Just a quick note to invite folks to visit the McMonsterBook Channel on YouTube — http://www.youtube.com/mcmonsterbook In the Uploads section, be sure to hit See All, and then click on links  to watch: The short video, DIVA GUGU, VAMPIRE HUNTER "The Further Adventures of  Lizzy Borden" from TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES The book trailer for the  Michael McCarty vampire novel, LIQUID DIET Two installments of  the vampire epic, DR. ACU, L.A. An interview with The  Great Sewer Clam, and … The book trailer for RAISING DEMONS FOR FUN & PROFIT Thanks!

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Time Machine Of Terror! 1957: Cut-Rate Creatures and Bargain-Basement Behemoths

by Mark McLaughlin

Professor Artemis Theodore LaGungo stared forlornly at his salad plate, which was still half-full. I was having lunch with him last Saturday in the backroom of his curio shop, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES. I’d brought salads for both of us from a nearby deli, and some cookies, too. I finished my main course in only a few minutes, but the Professor wasn’t able to polish off the light meal I’d set before him.

“When I was your age,” he said, “I used to eat thee times my weight in food every day. Or so it seemed! Now, I don’t have enough appetite to choke down more than half a salad for lunch. What happened to that enormous appetite of mine? Where did it go?”

“Well, maybe that’s all the food you need at your age,” I said. “A person’s metabolism slows down with time, and after all, you’re well over sixty.”

“Ha!” The Professor’s bony shoulders bobbed with mirth. “I’m well-well-WELL over sixty! More than sixty times two! But still, you’d think I’d have more of an appetite than I do, considering how much I used to eat back in my prime.”

“Now Professor, you have the wisdom of the ages locked away in all your various relics and gizmos and thingamabobs,” I said. “Surely you must have some tonic or poultice or ancient fetish doll that can help to restore your appetite.”

LaGungo’s deeply furrowed brow furrowed even more as he considered my suggestion. “Well, I do have those dried purple berries of the Congo tikuuni vine…. They’d restore my appetite. But, I’d also grow breasts, and that’s just not a good look for a man my age.” He thought some more. “I also have a vial of wooly mammoth hormones. It’s a cure for both weight- and hair-loss. The problem is, it’s strong stuff, and I don’t want to triple my weight or quadruple my body-hair coverage. Again, not a good look.” He sighed wearily.

I reached into the lunch sack, pulled out a big chocolate-chip and macadamia-nut cookie and set it on the empty half of the Professor’s plate. “Try nibbling on that cookie. Maybe you just need a little sugar to get you going.”

“It looks great, just like the salad.” The Professor picked up the cookie and proceeded to nibble. “It’s very good. But I’m just not that hungry. Let’s face it. These days, my eyes are bigger than my appetite. I’m the exact opposite of 1957.”

I pulled my own dessert out of the sack. It was a big peanut-butter cookie slathered with chocolate frosting, and as I took a big bite out of it, I noticed that the Professor was staring at me.

I chewed, swallowed, and then said, “What’s wrong?” – knowing exactly what was wrong. Obviously, he’d hoped that I would question him about that 1957 statement.

“Well….” The Professor rolled his eyes. “I was kind of hoping you’d ask me what I meant by that observation about 1957.”

“The question was on the tip of my tongue,” I said, “but this peanut-butter cookie blocked it from coming out of my mouth. Professor, what exactly did you mean by saying that you were the opposite of 1957?"

“Funny you should ask!” he cried. “You see, I told you my eyes were bigger than my appetite. But in 1957, the collective appetite of the move-going public was bigger than their eyes! They wanted to see magnificent wonders, but–”

“But–?”

The Professor smiled. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to get into that magnificent Time Machine of Terror! that I sold you to find out the rest.” He took a good-sized bit of his cookie. “Concentrate on the movies for that year, don’t worry about TV – and while you’re visiting 1957, think about America’s biggest movie star in 1956….”

After lunch, I went home and did just as the Professor suggested. Before I tell you about what I observed in 1957, let’s take a look at various goings-on in the world that year:

On January 3, the first electric watch was released by the Hamilton Watch Company, and ten days later, on the 13^th, Wham-O Company made the first Frisbee.

On January 20, Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States.

On February 16, Ingmar Bergman's film THE SEVENTH SEAL opened in Sweden, and on March 1, “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss was published.

On March 6, the U.K. colonies Gold Coast and British Togoland became the nation of Ghana.

On March 17, Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay died in a plane crash.

On March 26, Elvis Presley, at age 22, bought Graceland for $100,000.

On March 31, the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV musical CINDERELLA, starring Julie Andrews, was broadcast live and in color by CBS.

On April 12, the poem “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg, printed in England, was seized by U.S. customs officials as obscene material.

On May 15, Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb in the Pacific.

On May 24, Anti-American riots broke out in Taiwan.

On June 27, 400 were killed when Hurricane Audrey ripped through Cameron, Louisiana.

On July 6, two British teenagers met for the first time. Their names were John Lennon and Paul McCartney and three years later, they would perform together as part of their new group, the Beatles.

On July 28, an earthquake rocked Mexico City and Acapulco.

On August 5, the dance show AMERICAN BANDSTAND, a local program produced in Philadelphia, joined the ABC Television Network.

September 4 was proclaimed “E Day” by the Ford Motor Company when they introduced the Edsel.

On September 5, Jack Kerouac's “On the Road” was released.

On October 4, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth. On November 3, Sputnik 2 carried the first animal into space – a dog named Laika.

On November 13, the laser was invented by Gordon Gould.

On December 6, America’s first attempt at launching a satellite blew up on the launchpad.

On December 20, the Boeing 707 flew for the first time.

During 1957, the following celebrities, among others, were born: TV personality Vanna White; actors LeVar Burton, and Daniel Day-Lewis; Princess Caroline of Monaco; actresses Kathy Najimy, Melanie Griffith, and Fran Drescher; director Spike Lee; singers Gloria Estefan, Siouxsie Sioux, and Donny Osmond; newscaster Matt Lauer; and Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan.

The following celebrities were among those who passed away in 1957: actors Humphrey Bogart and Oliver Hardy; conductor Arturo Toscanini; author Laura Ingalls Wilder; Senator Joseph McCarthy; director James Whale; musician Jimmy Dorsey; physicist Johannes Stark; designer Christian Dior; writer Lord Dunsany; and movie mogul Louis B. Mayer.

As you might remember from my previous entries in this blog, I regularly travel through the dimension of old TV shows and movies in the Time Machine of Terror! – or TMOT! – which I bought from Professor LaGungo. The TMOT! 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.

My first stop in 1957 was THE DEADLY MANTIS, since I’ve always liked praying mantises. What’s not to like? They look like comical, spindly aliens, with their sturdy, nimble arms and big-eyed, alert little faces.

The handsome male-lead scientist in this black-and-white potboiler is quick to tell us that praying mantises are nature’s most savage beings, despite their size. Really? More savage than, say, a rabid wolf or a hungry piranha…? Okee-dokee, Mr. Scientist! Praying mantises may be bloodthirsty, all-around predatory critters, but still, they look too much like grasshoppers to be frightening.

Of course, BEGINNING OF THE END would have us believe that a giant grasshopper is scary, and if ONE giant grasshopper is scary – well then, hundreds of them would be the ultimate in terror!

Peter Graves played the scientist whose experiments indirectly created the giant grasshoppers (though nobody faulted him for it … folks were more easygoing back in the Fifties). Strangely enough, as I watched Peter Graves fight off the hungry hordes of hopping horrors, I wasn’t the least bit frightened, or even slightly concerned about Pete’s welfare. I knew he’d be okay, though his nice clean suit might get some of that brown grasshopper-spit on it.

I then decided it was time to pay a visit to KRONOS, Ravager of Planets! I mean, what can be bigger or scarier than an alien menace huge enough and voracious enough to ravage an entire planet?

I watched as the metal giant from outer space, Kronos, stomped across the countryside on its metallic pillar-legs. Basically, Kronos looks like a giant, squarish, stainless-steel peppermill which moves forward by pumping its cylindrical legs up and down, crushing anything in its path. How does pumping one’s legs directly up and down move one forward? I’m not quite sure – but then, when it comes to aliens, anything is possible, I guess.

Kronos had been sent to Earth to drain the planet’s electrical energy … and perhaps to press a few suits (with their occupants still in them). After a while that weird pillar-pumping action started to get on my nerves. Finally, I could stand no more. I opened a hatch of the TMOT! and yelled out, “Sorry, Kronos, but you’re no Godzilla!”

