Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

Library Addition: PBO First of The Night Strangler

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2021

This is one of those things I just didn’t think of picking up earlier:

Rice, Jeff (Richard Matheson). The Night Strangler. First edition paperback original, a Fine- copy with slight glue wrinkling near top of spine and slight spine fading, otherwise new and unread, signed by Richard Matheson. Novel by Jeff Rice based on Matheson’s screenplay for The Night Strangler, the sequel to The Night Stalker and the second TV movie starring Darren McGavin as reporter Carl Kolchak. Bought off eBay for $42. Copies that are both nice and signed by Matheson are uncommon.

Lego Star Wars Holiday Special Debuts Today

Tuesday, November 17th, 2020

The Lego remake of the Star Wars Holiday Special evidently premiered today on Disney+.

Looks less a remake than a complete comic re-imagining.

I don’t have Disney+ (or any other streaming service), so I can’t tell you how good it is.

But it can’t help but improve on the original

Halloween Horrors: Ghostwatch

Friday, October 16th, 2020

Back on Halloween in 1992, the BBC played a trick on its viewers by broadcasting a program called Ghostwatch. It was an early example of what we would call “Reality TV,” and like the overwhelming majority of Reality TV shows, it was fake.

It was supposedly a BBC camera crew staking out a home where poltergeist was said to be active. In fact, it was a scripted event where viewers intentionally caught glimpses of the malevolent ghost “Pipes” in the background while he was ignored by the cast, with planted on-air callers to the studio adding to the story, and during the course of the broadcast things got progressively weirder.

Like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast, there were disclaimers that it was fiction, but the form in which in which it was presented (with real-world TV personalities like Red Dwarf‘s Craig Charles and presenter Michael Parkinson) convinced viewers they were watching the real thing.

And like Welles, they caught hell for it:

Five days after the programme’s transmission, an 18-year-old boy with learning difficulties, Martin Denham, hanged himself, having fallen into what his stepfather described as a trance. He had become obsessed with Ghostwatch and was convinced that there were ghosts in the water pipes of his Nottingham home.

In November 1993, a year after the programme’s one-off airing, two doctors from a child psychiatry unit in Coventry, Dawn Simons and Walter Silveira, submitted an article to the British Medical Journal (BMJ) recording the first cases of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by a television programme. Two ten-year-old boys had been referred to them. One was admitted to an inpatients unit for eight weeks; he would bang his head in an attempt to free himself from thoughts of Ghostwatch and its evil spirit, “Pipes”.

Consultants from Edinburgh came forward with four more children with similar symptoms. Martin Denham’s parents launched an inquiry into their son’s death. In 2002, his mother condemned the BFI’s DVD release of Ghostwatch, saying the programme had killed her son.

The show’s producers, Ruth Baumgarten and Richard Broke, were hauled on to BBC One’s consumer watchdog show Biteback to defend themselves.

Here’s a retrospective video on it:

And here’s writer Stephen Volk on creating it:

Today, of course, fake paranormal reality TV shows have proliferated so far and wide that you can rank over 60 of them and see them parodied on South Park:

Would You Believe William Shatner As Archie Goodwin?

Friday, April 17th, 2020

Seeing is believing:

That’s the unsold pilot for a 1959 Nero Wolfe TV show, with Shatner as Goodwin and Kurt Kasznar (probably known best, most unfairly, for a role in Land of the Giants) as Wolfe.

I could definitely see myself watching this on METV…

(Hat tip: Don Webb.)

Every MST3K Reference in Rush

Wednesday, January 15th, 2020

As a guy who only owns Moving Pictures, I’m not the right person to talk about the passing of Rush drummer Neil Peart. So instead, here’s every Rush reference in Mystery Science Theater 3000:

(Dwight already posted all the Archer references, though I think that video is missing an incarnation or two Krieger’s van.)

Sad Thanksgiving News: No MST3K Season 13 on Netflix

Thursday, November 28th, 2019

I Haz a Sad:

Things have been far too quiet on the MST3K front lately. It has been over a year since Mystery Science Theater 3000 season 12 hit Netflix, and since then, we’ve heard nary a peep about production on new episodes. Sure, series creator Joel Hodgson has been busy with the live tour and various other efforts, but you would think that after a year, and with Thanksgiving looming (an all important date on the MST3K calendar) Netflix would get the ball rolling again. You would be wrong. It’s time to find another home for the Satellite of Love.

Hodgson sends out regular email updates to an MST3K mailing list, and today’s email blast brought the news fans have dreaded. Mystery Science Theater 3000 season 13 isn’t happening. At least not on Netflix.

“As some of you might have guessed, we won’t be making new seasons of the show for Netflix,” Hodgson wrote. “However, I want you to know that we’ve had a wonderful time working with the Netflix team, and will always be grateful to them. After all, they gave us the opportunity to spend the past few years aboard the Satellite of Love, and made it possible for new generations to discover the joys of riffing cheesy movies with your friends.”

This is sad news, but not unexpected, since rumors had been flying that another deal was not forthcoming from Netflix for months.

Hopefully they’ll be able to land on their feet and find another channel or service willing to continue the show. (Disney? It’s pretty family friendly and relatively inoffensive…)

An Interview With Thurl Ravenscroft

Tuesday, December 4th, 2018

You may never have heard of Thurl Ravenscroft, but you’re almost certainly heard him many, many times in your life. He was Tony the Tiger, the voice behind “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” and about a hundred Disney characters.

This is an interesting interview with him.

He died in 2005.

Netflix Reveals MST3K Turkey Day “Gauntlet”

Monday, November 12th, 2018

The cat is now officially out of the bag:

  • Mac and Me
  • Atlantic Rim
  • Lords of the Deep
  • The Day Time Ended
  • Killer Fish
  • ATOR The Fighting Eagle
  • Quick thoughts:

    1. Going to be an awfully wet season.
    2. Since the Joel era already did Cave Dwellers, does that make ATOR the first movie they’re riffed twice? Edited to add: People on Facebook are telling me that Cave Dwellers is actually the second Ator movie, not the first.
    3. Jonah should go on Conan, promise to show a clip from them riffing Atlantic Rim…and then it be a clip of them riffing the wheelchair falling scene from Mac and Me…

    Library Additions: Three More Armadillocon Books

    Saturday, August 25th, 2018

    Only theme here is that these are the last books I bought at Armadillocon:

  • Adams, Scott. Fugitive From the Cubicle Police: A Dilbert Book. Andrews & McMeel, 1996. First edition? (no additional printings listed) trade paperback original, a Fine- copy with touches of edgewear. Cartoon collection. Bought for $2.50.
  • Beatts, Anne and John Head. Saturday Night Live: Host, Francisco Franco. Avon, 1977. First edition trade paperback original, a Near Fine+ copy with wear at point. Collages sort of mock scrapbook with pictures, scripts, jokes, etc. from the first few seasons of Saturday Night Live (you know, back when it was funny). The price sticker on the cover is actually part of the design. Bought for $2.50.

  • Dozois, Gardner, editor. The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty Fifth Annual Collection. St. Martin’s, 2018. First edition hardback, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket. The last Dozois annual, alas. Obtained for trade credit.
  • “The Best Interview In The History of Television”

    Saturday, June 9th, 2018

    Robin Williams on Craig Ferguson from 2011. That’s the title on the video. I wouldn’t make that big a claim, but it is pretty damn funny.