Tuffy and His Harem – Nick Anderson (1935)

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sascover“Broad-shouldered, big-muscled giant of a fellow” Tuffy Scott is standing in the stern of a row-boat.  What is it with the row-boats lately? I’m pretty sure they had steam, diesel and the internal combustion engine in 1935.

Tuffy was put into the row-boat with three “almost totally unclothed” babes when the casino boat the four had worked on in different positions — especially the girls — was raided. After the raid, they were somehow left behind, “three girls in tiny red silk panties, and red & white silk bandeaux that barely covered three sets of luscious breasts” and one lucky, lucky dude.

After the horrendous luck of being abandoned at sea with this half-naked titular harem, Tuffy has the even worse luck of spotting a ship almost immediately.  They make their way to the ship by using their only oar.  The process is  described as somehow positioning the oar between a girl’s legs, and being swiveled back and forth.  This is a row-boat, not a kayak, so I’m not sure how this worked.  But I’m pretty sure I know why the girls wanted to take the long way.

They find it is just a scow that broke its towing cable and was left behind.  Tuffy and the girls — Zoe, Mai and Honey — climb on board the deserted barge. After finding a barrel of water, they get some sleep.  Their good luck continues as a hurricane-caliber storm washes off the barge.  The next day they go all HGR (Home & Garden Radio) on its stern, patching the roof of the wheelhouse, caulking the walls, making the interior homey.

The girls — who had been dancers on the casino ship — are so appreciative of Tuffy’s leadership that they decide to put on a show for him.  Tuffy makes like Desi Arnaz on the bottom of a wooden bucket as the girls dance out of the wheelhouse, having completely ditched their skimpy tops.  “Their breasts, snowy mounds that trembled as they moved were free and uncovered . . . the three pairs of breasts seemed to be alive under the moon’s pale light.”  For the girls’ big finale, they one by one tear off their panties and run buck naked to the wheelhouse.  Batman v Superman gets made into a $250M shit-fest while this goes unproduced for 80 years? [1]

Inexplicably, Tuffy takes a while to ponder and reflect at his situation.  By the time he gets back to the wheelhouse, the girls are asleep.  The next morning, they spot a fishing boat.  The Mexican crew seems a little shifty to Tuffy and leers at his nearly naked harem.  They decide to risk it and promise the captain a reward if he will take then to San Diego; and a bonus if they go to the zoo.

Naturally, it is about five minutes before the crew wants to turn the rescue mission into a pleasure cruise.  Tuffy, with the girls’ help, kills one of the crew before the captain points two revolvers at him.  One of the girls slips Tuffy a knife which he is able to whip Jack Bauer-style into el capitán’s el necko.  Holding the rest of the crew at gunpoint, he sets course for San Diego.

The group separately recovers with friends.  Famous from their ordeal, the girls decide to take a show on the road and invite Tuffy to be part of the act.  Still clearly suffering from heatstroke and dehydration, Tuffy says, “I wouldn’t be no good in that sort of life.  All I’m good for is swabbing decks and such things.”

A model for such stories.  Sexy, scantily-clad then naked girls, strong sailor, danger at sea, action with the fishing boat.  Bravo.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Of course, Hollywood would botch this too by casting Ben Affleck as Tuffy.
  • First published in August 1935.
  • Also that month:  Meh, August 1935 is the new April 1935.  Was that the only two months this magazine was published?  I’d subscribe now.

Tales of Tomorrow – The Children’s Room (02/29/52)

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ttchildroom02Bill suggests to his young son Walt that it is time to go to bed, and that it might be better to go now rather than wait for his “old lady” to say so.  Walt is engrossed in his studies but takes the time to help his old man [1] with a physics problem.

Walt points out that Bill has made a simple mistake in converting, from Fahrenheit to Centigrade [2].  To be honest, this hits close to home — I screwed up that 9/5 vs 5/9 thing on a test in high school and am still bitter about it.

