mikemovies, that would be “Robot Monster”, the movie so horrible, it wasn’t released … it escaped ! Watch Ro-Man tune his WW II surplus radio bubble-machine on a kitchen table outside his cave in the Western desert.
Featuring the timeless performance of Selena Royle.
Stephen King once wrote that, if the film had been fifteen minutes longer, he may have laughed himself into a hernia while watching it.
BklynJim, as you may have surmised, I couldn’t agree with your last post more !
Lost Memory, I had had a similar thought about posting my address here. “the stalker might show up at your house for dinner.” Like Dr. Hannibal Lecter having his old friend, Dr. Chilton, for dinner ?
Trivia For Dummies ? How about “Dummy Trivia” ?
No, Lost Memory, we liked your plaster lesson fine. As for bricks, how about the orange and yellow Kreuscher bricks that most of the houses in Ridgewood are made of ? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s brick lesson, “The Cask Of Amontillado” ?
Thanks in advance, BklynJim. Patience is my middle name. It’s good to know you got “tingled” at the RKO Bushwick in the late 1950’s. I had to wait until late September 1988 at Film Forum in lower Manhattan. As a bonus, a staff member ran around the cinema, shaking a two-foot long rubber tingler at the audience !
robbie dupree : I remember “Five Easy Pieces”, and am also reminded of Janis doing Kris Kristofferson’s (?) “Me And Bobby McGee”.
Also Keith Richards' maternal grandfather, Au(gus)tus DuPre, from whence he got his love of music.
Thanks, BklynJim, I shall look forward to that. Good point you made about the enthsiasm for, and love of, movies, and of movie theaters, that is behind much of the “O/T” posting here. True, there’s only so much you can say about plaster, masonry, Wurlitzer organs, NYC title deeds and searches, carpets, marble stairs, mirrors, handrails, balustrades, chandeliers, boxes, grand tiers, drinking fountains, refreshment counters, lobby cards, before people begin to lose interest.
mikemovies, I agree with you about Lost Memory. He should NOT leave. Make the trivia questions as easy or as difficult as you wish. Yes, I would enjoy horror movie questions. You never heard of some of the movies I talk about ? Good. You can learn from me, then.
frankie, I have never seen “Stolen Face”, though I have heard of it. I HAVE seen “Les Yeux Sans Visage”, a.k.a. “Eyes Without A Face” and “Horror Chamber Of Dr. Faustus”.
You’re welcome, Charlie S. I’m glad you liked “Bushwick Buddies”. Yes, the area IS making a comeback. You and robbie dupree are in agreement about the former Embassy matrons.
robbie dupree, you’re welcome to the names of those gimmicks. Re : REVOLTING, in March 1972 the film “Mark Of The Devil” was playing at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood (theater # 4621 on this site) and the gimmick was, this film is so DISGUSTING, you will receive a free vomit bag with the price of admission. You are right about the electric shocks in some of the seats for “The Tingler”. In that film, you get to see Price inject himself with “LSD25” and hear him say to his wife and cat, “You two have met ? In the same alley, perhaps ?”
No, I have seen neither “Matinee” nor “It Came From Hollywood”, but I am sure I would enjoy both, as I enjoyed the 1994 film “Ed Wood”.
Thanks, BklynJim, how do I get my DVD sampler mailed to me ? Post my home address here ?
I like “Mah-Nah Mah-Nah”, also, especially on Red Skelton, fall 1969, with that lunar landing scene.
But during the first Godzilla movie ? You guys should work for Mystery Science Theater 3000 !
Lost Memory, you like Kool and the Gang also ? Have you noticed how they started out sounding like a black self-parody with “Jungle Boogie” in early 1974, then sounded whiter and whiter, and sounded whitest of all with “Cherish The Night” in 1985 ?
My best friend and I always dug that bass riff in their summer 1974 hit, “Hollywood Swingin”.
Lost Memory, I’ve gotten used to my high heels. It’s that 18-hour push-up bra that still bothers me.
jackeboy, I wouldn’t call the US version of Godzilla a “cheesy monster movie”, because, for me, it still evokes the dread and terror of the “demon lizard from hell”. I had said oboe in the background, in a previous post, but it may be a bassoon instead, doing the duet with those stark, grim piano chords.
Besides “Ran”, did Kurasawa also do a version of “Rashomon” ?
“We all know Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da, but can you show me where you are ?”
– Beatles (Harrison), “Savoy Truffle”, White Album, 1968
“he is King Misogynist !!!” Are there any women posting on this site ? I think you might mean King Misanthrope Curmudgeon.
I’ve seen both American and Japanese versions of “Godzilla” and have enjoyed them both. In the original Japanese release, the Japanese characters more or less speak for themselves. In the American release, they are more like “props” that the Raymond Burr character talks about. Yet, I still love Raymond Burr’s grim, doomy, purple lines, heard over those views of Tokyo in smoking ruins, about “the odor of scorched flesh” and “the living hell of another world” and “for some, there would BE no tomorrow”, with that grim, stark, low oboe and piano music in the background.
BklynJim, 6 / 14,300 = 0.0004196 = 0.04196 %, which is 4.2 percent of a percent. I agree, hardly worth getting anyone’s BVD’s, panties, thong or otherwise, into a knot.
Just for chuckles, what six theaters are those ?
“It’s my hope …” Yes, mine, too, and I couldn’t agree with you more !
It mentions arrests at a Bund rally at Ridgewood Grove Arena in the 1930’s.
Lost Memory, that’s a great description of the German movies that once played at the Wagner Theater. Before reading this, I had known of Hans Albers only as a bandleader, with a hit single, “La Paloma”, on the jukebox at the Elco Bar at Seneca and Weirfield in summer 1969.
That Elco jukebox also had recordings by Whoopi Wuhlfahrt and the Six Fat Dutchmen !
I think there have been jokes here about the [Richard] Wagner Theater, and the Arion Theater really being the Aryan Theater.
Bushwick is indeed making a comeback. You might want to join the “Bushwick Buddies” website by contacting the site mistress, Eleanor, at :
For robbie dupree :
“House On Haunted Hill” …. in bone-chilling Emergo !
“Mr. Sardonicus” … with Punishment Poll !
“The Tingler” … in spine-tingling Percepto !
Film Forum in lower Manhattan had them all in fall 1988, complete with their original gimmicks, in its “Gimmick-O-Rama”. Together with their summer 1988 sci fantasy and horror festival, it was a real one-two punch !
I personally can verify it operating as a porn cinema in 1968, showing titles like “The Devil’s Bed” and “Let’s Play Doctor”. I lived with my mother’s family, four blocks northeast of the Wagner Theater at that time.
Well, BklynJim, He’s got a lot of ‘em in His service now. The Loew’s Gates Theater is now the Pilgrim Baptist Church, and the Empire Theater at Broadway, Ralph and Lexington Avenues is also now a church. You may want to attend a service at one of these churches when you return, simply to get inside one of these old theaters again.
Oh, and Loew’s Valencia is now the Tabernacle Of Prayer For All People.
“I remember my father taking me to a huge movie palace on Broadway just west of Broadway Junction about 1958 near Granite st. anyone remember what theater this was?”
Charlie S., that was probably the Colonial Theater, 1746 Broadway, on the southwest side of Bway, also bounded by Rockaway Avenue and Chauncey Street, entrance on Bway at Moffat Street. It has its own page on this site. It is now the Wayside Baptist Church.
Yes, EdSolero, I had wondered myself about those out-of-context day-for-night shots of Lugosi walking around in a grassy field in his Count Dracula outfit.
I only saw “The Black Sleep” once on TV when I was a kid, and a mention of it in “Monster World” also back then, spring 1965. John Carradine played a resurrected Crusader fanatic, shouting something about the Holy Land, and “Kill, kill, kill !” The still from it in
“Monster World” showed both Carradine and Johnson.
You can try shopping for it on the IMDb to see if it’s on DVD.
I saw “Mesa Of Lost Women”, but not as a kid, not the Miklos Rozsa “hairy men” film I mentioned above. I saw it at Film Forum in lower Manhattan the summer of 1988 on a double bill with “Plan 9” plus a Captain Marvel episode. It starred Jackie Coogan as a mad scientist, almost unrecognizable, because he wore heavy black-framed glasses, and had false hair.
