Vintage DR. CYCLOPS Glass Movie Slide…From England!

Yes I’m still here, gang. Now, I could say that I wanted to leave my last post up at the top of the main page for as long as possible because it was a Leap Day special, and maybe there is, or was, a little truth to that. But, the more honest reason for the delay is that I’ve just been so busy with work, I’ve had relatively little time to tax the brain cells dedicated to writing, and when I do have time, all I really want to do is lie down and listen to the radio or watch whatever local professional sporting event happens to be, erm, happening. (I’m so glad baseball season is upon us once again.)

Furthermore, despite having almost unlimited things to write about (I got a lot of junk stuff), I simply couldn’t think of anything that got the creative juices flowing enough to render me typin’. No jive, this latest update was very nearly a look at the Atari 8-bit computer version of Superman: The Strategy Game; I even had pictures and a large chunk of the article already down before I decided I had lost interest. (Not in the game or computer, just in the babbling about it.)

Still, I wanted to get something up before too much time had passed, lest whatever readers I happened to retain started getting antsy. I needed to dig something out that would make for a quick ‘n easy stop-gap post; something I could snap a single picture of, ramble about for a bit, and then go on my merry way.

In the end, it came down to either a Simpsons air freshener from 1990, or our subject today. Did I make the right decision? Who cares, it’s a new update!

Remember the super neat Ken Maynard Lucky Larkin glass movie slide post? Of course you don’t; here, take the link. Well, we’re entering that arena once again, but this time, it’s not related to an antiquated (and possibly lost) sagebrush saga, but rather, some golden age horror/science fiction. Dig this:

Oh this is the stuff right here. I’m a sucker for vintage memorabilia from the horror and/or sci-fi genres, though since I’m far from the only one, it tends to be highly sought after (read: more expensive), and as such, I don’t add things like this to the collection as often as I’d like. Still, when this one crossed my path online, already affordable and then I received a discounted offer on top of it, well, I could only resist for so long.

Quick refresher: glass movie slides were quite literally advertisements projected on theater screens back in the day. They could be for local businesses or products, or, as we have here, pitches for other movies showing or to be shown at the respective theater. In this case, we have one for 1940’s Dr. Cyclops, and what’s more, it’s from England! Who knows how many of these could still exist or what my odds of coming across another are, but I’m guessing the number has to be pretty low in either case.

I bought this last year (from a seller in Jersey; go figure!), and as I recall it, I hesitated some before finally deciding to spend money that I shouldn’t. The reasons are, or were, twofold: 1) It’s not exactly a graphical feast. There is, as you can see, a nice old timey look to the slide, but it lacks the fantastic artwork that can really make these things ‘pop’ even in this day and age (go back and look at Lucky Larkin if you don’t believe me). Sidenote: they spelled “Janice” wrong. 2) Despite a love for vintage horror and sci-fi in general, where Dr. Cyclops in particular is concerned, to be totally frank, it has never been one of my favorites. Still, the various other factors related to the slide won me over in the end, and even if I don’t really care about the movie, I’ve also never really regretted buying it. Plus, who cares, it’s a new update!

Dr. Cyclops regards a crazy scientist stationed deep in the jungle who has developed the ability to shrink stuff. He shrinks a bunch of visiting biologists who, understandably, balk at being miniaturized and thus decide to defeat the mad doc and return themselves to their normative dimensions. Or something along those lines; like I said, it’s never been a favorite of mine. Look, just read about it, okay?

Anyway, the slide itself. First off, there was just no good way to get a picture of it; the glass that houses it is apparently the most reflective in the known universe. As such, please enjoy my hand’s cute reflection in it. (Seriously, this was the best I could do. But who cares, it’s a new update!) Also, note the label at the very top; I know it’s a bit hard to see (I briefly considered taking a picture specifically of it, until like Atari 8-bit Superman, the notion got nixed). It reads “HERBERT BAKER” and underneath “THAXTED (Dunmow) ESSEX” though what precisely that refers to, I’m not sure. It could have been the distributor of the slide, or perhaps the proprietor of the theater that ultimately projected it. The latter would be cooler than the former. ‘Course, it could just be the labeling of a very proud former owner of the slide, I dunno.

Thaxted is a town in Essex, and Dunmow was, near as I can tell, a railway station there that now no longer exists. I still don’t know how all that relates to the slide, though.

One more thing: 1940 was the year Dr. Cyclops, an American picture, premiered in, say it with me, America. (The United States, I mean; savvy?) But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when this slide hails from. It could have debuted in England later, or possibly even be from a later re-release either way. I’m not sure there’s any way to definitively know. Also, keep in mind 1940 was World War II time, even though the U.S. hadn’t officially entered it yet. How that impacted the release of an imported sci-fi movie to Britain, I do not know. I imagine they probably had bigger things on their collective mind. Even IMDb doesn’t reveal the pertinent information.

So, you now know about as much as I do about this slide, which is admittedly relatively little. There’s a real possibility someone out there knows way more than I do about it. Nevertheless, it’s vintage horror/sci-fi, it’s a piece of cinematic history, it’s (probably) fairly rare, and, last but not least, it’s cause for a new update. What more could you possibly want in a post?

See y’all the next time I feel like typing stuff!

10/31/1992 Bruce Springsteen Ticket Stub!

Halloween? Why yes, it is indeed Halloween today! Happy Halloween!

For this update, I’ve got something that, on the surface, doesn’t appear overtly Halloweeny. And I guess as a whole it really isn’t. BUT, it’s related to an event that took place 31 (!!!) years ago this very day, so as far as I’m concerned, it counts. Plus, it’s just what I feel like writing about right now, and that’s a pretty big factor, too.

Dig this:

Your eyes ain’t deceivin’ you; that’s a ticket stub from Bruce Springsteen’s Halloween night concert in Minneapolis, all the way back in 1992! Cool winnins? I sure think it is!

You know, I haven’t talked a whole lot about Bruce on this blog; the most notable occurrence was, wow, just over 10 years ago as of this writing, when I babbled about the neato Springsteen carnival mirror I found. Don’t let the lack of coverage on my dumb website mislead you though; Springsteen is my all-time favorite musical artist. His music has meant more to me than anyone else’s, with four (on some days, five) of his albums finding themselves on my personal top ten favorite albums list. Does that hurt the variety of the list? Maybe. Do I care? Not in the least. Hey, it’s my list!

So much of his output has been the soundtrack of my life. And even beyond the albums (I’ve got ’em all), collecting Springsteen memorabilia (I’ve got a lot), not to mention seeing him in concert when possible (right now, I’m up to seven shows, which is nothing compared to some Boss fans, I know, but that’s still six more times than anyone else I’ve seen live), it’s all been a big part of what makes me, well, me.

On the memorabilia front, I’ve been on a bit of a ticket stub kick lately. Mostly I stick to stubs from shows that were local to me; you know, Northeast Ohio. Not always though – sometimes it depends on the tour and/or venue and/or price. In the case of this ticket stub here, it doesn’t represent one of his generally more-celebrated eras (more on that in just a bit), but the date, the date, I bought this stub specifically because of that. And, to be totally frank, because I could get a Halloween day post out of it.

Graphically, okay, sure, there’s nothing too eye-popping about it; it looks like so many other Ticketmaster-issued tickets from that era. It contains all the pertinent required information: price, seating, the, uh, artist you’re entitled to see with said ticket, and so on and so forth. It’s been awhile since Bruce tickets were only $26! (The inflation calculator I just found says that would be $57.04 in today’s dollars, which is still a heckuva deal.) I’m not familiar with the seating of that venue, then or now, but section 116 sounds like it wasn’t bad, I guess? Maaaaan, I don’t know. You were in the door and guaranteed to see, as far as I’m concerned, the greatest live performer of all-time; closer is always better, but just being there is the really important thing here, in my eyes.

From what I’ve seen, ticket stubs from that 1992-1993 tour aren’t particularly pricey or sought-after. I’d imagine there are exceptions, but when an auction for a stub from one of his Nassau shows on that tour keeps ending and being relisted without bids for only $2 + free shipping (I eventually wound up winning it – unopposed – cause dude, it’s Bruce and it’s over 30 years old and it was two bucks plus free shipping), you gotta figure there are higher priorities in the Springsteen collecting world. (Which, of course, there are; lookin’ at you, script cover Born to Run!)

Why the (relative) disinterest? First and foremost, I’d guess it’s because for an artist of Bruce’s age, not to mention his general fandom’s age, a ticket from 1992/1993 probably isn’t considered golden era. Which, hey, it isn’t; for that you’d want something extending from somewhere in the 1970s to somewhere in the 1980s – though where that exactly that starts and ends is up to the individual. (Personally I’d go 1975-1981, with the absolute peak being 1978-1981, but that’s just me.)

But disregarding that aspect, that 1992-1993 tour followed the late-80s dissolution of the beloved E Street Band; for 1992-1993, Springsteen toured with an (almost) entirely new group (universally known as “The Other Band,” though they weren’t officially called that – or anything, actually). And that followed two simultaneously-released albums that weren’t always highly-regarded, something made even more glaring when you consider Springsteen was pretty much batting .1000 previously. Rightly or wrongly, the era isn’t always recalled fondly.

I don’t agree with that viewpoint. Okay, I was alive then, but far too young to be familiar with Bruce Springsteen’s music in any meaningful sense, let alone going to see him in concert. Had I grown up listening to/seeing him prior, who knows. But looking back now, I’m actually fond of early-90s Bruce. The albums, Human Touch and Lucky Town, I really think are better than they aren’t. (Lucky Town, barring some cringey lyrics in “Leap of Faith,” I think is overwhelmingly strong, and Human Touch, had it been pruned of two, three, or maybe even four of its weaker tracks, I think it’d be more widely-accepted as well.)

And the tour that supported them (and which this ticket stub is from)? I think it’s pretty derned good. Not his best, mind you, but those shows could be pretty terrific in their own right. They were rock concerts, but there was often a more soulful, Gospel-esque sound to the songs, though at other times, the band bordered on metal, so heavy was the rockin’. Sounds like a strange mix, I know, but in my opinion, Bruce made it work. (I consider the renditions of “Light of Day” from this tour to be definitive, by the way.)

Oh, Halloween. That’s right, this is a Halloween post. For that October 31, 1992 concert, according to phenomenal fan resource Brucebase, the set was pretty typical for the era, but the show opened with oldie-but-goodie “Spirit in the Night” (a video online shows Bruce lyrically modified it slightly to better reflect Halloween), but even more appropriately, Professor Roy Bittan played Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” as an introduction. Pretty cool, and definitely Halloween-appropriate!

There were Springsteen concerts performed on October 31 prior that had stronger Halloween feelings to them (1984 is a good example; 1980 is an even better one), but really, 1992-1993 tour or not, super strong Halloween vibes or not, could there be a better Halloween party to attend than a Springsteen concert? I submit that there is/was not. Your mileage may vary, of course.

And with that, this brief, but hopefully fitting, Halloween post comes to a close. Was it what you were expecting from me today? Almost certainly not. But hey, I gotta go with my gut sometimes, and even if I threw you a curve ball with this one, hopefully you liked it.

Have a happy, safe Halloween, gang!

VHS REVIEW: An Aztec Mummy Double Feature! (1980; Hollywood Home Theatre)

Ooooh, I haven’t posted since August; whoops! My bad! Time to rectify that, cause it’s October, and that means Halloween is a’comin’, and that means cheesy horror movies. And boy do I have a cheesy flick for us today! Two of ’em, actually.

Dig this: from the primordial days of home video, we have a Hollywood Home Theatre release! From 1980! 1980! As of this writing, a whopping 43 years ago! Because they came so early in the home video era (VHS had only been around for three years at that point, and was still a few away from well and truly taking off in a mainstream sense), these Hollywood Home Theatre tapes tend to be pretty rare; for example, it took me years to nab a copy of their Metropolis release. What happened was I ordered one for sale online, and then waited…and waited…and waited. Evidently it had already sold in the seller’s brick-and-mortar store, so a refund was issued, and then I waited even longer (WAY longer. SEVERAL YEARS longer) for another to show up. When one did, I naturally bought it, and while my hopes of a Channing Pollock edit were dashed upon arrival (it turned out to be more or less the same print as what we looked at a thousand years ago here), at least I finally had it.

Indeed, they may be tough finds nowadays (and even back then?), but there were plenty of titles to their credit. In fact, several months back, I kept watching (and unwatching) an auction with a bunch of old western movie VHS tapes. Most of them I didn’t care about, but there were three of these HHT tapes, each featuring multiple b-westerns per, and that’s what kept my ears figuratively perked. I didn’t technically need most of the films presented (and the ones I didn’t, to the best of my recollection, already have, I also didn’t really want), but the rarity of the tapes themselves still kept my interest level higher than it might otherwise have been. Eventually the lot sold to someone not named me, but I wasn’t too disappointed – after all, I still had this tape in my arsenal.

I’m just surmisin’ here, but as with other VHS tapes that still hold some value in this day and age, I imagine the horror and sci-fi HHT releases tend to garner the most attention. At least they do in my case. As such, when this “Aztec Mummy Double Feature” release popped up for really cheap, and I had never seen it before (or since), I jumped on it. Funny thing was, I never even had much interest in these films prior, but cornball old horror movies on rare VHS releases for really good prices, hey, that’s always gonna get my attention. In this case, I didn’t even hesitate when it came to hitting the “spend money on this” button. I probably should learn to hesitate more when it comes to that button, but this time around, I’m glad I didn’t!

Presented via an annoyingly uncentered sticker on the front sleeve, the movies that make up our double feature are The Curse of the Aztec Mummy and The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, which are actually movies #2 and #3 of a late 1950s horror trilogy from Mexico. Beginning with 1957’s The Aztec Mummy, these were all filmed back-to-back-to-back. While that first film seemed to ultimately get some kind of butchered release in the U.S., the second and third parts were imported here in the early-60s by K. Gordon Murray, who specialized in this sort of thing, and it’s those Murray products we have here. (It appears Murray never tackled the first installment.)

There was also a 1960s effort titled The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy, but near as I can tell, it’s not actually part of this series.

For my part, I tend to run hot and cold on these K. Gordon Murray imports. My interest in this sort of thing was higher in my early, early horror & sci-fi fandom (when I was around 11, 12 years old) but has since eroded precipitously. For example, I’ve never much cared for the bizarre 1959 Santa Claus he brought here (instead, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians has traditionally been my silly Christmas movie of choice), but his World of the Vampires was something that peaked my interest back then but doesn’t really now. (A revisit probably is in order, however.)

On the other hand, I saw The Brainiac for the first time a little over 10 years ago, and quite unexpectedly on my part, absolutely loved it. As such, I was hoping the two movies on this tape would fall more towards that end of this particular spectrum. Did they? Read on!

Actually, before we get to that, let’s take a quick look at the back of this sleeve. I didn’t really intend on including this, because these HHT sleeves are mostly generic from release to release. (I say mostly, because while you’d think they’re all uniform aside from the sticker on the front, the appropriate titles are printed on the sides. So why the sticker at all? A savings in cost is my best guess.)

Anyway, generic sleeves weren’t really uncommon in the early days of home video, especially where the backs were concerned. A good part of the time, these included a standard pitch (like what you’re seeing here) or a listing of other releases, some copyright info, and little else. It took a bit for manufacturers to realize, hey, we could be utilizing the back sleeves to, you know, really sell the movie proper.

Also, I just noticed it’s spelled “theater” on the back here, but “theatre” everywhere else. This discrepancy mildly disconcerts me, especially since I’m going against my every natural instinct and going with the “theatre” spelling in this article. It feels wrong. It feels dirty.

Oh alright, I’m gonna come clean: the real reason I’m bothering with the back of the sleeve is the old Blockbuster sticker still affixed to it. Forget the era the sticker alone evokes; I’m just amazed a tape of this nature could survive at a Blockbuster as late as May 24, 1994! Want an added bit of age-related depression? As of this writing, we’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of that date. No, that doesn’t make me feel good either. I think we need to wrap ourselves in some nonsensical silliness now.

I was passingly familiar with The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy beforehand (more on that aspect momentarily), but The Curse of the Aztec Mummy was the more new-to-me flick here. Online reviews made it sound like it would be sufficiently goofy for me – and it was.

(WARNING: some spoilers are ahead, as if anyone cares.)

Our title, our Angel, and our mummy.

The plot evidently picks up immediately after the first entry, which is odd since it seems that flick, in a butchered English translation at least, hadn’t even been released in the U.S. yet. A flashback at one point fills that part in: previously one Dr. Almada hypnotized his fiancée Flor in order to recall her past life as an Aztec maiden (a plot element obviously inspired by the Bridey Murphy craze of the 1950s; U.S. filmgoers had already gotten homegrown cinematic efforts in the horror vein with fare such as The She-Creature and The Undead, flicks that dealt with past life regression or some gobbledygook like that). It seems that the former-Flor had defied Aztec law and fallen in love with a warrior, which resulted in her being put to death and the warrior being given an eternal sentence as undead guard of an Aztec breastplate and bracelet. (That’s our titular mummy!)

Apparently the first Aztec Mummy was a big fat rip-off of Universal’s 1932 The Mummy, with the Egyptians being replaced by the Aztecs. Wanna know a secret? Despite being a classic horror and sci-fi lover, I’ve never much cared for the Universal Mummy films. Even the highly-regarded original has never been of much interest to me. I recall kinda enjoying one of the later b-movie entries in the series, but without doing a bit of (admittedly minimal) legwork, I couldn’t even tell you offhand which one that was. I guess I could go look, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble for an article only 7 people will ever actually read.

Anyway, as Curse opens, villain of the first film Dr. Krupp (alias “The Bat” for some reason) is in police custody (his interrogation seems almost entirely too informal and nonchalant, but then, I’ve been watching a lot of Miami Vice lately so maybe my perception is just skewed. I do wish Tubbs was here to yell at him, though). Krupp is, in almost comically short-order, rescued by his underlings, and seemingly undeterred by the events of the first film, continues on his quest to retrieve the breastplate and bracelet. It seems deciphering the hieroglyphics on them will lead to an ancient Aztec treasure. I guess the probability of making an undead mummy with superhuman strength really, really mad by doing this isn’t something he considers a big issue.

This may all sound like pretty standard cheapie horror flick material, but what drives Curse is just how unrelentingly nutty it is. This is some cheap, goofy stuff, and I consider that most definitely a good thing. For instance, as Krupp’s gang is breaking him out of police custody (the cops shake clearly non-firing machine guns at them while sound effects tell us, yes, they are indeed firing bullets and how dare you think otherwise), who should arrive to attempt saving the day? A masked superhero called “The Angel.” Think of a lucha libre, though I’m not sure he’s technically a wrestler. Nevertheless, the scene with Angel matter-of-factly driving down the road to intercept the baddies is wonderful, and his ineffectiveness at doing so gives me some real Prince of Space vibes. Angel is pretty useless for the most part, but his random presence gives this movie just the over-the-top factor it needs.

Some of the prevailing nuttiness of Curse is there naturally, while some of it is a result of the insipid dubbing. For example: Angel is promptly overpowered by henchmen, and while he’s on the ground unconscious, Krupp stops one of his underlings from shooting Angel dead. Krupp then clarifies that he wants Angel dead, but he wants to kill him in his own special way. They then leave him on the ground, get in the car and drive away! Ignoring the fact the baddies just gunned down a bunch of cops without hesitation or remorse, what really confuses me about this scene is that Angel’s head looks like it’s positioned under the tire of the getaway car, but Krupp’s gang hesitates just long enough to allow him to move it to the side before they drive away. This whole moment is handled so, I don’t know, lackadaisically I guess, that I honestly can’t figure out if squishing Angel’s head was Krupp’s special way of offing him, or if that’s just where the actor was and someone off camera told him to move so the car can split.

A lot of the goofiness is strictly dialogue-based, however. Certainly this is purely a fault on the part of the dubbing, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it. When Angel randomly shows up at the home of Dr. Almada, his sudden appearance is treated with less shock than you might expect a masked stranger to elicit. Angel then refuses to explain why he’s wearing a mask because it’ll take too long, then just moments later explains he wears it to make his crime fighting job easier. (It neither takes too long to explain nor even really needs explanation.) During that same scene, after Angel explains how Krupp escaped by gunning down cops, Flor states “what a ruthless thing to do” in a tone that doesn’t at all capture what a ruthless thing it was to do.

Dialogue dumbness doesn’t end there, either. Speech is redundant or nonsensical time and time again, and while we’re at it, I noticed the voice given to Krupp doesn’t fit the villainousness of the character; he actually sounds sorta kind and compassionate!

Also, Angel is eventually revealed to be Almada’s wimpy, bespectacled assistant. It’s something you can see coming a mile away, but it gives the film an additional, mild Superman vibe. Just, you know, minus the whole genuinely heroic thing.

The Aztec Mummy himself (itself?) doesn’t actually figure into the plot all that much until the film is nearly over, though at only a little over an hour long it’s not like it takes all that long to get there. Basically the breastplate and bracelet are stolen, mums wakes up, heads to Krupp’s hideout, does some pummelin’, retrieves the items, and leaves. Alright then, thanks for stoppin’ by!

I genuinely enjoyed this movie! It’s so fast-paced, goofy and at times outright stupid that you can’t help but love it. Plus, its brevity is an attribute, not a detriment. So does it indeed fall towards the Brainiac end of the silly Mexican horror spectrum for me? Yes, and in fact, I may like it more! As far as this tape goes, The Curse of the Aztec Mummy is worth the price of admission alone. Well, as long as said price is pretty cheap, like it was for me.

Okay, time for the second feature…OH HEY, WAIT!

Lookit that! In between the movies, HHT actually included the old Let’s All go to the Lobby snipe, plus intermission and feature presentation cards! I sure wasn’t expecting that! It’s a small thing, but it sure adds to the whole “double feature” aspect of the tape! I would have expected something quirky like this on a release from the 1990s, but for one as old as 1980, it’s definitely a pleasant surprise!

And that brings us to movie #2: The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy. As I said before, I’ve had a passing familiarity with this movie, but until this tape, it wasn’t something I had actually watched. Besides this VHS, I own it twice-over, as part of the Grampa series (because of course), and as a longtime MSTie, I have that particular Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode on its respective DVD set. The Grampa tape is a later release so his intro/outro isn’t even on it, and the MST3K episode, that’s a first season installment, one I’ve heard isn’t particularly great even by the standards of that year, so I never even bothered firing it up. Add to that the movie’s reputation as dull and littered with flashbacks to the previous two entries, and yeah, I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to dig into this one beforehand, not until I had fun with Curse anyway.

(WARNING: some more spoilers coming, like it matters.)

Our title, and our titular characters.

Despite being filmed immediately after the movie we just saw, and in stark contrast to that flick’s plot, Robot doesn’t take place right where Curse left off. Instead, it picks up five years after the events of the preceding film. I’m not sure I like that, but it’s not like I had much say in the matter.

One thing’s for sure: it’s definitely loaded with flashbacks, including lengthy ones from the first film in the series. In the context of this tape, that works, and really, even in the context of the time in which this was first released here, it’s appropriate, since as previously stated that first movie hadn’t properly hit the U.S. yet. It’s kind of a drag seeing things we had already seen flashbacked to an hour or so before, and even more of a drag seeing flashbacks to the movie we had just watched, but it is what it is. And, there are large portions from the first movie seen here that we didn’t see in Curse, which helps flesh out the overall story somewhat. It’s here that we first see the mummy repelled by the sight of a Crucifix, Dracula-style, and while it’s not something touched on again (not in these English translations at least), it’s something that pleased this good Cat’lic boy.

After getting the preliminary flashbacks out of the way, the film then starts flashing back to (presumably) new footage to set up the main story, and actually, now that I think about it, much of the movie is one big flashback, being related to friends of Almada and his now-wife Flor. (Nice continuity!)

It seems Krupp escaped his apparent death at the end of the last film, and for the past five years has been working on his ultimate plan to defeat the mummy, retrieve the artifacts and get his precious, precious treasure. By hypnotizing Flor, Krupp is able to find out where the stupid mummy is now located, and with that knowledge in hand, his scheme is revealed: he’s built a remote controlled, atomic powered robot! When the breastplate and bracelet are retrieved and the mummy predictably wakes up to deliver a beat down, said robot should be able to withstand the assault and instead defeat the mummy once and for all.

And what a robot! This thing is a boxy, stereotypical 1950s bot, beyond cheap looking and impossible to take seriously. Inside its helmet is a real person’s face, assumed to be a corpse Krupp stole, and decked out with lightbulbs, the thing is just plain goofy.

But you know, when the climatic-yet-brief fight finally occurs, it does seem that the robot has the upper hand; it withstands every attack from the mummy. Like the last film, the mummy doesn’t really factor into things (barring flashbacks) until the end here. It does seem like he/it/whatever might lose the battle, though since it’s an eternal, supernatural mummy, maybe the fight would just go on and on and on in a repetitively endless draw or something. But when our protagonists arrive and shoot the remote control out of Krupp’s hands, the mummy makes quick work of the thing, shaking it apart like a bunch of tin cans. It’s both funny looking and highly anticlimactic.

I have less to say about Robot than I did Curse, because Robot just isn’t as much stupid fun. The titular bout is wacky enough, but the first half or so (it’s not like I timed it) of the film is mainly recounting the previous entries, and even when the new story proper gets rolling, it’s not as entertainingly stupid as the last movie. Even the dubbed dialogue takes awhile to get funny. The movie starts promisingly enough, with an introductory narration that promises the events to be notarized as true (yeah, okay) but then immediately contradicts itself by claiming the film is a work of both fact and fiction (which may hold some truth; the Aztecs apparently did have their own mummies, though I’m not sure how close they looked to the cinematic representation here, and at any rate I’m fairly certain none of them ever came back to life to fight crime), but until the end of the movie, things just never live up to that silly goose hype.

Furthermore, Almada’s assistant is back, but The Angel doesn’t make a reappearance, not even in the flashbacks (at least not masked and in action). Krupp does obliquely reference The Angel once, but if you hadn’t seen Curse first, you’d be none the wiser. That’s a let down, and takes away a lot of inherent goofiness, something Robot has but needs more of. A LOT more of. It’s just not as entertaining as Aztec Mummy #2.

I did really like the cheap-but-endearing cemetery and laboratory sets, however.

So that’s Hollywood Home Theatre’s Aztec Mummy two-fer. The second half of the double feature may not live up to the first, but you know, as a whole this release is still a lot of fun. Certainly it’s an early example of home video; the sleeve is mostly bare bones and the prints utilized aren’t exactly pristine (Robot looks a bit better than Curse, but not by much. That said, both are entirely watchable). Nevertheless, the movies are just wacky enough to recall the drive-in double features of yesteryear, something that is only reinforced by the intermission segment. If that’s what HHT was seeking to achieve, I dare say they succeeded!

Is this the most sought-after release on the label? I’m almost positive that it isn’t. There’s at least one Godzilla entry in their oeuvre, and I’d imagine that is worth some mega bucks to ‘Zilla/VHS collectors. Nevertheless, I’d think there’s some inherent value to anything vintage horror and/or sci-fi on the label, but even if there isn’t, I’d still say this is a cool way to visit, or revisit, these flicks. Provided you can find the tape in the first place, that is!

Bentley Compu-Vision (1983)

Now gang, believe me when I say I’ve been wanting to showcase this retro video game oddity for quite awhile, and today is the day. Folks into vintage electronics and/or thrifting will almost certainly be at least vaguely familiar with the portable black & white TVs put out by Bentley in the 1980s. They were (and are) cheap and ubiquitous, and while I can’t find a scan online right now, I recall seeing ads giving them away free when you bought RVs back in the day. I would guess you could get them free any number of ways; buying cars, opening a bank account, and so on and so forth. That’s just a guess on my part, but considering how common they are and have been for many, many years, it makes sense.

