Old Movies For Young Stoners Bob Calhoun

With superheroes dominating today's multiplexes and streaming channels, we look back at the 1960s, when people got way into superheroes for two years and then got the hell over it.

First, we've got the superhero as a metaphor for American imperialism, racism and police brutality in MR. FREEDOM (1968), a savage satire produced in France and directed by American expat William Klein. In "Mr. Freedom," fellow expat John Abbey (The Sandpiper) plays a sociopathic himbo in red, white and blue football pads who takes a break from beating up Black people to keep the "mixed-up, sniveling crybabies" of France from falling to a communist invasion led by an inflatable Chinese Dragon and a Russian agent clad in a comical amount of foam rubber. Featuring wacked-out visuals that capture the look and feel of French sci-fi comics (think Moebius) and later American dystopian comics such as "Dark Knight Returns" and "The Watchmen." Also starring Donald Pleasance as Mr. Freedom's boss, Dr. Freedom, Delphine Seyrig as Mr. Freedom’s girlfriend, and French pop and jazz legend Serge Gainsbourg. Director William Klein died on the same day that we taped this ep. RIP.

For our B-feature, we go waaaay low budget with "Rat Pfink a Boo Boo" (1966), a ramshackle effort from Ray Dennis Steckler, the mad genius behind the world's first monster musical, "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies." The film starts out as a pretty severe crime drama but then makes one of the most jarring tonal shifts in history when Rat Pfink and his trusty sidekick Boo Boo show up and turn it all into a goofy superhero flick, no doubt inspired by the wave of "Batmania" that swept the nation in 1966 with the brief mega success of TV's BATMAN with Adam West. This one's got some rock and roll numbers + a gorilla (!), causing Philena to ask why dudes are so into apes, a question that the straight cis men on the panel don't have all that good answer for. It's perhaps something we'll have to ponder in a future Ape-isode of OMFYS.

MR. FREEDOM is streaming on Criterion Channel. RAT PFINK A BOO BOO is on tubi + it's including in Severin Films' upcoming "The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler" blu-ray boxset. The set also includes "Wild Guitar," "The Thrill Killers," and "Incredibly Strange Creatures..." among others + intros by Joe Bob Briggs. Go to severinfilms.com for more info.

Weed is at your local dispensary. If you get it on the streets, we don't need to know.

Hosts: Philena Franklin, Cory Sklar, Greg Franklin, Bob Calhoun
Co-producers: Bob Calhoun & Cory Sklar

In our terrific tenth episode, we delve into the hallucinogenic possibilities of the most surreal movie genre of them all -- the musical! And as strange as the musical is, it was the most normie form of entertainment for a good chunk of the 20th Century, and is still capable of giving us the utter batshit weirdness of CATS from time to time.

For our first film, we go back to the height of MGM and the technicolor musical for ON THE TOWN from 1949 where Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin are a trio of horny sailors looking for love and destroying brontosaurus fossils while on 24-hour leave in New York City. Along the way, they meet Ann Miller as a beautiful woman scientist who's smitten with Munshin because he looks like a neanderthal; Betty Garrett as an aggressively amorous cabbie with a hankering for Frank; and Very-Ellen as "Miss Turnstiles," the object of Kelly's affections and the subject of the movie's dreamlike dance sequences. With satire that still lands and groundbreaking location cinematography, this one was a big hit with young stoners Cory & Philena.

In our second feature, British director Ken Russell and Roger Daltry of The Who, fresh off their success in TOMMY, get even weirder with the rock opera for LISZTOMANIA (1975), an anachronism-heavy take on the life of Hungarian composer (1811-1886), a long-haired heartthrob who sent young women into fits of hysteria. Russell's obsessions with sex, paganism and Third Reich iconography are all on display here as this movie is chock full o' towering dicks, bare breasts and Nazi vampires. Plus we have the lead singer of The Who being enveloped by a mammoth vagina, Ringo Starr as the Pope, AND Nell Campbell from Rocky Horror Picture Show completing her mission to be in the weirdest musicals of 1975. And Rick Wakeman converted the music of Liszt into its prog rock synth score and plays Thor in a way you'll never see the thunder god portrayed in the MCU. Weed recs are definitely essential for this one.