Lost Memory, that’s correct about Lugosi. He was replaced by Ed Wood’s chiropractor, who was eight inches taller and did not resemble Lugosi in the slightest.
Tor Johnson also appeared with Lugosi in “Bride Of The Monster” and in “Night Of The Ghouls”, which was a sequel to either “Bride” or “Plan 9”. It stayed unreleased for many years because Wood was broke, and unable to pay the lab bill to process the film !
I have all three Ed Wood films on the same VHS at home.
I think “Bride Of The Monster” was the last film that Lugosi lived through the completion of.
mikemovies, I practically know “Plan 9” by heart. One of my favorite lines (among many) is when the airline pilot says to the stewardess :
“Say ! How about you and me balling it up when we get to Albuquerque ?”
I think I saw “Mesa Of Lost Women” on TV as a kid. An air force bomber crash lands on the mesa to Miklos Rozsa film music I’d heard earlier in the George Reeves “Superman” TV show, and the “lost women” make reference to “the hairy men” when they speak with the bomber crew.
“The Brain Eaters” I haven’t seen. I seem to be in more danger from
“The Fan Site That Ate My Brain”.
I’m reminded of my bus ride past Loew’s Kings on Flatbush Avenue this past Thursday July 20, 2006. I knew roughly where it was, and had my eye out for it. Then (pleasant surprise !) I actually saw the name “Kings” in two places on the marquee.
Then I got an idea of the true size of the auditorium, when I looked above the marquee and saw its roofline looming several stories above adjacent lower buildings, like the profile of the back of a brontosaurus walking through low trees and brush, and protruding above it.
mikemovies, that would be “Robot Monster”, the movie so horrible, it wasn’t released … it escaped ! Watch Ro-Man tune his WW II surplus radio bubble-machine on a kitchen table outside his cave in the Western desert.
Featuring the timeless performance of Selena Royle.
Stephen King once wrote that, if the film had been fifteen minutes longer, he may have laughed himself into a hernia while watching it.
BklynJim, as you may have surmised, I couldn’t agree with your last post more !
Lost Memory, I had had a similar thought about posting my address here. “the stalker might show up at your house for dinner.” Like Dr. Hannibal Lecter having his old friend, Dr. Chilton, for dinner ?
Trivia For Dummies ? How about “Dummy Trivia” ?
No, Lost Memory, we liked your plaster lesson fine. As for bricks, how about the orange and yellow Kreuscher bricks that most of the houses in Ridgewood are made of ? Or Edgar Allan Poe’s brick lesson, “The Cask Of Amontillado” ?
As for “bricks with a p” ….
In pace requiescat !
Thanks in advance, BklynJim. Patience is my middle name. It’s good to know you got “tingled” at the RKO Bushwick in the late 1950’s. I had to wait until late September 1988 at Film Forum in lower Manhattan. As a bonus, a staff member ran around the cinema, shaking a two-foot long rubber tingler at the audience !
robbie dupree : I remember “Five Easy Pieces”, and am also reminded of Janis doing Kris Kristofferson’s (?) “Me And Bobby McGee”.
Also Keith Richards' maternal grandfather, Au(gus)tus DuPre, from whence he got his love of music.
Thanks, BklynJim, I shall look forward to that. Good point you made about the enthsiasm for, and love of, movies, and of movie theaters, that is behind much of the “O/T” posting here. True, there’s only so much you can say about plaster, masonry, Wurlitzer organs, NYC title deeds and searches, carpets, marble stairs, mirrors, handrails, balustrades, chandeliers, boxes, grand tiers, drinking fountains, refreshment counters, lobby cards, before people begin to lose interest.
mikemovies, I agree with you about Lost Memory. He should NOT leave. Make the trivia questions as easy or as difficult as you wish. Yes, I would enjoy horror movie questions. You never heard of some of the movies I talk about ? Good. You can learn from me, then.
frankie, I have never seen “Stolen Face”, though I have heard of it. I HAVE seen “Les Yeux Sans Visage”, a.k.a. “Eyes Without A Face” and “Horror Chamber Of Dr. Faustus”.