Or maybe they were just incredibly cheap to purchase from the beginning. They weren’t exactly high end, but they did their job and looked (look) cool enough. I’ve related this anecdote before, but I still recall taking mine on a camping trip back in like 1999, and staying up late watching Terminator 2 on Big Chuck & lil’ John with it (by the end of the broadcast, the power of the gigantic size D batteries had been sapped sufficiently enough to basically render the film a silent). Granted, there’s not much you can do with these TVs nowadays, not without jumping through some hoops at least, but the point is anyone who has been into vintage electronics for some period of time should have a passing familiarity with ’em, even if only by sight.

WELL, it turns out lil’ itty bitty televisions weren’t the only things Bentley (not to be confused with the car company, near as I can tell) put out back in the 1980s. The most well-known and common, sure, but in addition to that, they also put out a similar-looking portable all-in-one Super 8 projector, which was, if nothing else, cool in concept; some of the reviews I’ve seen online don’t exactly give it high marks. (I have one of these, but it’s still new-in-the-box and I never had the heart to crack it open – especially since I don’t do much, or anything really, with Super 8.)

Also put out by Bentley back in the 1980s? A video game console!

“Oooh, what does it play?!”

The Bentley Compu-Vision (though it’s often spelled “Compuvision,” no dash, online – which is my preferred personal spelling, though I’ll be technically correct here in hopes of staving off snotty comments) was released at some point in 1983, and is a compact, elegant little beast. The black casing with woodgrain trim (which extends along the sides) obviously recalls the Atari 2600, while the built-in controller bays and usage of “vision” in the name puts it on the same turf as the Intellivision and ColecoVision (plus, hey, ColecoVision, Compu-Vision, CV – coincidence???).

Woodgrain was probably a little passé by 1983, even the then-current iteration of the 2600 had dropped it by then, but nevertheless, this thing just looks cool. From the onset it comes off like a 2600/ColecoVision hybrid. It’s a relatively small, lightweight console, attractively designed and with the shiny gold lettering of “Bentley Compu-Vision” lending it an additional touch of, I don’t know, techy class or something.

“That’s all well and good, but what does it play?!“

What’s more, the usage of “compu” in the name unmistakably plays into the then-emerging popularity of home computers. Computers were still a relatively-new thing to consumers – in a general, widespread sense – at the time, but their popularity was increasingly growing. Spearheaded by the Atari 8-bits and Commodore 64, and with the video game crash of 1983/1984 hitting consoles – and retailers – hard, the emergence of home computers as an ever present part of daily life (which continues to this day, right down to the smart phones we have in our pockets) can probably best be traced to the era we’re talking about right here. They certainly existed before, but it was at that point that their popularity with the general public really started taking off. Or at least that’s how I see it.

Of course, where the Compu-Vision is concerned, that’s just fancy-namin’; this thing is a computer in only the barest of senses. Oh sure, it’s electronic and does electronic things, technically you could call it a computer, but functionality-wise, it was hardly a substitute for an Atari 800XL.

Nevertheless, from name to design, there’s little doubt as to what era this hails from. From outside appearances alone, it’s tough to imagine this thing coming from anywhere but the 1982-1984 timeframe.

“SO WHAT DOES IT PLAY ALREADY?!?!”

So what does the Compu-Vision play, you ask? Pong. It plays Pong. And variations of, say it with me, Pong.

Quick background: in the 1970s, General Instruments produced the AY-3-8500 chip. Easily acquired, this chip led to a glut of Pong-based consoles from a variety of manufacturers in the late-70s. Of course, since the chip played the same set of Pong variations across the board, this meant there was little difference between the consoles beyond outside cosmetics. Indeed, we’ve already seen one such example with the Wonder Wizard a few years back.

With so many consoles being basically identical beyond their case design, not to mention the emergence of cartridge-based systems (and yes, even home computers were beginning to make the scene), it stands to reason Pong-based units had sorta petered out by 1978/1979, though in retrospect they still remain interesting examples of video gaming, based solely on how they look (unless you just really, really like Pong).

The Compu-Vision here plays four Pong-based games. In order of my screenshots, there’s handball (called “practice” on the console itself), squash (often called jai alai on these consoles, which I wish was the case here cause then I could reference the “Killshot” episode of Miami Vice, which I guess I just did anyway), soccer (also often called hockey), and tennis, which is just your standard, classic Pong.

Besides the expected power, reset and game variations, switches on the console also let you adjust the angle of the ball, the speed of the ball, and the size of the paddles, so these could all be made quite a bit tougher than you may first expect. The ball really zips on the fast speed, for example. This could make for some really fun, competitive matches, though I’m just surmisin’ here cause it’s not like I can ever get anyone over to play this stuff with me. Except for practice, these are all two-player only; my superfluousness has come back to haunt me!

Because this Bentley came out so much later than other Pong-based consoles, it shares some traits with other contemporary machines: sound is piped through the TV rather than the console itself, and unlike the Wonder Wizard nonsense I had to deal with, the Bentley uses a standard RF cord and switchbox. It also takes a 6V DC adapter, which I didn’t have available (or maybe I did and just wasn’t aware of it; I’ve got enough junk laying around to where that’s a distinct possibility). In a nod to Pong past, the console also uses batteries, though in this case it’s not several hundred (loose approximation) behemoth batteries, but only four AAs. Cheap and readily available, the convenience factor was/is off the charts!

All of this meant that getting the console to display on my PC and taking real, actual video/ screenshots was pretty easy. Yes indeed, those screencaps above were taken by yours truly, from this very console. Of course, given the AY-3-8500 used, the graphics (such as they are) are identical to any number of other Pong units, but I promise you, these here are from the Bentley. I mean, why would I lie about that?

Some (but not all) Pong consoles had the paddle controls built right into unit, meaning players had to sit right up on the machine and hunch over it for the duration. But since the Compu-Vision wanted you to think it was more than it really was, the controllers, while ultimately hardwired in (always a danger: remember the Arcadia 2001?), are at least removable from the unit. The cords aren’t super duper long, you still need to sit pretty close to the console, but at least you can lean back on the couch some.

Here’s the deal with the controls on these old Pong systems: decades of dust and dirt accumulate in them, resulting in them being pretty jittery on-screen. This is generally an easy fix, the potentiometers simply need cleaned. This is common enough that I automatically assume the paddles will be jittery whenever I bring a new old one of these things into the collection.

But you know what? This is actually the second Compu-Vision I’ve added to the collection (the first, my “collectible one” as it were, is boxed away safely), and in both cases, I’ve found the controllers to be excellent. Not only are they pretty comfortable, but they performed wonderfully without my attempting to clean them in any way whatsoever. Now you could argue that because this thing was so obsolete upon arrival (something we’re going to talk more about in just a moment), no one played it enough to get the controllers dirty, but I really think they’re just well-made in general. My first Compu-Vision, the controls were silky smooth, and with this one here, while they could probably use a bit of a cleaning, things are still entirely playable as it is. (Looking at the picture, you may be tempted to think there’s a bunch of grime in the base there; while there’s a tiny bit of debris, that’s actually the color of the nut used that makes things look uglier than they are.)

I never would have guessed it beforehand, but the controllers on this are some of the best I’ve found on a Pong console. Whoda thunk?!

Wanna know the most interesting thing about the Bentley Compu-Vision to me? It’s not the name, or the design, or the controllers. Rather, it’s the fact that it was even released when it was. I mean, 1983! 1983!! It may not mean much now, but it’s unbelievable just how antiquated this thing was upon arrival in ’83. I’ve seen more than one reference to it retailing at $25, a ridiculously cheap amount even in 1983 dollars (if accurate), but even if you could get it free with the purchase of a car or whatever, as I’m surmising, no kid was going to really want this in any serious gamin’ capacity. Video games, both at home and in the arcades, had hugely evolved by that point.

What’s more, the first flowerings on what we now consider the 8-bit era proper were in play. The Japanese versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System (as the Famicom) and Sega Master System (the Mark III) came out that year, and the Atari 7800 was in development here and slated for a 1984 release (which ultimately didn’t really happen, aside from a test market that year; we’d get that, along with wide releases of the NES and SMS, in ’86), but even the stuff already on shelves here in the U.S. was just miles ahead of this thing. Heck, it would have been outdated in 1979, never mind 1983! The fact that it was cosmetically made to ‘fit in’ just makes it all the more intriguing.

In a way, it makes a weird bit of sense though. I imagine the AY-3-8500 was still readily available, and video games were big business, so why not try to get in on the gravy train with an uber-cheap offering? Plus, it’s one thing to look at the console itself, but it’s not like the box (which I don’t have) made false promises. Aside from ignoring the fact it played wildly obsolete games, there was little doubt you were getting Pong with this thing. And aesthetically it fit in with home entertainment set-ups of the time, so I guess for a kid just trying to get the most consoles he could, it worked as filler if nothing else.

Plus, Pong may have been old hat by 1983, but don’t underestimate how fun and competitive a simple oldie like it could, and can, be. Indeed, when this came in, I had to unhook the Atari Video Pinball unit I’ve been noodling with, the versions of Breakout and attempts at basketball on it having kept me fairly occupied lately. There’s something to be said for twitch, hand/eye coordination type games. So while it may have been ancient even in 1983, believe it or not there was still some fun to be had.

Nowadays, the Bentley Compu-Vision isn’t exactly unknown; there’s plenty of info on it out there in internet land. But conversely, it’s also not that well-known, either. The Atari/Sears Pongs and the Coleco Telstars and the Magnavox Odysseys will continue to get more press in retro gaming circles, and rightfully so. That said, I think I’d say the Bentley is my favorite *proper* Pong console; the games are tried and true, and cosmetically it’s attractive, but the fact that it’s so ‘wrong’ is what puts it over the top for me. (Though when it comes to Pong consoles in general, I think the Telstar Arcade still tops it for me, even though that one was quite a bit more advanced and played shooting and racing games in addition. Although, while it doesn’t play any Pong variants at all, I think I like the Atari Video Pinball more than any of them, at least where U.S. consoles in this particular ‘dedicated unit’ genre are concerned.)

The Bentley Compu-Vision isn’t particularly valuable; you can find them relatively cheap and plentiful online. The first one I bought was entirely affordable, and you know how much this one was? $5! Five bucks!! There was shipping on top of that, but even that was incredibly reasonable. I’ve spent more total on old VHS tapes than I did this Bentley! Now granted, it wasn’t perfect; the battery cover was missing, and it was sold as untested, but at that price, I could afford to take chances. At worst, it’d become a neat display piece. The untested part didn’t even concern me all that much; while that’s sometimes seen as dishonest code for “broken,” in my experience these old consoles were built like tanks; I tend to give the benefit of the doubt and figure the seller just doesn’t have the switchbox or adapter or TV or whatever to fully test these. And while there’s a few machines I’ve bought simply for collecting purposes (that is, I never seriously intended to bother hooking them up – and still haven’t to this day), for ones I picked up wanting to at least give a try, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one that hasn’t worked to some degree.

Of course, that’s just my experience; you shouldn’t use it as your personal guideline. But for me, I’ve had good luck with these oldies. Things back then were built to last.

So, if you’re looking for a Pong console to add to your collection, the Bentley isn’t a bad choice. It plays the same games as so many others, but it has enough then-modern attributes, both in looks and in connections, to make it a better option than some. Plus, it’s got that whole super-late release thing going for it. If this wasn’t the last Pong console released in the U.S., it’s certainly one of the very last. So if you’re only adding one Pong and don’t want to break the bank, hey, you could do worse!

Messin’ Around with an Emerson Arcadia 2001

Friends, believe it or not, this blog is now 10 years old. 10 years old?! It’s true; I started it in March 2013. Back then, I was able to post a whole lot more frequently than I am now, but hey, I’ve stuck with it, and you know what? I WANT ACCOLADES! Gimme my accolades! Now! I mean, if you want. Please?

The earliest post here is this terrible old article from March 30, 2013 (don’t bother reading it), but there were a few posts before it that I no longer have up (I do that sometimes). As with anything else, the more you work at something, the better you become at it, and frankly, I don’t think I found whatever constitutes my groove here until, I don’t know, 2015 or 2016. Even then, there were things I did then that I’d do different now, but none of this really matters, so who cares?

ANYWAY, I don’t really have a big 10th anniversary extravaganza update planned, I guess I could have done one, but as previously stated, none of this really matters, so who cares? Nevertheless, our subject today harkens back, somewhat, to an article from those early, unformed days. Perhaps you’ll recall (though I doubt it) this old, old post from August 1, 2013, in which I detailed an uber-obscure old video game console by the name of the APF M1000. Despite the rough nature of that early effort (that one would look quite different if written nowadays), it’s done pretty well views-wise. Probably because no one had one of those things back in the day.

So what say we go back to the same wheelhouse, with another obscure video game console no one had back in the day, either. Although comparatively, fewer people didn’t have it than they didn’t have the APF. (In other words, it’s not as obscure.) Ladies and gennelmen, dig the Emerson Arcadia 2001!

Actually, design-wise the Arcadia isn’t dissimilar to the APF – right down to the uncomfortable, hard-wired controllers! But whereas the APF featured mostly rudimentary, first-generation type games, the Arcadia’s library was much more in line with the arcade scene of the early 1980s. There were a few actual ports of coin-op games, albeit mostly obscure ones, but don’t worry; much of the rest of the library was made up of shameless rip-offs of popular arcade games! Don’t think for a minute this doesn’t appeal to me.

Released in 1982, Emerson’s Arcadia 2001 was pretty much a flop. Ostensibly it was competing with the era-defining Atari 2600 and the 2600’s arch enemy, Mattel’s Intellivision. If those were its only two adversaries, it still wouldn’t have won the war, but it may well have made more of a splash than it did (especially with an introductory price of, supposedly, only $99, which even in 1982 dollars was still a pretty decent price for a video game console – if true, that is).