Walt’s old lady Rose enters and indeed orders him off to bed.  Bill smacks him on the butt and tells him to head upstairs.  Walt seems to need no sleep, but his mother insists that he go to bed and not play pup-tent with his textbook; or copy of Spicy Adventure.

Rose is appalled at Walt’s behavior, but Bill defends him as just being a normal boy with an IQ of 240!  Just like me, except for the IQ part.  Rose insists there is something wrong with him.  “Half the time he speaks a language that makes no sense.  He uses words an ordinary person can’t even comprehend.  And those horrible books with the strange markings.”  When Rose asks him what they mean, Walt says she is stupid.

After Rose goes to visit her mother, Bill goes up to Walt’s room.  He is reading one of those books with the strange markings.  Walt shows his father the book and he too can read the odd language.  I don’t know what the text’s symbols are, but I’d hate to try to board an airplane with it [3]. Walt says he got the book from the titular Children’s Room at the library. Bill remembers seeing no such room.

Bill takes the book to the library and is ridiculed for suggesting that it came from there. The librarian says, “Are you trying to tell me that these foolish hieroglyphics are readable!”  He asks for the Children’s Room and is told that there is no such place, but on the bright side, she doesn’t call the police.

There is a neat (for 1952) lighting effect where a wall of the library transforms into an entrance to the Children’s Room.  The librarian instructs Bill to read the book, as he is one of the few adults who can understand it.  The book tells him that he is a “mutation, a superior human being, a deviation from the normal.”  It informs him that such mutants must unite, because aliens are on the way to enslave us.  She says she needs to take Walt and that he can come with them.  Rose isn’t smart enough to join them, though.

ttchildroom13The next week, Rose chews Bill out for going out the last five nights. Last night, she followed him to the library. Maybe he is into the librarian type — like, you know, a librarian.  Bill implores her to understand for just a while longer.  She snaps at Walt for reading books she can’t understand. He replies, “Poor mother, you’re not one of us.  You’re just plain, poor mother.”  Walt tells her he is a superior human being.  Maybe Bill is right — this is a typical teenager.

Bill returns home to find Rose in tears.  When Rose tried to take the book away from Walt, he slapped her.  They go to Walt’s room where Bill tears up the book — i.e., renders it unreadable by tearing out a couple of pages.  Bill says they will go fishing the next day and everything will be A-OK.  Walt seems to agree, but after his parents leave, he gets another volume of the book from the secret place where he hides the swimsuit pages torn from the Sears catalog [4].  Hearing the call of the librarian, he leaves a note and climbs out the window.

This is more ambitious than most of the episodes.  Tales of Tomorrow had already used the concept of evolving humans in The Dark Angel and The Miraculous Serum, but this one was more intense.  It was primarily children involved, they are turned against their parents, there is a clandestine cabal running things, and an alien invasion seems imminent.

Frankly, this last point was ill-conceived as it lends some positive purpose to the events.

ttchildroom06Post-Post:

  • [1] Strange how “old lady” is offensive and disrespectful, but “old man” sounds warm and chummy.
  • [2] Actually the name was officially changed to Celsius in 1948.  Like the Metric system, it just can’t seem to catch-on.
  • [3] I mean like El-Al — there would be no problem in this country.
  • [4] See, this was pre-Playboy.  And Sears was a huge chain of department stores “where America shopped”.  And a catalog was this 3-inch thick paper magazine they would send out with pictures of their products.  And teenage boys . . . yada yada.

The Isle of Monsters – Jane Thomas (1935)

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sascoverA row-boat carrying a butchered man washes ashore in Montaba, India.  The man has no ears, no tongue, and his heart has been ripped out of his chest.  Chief Investigator Juan  Anthony somehow recognizes the body as Morris and vows to get to the bottom of this.

Morris had been looking for information on the High Priestess Vishnaw who was thought to be living on the titular Isle del Monstruos.  Anthony reaches into Morris’s loin-cloth and finds a book.  Dude, use a rolled up sock like everyone else!

