Was 'Help!' the first Beatles concept album?

The Help! soundtrack captures The Beatles at a transitional time.

The Beatles evolved a great deal between their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and their farewell album, Let It Be (1970). During those seven incredibly eventful years, the group's songs became more adventurous and experimental, both lyrically and sonically, and their albums became more ambitious in scope. There's a world of difference between Beatles for Sale (1964) and Abbey Road (1969), even though they were recorded by the same four guys from Liverpool, just a few years apart.

On the cusp: The Beatles in 1965.

In the early days, The Beatles' albums were extensions of their live concert performances. Each LP was simply a grab bag of whatever tracks the group happened to be working on at the time, generally a combination of Lennon-McCartney originals (with occasional Harrison contributions) and some rock, R&B, and country covers. It was a good formula that resulted in several classic LPs that remain popular today. 

But the Fab Four stopped touring in mid-career, which in many ways liberated them creatively. They no longer had to reproduce their songs onstage, so they were free to make music that could only emerge from a recording studio with all its sonic trickery. The group's lyrics changed, too. While their early albums are dominated by simple love songs—boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, etc.—their later LPs could tackle any number of social or psychological themes or even indulge in surrealism and pure abstraction.

There is so much difference between the group's early work and its later work, in fact, that most fans tend to divide their albums into two major categories: Early Beatles and Late Beatles. But some experts have proposed a third category: Middle Beatles, referring to that brief but productive time circa 1965-66 when they were first showing signs of artistic growth and dabbling in Dylanesque folk rock. The two best-known Middle Beatles albums are Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). But I'd like to add a third LP to this roster: the soundtrack to the group's second movie, Help! (1965). In revisiting this somewhat-neglected and underappreciated album, I have discovered some remarkably consistent themes throughout it. Help! is so cohesive that I would be comfortable calling it The Beatles' earliest concept album, predating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Does that sound preposterous? Stick with me. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 294: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 1]

Actor/lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl and his attorney, Paul Caruso.

Actor Timothy Farrell.

Ed Wood fans know mustachioed, curly-haired actor Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) from his roles in Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and The Violent Years (1956). A veteran of the Los Angeles theater scene, Farrell appeared in films and TV shows fairly regularly in the 1950s. His acting career seems to have petered out sometime in the 1960s. The IMDb says he worked on the cautionary educational films of producer Sid Davis as late as 1968, but I'm not convinced of this. I know I spotted him in a 1964 episode of the soap opera Day in Court. 

Apart from the Wood movies, Tim's greatest accomplishment as an actor was playing the villainous Umberto Scalli in three low-budget flicks produced by George Weiss: The Devil's Sleep (1949), Racket Girls (1951), and Dance Hall Racket (1953). (I may have to cover the Umberto Scalli trilogy someday.) While Farrell was occasionally cast as authority figures, like cops and doctors, I find him more convincing as slimy underworld types. There's just something vaguely unwholesome and unsettling about him. His most convincing performance is as the volatile, easily-agitated crook Vic Brady in Jail Bait. When Vic warns his young accomplice Don (Clancy Malone), "I'll fix you but good with the cops," you believe him.

Using his real surname, Sperl, Timothy had a lengthy but troubled career in law enforcement that eventually ended in scandal and disgrace. I find this terribly interesting because it suggests that the impatient, snarling hoodlum we see in Jail Bait is closer to Timothy's real personality than the reasonable and understanding Dr. Alton in Glen or Glenda. To test this theory, I thought I'd see what the Los Angeles newspapers had to say about Mr. Sperl, both the actor and the cop, over the years.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 293: The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969)

Kathy and Ed Wood at Kenne Duncan's wake. Note the book Ed is holding.

Awake, a wake.

There is a sweetly sad quality to the photos of Ed Wood taken in the last decade of his life. Eddie was in freefall by then, physically, personally, and professionally. Years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his face and body, leading to his early death at age 54. His career in show business was faring no better. He was supporting himself entirely through his work in the adult film and publishing industries. And even there, he had to maintain a furious pace just to (almost but not quite) keep up with his creditors. As he spiraled into addiction and poverty, he often took out his frustrations on his wife, Kathy. Ed Wood's last decade was marked by disappointment, uncertainty, violence, and desperation.

And yet, the man in the pictures looks cheerful and content. Not a care in the world, this guy. Sure, you could say that he was simply too soused to worry what was happening to him. He found a fool's paradise at the bottom of a glass and stayed there. But I'd like to think that the optimism that brought him to Hollywood in the 1940s had not abandoned him entirely in the 1970s.

One of the most compelling latter-day photos of Ed Wood was taken at the wake of actor Kenne Duncan in 1972. After years of declining health and declining fortunes, the famed cowboy actor ended his own life by overdosing on barbiturates. Some time later, Eddie and Kathy celebrated his memory by throwing a wake in his honor. They invited such luminaries as Paul Marco, Criswell, David Ward, Nona Carver, and Hope Lugosi. A somewhat grainy, underlit black-and-white photo—complete with handwritten notes by Kathy—captures all of these people, plus figures I believe are Marg Usher (Paul's agent) and actress Mona McKinnon. Eddie, drunk as a lord, is leaning against Kathy and holding a book: Ernest N. Corneau's The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969). 

