And Then, There’s A Giant Turtle Hurtling Through Space

Searching for late-night movie fare, I still find myself harboring hope that I might stumble upon some sci-fi, B-movie from the ’60s.

It’s something deeply ingrained from childhood. Living within spitting distance of the border of three states, we were within broadcast range of the television stations of two large cities and, as a result, we had a cornucopia of seven or eight channels at a time when most pre-cable viewers had half the choice.

(of course, reception was often determined by the time of day and meteorological conditions)

Late at night, there was often the opportunity to bask in the soft glow of fare that would someday provide reason for Mystery Science Theater 3000 to exist.

Sadly, sleepy-eyed kids of the 21st century escaping the bonds of bedtime for the first time won’t be dazzled by the spectacle of men dressed as prehistoric and futuristic creatures engaged in combat as buildings and cities crumble under the carnage of the combatitants.

(arigatou gozaimasu, Japan)

Instead, pint-sized people huddled under a blanket late in the evening are more likely to find little but hucksters pitching programs to help them lose weight, grow hair, or accumulate riches in real estate.

(arigatou gozaimasu, capitalism)

Pulling up the menu of free movies offered by our cable provider one night, my pulse quickened as I reached those filed under the letter G and a dozen or so flicks with Godzilla in the title appeared.

Unbridled joy turned into disappointment as I pulled up the synopsis of the first one and noted the date – 2000. Scrolling through the rest, each one was a product of the past decade and each had running times in excess of 100 minutes.

It’s Godzilla not The Shawshank Redemption. It’s understandable that two and a half hours would be required to tell the tale of Andy DuFresne and have him tunnel out of Shawshank, but if you can’t destroy Tokyo and have the good monster defeat the bad monster in under 75 minutes…

Of course, coming across a classic Godzilla flick as a kid was like hitting three cherries. More often than not, I’d have to settle for Gamera, the giant, rocket-propelled turtle.

With a nudge from nostalgia, I did a search for Gamera on YouTube and the first result was too intriguing to not click.

I recognized the footage immediately even if I didn’t recall the name of the flick (which happened to be Attack Of The Monsters). I should have remembered the name as I swear it seemed to air once a month or so on Science Fiction Theater, one of our independent station’s Saturday night offerings, in the late ’70s.

The plot, such as it was, revolved around two small boys getting whisked away to another planet by the lone survivors of an alien race – two Japanese women clad in futuristic garb – who intended two eat their brains like pudding.

The lure, of course, was Gamera as he battled some giant, bipedal pteradactyl and another rubbery beast with a ginsi knife for a head to save the day and the cranial contents of the young whippersnappers.

And, in the clip, the heroic battles were set to the music of Men Without Hats’ The Safety Dance.

While Godzilla has been, quite deservedly, celebrated in song, if there is a musical tribute to Gamera aside from those conjured by the obviously twisted mind of a YouTube poster, this office has not been notified.

Instead, here are four songs from the Billboard charts for this week in 1978 when I was ten and about a year or two away from music holding my attention as much as a turtle jetting through the cosmos…

Patti Smith Group – Because The Night
from Easter

I don’t know when I first heard the great Patti Smith’s lone radio hit. It certainly wasn’t in ’78 and I can’t really recall hearing it on the radio at all, ever.

I suspect that I heard Because The Night in college when, having heard a number of acts I loved mention Patti and/or cover her songs, I delved into her (then) relatively scant catelog and was smitten.

Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street
from Right Down The Line – The Best Of Gerry Rafferty

From the opening notes, Baker Street makes me think of the pool as I was often there that summer and the song was always blaring from the radio or a car stereo.

Frankie Valli – Grease
from The Very Best Of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons

Grease was the movie of the summer in ’78 and the music was everywhere. I doubt that I knew who Frankie Valli was or that Barry Gibb wrote the title song, but I liked it and, like Baker Street, it immediately conjures up summer for me.

Genesis – Follow You Follow Me
from …And Then There Were Three…

The first Top 40 hit for Genesis in the States, Follow You Follow Me came after the reduction of the band to a trio and its incarnation that would have considerable commercial success in the ensuing decade. I imagine it caused considerable angst for the long-time fans of the progressive act.

I had a college roommate who tried to indoctrinate me into Peter Gabriel-era Genesis as have several friends over the years. As much as I love Gabriel’s solo work, I’ve yet to really take to early Genesis, though.

Follow You Follow Me is a song that I’ve always adored. It’s mysterious, distinctive, and hypnotic.

Nothing Says Easter Like Ravenous, Rampaging Rabbits, Mushrooms And Extra Cheese

It’s Easter weekend and people all over the globe will, to paraphrase the late, great visionary Bill Hicks, commemorate the death and resurrection of their professed savior by telling children a giant bunny rabbit left chocolate eggs in the night.

Forget the hunt for pastel-colored eggs. the ceremonial carving of the spiral-cut, honeybaked ham, and religious observances. Several years ago, Paloma and I opted for a more unique way to do Easter – snagging a carryout pizza and watching Night Of The Lepus.

For those of you unfamiliar with this cinematic opus, Night Of The Lepus was born out of the nascent groundswell of environmental consciousness of the early ’70s, a movement that provided inspiration for a number of science fiction films at the time.

I must have been six or seven, when I first saw the movie, sitting in the dark of our living room, on the CBS Late Movie. As the credits appeared on the screen, I asked my dad, “What the @#$%& is a lepus?”

(actually, my vocabulary was less sodium-based at the time and it’s likely all I said was “huh?”)

But, despite my father’s surprising reply to my lepus query, I knew the CBS Late Movie to be a cornucopia of B-movies shown after the local news in the ’70s which often featured nature run amok.

And amok it runs in Night Of The Lepus in the form of rabbits the size of Volkswagens who have developed a taste for humans. Actually, they seemed disinclined to consume the terrified townsfolk, instead gnawing on them as though they were large, pale carrots.

Paloma and I had tentatively planned to make a tradition of a viewing of Night Of The Lepus on Easter, but, alas, one viewing of the film seems to have been enough for her.

So, this year, it’s Chinese take-out and Watership Down.

Night Of The Lepus was in theaters in 1972, so I must have seen the movie for the first time the following year. Here are four songs that were on the Billboard singles chart in late April of ’73…

Lou Reed – Walk On The Wild Side
from Transformer

How can a listener not get drawn into Lou Reed’s tawdry tale of life in the dirty city?

Is it possible to not hear Walk On The Wild Side and not have the colored girls singing “doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo” in your head for the rest of the day?

But, when I think of Lou Reed, I can’t help but remember a summer afternoon in 1986 when I was hanging out with my high school girlfriend, lounging in the den, watching MTV. Her great-grandmother, visiting from the Phillipines, was sitting there with us when the video for Reed’s No Money Down came on.

Great-grandmother had paid little attention to the television until, midway through the song, Reed began to claw at his face as he sang, tearing the skin off and revealing his skull as the old woman – now watching the proceedings for which she had no cultural frame of reference – freaked out.

War – The Cisco Kid
from The World Is A Ghetto

On the mental list which I keep of songs that I’d rather not hear ever again is War’s Low Rider. There’s just something about the song that is like a popcorn kernal caught between my molars.

But the south of the border groove of The Cisco Kid is always welcome.

Stevie Wonder – You Are The Sunshine Of My Life
from Song Review: Greatest Hits

Some love songs are dramatic.

Some love songs are gooey.

And then, there is the occasional love song that captures a feeling of contentment which I would offer as the most accurate vibe of the emotion. Well done, Mr. Wonder.

Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly With His Song
from The Best Of Roberta Flack

Most of the music I was hearing in 1973 was courtesy of the car radio. So, there are hits from the time that I actually remember hearing and ones with which I would become familiar during the ensuing years as I grew older and music became a part of my life.

Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song is one of the former and, as it was one of the year’s biggest hits, I recall hearing it often. Though it would be toward the end of the decade when I truly became interested in music, there was something about the song that drew me in even in ’73.

Take Your Stinking Paws Off My Heart, You Damn Dirty Apes!

Several days ago I wondered how audiences reacted upon first hearing Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and, similarly, I can’t help but imagine what it must have been like to see the climatic scene of Planet Of The Apes in the theater.

I wasn’t even walking when the original Planet Of The Apes was released in 1968, so I ended up viewing it for the first time on television in the ’70s no doubt on the CBS Friday Night Movie.

Planet Of The Apes is a classic flick and the entire film series was fun as a kid. I mean, aren’t most kids fascinated by monkeys and apes?