Unfortunately, the Arcadia launched not long before the ColecoVision, which promised to bring the arcade experience home and did a pretty good job of doing so. Furthermore, Atari also dropped the 5200 in 1982, which was supposed to fight the Intellivison but ended up going head-to-head with ColecoVision, and beyond even that, home computers – no slouches at playing games themselves – were gaining in popularity as well. Released into this climate, the Arcadia just never stood a chance.

Nevertheless, while it never made much of a dent in the U.S., an impressive number of officially-licensed clone consoles exist throughout the world. And, even though the library wasn’t exactly gigantic or, you know, great, there’s still a sizable number of titles aping real, big time arcade hits. While it’s more of a curio than something you’d give more playing time to than a 2600, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still some fun to be had. Right out the gate, this thing has more vested interest in it for me than the APF ever did/does.

You’ll have to contend with some relics of video game past, though. No, I’m not talking about the cartridge format (I consider that a good thing), but rather, the antiquated, uncomfortable controllers. I’m not just talking about them being hard-wired into the console, although that’s annoying too (this is a factor that will come back to haunt me; you’ll see later in the post), but rather, the elongated shape sporting a numeric membrane keypad, a joystick and fire buttons on the sides. It’s not particularly comfortable, and certainly not suited to long play sessions, and it’s a design seen over and over again in early video game consoles. From the Intellivision to ColecoVision to, well, even the APF, manufacturers sure did love to make kids’ hands cramp up! You think you’re such hot biscuits, takin’ on galactic invaders and whatnot? That may be true, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a price to be paid for such a wild, unchecked ego. Playing this for long periods of time could have dire ramifications for yours truly. “Hey man, how’d you get carpal tunnel syndrome? 10 years of blogging?” “Naw bro, it’s from playing my Arcadia 2001 too much!” “Your what?”

I will say this though: with its joystick rather than pad and still-mushy-but-not-AS-mushy fire buttons, I’d give the edge to Arcadia’s product over the Intellivison controller, anyway. Dubious honor? Well sure it is!

Okay, now listen: Arcadia consoles and games tend to be pricey. I had to drop a not-unreasonable-but-still-healthy chunk of change just to get this system. And even then, it took awhile before one showed up with a price that didn’t make me turn to an imaginary camera and shed a single tear like Iron Eyes Cody. (And yet, altogether this was still way cheaper than what I’ve currently spent on getting a working Commodore 64 set up – a set up that, as of this writing, still isn’t optimal but at least I can play Ghostbusters.)

As for games, some of the rarer titles have asking prices higher than what I paid for this console itself! And while some of the more common games aren’t particularly exorbitant price-wise, very often you’ll still have to drop a decent bit to get some of the (relatively?) better ones. Don’t get me wrong, you might be able to nab an Arcadia cartridge for single digits or low double digits, but those tend to be less exciting titles – and that’s not a very wise usage of your Emerson Arcadia 2001 investment, is it?

(An additional aspect to consider: the risk of buying untested cartridges is higher here because no one had an Arcadia 2001. It’s understandable a reseller isn’t going to have a console on hand to test that random copy of Funky Fish they picked up somewhere. While carts are hearty and durable – of the hundreds and hundreds I’ve owned over the years, I can literally count on one hand the number of games that have refused to work no matter how much I cleaned and/or pouted at them – the fact remains that you’re still goofing around with 40+ year old stuff here.)

This has been my longwinded way of saying I don’t have a ton of games for this thing. Oh I’ve got a handful that we’re about to look at it, but when it comes to adding titles to this particular collection, I have and will continue to pick my battles wisely. Well, as wisely as possible considering I’m talking about an obscure 1982 video game system. (We call this a first world problem.)

Here’s what we’re about to see: in delightfully alphabetical order, we have Alien Invaders, Cat Trax, Escape, and Space Attack. Those are, uh, what you’re seeing here. Each game was inspired by (read: a rip-off of) a real big time arcade title. What’s aping what? See if you can guess before I reveal the contents to you! See, this is an interactive blog! To get the most out of it, you have to pay attention to whatever stupid thing I happen to be saying at any given moment!

Take note that Alien Invaders is a smaller cartridge while the other three are notably taller. Arcadia games were manufactured in both cartridge styles. Why the size discrepancy? No one knows. In the end it doesn’t really matter, except that the taller carts look slightly silly when plugged into the relatively small Arcadia console.

These are the only four games I currently have for the Arcadia. Well, technically I have five: I have doubles of one of them. Which one? I’ll never tell.

Before we go game-by-game here, I just want to make special mention of the instruction sticker on the back of the cartridges. They’re amazing.

These things are pretty obviously, erm, grammatically problematic. Awkward phrasing is the order of the day here, along with really odd bullet points describing respective “features” of the game. And as you can see here, there can be flat out typos: “Be hurry,” folks! My guess is whoever put this together wasn’t a native English speaker – or at least that’s my hope. But hey, look, it’s “Fun for all the family” – well, I’m sold!

As fun as these instruction stickers can be to read, they also point to one of the, for lack of a better word, endearing aspects of Arcadia 2001 collecting: that is, the sort of strange, off-kilter feel of the whole thing. This console just wasn’t ready for prime time, but that didn’t stop it from jumping into the coin op-centric arena of early-80s gaming anyway. This may not have been ideal for some kid back in 1982, but in retrospect it’s one of the things that makes this all so, weirdly, appealing.

Okay, let’s play some games! Like my adorable picture above, we’ll go in alphabetical order here. Oh, and while I could have gone through the hassle of getting screenshots up here via a video capture card, the Arcadia features RF output only; this is to be expected of a 1982 console, but the result was that the hassle of getting it hooked up for ‘proper’ screencaps was an annoyance I just wasn’t prepared to undertake. Instead, I turned the lights off and took pictures of the actual Sony Trinitron TV screen playing these games. While there are a few screen abnormalities that you would expect to see when taking pics of a CRT TV in this manner, this still had the dual benefit of 1) mimicking the dark din of an early-80s arcade and 2) keeping my frustration levels lower. Trust me, the latter is more important than the former.

Alien Invaders – If you guessed this was Arcadia’s clone of Space Invaders, you were correct. Granted, this wasn’t exactly a puzzler; no respectable early-80s console would be caught dead without at least one of these. As such, the standard rules of Space Invaders apply: there are rows of marching aliens descending, fire at them with your cannon till they is all dead. Not gonna lie: I like Space Invaders, but only selectively. The arcade original was certainly revolutionary, but I’ve always found it a little too slow and clunky for my tastes; I much prefer the faster, smoother Atari 2600 port, and actually, my favorite version is the Atari 8-bit computer conversion. It added some original elements to the gameplay that not everyone may like, but it’s those very elements that make it more appealingly intense for me.

Arcadia’s take on the game doesn’t look bad; the white background doesn’t do it for me, but the sprite are sharp, it plays smoothly enough, and I like the city skyline in the background. Unfortunately, the game is crippled by one big, big flaw: there’s only one wave, and it’s timed. Clear all the aliens, and you’re left picking off motherships continuously until the five minute timer runs out. Man, that was a bad, bad idea; the whole point of these kinda games is to go for the highest score while seeing how many waves you can complete. Implementing a single, timed wave completely destroys those ideals. It may not be bad for a few rounds with a buddy, just seeing who can score the most points, but even then, that aspect is severely limited by the completely needless decision to make the game like this. Alien Invaders is bogus.

Cat Trax – In the early-80s, if a game wasn’t a Space Invaders knock-off, there was a good chance it would be a Pac-Man knock-off. That’s an over-generalization for sure, but hey, that’s just my way of saying Cat Trax is an Arcadia dot chompin’ maze game. Was that your guess??? Maybe it’s not fair to call it a rip-off; Crazy Gobbler more fit that particular bill. But like so many other games from that time, it was clearly inspired by the Pac-Guy.

I tend to run hot and cold on maze games. I can get as addicted as anyone to a well-done iteration, but I can just as easily let my eyes glaze over upon playing one that isn’t up to my arbitrary standards. Fortunately, Cat Trax is a goody. In fact, it’s terrific! It doesn’t do anything too different from Pac-Man, but it plays so well that of all the games we’re seeing today, it was the one I was most addicted to.

Basically, you’re a cat running through a maze, eating dots while being chased by three dogs. Occasionally a fish will appear in the middle of the maze; nab it, and your cat will turn into a dog catchin’ truck, which will allow you to chomp (well, catch) the dogs instead of the other way around. Clear all the dots from the maze, and you’ll advance to the next, ostensibly harder round. (Hear that, Alien Invaders?!)

I was a little concerned at first because your cat seems to move kinda slowly, but it’s actually not so bad, and speeds up once you grab the fish besides. I don’t have a lot more to say about this one, because it really is just your standard maze game from the early-80s – but rest assured, it’s a good one!

Escape – Looking at my picture of all these cartridges earlier, you might have been tempted to figure Escape was the token Pac-Man clone. After all, the character used on the artwork looks like a poor man’s Pacs, and the monsters and maze-like images in the background do little to dissuade you from that thinking. As such, you’d be forgiven for not guessing this was actually Arcadia’s take on Berzerk!

Actually, my understanding is that this was the Arcadia’s second take on Berzerk; the first was a game called Robot Killer, which is apparently pretty much the same as this one except with graphics that even more closely mimic those of Berzerk. Here, the robots have been replaced by monsters, and there’s a spinning…thing in the middle of the screen that occasionally speeds up and then shoots off in some random direction. But really, this is just Berzerk: run through mazes, fire at enemies, escape to the next screen.

Now I can get down with some Berzerk, but there’s a glaring problem here: man, this game moves S-L-O-W. Simply moving your character across the screen is nothing less than a slog! And to make matters worse, the stiff joystick on the Arcadia controller does you no favors; it’s uncomfortable and makes it easier to die by a mistake on your part than it should be otherwise.

Escape is interesting, and I like the idea behind it, simply because I like Berzerk in general, but yeah, this one is more of a clunker than it should be. Speeding your man up would have made a HUGE difference here.

Space Attack – Based on the title, you’d probably think this was another Space Invaders clone. Well, kinda sorta; it’s actually a Galaxian clone. I’m gonna tell you straight up: I loves me some Galaxian. If there’s a port of it, I want it. Despite all the reasons I shouldn’t, I even prefer it to its higher-regarded sequel, Galaga. As such, while I won’t go as far as to say this was my killer app for the Arcadia since it took me forever to get a copy (and 3D Bowling was also a big selling point, even though I still haven’t picked that one up), I will say this was my #1 most wanted title for the console for quite awhile. I just had to wait for the right deal to appear! It did, and so here we are.

The good news: the graphics are sharp and the game moves pretty fast. The aliens look appropriately Galaxian-ish and swoop down accordingly. The programmer implemented a fuel gage that progressively depletes during a round, which was kinda jive but not a deal breaker (it doesn’t totally ruin the game like Alien Invaders); it adds a sense of urgency the game didn’t really need but is okay…I guess.

Here’s the bad news: I fire the game up, it looks sweet, I start hammering on the controller, and nothing really happened. Okay, a quick look reveals that, flying in the face of conventional video game wisdom, Space Attack inexplicably uses the right controller rather than the left like every other sensible game in existence. That’s okay though, I can live with that, the controllers are hard-wired in, remember. So, I grab the right controller, the game starts, my ship is moving from side to side…and not firing. What a time to discover my right controller doesn’t work correctly! Maaaaan, the one game I was anticipating most, and I can’t even really play it! Can the controller be opened and cleaned/fixed? Probably. Am I going to go through the trouble? Naw. It’s really not that big of a deal; it’s not like I was planning on keeping the Arcadia continuously hooked up anyway, and besides, I’ve got plenty of ways to play Galaxian on thousand-year-old consoles if that’s what I’m feeling. Nevertheless, that’s the danger of hard-wired controllers; if something goes bad on one, the solution isn’t always an easy one.

Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue had Arcadia not gotten cute and decided to use the right controller unlike every other game ever. And yet, strangely enough, Space Attack is still more playable than Escape – even though I can’t even really play it!

See, told you those big ol’ carts sticking out of the console look sorta silly!

Disheartening controller mishap aside, I really am glad I picked Emerson’s Arcadia 2001 up. I’m not really sure what I was expecting with it; I didn’t have super high “imma game all night” hopes for it – I don’t exactly do that even with good consoles. This was more about finally adding a neat, forgotten piece of early-80s gaming to my collection. It’s an era in video games I’m everlastingly fond of anyway, and to have such an arcade-centric-but-not example of it, I just find it…appealing. Considering the prices of consoles and games, not to mention the game selection, if you’re into retro gaming, you probably shouldn’t go for one of these over a 2600. But if you’re a collector, there should be enough to interest you here.

And hey, small-ish, derivative library aside, for some kid in 1982/1983, maybe this was all his family could afford. It supposedly debuted cheap, and you have to imagine it didn’t take very long for even that price to begin dropping. For that hypothetical, game-obsessed kid, would any of the Arcadia’s faults even matter? It’s not hard to figure that scenario actually happened somewhere back then, so, I don’t know, this might be a case where the era it came from and what the console represents, even potentially, sorta outweighs what it, you know, is. Or was.

I think I kinda garbled what I was going for at the end of that paragraph, but it’s been 10 years, cut me a little slack already, okay?

Tiger’s LCD Handheld DOUBLE DRAGON Game (1988)

Friends, if you think back to nearly three years ago (as of this writing), hopefully you’ll recall my big ol’ pandemic time passin’ post. You know, we’re actually in the tenth anniversary (!) month of this blog, and in all that time, that pandemic post has proven to be one of my personal favorites here. Sure, it was highly personal and more for fun than anything (plus it killed time while we were in lockdown), but the diggin’ and searchin’ and eventual writin’ wound up being sincerely enjoyable for yours truly.

