Frogs!

Well, I've done Killer Bees, Killer Snakes and Killer Dogs, so why not Frogs?
Frogs (1972) is a fun eco-horror piece from American International Pictures, and when you see the AIP logo, it's like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval of b-movies. 
A family has gathered to celebrate their patriarch's birthday at a plantation house near a Florida swamp.   Snakes, lizards, frogs, birds and insects beseige the family, taking them out one at a time.
But to me, it's like the weirdest version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ever.
Ray Milland plays Jason Crockett, Big Daddy-esque patriarch.  His grandson Clint and Clint's wife Jenny are rather like Brick and Maggie, high school sports hero and cheerleader wife, both feeling the years beginning to add up.  Clint spends his afternoons drinking and his dialogue with an outsider to the occasion, Pickett Smith, a photographer whose boat Clint had overturned, while the two are drying off from having fallen in the lake could be seen as (as the kids say) slashy.  It helps that Pickett Smith is played by a young and shirtless Sam Elliott.
Milland is appropriately domineering and browbeating of his family, as good as Burl Ives or Rip Torn were as Big Daddy.

(After I'd written this, I did a google search- it seems I'm not the only one to see the similarity.)

Ozmopolitan

Tonight's watching was To Tell The Truth from 1971 and one of the mystery guests was an Oz collector.  This was when niche hobbies were looked upon and amusing and eccentric.  Of course, he could justify it because he owned bookshop specializing in  antique children's books.
One of the fakes actually had me fooled because Kitty Carlisle asked about the Oz theme park in Florida, and he corrected her, telling her it was in North Carolina. 
My parents took us there as kids, so that was an "it's him!" moment for me.

That was all I watched tonight.  After that, I read a book. 
Real paper and everything.

It's an Ida Lupino kind of night.

I'm seeing movies that I haven't seen in a long time as well as things I've every reason to have see but somehow missed,
Tonight it's (to the best of my recollection) two misses- The Food of the Gods and The Devil's Rain

I've seen AIP's Bert Gordon film adaptation of HG Wells' The Empire of the Ants a couple of times (Joan Collins.  Giant, Super Smart Ants!) so I guess my brain just persistance of visioned seen AIP's Bert Gordon film adaptation of HG Wells' The Food of the Gods (1976).  The more I watched, the more sure I am that I didn't.  Ida Lupino verses a killer maggot.  Marjo Gortner as a football player.  Giant Chickens.  Giant Rats.  Giant Wasps.  My credulity was strained with Gortner as a football player.

And I have no idea how I missed The Devil's Rain (1975).  It's directed by Robert Feust, the director of both of Vincent Price's Phibes movies.  Ernest Borgnine plays the pope of Satan.  William... Shatner... opposes him.  Ida Lupino plays Shatner's mother.  Shatner fails, so it's up to his brother, Tom Skerrit, and Skerrit's psychic wife to save the day.  He's colleagues with Eddie Albert, playing the Van Helsing role,  which after watching Green Acres, makes this even more surreal.  There's a church in the middle of nowhere that looks like the church from Guns 'n' Roses' November Rain video.  It's... not monstrously bad.  But it's not Phibes.

Squeeky? Really? Gavrillo Princip, THERE'S a name!

It's one of those things that's just on the otherside of my recall barrier- The Ford Administration.  I knew about it, I *think* there may have even been a mock election Ford v Carter at my elementary school. 

But Carter, with those teeth- and peanuts!- was the first President that I really remember.  At seven, I guess that's not too bad, considering all I had to think about at the time was The Little Rascals and Batman.

So whenever I learn something about President Ford, it's usually something I learned before, like in high school government class, but it doesn't really stick.

 When I was watching tonight's news- KOVR Action News from 11/21/75-  I was reminded about the wacky antics of Lynette Fromme.  And by wacky antics, I mean assassination attempt on President Ford.  For Manson. Insane.

--

 That was all I watched tonight.  Work kicked it up a notch, yes, even on a saturday night. -- I've been trying to get an approximate when for something and then I realized the when occurred when Ronald Reagan was shot... and now that I'm pondering that, I realized another when occurred when Spider-Woman was on TV... so using those events to place when my grandparents were living in specific places, why are my memories of their apartment from my first ten years so vivid?  My grandparents moved from an apartment in Ghent to one on Little Creek Road, then to a condo by the Navy Base. I remember watching Spider-Woman on Little Creek, which ran from September 79 to January 80.  So, in that window, or before they moved from Gates Avenue to Little Creek Rd. Then factor out time we didn't live in Tidewater during my first ten years, then cognitively, I was only really familiar with Gates Ave for say... seven years.  Damn.  It was then I became a hard core reader - I still have a bookshelf she painted and decoupaged that she allowed me to keep my books on at her apartment.

