The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) Official Trailer

               This will be the first episode for 7 Song Friday, Musical movies and such!  I have both the movie and the book.

Mysterious Island (1961)

This is a fun adaptation of the book, and I have come to appreciate it a lot more now than I did some forty years ago when I first saw it.

262. The Annotated Hobbit

           

Bucky O' Hare - Intro

                     

Island Of Lost Souls HD Theatrical Trailer

              

Phantom 2040

 

Kit Walker is the 24th person with that name.  He has no idea about his ancestry, since his mother never told him.  They no longer live in Bengalla, but in Metropia, formerly known as New York City.  The world is rather forlorn, and many corporations try to strong arm the government into doing what they want.  Wait, what year is this happening?  Anyway, Guran shows up to have Kit fulfill his destiny as the 24th Phantom.  Kit is reluctant, but eventually takes over and battles many weird foes.

Pussycat concert!

What a fun poster for a faux concert!  This it even mentions the headphones.  I'm just cynical enough to think some corporation might actually do this to their fans, or actually would try the subliminal messages in media.  Not a bit of that would surprise me.  And this movie was in 2001.  This is a movie I really wish I had seen in the theater, but for some reason in April of 2001 I was not even aware of it.  Or if I was, I thought it would be terrible.  I am glad to find out how wrong I was.

Moby Dick coloring book

 

This coloring book was published in 1968.  I still have my copy, though it is not in good shape.  I found a new one several years ago, and it is in very good shape, and complete.  There are three "stories" here, one where Moby takes on a giant octopus, then saves the boys from mermen and carnivorous plants, and finally, a sea serpent is looking for a snack and the battle is on.  The first part of the book is introducing Tim, Tubb, the original Scooby and Moby.  There are a lot of pictures to color of sea life as well.  It is pretty close to the cartoon, all things considered.  It is pretty violent- Moby knocks a merman into one of the flesh eating plants, which presumably ate the poor critter alive.  He buries the octopus and, according to the writing, "destroys the serpent".  Then it is a happy ending.

Ms. Marvel 01- Generation Why

 

Kamala Khan is a junior in high school and loves superheroes.  She and her pal Bruno are planning on going to AvengerCon.  Both of them are going through the trials and tribulations of teenage years, which are familiar to any who went through them (unless they have turned into an adult, shudder),  Kamala is from a traditional Muslim family and her favorite hero is Captain Marvel.  There is some mystery about her grandmother,  Kamala wants to give her Captain Marvel costume some flair of her own heritage, which is a wrist band from the old country.  This wrist band gives her powers right in the middle of the costume contest.  Is this magical or alien?  Yet another mystery to explore.

Mysterious Island Dell Comics

Dell Comics sure licensed a lot of adaptions of movies and TV shows.  I have a few of these that I have collected here and there.  I was never that impressed with the artwork, as I was preferred the dynamic stuff from Marvel and DC.  I also didn't know that most of the adaptions were done before the movie was released, and generally based on scripts, rather than the actual movie.  I haven't read this one, nor do I really have any urge to obtain a copy of it.  I like the movie just fine these days.  It's a well done adventure.

Cyborg: The Six Million Dollar Man (1973)

 

Watching this pilot all the way through for the first is a pretty interesting experience.  It is based sort of loosely on the  Martin Caidin's 1972 novel Cyborg and the first half is really good.  Lee Majors shows a range that is surprising, and I really enjoy his interplay with Nurse Manners.  There is no Oscar Goldman, but instead we get the old man Darren McGavin as Oliver Spencer.  I love Darren, and later on he would stalk mysteries in the night.  Rudy Wells was played by Martin Balsam, then Alan Oppenheimer for until season 3. Martin E. Brooks finally showed up in for the rest of the series, plus the sequels and return movies.  Oddly enough, I always remembered Brooks being Rudy Wells in every episode I saw.  How the mind plays tricks on you after 50 years.

Six Million Dollar pilots

 

I remember the first time I watched The Six Million Dollar Man.  I thought it was the first episode, since it was the show to watch that year.  Later I read the novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin, which the show was based on.  He wrote a few more of stories starring the original Steve Austin, and they are enjoyable.  I was really surprised to learn that there had been three pilot movies before the series started.  I found this out on the Sci-Fi Channel, when it aired the bionic series sometime in the mid-90s.  Seeing Darren McGavin as Oscar Goldman Oliver Spencer was also a surprise.  I haven't seen this movies or episodes now for about 20 years, so I am looking forward to watching them now.

This aired in 1975, just after the last of the Apes movies were fading from our memories.  Well, at least the general public.  We used to watch anything that was related, but this show did not hold my attention, and I don't remember it at all.  It followed the first two movies, but instead of an agrarian lifestyle for said Apes, they are closer to the actual book, where they had cars and other technologies available to them.  However, the Apes fad had faded by the time the cartoon had aired, and it wasn't seen again for almost 20 years.  The Sci-Fi channel aired it when it started, but I wanted the Filmation and Gigantor cartoons, so I never watched it.