That’s when Professor LaGungo’s comment hit me. America’s biggest movie star in 1956 … size-wise … was Godzilla! The movie GODZILLA had been released in Japan in 1954 and in America in 1956. GODZILLA was a huge hit, so of course, every movie-maker in Hollywood and various other entertainment-oriented communities wanted to churn out the next big monster epic for 1957.

Professor LaGungo also had said that in 1957, the collective appetite of the move-going public was bigger than their eyes. That was true! They all wanted their eyes to grow wide with wonder as they feasted their hungry peepers on huge monstrosities, bigger and better than Godzilla. America’s filmmakers certainly gave it the old college try, but alas, none of their efforts really measured up. I steered the TMOT! hither and yond – and then yond and hither, just to be thorough – and couldn’t find any U.S. creatures from that year more impressive than Japan’s Mr. G.

THE MONOLITH MONSTERS told the tale of alien crystals that grow huge in the rain, and then come tumbling down when they’ve grown too big, flattening anything in their general proximity. That’s a monster? More like an out-of-control science-fair experiment. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty old-school when it comes to the definition of “monster”: If it doesn’t have eyes, teeth, claws, and/or a brain … if it’s basically just a mass of solid mineral matter … it’s not a monster. It’s a rock.

In THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD, the title terror turned out to be an oversized, prehistoric slug. Not much competition for Godzilla. Which is scarier: a towering prehistoric dinosaur that shoots radioactive fire out of its jaws … or a really big caterpillar?

Apparently the makers of I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF decided than big wasn’t necessarily better. At least their monster was just as toothy as Godzilla. But, being an adolescent monster, the Teenage Werewolf simply didn’t project Godzilla’s confidence and worldliness.

I decided to check out a couple other countries. First I steered the TMOT! down Mexico way and witnessed the epic battle known as THE ROBOT VS. THE AZTEC MUMMY. Before long, I was personally involved in a huge fight. Namely, I had to fight off drowsiness long enough to fly the TMOT! in another direction. I did admire the director’s sense of inspired zaniness in pairing off such unlikely opponents, but after loads and loads of talky build-up, the actual fight between the Robot and the Aztec Mummy only lasted about two minutes.

Next I decided to see what England had cooking in 1957 and was pleasantly surprised. THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN launched a new fear-franchise for Hammer studios, with Peter Cushing playing the monster-making Baron with icy bravado in this inaugural release and several sequels. In this version of the classic tale, the doctor is actually more intriguing – and in some ways, more of a monster – than his creation. Christopher Lee played the Monster as a zombie-like brute, with none of the unexpected tenderness that Boris Karloff sometimes projected when he played the role for Universal Studios.

NIGHT OF THE DEMON, another British treat, concerns a fine English gentleman who is also a sorcerer, whose arsenal of arcane tricks includes a very handy way of ridding himself of enemies. The title demon is about as big as Godzilla, and even though he has less than a minute of screen-time, it’s so effective, any more than that would be anticlimactic. I enjoyed this elegant British soiree as much as GODZILLA, and perhaps a bit more – the dialogue is snappier and the monster doesn’t spend yards of film footage crushing real estate underfoot.

Now, you may be saying, “Hey Mark, thanks for telling me to avoid KRONOS, BEGINNING OF THE END, THE DEADLY MANTIS and some of those other movies. I’ll never, ever watch them!” If you are saying that – well, stop saying that, because that’s not what I mean! I am NOT telling you to avoid those movies. In fact, I encourage you to buy them (or at least rent them), watch them, and ultimately, love them.

Sure, they don’t measure up to GODZILLA.

Sure, they’re flawed and kooky.

But, that’s part of their charm. As a monster movie, KRONOS is no match for GODZILLA. Still, it’s the best movie ever made about a giant, energy-sucking, alien pseudo-peppermill trying to destroy the Earth. In fact, before I came back home, I flew over Kronos again and shouted an apology out of the hatch.

I don’t think it heard me, but then, I’m not even sure if it has ears, so it may not have heard me the first time.

– # –

Mark McLaughlin's latest book is RAISING DEMONS FOR FUN AND PROFIT from Sam's Dot Publishing, available  in the Anthologies section of http://www.genremall.com and also at http://www.Horror-Mall.com. You can find out more about Mark's rascally antics at http://www.myspace.com/monsterbook. 

 

 

TIME MACHINE OF TERROR!

by Mark McLaughlin

 

 

1977: The Year of Crap VS. Splendor

 

 

Last Tuesday after work, I stopped by Professor LaGungo’s Exotic Artifacts & Assorted Mystic Collectibles to see what new items he had added to his inventory of bizarre goodies from around the world, among other places. I also had an important question to ask him.

 

As I entered the shoppe, it occurred to me that the head of Artemis LaGungo, who is well over one-hundred, resembled one of the many shrunken heads to be found on the shelves of his store — except, of course, for the fact that his head was normal-sized. His liver spots were so large and old, some had their own liver spots. When he saw me, he gave me a smile so wide, it put me in mind of a jack-o’-lantern.

 

“Hello, Mark!” he said. “I’m so glad you stopped by. I’ve acquired something you might like to keep inside the Time Machine of Terror!” He reached under the counter and pulled out what appeared to be a quaint water pistol made out of pink plastic. The little gun gurgled as he shook it. “It’s always full,” he said, “no matter how many times you shoot!”

 

So saying, he fired the pistol at a nearby teddy bear, again and again, until poor teddy was soaking wet. He shook the gun again and it gave us the same gurgle. “Listen: still full — of holy water!” he cried happily. “It was specially created by a clown priest, who used it for exorcism cases regarding children. You can have it for twenty bucks.”

 

“Sounds good to me,” I said, handing the professor two ten-dollar bills. “I may need it to protect me from some of the crappier B-movies that I visit in that time machine you sold me.”

 

“Oh, never joke about the power of crap!” the professor whispered as he gave me the toy.

 

“The power of crap…?” I repeated, mystified.

 

“Just as good and evil are equal but opposite forces that flow through our universe,” the professor explained, “so splendor and crap are opposing powers that hold sway in the dimension of old movies and TV shows. If you want to see what I’m talking about, visit the year 1977 in the Time Machine of Terror!”

 

I suddenly remembered the important question I needed to ask the professor. “I check the fuel gauge on the time machine after every trip, and right now, the tank is half full,” I said. “I’d like to fill it back up, but I don’t know what to use.”

 

The Time Machine of Terror! (or TMOT!, for short) is powered by spinning mystic gears from an ancient Lemurian time-temple — evil, twisted gears lubricated with the blood of the damned, the tears of the innocent, and peppermint oil. The peppermint oil makes it smell nice. So while I knew what kept the gears turning smoothly, I still had no idea what the machine actually required for fuel.

 

“Your trip to 1977 will answer that question,” the professor said. “Now let me show you a delightful wind-up praying mantis that came into the shoppe earlier today….”

 

Later that evening, I entered the TMOT! and paid a visit to 1977. But before I tell you about that, let’s take a look at what happened in the world that year….

 

On January 3, Apple Computer Inc. was incorporated.

 

On January 18, the germ that causes Legionnaires’ Disease was identified.

 

On January 19, snow fell in Miami, Florida, for the first time in the city’s history.

 

On January 20, Jimmy Carter succeeded Gerald Ford as America’s 39th President.

 

On February 11, an astounding 44-pound, 9-ounce lobster was caught near Nova Scotia.

 

On March 4, an earthquake in Bucharest killed 1,500.

 

On March 27, a collision between KLM and PanAm Boeing 747s at the Canary Islands killed 583 people.

 

On April 22, optical fiber was first used to carry phone-call traffic.

 

On May 25, STAR WARS opened in theatres and became, at the time, the highest grossing film ever.

 

On June 26, Elvis Presley performed his final concert in Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana

 

On July 13, a blackout in New York City lasted for 25 hours.

 

On August 16, Elvis Presley died at age 42 at his Graceland residence. His funeral in Memphis, Tennessee, brought out 75,000 fans.

 

On August 19, comedy legend Groucho Marx died.

 

On September 29, the Food Stamp Program began.

 

On October 14, a gay rights activist named Tom Higgins hit Anita Bryant in the face with a pie at an anti-gay rally in Des Moines, Iowa.

 

On November 8, San Francisco elected City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official of a major American city.