I'm getting rambly and nostalgic... time for bed.

Columbo, you're a gem

The thing about previews is they're a great source of ideas of what to watch, like the ABC Fall Preview 1974-75, including Saturday Morning cartoons These Are the Days (with the Watchmen's Jackie Earle Hailey doing voice work) and Devlin- I remember Devlin from when I was a kid (a motorcycle stunt team family) but I didn't realize that These Are the Days (small town, turn of the century, slice of life cartoon) and Devlin were both dramas, as good as Hanna Barbara could manage anyway.

 I recently commented on Facebook about "Always" movies- movies that have become so ingrained into the cultural psyche that it's hard to remember a time before them.  The Sunday and Monday Night Movies previewed were a good example of that- The Last Picture Show. High Plains Drifter. Thunderball. The Poseiden Adventure.  All of them making their television premeire that season. Perry hasn't seen The Last Picture Show.  That goes to top of the list of good movies to watch.

There's a lot of fun episodic stuff that season, but since Kolchak: The Night Stalker is on Netflix, I'll be working my way through the series.  I need to find episodes of Get Christie Love! because it looks damn cool.

Because it's *always* good, I treated myself to an episode of Columbo, Negative Reaction (10.6.74), one I'd managed to miss somehow.  Dick Van Dyke plays the killer and if you close your eyes, it's like the weirdest episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show ever.  Series regular Vito Scotti, only Peter Falk is in more episodes,plays a wino and F-Troop's Larry Storch plays a driving examiner.

Life Before IMDB

We don't realize how well we have it.
You want to know about a movie these days, check out IMDB or Wikipedia. Back in the day, there were all sorts of guidebooks for movies.  Lots of black and white pictures and short synopsies of plots, with the director and a couple of leads lists.

Even then, they were more like wishbooks... you'd see a movie that looks interesting, then keep an eye out for it in the weekly newspaper listings. Back in the seventies when I'd watch the afternoon movie on WVEC-13, I'd always check the green-sheet, the listings guide in the Virginia Pilot/Ledger Star, every saturday- especially on weeks that ended with a Friday the 13th and Halloween- that's when they'd do a line up of horror movies.
(Another special week that they'd have was "Ape Week" when they would run the Planet of the Apes movies.) While I'm doing the retro project, I'd love to get to the Norfolk Public Library and check out the VP/LS fiche for a few of those Friday the 13th weeks. Fun thing about the Pictorial History of Science Fiction is- it's copyright 1975.
 Think about that for a moment.
Pre-Star Wars.
The only mention of George Lucas is THX-1138.  No mention of Steven Speilberg what-so-ever.

Imagine that.

Those are real zircons...

After I posted last night I re-watched Quatermass and The Pit for the first time in years. having first seen it on the afternoon movie on WVEC in the seventies, with the proper American title Five Million Years to Earth.  Being unfamiliar with Quatermass back then, all I knew was this film was crazy.  It starts at a archeological dig in a tube station in London that goes oh so wrong.  Ghostly neanderthals.  Crickets from mars.  And Satan.  Now, imagine a kid fixated on Star Wars seeing it for the first time.  MIND. BLOWN. I've been able to see a couple of the other Quatermass pictures and they've got this terrific... Britishness about them. Like Doctor Who, but with a more grounded in reality  feel.

Watched the first episode of The McLean Stevenson Show (12.1.76).    Stevenson plays a hardware store owner who lives with his children- his son lives in the basment, his daughter's moved back in with her two sons.  His wife's mother lives with them in a spare room and she's "The Mother-In-Law" character.    I made it eight minutes into the show before I had to cry "Mercy."  The show ran from December 76 to March 77, broadcasting ten of the twelve filmed episodes.  That's nine too many.

As a palate cleanser after that, I watched The Price Is Right (1.6.76).  Game shows are good for mindlessness.  Amazingly, it's just like I remembered.  I think that has more to do with the fact that the show was the same thing for decades rather than my memory being sharp.

 I finished the evening off with What's Up, Doc? (1972), the Peter Bogdonovich tribute to screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby, starring Ryan O'Neal and Barbara Streisand.  I'm not a fan of Streisand's more recent projects and antics, but this was before she was "BARBARA", and she's a remarkably good comic actress.  Lots of mistaken identities and luggage mixups, it's just a romp that doesn't take itself too seriously.