Captain Clegg/Night Creatures (1962)

 

After watching Disney's version of this story, I thought I would watch Hammer's version.  This is the second adaption of the story, the first movie was made in 1937.  Since it is an early 60s Hammer movie, it is a little violent, and well shot.  The scenery is great.  It also has Peter Cushing as the hero, along with a young Oliver Reed.  The rest of the cast is pretty great as well.  It is kind of fun to see a movie that doesn't have to have 3 plot twists in the last act.  It is rather predictable now, but the whole movie is a lot of fun.

Lost In Space- sorta

When this cartoon pilot first aired in 1973 or so, I was excited.  I have always enjoyed Lost In Space, and thought a cartoon version would be pretty cool.  Well, it was not exactly a continuation of the live action series, and it's not Space Family Robinson either, but it was a pretty fun mini-movie.  Having Jonathan Harris be there as Dr. Smith certainly helps.  He was a bit toned down from his 60s counterpart, but that guy would never fly in a kiddie cartoon.  The robot, or Robon as it was called, also looked very familiar.  This allows Smith to use his famous insults and names for the robot.

Big Buy and Rusty, the Boy Robot

 

I watched some of this show when it aired in 1999, though Fox Kids only broadcast the first six episodes.  I was rather surprised to find out later that there were 20 more I had never seen.  That was a pleasant surprise, since it was a good show.  Later, thanks to a certain Buccaneer Body Of Water (which is now gone) I found all the episodes, but never got around to watching them.  A few were also slightly corrupted, so I deleted them.  I was glad to find this show on legit DVD.  It's really quite good, and while geared toward kids, it has several continuing story lines and does not talk down to the intended audience.  There is plenty of action and monsters and robots to keep the kids entertained, but the interplay between the characters to keep older minds working.  There are plenty of callbacks to other robot shows her as well.  It's almost a team up of Astro Boy and Mazinga Z.

Boris and Natasha (1992)

 

I watched this fun if overlong and scattered movie the other night.  The lead stars, Sally Kellerman and Dave Thomas, wisely chose not to sound like their cartoon versions.  It's hard enough not to compare them, but this helped.  Fearless Leader sets up our two "heroes" by sending them to the US as defectors.  His real agent, known as X, is after a time traveling microchip and the inventor of said item.  There are some very funny bits here and there, but it was scattered all over the place, with models and romance... this could work in a weekly serial, when you got two Rocky and Bullwinkle segments at a time.  Moose and Squirrel do make an appearance in here, of a sort, but they don't reveal themselves until the end of the movie.  Speaking of the finale, it is pretty clever.  Yes, it does involve the macguffin of the microchip.

Civil War (2016)

 

I have never read the comic book version.  Just looking at the cover makes me think it has WAY too many characters in it.  One of the good things about this first run of Marvel movies is that they only had a handful of superheroes to use, whereas the comic books had literally hundreds of these heroes to put in any given story.  This movie uses most of the established characters, and adds T'Challa into the mix.  All the heroes get some good moments.  Baron Zemo- well, Colonel Zemo, is the only real villain (aside from that petok General Ross) and the story is more grounded.  We also get Spider-man's debut (along with Aunt Hottie) and that is great.  The best scene of all is Giant-man showing up in the middle of the day.  I loved that scene.

The Great Brain (1978)

 

I saw this movie for the first time in the theater in 1978.  My brother Eric and I had read all seven books several times before seeing the movie, so we were kind of experts on the subject.  The movie was adapted from the first two books or so, which makes it a bit disjointed as it jumps around various story lines.  It's well enough acted, but seeing Jimmy Osmond as Tom Dennis, AKA the titular Great Brain was a bit of a stretch, though he does an admirable job.  That squeaky clean Osmond image does him no favors, as Tom regularly skirts a fine line of criminal activity.  We all knew why Jimmy was cast as the lead in the movie, what with it being shot in Utah.  The rest of the cast is largely unknown, but decent enough actors.

Sven- Dracula (1931)

 

Growing up in Colorado, KWGN Channel 2 aired a lot of Universal movies.  Sunday afternoons were filled with creatures, vampires, werewolves and mummies on a regular basis.  A certain genius friend of mine found out many years later that the station's programmer loved those movies, which is why they showed up all the time.  He also provided us with many Japanese monster movies as well.  So all of these Universal horror movies seem like old friends when I watch them now.  Of course, I see the films in a different light these days, and I don't always remember some of the fun details of the movies.  I think I was also doing other things while the movies were on, like talking to my brother or reading a comic book.  The world may never know now, though.