Naturally, I was curious. What was this strange, obscure book? What secrets might it contain?

Podcast Tuesday: "Twenty Feet from Fonzie"

A Fonzie presidency would bankrupt this country.

The dinosaurs are long gone, but some of their footprints still remain on the surface of the earth. You don't even have to leave the United States to see some of them. There are dino prints in Connecticut, for god's sake. Think of that: these huge, terrifying creatures lived millions of years ago before going extinct, and yet their tracks are probably within driving distance of a Target today.

I think you know where I'm going with this. The nostalgic sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984) has been off the air, extinct, for over 40 years, and yet its tracks can still be seen. If you know where to look, that is. While the show debuted in January 1974, it didn't really become a multimedia pop cultural phenomenon until 1976 during its third season. This was a pivotal year for Happy Days. The show's breakout character, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), moved in with the Cunninghams, and the entire series was reformatted so that it could be filmed in front of a live, boisterous studio audience. It also gained an immortal catchphrase: "Sit on it!"

The schlockmeisters and opportunists smelled money in the air, and they didn't wait to cash in. Soon, stores were flooded with Happy Days and Fonzie-branded merchandise—some of it authorized, some of it bootleg. In the spring of 1976, London Records wanted a piece of the action, so they released a novelty single called "The Fonz Song" by a manufactured group called The Heyettes. It was a breakthrough hit in several markets and even made the national charts. Was that enough? No. London Records decided that a full-length Heyettes album was in order. The result was Fonzie, Fonzie, He's Our Man. Naturally, we're talking all about it on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Some real talent went into this LP. The Heyettes were accomplished session singers, and the producer and arranger were longtime music industry veterans. But does any of this add up to a great (or even listenable) album? My cohost and I have some thoughts, and you can hear them by clicking on the podcast below.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 292: The Lascivious World of A.C. Stevens & Ed D. Wood, Jr. (2008)

Of all the Ed Wood sets ever released, this is definitely one of them.

lascivious [las·​civ·​i·​ous, lə-ˈsi-vē-əs] (adj.):

filled with or showing sexual desire; lewd, lustful

Over the decades, Ed Wood's films have been bundled together in various box sets, first on VHS, then DVD, and now Blu-ray. I've definitely purchased my share of them over the years. Maybe you have, too. There's a strange quality in Eddie's movies that makes you want to see more of them right away, so it makes sense to sell them in bulk. They're like potato chips or pretzels, difficult to stop at just one. Let's see now....

The monolith.

• The first such anthology I ever bought was Rhino's The Ed Wood Collection (1995), a three-tape set that came in a faux-angora box and included Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Bride of the Monster (1955). That pink, fuzzy monolith still sits among my Wood memorabilia today. I vaguely remember a blue version existing, but I can't find it. Did I dream it?

• Then there was Image Entertainment's The Worst of Ed Wood (2000), a four-DVD set. It contained the same films as the previous Rhino set, plus Jail Bait (1954). Its Plan 9 disc also included the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). When I think of this set, I remember buying it at a Borders in Flint, MI on a freezing cold day, using money I'd made as a customer service rep for General Motors.

• Just a few years later, Image released The Ed Wood Box (2004), a six-disc collection that included everything from The Worst of Ed Wood but added Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1996). It handily makes the previous Image set obsolete, but I never bought it because I already had Night and Haunted separately.

• A staple of cutout bins for years was Passport Video's two-disc The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (2007), which included Plan 9, Glenda, Bride, Ghouls, Jail Bait (in its rare director's cut form) and The Violent Years (1956), plus a bonus featurette called The Ed Wood Story. For some reason, this once-plentiful title has become scarce in recent years. A shame, too, as it contains the longer Rhino cut of Glenda rather than the shortened, censored version included in the Image sets.

• The landmark DVD collection that inspired this series of articles was S'more Entertainment's Big Box of Wood (2011), a six-disc set that included Plan 9, Bride, and Jail Bait, but added The Violent Years (1956), The Sinister Urge (1960), Fugitive Girls (1974), Drop Out Wife (1972), Hot Ice (1978), The Snow Bunnies (1972), The Beach Bunnies (1976), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), and Crossroad Avenger (1953). The set included new introductions (by Ted Newsom) and various commentary tracks, plus trailers and interviews with Dolores Fuller, Joe Robertson, and Kathy Wood.

• It's not a multi-disc set, but After Hours' Cinema's single-disc Ed Wood's Dirty Movies (2014) contained Eddie's final directorial effort, The Young Marrieds (1972), plus two additional titles: Nympho Cycler (1971) and Shot on Location (1972). Eddie's participation in Nympho is undisputed—he cowrote the script and appears on camera in a supporting role—but whether he worked on Shot is controversial.

• The most significant Wood collection of recent years has been Severin's three-disc Blu-ray set, Hard Wood (2024). It contained The Young Marrieds, plus Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus a variety of loops, featurettes, and commentary tracks. 

