3:30 or 4:30 - The Afternoon Movie Rocked!!!

From 2010...

Growing up in New York, we had the WABC 4:30 MOVIE, while folks in L.A. had KABC's 3:30 MOVIE. Same concept, different time, different coast. The 4:30 MOVIE was best known for it's amazing opening titles sequence and it's theme weeks: PLANET OF THE APES week, Super-Hero Week, Disaster Movie Week, Sci-Fi Week, etc. Sure, most were "edited for television" 90-minute condensed versions of two-hour films, but remember this was way before Blu-ray, before DVD, before VHS, before Laser Disc, before BetaMax, before Satellite, before pay-per-view... even before Cable TV. This was the only way to see movies...other then at the movies. They often mixed in TV-movies to make thing interesting. So here's a typical line-up..."Close Encounters of a Strange Kind" week - THE GARGOYLES starring Cornell Wilde, NIGHT SLAVES starring James Franciscus, THE OMEGA MAN starring Charlton Heston, THE STRANGE WITHIN starring Barbara Eden and the one, the only PSYCHO! A 109 minute film, chopped down to 72 minutes to fit a 90-minute time slot? Blasphemy! Wonder how much of the shower scene made it to broadcast.

The Sentinel

Here's a repost from 2009...

By the late 1970s, it seemed like each major studio had its own classy horror franchise. Warners had THE EXORCIST, Fox had THE OMEN, even Disney had its WITCH MOUNTAIN series.  Not to be outdone, Universal brought us 1977's THE SENTINEL (directed by food critic Michael Winner- it's true, look it up!), based on the novel by Jeffrey Konvitz .  Like many thrillers of the decade, the story starts in a faraway land where some kind of religious curse is established and then the action shifts to modern-day USA where innocent victims fall prey to the ancient evil. At its heart, THE SENTINEL is really a cautionary tale of a beautiful, but troubled young supermodel who gets in with the wrong crowd.  Kinda like MAHOGANY meets ROSEMARY'S BABY.Christina Raines is Alison Parker, a flat-chested cover girl who is about to sign a lease on her first apartment, in an elegant Brooklyn brownstone. Her real estate agent is played by the then-still-glamourous Hollywood legend Ava Gardner–in a performance that has subliminally inspired many a drag queen. We learn that Alison is recently out of the looney bin and is engaged to a slick young lawyer named Michael (Chris Sarandon) who only wears Sansabelt slacks and who is a recent widower. Alison's problems seem to stem from her walking in on her decrepit father while he was celebrating his birthday with lots of balloons, two overweight hookers and some really messy cake. Her reaction to this: she slit her wrists! Alison's new $400 a month apartment comes already furnished, and aside from the blind priest (John Carradine) who lives in the penthouse - all seems quite normal. She is welcomed into the building by an elderly bon vivant (Burgess Meredith- having a ball with the role) and his pets which I dubbed "Sylvester and Tweety".  We next meet a wacky lesbian couple played by the great Sylvia Miles and Beverly D'Angelo. Bev's character does not speak, but she does likes to masturbate to orgasm through her clothes right in front of Alison.  Yup. Charming! The rest of the tenants are quite an odd bunch, but they seem nice enough, especially when they throw a lavish cocktail party to welcome her and her cameltoe.Things take a turn towards the creepy when Alison is awakened by noises coming from the apartment above - and a swinging chandelier above her bed. The apartment above her is supposed to be abandoned!!! When she tells Ava about the disturbances, she finds out that no one lives in the building besides her and the old priest on the top floor! Spooky. Plagued by headaches and fainting spells, Alison's modeling career begins to suffer - but yet she refuses to leave the building, which is clearly haunted by the cast of THE WILD PARTY. Worried about her mental health, her fiancée Michael hires a private eye to look out for her. One night Alison dreams that Sylvester finally gets his paws on that little yellow canary. Awwww.

(Artwork by James and Harry Cauty) 

Alison then is suddenly attacked by a zombie who looks like her dead father - so she goes at him with a knife. Later, the body of the private eye shows up dead with multiple stab wounds. Ouch! At a party with real people (as opposed to the friendly ghosts in her building) she has another of her headaches and passes out. Meanwhile, Michael learns that the apartment building, owned by the Catholic church, was built over the gateway to hell!!! Apparently the blind priest is the night watchman who keeps all the demons at bay - and Alison is next in line to BE the Sentinel!

We also learn that all Alison's ghostly friends are actually dead murderers who are trying to escape from hell and that sweet, kindly Burgess Meredith is Satan incarnate.This leads to the real disturbing part of the film, coming at the climax when the gates to hell are opened and Alison's apartment is filled with demons, lesbians and deformed people (played by real life ‘circus freaks’) that creep towards our heroine in hopes that she'll commit suicide, therefore releasing them from hell forever. 

While I think Christina Raines is gorgeous, her acting is a bit wooden and I would have loved to see the first choice, Kate Jackson in the lead role. Chris Sarandon is perfect as Michael. Along the way some great, reliable actors get to chew the scenery: Martin Balsam as a professor, Jose Ferrer as a priest, Arthur Kennedy as the Monsignor, Eli Wallach and Christopher Walken as cops, Jerry Orbach (looking like a young Adolph Hitler) as a commercial director and Jeff Goldblum as a smarmy fashion photographer.

While not a classic, fans of big, gothic 70s horror films should check it out. On my old "Huh" scale - THE SENTINEL gets a big fat 9 outta 10 for Beverly D'Angelo's ridiculously over-the-top and surprisingly graphic masturbation scene alone which I've dubbed THE DaCUCHI CODE!  I'll leave you with this image...Boo!

Joya Sherrill 1924-2010

PRIME EVIL

A Catholic Classic for Ash Wednesday. A group of friends gathered one night to watch one of the last films by Roberta Findlay, a notorious filmmaker whose body of work includes porno and the infamous 1970s SNUFF.

PRIME EVIL from 1988 sounded great - It's supposed to be a frightfest about a group of evil Catholic monks in New York City who sacrifice humans to Lord Satan. A spunky undercover nun infiltrates the cult in an attempt to put an end to their Satanic shenanigans. How could we go wrong?

So we meet a priest named Father Thomas Seaton, a member of the demonic sect that formed in the 13th Century. We learn that members of this fraternity can earn immortality if they sacrifice a blood relation every 13 years. There's a fun & surprising decapitation scene, which seemed promising. But things go downhill fast from there.

It's December in NYC and we soon meet a guy named George and his intended victim- his "pure" granddaughter Alexandra, but her boyfriend Bill is suspicious. Alexandra thinks Bill is just jealous. We learn that she had been abused by her father and a group of child pornographers. We think he's jealous of them too.

After the sudden death of her mother, Alexandra moves in with her granddaddy and falls under the priest's seductive spell, never suspecting that she's being prepared for a Xmas sacrifice to Satan. However, the Catholic church is aware of the sinister cult plan and a young nun named Sister Angela has been recruited to expose their blasphemist ways for once and for all! This should be good...but it isn't. It's just boring.

There are a few "comic relief" scenes set at a gym and a womens' locker room. Not sure who these women are and why they are even included. There's also a SNL "Church Lady" reference. And then there's a subplot involving a George Costanza-lookalike psycho who is a the Satanic henchmen named Ben. He's about as “menacing” as, well - George Costanza. Sometimes he's killing some people, and other times he's giving them injections and abducting them. Huh?

When Satan finally appears he's played by muppet Gonzo drenched in catsup. The special effects get better towards the end when some Satatic people rapidly age and begin to melt. But aside from that, there's really no suspense, shocks or thrills, just lots of soap opera acting, a few boobs and some nice shots of New York City during Christmas season. A measly 2 out of 10 on my scale.

See Sal of "Sonseed" LIVE on stage!

Friend of Dougsploitation, Sal Polichetti of "Sonseed" will be appearing in New York City on Saturday, November 14 @ the Bowery Poetry Club (see flyer below for details) as a guest of the Tri-State Conspiracy. Together they will be performing a very special encore of "Jesus is My Friend" with Sal on lead vocals/bass.

You want FAME? ... Well, FAME costs.

In a world full of disposable entertainment about the trials and tribulations of being a talented teen, i.e. AMERICAN IDOL, HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL and now GLEE, it's nice to see where this genre got it's start.
FAME (1980, directed by Alan Parker) was a gritty, realistic, R-rated Academy Award-winning film about a group of young entertainers struggling to make it through four years of New York's High School of the Performing Arts. The film was well written, expertly directed, wonderfully acted and featured some great music. I'll never forget Irene Cara's brave performance as Coco. Parker also directed powerful and poignant films like MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, SHOOT THE MOON, THE WALL, BIRDY, ANGEL HEART, MISSISSIPPI BURNING and ANGELA'S ASHES.
FAME (2009, directed by Kevin Tancharoen), on the other hand, is a weak blinged-out PG-rated re-imagining about a group of mostly annoying pretty people struggling to make us give a shit about them as they are berated by former sitcom stars over how talented or untalented they are. The hip-hop drenched soundtrack is joyless with the only good songs being the few swiped from the original film (and the enjoyable Black & Gold by Sam Sparro) Oh, and Tancharoen also directed a Britney Spears tour.
In between the two FAME films came a well-made weekly TV series that ran for six seasons (1982-87) and a short-lived spin-off/revival called FAME L.A. (1997-98). FAME also became a reality show (2003) and has been the basis for several stage musicals (FAME: THE MUSICAL, FAME ON 42ND STREET and FAME FOREVER).

Getting back to the current film version–which a saw this weekend as part of a birthday celebration for my good friend Dennis Hensley–it does have some merits. The opening titles were cool. It was good to see Debbie Allen included in the cast and the sampling of her famous inspirational mantra ("You want fame? ... Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying. With sweat.") was a nice touch, as too was the brief nod to THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW. I also think that Naturi Naughton (she plays Denise Dupree) has true star quality. Every time she is on screen, she shines.
But thanks to FAME (2009) I now know...
•....hand-held camera work doesn't guarantee grittiness - only nauseousness
•...there are no openly gay kids enrolled in the High School of the Performing Arts, unless you count the asexual boy who wants to be a ballet dancer.
• ...that it is always winter in New York City.
• ...where former sitcom stars (Charles S. Dutton of ROC, Megan Mullally of WILL & GRACE, Kelsey Grammer of FRAISER and Bebe Neuwirth of CHEERS) go to die.
• ...I will never request Ms. Mullally to sing "You Took Advantage of Me" when we go to karaoke together.
• ...every record producer, film producer and successful teen actor are out to take advantage of students from the High School of the Performing Arts.• ...all African American parents don't want their kids to be stars.
• ...it takes exactly four years to resolve things that arise on your first day of class as an incoming freshman.• ...the loser kid who is told he'll never be a star and should return home to the farm in Iowa can be featured front & center in the big finale.
• ...a tribute to THE LION KING is no replacement for running and jumping and dancing through the streets of New York City.

Did I hate FAME? No. Would I recommend it? Hell no. But if you are a big fan of the original and/or the TV series you should check it out at some point.

The Douglas Michael Show with guest Sal Polichetti of "Sonseed"

Hello readers, welcome to a very special edition of Dougsploitation's The Douglas Michael Show. For those of you unfamiliar with the back story of my relationship/obsessesion with Sonseed, here it is in a nutshell.

I've owned a VHS tape of Sonseed performing "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" on an episode the WNBC TV show THE FIRST ESTATE for over 25 years. I've shown it to hundreds of people over the years. People of all faiths and people of no faith all just seemed to LOVE it. In August of 2008, a friend of mine converted it to digital and I posted it on Vimeo and also here on this very blog. Some crafty person stole it from Vimeo and put it on YouTube and before you knew, people all around the world were singing along with Sal Polichetti and the band. I later stole it back and posted it on YouTube myself as well- as have countless others. 2 Million viewings, several parodies and covers later, the song and the video had taken on a life of their own.

Soon after I posted the video, I was able, through a series of lucky circumstances, to get an exclusive interview with Sal, which I posted on this blog as a "Dougsploitation News Special Report". My daily visitors suddenly went from around 8 to over 8000 because there was no information about Sonseed available anywhere other than here...and then accusations began to fly that I made the whole thing up. That was fun. I even got to do a few interviews myself because of that. Now, a year later, I sit across from Sal Polichetti in a diner in Manhattan's Chelsea and we talk like old friends.
Doug : Hey Sal, it's great to talk to you again - almost a year later and this time FACE-TO-FACE! Welcome to my virtual talk-show - and my first on-location interview! If someone told me a year ago that I'd be sitting in a diner in Chelsea across from Sal from Sonseed, I would NEVER believe them. Life is strange sometimes.

Sal: You can take the boy out of Brooklyn but you can't take Brooklyn out of the boy. Although you've been living in California and I've been living upstate NY for quite some time it was obvious where we came from. Not everyone would understand that (you have to be from "New Yawk").

Doug: It's good to be back home, even if it is just for a quick visit. As you know, since I first posted the Sonseed video on my blog last year, you might say that things have kinda gotten outta control. Before Sonseed I had about 8 readers a day - then it was about 8000 a day. So, how has YOUR life changed in the past year?

Sal: I've never had a fan club in Sweden before! My brother-in-law forwarded it to me last week. I don't know what they're saying but I assume it's positive. I've also never done a telephone interview for a morning drive-time radio station in Sydney, Australia either (it's true; every other word out of their mouths is "mate"). I guess it's the wide scope of this whole thing that amazes me!

Doug: Wow, Sweden, Australia - you are an international superstar! There must be at least a dozen Facebook fan clubs. Did you ever think that Sonseed would be out on CD and available in stores like Best Buy? How did that all come about?
Sal: Greg Glover from Arena Rock in Oregon contacted me. He distributes a lot of indie, out-of-the-box stuff and thought this might be fun. We couldn't use the entire album due to copyright restrictions but most of the good stuff is there.
Doug: Oh, and it's so cool that I got a special "thank you" on the CD! What has been the reaction of your family...and friends to Sonseed's resurgence?
Sal: My sisters and their kids are blown away. I guess when you're a teenager and your old uncle Sal is a "YouTube" star that's big cred at school. My kids are sort of used to it; they've been seeing me perform in plays and with the band their whole lives. But I am waiting for my son to use "have you seen my dad on YouTube?" as a pick-up line.Doug: That's hysterical! Mabye he can get a tee-shirt made via Cafe Press that says that? I have to tell you, the part that makes me the happiest about this whole thing is you were able to reconnect with old friends because of all this and that it brought some happiness to Brother John before he passed away.
Sal: Everyone I've gotten in touch with has been really cool about the whole thing. It was great re-connecting with Frank Franco again (besides the annual Christmas card exchange) and we've actually met a few times in the past year. There are still some Sonseeders I haven't heard from yet. I find it hard to believe they all haven't heard about this whole thing. Maybe they're pissed off. Maybe they're embarrassed. Hard to tell.

Doug: Maybe they just don't have internet access yet? You've recently appeared on stage with a few bands- performing "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" to sold-out crowds. That must have been and incredible experience. So what's next for you? What's next for Sonseed?

Sal: Same old for me. I just finished doing "The Sunshine Boys" at a small theater in Walden, NY and I'm now in rehearsals for "Kiss Me Kate" in Monroe, NY. I still play old rock and roll with 3 other old guys every so often (my first love, actually). As far as Sonseed I suppose that's it. It would probably take "Beatle reunion" type cash to get all of us in the same place at the same time again. Frankly, I don't see that happening.

Doug: Well, if that reunion happens, I wanna be there! I just have to say what an extreme pleasure it has been meeting you in person and getting to know you. I only wish I had posted the video YEARS ago, but I'm so glad I finally did.

Sal: Same for me, brother. I don't know how I would have handled this years ago but I'm in a good place in my life right now and was able to enjoy it.Doug: Thanks again for talking to me and helping put my blog on the map. I love that your family sent me a "Hi Doug" photo. That is so sweet! All my best to your daughter Christina, your wife Donna and your son Joseph. I love that I can now say that "Sal Polichetti is a Friend of Mine"!Sal: Same to you and all you care about. If we ever get out to LA, we'll do this again!

Doug: I look forward to it - LA has a lots of great diners for us to hang out in. Oh by the way, I recently got to re-screen the video at Dennis Hensley's HOME VIDEO GONG SHOW at the REDCAT Theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A. - it did not get gonged this time! Here it is again, for old time's sake...ZAP!

Love at the Five & Dime...

I really miss the concept of a five-and-dime store. While I love the 99 Cents Store and Target, they are just not the same. Woolworth's, McCrory's, SS Kresge, Lamstons...all gone. Here's a wonderful old postcard depicting Stapleton Town Square in my hometown circa 1940s/50s. I can only imagine what this area looks like today.
Nanci Griffith's Love at the Five & Dime, covered here by the great Kathy Mattea is a melancholy reminder of those simplier times.
And Robert Altman's brilliant film adaptation of COME BACK TO THE FIVE & DIME, JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN boasts some wonderful performances by Sandy Dennis, Karen Black and Cher.

Shopping at Korvette's

Being back home in Staten Island, NY has already made me nostalgic for the place where most of my toys and records came from - a wonderful retail outlet known as

E.J. Korvettes.

Founded in 1948, Korvettes sadly went bankrupt in 1980. 

The chain was one of the first discount department stores. 

It was founded on the premise that people actually preferred to save money on their purchases!

Korvette's low-price model was similar to that of "five and dime" retailers such as Woolworth's, McCrory's, and S.S. Kresge (K-mart) but carried a broader range of products, from jewelry to appliances, underselling the major department stores.

E.J. Korvette at its peak, it had 58 stores, including my local store on Richmond Avenue - before there was a Staten Island Mall.

There was a even company-owned Hills Supermarket attached. After the store closed, it became a DMV. I have no idea what is there now. I guess I'll find out this week.