Hello!

An absolutely essential link has come in from correspondent Edward Bolman: a YouTube encoding of a 1962 45rpm single by the actor who played the ‘Thing in the Closet’ in the all-time psychotronic horror classic The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. Yes, we know you’ve been checking the CineSavant Column twice a day for weeks, hoping this would show up.

Rest assured we’ll never let you down. It’s Eddie Carmel sings The Happy Giant. We’re taking volunteers to transcribe the lyrics. Imagining Eddie singing in full makeup is not recommended. Actually, in the photos Eddie looks like a nice guy.

And while I’m here, a few years ago the CineSavant Column collected dozens of arcane, odd movie tie-in songs that could be heard through online links — from obvious stuff like the song for The Blob, to, what else, The Web from The Brain that Wouldn’t Die. The longest list of song links is here at the CineSavant Column for February 16, 2019. Hopefully some of the links are still active.

Getting even more weird, correspondent & researcher Gary Teetzel has uncovered a secret media file that uncovers the dreaded secret of a 1950s breakfast cereal — Sugar Jets!   Gary explains:

We begin with a link to a short item in a 1957 issue of Broadcasting Telecasting magazine that mentions a new series of commercials for SUGAR JETS cereal that will air during The Mickey Mouse Club show. They claim to present “authentic facts” about space travel. Willy Ley is a technical advisor, and none other than Chesley Bonestell is listed as ‘artist’ for the series of ads.

A little research turned up some samples of the ads themselves. Ignore the claim that a couple of them are from 1965 — they are clearly from the ’50s. You’ll immediately notice the Conquest of Space– style space station — which the narration assures us is based upon ‘United States Air Force information.’  I suspect that eating the plastic model kit of the space station would provide about the same amount of nutrition as eating a bowl of Sugar Jets.

Sugar Jets’ prediction of what futuristic phones would look like is positively uncanny. Looks just like the one I have in my pocket right now. →

SUGAR JETS Your Breakfast for Tomorrow Spot 1

SUGAR JETS Your Breakfast for Tomorrow Spot 2 (low quality)

While searching I also came across this third ad for SUGAR JETS that revolves around a pair of animated characters watching a woman (torso only) shopping in the supermarket. The cartoon boy starts out by saying “Ladies and Gentlemen!” but the girl character corrects him, saying it should be “Ladies and mothers.” Obviously, the idea that a man might handle some of the grocery shopping is considered to be more outlandishly fantastical than space stations or rockets to Mars.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson