Scaring the crap out of a Sprog - part 4

Seems quite innocent now, but Oddbod and Oddbod Jr really did scare the crap out of me. That and Jon Pertwee grwoing Jr from a severed finger.
Its still a great film, second best in the Carry On's for me, and holds up really well.
Fennella Fielding is, depite all sense and logic, really rather sexy and my hero Kenneth Williams gets to sprout my favourite ever line from him: "They're talking to Dan. Dan Dan The Gardening Man". Sure, doesn't look like much in print but its the way he comes out with it, sprouting forth from the most implausable fake beard ever and after the minciest, campest stalking walk ever seen. A true classic.

Flares and Collar Tips

Its inevitable that any site on the sixties and seventies will get round to fashion. Been postponing it here as i didn't want to put you off.
But the time has come.
Expect soon waffles and examples of a time when you were cooler the more your trousers covered your shoes or the futher your collar tips went out past your shoulders.
To ease you into it gently, here's a fabbo ad that gets the point across in just a few lines.

Original Star Trek on Blu Ray

Got this just recently- and its been a revelation.
Not only because they've remastered the show by going back to the negatives, cleaning them up and doing a fautless transfer (although the frequent change of film stock and switching to soft focus is VERY obvious here and rather jarring).
Not only because they've replaced the somewhat ropey effects (seen now) with CGI equivilants - although you can thankfully choose between original or revamped versions of each episode.
But mainly its because, what with the endless movies and even more endless TV derivitives, i'd forgotten what a GREAT show it was.
Its been at least 20 years since i've watched any of Series 1 and its a real blast to re-discover them.
Best so far has been "What Are Little Girls Made of?", with the brilliant bad guy in Ruk, played by Lurtch off the Adams family, but also that indelible image of Kirk and a lump of clay on the ever rapidly spinning turntable, in order to make an android duplicate.
But next up is "The Corbomite Maneuver", my favourite ever episode.
Can't wait.

Laurel & Hardy

All my adult life i've been a MASSIVE fan of the Boys, collecting tons of books, videos and DVD's.
And it all stems from their shorts being shown on weekends and at Christmas throughout my childhood.
They also installed a deep love and fascination of pre 40's Hollywood that's never left me, the juxtoposition of the squalor and misery of the skid row of prohabition times with the glamour of the movies.
But back to the boys - and they were sheer genius and i loved, and love, them dearly. The shorts and the features bear up to many, many repeat viewings. But to ilustrate the point, which Youtube clip to go for?
There's so many, and they're all great. Was going to go for anyhthing from "The Music Box", or the shaving scene from "Busy Bodies", or the head-behind-the-mast bit from "Towed In A Hole".
But in the end went for the most obvious. Its a true classic and a reminder of how, bizzarely, it made Number One in the charts and therefore an indelible reminder again of life in the seventies:

Army & Navy sweets

I've got aabout a 50/50 mix of teeth and fillings. Many contributing factors to that sad state of affairs, but high up there must be the habit of me and my fellow school friends of getting a quarter of sweeties from the local shop before embarking on the trek each morning.
By far the favourite of mine were these, a rock solid anniseed affair that turned your tongue black and made your mouth so acidict that you couldn't taste anything else for hours afterwards

Batman 186

Seems i learnt to read before i went to school, and that was partly via DC Comics. Our local shop had the classic round comic rack and my big sisters were always buying me them. Strangely, they were never Marvel, only DC and the titles i'd invariably gor for would be World's Finest for the brilliant Curt Swan team-ups of Supes and Bats, and Batman.
We're talking 1966 to 1970 here, ground zero for the campy version of the character. But, when you're 4 to 8 you're not aware of anything like that.
What you are aware of are brilliant thrills and spills, tons of action and bizarre characters - usually drawn by the excellent Carmine Infantino.
No more so than here in my favourite issue of the comic, one that perfectly illustrates when i'm waffling on about.
To read it now its VERY duff - the Joker hires a midget to play pranks on the Batman. And that's it.
But the 4-year-old me loved it, the cover especially. Can remember just studying this image endlessly. It was so much better than the (not Infantino) art inside and i was fascinated by the look on the lil' guy and his fake nose.
By the way, the other thing about this title that struck a cord back then and still resonates to this day, is this eras logo. I loved it dearly and was so impressed by the clever way his shoulder and cape is at that angle.
Just looking at it now really gets an emotional response from me. Odd eh?

Top 5 TV Openings

Here we go with my personal favourites and Number Five is there not only for the brilliant score, but the madness of the breakneck speed and editing of it. Shame most of the episodes didn't compete with what came over this drum roll.

Bubblegum Cards

Already touched on these in my post on the Batman one's by ABC. But there were tons more that i - and i guess everyone my age - was buying. I loved them dearly, not only as a way to collect pretty much the only memorabilia on a fave at the time, but for the bubblegum itself.
Didn't matter that it felt like having a sheet of metal in your mouth when you first bunged it in, or that there was a serious risk of tooth damage when you eventually got it to snap into pieces, or that it took a good half hour of salivating and chewing to get it to anything like a chewy state, or that it didn't really taste that nice.
It was the smell of the stuff. The lovely, artifically sweet, plasticy honk of it. Gawd knows what what they put it in and i guess you could never get away with it now, but i loved it. And the fact the smell lingered on the cards was an added bonus.
Anyway, here's five of the sets i was collecting back then - favourite being the comedy horror one's.