RIP Steve "Dr. Death" Williams

I just heard Steve "Dr. Death" Williams lost his battle to cancer.  he was from Lakewood, Colorado and I had the pleasure of seeing him wrestle in person a few times.

here he is picture with the late Terry "Bam Bam" Gordy with both the NWA and WCW World Tag Team title belts, something that will never happen again.

here's where I got the info.

MOTW - JQ #8 The Robot Spy

how cool are the monsters of Jonny Quest?  not every episode featured a monster, but a good chunk of the series did.  let's relive one of the most famous ones now.

does this scene look vaguely familiar? a UFO has just landed and Dr. Quest and Race Bannon are going out to take a look at the strange light behind the dunes.

it has landed behind an unidentified scientific/military base somewhere in a desert, I'm guessing either New Mexico or Arizona, since neither place got much notice in the 1960s.

Monster of the Week- Gorosaurus

I think I was about 7 or 8 when I first met Gorosaurus.  it was a summer kiddie matinee show at the Trojan Theater in Longmont, CO, and I was there to watch King Kong Escapes.  had no idea this movie was based on the Rankin-Bass cartoon at the time, I just knew it would have King Kong in it.  this would be the second time I would get to see King Kong on the big screen, the first being King Kong vs Godzilla.

barbarous!

why isn't this cool show out on DVD? you figure it would be prime material for gen Xers to spend their money on.

he's a Skull Man...

The Skull Man is an interesting cartoon so far.  based on Shotaro Ishinomori's creation, it's a good looking cartoon, that's for sure, but it's not animated in his style.

I'm not one much for dark and gritty shows, but every so often I like watching one.  it's only 13 episodes long so that helps.

Skull Man was the basis for Kamen Rider in a roundabout way.  I gotta say I prefer the Riders in their live action form, way more exciting that way.

a Demon of a book!

I got a wonderful book for Christmas this year- Beating the Devil, which is all about the making of one of the best horror/monster movies ever made.

it's written by Tony Earnshaw, and until they have a seance and call up the artists who have passed away, there will be no finer source about this book.  ever.

it has everything you would want to know about the movie.  some people would like to have this sort of thing on the DVD, but I'm one of those luddites who would rather read a book than read material off a tv or computer screen.  much more leisurely and much less eyestrain.

it's really well written and contains tons of interviews and archival history from the movie and from England as well.  it also makes me want to read the source material for the movie, the short story "Casting the Runes" (which made Dana Andrews eat prunes, I've heard tell).

a flying jawbone?

more fun than it would sound! Johnny Sokko episode #6.

Giant Robo vs Cats

got this Giant Robo toy several years ago at the local comic book shop.  it moves and even came with a rather out of proportion Johnny Sokko figure.  Johnny wouldn't stand up on the carpet so he got left out.

that's my tortoise shell cat Dacya in the background, she's not very impressed with our hero. 

I would have loved to have one of these as a kid, wouldn't that have just been a great toy to play with till it fell apart?  moves about as well as the live action one as well!

now if they only made a Dragulon to have him fight, the package would be complete.  I think he's my favorite of the monsters from that series.

here's Thuvia Jane, or TJ as it's easier for me to write and say.  she's also rather nonplussed about the impending battle with our hero.

Daci is just the supervisor for this battle.  don't worry, no harm came to either the toy or the cat, since she'd rather bat about softer fuzzier things.

somewhere out in space live...

easily one of the coolest of the 60s Hanna-Barbera superhero cartoon shows, the Herculoids just kicks all kinds of cartoon ass.  in a ten minute episode you got more excitement and explosions than you do in two hours of today's cartoons.  of course, all that fun didn't really leave a lot of time for characterization, but at 8 AM or so on Saturday morning, who cared?

not this monster/superhero fan!  of course, I don't remember seeing the Herculoids at all as a kid, until they showed up again in the rather anemic Space Stars in 1981, which of course I watched but knew even then it paled compared to the original, though overall it was not the worst of the bunch.

my favorite is Zok, the Laser Ray Dragon.  I mean, Zok was easily the most powerful beast of the bunch, and also the coolest looking.

he certainly is an interesting and unique dragon- with cat eyes and ears.  because it was done in a hurry and as inexpensively as possible, Zok tends to grow and shrink as the episodes demand.  which is nothing unusual with any cartoons from that time period.

and being designed by Alex Toth, the whole show is cool looking, save for a few of the villains here and there (Mekkano, the Machine Master springs to mind, especially when compared to Metallus, (voiced by the late and great Ted Cassidy), the Space Ghost foe).

here Igoo, the stone ape is about to demolish some hapless robots.  and this is in the opening sequence!

it was about 1978 or so, I think, when I was in WV and saw tv promos for Hanna-Barbera's World of Super Adventure.  Channel 20, WDCA was changing their programming for the new year and the 90 minute package was part of it.

unfortunately, we left before the show started, so I never got to see any of the wonderful cartoons they were showing for a while, though I remember seeing a Fantastic Four cartoon at some point.

there's been a few episodes released on DVD now, but come on, Warners, just release the full show for us.

Monster of the Week- Cranky Rex

sure, he's not really a monster, but a grumpy old tyrannosaurus rex chasing our cavemen heroes I think qualifies.  he certainly has a lot of character in the movie.

and YES, he is definitely a HE in the movie.

anyway, he's pictured here, chasing Atouk, Lar and Tala after Gog has inadvertently disturbed him, shall we say?  of course, Gog is left behind completely unaware of what the beast is doing to his daughter and their new friends.

what an amazing shot of our heroes fleeing from... hmm, he needs a name, but I just realized "Grumpy" is already taken.  we could call him "Dopey" since later on in the movie he actually is.  no, can't call him that either.  got it, Cranky!

and it would kind of keep the whole "Seven Dwarves" motif.  he's really not that smart, either.  this was shot in scenic Durango, Mexico, which looked prehistoric in 1981, and hopefully doesn't look much different today.  beautiful landscape abound, and the dinosaurs and other prehistoric critters look right at home in this place.

here Atouk (played by Ringo Starr) is about to accidentally save the day by inventing shish kabob on poor ol' Cranky.

this is a well animated and exciting scene, which made Cranky a menace, even if he never did get a meal (until his last scene in the movie).

I love this movie, saw it four times in the theater.  even it's page at IMDB seems to have a lot of compliments about it.  I always hoped for a sequel back then, I mean, wasn't Son of Caveman a natural title?  zug zug, indeed!