I think you can agree, that's a lot of Ed Wood collections and box sets. And there are still more I don't own, like The Ed Wood Curiosities Collection (2023), which adds the much-disputed Revenge of the Virgins (1959) to the mix. Then there's The Ed Wood Collection, Volume One (2009); The Ed D. Wood Jr. Collection (year unknown); and Ed Wood: The Dark Collection (unknown). Most of these are simply recycling the same old titles: Plan 9, Bride, Glenda, the usual suspects. But today, I want to talk about a three-disc DVD collection that's been largely ignored by the Ed Wood fan community.

The value of art can't be listed, measured, graded, or ranked... and we need to stop pretending it can be

This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide.

The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching. 

Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.

There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle. 

The strange, twisted world of Beatles soundalikes!

These lovely ladies are not The Beatles, as you may have guessed.

I wish I had a great story about becoming a Beatles fan, but in truth, I found the group's music in a clunky, roundabout way. That's the case with most of my lifelong interests. In the late 1980s, when I was in junior high school, my older sister briefly became friends with a somewhat artsy girl whom I will call Willow. That friendship ended acrimoniously, but it lasted just long enough for Willow to dub some cassettes of a few Beatles albums for my sister. And she, in turn, dubbed some copies for me. 

That's how I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles (White Album) (1968), and Rubber Soul (1965): through muddy, third-generation cassettes that I listened to on a portable tape player. I can still remember how I'd listen to "Within You, Without You" and imagine myself as an English secret agent deployed to India, chasing some scoundrel through a public market. There was just something about that track, with its exotic instrumentation and dry, reserved vocals, that ignited my imagination. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 291: "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died - An Ed Wood Jr. Inspired Horror Short Story" (2002)

Kailleaugh Andersson took Ed Wood to a strange place: Scotland.

There's a whole universe out there of Ed Wood-inspired fanart: comics, music, film, plays, etc. And I've reviewed a great deal of that material in this series. But not all of this stuff reaches me on its own. Far from it. Occasionally, readers of this column will hip me to some bit of obscure Woodiana that I might not otherwise have heard of. Recently, for example, the redoubtable Bob Blackburn told me about a short story called "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died" by Scottish author Kailleaugh Andersson that is available on Amazon for the Kindle. The story's two-star rating wasn't promising, but the $0.99 price tag was, so I took the leap of faith.

I could not find out much background information on either the story or its author. Kailleaugh Andersson once maintained a personal website, but this has not been updated in years. His Amazon biography describes him as a prolific horror author whose stories have been published (by the hundreds!) since the 1980s, sometimes in anthologies, other times in magazines or webzines. His wife, Alex Severin, has a number of books available on Amazon and still seems to be active. Maybe Kailleaugh is, too. But is his Ed Wood-inspired story worth your time and your 99 cents? Let's find out!

Podcast Tuesday: "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Encyclopedia Blues"

Debra Jo Rupp, Marion Ross, and Kurtwood Smith on That '70s Show.

Happy Days (1974-1984) was part of a nostalgia cycle that started in the late 1960s and kept going well into the 1980s, leaving numerous TV shows, movies, stage musicals, and albums in its wake. When Happy Days finally breathed its last in the summer of 1984, you'd think the cycle was truly over, too. Nope. Not even close. Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985) showed that there was plenty of juice left in that particular turnip. Stand by Me (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) proved it was no fluke. With The Wonder Years (1988-1993), nostalgia returned to television. By then, the bygone era being wistfully evoked was the late 1960s.

And so it continued. One of the big trends of the 1990s was nostalgia for the 1970s, though the nostalgia for that decade was about half-sincere and half-sarcastic. The pinnacle of this phenomenon was Fox's rambunctious comedy That '70s Show (1998-2006). Much more so than The Wonder Years—which was a thoughtful, occasionally weighty series—That '70s Show was the obvious spiritual successor to Happy Days. Like Happy Days, it followed a group of average Midwestern teenagers through various social, romantic, scholastic, and domestic adventures. Both shows were even set in Wisconsin and both shows existed largely to entertain rather than educate or enlighten.

During its initial run, Happy Days acknowledged its sitcom roots by welcoming classic guest stars like Danny Thomas, Elinor Donahue, Harriet Nelson, and Jane Wyatt. That '70s Show did something very similar by casting Marion Ross from Happy Days as Bernice, the demanding mother of patriarch Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith). In the November 1998 episode "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," Bernice has a longstanding grudge against Red's wife Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp), and it's up to Red and Kitty's son Eric (Topher Grace) to keep the peace. Or try to.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we discuss That '70s Show and Marion Ross' participation therein. We review "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and talk about how our feelings toward That '70s Show have evolved over the years. We invite you to join us.

A weird, forgotten chapter of 'Simpsons' history has been rediscovered

The Simpsons consult a family therapist in this forgotten 1989 cartoon.

By the time cartoonist Matt Groening unleased The Simpsons on an unwitting world in 1987—it debuted as a segment on Fox's live-action sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show—the era of the theatrical animated short was long over. Movie audiences of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s were accustomed to getting cartoons before features, and studios like Disney, MGM, and Warner Bros. famously produced them by the hundreds. Characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Tom & Jerry thrived in this medium for decades. This was an era we now call the Golden Age of Animation.

But animation was commonplace on television by the 1960s. Ex-MGM animators Joseph Hanna and William Barbera proved that cheap, made-for-TV 'toons could be successful, and other producers followed suit. People who wanted to see cartoons could do so at home whenever they wanted, so movie studios phased out their animated shorts over the course of that turbulent decade. From the 1970s on, theatrical cartoons were parceled out only as occasional treats, usually in conjunction with children's films. That's the way it still is today. If you see a Pixar feature, for example, you expect a short cartoon first. But you won't get one with most live-action movies.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast vs. 'Trip from Lesbos' (1967)

This week, we try to determine if Ed Wood wrote a forgotten 1967 pulp novel.

Ed Wood wrote a hell of a lot of pulp novels in the 1960s and '70s, most of which can be categorized as "erotic" literature. These books were written for an audience of dirty old men and inexperienced boys. But Eddie didn't write absolutely every dirty book on the market. He definitely had some competition in his chosen profession. And since he didn't always sign his own name to these tomes, his modern-day fans sometimes have to do some guesswork to determine whether Eddie did or did not write a particular novel.

This week, on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, I'm part of a panel of experts—along with Rob Huffman, James Pontolillo, and W. Paul Apel—who have gathered to discuss a fairly obscure little novel known as Trip from Lesbos or Flight from Lesbos published by Pad Library (one of Ed's known employers) in 1967. It tells the story of a young lesbian named Jean and what happens to her when she moves to Hollywood, reconnects with an old friend, and makes some new ones. This book has some hallmarks of Eddie's writing of the period, including an angora sweater, but does that mean it's his work? Let's discuss it.

If you're interested in reading this book yourself, it's available from Triple X Books for a mere $2. How can you go wrong?

My thoughts on 'MST3K: The RiffTrax Experiments (2026): Sting of Death'

Crow T. Robot, Mike Nelson, and Tom Servo are back, baby!

For a show with a relatively simple premise—a human and two robots watch old, "bad" movies and make fun of them—Mystery Science Theater 3000 has a remarkably complicated broadcast history, perhaps the most convoluted since SCTV. Let's see now. (Deep breath.)

It's baaaaaack!

After beginning as a local show in Minneapolis in 1988, MST3K moved to a national cable network first known as The Comedy Channel and then Comedy Central for seven seasons (1989-1996) before being canceled. It then ran three more seasons (1997-1999) on The Sci-Fi Channel, was canceled again, then lay dormant until a two-season Netflix revival (2017-2018) nearly two decades later. When Netflix was no longer interested in continuing, series creator Joel Hodgson tried to produce and distribute the show independently for one additional season (2022) before running out of money. And now, thanks to a very successful crowdfunding campaign, the series has re-re-re-re-relaunched in 2026 as MST3K: The RiffTrax Experiments.

Along the way, like any long-running sketch comedy show, MST3K has seen numerous writers and performers come and go. Hodgson himself left the show during its fifth season on Comedy Central. Some of the show's alumni have appeared in very MST3K-like spinoffs of their own, including Cinematic Titanic and The Mads are Back. The longest-lasting and most prolific of these, by far, has been RiffTrax, featuring the same lineup as the Sci-Fi Channel version of the show: Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. RiffTrax launched in 2006 and has steadily produced new material ever since, including numerous episodes that have been shown in movie theaters via Fathom Events. So these guys have been working together fairly steadily in the decades since the Sci-Fi era of the show ended.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 290: Rene Bond (1950-1996): A Dossier

Rene Bond got a healthy amount of press coverage.

One thing I have accidentally learned in writing this column for over a decade is that America's newspapers have a surprisingly spicy, risque past. Strippers, burlesque houses, and pornographic films were openly advertised in otherwise-ordinary, wholesome daily papers across the country. These were the exact same publications where you'd read Ann Landers or catch up on the latest sports scores. They just treated "adult" advertisers like any other sponsors.

In the 1960s and '70s, fairly bold ads for X-rated movies would habitually run alongside ads for every other kind of movie on the market. It is not impossible, for example, that you could have seen Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat (1972) being promoted next to Disney's Napoleon and Samantha (1972). This is not an exaggeration. This kind of juxtaposition happened nearly every week for years. I constantly come across this stuff in my research. It's why we have newspaper clippings related to Ed Wood's adult films. If they played at an actual movie theater, we probably have ads for them.

This week, I am turning my attention to adult film actress Rene Bond (1950-1996), who starred in Ed Wood's Necromania (1971) and appeared in several more films either written or co-written by Eddie: The Class Reunion (1972), The Cocktail Hostesses (1973), Fugitive Girls (1974), and The Snow Bunnies (1972). She also appeared in the disputed Wood film Bloomer Girl (1972). That's six movies total, more than Tor Johnson, Paul Marco, or Criswell ever did with Ed. Though she occasionally used aliases (including Lilly Lovetree, Lotta Rocks, and Rosemary Camelot), Rene also worked under her own name and was definitely not shy about publicity. So I decided to see what America's newspapers had to say about her.

Podcast Tuesday: "Your Kids Caught You Smoking and They Said No Way"

Tom Bosley and Marion Ross in Let's Call it Quits.

Along with the many, many laws and rules we have to follow in our daily lives, we are also given innumerable warnings about our health and safety. Don't do drugs. Get eight hours of sleep. Brush your teeth. Eat your vegetables. Look both ways before you cross the street. Since human beings are typically averse to being bossed around, I think there is a strong temptation to ignore all of this stuff. To hell with them! I'll do what I want! And I sympathize with that.

But there are some warnings I wish we would have heeded sooner as a society. It certainly would have been better, for instance, if we'd all given up on smoking as soon as the Surgeon General's report came out in 1964. But we didn't. We kept right on smoking for decades, and it led to a lot of needless suffering and death. Only now, in the 21st century, are cigarettes starting to lose their grip on us. (Of course, they're only being replaced by vape pens, but, you know... baby steps.)

Over the years, there were many attempts to get Americans to kick the habit. In 1974, the American Cancer Society produced a half-hour, sitcom-like film called Let's Call it Quits starring Tom Bosley and Marion Ross of Happy Days and filmed on the set of The Brady Bunch. This week on These Days Are Ours, we talk about that film and our feelings on smoking in general. Please do join us. And don't smoke.

The unsolvable riddle that is 'Monster a Go-Go' (1965)

Herschell Gordon Lewis tried to make something marketable out of an unfinished Bill Rebane film.

An ad for the film.

If I asked you to imagine the movies that typically wound up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, you'd probably think of those crummy, low-budget science-fiction and horror films made between the 1950s and the 1970s. These were shoddily-produced exploitation flicks that were shipped out to undiscriminating drive-in audiences across America for decades. These quickies were relentlessly hawked through hyperbolic trailers, posters, and radio ads that routinely made promises the actual movies—often slow-moving, static, and talky—could never keep. They featured unconvincing monsters, aliens, spaceships, and mad scientists, and they had attention-grabbing titles, often containing words like "space," "attack," "creature," and "invasion."

As silly as these movies were, there's a kind of innocence or naivete to them. Eventually, as home video supplanted the drive-ins, exploitation movies increased the amount of sex and violence, and the old-school, MST3K-style movies started looking a little quaint in comparison. Today, these movies are mostly seen as curios of a bygone era, beloved by some, despised by a few, and ignored by most.

If you stand way back and squint, Monster a Go-Go (1965) is the very kind of movie I've been describing. It was even used on MST3K in 1993 during the show's fourth season on Comedy Central. In the broadest sense, the film is typical genre fare. The plot goes something like this: an American space capsule has crash-landed in a field in Illinois. On board is astronaut Frank Douglas, but radiation has transformed him into a hideous, eight-foot-tall, Frankenstein-like monster with blisters all over his face. Still wearing his spacesuit, he mindlessly roams the area, occasionally murdering civilians. The military tries to locate Douglas and put a stop to his rampage. Meanwhile, scientists attempt to come up with an antidote for his condition, and Frank's grieving family worries about him. Complicating matters is the fact that Douglas is highly radioactive. It all leads to a tense finale set in the Chicago sewers.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 289: The screenplay for 'The Sun Was Setting' (1951)

"You horrible room!": Angela Stevens as June Drake in Ed Wood's The Sun Was Setting.

Here's a quirk of B-movie history for you. At least three of Ed Wood's unproduced screenplays have been published in book form: The Vampire's Tomb (1954), The Ghoul Goes West (1953-55), and The Frank Leahy Legend (1974). But only two of Eddie's produced scripts have ever been published to my knowledge: Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) and Bride of the Monster (1955). I'd love to analyze and scrutinize Eddie's screenplays more closely—both the ones that were made and the ones that weren't—but they're just not available to me. I have no idea how people get them.

In the case of Eddie's made-for-TV melodrama The Sun Was Setting (1951), I thought I'd take matters into my own hands and recreate the script myself by carefully transcribing the finished film. This is not the first time I've done something like this. Years ago, I painstakingly transcribed Glen or Glenda (1953). But that transcript is still a mess in terms of formatting. Perhaps someday, I will finish it. The Sun Was Setting is more manageable, due to its shorter runtime. In any event, it is my hope that this quasi-script will give us an opportunity to see how Ed Wood constructed a screen story.

NOTE BEFORE WE CONTINUE: This is not in any way, shape, or form the actual screenplay that Ed Wood used when making the movie. It is purely a fan-made work. It is not formatted as a standard Hollywood script would be. Instead, this material is presented in a form that I feel would be more easily readable. If you feel you can do better, you likely can and should. In fact, I invite you to do so. J.B. 

So I watched 'Coyote vs. Acme' and...

Wile E. Coyote and Will Forte team up in Coyote vs. Acme.

An uphill climb to the big screen.

It's not often I review recent movies on this blog. Then again, it's rare that I actually watch any film made in this century. Or this millennium, come to think of it. It's not that I'm against current movies; I just have so much old stuff to review that I don't get around to the new stuff that much.

I made an exception for Dave Green's Coyote vs. Acme (2026), the long-delayed feature film that Warner Bros. shelved for tax purposes several years ago, now finally released through the intercession of a company called Ketchup Entertainment. If you're reading this blog, you probably don't need me to explain what this movie is. You already know the characters and the basic plot. Like me, you grew up with Looney Tunes and its cadre of wacky animated characters: Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc. You're probably also familiar with the fictional Acme Corporation and its wide variety of faulty products.

So what did I think of Coyote vs. Acme? Short answer: I liked it. It's inventive, amusing, and well-made, and an elaborate tribute to the cartoons I loved in my youth. I recommend it unreservedly to Looney Tunes fanatics, especially those who also happen to be fans of actor and comedian Will Forte. In the past, Will has demonstrated his range on such shows as Saturday Night Live, The Great North, and The Last Man on Earth, plus such feature films as MacGruber (2010) and Nebraska (2014). If you've witnessed Mr. Forte at work, you likely do not need to be sold on his talents.

Do I have anything of particular value to say about Coyote vs. Acme? Any special insight to bring to this material? Well...

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 288: 'Invisible Ghost' (1941) and 'Deanimated' (2002)

Artist Martin Arnold did some interesting things to The Invisible Ghost (1941).

It was a long way down for Bela Lugosi. We know that his Hollywood career peaked with his indelible, much-imitated portrayal of the title role in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) for Universal. Over time, however, the Hungarian actor's fortunes were plagued by numerous factors: typecasting, shifting audience tastes, plus Lugosi's thick accent and ruinous drug addiction. By the 1950s, when he started working with Edward D. Wood, Jr., his once-sparkling career was utterly in the doldrums. Any work was welcome. Hence Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and the posthumously released Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

But Bela's career was vast and varied. By the time he made Dracula, he'd already accumulated numerous movie credits, foreign and domestic. From 1917 to 1921, he appeared in silent films made in Hungary and Germany. From 1923 onward, he appeared in American-made films, first silent then sound. And all this was in addition to maintaining an extremely active stage career. 

In the turbulent decades between Dracula and Glen or Glenda, Lugosi made dozens of films of wildly varying quality, ranging from major studio productions to low-budget B-movies and serials. In 1941, Lugosi began a productive if not exactly glamorous association with a Poverty Row studio called Monogram Pictures. Nine films in total eventuated from this. For a detailed and thoughtful analysis of this era, I'd highly recommend Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Guffey's Bela Lugosi and the Monogram Nine (2019). 

Podcast Tuesday: "We Have Nothing To Fear But OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING OVER THERE?"

Erin Moran in Galaxy of Terror (1981).

The actors on long-running sitcoms can get antsy sometimes. Playing the same character every week, year after year. Same jokes, same stories. It gets old after a while. Worse yet, the public gets the idea that playing this one character is all you can do. There is no surer career-killer than being typecast in a sitcom role. And so, TV actors tend to glom onto whatever movie offers come their way. Anything to prove they have a little range.

During his seven-season run on Happy Days, for instance, Ron Howard appeared in Eat My Dust (1976), The Shootist (1976), and More American Graffiti (1979) as well as the made-for-TV movies Huckleberry Finn (1975) and I'm a Fool (1977). He also directed the made-for-TV movie Cotton Candy (1978) and the feature film Grand Theft Auto (1977). Meanwhile, Ron's costar Henry Winkler stayed for all 11 seasons of Happy Days but still managed to find some extracurricular acting work, like the movies Heroes (1977) and The One and Only (1978), plus the made-for-TV movie An American Christmas Carol (1979).

But what of young Erin Moran, who played Joanie Cunningham on Happy Days? People may think that this sitcom and its spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi were the only major projects Erin ever worked on. But her resume is more diverse than that. For instance, between the eighth and ninth seasons of the show in 1981, Erin acted in a sci-fi thriller called Galaxy of Terror produced by Roger Corman, who had previously produced both Grand Theft Auto and Eat My Dust.

As you may have already guessed by now, we are reviewing Galaxy of Terror on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. Hit the play button down there to learn more.

The enduring, plain jane beauty of "Johnny Angel"

Shelley Fabares croons "Johnny Angel" on The Donna Reed Show.

Actress Shelley Fabares, who died on August 22 at the age of 82, never considered herself much of a singer, despite the fact that she scored a #1 hit single in America. In interviews, she talked about how the producers of The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966) strongarmed both her and costar Paul Petersen into recording pop singles. The makers of the sitcom were apparently eager to replicate the multimedia success of Ricky Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet and made it clear that, if Shelley didn't comply, she'd be written out of the show. And so, in late 1961, she became a reluctant pop star. Shelley recalled being extremely nervous to step into an actual recording studio, surrounded by talented professional musicians, but she somehow got through it.

Shelley's big musical moment.

The song she recorded, a winsome ballad called "Johnny Angel," debuted on February 1, 1962 during a fourth season episode of The Donna Reed Show called "Donna's Prima Donna." The public's response was simply overwhelming. By April 1962, "Johnny Angel" was the most popular song in America. Shelley was still no singer, and her music career was not sustainable for long. While she had a few more charting singles, including a direct sequel to "Johnny Angel," Shelley largely stuck to acting for the rest of her life. Later in her career, she was a regular on the popular ABC sitcom Coach, which ran from 1989 to 1997. Shelley Fabares' musical legacy is largely limited to this one song: two minutes and 19 seconds of audio cotton candy. 

As for The Donna Reed Show, it lasted four more seasons and eventually became a staple of syndicated reruns. I'm sure many people of my generation, born well after the original run of the show, became familiar with Donna Reed because of its frequent airings on Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite. What distinguishes this series is that it has nothing to distinguish it. Unlike The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, it is not built around a wild comedian with an over-the-top personality. It doesn't tap into "kid logic" the way Leave it to Beaver and Dennis the Menace do. It doesn't even have an unusual family structure, like My Three Sons or The Brady Bunch. Nope, it's just an unadorned, straight-down-the-line sitcom about a nuclear family in mid-20th-century America. This is exactly the kind of blandly wholesome show that inspired Gary Ross' film Pleasantville (1998).

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 287: 'Songs from the Ed Wood Zone' (2007)

The gang's all here! (artwork by Libby Reid)

There's something about Ed Wood, specifically the low-budget sci-fi/horror films he made in the 1950s, that inspires creativity in others. But why is that? I think it's because artists look at Ed and see a man who created highly distinctive, idiosyncratic work despite every conceivable obstacle. People watch his cheap but endearing movies and think, "He somehow got this insane movie made and released. What's my excuse?"

Even in his prime, Eddie had little money or access to resources, so his films feature laughable props, wobbly sets, and frequent continuity errors. His actors are often misfits and eccentrics, people who look and speak so strangely that they barely seem to belong to the human race. And Eddie's scripts, both in their plots and their dialogue, represent the deeply weird and personal sensibility of the author. Ed Wood just had a kooky, cockeyed way of looking at the world, and he managed to incorporate his own off-kilter ideas into stories of aliens, zombies, monsters, and flying saucers. Add to this the fact that Ed Wood was a cross-dressing alcoholic, and it's a minor miracle that his movies exist at all. But they do.

Over the years, I have reviewed numerous Ed Wood-inspired works, ranging from comic books to short films. Today, however, I am turning my attention to an obscure EP from 2007 called Songs from the Ed Wood Zone, which contains ditties about Tor Johnson, Bela Lugosi, and more. What, you've never heard of it? Well, I only encountered it because it kept turning up in my search results when I was looking for other Ed Wood-related material online. At first, I'd find it a little annoying ("Oh, not this again!"), but then I realized I should actually listen to the damned thing.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 286: Searching for details in 'Glen or Glenda' (1953)

The paintings of Frank Moss Bennett play an important role in Glen or Glenda.

Something strange happens to me when I watch the same movie too many times. Eventually, the plot, dialogue, and characters become second-nature, and I start noticing all the other stuff in the movie—the props, sets, costumes, etc. A similar thing happened when I screened all 255 episodes of Happy Days (1974-1984) for my podcast. Over the course of watching 11 seasons, I started caring less and less about the characters and their problems and began to focus my attention on what was happening in the margins of the show. (Wasn't that figurine on the other side of the living room last week? What happened to the recliner? Which magazine is that on the coffee table?)

And so, this week, I've decided to go rooting through Ed Wood's debut feature, Glen or Glenda (1953), in search of minutiae. I've certainly watched this movie enough times to start noticing all these little incidental details. But my interest in these things is not merely trivia for the sake of trivia. I've said that each movie—no matter how fantastic the plot or outrageous the characters—is a documentary of its own time and its own making. When I identify a prop or background detail in one of Ed Wood's movies, I get a clearer vision of the (now mostly vanished) world Eddie and his actors and crew members inhabited.

So let's get started, eh?

Los Cos: The original 'Fat Albert' special from 1969 has resurfaced!

Fat Albert bursts onto the screen in 1969.

A Cosby album.

Long before his name became associated with the drugging and raping of women, comedian Bill Cosby (born 1937) was known as a purveyor of warm, relatable humor about the day-to-day foibles of mid-20th-century American life. Leaning heavily on anecdotes from his own experiences, he talked about such subjects as sports, driving, childhood, marriage, parenthood, etc. in that friendly, conversational cadence of his. During a time of tremendous racial strife in this country, Cosby's act transcended color lines and appealed to a broad spectrum of the public.

In the 1960s, Cosby emerged as one of the top stand-up comics in America, headlining at nightclubs and appearing frequently on talk shows and variety shows. He also released a series of well-received comedy albums, starting with Bill Cosby is a Very Funny Fellow... Right! (1963). Meanwhile, his acting career took off with his groundbreaking dramatic role on I Spy (1965-1968). In short, Bill Cosby was big but nowhere near as big as he'd one day become. Ironically, his next major step forward came from looking backward.

In his act, Cosby frequently talked about his youth, growing up poor in North Philadelphia in the 1940s and '50s. He would regale his audiences with stories about his rambunctious childhood buddies, including Dumb Donald, Old Weird Harold, and the jubilant but massively overweight Fat Albert, the latter of whom was known for his catchphrase: "Hey, hey, hey!" Soon, thanks to these standup routines, several of which wound up immortalized on LPs, all of America was familiar with Bill Cosby's childhood.

Podcast Tuesday: "Father and Child Reunion"

In 1994, Henry Winkler was once again ready for his closeup.

There's such a thing as playing a character too well. When Jim Parsons—now and forever associated with his nerdy Sheldon Cooper character from The Big Bang Theory—hosted Saturday Night Live in 2014, he sang a song called "I'm Not That Guy," an ode to actors like himself who have been hopelessly typecast in sitcom roles. The lyrics reference Jaleel White from Family Matters, Jason Alexander from Seinfeld, and Henry Winkler from Happy Days. As Parson puts it: "Henry Winkler as the Fonz/The epitome of cool/But in real life, he was a nice Jewish boy who went to Yale Drama School."

It's true that, when Happy Days was cancelled in 1984, the news hit Henry Winkler very hard. He was so well-known as Fonzie that he didn't think the public would ever accept him as another character. And so, after the eleventh and final season of Happy Days wrapped, Henry walked away from acting for about a decade. He reinvented himself as a director and producer, jobs that kept him in showbiz but off-camera. All that Yale acting training down the drain.

But in 1994, Henry decided the time was right to come back to acting in a big way, taking the lead role in a Fox sitcom called Monty. Sensing it would have been disastrous to play a character even remotely similar to Fonzie, Winkler portrayed someone who was almost the complete opposite: an uptight conservative talk show host named Monty Richardson. The sitcom depicts Monty's professional life (where his coworkers barely tolerate him) and his home life (where his wife and children barely tolerate him). At the heart of the show is Monty's conflict with his liberal, college-age son Greg (pre-Friends David Schwimmer), newly engaged to even-more-liberal Geena (China Kantner). 

Obviously, Monty was a major change in direction for Henry Winkler. But was it a good one? That's what we're trying to determine on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast. You can find out what we thought by clicking the play button below.

1970s Hardee's commercials were beautifully chaotic

Gilbert Giddyup (left) and Speedy McGreedy shill for Hardee's.

Hardee's was not part of my childhood, at least not to any great extent. The restaurant chain had only a marginal presence in mid-Michigan in the 1970s and 1980s, lagging behind McDonald's and Burger King, plus KFC, Wendy's, Arby's, Taco Bell, and numerous others. I can only remember going to Hardee's with my family on a handful of occasions in my youth. A trip there was decidedly out of the ordinary. A big deal, you might say.

I cannot even recall seeing a single TV commercial for Hardee's when I was growing up. While I was very familiar with the antics of Ronald McDonald, Grimace, and the Hamburglar, I was denied the animated adventures of such Hardee's mascots as Gilbert Giddyup, Speedy McGreedy, and Supermouth. Were these Hardee's characters part of your childhood? Did you dream about them the way I used to dream of the residents of McDonaldland? 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 285: The weird, wild music of 'Necromania' (1971)

The music in Ed Wood's Necromania (1971) is drawn from a number of sources.

Back in 2019, I assembled a soundtrack album for Ed Wood's 1971 pornographic film Necromania and posted it to SoundCloud for other fans to enjoy. Following the template of the 1995 Orgy of the Dead soundtrack from Strangelove Records, I took the audio directly from the movie itself and included both music cues and dialogue excerpts. Response to the project was, let's say, muted. While I personally find this subject quite fascinating, it's not necessarily of much interest to the average person. Even many Wood fans steer clear of Eddie's adult movies, so the prospect of a Necromania soundtrack is not all that appealing to them.

Nevertheless, in 2026, I am bravely revisiting the topic. Music identification has come a long way in seven years, and it is now possible to find the actual titles and artists of the songs heard in the movie. At least some of the time, that is. I should clarify, for those who haven't seen it, that Necromania relies entirely on stock music. That's no surprise. While Bride of the Monster (1955) has an original score by Frank Worth, most of Eddie's classic films such as Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) use so-called library music. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 284: 'Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films' (1981) [PART 3]

A lifetime's worth of memories in just 32 crudely-Xeroxed pages.

A magazine from 1993.

Information is like tap water these days. Any time of the day or night, whenever we want it, it's there for our use. Just turn on the faucet and enjoy. True, there are places in this world where information is decidedly not accessible to all. By the same token, there are places where tap water isn't available either. There are probably places where neither is available. Be glad you don't live in any of those places.

Here, in the land of the free, we have become accustomed to information on demand as well as media on demand. If an album, movie, or TV show isn't available instantly, we declare it "lost." That's how impatient we've become. If you have to go to a library to get it, it doesn't exist. But we should remember that it wasn't always so. There was a time not so long ago when we were much more reliant on printed material and physical media for the information we now take for granted.

Edward D. Wood, Jr.: A Man and His Films, a 1981 chapbook by superfans Randy Simon and Harold Benjamin, is a product of that time before the information revolution. In those days, if you wanted details about an offbeat director like Eddie, you had to comb through the archives and maybe contact people who knew him personally. And so they did. Only a handful of Ed Wood's movies were accessible at that time, and much of Ed's career was entirely undocumented. But Randy and Harold cobbled together whatever they could and assembled a 32-page booklet from their findings, which they then distributed via mail order from an office in Hollywood. They called this operation The Edward D. Wood, Jr. Film Appreciation Society or EDWJFAS.