 

On December 1, Nickelodeon, the children’s cartoon channel, launched as the Pinwheel Network.

 

Notable 1977 births included actors and actresses Orlando Bloom, James Van Der Beek, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Liv Tyler, Edward Furlong, musicians Kanye West, Ludacris, Fiona Apple, and rich guy Donald Trump, Jr.

 

Before I hopped into the TMOT! for my trip, I splashed the outside of the time machine with plenty of holy water from the toy pistol. You see, my first stop in 1977 was going to be EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC, and I didn’t want the demon Pazuzu to try to climb aboard the timecraft.

 

As I’ve mentioned before, the structure of the TMOT! resembles a giant brass alarm clock with batwings, so I made sure the wings were well-saturated with holy water.

 

EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC takes place four years after young Regan’s demonic possession in THE EXORCIST. Richard Burton plays the wide-eyed priest sent by the Vatican to see how she’s doing, and his acting is so over-the-top, one might think he was one possessed.

 

It is revealed that Regan’s demonic tormentor, Pazuzu, is an African locust demon — perhaps its busy mandibles were what inspired Burton to chew so voraciously on the scenery. 

 

In one scene, the priest and Regan share a dual-hypnosis machine that uses a spinning hypno-wheel and flashing lights to lull patients into a deep trance. Sadly, it can’t hypnotize any audience into taking any of this happy horse-poop seriously.

 

This bold, brassy sequel features exotic locales and amazing special effects, but it’s still pretty much big-budget crap. At one point, the priest has a vision where he rides the demon-locust Pazuzu straight to Africa. Wacky! The whole opus is so breathlessly bizarre, you can’t tear your eyes off of it.

 

While Pazuzu was busy giving Richard Burton piggyback rides, I steered the TMOT! in a new direction. The TMOT! registered high energy levels coming from 1977 TV shows. ROOTS, a highly popular historical mini-series which concerned the lives of America’s slaves, was filled with dramatic and historic splendor. THREE’S COMPANY and THE LOVE BOAT, on the other hand, were horny, crappy sitcoms about swingin’ Seventies types with big teeth and feathered hairstyles.

 

Next, I turned the TMOT! toward STAR WARS, the top movie of 1977. As everyone knows, STAR WARS is a classic tale of young adventurers toppling an evil space empire. Like EXORCIST II, it’s a bold, brassy movie, but instead of crap, it offers splendor — grand vistas of wonder and excitement. It also features a healthy assortment of aliens and monsters. There’s a good amount of humor and playful energy: it knows not to take itself too seriously.

 

STAR WARS is fresh, energetic and consistently entertaining. The same can also be said for CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, another splendid 1977 box-office smash, which concerns humanity’s first official encounter with beings from beyond.

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS only features interactions with one type of alien, as opposed to the veritable space-zoo to be found in STAR WARS. But, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS is such a stirring, inspiring adventure, no viewer is going to feel short-changed by any perceived shortage of space fauna. The big-headed, childlike, vaguely angelic aliens are fascinating creatures, and the fact that they are usually backlit makes them especially compelling (beings from their planet seem to understand the importance of dramatic lighting).

 

Sadly, I didn’t find any fascinating aliens at my next stop, a STAR WARS wannabe from Italy called BATTAGLIE NEGLI SPAZI STELLARI — in English, COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS.

 

I did find some aliens with green skin and pointy ears, and a lot of bad special effects, including a huge, boxy, square-eyed, domineering super-robot who is capable of possessing — like an evil spirit or Pazuzu — people or even other computers.

 

The evil super-robot turns in a pretty mechanical performance, but next to the actors in CATHY’S CURSE, he looks like master thespian Laurence Olivier.

 

CATHY’S CURSE, a Canadian film, comes across as a dime-store version of the far superior 1977 release AUDREY ROSE, which told the haunting tale of a young girl alleged to be the reincarnation of another doomed girl who’d burned to death. While AUDREY ROSE was a splendid big-budget horror classic, CATHY’S CURSE looks more like a raked-together pile of scratched, faded cutting-room clippings.

 

CATHY’S CURSE is the story of a possessed pre-teen girl with long blonde hair and a foul mouth. She addresses a kindly lady medium as “Old bitch!”, “Fat dried-up whore!” and “Filthy female cow!” At one point, Cathy conjures up a witchlike avatar that says to the medium, “Medium? I’d say extra-rare piece of shit!”

 

Yikes! That little Cathy is hardcore!

 

Cathy carries around an evil doll that talks through the girl in a low, anguished devil-voice. But, that’s not the weirdest voice in the movie. The actress who plays Cathy’s mother speaks in a strange high-pitched whine, much like a demented version of Fran Drescher, which really has to be heard to be believed.

 

The 1977 version of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU explores the romantic possibilities behind this classic tale of a mad scientist who turns beasts into humans. Can a proper Englishman have a serious relationship with a woman who’s part panther? In DEMON SEED, a super-computer decides to have a baby with a human woman, who isn’t exactly thrilled about the idea.  

 

Earth was threatened by killer creepy-crawlies twice in 1977. In the crap classics, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS and KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, the title creatures endeavor to conquer humanity. Lord help us if they ever decide to combine their powers!

 

Man’s best friend turns into a Transylvanian bloodsucker in ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA. Apparently Dracula’s pet is also a vampire, and when his faithful hound ends up in suburbia, it’s clear that the neighborhood has gone to the dogs!

 

Outdoor horror pops up in THE HILLS HAVE EYES, an intense, savage tale of a desert family of sadistic freaks, and also in SNOWBEAST, a lame yawner about a white-haired sasquatch terrorizing a Colorado community during the skiing season.

 

I put the TMOT! in orbit around SUSPIRIA so I could study this movie for quite a while. This is the first of the three movies in the Three Mothers trilogy of Italian director Dario Argento. The other two are INFERNO (1980) and THE MOTHER OF TEARS (2007).

 

The Three Mothers movies were inspired by a literary work called “Suspiria De Profundis,” the sequel to “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” by English writer Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859).

 

In “Suspiria De Profundis” is a section entitled “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,” which states that just as there are three Graces, there are also three Sorrows: Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs; Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness; and Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears.

 

The villain in SUSPIRIA is Mater Suspiriorum, and here is what “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” says about her: “The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum — Our Lady of Sighs. … her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with wrecks of forgotten delirium.”

 

DeQuincey’s three Mothers are surreal goddesses of strange beauty and boundless power. Argento’s more down-to-earth interpretation of DeQuincey’s vision recasts the Mothers as diabolical super-witches.

 

Is SUSPIRIA a work of splendor or crap? It depends on who you ask. Because the movie contains multiple scenes of brutal, psychotic violence, some might dismiss it as crap. And because it is beautifully filmed and tells a complex and stylish tale of supernatural horror, some might consider it not only a work of luscious splendor, but also a cinematic classic.

 

The final stop in my 1977 tour was the apocalyptic crapfest, THE END OF THE WORLD, in which British horror icon Christopher Lee plays an alien disguised as a priest: Father Pergado, a.k.a. Zindar.

 

It seems that aliens have been watching Earth for quite a long time, and they’ve come to the decision that humanity is a disease that needs to be stamped out. A scientist and his wife fight the aliens for a good long time, but in the last few minutes, when it is clear the aliens are winning, the couple decides to jump ship and go live with the aliens. Talk about fair-weather friends!

 

As I set the TMOT! on a course for home, I reflected on what I’d learned this time around. 1977 was a footloose, rollicking year of great changes, high spirits, and great imaginative energy. Clearly the powers of splendor and crap were both in full swing.

 

After all, two of the greatest speculative-genre movies of all time — STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THIRD KIND — both came out in 1977. And many of the crappiest movies of all time — including EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC and CATHY’S CURSE — also came out. But even the crappy ones had their own unique brand of crappy splendor to them.

 

One cannot watch EXORCIST II: THE HERETIC without realizing one is watching something truly and majestically crappy. Such an opulent waste of money and resources! Veteran filmmakers and performers spent loads of time creating, fine-tuning and polishing this huge, glistening cinematic turd. It is the Mt. Everest of Awfulness — and paradoxically, all that combined crappiness makes it highly entertaining in its own kooky way.

 

The same can be said for many of 1977’s other movie crapfests. Just look at ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA. It wasn’t meant to be a comedy, but that’s what it turned out to be. Did its makers really think that anyone would find this goofball concept — Dracula’s vampire dog — even remotely frightening?

