Time Machine Of Terror! 1973: An Excellent Year for Devils and Doctors

by Mark McLaughlin

“Ouch!” said Professor Artemis Theodore LaGungo as he brought a large prehistoric curio down from a shelf in the main display room of his curio shoppe, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES. “I think I’ve pulled a muscle in my shoulder!”

“You should’ve let me help you with that Ridiculosaurus skull,” I said. “It looks terribly heavy!”

“It IS terribly heavy!” the wily, wiry old fellow said. “In fact, it’s RIDICULOUSLY heavy! And now I’ve pulled a muscle. But there’s no need to fret. I’m a licensed M-A-D Doctor.”

“I know how to spell ‘mad’!” I said, probably rolling my eyes. That’s just the sort of thing I would roll my eyes at.

“That was an acronym,” he said. He crossed to a drawer near the cash register, opened it and pulled out a large tube of liniment. He then unbuttoned his shirt and rubbed some of the liniment on his shoulder. “Aaaaaaaahhhh!” he sighed. “Feels better already!”

“What does M-A-D stand for?” I said.

“Made A Deal,” he replied, popping the tube back in its drawer. “I’m a ‘Made A Deal’ Doctor. I made a deal with Catafalquium, a minor demon who can give mortals the power to heal others … and themselves, which is why I made the deal. I had cancer at the time, but now I’m aaaaaall better.”

“So what did Catafalquium want in return?”

The Professor smiled. “All the erotic items this shoppe carried at the time. He’s a frisky devil! Which reminds me, you ought to visit 1973 in that wonderful Time Machine of Terror! that I sold you. It was an excellent year for devils and doctors!”

“And political scandals,” I said. “Watergate and all that.”

Professor LaGungo shook his head sadly. “President Nixon really took a beating that year. But you know, the space program made major advances while he was in office, and he helped to end conflicts in different parts of the world. He wasn’t a bad man … more of a high-stakes gambler.”

“I’ll have to take your word for that,” I said. “I’m not into politics.”

The Professor barked out a dry rasp of a laugh. “Silly boy! Human life is nothing BUT politics! Politics … just a game, really.”

Later, I went home and kicked the Time Machine of Terror! — or TMOT! for short — into high gear. Before I tell you about what I saw back in 1973, let’s take a look at various goings-on in the world that year:

On January 14, the first worldwide telecast by an entertainer, an Elvis Presley concert in Hawaii, drew more viewers than the Apollo moon landings.

On January 20, Richard Nixon was inaugurated for his second term as U.S. President.

On January 22, through the court case Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state bans on abortion.

On January 27, the signing of the Paris Peace Accords ended America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

On February 21, Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was shot down by Israeli fighter aircraft. Of the 113 people onboard, only five survived.

On February 22, America and the People's Republic of China agreed to establish liaison offices.

On March 7, Comet Kohoutek was discovered.

On March 17, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the new London Bridge.

Also on March 17, Pink Floyd's album The Dark Side of the Moon was released.

On March 23, Watergate burglar James W. McCord Jr., in a letter to Judge John Sirica, admitted that he and other defendants have been pressured to remain silent. He accused former Attorney General John Mitchell of being the 'overall boss' of the operation.

On April 3, the first cell phone call was made by Martin Cooper in New York City.

On April 4, New York City’s World Trade Center opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

On April 17, Federal Express began operations, delivering 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities.

On April 30, President Richard Nixon announced that top White House aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and others had resigned as a result of the Watergate Scandal.

On May 3, Chicago’s Sears Tower, the world's tallest building, was completed.

On May 14, America’s first space station, Skylab, was launched. On May 25, the Skylab 2 mission was launched to repair damage to Skylab.

On June 16, President Richard Nixon began talks with Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. On June 24, Brezhnev addressed the American people on TV.

On July 11, Varig Flight 820 crashed in France, killing 123 people.

On July 25, the Soviet Mars 5 space probe was launched.

On July 28, the Skylab 3 mission was launched to conduct medical and scientific experiments on Skylab.

On August 1, the movie American Graffiti was released.

On August 15, the U.S. bombing of Cambodia stopped, ending 12 years of combat in Southeast Asia.

On September 18, West Germany and East Germany were admitted to the United Nations.

On September 22, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger started his term as Secretary of State.

On October 10, Spiro T. Agnew resigned from his position as U.S. Vice President.

On October 17, a major energy crisis began with the Arab Oil Embargo, which was aimed at countries supporting Israel.

On October 20, the Sydney Opera House, 14 years in the making, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

On November 3, NASA launched Mariner 10 toward Mercury, and on March 29, 1974, it reached its destination.

On November 11, Egypt and Israel signed a cease-fire accord sponsored by the United States.

On November 16, NASA launched the Skylab 4 mission.

Also on November 16, President Richard Nixon authorized the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

On November 17, President Richard Nixon told 400 Associated Press managing editors, "I am not a crook."

On November 25, a military coup led by Lieutenant General Phaidon Gizikis ousted Greek dictator George Papadopoulos.

On December 3, Pioneer 10 sent to Earth the first close-up images of Jupiter.

On December 28, the Endangered Species Act was passed.

Celebrities born in 1973 included boxer Oscar de la Hoya, actor Neil Patrick Harris, hip-hop singer Akon, actress Tori Spelling, model Heidi Klum, talk-show host Carson Daly, Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and dancer Nikolay Tsiskaridze.

