Owner, operator, and fuzzy retro feelers giver at NightmareNostalgia.com.
Worshipper of our Lord and savior Boo Berry, Patti is a seasoned pro having written for the top horror websites and magazines over the past few years until she decided to go balls to the wall and make her own focusing on pure feel-good nostalgia. Mom to two humans and three furballs.
Ahhh… The dog days of Summer are finally upon us. BBQ’s, trips to the beach, and countless cannonballs of glory into swimming pools are a given thanks to the scorching heat. And hey, if happen to reside in Satan’s Armpit, I mean the desert much like myself and dealing with 115 degrees plus these next few months, chances are you’re going to want to crawl into the shadiest corner of your home and live like a true desert rat. However, if you also happen to be a Godzilla fan like myself then we can now bless the rains down in Africa and COMET TV for giving us a monster of a Summer with a full three months of Toho dreams!
Beginning on May 27th, COMET will be airing two double-header national treasures every Sunday through the first weekend in September. The first each night featuring the undisputed King of the Monsters and the second starring some lesser-known monsters in the Kaiju universe. From the 1954 debut of Gojira, to Destroy All Monsters, all the way to campy classics like Konga, I’m grabbing a frozen banana pop and chilling out with giant monsters this Summer.
They’re slimy,. They crawl, and go splat.. splat.. and SPLAAAAAT!!!
There’s no doubt about it. Nothing sounds more nostalgic, (and frankly funnier than shit) than producing with your little hands, slimy bugs to set upon Dad’s forehead while he snoozes away on the couch once upon a lazy Sunday afternoon. The familiar freshly-baked Plasti-Goop smell all 90’s kids will instantly recognize is something we all collectively can agree was the jam back in the day. And it seems some things never change, as in recent news via Variety, Paramount has snagged up those slimy rights an official Creepy Crawlers live-action film has been greenlit for production!
Be still my gooey heart.
Anywho, yes nostalgic boils and ghouls. The testosterone infused Easy-Bake-Oven childhood relic is getting its own film from the same people who brought Goosebumps to life on the big screen. While that’s pretty much all that’s known thus far, I can (because I’m a positive thinker) make a fair assumption a similar formula may be followed and it’s going to be a fun piece of nostalgic entertainment. However with this in mind, did you know this isn’t the first time Creepy Crawlers has been adapted onto on-screen entertainment?
With the success of a certain rip-off concerning dino-mite, morphing Japanese superheroes, Saban Entertainment tried their hands in the animation department with, what else, the Creepy Crawlers line! I often wonder what these pitches in the writer’s room sound like to everyone else sitting around a table. Like, “Hey! You know that slime crap that bakes into bugs that annoys the crap outta parents?! Let’s make a series about that!” Then again, the glorious era we speak of was very keen to nabbing up R-Rated programming like Tales From the Cryptand The Toxic Avenger and making them kid-friendly for Saturday mornings. Man… did we have it made or what?!
The Creepy Crawlers series debuted in the US in October 1994 with the simple premise of goodies vs baddies. Except the kicker is, the Creepy Crawler hybrid monsters portrayed in the series were indeed the good guys! And of course, they had to have a pint-sized human sidekick to move the story along and enter humanoid kid Chris. The series kicks off with Chris who is fascinated by magic and wizardry, working in a magic shop under the kind of nutty magician Professor Googengrime. And yes, he looks just like you would think with a name like that. Anyway, the talented little Chris builds and develops something he calls “The Magic Maker”. Which of course, is supposed to mimic the Creepy Crawlers toy oven. Googengrime dismisses it as garbage but unbeknownest to him will be the source of power becoming the bane of his very existence. Now here where a show about mutant bugs gets weird:Â Once-every-thousand-years, a planetary alignment called by Googenbrime the Magical Millennium Moment, rains down cosmic energies. As fate would have it, these lights rain down on the magic shop, which somehow made the Magic Maker capable of creating strange, man-sized bug/magic trick composite mutant creatures. Enter the Creepy Crawlers mutants Hocus Locust, Volt Jolt and T-3 and now we have a series that pits the buggy monstrosities along with Chris against the evil Googengrime who duh, now wants the Magic Maker for world-domination purposes. More Creepy Crawlers hybrids came later in the series, however, the original three named above we’re the main focus for most of the series run.