It also provided the catalyst for today’s topic. In that old article, at one point I waxed nostalgic for the long, long line of licensed handheld LCD video games put out by Tiger Electronics in the late-80s and up throughout the 1990s. You may have had to grow up with them to truly appreciate them nowadays (more on that in a bit), but for those of us a certain age, these things were beyond ubiquitous – which was good, because if you were a popular arcade game, console game, movie, TV show, cartoon, or pop culture figure that would appeal to kids, there was a very, very good chance you’d see a Tiger adaptation at some point.

I’ve been wanting to give one of these a specific spotlight for a while now, and when I recently picked up a cheap Tiger Heavy Barrel handheld, I first figured that was going to finally be it. But, for as neat as Heavy Barrel is, when I really thought about it, I decided if I was going to go through the process of writing a whole article on one of these, I might as well do it right. And if you remember this oldie, you’d know there was only one proper choice, one logical choice.

Behold!

Yes indeed, legendary arcade (and console) beat-’em-up Double Dragon saw a Tiger iteration! I mean, Heavy Barrel was a popular game, but it never had the clout the Double Dragon series had in the late-80’s and early-90s. So if Heavy Barrel got the LCD treatment back in the day, you best believe Double Dragon would as well!

The original Double Dragon trilogy plus Super Double Dragon all saw Tiger ports, but from a sheer status-standpoint, the first is, in my opinion, the chaser. Plus, it’s the easiest to obtain. Well, the first three are actually all pretty easy to obtain, though Super seems to be notably tougher to be had. But for pure late-80s fightin’ action (not to mention that iconic artwork), I still say you go for the original.

It’s also the most emblematic of what I’m talking about with these Tigers: an uber-popular, big name game in both arcade and console circles. Not that the company didn’t put out ‘regular’ kinda games (think generic baseball, pinball, etc.), they did, and they had games based on licensed properties prior, but when I (and I’d guess most people) talk about these Tiger handhelds, generally that’s referring to the ones I mentioned in my intro. No joshin’, it seemed pretty much every hot, remotely-kid-friendly property of the late-80s to late-90s got transformed into a Tiger. Not every one did, of course, but many, many were. A good portion of these are still easily acquired nowadays (though not always as cheaply as you might think/hope), though others are surprisingly rare; not that I’m constantly on the lookout for it, but I’ve only seen the game based on the first Wayne’s World movie for sale once, for example. And the asking price wasn’t low.

(My guess is that, in some cases, the game only had enough units made to last the duration of a property’s peak popularity. When the promotional hype for whatever died down, the title would be phased out. That’s merely and completely guesswork on my part, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? That would account for the relative rarity of some of these, anyway. Sorta like licensed cereals; they’d be around for a bit, but who’s gonna keep buying Batman Returns for breakfast when Batman Forever is in theaters?)

It still works! There it is, all turned on. We’ll take closer looks at the actual gameplay momentarily.

Double Dragon, like pretty much all of these Tigers, is a simple LCD game, limited in graphics, animation and sound, only loosely resembling the real property it’s mimicking. When it came to the ports anyway, the old commercials promised something akin to the original arcade (or console) game in your pocket; I still fondly recall the ad in which kids went to great lengths, including hauling a full size coin-op down the hall, to play their favorite games at school, until Tiger simplified the issue for them with these handhelds.

Of course, in reality these things were approximations at best. Considering real consoles and computers often had a hard time bringing the latest arcade games home, there was just no way a cheap LCD handheld was going to be an accurate representation of whatever. In the handheld realm, even a real Game Boy couldn’t do that. Didn’t stop us from daydreaming about the possibilities, though; I grew up with these, and to this day I recall imagining all the fun I’d have once I had Tiger’s Batman wristwatch on my, uh, wrist. I eventually got that watch, and while I’m guessing the real product deflated some of those fantasies once I started playing it, I was also young enough to not really care. (I still have that watch, and actually just dug it out the other day. ‘Course, since I can’t recall ever changing the battery in it, the possibility of it still functioning correctly is quite low, methinks)

Simple as they may have been, if you were a certain age, these Tigers still managed to feel special though. Maybe it was that whole single-game-in-your-pocket, complete with marquee (thus recalling actual arcade machines) thing that did it. Or maybe it was just because they were cheap and everywhere. At any rate, and despite natively being a Nintendo kid, in the days before I had a Sega Genesis to call my own, I was as excited for Tiger’s Sonic 2 as I would have been for any ‘real’ video game. (I played that thing like crazy, too.)

But then, this all might be hard for newer gamers to appreciate; in this day and age, we have portables with real licensed arcade/console titles. For someone who didn’t grow up with them, looking at these Tiger games with their monochrome graphics, limited animation, simple gameplay and beeps and boops constituting music, that might all elicit a severe “so what?” at best, “this is garbage!” at worst. But frankly, those might be the reactions from some people who did grow up with these, too; nostalgia’s a powerful thing, but when a revival of these popped up a few years back, it was both exciting and confusing. It was cool they were back, but would modern gamers care? Would the people who had them back in the day still care? Had the time of these handhelds passed beyond any revival? That’s all up to your personal viewpoints on these, I s’pose.

In my pandemic post, I said something along the lines of these Tigers really not being very good. In some cases that was true, but in hindsight, that wasn’t a totally fair assessment. Granted, generally these lack the simple-yet-addictive twitch gameplay of Nintendo’s best Game & Watch offerings, but I’ve picked up a few old Tigers recently, and I’ve actually been a bit impressed with how they attempted to cram the ‘genuine’ experience into them. I’ve had more fun playing these than I haven’t. (Hey, no jive, while writing this article, Tiger’s Star Trek: The Next Generation handheld arrived in the mail, providing me with a little game break before getting back to writing about, erm, game breaks.)

Getting back to this Double Dragon, you may be wondering just how a full-size, big time beat-’em-up translates into LCD form. Believe it or not, a decent facsimile of a beat-’em-up was possible on an LCD handheld; Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 was terrific. (Or at least I remember it being terrific.) I’m not sure Double Dragon reaches those lofty heights, but it fares better than it doesn’t.

Double Dragon in the arcades was a side-scrolling brawler in which one Billy Lee (and his brother Jimmy Lee in two player mode) traverse diverse areas and fight an assortment of enemies in a quest to rescue Billy’s kidnapped girlfriend Marian and wipe out city-terrorizin’ gang The Black Warriors. With a bunch of moves and weapons, simultaneous two player action and a truly awesome soundtrack, it was a smash hit; console and computer ports followed, with varying degrees of success.

For this Tiger, while it takes some cues from the coin-op source material, it seems to take as much inspiration from the mega-popular Nintendo Entertainment System port as anything; new moves are gained as you progress, and since it’s single player only, instead of a fighting partner, Jimmy Lee is instead the final boss here (as per the original ad for the game and just like the NES version). The basics of walking the street and pummelin’ baddies remains, however.

In this case, the number of enemies (as in, variety) has been shortened dramatically; there’s a dynamite thrower who appears at the top of the screen occasionally, but for the most part your main adversary is some generic thug. (That’s who you’re seeing above; sorry about that yellow scratch on the screen, by the way – I didn’t feel confident in attempting to clean it off.) Whether the original instructions gave him an official name, I do not know, but he looks more like a biker or something than anyone seen in the arcade original or NES port. I guess he’s kinda Abobo-esque, though I’m not sure if that’s who he’s supposed to officially be.

Don’t go in expecting a myriad of moves at your disposal; you’ll gain the ability to jump and then later jump kick as you go on, but for the most part you’re limited to rapidly punching and kicking your opponent. This is actually more fun than you might expect it to be, especially when you’re dodging the dynamite thrower and it’s getting near the end of the stage and your health is running low. The kick looks incredibly goofy, though I appreciate that Tiger replicated the left punch/right punch animation of the arcade/NES.

Later on, you start using weapons, though I wasn’t sure at first if the game was just giving them to me or if I was accidentally picking them up and not realizing it; I think it’s an automatic thing on the game’s part. I’m not sure there’s an appreciable difference in the number of hits it takes to dispatch a thug, but it’s a nice touch nevertheless.

Originally, Double Dragon was three-dimensional-esque in that you could move between the foreground and background of a stage, as in most beat-’em-ups. On an LCD handheld with severely limited frames of animation, this wasn’t exactly feasible, though they did approximate it. What you’re seeing above is Billy Lee “moving backward,” kind of into the background. You do this as a dodging maneuver, particularly when a dynamite thrower shows up. (That’s what you’re seeing above, as well.) I say this is better than keeping the game strictly single-plane the whole way through.

In most of these Tiger handhelds, there’d be a pre-printed background in which the LCD sprites would be laid overtop throughout. Double Dragon foregoes this somewhat; there’s a plane in the background and there’s some light coloring, as you can see, but there’s no real permanent background graphic like usual. Instead, there are actual specific sprites used per stage to mimic the locations of the source material. I like this a whole bunch. It feels so much cooler, and truer to the game it’s trying to be. In the first stage, you’ve got a loose city skyline in the background, for example. Above is the third stage’s forest, and stage four is a cave, complete with falling stalactites – something unmistakably taken from the NES version. (There’s actually little to see in the second stage, I think some groundwork kinda sorta representing the industrial area it’s supposed to be, but visually it’s the least impressive level in the game.)

There’s not much sound-wise, mainly a series of beeps; this was par for the course with these Tigers though. Don’t go in expecting anything even remotely resembling the classic original soundtrack, okay?

You know, when all is said and done, I really like Tiger’s LCD adaptation of Double Dragon. Is it the greatest, most addictive LCD handheld ever? Well, no. BUT, it kept me occupied, and it looked about as much like Double Dragon as you could reasonably expect from a late-80s product. While I didn’t play it for hours on end, I did like seeing how far I could make it, and it was reasonably fun throwing down against gang members. I’m not sure you can ask for a whole lot more than that. At a time when the Double Dragon series was at its height of popularity and was burning up the arcade, console and computer fronts, Tiger gave kids a credible handheld to take to school, on car trips, etc. It did the job it was intended to do, it’s fairly fun, and as a late-80s gaming artifact, as far as I’m concerned, it’s irresistible.

All that said, it’s now over 30 (!!) years old, and while this example works fine, I still oughta keep it nice an’ collectible. But what if I still wanna get my cheesy LCD fightin’ fix, something just to goof around with when I’m bored? I used my bean there, too…

Yep, I picked up the sequel as well! Honestly, it’s not terribly different from the first installment, though they did include the back kick. Dig the pre-printed background; a scrolling ground gives the impression of progression. Unlike the first game, it’s pretty much single-plane and straightforward, though there’s a platform-y broken bridge you have to jump over gaps in late in the game. I prefer the first game, though from a gameplay-standpoint it’s pretty much a draw. More importantly, this is my ‘playing’ one, the one I’ll take with me when I’m trying to look hip in public. Complete with jean jacket and sunglasses, I’ll be totally rad to the max! (Just ignore the fact it’s no longer 1990 and I’ll be 37 years old in less than a month as of this writing.)

VHS Review: Al “Grampa” Lewis Hosts INVISIBLE GHOST (1941; Amvest Video, 1988)

It’s time for a little rectifyin’. Longtime readers may recall my 2016 review of Pop Flix’s 2-disc, 8-movie Bela Lugosi DVD set. To this day, it’s still my favorite budget DVD release of Lugosi’s poverty row (and subsequently public domain) movies. Have there been more comprehensive collections released? Well, yeah. And yet, the concise all-killer, no-filler line-up of films and clean, attractive presentation of them in Pop Flix’s offering continues to overwhelmingly appeal to yours truly, over 6 years later. I even gifted a copy to my cousin last Christmas, such was and is my continuing fondness for the set.

While my love of the collection hasn’t changed, my list of personal favorites contained within it has – somewhat. The Devil Bat and The Corpse Vanishes continue to reside in the upper echelon of Lugosi flicks in my mind, whereas The Ape Man, which I raved about back in ’16, has fallen in stature precipitously. And Bowery at Midnight, which was the big surprise of the set for me, frankly, that has grown to become what just may be my all-time favorite Bela movie, poverty row or otherwise.

If you go back and read that article, you’ll note that I was somewhat lukewarm on 1941’s Invisible Ghost. In fact, my conclusion back then was: “…this, for me, is one of the weaker entries, though that’s really only relatively speaking; this is still a good one, but it’s a bit overshadowed by some of the other flicks here, in my eyes.”

Yeah, that opinion has changed quite a bit in the intervening years as well. I didn’t intentionally set out to change my earlier viewpoint, but regular watches in the time since has resulted in Invisible Ghost steadily growing to ultimately become what is very likely a top 3’er in my Bela favorites (The Devil Bat and Bowery at Midnight being the other two).

As such, rather than going back and modifying the original review, which is something I really, really didn’t feel like, a full-fledged update seemed to be in order. But by what vehicle? Should I bust out the Pop Flix DVD and (re-)review just that movie? Nah, too easy. Or maybe the movie as presented by The Ghoul back in 2000? (I briefly mentioned that episode and the thought of reviewing it in that 2016 article, after all.) Nah, too much work. Do I try to snag a cheap copy of the appropriate entry in GoldStar Video’s Tales of Horror VHS series, which I like to babble about? Actually, I tried, but there were 0 copies available online that I could see.

So you know what that means? Yes indeed, it’s Grampa Al Lewis time once again!

Hey, it’s October, Halloween month, and as I write this, it’s cold and overcast and rainy out, so the setting is right. Plus, I’m pretty sure these Amvest/Grampa VHS articles get more continuing views than anything else I write about, so might as well!