 

When the TMOT! and I returned home, I checked the machine’s fuel gauge. The tank was full! Apparently the trip to 1977 had filled it back up. So what was the tank full of?

 

Full of splendor? Full of crap? The year I’d just visited had overflowed with both. Splendor and crap are both fuel for the imagination — and apparently, for bat-winged Lemurian time-machines as well.

 

 

– End –

 

 

MARK McLAUGHLIN is part Greek, part Irish, part French, all terror. He is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of numerous story collections, including RAISING DEMONS FOR FUN AND PROFIT, MOTIVATIONAL SHRIEKER, PICKMAN’S MOTEL, and TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

 

To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com.

 

 

 

1959: THE YEAR OF THE LEECH

by Mark McLaughlin

 

 

The little bell above the door tinkled as merrily as a drunken pixie as I entered PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

 

“Good morning, Mark!” the Professor cried, grinding the butt of a cigarette into an ashtray made from the top half of a human skull.

 

“Professor, I didn’t know you smoked!” I had three reasons for being surprised to see him with a cigarette in hand.

 

Reason No. 1: He was incredibly old, and while smoking is unhealthy for anyone of any age, it must be especially bad for someone who’s been around for more than a century.

 

Reason No. 2: The shoppe was full of valuable antiques, all old and dry, so smoking presented a fire hazard.

 

Reason No. 3: I’d known the Professor for quite some time and had never seen him smoke before.

 

“You must be quite surprised to see me smoking,” the Professor said. “After all, I’m well over a hundred years old — it can’t be good for me! And, the shoppe is full of dry old things — a fire hazard if ever there was one! And of course, you’ve never seen me smoke before.”

 

Sometimes, it’s like he can read my mind.

 

“Right on all three counts,” I said. “So what’s up with the cigarette?”

 

“I only smoke one of these a year,” he said. “They come from my private collection of curios: cigarettes handcrafted by the occultist Aleister Crowley, made from leaves he’d picked from the Tree of Knowledge.”

 

“They must be all stale and moldy by now,” I said.

 

“Oh no, they shall remain fresh forever,” the Professor said. “They’re quite refreshing, but I only dare smoke one per year.”

 

I looked down at the charred stub in the ashtray. “What would happen if you smoked a second one right now?”

“Smoking one a year gives me the knowledge one needs to live an extremely long time,” the Professor said matter-of-factly. “Smoking two in one year would teach me why death is actually preferable to life.” The old man shrugged. “I’d rather not take that lesson.”

 

I decided to change the subject to something less depressing. “Professor, I’m really enjoying that ancient Lemurian time machine you sold me!”

 

“Oh, I’m so glad!” the Professor said. “I really am sorry it can only visit the dimension of old movies and television shows. It was broken when it came into the shoppe, and apparently the replacement parts I used from a film projector, a VCR and a couple old TV sets limited its capabilities.”

 

“No need to apologize — or to supply exposition,” I said. “You told me all that when I bought it.”

 

The Professor grinned. “Well, I know you’re a writer, so I said all that in case you put this conversation word-for-word in a story, or perhaps one of those Internet blogs I’ve been hearing about. So have you visited 1959?”

“Not yet!” I said. “Why? Do you think I should?”

 

“Certainly, yes! American was in an intriguing transitional stage in 1959,” he said, his eyes glittering with knowledge. But then, he’d just smoked that Crowley cigarette. “The traditional ways of the Fifties were soon to give way to the new permissiveness of the Sixties. Even in the counter-culture, beatniks were soon to be replaced by hippies.”

 

“And how is that transition reflected in the movies of 1959?” I asked.

 

“Excellent question! I could tell you the answer, but that would only spoil your fun.” The Professor absent-mindedly stroked a stuffed lizard on the counter. “I will tell you this: 1959 was the Year of the Leech! Now, let me show you some items that came into the shoppe earlier this week…”

 

Later that day, I did indeed visit 1959 — but before we get to that, let’s take a look at what happened in the world that year….

 

On January 3, Alaska was admitted as the forty-ninth American state.

 

On January 12, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Motown Records.

 

On February 3, musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper died when their chartered plane crashed near Clear Lake, Iowa.

 

On February 16, Fidel Castro became the Premier of Cuba.

 

On March 9, the Barbie doll made her debut.

 

On April 9, NASA announced the selection of seven military pilots to become the first American astronauts.

 

On May 28, two monkeys, Able and Miss Baker, were the first living creatures to return from space, via the Jupiter AM-18.

 

On June 9, the USS George Washington — the first submarine to carry ballistic missiles — was launched.

 

On, July 8, Dale R. Buis and Charles Ovnand were the first Americans killed in action in Vietnam.

 

On July 17, an Australopithecus skull was discovered by Louis and Mary Leakey in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.

 

On August 8, a flood in Taiwan killed 2,000.

 

On August 21, Hawaii was admitted as the fiftieth American state.

 

On September 14, Luna 2 crashed on the Moon — the first man-made object to do so.

 

On October 2, Rod Serling’s THE TWILIGHT ZONE premiered on CBS.

 

On November 18, MGM released BEN-HUR in Technicolor. It went on to win eleven Academy Awards, a world record until 1998, when TITANIC equaled the record.

 

On December 1, the Antarctic Treaty declared Antarctica to be a scientific preserve, free of military activity.

 

1959 was also the birth year of chanteuses Sade, Sheena Easton, Irene Cara and Marie Osmond; actors Kyle MacLachlan, Tom Arnold and Hugh Laurie; rapper Flavor Flav; gender-bending pop star Pete Burns; basketball player Magic Johnson; rock star Bryan Adams; comic musician “Weird Al” Yankovic; Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson; and murder victim Nicole Brown Simpson.

 

As I’ve mentioned in previous blog entries, the Time Machine of Terror!, or TMOT! resembles a giant, old-fashioned brass alarm clock with bat wings, and is invisible to anyone outside of the machine (it came with a tracking device in case I forget where I’ve parked it).

 

When I arrived in 1959, I decided to check out the Professor’s “Year of the Leech” reference by visiting THE LEECH WOMAN. This black-and-white potboiler concerns an amoral doctor who wants to learn how to make elderly women young and beautiful again. An incredibly old African woman offers him the information he’s looking for, provided he’ll help her to return to her tribe.

 

The sleazy doctor zips off to Africa with his aging, alcoholic wife in tow as a human guinea pig. He learns that older women can become young again if they drink a mixture of rare orchid pollen and male pineal-gland juice. Unfortunately for the doc, he soon becomes the pineal colada that restores his wife’s beauty.

 

Her newly restored loveliness, however, doesn’t last long, and so she has to kill and kill again to keep the glandular cocktails coming.

 

THE LEECH WOMAN didn’t feature any actual leeches, so I decided to hop over to ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES, which really does live up to its title. Man-sized leeches abscond with various citizens of a bayou town and hide them in a secret cave, so they have something to slurp on whenever they feel a little puckish … or suckish, as the case may be.

 

I continued to hop from movie to movie, hoping to discover the secret behind the Professor’s comment….

 

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE features a storyline similar to that of ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES. An enormous, horrific, tentacled, thoroughly Lovecraftian spider-creature seizes local yokels and plasters them to the walls of its cave with webbing, so it can suck out some of their blood every now and then.

 

THE KILLER SHREWS takes place on a remote island where a science experiment has gone haywire, creating enormous, ravenous shrews that need to eat several times their bodyweight in food every day just to stay alive.

 

THE BAT is named after a masked killer who slays anyone standing between him and a fortune hidden in a mysterious mansion. THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL also presents us with a greedy fortune-hunter hatching a dastardly plot in an evil edifice.

 

In HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, an insane author kills a series of innocent victims so he can write best-selling books about the mysterious murders.

 

In THE BLOODY BROOD, wicked beatniks also kill the innocent for kicks … in BLOODLUST, a mad millionaire hunts down humans for his twisted amusement … and in A BUCKET OF BLOOD, a deranged beatnik artist murders folks and turns them into valuable works of art. Dig that crazy cadaver, daddy-o!

 

How right the Professor was! 1959 was indeed the Year of the Leech. In movie after movie, predatory creatures and maniacs slaughtered victims for nourishment, profit or sport. The conservative world of the Fifties was trying to convey a message, and that message was “HELP!” Traditional values were being sucked dry by an advancing wave of vampiric hedonism.

