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markncarlyle
Reviews
How Do You Like Your Eggs? (1977)
Not this way . . .
Two way interaction would seem to be a natural for a television game show. HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR EGGS? showed the world (or at least, the Columbus, Ohio area) that the idea looked better on paper than it did when brought to the television viewing public.
Using the experimental QUBE interactive system developed by the Warner Cable system, the game itself consisted of two married couples whose job it was to guess the outcome of a series of survey questions asked of the at-home audience. Unlike FAMILY FEUD, the at-home viewers were answering these questions in real-time, as the show was being broadcast. Each half of the couple predicted which answer they thought would be the most popular among the five (later four) choices, alternating between the couples for each round. If one member of the couple was correct, the couple received one point; if both answered correctly, they received two points, and a chance to steal a point from their opponents (or possibly lose one of their points). This would go back and forth until one couple scored a minimum of five points, for which they won an Atari Super Pong 10 set, and would go on to a bonus round in which they could win a portable color TV (the losing couple got dinner for two at a local restaurant).
If the premise sounds complicated, it was even more so when watching the show itself. The overly complex rules of the game slowed down the pace of the game; not a very good thing for a quiz show. The bouncing back and forth between the couples, rather than having all the contestants try to answer in each round, didn't help either, and neither did having the winners declared only after a set number of points were reached (instead of the couple with the most points at the end of regulation play). This caused one episode to end with neither couple being declared the winner (they were asked to come back for the next show, but only one couple did). And it would be rather difficult to believe that married couples would be standing in line to appear on a show for a chance to win a video game.
But the show's biggest flaw was in the use of the QUBE system. In order for the real-time interaction of the home audience, the show would have to be broadcast live. Anybody who knows anything about live TV knows that anything can happen, and often does. Technical difficulties can hamper any live broadcast. And although nothing tremendously awful happened during any of the four experimental episodes, surviving footage of other QUBE-based programs proved that the system could (and did) break down at times. Had this happened during a HDYLYE live broadcast, the results could have been very embarrassing for everyone involved with the show. As it was, three of the four episodes ran over the 30-minute mark. Not a very efficient use of time.
But kudos have to be given to the show's host, Bill Cullen. He does his best to keep the show going, no matter how much the show's pacing drags. Always upbeat, he is easily the one thing the producer's got right with HDYLYE. One has to wonder what was going through Cullen's mind, though, as it became painfully apparent that this was a sinking ship, and there was ultimately no way of fixing it.
All said, this was not the worst game show I've ever seen (1967's REACH FOR THE STARS would probably take that dishonor), just one that was ultimately not very well thought out, overly complicated, and would not likely hold the interest of a nationwide audience. As of this writing, all four episodes are available for viewing on YouTube, so you can see for yourself of how ideas, no matter how sincere, can come up just short of the best intentions.
Sons of Satan (1973)
A Very Missed Opportunity
Gay porn has its camp elements. Vampire movies also have their camp moments. Therefore, one would think that SONS OF SATAN would be a high velocity campfest. Unfortunately, gay porn pioneer Tom DeSimone (using the alias Lancer Brooks) has combined these two promising genres, and come up with a 67-minute snoozefest.
The runaway success of DEEP THROAT made storylines de rigueur in porno flicks. And sometimes, the results could be very clever or, at least, interesting. And that's what makes watching SONS OF SATAN so frustrating: the "coulda-been" factor.
A young man goes in search of his missing brother who, unbeknownst to him, has willingly joined a faction of gay satanist vampires. About half of the movies deals with the brother's indoctrination with the cult; the second half with the discovery of the older brother snooping's in the house, and what happens to him by the end of the movie.
As bland as that short synopsis sounds, the movie is even duller. The majority of the film's short running time is devoted to scenes of gay copulation in various forms, and these go on and on to the point of abject boredom (not unusual in pornographic films). And most of these scenes are statically shot, and from a distance, which doesn't exactly heighten the arousal factor much. And things really go south when the cast is asked to handle the sparse dialogue. The entire cast is so wooden, it's like staring at a lumberyard. Despite the potential campy possibilities inherent here, the cast doesn't seem to be having any fun with it, and therefore, neither does the audience.
But the movie's biggest disappointment has to be the handling of the supernatural elements of its so-called plot. Apparently, in this instance, having gay sex turns young men into vampires (the pre-story sexual orientation of brothers Jonathan and Chase is never mentioned, so we don't know whether they were gay at the outset or not). But since the vampire element is barely even touched upon, it begs the question: why introduce it at all if you're not going do much of anything with it? It just becomes an extemporaneous factor here. And the whole "having gay sex even once will turn a person gay" cliché that seeps through, while it was still a fairly common misconception at the time of the film's initial release, is still pretty sad, especially coming from an openly gay director.
1992's LOVE BITES, for all its faults, at least tried to do something with combining gay sex and the old vampire chestnut. SONS OF SATAN, on the other hand, may go down in cinema history as the first combination gay porn/horror movie. But that's really all that can be said in its favor.
Santa's Christmas Circus (1966)
A Lost Film Found, But is it Worth It?
Until recently, all that seemed to survive of the Kansas City-lensed Christmas matinée film "Santa's Christmas Circus" was the 1 1/2- minute trailer. Then a copy of the entire (1-hour) film happened to be unearthed not too long ago. As with a lot of lost films, the question is whether it was worth finding.
As with any film intended for the relatively extinct kiddie matinée circuit, cost was a big factor. The bookings for these films were limited to weekend matinees, and for holiday themed films, that window of opportunity closed even quicker. So films like SCC were made on the lowest budgets possible, because at 50 cents a ticket, the box office receipts weren't going to be too high.
That being said, it's still quite amazing at how cheap this film looks. The trailer did give some indications of this being an ultra low budget film, but in seeing the actual movie, its catchpenny nature is astounding. It would rival Roger Corman's quickie shooting schedules. It must have been shot in one day; two at the most. A group of about 12 to 15 children join Whizzo the Clown (a popular KC TV host) at his house (?) and pretend to be performers in a quickie "circus". Whizzo, meanwhile, stumbles and mumbles along incoherently, showing them footage of Christmas-themed dioramas, before taking them for a visit to Santa's workshop for a visit shorter than the average child has with a mall Santa.
It can be hard to make criticisms towards a film geared towards small children, but it would be hard to imagine that even a small child in 1966 would have found this film entertaining. Whizzo speaks so quickly and rather softly, so the viewer has a tough time understanding anything he says. His humor is on par with the kind of clown who makes a special appearance at the opening of a supermarket (and generally ends up annoying the shoppers). The children aren't really required to act, except for one girl who's supposed to have the holiday blues (she looks more disinterested than sad), and a pair of tiny tots who are apparently Santa's elves. One little girl has the croupiest cough throughout the entire film, making one wonder how many of the others she infected. What few special effects exist are pretty much on the same level of any episode of "Bewitched". But the biggest disappointment for the kids would probably be that Santa, though top billed, doesn't show up until 3/4 of the way through the movie, and then only for less than 10 of the remaining 15 minutes of running time. Outside of its "lost and found" status, it would be hard to imagine anyone outside of the KC/Topeka area (where Whizzo's TV shows were broadcast, and people still have fond memories of him) having much interest in the happenings on display here.
So you don't get much Santa, and you don't get much of a circus either. I guess I'd rank this one a bit above "The Magic Christmas Tree" in quality, but in the end, I think it'll be a long time before this once lost "classic" is inducted in the National Film Registry.