Kurt Russell

Dexter Reilly probably never visited a grindhouse but I did fairly regularly.

At age four one of my early favorite TV series was THE TRAVELS OF JAMIE MCPHEETERS starring—as unlikely as it sounds—Charles Bronson and the Osmond Brothers—oh, and Kurt Russell as Jamie. After that, whenever I’d spot him on another show I’d say, "There’s Jamie!" Eventually, it became "There’s Kurt!"

In 1969, with the release of Disney’s live action feature-length sitcom THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES, Kurt Russell was added to my permanent favorites list. He played a different role in THE BAREFOOT EXECUTIVE but it may as well have been COMPUTER’s "Dexter Reilly" as the entire film seemed like just another "episode." Dexter DID return in NOW YOU SEE HIM, NOW YOU DON’T and in a final belated sequel, THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD. Surrounded by sidekicks played by ( among others) the wonderful Michael McGreevy and cartoon voice legend Frank Welker, Dexter’s world is also home to a roster of enjoyable character actors including Joe Flynn, Cesar Romero, Phil Silvers, Eve Arden, William Schallert and Dick Bakalyan. These are people that I would pay to see chew the scenery even if there were no plot…and there barely was in these pictures.

In the first film, Dexter becomes super smart. In the second, invisible. By the third, six long years later, he’s super-strong...and STILL in college. After that, Kurt tried several times to reinvent himself as a grown-up star, finally succeeding with the help of director John Carpenter who cast him against type in ELVIS, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and THE THING.

Still, his life was inextricably tied with Disney. Seems he appeared as a child in that studio’s THE ONE AND ONLY GENUINE ORIGINAL FAMILY BAND which also featured a young lady named Goldie Hawn in a small role. When the two met up again years later, they became one of Hollywood’s more stable couples.

I remember seeing Kurt on an early ‘80’s Letterman show where he said he would really have preferred to have become a baseball star. He then told a story that shocked me and which I won’t repeat lest I heard it wrong, remember it wrong or missed a part where he said it was a joke. Still, it changed my thinking on him. Since then, he’s still been a pleasant familiar face in films but never again as much as he had been. That said, I am REALLY looking forward to seeing GRINDHOUSE. Having sat through my share of real grindhouse double features as an impressionable teen, it’s all nostalgia for me…including Kurt who, I hear, actually brings vestiges of Dexter Reilly to the role!

It seems that if I don’t see a movie in its opening week, I usually miss it until cable or DVD and I’m working the next seven days straight. If I DO catch GRINDHOUSE, I’ll let you know what I think!

Silver Age DC Ads

Metal Men-The Movie?

The cover seen here may turn out to be prophetic in that a few years from now METAL MEN toys could be all the rage in the wake of their hit movie. That's right, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER is reporting that Doc Magnus's wacky robots, long a favorite of mine, are heading to the screen courtesy of some of the folks behind the X-MEN movies and CONSTANTINE. With the current state of moviemaking being what it is, this might actually be a good idea! Of course, with the current state of Hollywood production being what it is, it may well be a decade more before we actually see METAL MEN-THE MOVIE! (And please, please, please don't let 'em adapt the Sekowsky version!!!! Oh, no!!)

Disneyland Color Television

Here we have a licensed Disney product that offers false advertising (it's not REALLY a color TV), features off-model characters, misspelled names (Davy? Davey?) and the wonderful line "...Disneyland and his friends." Ya gotta love it!

The Big Red Machine

Well yesterday was Opening Day which in the Cincinnati area is akin to a major holiday with school closings, parties, parades, etc. Here’s a slightly late tie-in, a nicely caricatured rendition of the 1970’s Big Red Machine, courtesy of the artist, Daerick Gross (INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE). Mister G sent this along with a nice note recently after I ran several pieces he did for the CINCINNATI POST as a staff illustrator back in the day. These were the Cincinnati Reds at their best—Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, Dave Concepcion, Joe Morgan...Ahhh, those really were the days. I wouldn’t recognize a Red now if I saw one. Thanks, Daerick!

Nobody's Perfect

It’s funny how the mind works. This morning I caught a few hilarious minutes of a Peter Sellers Inspector Clouseau movie and found myself remembering this short-lived and forgotten TV series. NOBODY’S PERFECT had a brief run on ABC in the summer of 1980 but had actually been filmed a year or more earlier. Designed as a sort of TV version of Clouseau it starred the versatile British actor Ron Moody (Fagin in OLIVER a decade earlier) as bumbling Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Roger Hart on loan to the San Francisco Police Department. It had originally been on the previous year’s prime time schedule as HART IN SAN FRANCISCO (Hold the obvious Tony Bennett jokes. I’m sure they were everywhere at the time.) but was replaced by James Gregory’s DETECTIVE SCHOOL (featuring ancient Douglas Fowley as "Robert Redford."). Neither was particularly funny. NOBODY’S PERFECT owes its unsuccessful off-season run to ABC’s attempt to at least earn a little back on its investment in the otherwise wasted episodes. Moody was great as the klutzy, accident-prone detective but, like Alan Arkin and Steve Martin, his real problem (even though he was not actually playing Clouseau) was that he was NOT Peter Sellers.

Comicpacs

Any kid growing up in the sixties will undoubtedly remember these or some variation of same. This ad from 1962 shows an "official" bag of 4 DC comics (with a penny savings!) but every mom and pop grocery, carry-out, pony keg, etc. would, at some time or other, carry bagged comics. You could see what the front and back one were but you had to take your chance with the middle one. Usually these were "stripped" comics (with at least the top third of their covers removed) that had been reported as returned by the "reputable" newsdealers but somehow got bagged and sold for a 100 percent profit by perfectly nice folk who just didn't get that they were doing anything wrong! I still have a lot of coverless comics from these kind of bags, some of which are labeled "3 comics for 25 cents!" In fact, every once in awhile I STILL see comic packs although now they're usually non-returnable issues that turn up in 3 for 3.99 packs in drugstores and such.