You’re welcome, Charlie S. I’m glad you liked “Bushwick Buddies”. Yes, the area IS making a comeback. You and robbie dupree are in agreement about the former Embassy matrons.
robbie dupree, you’re welcome to the names of those gimmicks. Re : REVOLTING, in March 1972 the film “Mark Of The Devil” was playing at the RKO Madison Theater in Ridgewood (theater # 4621 on this site) and the gimmick was, this film is so DISGUSTING, you will receive a free vomit bag with the price of admission. You are right about the electric shocks in some of the seats for “The Tingler”. In that film, you get to see Price inject himself with “LSD25” and hear him say to his wife and cat, “You two have met ? In the same alley, perhaps ?”
No, I have seen neither “Matinee” nor “It Came From Hollywood”, but I am sure I would enjoy both, as I enjoyed the 1994 film “Ed Wood”.
Thanks, EdSolero.
The links to KenRoe’s photos may be found above at :
posted by KenRoe on Jul 3, 2006 at 6:44pm
Thanks, BklynJim, how do I get my DVD sampler mailed to me ? Post my home address here ?
I like “Mah-Nah Mah-Nah”, also, especially on Red Skelton, fall 1969, with that lunar landing scene.
But during the first Godzilla movie ? You guys should work for Mystery Science Theater 3000 !
Lost Memory, you like Kool and the Gang also ? Have you noticed how they started out sounding like a black self-parody with “Jungle Boogie” in early 1974, then sounded whiter and whiter, and sounded whitest of all with “Cherish The Night” in 1985 ?
My best friend and I always dug that bass riff in their summer 1974 hit, “Hollywood Swingin”.
Lost Memory, I’ve gotten used to my high heels. It’s that 18-hour push-up bra that still bothers me.
jackeboy, I wouldn’t call the US version of Godzilla a “cheesy monster movie”, because, for me, it still evokes the dread and terror of the “demon lizard from hell”. I had said oboe in the background, in a previous post, but it may be a bassoon instead, doing the duet with those stark, grim piano chords.
Besides “Ran”, did Kurasawa also do a version of “Rashomon” ?
“On ladies night I’m also Patsy. LOL”
“We all know Ob-La-Di-Bla-Da, but can you show me where you are ?”
– Beatles (Harrison), “Savoy Truffle”, White Album, 1968
“he is King Misogynist !!!” Are there any women posting on this site ? I think you might mean King Misanthrope Curmudgeon.
I’ve seen both American and Japanese versions of “Godzilla” and have enjoyed them both. In the original Japanese release, the Japanese characters more or less speak for themselves. In the American release, they are more like “props” that the Raymond Burr character talks about. Yet, I still love Raymond Burr’s grim, doomy, purple lines, heard over those views of Tokyo in smoking ruins, about “the odor of scorched flesh” and “the living hell of another world” and “for some, there would BE no tomorrow”, with that grim, stark, low oboe and piano music in the background.
You’re welcome, Lost Memory. And thank YOU !
BklynJim, 6 / 14,300 = 0.0004196 = 0.04196 %, which is 4.2 percent of a percent. I agree, hardly worth getting anyone’s BVD’s, panties, thong or otherwise, into a knot.
Just for chuckles, what six theaters are those ?
“It’s my hope …” Yes, mine, too, and I couldn’t agree with you more !
I got 4 out of 5 correct on the Tor trivia test. Better than I thought I would do. Thanks, mikemovies.
Lost Memory, rather than guess, I will let Warren speak for himself.
Thanks, Lost Memory.
Everyone follow the bouncing swastika ! Can you say “Leni Riefenstahl ?” I KNEW you could !
Segue to Mel Brooks' “The Producers” ….
Here’s the link to the latest Times Newsweekly “Our Neighborhood” article about Nazi sympathizers in Ridgewood in the past :
View link
It mentions arrests at a Bund rally at Ridgewood Grove Arena in the 1930’s.
Lost Memory, that’s a great description of the German movies that once played at the Wagner Theater. Before reading this, I had known of Hans Albers only as a bandleader, with a hit single, “La Paloma”, on the jukebox at the Elco Bar at Seneca and Weirfield in summer 1969.
That Elco jukebox also had recordings by Whoopi Wuhlfahrt and the Six Fat Dutchmen !
I think there have been jokes here about the [Richard] Wagner Theater, and the Arion Theater really being the Aryan Theater.
Postfreiht macht frei !
You’re welcome, Charlie S.