It’s true: Invisible Ghost was released as part of Amvest Video’s 1988 “Grampa Presents” VHS series. I’ve written about these plenty (here’s the latest – from last October); they are, bar none, my favorite budget video releases, of yesterday or today. So if I’m going to revisit Invisible Ghost and give it its proper props, this is the correct way to go about it. I mean, maybe not from a non-obsolete technology or picture quality standpoint, but…

Get them synapses fired up and you’ll realize this is the respective VHS cover right here. The artist’s rendition of one of the more-famous images from the film is perfectly respectable, and while I’m not a big fan of how the movie title itself was rendered (it looks hairy, like it would be better suited for a werewolf movie or sumpin’), the artwork is nice and colorful and it’s overseen by the “Grampa Presents” banner at the very top, which puts it above many, many other budget tapes from the era. Heck, it puts it above other tapes in the very same series!

Oddly, not every Grampa tape used the motif, but these tapes were supposed to have that banner, along with a “Grampa’s Ratings” feature on the back. I don’t really have anything much to say about the reverse of the sleeve, but Grampa did rank this one two bats and remarked “a deadly obsession” there, which doesn’t really tell anyone anything, but at least it’s present. (I have my doubts Al Lewis himself actually sat down to rate and write these – but I sure like to imagine he did.)

I’ve written about these Grampa tapes so many times by now that there’s little I can say about them that wouldn’t be massively repeating myself. Follow the link I gave you before and go from there if you want to know more. Or hit the search button; that works too, I guess.

Put shortly, movies in this series were hosted by Al Lewis, doing his Grandpa Munster shtick without being called Munster; here he’s simply “Grampa.” Accompanied by a green (blue?) screen, old horror movie clips, computer-animated special effects, neon squiggles, and an off-screen Igor that you may or may not hear, Lewis does his tried-and-true “I’m an old vampire” routine.

The intros and outros for these tapes were always the same, and despite the late-80s budget video trappings, they’re a lot of fun. The intro was more for setting up the premise and announcing the movie (which was supposed to be announced by the unseen Igor, though a good part of the time they didn’t even bother including it; such was the case here) while the outro focused mainly on the titles available in the series and how you could go about getting them. Same every time or not, these host segments add so much to these tapes; not only are they a unique touch in the world of budget home video from that time, but they recall the television horror hosts that were an endangered species even then. If you’re gonna watch a cheap VHS release of a public domain movie, there were (are) far, FAR worse ways to go about it.

So that’s the background to the main reason for this article: giving Invisible Ghost its deserved due. Things go better with Grampa, but our real focus today is the movie, so let’s get to that now.

Invisible Ghost was released in 1941, the first of ultimately 9 movies Bela Lugosi did for poverty row outfit Monogram Pictures. From my understanding, it’s often considered the best of the bunch, and while I’m not sure I completely agree with that, it’s definitely a good’un. As The Ghoul used to occasionally say, “it’s a dandy!”

Our plot: Lugosi plays one Charles Kessler, a man of considerable wealth and power (though unless I’ve just totally missed them over and over, specifics as to how/why are never given; dude’s mad rich, okay?). Some years prior to the start of the film, Kessler’s wife cheated on him with his best friend, they reconciled, but then apparently ran off with said friend anyway, something that left Kessler devastated. As the movie begins, Kessler is seen having dinner and talking with “his wife,” who of course isn’t actually there. Evidently this is something he does each year on their wedding anniversary, though he’s (seemingly) normal otherwise. In fact, he’s overwhelmingly caring and kind.

Unbeknownst to Kessler though, his wife is still around. The night she ran off, there was a car wreck, and while the best friend died, she survived, and she’s been squirreled away nearby by Kessler’s gardener. Wifey is in a perpetually dazed, amnesic state, so she’s being kept hidden until she’s “better.”

She gets out sometimes though, and when Kessler spots her standing outside of his window, he’s goes into a homicidal trance, in which he simply has to strangle someone with his robe. That’s right, prior to the start of the film, there’s been multiple unsolved murders amongst the staff of the Kessler home (an exact number is never given, but it’s noted as “a lot”). No one knows it’s Kessler – not even Kessler himself!

This may all sound farfetched, but suspension of belief is often required with these 1930s/1940s horror cheapies, so nothing too out of the ordinary there. But what drives Invisible Ghost and makes it so much fun is just how nutty it is. No one in this movie ever behaves in a logical manner, it never plays out how you think it should, even by wartime poverty row standards. And because of that, it’s an absolute blast to watch. Some of the notable aspects that’ll have you simultaneously scratching your head and getting a total kick out of the proceedings (CAUTION: some spoilers are coming!):

• Okay, so multiple people have been murdered in the Kessler home over an unspecified number of years, most or all of them apparently being servile employees. And yet, suspicion never falls on Kessler or his daughter or, really, anyone else in the house that hasn’t been offed yet? Did the cops think some rando is just occasionally stopping by and doing this, and leaving it at that?
• Kessler is rich and powerful, so it’s no stretch to imagine these murders are newsworthy; we’re talking front page kinda stuff here. In fact, late in the film it’s implied they have made the papers. So how exactly are they still finding employees? A high probability of being murdered isn’t exactly a perk, no matter how tough the job market in the area may or may not be. (Speaking of that late film moment, it’s during a conversation with the new cook, who mentions she doesn’t read the papers. So how’d she find out about the job? Does Kessler put up a “help wanted” sign in his window? And if it was by word of mouth, newspapers or no, wouldn’t the reputation of the house precede it?)
• Why not move out of the house? This is explained away as “sentimental reasons,” cause, wife. Okay, fine, I’ll buy that, but why keep hiring staff if there’s the strong possibility they’ll be killed? Kessler (when he’s not in nutso mode) is seen to be kind and compassionate, so wouldn’t he, you know, want to keep people as safe as possible until the murderer is apprehended? Can’t he make his own dinner for awhile?
• Are we really supposed to believe the gardener has hidden Kessler’s wife away for several years? And while I can kinda sorta understand his rationale for keeping her hidden (it’d crush Kessler), she’s obviously damaged mentally – is hiding her away until she “gets better” really the best course of medical action? And after a number of years without getting “better,” shouldn’t he try to find a doctor, at least on the sly? I mean, the gardener is clearly no Einstein, but this is still incredibly stupid. And by the way, he doesn’t want to bring Kessler’s wife to him cause it’d hurt Kessler? Dude, the guy is having a yearly dinner conversation with an empty chair!
• Kessler has a daughter, Virginia, who has a quasi-fiancée, Ralph. Ralph evidently had some sort of relationship with Kessler’s new maid, Cecile. Cecile still carries a torch for Ralph, even though Ralph says it’s over. Ralph is overheard telling her she’s not going to stand in the way of his happiness, so when Cecile is murdered by Kessler, Ralph is convicted on that slimmest of circumstantial evidence – and executed!
• In the very next scene, Ralph’s identical twin brother Paul shows up at the house! Say what?! He couldn’t get there in time for the trial/execution, but he wants to help solve the murders, so he’s quickly given a room! Paul never really does that much, making you wonder why they’d even bother with the whole twins thing in the first place. And speaking of, Paul never seems too upset his brother was executed for a murder he presumably didn’t commit. In fact, except for a moment when Kessler is afraid the new cook has been murdered, none of the main characters ever seem too concerned/upset when a new murder has been committed. Even the cop in charge of the investigation seems more annoyed with it than anything.
• At one point the idiot gardener gets offed by Kessler – except that he doesn’t, except that he does. Y’see, Kessler strangles him during one of his trances, the body is found, and eventually taken to the coroner. When the gardener’s wife shows up to see the body (she seems upset, even though she’s not really a main character), she discovers that he’s still alive! He dies for good soon thereafter, but it’s such an odd, odd moment. First off, the wife screams in terror rather than being overjoyed he’s alive. But also, I mean, the guy’s heart was still beating, yet missed by the cops, coroner et al., for seemingly hours (Jack Klugman would have never stood for that – and as the story goes, he didn’t). And not just that, but is this really a believable outcome of strangulation? The guy was hurt bad enough to be unconscious for a relatively lengthy period of time, only to randomly regain consciousness momentarily before completely dying? I can see something like that happening as the result of a head injury or whatever, but having the air choked out of you?
• Late in the film, when it’s suspected the butler is the culprit, Paul insists he be tested to see if he’s insane before being arrested. Ignoring that the test is hilariously simple, it’s a nice thought, especially since the evidence, while still circumstantial, is much stronger than what got Ralph executed.
• Not really a strange moment, but Bela’s declaration of “apple pie? My, that will be a treat” at one point is pretty hilarious.
• Kessler’s wife seems to have a strange psychic connection with Kessler. He seems to magically know whenever she’s standing outside the window, and at the climax when he’s in mid-strangle (this time with observers), she suddenly drops dead, which then immediately releases her mental hold on Kessler. This ‘connection’ is never explained. So we have to surmise that his love for her was so strong that he just ‘knew’, I guess?

If it seems like I’m picking the film apart just for the sake of being snarky, trust me, I’m not. Invisible Ghost is so much fun simply because it’s so loopy. Forget suspension of belief, just throw your ideas of logic right out the window from the start. No one behaves logically in this film, so just sit back, accept that from the word go, and hold on for the ride!

Some positive positives: they’re somewhat obscured in the dupey, worn print Amvest utilized, but the usage of shadows and evocative camera angles in Invisible Ghost is truly impressive. It’s all relative, but this movie is more atmospheric and artistic than it really has any right to be. (Kino’s terrific 2017 Blu-ray release shows all this much better, though it seems to be out of print now, which is a shame, because it’s amazing to realize the film could look as terrific as it does there.)

Also, the butler Evans is played by African-American Charles Muse, and far from a jokey Mantan Moreland-like character, Muse plays the role with dignity and intelligence. Considering the time period this was released, this is both amazing and refreshing. Muse is excellent.

(Speaking of acting, as always, Lugosi is terrific.)

I can’t recommend Invisible Ghost highly enough. At only a little over an hour, it naturally moves fast, and its complete lack of predictable behavior is an asset, not a detriment. It’s breezy, cheap, wartime poverty row horror, and it’s irresistible.

Of course, in this case, things finish up with Grampa, which is just the icing on the cake. Again, like a television horror host, it’s an appropriate (and fun!) way to wind up the presentation.

Like the intro, I can only say so much about the outro that I haven’t said before. A list of available titles are given, a way to order them is shown, Lewis makes corny jokes, the end.

Although, despite having seen this stuff so many times prior, something humorous that struck me this time around (and which I can’t really recall taking stock of before) is Lewis’ reactions to the appearance of the “Casket of Horrors” (supposedly a display found in video stores, it was meant to house this Amvest video series, though how many, IF any, made it out there is up for question). His reactions go from shocked and confused to accepting of the sudden appearance of the display, which I found kinda funny.

By the way, the blank space between the end of the movie and the start of the outro is considerable – so much so that I initially thought Amvest accidentally left the outro off entirely at first. Which isn’t unprecedented; one of my tapes from this series totally left it off, which in retrospect made Lewis’ hype for it in the intro unintentionally funny. But it leads to this question: were they putting these intros/outros on manually each time? The jump in video quality from the host segments (which weren’t exactly HD anyway) to that of the movie (which often looks like a copy of a copy) is usually pretty noticeable. And if you’ll recall my last Amvest post here, where the opening credits of the movie were cut off somewhat, it makes me echo a question I asked last time: how does this even happen?

No matter, cause the package was ultimately complete here, and all the better for it. But don’t let Al Lewis be the deciding factor; Invisible Ghost can and does stand on its own as a fun, often ridiculous piece of entertainment. As an entry in Bela’s poverty row output, it may not be high art, but it’s irresistible all the same. You can’t not love it! Give it a shot, and if you can do that with Al “Grampa” Lewis in the vicinity, all the better!

VHS Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE SECRET WEAPON (1942; Vintage Video, 1985)

Over the last two or three years, I’ve found myself really getting into the classic mystery (read: whodunit) films. Not that I had never watched them before or didn’t have any in my collection; I had and I did. But as you may or may not have surmised while looking at my dumb blog, my tastes have traditionally (but not exclusively) leaned towards classic horror & sci-fi. (Well, and b-westerns, too.) The sad fact of the matter is whodunit flicks had been woefully neglected for much of my movie-watchin’ life.

While I still love the stuff that has mostly been my bread & butter, as I’ve grown older I’ve also progressively grown to appreciate an absorbing mys’try flick. Charlie Chan, Mr. Wong, Bulldog Drummond, lay ’em on me mama. (Nearly a year ago, we took a look at an old Dick Tracy film, but I tend to think of those movies more as crime thrillers than full-fledged whodunits – though ultimately in the same wheelhouse.)

Anyway, Sherlock Holmes. The name is practically synonymous with “whodunit.” I haven’t read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, but I’ve certainly gotten into films based on the character. Well, classic films. Well, the Basil Rathbone series, at least. I have no idea which cinematic version of the character purists consider definitive, but I think it’s safe to say that in the general public consciousness, Rathbone’s rendition is the one that immediately comes to mind. We’re talkin’ iconic here.

And that brings us to or subject today.

Four of the films in the Rathbone series have long been delightfully public domain, and while my current probable-favorite in the series (The House of Fear) isn’t one of them, there’s still good stuff to be had. And even more fun is the smorgasbord of budget releases these now-PD entries have enjoyed over the years. And that brings us to our subject today. (Wait, I already said that.)

1942’s Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is the earliest of the series to go public domain, though luckily in regards to this review, it’s one I hadn’t seen prior.

Wacky Fact: I picked up a terrific two-disc DVD set at the dollar store some months back that included all four PD Rathbone flicks, other vintage, presumably-PD Holmes movies, and a load of episodes from the 1950s TV series. I had the ‘movies’ disc loaded up for quite awhile, but as is my wont, aside from a quick looksee, I never got around to actually watching any of it before it got swapped out for something else. Not that I can’t load it back up again when the mood strikes me, of course, and if nothing else, the four Rathbone flicks were more than worth the price of admission alone.

Who dun-it this time? Why, Vintage Video, of course!

My unintended hesitation turned out to be fortuitous though, because when this particular home video release turned up for sale online and I duly slammed my meaty paws on the “BUY DIS” button, I got to go into it fresh. Once the tape arrived and I found the time/drive to sit down and watch it, I mean.