Both movies are currently streaming on HBOMax. I just checked and they're still there but watch 'em while you can before HBO is nothing but Ghost Adventures spinoffs.

Sorry for some of the audio hiccups here. Weed recommendations are in the episode along with Bob Calhoun's special tribute to his friend "Judo" Gene LeBell, the legendary martial artist, pro wrestler and Hollywood stuntman.

Hosts: Bob Calhoun, Cory Sklar, and Philena Franklin

Producers: Bob Calhoun & Cory Sklar

Floyd Webb of the Blacknuss Network joins us as we blast off to the stars for two wildly and weirdly different cinematic visions of space travel in a sprawling but mellow talk that goes from usual movie and weed convo into the mysterious deaths of NASA's Black astronauts, Floyd's experiences with Melvin Van Peebles, and so much more. This episode takes small steps and giant leaps PLUS it's dropping on the 53rd anniversary of the US Moon landing! Bob assures us that OMFYS is far too disorganized to have our Black astronaut conspiracy episode posting on NATIONAL MOON DAY and that this is purely coincidental, but is it!?!

Blaxploitation and Afrofuturist longings collide in our first film, TOP OF THE HEAP (1972), where producer/writer/director Christopher St. John stars as George Lattimer, a Black beat cop in Washington D.C. who lapses into hallucinatory dreams of landing on the Moon. However, even his interstellar fantasies are no escape from his real-life anxieties. His badge makes him a pariah in his own community and earns him no respect from his white co-workers. His marriage is falling apart and things aren't going much better with his lounge singer girlfriend. And if that wasn’t enough to cause a break with reality, his teenage daughter is doing drugs; and he is avoiding his mother's funeral in Alabama. Virtually lost for decades, Floyd gives insights into his quest to rediscover it and make it available on Blacknuss.tv.

And OMFYS goes from the sublime with "Top of the Heap" to the ridiculous with Zsa Zsa Gabor in QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958) where square-jawed, horned-up American spacemen crash land on Venus, which is of course run entirely by 50s pinup models with Forbidden Planet surplus ray guns. Their leader is a masked and man-hating space Queen hellbent on using her space ray to destroy the Earth. Can Zsa Zsa as a rebel leader scientist free the Earth astronauts so they can save their home world? Will everyone stop making out long enough to disable the death ray and put Zsa Zsa on the throne? And what kind of weed do you smoke with all this mid-Century nonsense? We have the answer to the last question at least somewhere in the vast expanses of this episode after Floyd blows our minds with his tale of seeing "Queen of Outer Space" in a segregated theater in Mississippi when it was first released.

Top of the Heap is streaming on Blacknuss, a streaming service focused on Black independent filmmakers from around the world. You can start your free trial at https://blacknuss.vhx.tv/ and it's just $3.99 a month after that. $3.99!

Queen of Outer Space is available for $2.99 on Prime or on Dailymotion if your conscience can bear it it. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21o27r

Special Guest: Floyd Webb
Co-hosts: Bob Calhoun and Greg Franklin
Audio editing: Cory Sklar

Baz Luhrmann's ELVIS is upon us, so it is now time for OMFYS' ELVIS EPISODE! First, Elvis Presley himself is a karate-chopping, motorcycle-riding, rock and roll rebel with a big chip on his shoulder who falls in with a traveling carnival in ROUSTABOUT (1964). Only Elvis' singing can keep the carnival from being gobbled up by a sideshow conglomerate, so it's up to carny queen Barbara Stanwyck (!) to convince him to stop being a dick long enough to save the show in what is (kinda sorta) the Elvis movie version of Nightmare Alley. Also starring Joan Freeman and the age appropriate love interest and Leif Erickson as the drunken carnival foreman who runs Elvis off the road in a fit of rage + Richard Kiel as the strong man, Teri Garr shaking her tail as a cooch tent dancer and Billy Barty as the butt of Elvis' cancellable jokes. Raquel Welch is also in here somewhere. Produced by Hal Wallis (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, True Grit) if you can believe that! Roustabout is currently streaming for free with ads on Pluto.

