Go Ahead, Waste My Time

Yes, my title is a really lousy rendition of the "Go ahead, make my day" line as uttered by Clint Eastwood in Sudden Impact. But it's relevant because this post is about a website dedicated to some of the cheesiest lines ever spoken in action movies. The Quotable Action Hero blog is guaranteed to waste at least fifteen minutes of your life. So what's weird about it? It may just be a matter of opinion, but these are not your typical quotations. In fact, if the blog author didn't include the movie's name along with the quote, I would have no idea where most of these lines came from. What do you think?

Psych-Out

Once you have experienced the 1968 film PSYCH-OUT, you will be unable to return to your square, plastic, uptight lifestyle. Just the sight of Jack Nicholson's fake ponytail alone will trip you out!

George Putnam, RIP

TV newscaster George Putnam has died. Read his LOS ANGELES TIMES obituary here.

Putnam was frequently cited as the inspiration for the Ted Baxter character on THE MARY TYLER MOORE show.

Make your own judgment based on the videos below.

Virgin Sacrifice

VIRGIN SACRIFICE completes the trilogy of films contained on a single disc I recently netflixed. We covered the other two--WILD WOMEN OF WONGO--and BOWANGA BOWANGA--here and here.

VIRGIN SACRIFICE was the second-best, after WONGO but before BOWANGA. You're getting the juciest bits in the clip here. But there is a scene in the film not present in the trailer, a shot that lingers on the completely bare breasts of the (white woman) sacrificial victim for longer than a subliminal moment. I thought that highly unusual for the era, but as we are reminded at this site chronicling the history of sex in the cinema, such moments have existed since motion pictures began.

Follies of the Mad Men #15

[From Life for May 22 1964.]

Our booze appeals mainly to Eighteenth-century highwaymen.

Wild Women of Wongo

I'm just now recovered from my viewing of THE WILD WOMEN OF WONGO. But I still cannot say what my favorite moment is from the film. Perhaps the wild dance ordered by the High Priestess. Perhaps the endless scene where our heroine, the cute-as-a-button redhead Jean Hawkshaw, to the right here, wrestles underwater with a rubber alligator.

You'll have to decide for yourself. First, take a look at the unfortunately bleached-out trailer. Then view the whole film--in glorious "Pathecolor"--on YouTube, in several parts, with the first one featured after the trailer.

Also on YouTube is the MST3K version.

The South Will Collect Its Pensions Again!

How weird is it that there are still Confederate Widows alive? Although one named Maudie Hopkins died just recently, experts claim there are still other women alive who were once married to men who fought for the Confederacy. Obviously this bestselling novel will still have relevance for some time yet.

Bowanga Bowanga

BOWANGA BOWANGA, or "The White Sirens of Africa," is a lot less fun over sixty minutes of viewing than this select snippet pretends. So be content with what you see here, and save yourself a rental.

Follies of the Mad Men #13

[From Fortune for December 1945. Two scans, top and bottom.]

There is nothing spectacularly "weird" about this particular entry in our series, except that the artist is William Steig, the famed illustrator and author responsible, most notably in Hollywood terms, for Shrek. It's curious to see him turning his talents to advertising during his early career, as so many artists who later grew rich and famous once did.

Perhaps the true vestige of weirdness here, though, is the image of the proud boy wearing his Jughead cap. You can learn about the history of the Jughead beanie and how to make such a cap yourself at Juggie's Wikipedia page. Or perhaps you'd want to buy one readymade, either here or here.

But maybe you want to go for the entire Jughead look!

Head Out on the Highway

Yesterday we spoke of cursed movies that affected cast and crew alone. Today, we'll look at movies that emit curses--in the form of copycat incidents.

Can it possibly be that the 1993 movie titled THE PROGRAM is still exerting its malign influence, causing dumb-ass teens to lie down on the center stripe of highways, as described in this fifteen-year-old article from The New York Times?

What makes me think so? An identical fresh incident from my own home state, as recounted in this article.

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.