As you can see, we are once again taking a trip into the world of Vintage Video/Amvest VHS. A cursory glance through the contents of this site will quickly show how fond I am of this label. Certainly we’ve looked at their Grampa Al Lewis series multiple times, but our subject today is more in line with one of their ‘regular’ releases, which we’ve also seen before. (In other words, no, Al Lewis doesn’t host Holmes here, though that would have been pretty baller.)

I’m a real sucker for tapes from this manufacturer, even though they (mostly) dealt with the same public domain movies multiple budget outfits during the home video boom of the 1980s dealt with. Certainly this all stems from the aforementioned Grampa series, but there’s also the sometimes-unique cover art, sometimes-interesting prints used, and frankly, the relative-obscurity the releases as a whole share. (They tend to be scarce – maybe one or two copies for every, I don’t know, twenty comparable releases from Goodtimes – though they’re not particularly valuable. This copy here, the first I’d ever seen, was mega cheap – and still sealed, to boot.)

‘Course, you kinda need an affinity for VHS and budget home video and whatnot to appreciate all this (growing up with it all probably helps, too), because technically, this is pretty superfluous to have in the day and age. We’ve got DVD and Blu-ray and innernet streamin’ and all that, and when the movie in question has long been in the public domain, from a practicality standpoint, there’s really no reason to get so stoked over something like this.

Except that with the right mindset, there is: forget picture quality and bulkiness and ease of use – it’s all about taking a trip back in time here. Are there better ways to watch this movie? Well, yeah. But this here, it’s like holding a piece of a bygone era in home video in your hands – which of course is exactly what is indeed happening. Necessary? Naw. A trip back in time? Well, yeh. (Or so says I, and as we all know, my word is of tantamount importance.)

I like the cover art here; certainly it’s in the 1980s budget video release tradition, but that’s perfect for our purposes today. A good many of these VV/Amvest tapes, at least earlier ones (1985, as opposed to 1988 and beyond) simply used original poster art, usually (but not always) bordered with the VV banner you’re seeing here. There could be some modifications to the original artwork, but for the most part, it was still ultimately, you know, the original poster art. However, the tapes I find especially interesting in this particular arena are the ones that used original, or at least more original, motifs. Such is our case here: sure, they just used stock photos of Rathbone’s Holmes (along with Nigel Bruce’s Dr. Watson), but the watercolor (?) filtering (?) of them coupled with the unique title font (and slightly silly “Who dun-it this time?” tagline) intrigues your pal me. Also, dig the credits at the bottom of the cover, you can’t really read ’em here but they seem to be mimicking those of a ‘big time’ video release, which is something I can’t really recall one of these VV tapes identically doing. Was there some then-recent Sherlock Holmes movie this was piggybacking on?

(Speaking of dates, the one found on the back of the box here was indeed 1985, but in the interest of full disclosure, the label on the tape itself was a newer one akin to what Amvest was using around 1988 or so. Thus, this was undoubtedly a later re-release, but since I don’t have an exact date otherwise, I’m sticking with ’85 here, as you can see in the article title above. Aw, it’s not like it really matters anyway…)

I don’t have much interesting to say about the back of the box, so what say we look at the movie proper now…

The opening image, such as it is.

Upon firing the tape up, I was treated to this: the credits already in progress, right from the very start. No title card, credits already rolling. Thaaaaaanks. Ah, budget tape tradition! I’m not going to go out of my way to track down another copy to see if they’re all like this (‘course, if I come across another one in-person during my travels…), but this begs the question: how does this even happen? Was it the way their “master tape” (whatever that constituted) was, or were they making copies tape-by-tape and this was a goof they didn’t notice or just didn’t feel like correcting? It’s kinda funny, but also kinda irritating. Then again, this sort of thing wasn’t totally uncommon with budget video releases, and it’s not even the first time I’ve run into the opening/closing parts of whatever being MIA with VV/Amvest. It is what it is.

Our plot: Holmes has been enlisted to protect one Dr. Tobel, who has created a new fancy schmancy bombsight to fight them Nazis with. As a precaution, he separates the bombsight into four pieces and entrusts them to four different scientists. For good measure, he notates who has what, but as a coded message involving “dancing men.” (Said code being the only part of this movie that was based upon an original Doyle story, apparently.)

Of course, rather than following Holmes’ simple directions and staying put, Tobel just has to slip out of protective custody to visit his fiancée (wimmins, amiright?), which promptly and naturally gets him abducted by baddies. The specific baddies in question? Holmes’ arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty and his cohorts, that’s who! Turns out Moriarty is in league with the Nazis; selling them the bombsight would be very lucrative, as you may well imagine. This is undesirable to say the least, so now Holmes must rescue Tobel, recover the four pieces of the bombsight, and thwart Moriarty (and by extension, the Nazis), for the time being at least.

Holmes facing off against Moriarty (or rather, from left to right, Moriarty facing off against Holmes).

Wait, Nazis? Say what?! It’s true; this is a WWII-era Sherlock Holmes adventure! Y’see, 20th Century Fox produced the first two entries in the Rathbone Holmes series, and they were in the natural Victorian setting. But afterwards, Universal picked up the series, turned them into b-movies, and placed them in a then-modern wartime setting. (Supposedly with an explanatory “Sherlock Holmes is timeless” or something along those lines; I haven’t seen that first Universal effort. Secret Weapon here was the second.) It’s pretty unexpected, and really, to be frank, pretty awesome. I mean, it’s Sherlock Holmes, fightin’ Nazis! Unless you’re a purist’s purist, you can’t not love that! I haven’t seen every entry in the Rathbone Holmes series, but I sure hope there’s a scene where he decks Hitler at some point, not unlike that crowd pleasing moment in Zone Troopers. “Did I just engage Adolph in fisticuffs?” “You sure did, my good chap!”

Not gonna lie: this is some good stuff right here. You’ve got Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, which automatically makes things worthwhile, but then you add a WWII setting and a breezy, b-movie sheen over top of all of it, no jivin’, it’s just irresistible. The movie is more spy-ish than I was first anticipating, with Holmes’ disguising himself and going undercover more than once. And while I’m not sure I’d consider it a full-fledged whodunit (probably the only real sleuthing sleuthing is deciphering the code), it’s got some noirish elements, terrific acting (Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Lionel Atwill as Moriarty? Plus Nigel Bruce’s ever-reliable Watson? Yes, please!), and even some gruesome elements (besides the obvious implications of the Nazis gaining the bombsight, at one point Moriarty attempts to slowly kill Holmes by draining his blood, drop by drop). I ain’t joshin’ you, this is a lot of fun. If you’re a sucker for wartime b-movie action like I am, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon is a must.

So, what kind of print did Vintage Video/Amvest/whoever utilize for this release? Their tapes could feature prints ranging from “okay” to “dragged around the parking lot multiple times.” Secret Weapon falls more towards the latter end of that spectrum. While the duplication itself was decent enough I guess, the print they got was, well, it was pretty wasted. It’s probably darker than it was intended to be, and there are a lot of film scratches, dust, dirt, debris, splices, what have you. There are some moments of really heavy wear, and while things seem to calm down somewhat as the film progresses, this probably isn’t the, uh, best the movie has ever looked.

Furthermore, the run time: the back of the box sez 70 minutes, the official run time I’m seeing online is supposedly 68 minutes, but the actual running time here is really about 56 minutes. So unless the missing part of those opening credits ran 11+ minutes (something tells me they didn’t/don’t), it’s a safe assumption this is an edited print. Cut for TV at some point? Really egregious splices? Something else? No idea.

But you know, none of that really bothers me. Okay, sure, if I’m paying for a big deluxe Blu-ray or something, I’d want the movie to look like Rathbone et al. are performing live right in front of me, inexplicably in grayscale, at that very moment. But this tape as it is, it presents the movie in a way that recalls countless trips through the projector, multiple runs on late night television over the decades, an old timey cinematic feeling, something along those lines. It’s part of the fun (at least in retrospect; it probably wasn’t a blast back then) of collecting these old school budget tapes: you never quite know what you’re going to get. Unlike today, where it seems like the same prints just keep getting shared over and over, copies could really vary from manufacturer to manufacturer back then.

Still, the complete opening credits would have been nice. And speaking of the credits, the final cast credits card is there, but cuts off really quickly, as if whoever couldn’t wait to be done with the whole thing. Of course the meat of the movie (i.e., the important stuff) is all there – such as it is I mean – but yeah, this really exemplifies the mid/late-1980s budget home video release ideal. (Ideal?)

So there you have it: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, as presented by Vintage Video slash Amvest back in the 1980s. If you just want to see the movie (and seriously, it has my recommendation), that’s something that can be easily accomplished. Home video releases are numerous, but since it’s public domain, you can watch it free an’ legal online right now if you so desired! Would that be as much fun as taking an unnecessary trip back to the 1980s as I’ve done here? I’ll let you decide that aspect for yourself.

By the way, this wasn’t the only Rathbone Holmes VV put out: The Woman in Green and Terror by Night also saw releases on the label. (I couldn’t find Dressed to Kill, the last PD Rathbone Holmes as well as the last Rathbone Holmes period, via VV, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one of those out there, too.)

Oh hey, fun facts up in here: this post was first intended to be just as you’ve seen it now, but then I thought about three separate reviews over three days for the three VV releases, and then I thought about a single post spotlighting the triple bill, and then I considered four reviews over four consecutive days with Congress Video’s 1985 VHS release of Dressed to Kill filling out the fourth, and then as late as yesterday I considered a single post, double bill looking at just Secret Weapon and The Woman in Green, before simply going back to the original plan and giving Secret Weapon the sole spotlight. I enjoyed it so much, it deserves the space to itself.

Did I ultimately make the right decision? Well, we’re just going to have to live with the results, anyway.

Tomy Pocket Baseball Handheld Game (1975)

Gang, we’re coming up on August, which puts us firmly in “dog days of summer” territory. It’s not too bad right now as I write this, but there have been some days that have been melty levels of hot – and with this being Northeast Ohio, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more of those to come.

Anyway, summer puts me in a baseball mood. Now, I love me some sports, and traditionally baseball has been my favorite. For awhile basketball was right up there with it, but then, I loves me some football too, and hockey has been working its way into my heart as well – even though Columbus is the only team I even remotely care about NHL-wise. The subject of just what my favorite sport is is something I have internally wrestled with more than once, though I eventually decided to stop worrying about it and take things on a seasonal basis (though there is naturally some overlap there).

If push came to shove though, I think I’d still go with baseball. Funnily enough, growing up in the 1990s when the Cleveland Indians were making their pennant/World Series runs, I wasn’t big on it, mainly because I wasn’t really a sports kid and my parents having the games on each and every night meant I couldn’t watch what I wanted. As I grew though, my appreciation for America’s pastime did as well, and nowadays, I’m the one who simply has to have the game on each and every night.

Baseball, to me, has an aura and history about it that strikes at my heart in a way football and basketball just don’t, and besides avidly following Cleveland year in and year out, I absolutely love baseball books (biographies and autobiographies), video games (albeit old school, more arcade-minded ones; think of many NES and Sega Genesis offerings), keychains and similar promotional memorabilia, and things just like, you know, our subject today.

Behold! Tomy’s Pocket Baseball handheld game, from 1975!

This was a garage sale find from last week. My yard and garage sale scores have been kinda iffy this year; I pretty much always find something I don’t need to bring home, but specimens I can get really and truly stoked over have been rarer. Rest assured though, I got stoked over this one. The funny thing is, I probably didn’t even need to; I’ve had one of these in my collection for years. If memory serves, it was found along with several other vintage baseball handhelds at a second hand store yeaaaaars ago, the kind of mega-score I dream about and which doesn’t happen nearly often enough to satisfy me.

And yet, I couldn’t have been happier to find another example out in the wild; the moment I set eyes on it, I knew it was coming home with me. A vintage baseball handheld game? You just can’t have too many of those. The fact it was found with a Mini-Mate Spiral Score handheld, same general size and time frame as baseball here, and they were only a quarter apiece, well, I’d be a fool not to take advantage of that bargain!

As you can see, this handheld is in the same vein as a pocket pinball game, a double cool winnin since I collect those too, though this is better cause baseball. It’s not electronic in the slightest, though as you may be able to surmise from the picture here, there’s an added mechanical element that I really like and which we’ll talk more about momentarily.

Low-priced little handhelds like this were awfully common in grocery stores and such back in the day; not that they weren’t around before or after (I mean, you can still get handheld pinball games at the dollar store), but the 1970s to 1990s are chiefly the decades I associate with things like this. (Even though I, uh, wasn’t alive in the 1970s.) These were cheap little toys meant to pacify the children while mom shopped, they gave kids something to do on car trips, and while they certainly weren’t “high end,” in those less technologically-advanced (read: pre-internet, pre-smart phone) times, coupled with a healthy dose of imagination and the simple fact that there just wasn’t always any other alternatives, well, there were worse ways to pass the time.

Being from 1975, Tomy’s baseball thing predates me a bit, though handhelds of a similar nature (and like Tomy here, made of a higher quality than what you might find today) certainly entered my grubby little hands back in the day. Indeed, I still have slot machine and roulette wheel handhelds from my formative years, to the best of my recollection found at Finast while with mom during long ago grocery jaunts.

Here’s the back of the unit. Look at the bottom: see, 1975. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t. Neato bonus: the remnants of an old Click sticker, which is exactly the kind of place you would have found this thing at back then. Shoot homey, that was almost worth the quarter all by itself!

Fortunately, the old instructions sticker remains on the back. This is good, because while it’s obviously not a complicated game to play, there is a specific way of going about it, though you could probably figure things out yourself if need be.

At heart, this is really just a handheld pinball game. You shoot the ball as normal, though in this case, instead of tilting the case and trying to land the ball in the highest scoring slot, you’re instead trying to drop the thing through holes representing single, double or triple base hits – or better yet, a home run. Little pegs on the field make this task more difficult, and should you royally whiff and hit the bottom, it’s an out. Throwing your fist and yelling “HAH!” like an ump is optional.