Morris wrote that he witnessed the horrible Dance of Fertilization.   Doesn’t really sound that horrible.  Unless it was like that time when I woke up one night and saw Tony banging Carmela on the Sopranos. Yeah, that was kind of horrible.

He reads Morris’s description of Vishnaw.  The legendary Indian deity is naturally described as “caucasian . . . flaming red hair.”  Anthony and his sidekick Hack Larson row to the island to get the scoop.

The search gets off to a good start — after the three hours of back-breaking rowing, I mean.  Their boat is suddenly surrounded by naked blonde babes in the water.  The girls with their “firmly molded breasts” make the men’s dingy move like they were motor-boating. They are propelled to the shore.

They continue rowing into a subterranean river where they hear a “groan . . . a low, sobbing sound,” then the sound suddenly stops —  sure sounds like a Fertilization Dance to me.  They see a set of stairs carved into the stone and tie up the boat.  The moaner was a bloody man now laying dead on a raised alter.  The tall blonde High Priestess has cut off his ears and ripped out his heart as “20-30 of her nearly naked disciples” look on with 40-60 bare breasts.  Within seconds, Anthony and Hack are captured.

Anthony awakens and is surrounded by vestal virgins.  He is hailed as the returned Great White God Vishnaw, and is being prepped for a union with the beautiful High Priestess. After having lots of the sex, Anthony understandably dozes off.  Only after he wakes up does he remember, oh yeah, wasn’t there another dude with me?  Yeah, the poor sap I saw dragged into a pit by some long hairy arms.  Anyhoo, wonder where that High Priestess babe got to?

In the darkness, Anthony sees something creeping toward him.  “A huge, hairy body with welts across its shoulders slithered toward the divan.  Two great eyes like balls of fire gleamed evilly from its glistening skull.  It left a slimy trail behind it like some enormous slug emerging from the bowels of the earth.”

As the thing gets between Anthony and the High Priestess’s “firm breasts, slowly rising and falling abdomen . . . the slimly tapering heads and legs,” he jumps on and starts a-wrasslin’.  Once again, he is knocked unconscious.

When he wakes up this time, he is not surrounded by blonde virgins, but six or eight ghastly beasts; well, they’re probably also virgins.  The things are chowing down on the dead man he saw earlier.

Anthony escapes and finds his gun.  He witnesses Hack being brought in as the next sacrifice.  Anthony goes all Travis Bickle and rescues Hack from being de-eared, de-tongued, and de-hearted.  They row away from the island after leaving a massive explosive charge. This story is so old, it was probably C-1. [1]

A fairly mediocre offering from this collection.

Post-Post:

  • [1] The first C-4 was just called C and developed in WWII.
  • First published in August 1935.
  • Also that month:  Will Rogers killed in plane crash.
  • Isle of Lucy

Night Visions – Voices (09/24/02)

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nvvoices1Sandra slides into that one-ring circus of horrors, the MRI machine. There is nothing this show can do that’s any more unnerving than that. In fact they should just cancel the series right now!  Oh. [1]

Afterwards, the doctor tests her hearing, but she is still deaf as a post.[2]  It is heart-breaking as the doctor tells her the experimental procedure failed and she will be deaf forever.

She returns to her job as a courtroom artist.  Perez — Lombardo Boyar, who played the most annoying character to ever appear in the eight seasons of 24 [3] — is on trial for a murder he did not commit.  While sketching the trial, Sandra hears a voice in her head saying things like “Sticky blood.  Someone clean his hands.”  During a recess, she is able to determine the voice is coming from Detective Malone who investigated the case.

nvvoices3As Malone takes the stand, she hears “Now they pay . . . I will help you, God.”  As he is questioned about his actions at the scene, Sandra hears him say, “I put the gun in his hand” as he describes a complete different scenario at the crime scene.