 

Happily-ever-after just wasn’t part of the picture in 1959 horror movies. In THE ALLIGATOR PEOPLE, a lovely, starry-eyed young woman meets and marries a handsome, successful young man, only to discover that he is in fact … an alligator person. Goodness, what will the neighbors think? At least she found out before they had kids!

 

Even the wholesome concept of following in daddy’s footsteps was shot in the head in 1959. In RETURN OF THE FLY, a young scientist decides to pick up where his pappy left off — and becomes a ghastly insect-headed freak, just like the old man.

 

There was no one a person could turn to for solace or security in 1959. You couldn’t even trust the medical profession — just look at that despicable doctor in THE LEECH WOMAN. He wasn’t the only fiendish physician to grace the silver screen that year. You’d think a pathologist would want to keep people alive, but in THE TINGLER, the medic in question gleefully allows a helpless mute woman to die so that a centipede-like monstrosity can spring into being. Nice bedside manner, doc!

 

The movies of 1959 clearly depict the tail-end of an era in crisis. No more dads smoking pipes as they read the daily paper by the fireplace. No more moms in aprons baking apple pies. No more sons and daughters studying in libraries and sipping malts through bendy straws. Kiss those sweet images goodbye, because the Sixties soon ushered in an era of free love, long hair, and recreational drugs that conservative types found as frightening as any giant leech.

 

When I returned to the present day, I visited Professor LaGungo’s shoppe and told him of what I’d learned during my trip to 1959. He listened to what I had to tell him and then said, “Actually, my comment had nothing to do with any of that. By ‘leech’ I was referring to the 1959 movie, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, because everybody says it sucks … you know, like, um … a leech … my little joke….”

 

He paused, his cheeks pink with embarrassment. Finally he said, “Anyway! Let me show you some goodies that came into the shoppe about an hour ago…”

– End –

 

 

MARK McLAUGHLIN is part Greek, part Irish, part French, all terror. He is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of numerous story collections, including MOTIVATIONAL SHRIEKER, PICKMAN’S MOTEL, and TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

 

To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com.

Waaaaazzzzzuuuuuuppp!!! Welcome back to the Time Machine of Terror! (TMOT! for short).

A little exposition to set the stage for you: As I’ve mentioned in previous installments of this blog. I purchased the TMOT! at a groovy little emporium of second-hand horrors known as PROFESSOR LAGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

The TMOT! bears more than a passing resemblance to a giant, batwinged alarm clock. It can only visit the movies and TV shows of other time periods, for you see, it was broken when shopkeeper Professor Artemis LaGungo acquired it. The prof’s attempts to repair it with spare parts from VCRs, TVs and film projectors only partially fixed it.

Today we’re going to visit 1984, the year my favorite song was released — YOU SPIN ME ROUND (LIKE A RECORD) by Dead or Alive.

YOU SPIN ME ROUND came out in England on Nov. 4, 1984. It reached No. 1 in England in March 1985, and in the United States, peaked at No. 11 in September 1985.

English author George Orwell once wrote a bleak novel called NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, published in 1949, in which he predicted that the future would be ruled by a harsh, totalitarian regime. Well, ya know what? George was wrong. As wrong as 2 + 2 = 73.

You see, George hadn’t figured YOU SPIN ME ROUND into the equation. Really, how could the world ever become a repressive dystopia with that high-energy dance hit rockin’ the house with a strong song? All I can say to George is: You’re a fine writer, but leave the predictions to Nostradamus.

Let’s spin the hands of time round (like a record) back to 1984 and see what else was happening:

On January 24, the Apple Macintosh was introduced to the world.

On February 8, the 1984 Winter Olympics opened in Sarajevo, and closed on February 19.

On March 22, teachers in Manhattan Beach, California, were charged with ritualistic abuse of preschool students. The charges turned out to be unfounded and were dropped.

On April 4, U.S. President Ronald Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons.

On April 6, TERMS OF ENDEARMENT won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

On May 23, a methane gas explosion killed sixteen at the Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, England.

On June 8, a tornado ripped apart Barneveld, Wisconsin, injuring almost two-hundred people and killing nine.

On July 18, James Oliver Huberty went on a shooting spree at a McDonald’s restaurant in San Ysidro, California, killing twenty-one people before he was eventually shot and killed.

On July 23, Vanessa Williams resigned as Miss America after nude photos of her appeared in PENTHOUSE. Happily, her career recovered and she’s now known as the mean fashion queen on UGLY BETTY.

On August 30, the space shuttle Discovery blasted off on its maiden voyage. It came back on September 5.

On October 5, Marc Garneau, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, became the first Canadian in space. On October 11, also aboard the Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first American woman to perform a space walk.

On October 31, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh security guards. In the riots that followed in New Delhi, 2,700 Sikhs died.

On November 6, Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale in the presidential election with 59 percent of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon’s 61 percent victory in 1972.

On November 25, the group Band Aid, composed of thirty-six U.K. musicians, recorded “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” to raise funds for famine relief in Ethiopia.

On December 3, a chemical leak from a pesticide plant in India killed an initial 2,000-plus people and injured up to 22,000 more. In time, 6,000 of the injured victims died as a result of the incident.

During the year, the Transformers, cartoon-stars-turned-toys, made their debut and spread quickly across America. Here are some more outstanding 1984 debuts:

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook, was born May 14. America Ferrera, star of UGLY BETTY, was surely a super-cute baby when she was born April 18. Actress Scarlett Johansson arrived pink as a bunny’s nose on November 22.

Singer Ashlee Simpson was born October 3. Her older sister Jessica, born July 10, 1980, recorded a super-lame version of YOU SPIN ME ROUND before she turned her talents toward country music. See? It all comes back to that song.

What else was spinning in 1984? Well, it was a great year for big hair, with little fans in millions of hair-dryers spinning furiously as nightclub studs and hotties blow-dried their moussed-up coiffures. Now let’s take a look at some of year’s horror movies–

What the–? The TMOT! is spinning out of control! It wants to stop at 1989 instead of 1984. But why?

The TMOT!’s chronometer indicates that we’re being pulled into the wrong year because of some other Eighties’ influence with a ‘4′ in it … a ‘4′ which is exerting a very strong suction….

Of course! AMITYVILLE 4: THE EVIL ESCAPES was made in 1989, and it sucks with the inescapable power of an intergalactic black hole!

Patty Duke stars as a widow with three children who moves back in with her mother. Unfortunately, her mother has just received a huge clunky lamp as a surprise gift. The lamp had been obtained at a yard sale — and in what yard had that sale been held? The accursed front yard of the haunted Amityville house!

It turns out that the evil of the Amityville house had fled into that lamp during an exorcism, and now that very evil has been transferred, via the lamp, into the same house as Patty and the gang. And since the evil has lived in a lamp, it has gained the power to tinker with the mechanical world, and soon an electric tea-kettle, a chainsaw, a garbage disposal, and even the house’s plumbing are out of control.

In the end, the evil transfers into the family cat, Pepper — and now Pepper and AMITYVILLE 4 are trying to take control of the TMOT!

Fortunately, I have a few occult tricks up my sleeve. I shall tap into the ancient powers of the 1974 made-for-TV movie, THE CAT CREATURE, starring Gale Sondergaard and Meredith Baxter. Meredith plays a seemingly meek clerk at an occult goods store who turns out to be a reanimated mummy. Meredith looks a bit more Irish than Egyptian, so I guess reanimated mummies are masters and mistresses of disguise.

I shall now call upon Bast, the Egyptian cat deity worshipped by Meredith Baxter in THE CAT CREATURE. “Hey, mighty Bast, it is I — Mark McLaughlin, your favorite minion and a true Bast-ard. Please tell Pepper and AMITYVILLE 4 to stop screwing with the TMOT! Thanks, love ya! Call me, we’ll do lunch!”

Okay, now let’s take another look at the controls. Ah! Back on track! 1984, here we come! First stop: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

Like the original HALLOWEEN, FRIDAY THE 13TH, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE (all of which have since been remade), A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one of those movies where young people seem to get hacked up by boogeymen whenever they party, have sex, or basically do something naughty.

Of all those horrific coming-of-age tales, NIGHTMARE stands out from the pack because a.) It isn’t centered around a holiday, b.) Freddy’s victims include innocent children, and c.) It was the first of the bunch to have a clearly supernatural villain.

More clarification on c.): The pick-axe-swinging miner in MY BLOODY VALENTINE was a mere mortal. Michael from HALLOWEEN started out as just an extremely resilient psychopath: later, the sequels made him supernatural. The same with Jason, who wasn’t even the killer in the very first FRIDAY THE 13TH.

