Hello!

It’s a Flying Saucer Scare, from 1957.

Circulated by both David J. Schow and Joe Dante are these vintage newspaper photos that tell a story every Sci-fi fan will appreciate. They say these surfaced years ago, so they must have slipped unseen past these eyes.

According to the message I received, the The L.A. Times ran these photos in January 1957, taken ‘in the mud and dark of night in an area off Lakeridge Road.’  Hearing some talk about a flying saucer landing in the neighborhood, none other than Gloria Swanson and some friends (one of them in a very posh-looking coat) trundled through the mud and took these photos. We like seeing that the practical Ms. Swanson was smart enough to wear her mud shoes; she took off her dark glasses for the photo. As it looks like a dark and rainy day, were the glasses an attempt to maintain anonymity?

‘Just off Lakeridge Road’ places the saucer not in Bronson Caverns, but in Cahuenga pass up behind Lake Hollywood and the Ford Theater, in some clearing between Mulholland Drive and the Hollywood Sign. Monster movie fans will recognize the saucer right away, as being from Tom Graeff’s tiny, over-achieving production  Teenagers from Outer Space.

I think even Roger Corman would make sure to clean up after himself, as this is a rather large piece of junk to leave behind for somebody else cut up and haul away. The Teenagers movie is a hard-luck Hollywood tale … apparently filmed in late 1956, it didn’t surface until 1959. It’s not likely that Tom Graeff saw any profit participation in its national release from Warner Brothers.

(Both images enlarge.)  I saw Teenagers from Outer Space new in 1959 at age seven. I thought it was terrific, and really felt sorry for the teenage spaceman. But even I wasn’t fooled by those big lobster shadows.

And some scheduling news gives us the opportunity to say something nice about Turner Classic Movies. The blurb is short and sweet — the cable station is presently devoting a ton of air time to  Hollywood Pre-Code Movies,  dozens of them. It’s happening now and continues through March.

They’re listing at least ten we haven’t seen, so the DVR will get a workout. TCM has grown more corporate, but it still provides a basic access to classic films, and they still make it their business to air rare and unusual items.

TCM has its own list, but the one at this pre-code.com link is convenient. It comes in an article that also plugs a new TCM book by Kim Luperi and Danny Reid.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Just to show you how organized we are here at CineSavant, until a few minutes ago, today’s Column bore the proud date ‘February 29, 2025.’

The tireless Joe Dante has circulated an article from the page ‘boundingintocomics.com,’ by J.B. Augustine.  It discusses a CineSavant-compatible subject — Godzilla — and also gives us another opportunity to praise the late Michael Schlesinger, a much-missed producer, director, studio exec. and super-fan of all things cinematic.

Among Michael’s wildest assignments at Columbia was the writing and production of an American release version of Toho’s Godzilla 2000. It was liked so much by Toho that for quite a while, a followup project was in Columbia’s production hopper …. another American-made Godzilla movie.

The article describes the proposed show as a mix of comedy — the human side of the story — and fairly serious Kaiju monster-stomp action. How cool it is to be able to read all these details about a movie that was to be called Godzilla Reborn.

And the alert Gary Teetzel tells us of another desired title in the works, now with a confirmed release date …

Coming May 13th is a remastered Blu-ray of 1965’s  Crack in the World.  We’ve viewed Olive Films 2010 Blu-ray many times, and see a lot of room for improvement … dirt here and there, film damage, and splices that jump in the gate. Kino’s disc is said to be a new 4K scan, so hopefully it will be brighter and spiffier presentation all around.

The new disc will have a Gary Gerani commentary, plus a two-part video discussion with Stephen R. Bissette and Tim Lucas.

Our existing, old DVD Savant review is  here.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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With no pressing column items today (read: random, irrelevant), we’re distracting ourselves from the demolition of the nation we love with the frivolous pursuit of arcane Science fiction titles… our weakness.

We may still be able to review Film Masters’ Monster from the Ocean Floor.  It’s an attractive disc, and said to be scanned from the original negative, something we didn’t expect. It’s Roger Corman’s first solo outing as producer, and I’ve always thought it a winner, even produced at its tiny scale.

We’re also tempted by a foreign Region B import, a U.K. Eureka disc set titled Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA. Two of the pictures were scanned from 70mm. The box looks very desirable — especially the extra videos and text extras.

The only issue is one many collectors face — a much- desired title shares a box with other pictures that aren’t so essential. Perhaps the extras will make the difference. The poster above with the words  “Milcząca gwiazda” is the Polish title for  The Silent Star, aka  Der schweigende Stern or  First Spaceship on Venus.

A lack of compelling news items encourages more disc news. A massive box arrived yesterday, with review discs scattered all over the calendar. All but one are from Vinegar Syndrome. For horror fanatics, it’s quite a haul.

The packaging on these special editions is really handsome. They’ve gone in for heavy boxes to hold the keep cases, vertical sleeves and boxes that open from the front.

