Fifty Nights of Science Fiction Thrills

Recently I purchased fifty grade B 1950s-era science fiction movies for fifteen dollars. I also recently bought forty 50s era Time magazines for a hundred dollars. But let's talk about the DVDs--in a package called "Sci-Fi Classics" by Mill Creek Entertainment.

Having watched just four of the fifty, I can already recommend this collection to anyone who wants to laugh, become baffled at trying to figure out how anyone could conspire to make anything so bad, wonder at how these trifles ever got shown in a theater, marvel at the unrepentant and continuing fatuousness, try to decipher a connection between the chilling titles (like "The Incredible Petrified World") to the dull doings on screen, and watch, in a historiographic, postmodern manner, the effects of sexism, racism and lousy cinematography at work in a culture struggling with such newfangled phenomena as radiation and the possibility of outer-space travel.

I have laughed out loud at certain moments in these movies: as when a random, large lizard that has nothing to do with the movie puts in a brief, pointless appearance; or when scantily-clad women wrangle in a prurient cat-fight. My wife, a vocal critic of anything that emits even a whiff of sexism, has vowed the films are a disgrace and beneath one's intelligence. Of course she is correct.

But I cannot forego the pleasure of marveling at the wide gap between what is promised (chills, thrills and earthshaking revelations) and what is actually in the movie, usually a tawdry mash-up of tepid acting, embarrassingly poor special effects (no Ray Harryhausen here), nonsensical plot-twists and what appears to be a general heedlessness to the notion that one might actually ask another human to pay money to view the resulting dreck.

Perhaps the most strking example of this canyon-wide gap (at least so far) has been "The Monster that Challenged the World". The monster turned out to be a species of mollusk that grew (because of radiation, as appears to be the rule) to the size of an old gumdrop-shaped Fiat in an inland lake and then tried to escape through an irrigation system. Sure, there were a couple dozen of them. And they could walk on land! And they actually killed some folks. But they were slow, and not that big, and for heaven's sake they were mollusks after all. Besides scaring people to death and strangling a poor doddering old man at a guardpost, the monsters' worst offense was to leave behind a white slime that looked like toothpaste in outsized volume (and was not harmful except to one's sense of aesthetics). This, I submit, is hardly a challenge to the world as much as to the State Agricultural Commission.

But that is all part of the fun.

After a hard day trying to get other people to do what you want them to do (at work or business), or being made to do what other people want you to do (at work or business), why not mix yourself a toddy and sit back to enjoy fifty of these wonderfully idiotic movies guaranteed not to inspire or frighten or connect one to "what's really going on out there" but that may, after the effects of the toddy sets in, cause you to chuckle and smile and knit your brows in wonderment at the cinematic genuine silliness of which our so-called advanced race of creatures is capable.

The Glory that is the Company that Rents the Time Life Name and Logo

Bowser, the Sha-Na-Na guy, was actually a performer at Woodstock. His greaser-persona, an intentionally ironic throwback even forty years ago, made it seem an unlikely venue for him. But perhaps it is less unlikely that the now-superannuated Bowser is on TV hawking a multiple CD collection of the great, great 1950s songs through a mysterious company that also rents out the Time Life name and logo for the purposes of bestowing legitimacy on a decidedly shifty operation.

I pride myself on making certain to avoid scams and have done so all of my adult life. I will say now (whether you choose to believe me or not) that I always thought Dubai and its silly tall building and its pathetic palm-shaped island would be headed for the scrap-heap even before they'd be finished. When I was a teenager I knew a particular kid, known to me as a teller of Burj-Dubai-worthy tall-tales, who told all my friends he was suffering from a soon-to-be-fatal case of Hodgkins disease (or the like). All my friends believed him, went over his house, gave him presents, wept. I told them he was full of baloney. They called me inhumane and an intolerable cynic. Then the kid didn't die. He'd never been sick. However my nickname became "the cynic" and not in a bad way.

There have been lapses. Still in shock over that date which shall not be mentioned, I fell for a Republican's insistence that we must invade Babylon though I had long taught myself never to trust a single word spoken through Republican lips. And look what happened.

The second time was when I believed in Bowser. I had some prompting from a family member: "You love all that fifties stuff, you should get this". The hits did sound good. And Bowser made several promises to which I shall not hold him personally responsible.

Suffice it to say the on-line purchasing process was damnably deceptive, and that it somehow jumped to a "you have just purchased" page without my clicking "purchase", and that it added several way-overpriced, unwanted items to my tab, and that the order could not be canceled until after it shipped (!), and my only option would be to return everything after I'd received it based on the promise of a "full money back guarantee". Fortunately I had made the purchase using American Express and they are pretty good about defending against this kind of chicanery.

The moral of the story is that one should a)never listen to a Republican and b)never fall victim to what is an obvious scam even if it seems in every way appealing and as if it cannot possibly really be of any harm.

Finally, let it be known that the old brand of "Time Life" now survives not as the proud emblem of the world's most recognizable publishing empire but as a front for cheap shills trying play on the pipe of historical significance. Don't fall for it.