But NIGHTMARE’s Freddy–! He was psychotic before he died, and supernatural, powerful and exponentially MORE psychotic after his death.

Plus, he doesn’t just kill his victims, like the others. Freddy claims and imprisons their souls to give himself more power. Basically, he has made himself into a localized and self-contained version of Satan and Hell, rolled into one. That makes the coming-of-age aspect of NIGHTMARE even more tragic: the victims are on the verge of becoming adults, but they’re chopped down by Freddy before they ever get the chance. Their future is Freddy’s fuel.

PHENOMENA, also known as CREEPERS, is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl coping with all the changes that come with growing up. Aaaww, just like the girls on the old TV show, THE FACTS OF LIFE. But unlike those sitcom girls, she’s also coping with the following unusual concerns:

1.) Her rich actor-dad has sent her to a foreign boarding school.

2.) All her schoolmates have the hots for her dad, because he’s a handsome leading man.

3.) A crazed killer is brutally murdering area residents, including students at the school.

4.) She can telepathically communicate with and control insects — especially those of the winged variety.

The FACTS OF LIFE gang never had to fight vicious psychopaths or summon clouds of flying things with their minds!

The director of CREEPERS, Dario Argento, really likes to mix things up, and in this one, he succeeds in creating one of the most unpredictable movies you could ever hope to watch. He even throws in Donald Pleasance with a Scottish accent — and a chimp!

In CHILDREN OF THE CORN, based on a Stephen King story, the kids in a small, secluded rural town start their own cult, and in this religion, coming of age means it’s time to die. All adults are killed off, unless the kids have some practical use for them.

So what kind of religion requires children to slaughter their parents, you ask? Basically, these apple-cheeked young zealots pray to an amorphous demon called He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Kids! You never know what they’ll worship next!

The best coming-of-age horror movie of 1984 has to be THE COMPANY OF WOLVES, a stylish fantasy-horror film, directed by Neil Jordan and based on the werewolf stories in Angela Carter’s story collection, THE BLOODY CHAMBER.

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES concerns the old-world dreams of a contemporary young lady. No one in her family understands her, so she dreams up a Gothic fairy-tale realm where storybook adventures come alive — usually with a horrific, often erotic twist. Little Red Riding Hood finds herself mighty attracted to a mysterious, well-dressed but somewhat hairy nobleman — a wolf in chic clothing if ever there was one.

Like I said, 1984 was a great year for big hair, and you’ll find hair to spare in this strangely beautiful, beautifully strange movie. Long after you’ve watched it, you’ll remember its haunting images. For example, there’s one scene where a peasant lad in the woods suddenly encounters a Rolls Royce with a wicked but elegant passenger….

Hey, what’s that noise? Sounds like something’s scratching at the TMOT! Let me just take a look in the rear-view mirror–

Will ya look at that! It’s that darned Pepper, clawing at the door. Why, he’s been hanging onto the TMOT! since 1989. He must be sick of AMITYVILLE 4. Can’t say that I blame him!

Well, he’s been hanging on for so long, I’d hate to send him spinning round (like a record) into the time/space vortex. And now that I think of it, my cat would probably enjoy some companion while I’m at work. I guess I’ll keep him!

Until next time!

#  #  #

MARK McLAUGHLIN is mostly Greek but also part-Irish and part-French. But please, stop talking about his parts … you’re making him blush. He is the author of the story collection, TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM.

McLaughlin has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award many times and has won once. The award can be found in his closet next to a vanilla-scented air-freshener. To find out more about Mark’s work, visit www.myspace.com/monsterbook, www.skullvines.com, and/or enter McLaughlin into the search engine at www.horror-mall.com. Peace out!

1971: Year of the Horny Europeans in Castles
by Mark McLaughlin

Welcome back to the Time Machine of Terror! — or TMOT! for short.

First, the basics, for those of you who have not yet read the previous installment of this blog. I purchased the TMOT! at a quaint little shoppe of second-hand horrors known as PROFESSOR LAGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

The TMOT! resembles a giant, batwinged alarm clock. And while it can zip around with chronological ease, it can only visit the movies and TV shows of other time periods. It was already broken when the shoppe-keeper, Professor LaGungo, acquired it, and his attempts to repair it with parts from VCRs, TVs and film projectors only partially fixed it.

But then, he did the best he could. The TMOT! runs off of ancient Lemurian time-technology, and there aren’t any ancient Lemurians around to fix it.

Back in 1970, Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw starred in LOVE STORY, the tender tale of a young couple whose romance holds only one problem — the girl is terminally ill. Bummer! The slogan of that poignant melodrama was “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry.”

The next year, another movie came along with a poster that showed a beautiful woman smooching with a guy whose face resembled a dried-out skull partially covered with a scarred layer of leathery hide.

The movie was THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES and its slogan was “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Ugly.” Let’s set the TMOT! for 1971 and find out a bit more about Dr. Phibes, and also see what else what going on that year.

Here are some notable dates from 1971:

On January 2, cigarette advertisements were banned from radio and television in the United States.

On January 12, the classic sitcom ALL IN THE FAMILY premiered on CBS.

On January 25, Charles Manson and three of his cult members were found guilty of the Tate-LaBianca murders of 1969.

On February 5, Apollo 14 landed on the Moon and returned to Earth on February 9.

On February 20, 74 people died when multiple tornadoes swarmed across Mississippi.

On May 12, an earthquake tore apart the city of Burdur in Turkey. On May 22, Bingöl, Turkey was also hit by an earthquake, killing more than 1,000.

On June 18, Southwest Airlines began flights between the Texas cities of San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston.

On June 30, the Soyuz 11 spacecraft sprang a leak and lost its air supply, killing the crew.

On July 3, rock star Jim Morrison was found dead in a Parisian bathtub.

On July 31, Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin took the first lunar rover ride on the Moon. On August 7, Apollo 15 came home.

On September 4, a Boeing 727 crashed into an Alaskan mountain, killing 111 passengers.

On September 8, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened in Washington, DC. On October 1, Walt Disney World opened in Florida. But not all the world’s entertainment centers enjoyed good fortune: on October 28, Cairo’s Egyptian Opera House burned down.

On November 13, Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to enter Mars’ orbit with success.

On November 24, the mysterious D. B. Cooper parachuted from a plane he’d hijacked, along with $200,000 in ransom money. He was never seen again.

On December 18, the world’s largest hydroelectric plant revved into action in Krasnoyarsk, Russia.

The top film of the year was FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. The latest James Bond adventure was DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, and the year’s top Disney film was BEDKNOBS AND BROOMSTICKS.

Before we peek in on Dr. Phibes, let’s visit a few other 1971 locales, shall we?

1971 was apparently a good year for imposters, if the movie THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE is any indication. It’s an Italian production with mostly Italian actors, but they’re all pretending they’re English. The dubbed-in voices won’t fool you – they’re all Italians speaking English and striving to sound like upper-class Brits. Couldn’t they have hired David Niven or even Mollie Sugden for a weekend to do some voicework?

This suspenseful horror-mystery concerns a wealthy, mentally ill young gent, Lord Cunningham, who is madly obsessed with his dead, red-haired wife, Evelyn. He cruises nightclubs looking for beautiful redheads so he can take them back to the castle for some psychotic love-games. These games soon turn lethal — or do they? Is he actually murdering any of these women?

He eventually meets and falls in love with a blonde, and soon proposes to her. She thinks she’s pretty lucky to have caught a handsome millionaire. But her luck takes a turn for the worse when she decides to try on a red wig for kicks.

THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE has loads of plot twists and turns, and also features the lovely Erika Blanc, a seductive redhead whose every expression and movement pulsates with smoldering sexuality. Today’s cinema would have you believe that Angelina Jolie and Anne Hathaway are hot stuff, but they’re just skinny, flickering birthday candles compared to the erotic lava-flow known as Erika Blanc.

Erika Blanc plays an erotic dancer who Lord Cunningham menaces for a while, but we eventually learn that this particular redhead is a formidable opponent and basically, the wrong lady to mess with.

Erika Blanc was pretty busy in 1971. In THE DEVIL’S NIGHTMARE, or LA TERRIFICANTE NOTTE DEL DEMONIO, she stars as a mysterious woman who is not only the daughter of a rich Nazi, but also a lascivious sex-demon, or succubus (wouldn’t you like to hear Daffy Duck trying to pronounce “lascivious Nazi succubus’?).

One night, a busload of tourists is stranded at her family’s ancestral castle, and she decides to send them all straight to Hades, with the help of a skinny little weirdo who is apparently the Devil. It’s odd to think of the Devil as skinny and little, but then, he was a snake in Eden, and that’s pretty darned skinny and little.

So, one by one, the tourists are killed off, all dying in the act of committing a mortal sin. That sort of thing guarantees each of them a one-way ticket to Hell. But then, as tourists, they should be willing to visit exciting new ports of call.

The henna-haired horror-honey is not unopposed in her efforts. One of the tourists is a handsome young seminarian, and it’s quite amusing, watching our diabolical darling try to bump and grind her way into his affections.

Does our titillating Teutonic terror-tart triumph? Does our sizzling succubus succeed when confronted with Holy Roman chastity? It would be a mortal sin to give away the ending.

I do want to mention this, as a side note: The last frame of the movie is an art-card of the words ‘The End’ in Italian: FINE. So if you don’t like the ending, that’s FINE by me!

More sultry Seventies devil-women spice up the silver screen in another sexy Euro-potboiler, THE WEREWOLF VS. VAMPIRE WOMEN. Paul Naschy stars as a rich, horny werewolf with a crazy sister and his very own castle. Apparently, the economy and people’s libidos were both great in Europe in 1971, because as you can see from the movies so far, everyone back then was sex-crazed and had their own castle.

Two pretty lady travelers happen upon the castle of the werewolf, and they soon become his guests. One becomes the werewolf’s lover and the other is turned into a vampire when she is bitten by Countess Wandesa Dárvula de Nadasdy, the local version of Countess Bathory.

At one point, the werewolf (in human form during the day) has to bury his sister, who is a victim of the vampire. To make sure his sister doesn’t become a vampire (as vampire-victims so often do), he drives a stake through her heart and cuts off her head. I can just see him at the bar later that night: “What a day! I had to dig my sister’s grave, drive a stake through her heart AND cut off her head. I’m always doing things for other people — I never get any ‘me’ time!”

The finale is a battle royale between the werewolf and the corpuscle-craving countess. This scene is worth sitting through all the movie’s more boring stretches (mainly, scenes of people explaining the matters-at-hand to each other, thus providing the audience with exposition). And after all, when was the last time you saw a really good fight between a werewolf and a vampire in a mantilla? For that matter, when was the last time you saw anyone in a mantilla, let alone a vampire?

The title character of LADY FRANKENSTEIN is also horny and lives in a castle, and she even goes so far as to create a composite lover out of a mentally challenged hunk and an aging scientist who helps her with her experiments. You have to admire her resourcefulness in working with the resources at hand, with minimal waste. Now that’s one environment-conscious insane lady scientist.

This movie stars veteran actor Joseph Cotten as Dr. Frankenstein, and his matter-of-fact action-hero voice sounds odd, coming out of a German doctor’s voice in a dubbed Italian horror epic. They didn’t dub his voice, but should have.

In LEGACY OF BLOOD, an elderly millionaire, played with relish by John Carradine, passes away and leaves his fortune to his adult children — with one stipulation (but then, the last will and testament in any horror movie always has a catch to it). The heirs have to spend a week in his mansion to collection the fortune, and pretty soon a mysterious murderer begins picking them off, one by one. Of course, they have sex with their various partners to pass the time — in an American mansion instead of a European castle, but still, it’s a pricey piece of real estate.

In the horror classic DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS, we have another vampire Countess Bathory — and unlike the one in the werewolf movie, this one doesn’t wear a mantilla. This one wears a red sequined evening gown and furs and red, red lipstick. This one also has wavy blonde hair, a coy smile and no fangs. She is accompanied by a younger lesbian lover/companion, who is profoundly tired of the jet-set vampire lifestyle her more experienced lover has enjoyed for centuries.

The Countess and her companion check into a huge, grand hotel which is practically empty since it is located in a remote location (in Europe, of course) and it is the off-season. Soon the Countess starts eyeballing a young married couple, the only other guests staying there.

The vampire and her vixen play cat-and-mouse with the couple through most of the movie, and we soon learn that the husband is not only a sex-fiend, but also a psychological train-wreck. Can this marriage be saved? Don’t bet on it. Kinky lovemaking in a lavish setting strikes again — and soon, everything changes for the Countess, her companion, and the newlyweds.

And now, let’s look in on THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES. There’s no sex in this one, but the good doctor, played by Vincent Price, is totally in love with his wife — and he does live in a beautiful mansion in England. Unfortunately, Mrs. Phibes dies during a surgical operation, and Dr. Phibes gets his face burned off when his limo crashes as he hurries to get to the hospital to be with her. He gets better and learns to how to rebuild his facial features with putty, make-up and wigs, and as you can well imagine, it’s a major understatement to say that he’s pissed off at the doctors and nurse whose efforts failed to keep his wife alive.

Dr. Phibes begins killing off the medical team one by one, using the ten curses of the Old Testament as his weapons. Bats, boils, hail, rats, locusts … the body count climbs as the curses tally up.

Because of the injuries he received in the car crash, Dr. Phibes now speaks through a tube in his neck, which means that Vincent Price plays the part without opening his mouth once. Surely this was a cinematic first for Vinny, who was always eager to chew up the scenery. The doctor has an assistant — Virginia North as the beautiful, mute Vulnavia — and her graceful presence adds elegance and sultry allure to the proceedings.

THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES is stylish, suspenseful, and fiendishly clever. Every detail is perfect. The English detectives are entertaining in their befuddlement, and the jazzy soundtrack is quite enjoyable. It’s even fun watching the clockwork musicians as they perform with mechanical precision in Dr. Phibes’ grand ballroom.

Speaking of clockwork, the TMOT! is sounding a little creaky, so I’d better steer it back to the present day and oil it up. It really was amazing to see how many rich folks were knocking boots in their European castles back in 1971. The economy has sure gone downhill since then! People aren’t buying castles any more — but hey, at least love is free (and if you’re paying for it, I don’t want to know).

Until next time!

– End –

MARK McLAUGHLIN is the author of the story collection, TWISTED TALES FOR SICK PUPPIES, and co-author (with Michael McCarty) of the novel, MONSTER BEHIND THE WHEEL, the poetry collection, ATTACK OF THE TWO-HEADED POETRY MONSTER, and the Darkside Digital e-book, PROFESSOR LaGUNGO’S DELIRIOUS DOWNLOAD OF DIGITAL DEVILTRY AND DOOM. To find out more, visit http://www.myspace.com/monsterbook, http://www.skullvines.com, and http://www.horror-mall.com.

TIME MACHINE OF TERROR!
by Mark McLaughlin

A Visit to 1963

Welcome to the Time Machine of Terror! — or, TMOT! for short. I purchased the TMOT! from an elderly shopkeeper named Professor Artemis LaGungo, proprietor of a quaint little shoppe of second-hand horrors known as PROFESSOR LAGUNGO’S EXOTIC ARTIFACTS & ASSORTED MYSTIC COLLECTIBLES.

The TMOT! is powered by spinning mystic gears from an ancient Lemurian time-temple — evil, twisted gears lubricated with the blood of the damned, the tears of the innocent, and peppermint oil. The peppermint oil makes it smell nice. I have to travel in it, ya know.

The TMOT! resembles a giant, old-fashioned brass alarm clock with bat wings. Fortunately, it’s invisible to anyone outside of the machine, so it doesn’t scare anybody. It came with a tracking device (which looks like an ordinary wristwatch), in case I forget where I’ve parked it.

People often ask, “Mark, will traveling in the TMOT! doom your soul forever?” — to which I reply, “I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”

The TMOT! does have one problem. It was broken when Professor LaGungo acquired it, and since he didn’t have access to an ancient Lemurian hardware store, he had to improvise on some of the replacement parts. He used various parts from a film projector, a VCR, and a couple old TV sets, and as result, the TMOT! can no longer visit actual locales from the past.

It can only visit old movies and TV shows. But hey, fiction is usually more interesting than reality anyway, so it’s still a sweet ride.

I’ve always enjoyed James Bond movies, so before you arrived, I set the TMOT! for 1963 — the year that the first James Bond movie, DR. NO, appeared on movie screens across America (on May 8, to be exact).

Before we go time-traveling, let’s see what else happened in 1963:

On February 21, 900 died when an earthquake destroyed the village of Barce in Libya.