Celebrities who passed away in 1973 included 36th U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, actor Wally Cox, novelist Elizabeth Bowen, Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck, playwright Noel Coward, artist Pablo Picasso, singer Bobby Darin, fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and Hollywood sex-symbols Betty Grable, Veronica Lake and Irene Ryan – that rambunctious silver fox from TV’s THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES.

As you will recall from my previous entries in this blog, I regularly travel through the dimension of old TV shows and movies in the TMOT! – which looks like a giant brass alarm clock with batwings. Or rather, that’s what it would look like if it weren’t invisible from the outside. It came with a locating device, in case I should forget where I’ve parked it.

In 1973, the world learned that humanoid monsters don’t always have to be Caucasian. The movies BLACKENSTEIN, Voodoo Black Exorcist and Scream, Blacula, Scream! brought forth black versions of Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy, and Dracula, respectively.

Meanwhile, Hammer Studios brought out Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride, also known as THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, which was the final installment in their Dracula series. In it, we find out that because pure running water can destroy a vampire, you can actually kill a batch of them by turning on the fire sprinklers!

VAMPIRES' NIGHT ORGY took place in a town overrun by vampires and cannibals – not exactly the best place for a busload of tourists to visit.

Andy Warhol’s pal Paul Morrissey directed sexy versions of the Frankenstein and Dracula stories called Flesh for Frankenstein and BLOOD FOR DRACULA. TV horror maestro Dan Curtis cast Jack Palance in a new version of DRACULA which positioned the Count as a warrior, rather than a suave sophisticate. Frankenstein: The True Story gave us a handsome Monster whose looks, sadly, had a very short shelf-life.

Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks told the shocking tale of how Count Frankenstein (in this one, he’s a count) brought a Neanderthal back to life. Apparently they all didn’t go extinct. The things you learn from old movies!

As I zipped around in the TMOT!, checking out all those various versions of the Frankenstein story, I could see that Professor LaGungo was right about 1973 being a good year for doctors, since the monster-making Baron was a man of medicine (albeit bad medicine). And there were other mad medicos hanging about, too…

In SSSSSSS, a mad scientist decided to turn his lab assistants into king cobras.

Don't Look In The Basement! was set in a mental hospital where the patients had taken control, posing as doctors and nurses.

I really enjoyed hovering around the movie, Horror Hospital. In this saucy serving of U.K. Grand Guignol, wheelchair-bound Dr. Storm practiced strange experiments on human guinea pigs to get them to obey his megalomaniacal will. He had a most unusual method of dealing with escapees: his limousine was equipped with blades for decapitating any running person he might pass in that fast luxury car.

I also relished the wit and wickedness of THEATRE OF BLOOD, in which Vincent Price played a Shakespearean actor who killed off reviewers who had panned his performances. He killed them off according to the ways various Shakespeare characters shuffled off their mortal coils. And during one murderous vignette, Price dressed up as a surgeon to perform an impromptu head-ectomy.

Certainly 1973 yielded a bumper crop of mad doctors and medical mischief. But Professor LaGungo had also mentioned devils. I’d seen a lot of vampires earlier — were there any other demons or hideous creatures afoot…?

In the year’s most popular horror movie, THE EXORCIST, the demon Pazuzu possessed a poor little Washington, D.C. girl named Regan. This horror masterpiece electrified audiences worldwide and spawned dozens of rip-off films, as well as a litter of less-interesting sequels. EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC came out years later and is remembered fondly by lovers of bad cinema as one of the worst horror movies of all time, and certainly the most ludicrous sequel to a classic.

That wasn’t the only problem taking place in the Washington, D.C. area at that time. The Nixon administration was experiencing Watergate woes, as you saw in my earlier synopsis of 1973 events, and as if that weren’t enough, the movie THE WEREWOLF OF WASHINGTON revealed a different sort of White House dilemma — a President cursed with lycanthropy.

In Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, zombies popped out of their graves like mushrooms springing up in a forest after a rainstorm. The living characters in this one are so pretentious and unlikeable, I found myself cheering the zombies on. Yeah, go get ‘em!

Psychic investigators visited the Mount Everest of haunted habitats in THE Legend of Hell House. Other teams of researchers had visited the house before, and most had died horrible deaths. And yet, these teammates think they can beat the odds — even though one of them had been part of an earlier expedition and the experience had popped a few of the bulbs in his mental marquee. I decided not to fly the TMOT! too close to Hell House … better safe than sorry.

While Pazuzu and the diabolical denizen of Hell House were noisy and obscene entities, the infernal title character in Lisa and the Devil was quite charming and urbane. In this macabre and yet often darkly surreal romp, we find that the Devil is in fact, a merry fellow who considers humans to be his life-sized toys. In fact, sometimes he turns his living playthings into mannequins, carries them around and arranges them in strange tableaus for his own amusement.

As I headed for home, I thought about the Devil and his whimsical ways. Could it be true…? Are humans just the Devil’s playthings? Are we all just toys — or perhaps pawns in some huge chess match? Shakespeare once said: All the world’s a stage … but maybe he was a little off. Maybe it’s a board game.

If that’s the case, I guess doctors exist so we can be healed and popped back into the game, whenever we fall ill or sustain an injury. Dr. Frankenstein is such a skilled doctor, he can put players back in the game even after they’ve died!

But when considering all those notions, one disturbing question came to mind. Who exactly are game-masters? Is life on Earth a game between the Devil and God — or maybe the Devil and ANOTHER demon?

I would have to discuss the matter with Professor LaGungo….

– End –

Mark McLaughlin's latest books are RAISING DEMONS FOR FUN & PROFIT and TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, both available from www.Horror-Mall.com.

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