Movies That Fell Through the Cracks # 66

You can see by the ad that 1977's THE GREAT SMOKEY ROADBLOCK was clearly a good ol' boy comedy road picture along the lines of Burt Reynolds' then-box office topping flicks like SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT. Only it isn't. Well...parts of it are...kinda. In fact the main problem with this picture, also released and later shown on TV as ELEGANT JOHN AND THE LADIES, is that it doesn't know what it wants to be.

The plot is essentially the story of an old man put out to pasture who wants one last meaningful run in his designer truck and agrees to run a cargo of prostitutes across the country.

Plotwise, far too many serious parts get in the way of the promised wild and crazy comedy but much of that is made up for by quite an impressive cast.

Toplined is Henry Fonda, arguably one of the top 5 male film stars of all time. Although long past his prime he still alternated character roles with leads in prestige stage and TV productions. This was his first leading film role since 1973's Italian western, MY NAME IS NOBODY, which teamed him with Terence Hill.

The rest of the cast is a mix of veterans and newcomers. The former include Bibi Osterwald, Dub Taylor and Austin Pendleton. The latter contingent includes the pre-Freddy Kreuger Robert Englund, a post ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Susan Sarandon and a pre-WKRP Gary Sandy.

All things considered, when you take into account that this was the first writing and (only) directing credit for 25 year old John Leone, from a family of producers and distributors, THE LAST OF THE COWBOYS (yet another of it's names), is best described more as flawed than bad.

Artistic Musings on Frankenstein's Monster-1970's

Still recovering but here are some Frankenstein images I did in the seventies. The large one is dated 1975 but the other ones, although undated, are most likely from around 1979.

Random Panels of Comic Book Weirdness # 83

In which ADAM STRANGE, the hero of this highly touted, well-remembered series, just ups and decides that he should take over the planet since he's now become a giant. Let's just kill a few hundred innocent people by destroying that building, shall we pal? And note the scintillating dialogue from his unseen paramour.

(For the record, this turns out NOT to be the real Adam...but that doesn't make this panel any better.)

Happy (Birth) Days- Daerick Gross

I'm sicker than I've been in ages but that doesn't change the fact that today is the birthday of my friend Daerick Gross (of VAMPIRE LESTAT and MURCIELAGA SHE BAT fame). I dug up this Ron Howard caricature from his early days at THE CINCINNATI POST for him and thought I'd share it with you in between my BLUH moments today.

Animated Star Trek Article-1973

The Fantastic Foursome-1992-Doyle/Kupperberg

I'm sure even the non-comics fans amongst you noted that THE FANTASTIC FOUR was in the news today. This is NOT that particular foursome. No, this rare 1992 comic came pre-bagged with copies of SPY magazine. SPY was a surprisingly trendy but generally numbingly unfunny satire magazine that seemed to want to be the new NATIONAL LAMPOON but couldn't quite figure out how to do so. This was one of their odd successes--a comics and Clinton-era politics parody reminiscent of the sixties Tony Tallarico classic (now there's a phrase you don't hear very often!), THE GREAT SOCIETY COMIC BOOK. It's also similar to the much more recent ADVENTURES OF UNEMPLOYED MAN (watch for a review here soon!) in that the creators clearly have a working knowledge of both the political climate and comic book history. In this case, those creators are our pal Alan Kupperberg (veteran artist/writer for Marvel, DC, comic strips, NatLamp and Wally Wood) and writer Larry Doyle (an editor for SPY, future SIMPSONS producer and, along with Neal Sternecky, the creator of WALT KELLY'S POGO, the criminally underrated eighties revival of that classic strip). Don't skip the letters page at the end. Hilarious! Why couldn't SPY have been like this all the time?

Fawcett Ad-1951

Note the number of cowboys in this clever 1951 Fawcett Comics ad that shows Captain Marvels Sr and Jr still bravely hanging on but has no sign of Mary!