Bushwick is indeed making a comeback. You might want to join the “Bushwick Buddies” website by contacting the site mistress, Eleanor, at :
For robbie dupree :
“House On Haunted Hill” …. in bone-chilling Emergo !
“Mr. Sardonicus” … with Punishment Poll !
“The Tingler” … in spine-tingling Percepto !
Film Forum in lower Manhattan had them all in fall 1988, complete with their original gimmicks, in its “Gimmick-O-Rama”. Together with their summer 1988 sci fantasy and horror festival, it was a real one-two punch !
I personally can verify it operating as a porn cinema in 1968, showing titles like “The Devil’s Bed” and “Let’s Play Doctor”. I lived with my mother’s family, four blocks northeast of the Wagner Theater at that time.
Interesting that the Valencia part of the ad, under “Vaudeville”, mentions Borrah Minevitch, with, presumably, his “Harmonica Rascals”.
Well, BklynJim, He’s got a lot of ‘em in His service now. The Loew’s Gates Theater is now the Pilgrim Baptist Church, and the Empire Theater at Broadway, Ralph and Lexington Avenues is also now a church. You may want to attend a service at one of these churches when you return, simply to get inside one of these old theaters again.
Oh, and Loew’s Valencia is now the Tabernacle Of Prayer For All People.
“I remember my father taking me to a huge movie palace on Broadway just west of Broadway Junction about 1958 near Granite st. anyone remember what theater this was?”
Charlie S., that was probably the Colonial Theater, 1746 Broadway, on the southwest side of Bway, also bounded by Rockaway Avenue and Chauncey Street, entrance on Bway at Moffat Street. It has its own page on this site. It is now the Wayside Baptist Church.
Yes, EdSolero, I had wondered myself about those out-of-context day-for-night shots of Lugosi walking around in a grassy field in his Count Dracula outfit.
You’re welcome, Lost Memory.
I only saw “The Black Sleep” once on TV when I was a kid, and a mention of it in “Monster World” also back then, spring 1965. John Carradine played a resurrected Crusader fanatic, shouting something about the Holy Land, and “Kill, kill, kill !” The still from it in
“Monster World” showed both Carradine and Johnson.
You can try shopping for it on the IMDb to see if it’s on DVD.
I saw “Mesa Of Lost Women”, but not as a kid, not the Miklos Rozsa “hairy men” film I mentioned above. I saw it at Film Forum in lower Manhattan the summer of 1988 on a double bill with “Plan 9” plus a Captain Marvel episode. It starred Jackie Coogan as a mad scientist, almost unrecognizable, because he wore heavy black-framed glasses, and had false hair.
Lost Memory, that’s correct about Lugosi. He was replaced by Ed Wood’s chiropractor, who was eight inches taller and did not resemble Lugosi in the slightest.
Tor Johnson also appeared with Lugosi in “Bride Of The Monster” and in “Night Of The Ghouls”, which was a sequel to either “Bride” or “Plan 9”. It stayed unreleased for many years because Wood was broke, and unable to pay the lab bill to process the film !
I have all three Ed Wood films on the same VHS at home.
I think “Bride Of The Monster” was the last film that Lugosi lived through the completion of.
mikemovies, I practically know “Plan 9” by heart. One of my favorite lines (among many) is when the airline pilot says to the stewardess :
“Say ! How about you and me balling it up when we get to Albuquerque ?”
I think I saw “Mesa Of Lost Women” on TV as a kid. An air force bomber crash lands on the mesa to Miklos Rozsa film music I’d heard earlier in the George Reeves “Superman” TV show, and the “lost women” make reference to “the hairy men” when they speak with the bomber crew.
“The Brain Eaters” I haven’t seen. I seem to be in more danger from
“The Fan Site That Ate My Brain”.
I’m reminded of my bus ride past Loew’s Kings on Flatbush Avenue this past Thursday July 20, 2006. I knew roughly where it was, and had my eye out for it. Then (pleasant surprise !) I actually saw the name “Kings” in two places on the marquee.
Then I got an idea of the true size of the auditorium, when I looked above the marquee and saw its roofline looming several stories above adjacent lower buildings, like the profile of the back of a brontosaurus walking through low trees and brush, and protruding above it.