I can’t go into full descriptions but there are several here that will get full reviews. I’l compensate with sales links, that ought to please the marketers — fans of these pictures might not know they’re available.

Congo 4K,  Street Trash,  Women on the Run,  Blood Tracks,  Crack House,  Virtuosity 4K,  Deranged 4K,  The Seventh Curse & Witch From Nepal,  Sliver 4K,  Curse of the Devil, The Vampires Night Orgy & Demon Witch Child,  Black Eyed Susan,  The Keep 4K,  The Terrornauts,  Looking for Mr. Goodbar 4K,  Neither the Sea Nor the Sand,  White Cannibal Queen,  The Possession of Joel Delaney 4K,  The Carpenter,  The Mansion of Madness (La mansion de la locura).

Also arrived was a 4K of  Don’t Torture a Duckling from Arrow Video …. a major upgrade.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

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I think this first item is a Michael McQuarrie link …

It’s one show of a PBS series (?) called Locationland, hosted by author Harry Medved — who I remember spending an afternoon editing with about 40 years ago, putting together ‘Golden Turkey’ clips he had gleaned from VHS recordings.

This show tracks down movie locations, and the subject of this episode is none other than the Ed Wood movie  Plan 9 from Outer Space. Harry is aided by comedian Dana Gould. They run all over the San Fernando Valley, finding various houses, a cemetery, etc. The sound stage where all the interiors were filmed is not very big at all, more like a rehearsal stage.

Harry looks great, and is a good host — the editing of clips and graphics is pretty cute, too.

And correspondent-advisor Malcolm Alcala sent along this more-or-less unidentified short subject. The people who posted it on YouTube say it’s untitled but invent a title anyway. The six-minute piece will gain attention because it is Stop-Motion Animated, and features dinosaurs.

Elaborate puppets represent humans, a couple of strange monsters and several dinosaurs. It does resemble an attempt at a pilot for a kid’s show like Art Clokey’s Gumby. The story begins with a prehistoric egg that hatches. A little girl forms a relationship with a baby Tyrannosaurus; then, a machine called a ‘Radartron’ becomes a time portal for an accidental trip back to dinosaur days.

A number of concepts are shoehorned into the six minutes. The voices and characterizations aren’t the best — everybody looks perpetually anguished — and the surviving soundtrack has innocuous music that doesn’t add much. We wonder if potential investors found the toothy monsters too threatening for kiddie programming — the adult Tyrannosaur has a face like a demon from a Tim Burton animation. Plus the ‘endearing’ finale is almost macabre. A child not yet clued into the concept of death might get quite a jolt from what’s left of the little girl’s ‘adorable’ pet dinosaur named Tina.

The surviving print has only one color register left — red !  We have an attic full of old 16mm prints in the same condition.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Since we never post anything with the slightest political bias, today we’ve got a great educational short from 1946, with an important message. We first reviewed it on a worthy old Fantoma DVD called  The Educational Archive: Patriotism, where it led off a selection of classroom films about good citizenship, etc..

We think the disc is OOP, but its short subject Despotism is presently up on Youtube. It is inspiring.

The 10-minute Encyclopedia Britannica short is basically a lecture presentation with an animated slide show / PowerPoint describing a gradient between Democracy and Despotism. Back in 2003 I wrote:

“… an interesting part-animated examination of the difference between a free society and a despotic one, using a number of relative values to indicate how free a country is. Its main positive idea is that no country can call itself completely free, and even despotic countries may have some freedoms working. This is refreshing because the terminology used cuts out the -ism labels and gets down to hard facts. Curiously, the objective standards raised here put today’s America in the ‘at risk’ category: our information system is quickly being consolidated into one source of control, and an emergency has allowed our executive to override constitutional guarantees of illegal search & seizure, and imprisonment without trial or counsel.”

That was 2003; I guess I was referencing post- 9/11 developments. We like that the show is so dry and simple. We still find the arguments compelling … just the facts, immediately understandable, and no emotional baggage.

Last Saturday we reviewed a disc called  Fade-In. Friend and advisor Randall William Cook responded to my obvious crush on actress Barbara Loden by sending over a YouTube link to an excerpt from an old Ernie Kovacs Television Show.

Being so well informed, we were completely unaware that one of Barbara Loden’s first major gigs (outside of being a member of the Actors Studio) was as Ernie Kovacs’ regular TV assistant, sidekick and skit-player. There appear to be scores of Kovacs TV shows and specials. From personal experience I only knew (barely) his later on-screen collaboration with the great Edie Adams, his wife.

There aren’t that many opportunities to see Ms. Loden perform. Just to give us a few more minutes with her, Randy sent along this ten-minute clip of Kovacs doing a funny (and sloppy) ‘bad magician’ skit, with Barbara as his assistant and foil:

Another forward from Randy: If you enlarge the inset graphic to the right, it’s an article showing one of Kovacs’ creative comedy gags … Barbara Loden ‘starred’ as Kovacs’ very own miniature dream girl … almost a ‘Femlin?’

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson