Ask yourself... Outside of a biker bar, a Diddy baby-oil freak-off or in the front row of a Megadeath concert, where is the last place you would expect to find sibling pop stars Karen and Richard Carpenter? For me, the answer was - in outer space! LOL But, it actually happened. Here in the Underworld, where Lawrence Welk is a demigod and we have the entire series of
The Captain and Tennille show on DVD, there's no 1970s variety show or TV special too low for us to discover and enjoy. And today's featured gem fits that bill exquisitely!
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The Carpenters were a brother-sister act who took the music industry by storm with a long string of mostly gentle-sounding hit pop songs that soon became mainstays of soft rock and "oldies" stations as well as favorites of piped-in music for restaurants and elevators. I don't mean that as an insult. They were just perceived as squeaky-clean, safe and acceptable to a mass audience.
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Full disclosure on my part is that I always found Richard and Karen rather creepy. They were nevertheless very popular, and - apart from this shot - smiling, amiable, happy and very safe. Richard was a musical genius and Karen had an astonishingly pristine voice filled with nuance and remarkable range and pitch. After overcoming a deep shyness, she emerged from behind the drums of their band to become the featured focus of the act. As it happened, the ever-present smiles did cover up some sad situations in their lives, so I guess I wasn't 100% delusional when, as a teenager, I felt there was something a bit amiss amid all the rainbows and sunshine.
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To begin our look at today's featured program... Things begin ordinarily enough. The duo is in the studio laying down the number "Sweet Sweet Smile."
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'Course the verisimilitude is immediately interrupted when we find that their sound man (and apparent lifelong friend) is rubber-tongued, wacky comic Charlie Callas!
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Oh no! Next thing we know, The Carpenters apparently have a target on their back!
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The siblings are under surveillance from a spaceship far above! Some of the crew members on board just cannot help themselves and are dancing along to the musical stylings of their target.
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This special aired in May of 1978, so, no, it wasn't Christmastime! I refer to these Terpsichoreans as "The Phyllis Diller Dancers."
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In charge of the flight, who else, but Suzanne Somers and John Davidson...
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After a sequence in which their musical instruments begin playing on their own, Karen and Richard are startled to see the beginnings of a figure materializing before them.
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Beaming into their studio is Davidson, sporting his best Lycra jumpsuit and Herbal Essence-scented hair. (The show was sponsored by that shampoo brand.)
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Yep. The Carpenters...Space Encounters is not your grandmother's TV special.
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Far from being alarmed (or very surprised, really), The Carpenters look on at the visitor who's just materialized in front of them and all Karen can do is remark on how he's "kinda cute." (Richard is on the fence and provides a "so so" gesture.)
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I couldn't figure out for the life of me what the insignia on Davidson's chest was. I thought at first it was an "okay" hand sign, then I thought it might be the Playboy bunny icon. Neither proved true, as I will demonstrate later.
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Davidson explains that he's from another planet (Plutarious, from what I could tell.) The citizens put all of their focus on technological advancement, foregoing the development of art and music. They have sought out The Carpenters in order to explore new ways of expressing themselves through song.
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He reveals that he's got various stages of the group's musical development on video (!) and that he can show them their very early work, performing at a high school dance.
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Orbiting above is Somers, who follows Davidson's instructions to provide transmission of the tape to him and his new pals.
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Somers was fresh into her stratospheric success on Three's Company and plays a character not terribly unlike Chrissy Snow, though her role here is more interested in shallow pursuits like hair, nails and clothing than the more down-to-earth Chrissy tended to be. Regardless of the heavy makeup and garish styling, I think Somers was at or near her highest level of physical appeal here. She's eye-popping.
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Anyway, soon enough we see the high school dance. (Judging from the big C on the lettermen's sweaters, are we to gather it was Carpenter High??) There's a brief snippet of "Da Do Ron Ron," followed by...
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...Richard crooning, with a heavy Connecticut accent, The Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun," which is quickly followed by "Dancin' in the Street" with Karen weaving amongst and occasionally joining in with the dancers.
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Barely recovered from the electricity of this blast from the past, Davidson decides he wants to give singing a try. He requests that Somers provide him with a duly romantic setting for his number.
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Not situated in what appears to be a large terrarium, Davidson can start in on his song.
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In the slightly gooey, loungy way he regularly performed on The John Davidson Show, he slides into "Just the Way You Are" With his zipper undone close to his belly button, he's halfway home to changing out of that get-up!
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The florid arrangement of this originally rather simple Billy Joel hit, paired with Davidson's "Here comes my big moment" vocal is something truly out of this world....
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Now we're transported back in time to a rehearsal in The Carpenters' garage.
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Karen sings "Goofus" while razor-precise vocal backup accompaniment eerily appears from... who?!?! The bandmates? (In truth, it was she herself, overlaid on top of her lead vocal, singing backup for herself.)
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What follows is a jaw-dropping six-minute medley of music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Star Wars (1977) with an orchestra of about 30 or so pieces!
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Young Carpenter skillfully tickles the ivories as the orchestra lushly backs him up. It's a moment that would've put Richard Clayderman on suicide watch. And one can barely imagine time like this being devoted to instrumental music in a one-hour network TV special. That said, sci-fi movies, and their music, were the rage at the time, so that's the reason why it went on.
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Next we find Karen recalling the early days when she'd hang out in a trash-strewn alley (fully gowned!) while waiting for her brother to set up the equipment. She plaintively performs "Little Girl Blue."
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But enough of these earthly scenes... We're now at the point where things are about to take off. (Speaking of taking off. Callas wouldn't have to expend much effort to take off his shirt, which is already undone halfway, as was the trend at that time!) Davidson informs the earthlings that he has a nightclub
on board his ship (!) called The Galaxy Room. He invites them to beam up
and join him there. Karen says they ought to split...
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...so, taking her quite literally, that's what Davidson does!
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Richard has to inform Davidson of the slang term so that he can pull himself together and get them up to where the action is.
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And so, just like that, the four of them are beamed up to The Galaxy Room.
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This space mission was formed in order to help correct the oversight that his species made when advancing their society. They concentrated on science and neglected art. And it shows...! Ha ha ha!!
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Why a spaceship on a mission to discover the art of music already has an existing nightclub, and roster of entertainment, is one of those plot holes best left alone.
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Joining them in all the fun is a newly-changed Somers, whose hair is now even more jacked-up and whose earrings look like they were once hood ornaments on a Lincoln Town Car!
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First act on the bill is this trio of fan-dancing robots, clanking around to the strains of a bump 'n grind strip song. I never did figure out if they were or were not supposed to be performing in sync instead of completely "off" in their movements.
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Rather perversely, Callas begins to fall for one of them! Richard and Karen take note of this over sips from various beverages that resemble Formula 409 or Janitor in a Drum!
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Now Richard is called up to play and sing "Piano Picker." During the opening of this song, he demonstrates some odd sounding "s" sounds that seem like an untreated impediment?
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If you're into him, you'll be glad to know that he too backs himself up on vocals and even has a four-part split-screen during it.
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There must have been a determination that this special wasn't tacky enough (!), so suddenly we get Karen and Suzanne performing a duet, "Man Smart, Woman Smarter," while flailing fringed shawls around.
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I simply couldn't help letting my mind wander during this number at the notion of generally demure Karen performing alongside the outwardly sexy Somers with both of them in body-hugging polyester get-ups. Not that Karen looks bad in any way. Just the dichotomy of it and what she might have been feeling.
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I think the deer-in-the-headlights expression says a lot.
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In the aftermath of the prior song, Davidson croons "Dance in the Old Fashioned Way."
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He and Karen dance cheek-to-cheek. In real life, these two developed a friendship that even resulted in a couple of chaste dates (according to him, only some shy goodnight kisses.) She was comfortable enough with him to have him on a later special, The Carpenters: Music, Music, Music.
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During and after this, Richard turns his own attention to Somers. This is where an already campy program soars into the camp stratosphere... Without any warning, he goes from singing sweetly to her to introducing...
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...a DISCO SQUARE DANCE! The Phyllis Diller dancers gyrate around to a rendition of "Turkey in the Straw" that's been amped up with a disco beat!! This is for those people who were not properly traumatized by Florence Henderson singing a disco version of "That Ol' Black Magic" on The Paul Lynde Halloween Special in 1976!
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Then, as if possessed by an unseen warlock, Richard and Karen are compelled to take part in a presentation of "The Hustle!"
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This is followed by the principals ambling about while Karen performs "Boogie Nights." If you were to strain vanilla ice cream through a colander, then put that substance through a wire-mesh sieve, then pour what remains through a paper coffee filter, that remnant is the amount of soul that is present in this iteration of "Boogie Nights!" This is punctuated by a rendering of "I Could Have Danced All Night."
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Now marked safe from any more disco-infused medleys, the cast convenes for one final chat.
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The show itself is not quite over, however. The Carpenters and that orchestra are back.
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They perform "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," one of their most unusual offerings. Originally done by a Canadian band called Klaatu, it was certainly timely in the wake of the sci-fi craze that overtook the world around this time. It was also a big hit in the UK and Ireland. But in the US, it didn't enter the top 30 of the Billboard chart and signaled a decline for the duo. They'd have only one more top 20 hit ("Touch Me When We're Dancing," three years later, which made it to 16.)
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Only in the '70s could such startling combinations of people and projects come to fruition. Rare is the performer who didn't star or guest star in a variety special. Even rarer is the star who got through such an experience unscathed! Of course I hungrily watch every one that comes my way...
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This special is uploaded to YT by a devoted fan in its entirety right here. It is slightly off-sync in picture versus sound, but I didn't find it so bad that I wasn't able to remain engaged. (Other, less visually clear, versions are on there, too, broken into parts.)
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As anyone knows who hasn't been living under a rock, Karen Carpenter, despite the smiles, had a pretty tormented time of it in real life. Though close to her family, the bulk of the attention and admiration had been steered towards her brother by their parents and she developed into a very insecure person, despite possessing a voice that gave (and still gives) millions of people great pleasure. A sole marriage soon came unraveled after it was discovered that her husband had received a vasectomy without telling her, when she longed to be a mother. Her life was eventually cut short due to heart failure associated with her prolonged battle with (the then lesser-known afflictions) anorexia nervosa and bulemia. She was 32.
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::: BONUS PICS :::
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Much of Ms. Somers' work on the special was done all alone, with only communicator conversations with Davidson from her post. A fair amount of publicity pics were taken of her in her skimpy get-up as she was really becoming a hot TV property at this time.
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This one shows a clear picture of the insignia that she and Davidson wore on their chests. Always a sucker for anything glitzy, I loved her bracelets/cuffs!
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Judging from some of the expressions here, I don't think everyone was quite ready for the pic to be snapped...! As you can see, Richard was also very, very slender, though his issues were not diet related. He was plagued with insomnia and began taking, then abusing sleeping pills and Quaalude, eventually entering rehab for this.
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Here we have a more cohesive cast photo with everyone smiling and in place.
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Somers and Davidson weren't total strangers when they did the special together. She'd appeared on The Tonight Show when he was filling in for Johnny Carson. Note her affection even then for wrist cuffs! Davidson's name has a haunting quality where I'm from because he was the headliner at a local supper club in which a fire broke out and claimed 165 lives. It was in my small hometown and for at least a year afterwards his name remained on the marquee, being driven past and seen on a daily basis. (The site remained vacant for nearly 40 years, with new homes being built there only within the last year.)
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Some folks may have forgotten that Davidson (now 83) followed in the footsteps of Mr. Burt Reynolds by posing as the centerfold in February, 1974 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. (It was a double-sided centerfold. See below for the flip-side.)
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Jim Brown offered an alternate chunk of beefcake.
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Editor Helen Gurley Brown announced the selection during a campy, now long-forgotten, press conference featuring the two men! And now I think that's enough shenanigans for one day. Till next time!
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12 comments:
Like, OMG, as the kids say today! (Or do they?) Never in my most fervid LSD induced hallucinations could I have imagined this!
The “Star Wars” mania birthed a lot of highly questionable projects - remember the disco version of the soundtrack? This magnum opus surely ranks among the looniest.
Yeah, the Carpenters were about as anodyne as music could get, but their stuff was just so well done it was often irresistible. Apparently Richard was regarded as one of the best orchestrators in the business.
John Davidson, to me, was almost asexual - no “there, there”.
As an antidote to this, there is a lovely clip on YouTube from another Carpenters special, Karen doing a duet with Ella Fitzgerald. Just wonderful.
Boy does this take me back! Not this particular episode but a couple other Carpenters specials I saw back in those days. The "comedic" moment about having to split and then visually splitting John Davidson was one of those excruciating bits that always showed up on their specials. I can still hear the canned laughter and see Karens reaction shot to the joke. They must have been going after the Real People audience with those stilted jokes. And now that I think of it, didn't John Davidson host a show like that back then?
On another note, when I first saw the Phyllis Diller dancers in their red Christmassy outfits I was hoping there was going to be some kind of Star Wars / White Christmas disco mash up with Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen in space. Though I suppose we shouldn't mention Vera Ellen and Karen Carpenter in the same breath!
BrianB
I was 15 thru most of 1978 and remember the '70s as if they were yesterday. I swear, Suzanne Somer's hair in this TV special is indeed futuristic -- frizzed and flopped over to one side, plus her heavy eye make-up -- and pre-dates Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and cripes even Boy George by about 6-10 years. Had I seen only her publicity photo from this event, I would have wrongly pegged it at 1985. BTW, John Davidson had a beautiful voice. His brisk 1960s recording of the lounge-fave "What Now My Love" is one of my favorites.
I loved Karen's voice. My favorite Carpenter's song will always be "Bless the Beast and the Children." It gives me the vapors every time I hear it because it reminds me of my childhood, specifically the neighborhood/schoolyard (The Mary Lyons) and kids I grew in/around. After HS we all seemed to have gone our own ways. Have yet to bum into any one of them, but sadly I found out a few weeks ago that one of them, my best friend Michael, whom I met in 1st grade, died 2 years ago from COVID. This time of year I'm always flooded with memories of how we spend our summer days/nights either playing softball, taking bike trips, fishing down by Chandler's Pond, going swimming in the public pool or going to the movies. AM radio was also big part of our lives. We took our radios with us everywhere.
I admire your dedication to your art as a critic. I couldn't get through the first 10 minutes of this cringe fest before turning it off. I grew up watching most of these variety shows/music specials in the 70's, especially the Christmas ones, but alas, my viewing habits/tastes have changed with both my waist and hair lines. However, I did enjoy reading this review. It was spot on!
Before I go, and this turns into an op-ed, I just wanted to share a story I hear about The Carpenters when they guest starred on The Carol Burnett Show. One day while having lunch in the CBS commissary, their shrew of a mother was ridiculing and publicly embarrassing Karen about what she chose to have for lunch - portion wise. Carol witnessed the ruckus and in true her form came to Karen's defense. Seeing how flustered Karen was, Carol ordered that both their parents be escorted off the lot and barred until they finished taping their episode.
Have a safe and memorable holiday weekend
Sorry, its me again! I forgot to add in my previous comment that I just watched a movie from one of your favorite genres 70's/80's made for tv airplane disaster films. This ones from 1983 and entitled Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land! starring Lee Majors and Lauren Hutton. I've added the following link to it on the free streaming site PrimeWire for your enjoyment and maybe review at a later date! Take care!
https://www.primewire.tf/movie/191610-starflight-the-plane-that-couldnt-land
Yeah, Richard had a lisp that was a bit difficult to take, particularly on head scratchers like Druscilla Penny from their second album. Or should I say Drusthilla Penny. Don't listen to it because you won't be able to extricate it from your mind after. Did the Carpenters inspire the concept of cheesiness? Probably, but the great tracks are irresistible, much like the best cheese. My husband is such a fan now I will have to find out if he saw this back when it aired. Gotta see it. Btw, is it me or does Suzanne Summers look Morgan Fairchild-ish?
The Carpenters and naked Jim Brown, you have made my morning. Nowhere else. Also a long term mystery is solved. For the life of me since I discovered this song about ten years ago, I could not make heads or tails of why Karen Carpenter would be singing to Aliens, it was a hit overseas so that's probably why it was perfect for this. Definitely in the "camp" of Paul Lynde's Halloween. Also disco was not for everyone and they really just rode it into the ground with specials like this. The backlash becomes even more inevitable when you see specials like this and the Brady's. I love this! Karen's voice always makes me happy and sad at the same time but her brother just weirds me out.
Dan, I don't know if they still say "OMG" but today's kids definitely put "like" into every sentence in-between every two or three words....! Drives me to drink. I have to say I had an 8-track which contained the "Star Wars" theme disco-ized by Meco and I played the hell out of it. LOL I will try to check out Karen and Ella together. Thanks!
BrianB, John co-hosted "That's Incredible!" with Fran Tarkenton and Cathy Lee Crosby! I was a regular viewer. Oh gawd... Vera Ellen... I'm just finally finishing up a rare bio on her. She was her era's version of Karen, though there are still deniers out there who refuse to believe that she had an eating disorder!! Whether is was that or body dysmorphia, she had something for sure, poor thing.
Narciso, you make such a great point! For 1978, Somers is foretelling the big hair and HEAVY makeup which would punctuate most of the following decade. It might have looked wild at the time, but soon would be practically the norm! I agree that John had a lovely voice. It's just that he (like Merv, Mike and others) would take on pop songs that had just a skosh more edge and then sing them in that, well, gooey way that was more suited to the opening credits of a 20th Century Fox romantic escapade and they turned a little icky sometimes. Thank you!
Bee's Knees, I had never heard about that scenario involving Carol Burnett! Wow... I did mention how the parents tossed their attention more towards Richard, but that story seems to point to a level of abuse. And judgement from a parent that way can become damaging if you don't have the backbone to shut it down (as I have had to myself, at times.) I recently obtained "Starflight One" on DVD and intended to feature it here, but I just wasn't feeling it. Somehow that movie falls flat for me. But it's exactly in my usual wheelhouse, of course! BTW, I went to a really small elementary school and my 8th grade class had 16 kids in it, TOTAL. And, alas, at least three of them are dead now. (And one was from Covid.) So I hear you on the older, simpler days. Thanks.
Shawny, I will take your advice and avoid the song. I imagine that cheesiness was somewhere out there before Richard and Karen, but their images lent themselves to taking part in it all. Morgan probably got some makeup ideas from seeing Suzanne and began applying them to her own face! But, honestly, growing up as a teen in the '80s, I thought it was truly weird whenever a woman DIDN'T have a face literally COATED DOWN in all sorts of makeup. Ha ha ha!!
Gingerguy, glad to be of service! :-) Strange as it is, I actually really like their song "Calling Occupants." I can see why their core fanbase was less into it. I can't tell you how many times I've like a song and then discovered that it was a so-so hit here, but #1 in the UK or something. I must have British taste in there somewhere. LOL I truly believed that I would see Bruce Vilanch's name in the credits for this special (He recently wrote a book about working on "The Brady Bunch Hour," "The Star Wars Holiday Special," "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special" and others!), but his hands were clean. This time!
Just to follow up: They spent money on this - especially the CGI. It was an interesting premise for an airplane disaster movie and somewhat entertaining. There's a rather humorous subplot involving the "unhousing" of a VIP corpse from his casket to use as transportation. Another involves transporting passengers through what looks a vacuum cleaner hose/bouncy house to a space shuffle. There are also some familiar faces strewn about. Its hokey at times but that what makes these films memorable.
The first time I went thru this post, I was so traumatized by that cotton candy confection Karen is wearing in that first pic, that I didn’t notice that hint of things to come in Richard’s pants. Thank you, polyester!
Hi Poseidon - Hoo boy! Did this take me back. Horrifically so. Thanks to YouTube and posts like this, my joyful memories of how the ‘70s felt continue to crash disastrously with how the ‘70s looked. I seriously don’t remember it being this awful, and yet…it was!
“Calling Occupants” was the first Carpenters song I really liked, and I became a fan of the group through their “Passages” album. But I wonder if my feelings would have survived this TV special? The sexless John Davidson? The humor-challenged Charlie Callas?
I love that you went into such a deep dive with this show, because it demands dissection. It’s utterly bizarre in still images, making me afraid to check out the actual video.
I’ve been catching up with a lot of your posts that I’ve missed, but this one was the most fun for me because it brings back this surreal era so vividly.
Keeping in the spirit of the space mania that gripped pop culture in the late
70s, reading this was a real blast. Thanks, Jon!
Ken, always great to see you! Glad you haven't given up on occasional wades through The Underworld. We can say that the '70s were awful, but what is good today?!?! Not too much. How amazing that "Calling Occupants" was the song of The Carpenters which really drew your attention and it was basically the same for me! And it was not a big US hit. LOL about "humor challenged" Callas. He always looked like he forgot to put his teeth in.... I think that you should, ahem, launch yourself to the link and see what you think of the special itself, even if only for the music. Thanks much! Take care.
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