They’re furry humans with the smaller ones like cartoons brought to life and capable of hijinks and shenanigans.

The larger ones could scale buildings and woo blondes.

The idea of apes running the planet was certainly a thought-provoking one to a kid.

As an adult, I see plenty of upside to the other primates having the chance to call the shots.

Their politicians wouldn’t be bought and paid for by corporations as what value could pieces of paper with images of long-dead humans have for apes.

Environmental issues would be taken seriously if actual monkeys were in charge.

It would also be socially acceptable to work without pants.

Plenty of upside.

But seeing the original Planet Of The Apes as a kid in pajamas sprawled out in front of the television was a riveting experience. I doubt that I stirred, mesmerized immediately by the trippy opening in space and the unusual, evocative and eerie title music by Jerry Goldsmith.

(and, if you saw the movie as a kid, weren’t you creeped out by the mummified corpse of Stewart, the female astronaut?)

The tension built as the astronauts slowly trekked across the desert, Charlton Heston opining on the condition of the world that they’d left behind and the sky flashing with strange lightning.

And then the apes arrived hunting the humans.

By the time that Lady Liberty makes her cameo, I was already wondering why I had to study for a spelling test the following week if the future was going to be spent being hunted by monkeys.

I was thrilled beyond repair to hear that Tim Burton would do a remake of Planet Of The Apes and felt sucker-punched as I watched his (or, perhaps, the studio’s) “re-imagining,” which had none of the suspense of the original.

The nine-year old in me kept a year-long vigil waiting for Burton’s movie to hit the theaters, making the actual viewing of it one of the most anti-climactic moments of my life.

I know that some time ago I had read/heard of another movie in the Planet Of The Apes series, but I banished the idea of another go ’round on the monkey planet to the dim recesses of my mind.

So I was surprised to hear of the August release of The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.

I was inclined to want nothing to do with awkwardly-titled flick, shaking my head and pondering if people would even care about it despite the financial success of Burton’s version.

Then I vowed that I would not be drawn in.

And, then, I saw the trailer.

I’m not sure exactly when I finally got to see Planet Of The Apes. I do vividly recall being five or six, seeing a commercial for an airing of it, and being told in no uncertain terms by my parents that I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch it.

However, I have no doubt that by 1975 the parents had finally acquiesced. Here are four songs that were on the charts from this week in 1975…

Ozark Mountain Daredevils – Jackie Blue
from Billboard Top Hits: 1975

The title character in Jackie Blue sounds like one confused girl, but I can’t help but think of pizza when I hear the song. It seems like every trip we made to Pizza Inn when I was eight resulted in one of the patrons putting down their money for Jackie Blue on the pizza joint’s jukebox.

I dug the song as a kid. It was catchy and mysterious, though, at the time, I mistook drummer Larry Lee’s falsetto for a female vocalist.

America – Sister Golden Hair
from Billboard Top Hits 1975

Paloma has long expressed the belief that our eldest cat, Sam, is fond of light rock from the ’70s, especially America and such stuff does seem to capture her attention when played.

As for America, I do remember hearing a number of their hits – A Horse With No Name, I Need You, Lonely People - when my parents would have the radio on during their ’70s heyday. Though the lyrics are a bit meh and the protagonist comes off as a bit of a wuss, I dig Sister Golden Hair‘s sunny melody and catchy chorus.

Michael Murphey – Wildfire
from Blue Sky – Night Thunder

I wasn’t listening to music in 1975 aside from what I’d hear on the radio in the car, but I do remember hearing Wildfire. How could I not?

Before the first chorus, a young girl is dead and “the pony she called Wildfire” is lost in a blizzard. Oh, the carnage. Between hearing this song and seeing Old Yeller, would my parents letting me see a movie about talking apes hunting humans really been that traumatic?

David Bowie – Young Americans
from Young Americans

Though David Bowie’s Young Americans has oft been referred to as “plastic soul” which, according to Wikipedia, is a term coined by an unknown black musician in the 1960s, describing Mick Jagger as a white musician singing soul music, it’s plenty soulful if you ask me.

(undoubtedly aided by the legendary Luther Vandross providing backing vocals)

I was surprised to note the timeline of Bowie’s hits and note that Young Americans was only the singer’s second Top 40 hit in the States at the time. I’d not be surprised if, at the time, the idea of talking apes taking over the planet was less threatening a concept than David Bowie in middle America.