Hello!

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