Creepy Crawlers the Animated Series only lasted two seasons with a total of 23 episodes. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that remembers the cartoon with a nostalgic fondness and I’m not so sure why that is?! Personally, I think it’s a fun, run-of-the-mill Saturday morning gem that reminds me a little of early Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes. In any regard, I can always appreciate any attempt at basing a cartoon off of a beloved horror-themed product of our childhood.
Special shout out to YouTube uploader Bsh for posting the first full episode of the series! So if you’re interested in the origins of buggy heroes, grab yourself a bowl of cereal and make Saturday Morning a party!
Nightmare Nostalgia Presents Creature Feature: An ongoing tip of the hat to some of horror’s greatest monsters throughout the genre that don’t seem to get the recognition they wholeheartedly deserve.Â
On the heels of a recent Poltergeist II movie anniversary and what would have been the 98th birthday of one Julian Beck, we won’t just tip any hat, but our oversized black felt-wool head-huggers and sing the gospel of all the “Holy Temples” to the man who gave everything, including his failing health, to a character that will forever be burned into our brains as one of the downright scariest in horror history.
Born on May 31, 1925, Julian Beck wore many hats in the entertainment business, not just the creepy pastor topper we’ve all come to associate him with via Poltergeist II. The on-screen preacher began his love affair with the arts and dabbled in painting abstract expressionist pieces in the early 1940’s until meeting his future wife, Judith Malina who had a tremendously immense passion for the theatre. The love-connection turned into theater history and the pair later founded the prestigious, and often controversial, Living Theater which focused on giving the audience an immersive and shocking experience to take home, reflect, and learn from. Beck, a self-proclaimed anarchist who on several occasions had plenty of trouble with the law, lived by the saying, “If one can experiment in theater, one can experiment in life.” With close to 40 years of embracing these types of convictions inside and out of the theater, Beck’s finest hour came (kind of ironically), in the on-screen role as a passed-on pastor from another time who beat to his own drum as well. I’d say in a way more terrifying and psychotic manner, but you catch my drift here.
Keeping in horror franchise tradition, (although usually via accident-you never know if a sequel will follow) we normally don’t get a whole lot of backstory on the main antagonist. As a matter of fact, the name of Henry Kane was never mentioned once during the first film. Good ole’ Tangina warned of a malevolent presence in the home that she referred to as only, “the beast”. The Other Side, the follow-up four years after the original Cuesta Verde neighborhood nightmare gives us all the answers and a face to said beast with, of course, Julian Beck. And because of his creepy ass performance, I briskly walk a little bit faster past any senior living communities.
His soft-spoken demeanor could go from 0-100 real quick during his little temper tantrums, giving way to a visual about 8,000 teeth in the man’s mouth. Of course, I’m exaggerating a tad but I’d call you a liar if you didn’t think he had an extra set of chompers in there when his face twisted with anger. Besides angry dentures and walking around softly singing culty hymns, Kane’s dagger of a stare was enough on its own to make you avoid this dude walking down the street. Proving that an over-abundant amount of gore and make-up aren’t needed to give someone the skeevies. Not to take anything away from Kane’s other forms in the film including that incredibly EPIC H.R. Giger Tequila-Worm vomit monster (played by Noble Craig). But as Carol Anne said herself in Poltergeist III, “remember, less is more.”
Unfortunately, however, Beck’s look of a resurrected corpse throughout the film wasn’t movie magic but due to a 1983 diagnosis of the often fatal pancreatic cancer. Beck knew his days on Earth were coming to an end and gave everything he had to the role that launched his name into horror infamy. Often in pain on set, and if you look closely into his eyes via the clip above it’s painfully obvious, Beck used his unfortunate circumstances and threw himself into the role of the nefarious cult leader. Little Heather O’Rourke herself was so frightened by his unfiltered skeletal appearance, she burst into tears upon the pair’s first meeting.
I would have run like a bitch too sweetheart.
Today on the anniversary of the life of one Julian Beck, we appreciate his dedication to a role that was to be his last, and sadly never lived to see on screen. I can also appreciate that due to the Kane character, I’ve never wanted to open my door on a rainy day; especially to an elderly gentleman on the other end. Thanks for the eternal nightmares Reverend.