On March 16, 11,000 were killed when Bali’s Mt. Agung erupted.

On March 22, The Beatles released PLEASE PLEASE ME, their first album.

On June 16, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova blasted off in the Vostok 6 and became the first woman in space.

On July 1, ZIP Codes were introduced in America.

On July 26, 1,800 died during an earthquake in Skopje, Yugoslavia.

On August 28, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech to an audience of about a quarter of a million people.

In September, the first X-Men comic book was released by Marvel Comics.

On October 4, Hurricane Flora killed almost 7,000 people.

On November 6, General Duong Van Minh took over South Vietnam.

On November 14, a volcanic eruption created the island of Surtsey.

On November 22, U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as his successor.

On November 23, England enjoyed the first episode of the BBC TV series, DOCTOR WHO.

On December 25, Walt Disney released THE SWORD IN THE STONE, his eighteenth feature-length animated movie.

Pretty crazy year! Okay, TMOT! — make with the time travel!

Geez, those gears make a lot of noise! Since they’re lubricated with the blood of the damned and the tears of the innocent, their mad grinding sounds a lot like damned folks screaming and innocent folks crying. The peppermint oil doesn’t make a sound. Smells nice, though!

And here we are: 1963, right in the middle of DR. NO. Bond, James Bond, is in the Caribbean, trying to stop a mad scientist from sabotaging America’s space program. Ursula Andress co-stars as Honey Ryder, the original (and in the hearts and minds of many fans, the loveliest) Bond girl.

This was the movie that set the stage for a movie franchise that has never died, and in fact, is more popular than ever. Bond is handsome, debonair, and witty; his ladies are sexy and intelligent; his colleagues are stuffy and always shocked by his naughtiness; and the villains–!

The villains are always evil, ruthless, cruelly handsome masterminds. Ian Fleming, author of the original Bond books on which the movies are based, modeled Dr. No after Sax Rohmer’s Asian super-badguy Fu Manchu. Dr. No has artificial hands — the originals were lost in a lab accident. The Doc built his NASA-style tropical-island lab with ten-million he’d stolen from the Tong. Back then, you could really do a lot with ten-million dollars. These days, that paltry sum wouldn’t even pay for a single measly secret missile.

I do find it pretty funny that in the big finale, a flashing sign goes off in Dr. No’s secret lab that reads, ABANDON AREA. Boy, talk about planning ahead! Apparently, Dr. No said to himself, “You know, on the off-chance that Bond defeats me someday and causes all my plans to screw up, I’d better put in an ABANDON AREA sign so my stupid henchmen will know what to do.”

So as Dr. No sinks slowly into a pool of boiling radioactive water (what secret lair is complete without one?), we bid a fond adieu to the Caribbean and steer the TMOT! toward….

Nathaniel Hawthorne!

Our next stop takes us right into an eerie cinematic costume epic. TWICE-TOLD TALES is an Old World horror anthology-movie featuring three stories by old Nate himself. His specialty was weird domestic melodramas (but then, all domestic melodramas are weird — just watch any episode of any daytime soap opera).

Each story stars Vincent Price as a different character, and he also narrates this supernatural shindig. Sebastian Cabot (Mr. French from the old FAMILY AFFAIR sitcom) is Vinnie’s co-star in the first story, which concerns two old coots who discover, springing from a nearby tomb, mineral water with the miraculous power to turn them into young coots.

They use this earthborn energy drink to revivify the lovely dead lady sealed up in the tomb, but then jealousy reveals its ugly head, with gruesome results.

In the second tale, Vinnie is an overprotective father who turns his lovely daughter into a poisonous (but still lovely) creature whose touch is deadly — just to keep her from doing the horizontal mambo. Geez, Papa, lighten up already!

The third segment is a haunted house tale so crammed full of nasty family secrets that it makes the JERRY SPRINGER SHOW look like a quaint Victorian tea party. Clearly the producers of this movie sensed that the Sixties were going to get pretty raunchy, and so they tried to tell the world, “Behold the wages of sin: pain, death, and rampant over-acting! Repent! Repent!”

But did the world listen? No. Decadence ensued, paving the way for an even greater horror: Disco.

Now let’s steer the TMORT! over to Europe and see what’s happening there. Ah, we’re just in time to celebrate BLACK SABBATH.

1963 was an excellent year for anthology horror movies. Just as Vincent Price hosted TWICE-TOLD TALES, so Boris Karloff hosts this Euro-horror trilogy directed by Italian terror-maestro Mario Bava. Unlike camera-hog Vinnie, modest old Boris only stars in one segment.

Telephone calls from nutty stalkers have been a staple of cheesy horror movies for years, and the first segment of BLACK SABBATH may have started the trend. A beautiful woman keeps getting calls from a mysterious, murderous presence. Why is it that young ladies victimized by krazy-killer-kallers never just LEAVE THE HOUSE AND DRIVE TO THE POLICE STATION? No, they stick around, waiting for the next loony call.

They usually don’t even call the police — although when they do, the police are apt to tell them, “The calls are coming from inside the house!”

A nurse with sticky fingers gets what’s coming to her in another segment. She steals a ring from a dead medium — and as all horror fans know, you never steal anything from a dead witch, warlock, vampire, or other supernatural sort — not even a pixie. If you do, you can pretty much count on the icy talons of death creeping forth to reclaim the loot. This segment is especially atmospheric and creepy, with a sharp twist ending.

The segment featuring Boris proves that the family that slays together, stays together. One by one, the members of a rural peasant-type family succumb to the seductive horrors of vampirism. Perhaps Mario Bava was trying to remind us of the wholesome family values of an earlier time. Ah, those were the days. The tyke from LEAVE IT TO BEAVER never chopped up anyone with a cleaver. OUR MISS BROOKS never tortured anyone with hooks. MR. ED never trampled anyone dead.

Bye-bye, Boris — now the TMOT! is taking us to the imaginary country of Mandoras, where THE MADMEN OF MANDORAS keep Adolf Hitler’s head alive and insanely happy inside a cheap special effect. The severed Nazi noggin is leading the titular loonies into a hare-brained scheme to take over the world. A few years later, some tepid new scenes with boring (and disposable) new characters would be added, creating the TV movie, THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN.

It would seem that folks in the early Sixties were worried that the dead dictator was still up to his old genocidal tricks. Apparently Hitler was planning to remove color from the world, because the movie is in black and white — which neatly matches the hues of Adolf’s pale skin and uber-sable hair.

After countless boring chase scenes and loads of tedious exposition, the fearsome Fuhrer’s brain-box is trapped in a burning car — and, in what is surely the movie’s most expensive bit of footage, it begins to … melt. I guess decapitated despots are made of bee’s wax. Who knew?

Now let’s find a foreign locale with a bit more color — namely, the lush, full-color South Pacific island of MATANGO: ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE.

MATANGO features a yachtful of jaded Asian young folks, looking for kicks on the high seas. Unfortunately, they share the fate of the GILLIGAN’S ISLAND gang and end up stranded on an unknown island, wondering what the heck they’re going to eat.

Before you can say portobello casserole, they find a big batch of tasty mushrooms. They’re pretty proud of their discovery — in fact, they all get a swelled head over it. A swelled mushroom head, that is. One by one, they all start turning into mushroom people — but then, I’m guessing you already figured that out, since the title of the movie makes a clear reference to mushroom people.

Clearly, the folks at Campbell’s missed out on a brilliant movie tie-in promotion by not releasing a new line of Cream of Matango Soup. Oh, if only the TMOT! could travel in time through the real world — I could go back to the Campbell’s boardroom, make my pitch to the corporate honchos and watch the money come pouring in! But, then I’d be changing the path of the space/time continuum, and when I returned to the present day, three-eyed koalas with tentacles would probably be ruling the Earth. I hate when that happens!

MATANGO boasts excellent special effects and a lot of super-creepy moments. Who’d have guessed that oversized, ambulatory produce could be so scary? I’m guessing this movie might have inspired ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES. (Note to self: Start work on the script for ATTACK OF THE ZUCCHINI CREATURES — if Hollywood doesn’t buy it, add sex scenes and sell it to the porn industry.)

My cat’s probably getting hungry back at the house, and I could sure use a cup of coffee, so I’ll set the TMOT!’s coordinates for home. We’ve covered a lot of ground today, haven’t we? Well, you know what they say. Time flies when you’re traveling in a giant bat-winged alarm clock!

– End –