Here’s where that additional mechanical element comes in: if you get “on base,” the ball drops through to the diamond, and by pulling a lever on the left side of the game, you rotate the “runner” to the appropriate plate. It’s actually pretty neat, and fortunately, the function still works fine here. (Stuff was built to last back then, and Tomy made high quality toys besides.) Playing by yourself, it’s awfully easy to cheat (“aw, I was just stealin’ home!”), and tilting the game wildly could very conceivably move a runner from the score box back to the bench by accident, but truth be told, 47 (!) years later this all still works pretty well.

Obviously it’s a purely offensive-minded game; no well-executed double plays are going to happen here, but I still had some fun with this. I mean, I didn’t play it for 20 hours straight or anything, but the results of my play are evident in that first picture above. As the instructions kinda sorta imply at the end, this could make for a competitive two-player contest (“hey, it’s still my turn!”), though it still works as a single-player outing; handle both teams yourself, or load the “bench” all the way up and see how many runs you can score in a single round. (Or rather, inning.) Keeping score on a piece of paper probably isn’t a bad idea, though that hurts the car ride portability of the thing somewhat.

More imaginative types undoubtedly thought of their favorite teams and players while playing back then, and if you wanted to get really industrious, I guess you could fantasize the managerial aspects of the game as well. “Hey, I just traded my third baseman! He was my favorite player, the bum!” (Did you get the whole conflict thing I was going for there? Aw never mind…)

There’s Tomy’s baseball, along with the Mini-Mate Spiral Score it was found with; they is brudders, I think I’ll keep ’em together. (Had I found only Spiral Score, I still would have been pretty happy, though I probably wouldn’t be getting a post out of it now.)

Nowadays, while undoubtedly worth more than the 25 cent piece I dropped on it, Tomy’s Pocket Baseball still isn’t worth a whole lot. They’re fairly common, online anyway (you probably won’t be tripping over examples while walking to the post office), and have obviously been superseded by many, many handheld baseball offerings since. Nevertheless, the fact it’s now pushing 50 (!!) years old and is still relatively fun, at least in short bursts, is something to be celebrated. It’s neat to imagine some baseball-obsessed kid pouring over it back in the 1970s or early-80s, whiling time away or having a competition with a sibling or friend.

The next time the game is rained out or inexplicably not on TV (via my streaming options, anyway), maybe I’ll sit back with this thing and imagine local legend Tom Hamilton calling my plays…

VHS Review: DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL (1946; Silver Screen Video, 19??)

Wanna know the honest truth? I’ve been wanting to write about at least one of the 1940s b-movie flicks centered on comic strip hero Dick Tracy for awhile now. The obvious chaser has been Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome because, hey, Boris Karloff. Nevertheless, when this here copy of Dick Tracy vs. Cueball presented itself at a thrift recently (or actually not so recently; it was months and months ago), I jumped at the opportunity to finally check this one off the arbitrary bucket list.

‘Course, it still took awhile to, uh, happen. I started with a little preliminary work sometime back but then just scrapped the whole idea, only to revive it just earlier today. What can I say, I’m an enigma.

I know for a fact I’ve got other various copies of 40s Tracy movies on VHS boxed/buried away (Gruesome included), maybe/quite possibly even a copy identical to this one. But wanna know another honest truth? At a certain point, it just becomes easier for me to pick up a new old copy of whatever rather than go digging for something I ultimately may or may not even wind up posting about. What can I say, I’m an enigma. (And I’ve got too much stuff.)

Put out by Silver Screen Video in, erm, I don’t actually know when (as you may have surmised by the title of this article; there’s no copyright date anywhere on the tape, man!), this is, simply put, public domain movie/budget video tape goodness in a nutshell. As you can see, the original poster art used for the front cover here is terrific, and if you yearn for the days when VHS tapes recorded in EP/SLP often featured a request to adjust the tracking if/when necessary on the tape label, well, you’re covered here.

Silver Screen Video released the four entries of the 1940s RKO Dick Tracy series (all of which had become delightfully public domain by then) on VHS, and none are particularly rare where used tapes are concerned – no Junior Dick Tracy sleuthin’ required to hunt these babies down! Indeed, I wasn’t even all that surprised when I found this one – I *was* happy though. It saved me potential back-breakin’ manual labor, after all! While, as previously stated, Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome was more of a chaser for me (it’s actually sorta weird it didn’t turn up after my deciding I could get a post out of it; these tapes really are pretty common, even in this day and age), there wound up being something about Cueball that actually fired my interest up even more: it was once considered one of the worst movies ever made.

No, seriously; it was included in the 1978 book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time! Now that’s something I sure didn’t expect to hear! The RKO Dick Tracy films of the 1940s, obviously they’re not considered high art, but I was unaware of any of them actually being considered outright bad. And certainly not bad enough to merit any “worst movie of all time” nominations! I haven’t read that book, I assume they explain their reasoning behind the inclusion, but yeah, this was definitely unexpected to me. So naturally my curiosity was piqued; could there be some truth to that declaration? (Wacky Fact: while I almost certainly owned it already, I know I had never actually *watched* Dick Tracy vs. Cueball beforehand.)

Before we get to the actual movie stuff, here’s the back cover. The synopsis is brief, but fine. I’d have worded it a bit differently – it’s a little inaccurate even at only a single sentence long, but you get the gist of the picture. So mission accomplished anyway or something like that.

I get a kick out of the disclaimer underneath the synopsis, that little reminder that, hey, the flick is public domain so you can just go put a muzzle on that attorney, ace. You saw those reminders pretty frequently on cheapie cartoon compilations from that era, but needless to say, it wasn’t limited to only ancient animation anthologies. [Alliteration]

By the way, that picture used on the back is not from this movie. And while we’re at it, y’all can just ignore that 62 minute runtime notation, too; the actual film is about 10 minutes shorter. An old print prepared for TV, or edited for other reasons? I guess a scene of Tracy in an airplane could have been in those excised 10 minutes, but given how the movie plays out, that seems highly, highly unlikely. Since the movie is public domain, I suppose I could go find it somewhere online to check without having to worry about thugs coming to pummel me (not over this anyway), but that seems like an awful lot of work for an article only 12 people will ever actually read.

As you can see, and as I have already stated, there’s no copyright date listed anywhere on the tape or sleeve. Using my powers of useless knowledge however, I can guesstimate that this hails from the late-80s, or perhaps more likely, the early-90s. Why do the early-90s seem more likely? Because 1990 was the year of the big budget Warren Beatty Dick Tracy movie, that’s why! It might be a little hard to understand now, but believe me, the hype for that movie was through the (figurative HAW HAW HAW) roof; beforehand, Dick Tracy wasn’t exactly the beacon of cool-to-kids that Batman or them karate Turtles were in that era, but thanks to the hype machine, for a relatively brief time, it was all about that comic strip crime fighter. I know, because as I mentioned in this post, I got bit by the bug big time. To this day, for me the sight of that Dick Tracy movie logo evokes an image/feeling of 1990 that few other things can.

Anyway, as with any big time Hollywood blockbuster, hey, others want to capitalize on the hype too. And since the RKO Dick Tracy films were quite public domain by then, well, it only makes sense that manufacturers would take advantage of that lucky (for them) break. ‘Course, I don’t know that’s what happened in this case, but it’s a good hypothesis. And even if Silver Screen technically released these tapes before ’90, it’s a safe guess they saw a new surge of sales when Dick Tracy mania swept the nation.

Or maybe I’m wrong on all counts, whatever.

So anyway, 1946’s Dick Tracy vs. Cueball. This was the second of four films based on the Chester Gould character that RKO released in the mid/late-40s. There had been a number of serials prior (the first of which is also quite common in the public domain arena), but I find these 1940s RKO features more appealing personally. Probably because, barring a few exceptions, I’m awfully wishy-washy on serials; while I like the vintage cinematic era they evoke, I don’t typically like watching them. Go figure! But, I digress.

As you can see in my adorable little screen caps here, Cueball isn’t just in the title, he even gets a special introductory card (that segues into his live action counterpart appropriately – swanky!). Does that mean Cueball wasn’t a Chester Gould creation, but rather a villain cooked up by RKO? Truthfully, I have little experience with the original Tracy comic strips; I mean, I’ve got a rudimentary knowledge (boy, those space age installments sure sound goofy), but that’s about it.

Our plot: Cueball (can you guess why that’s his nickname?) is in league with some other nefarious types to steal some ‘spensive diamonds. (Is there any other kind?) Unfortunately, he’s forced to kill the dude he’s stealing them from, so pretty much right off the bat things are getting dicey. (Dicier?)

The murder is what sets Dick Tracy on the trail. But not only that, it also causes some apprehension on the part of the guy Cueball was supposed to sell the diamonds to. He’s a crook with apparent scruples, because he balks at murder being attached to his ill-gotten gems. So anyway, Cueball has to find someone to buy his diamonds, keep others from stealing them from him, all while going around strangling people with a leather hat band. (He’s not a very nice guy.) Of course, Dick Tracy is getting progressively closer during all of this.

Speaking of Tracy…

“Hey that’s not Warren Beatty!” Now, you know full well that’s Morgan Conway in the role of our hero. And if you didn’t, you could’ve just scrolled back up and looked at the front cover again. So is there a reason you’re giving me grief?

Like I said, I’m not terribly familiar with the original comic strips, but Conway seems to do fine here. He’s easygoing yet tough, smart and tenacious, all at the expense of constantly neglecting his girlfriend Tess Trueheart. He doesn’t use that wristwatch walkie talkie thing, which had apparently been introduced in the strips earlier in ’46 and thus its absence vaguely hurts me deep, but otherwise, yeah, I like Conway just fine in the role. I wonder if there’s ever been a fistfight between people arguing over who was the better Dick Tracy: Morgan Conway or Ralph Byrd? Dick Tracy wouldn’t approve of that.

“So do you think that ‘You’re So Vain’ song is really about Milton Armitage?” Knock it off.

The plot, it’s fine, it doesn’t do anything too trendsetting, but then, it (probably) wasn’t meant to. At only 62 52 minutes, it obviously moves briskly. I like Conway’s Tracy, Cueball is appropriately sinister, there’s some comic relief from Tracy’s goofy partner that doesn’t impact the movie negatively. There’s more comic relief from Vitamin Flintheart (you gotta love these character names) that’s a bit more annoying, but nevertheless, I liked most of this well enough.

What struck me more than the plot or the characters, however, is just how this movie looks; this is very much a film noir by way of comic-based b-movie, and that’s most definitely a good thing. The usage of shadows and lighting and evocative camera angles, along with that budget movie sheen, it’s all irresistible in a post-war matinee sorta way. I love it! So much of this flick is bathed in shadows, its noir-ish good looks really sorta disguise those comic strip roots. I could see someone with an unnatural hatred of all things Dick Tracy still being able to appreciate this one, based solely on the aesthetic qualities it exhibits. Despite some moments of levity, the world of Dick Tracy vs. Cueball is a dark, shadowy, sinister one. I mean, there’s even a bar, complete with matching neon sign, called “The Dripping Dagger.” (It probably wouldn’t have been considered a family restaurant.)

Things that could cause some consternation in this day and age: at one point, Cueball strangles the woman that tried to steal his diamonds with his trademark hat band…but not before smacking her in the head with it a couple times. It’s not particularly graphic, but still unsettling for obvious reasons. Also, a little kid playing cowboy uses some language that would be considered derogatory towards Native Americans nowadays. So, as with any movie from decades past, if you watch, watch while remembering it was a different time, a different era in which it was made.

As for the film print Silver Screen Video utilized, it’s…mostly alright. It’s always kinda dirty/dusty/scratchy, but mostly it leans towards the “watchable-but-mediocre” end of the spectrum, with occasional moments of heavy wear and tear. BUT BUT BUT, hear me out: none of that actually hurts the ultimate presentation! Lemme explain: the accumulated wear of this Dick Tracy vs. Cueball evokes countless trips through the projector, of Saturday matinees, of late night television broadcasts on local stations, and as such, there’s just a certain ‘feeling’ about all this that still manages to work in spite of itself. Besides, it’s a budget video release – do you really go into one of those expecting pristine film prints? Lower your standards, champ.

SO, all that said, should Dick Tracy vs. Cueball be making any all time worst movie lists? In my opinion, no. Not at all. In fact, without having read that book or the explanation behind the inclusion of the film, yeah, I just don’t get that choice. Okay, sure, technically it’s not a great film, most people aren’t going to mistake it for an a-movie, there’s some dialog that’s a little silly, etc. etc. etc. But, I didn’t really notice anything about it that would be considered more offensively bad than countless other offerings from the era. Am I missing something here? Was there something in those apparently-excised 10 minutes that could so drastically lower the stature of the film? I can at least understand some choices in that book, even if I don’t agree with them. (I totally love Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster and happily consider it the best ‘Zilla of the 1970s, but I can see why some would hate it, because the movie is just totally whacked out, man.) But even in that pre-internet, comparatively less-accessible (movie-wise) era, saying Dick Tracy vs. Cueball wasn’t just bad, but actually one of the worst films ever made, it just seems like such a random inclusion to me. Your mileage may vary, of course.

So yes, ultimately I liked this one plenty. It’s fast and noir-ish and such a fun example of a post-war programmer, as well as a fun example of budget VHS from the late-80s/early-90s. Maybe it played into the hype surrounding Beatty’s Dick Tracy, or maybe it was just easy product for Silver Screen Video to get out there regardless of what else was happening. At any rate, this totally seems like the kind of a tape I would have found for mega cheap at D&K in the late-90s, and THAT, my friends, is a nice feeling to have. (Even if it never actually happened. Not to my recollection, anyway; I do remember seeing some cheapo cartoon tapes there in the summer of 1997, so, yeah.)