And next, we go for a bit of ELVIS PANIC with THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER (1962), the zero-budget passion project from Timothy Carey, the unhinged character actor who once drove Marlon Brando to stab him with a pencil. Best known for small but utterly engrossing performances in Kubrick's The Killing (1956) and Paths of Glory (1957), Carey poured everything he had (including the labor of several family members) into this tale of Clarence Hilliard, a bored insurance salesman who transforms himself into a dangerous cult leader and proclaims himself a god through very Elvis-like rock and roll performances. Featuring Paul Frees (Mars and Beyond/Episode 3) as the voice of the Devil himself and music by a very young Frank Zappa. Now streaming on Prime for an extra 99¢ rental.

All this plus Robert Lopez AKA EL VEZ stops by to discuss the upcoming mega Elvis biopic, Elvis Presley's own movie career and the continuing impact of the King of Rock and Roll on pop culture.

Hosts: Bob Calhoun, Cory Sklar, and the father-daughter duo of Greg Franklin & Philena Franklin

Weed is available at your local dispensary in participating states.

Special guest Justin Wiese of Torn Light Records and the Esquire Theatre in Cincinnati joins us as we go DARK AF. We begin with the inescapable fatalism of director Edgar Ulmer's film noir classic DETOUR from 1945 where Tom Neal as sadsack Al Roberts is thrust into a tragedy of errors as he thumbs a ride across the country. Just when things couldn't get any worse, they do when he hooks up with Ann Savage as Vera, the venom-spitting queen cobra of all film noir. Savage more than lives up to her surname with an intense performance that has our panel of potheads leaning sativa just to keep up with her. Then we go a little Neo-noir but still black and white with two-fisted auteur Sam Fuller's shocking gut punch, The Naked Kiss (1964 with Constance Towers as a vengeful ex-hooker who tries to go straight in a small town only to find that polite society is way more twisted than the sleaziest brothel. This one comes with some haunting dream sequences punctuated by bursts of brutal violence capped off with a message that makes Greg Franklin categorize this as "wokesploitation."

Hosts: Bob Calhoun, Cory Sklar, Philena Franklin + the epic return of Greg Franklin of Six Point Harness Studios, who had been away on assignment. Guest starring Justin Wiese.

Detour is streaming without ads on Kanopy and Criterion Channel and free with ads on tubi, Roku Channel, and Pluto + there's a blasphemous colorized version on Prime.

The Naked Kiss is streaming on Prime, Criterion Channel, HBOMax, Tubi, and Kanopy.

Audio clips courtesy of Archive.org.

Godzilla and Ray Harryhausen! We've got dudes in rubber suits AND stop-motion animation going on. We're taking a break from the trippy Euro art films we've been featuring on OMFYS lately and going back to basics with some goddamned MONSTER MOVIES! First up, we have 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (1957) from special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. Thrill to a giant space dinosaur from Venus rampaging through Rome and fighting an elephant! And chill through expository scenes of military men in offices that sent Cory and Philena pushing the forward button. SPOILER ALERT: think Sativa for this one. And then we reassess the kaiju batshit craziness of ALL MONSTERS ATTACK (1969) aka GODZILLA'S REVENGE, a tender tale of a young boy bullied by neighborhood kids so hard that he escapes to Monster Island where he pals around with Godzilla's nonbinary child Manilla (aka Minya) and learns to fight his own battles from the big man himself, Godzilla! All this plus giant mantids, spiders, lobsters and a new red-headed monster called Gabera. Conventional wisdom calls this the worst Godzilla movie but OMFYS is here to say, "no way!" It's a psychedelic masterpiece (and a little bit of an art film, so we can't really escape). Enjoy!