She reads his mind that he blames himself for his little brother’s death. She tells him it is not his fault.  He apologizes for assaulting her and she forgives him even gives a little smile.

I trimmed out a lot of words there because I just didn’t care.  It is a fine premise, but it just doesn’t come together.  Sadly, the uni-named, quad-sensed Terrylene as Sandra is a large part of the problem.  Boyar didn’t have much to do, but was his usual caricature of a Mexican.  John Finn — best known to me as Michael Kritschgau on The X-Files — is always interesting, though.

Wish I had something clever to add, but I think that in every post.

nvvoices4Post-Post:

  • [1] This was indeed the final episode of the series.
  • [2] Other “deaf as a” autofills from Google:  Doornail, Doorknob, Haddock.
  • [3] On the other hand, he was excellent in Big Ass Spider — which tragically has been retitled Mega-Spider.  Is this the PC version?  Did too many people with gigantic asses complain?
  • Director Ian Toynton also directed one of Boyar’s episodes of 24.

Night Visions – Patterns (09/24/02)

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nvpatterns03Psychiatrist Dr. Critchley (Miguel Ferrer) arrives at his office to find a police officer waiting with a prisoner.  He tells the prisoner Martin (Malcolm McDowell) he is being held for observation to see if he is a danger to himself or anyone else. Martin smirks and says his being there is a danger to everyone.

Martin was busted for harassing a man that he claimed was sitting on the wrong bench in the park.  Again, he says that posed a risk to everyone.  Critchley asks him about the obsessive folding and unfolding he is doing with a piece of paper, kind of an OCD [1] ritual.

Martin tells a story from his childhood.  If a bird flew on to a telegraph wire and stayed there for more than 10 seconds, nothing bad would happen to his family — other than living in the last neighborhood in America to have telegraph wires.  He did this every day.  He also flipped light switches on and off, spaced books on his shelves perfectly, avoided sidewalk cracks, any kind of ritual to keep his family and the world safe.

The story is utterly predictable as it moves from point A to point A- in a perfectly straight line.  And yet, surprisingly, it has little padding.  Somehow, this simple episode accomplishes what I could not in elementary school — it uses its time wisely.[2]

nvpatterns04Of course Martin’s OCD tics are going to be the glue that keeps the world together.  Of course Critchley is going to be skeptical.  Of course Martin is going to be found to be telling the truth.  And of course Critchley will inherit the burden that he was skeptical of.

However, without watching the episode again — which ain’t gonna happen — I can’t remember a single place it went wrong.

A big chunk of the second half is just Critchley walking round seeing the fabric of society, the laws of physics, and just plain common sense break down.  Some of it is pretty dark — his chirpy nurse becomes crabby and eventually hangs herself.

In the opening scene Critchley walks past a woman sitting in her car seat sideways, with her feet on the ground.  It is completely panned by without comment.  Kudos to the show for having the same woman in the same position later hitting herself in the head repeatedly with a shoe.  Just fun stuff!

The men are not immune.  The security guard is naked and another doctor is urinating in the hallway.

nvpatterns22Some of the effects are just goofy fun.  Signs are spelled backwards, fish fall from the sky.  Firemen show up with flamethrowers instead of waterhoses.  This lacks the added dimension to make it a Fahrenheit 451 homage, but it is pretty amusing that they are streaming fire at a Ford Pinto.  They could have waited 20 minutes and it probably would have gone up by itself.[3]

The episode is aided by the presence of McDowell and Ferrer who are always great.  And by some clever ideas and fun visuals.  Simple, but it gets to its destination without blowing up.  Unlike a Pinto.

Post-Post:

  • [1] Origami Compulsive Disorder.
  • Alternatively, Orange Clockwork Disorder in honor of McDowell.
  • [2] This still bugs me.  What the hell was I not doing?  I even took my own books to class to read during down-time.  OK, maybe it was Mad Magazine, but still.
  • [3] A comic version of the Pinto clip.