Poseidon Quickies: This is the "Night."

The woe of an actor popular in a certain era who must then navigate a career later on when few modern audiences remember then (or care to try.) Some are wealthy enough to retire gracefully, some are lucky enough to keep working in prestigious pictures, but some... find themselves resigned to items like Evils of the Night (1985!) One glimpse at the names involved in this teen slasher flick meant that I had no choice but to check it out. It was so much worse than I could ever have imagined. But... there was one small benefit. Nestled in with all the young female T & A (& P!) there were some attractive young men. And with a 1:24 running time, it's not like I was subjecting myself to some horrible, bloated mess (like a certain recent superhero movie I tried to get into, but gave up on during the second of its three hours!) Evils of the Night is bad. But it was sometimes entertainingly so. And because I graduated high school in 1985, it was nostalgic to me for some of the hair, clothes, etc...

Your eyes are not deceiving you... This is Julie Newmar, John Carradine and Tina Louise as aliens (!) who need the blood of young people to prolong life on their planet. It doesn't make them younger or anything fun like that. You just live on and on (witness Carradine!) for many more years than otherwise anticipated.

Newmar was about 52 at this time and still in good physical condition. She'd been appearing frequently on television, but hadn't been in a movie of any consequence since Mackenna's Gold in 1969. She is currently 89.

Louise, a year younger than Newmar, was in about the same boat, working on TV and low-rent movies with her last film of any note being The Stepford Wives (1975.) She had, at least, been featured on the super hot TV show Dallas for a while. She is currently 88.

Carradine was just shy of 80 when he made this. He'd been in films since 1930 and worked tirelessly always in every conceivable sort of project (though chiefly horror towards the end) right up until his death in 1988. He was 82 and was felled by heart and kidney failure.

The alien blood-seekers have come to Earth in what looks like a decorated to-go food container...

The aforementioned trio of interplanetary beings decides that the best way to obtain young blood is to hire two down-on-their-luck garage mechanics to visit a nearby lake and abduct various college students there on vacation...!

Neville Brand, then 65, is one of them. He'd done a number of thrillers and horror films in prior years, but this would mark his final bit of acting on screen. Emphysema claimed Brand in 1992 at age 71.

The other is 59 year-old Aldo Ray, who'd been taking practically any job for quite a few years in order to pay back alimony and other debts. He passed away in 1991 from throat cancer at age 64.

It's no real treat to see the quintet of once-popular performers slumming in this total and complete drek, though each of them is giving his or her role the best they can. But none of them are really in it long enough, despite their billing, to warrant all that much comment. As the henchmen, Ray and Brand are on hand a fair amount. The aliens, with the exception of Louise, have only limited screen time. The movie (and this post!) mostly concerns the victims.

If one finds himself tuned in to a piece of crap like this, it's always nice to at least have some male pulchritude on display. The summer, lakeside setting allows for some of this.

A fair hunk of the running time of this movie concerns idiotic, hopelessly horny coeds trying their best to get it on. This particular couple was portrayed by actual XXX adult film stars Amber Lynn and Jerry Butler. (Lynn shows all in her scenes, but Butler, still attempting to break into the mainstream, offers nothing but a lot of chest and was using his real name in the billing.)

If he wasn't going to show us anything else, at least we got to see some prolonged hairy chest shots. You may recall Butler as the one-time husband of Lisa Loring (Wednesday Addams of The Addams Family) whose tell-all book "Raw Talent" caused some shockwaves at the time.

Warren Beatty once infamously described him as one of the best actors he'd ever seen...! Butler died of pancreatic cancer in 2018 at age 58, following a long period of personal difficulty.

I found this sunburned cutie rather intriguing as well.

He later turns up in a lilac Izod polo and Guess jeans! It's all so "80s" without even trying to be. It's just what it was.

Yes, please...

This guy in green is really not my type to be honest. But he's the ostensible leading man of the film and he has a couple of eye-opening moments.

Getting up from the campfire was one of them.

I like a good hot dog over an open flame. LOL

These shorts, which he wears for most of his screen time, are just plain tight!

I'm not joking. (No, I'm not gonna start that again! Ha ha!)

What really got my attention, though, was his introduction on the beach.

I swear there is no lining in these shorts and you can see right up the open leg...!

I'm not joking. God, I love the '80s....

Do check out the super-futuristic get-up, punctuated by the shoes, given to Louise for a costume. She turned her nose up at Rescue from Gilligan's Island, but said yes to this?!

If you should wish to wallow in his obscure gem, the movie is free (with infrequent ads) on Tubi in a beautiful print right here. I will leave you, though, with our stars in happier days.

Let's face it. Carradine was always old and always scary (!), but I did find these young-ish portraits. He, of course, also gave the world a set of sons who took up the profession.

Brand was never a pretty-boy, even in the beginning, but he was an effective performer who could play a variety of types in his hey-day.

Ray was a burly, but cuddly, bear with an endearingly raspy speaking voice.

Newmar will always be immortal for her portrayal of Catwoman on Batman and had a body to die for.

Despite her disinterest in it, Louise is also immortal for her role of Ginger Grant, which led to the pop culture question that so many men are asked, "Ginger or Mary Ann?"

This was a special comedown for Ray and Louise. In 1958, they'd costarred in the United Artists release of God's Little Acre together!

Decades before the up and comers (or in most case downers) seen in Evils of the Night, they too had enjoyed their own time rolling in the hay.

That's all folks! Till next time.

Poseidon Quickies: It Actually Happened... and with a Kiss.

As a lifelong fan of game shows, especially ones that involve celebrities, I sometimes find myself poking around YouTube or other places on the Internet for something of interest. (Fortunately for my middle-aged waistline, this often happens while on a treadmill at the gym!) As of late, I've been checking out the entertainingly tacky The New Treasure Hunt from the 1970s, old installments of Name That Tune and The Joker's Wild and vintage The Newlywed Game. But I also stumbled upon a parody featured on a now-obscure show that was briefly a mild hit during my youth - Fridays. What led me to it was a satiric presentation of Family Feud. 

The Saturday Night Live rip-off competitor Fridays debuted in April of 1980 and aired on, um, Friday late night ABC television. Rather closely following the format of its inspiration, there were faux newscasts, envelope-pushing sketches, trendy musical guests and celebrity parody, most often with a political bent.

The Family Feud parody had Bruce Mahler offering up a rendition of Richard Dawson that that the 3-piece suit and the carnation down (along with some gestures), but not any sort of accurate voice.

One of the families on this episode will be somewhat familiar...

Meet Ted, Rose, Joan and Jackie!

I thought they got Jackie O down pretty well, actually.

Rose was portrayed by none other than one Michael Richards, later of Seinfeld...! He was in drag a fair amount on this show.

He had a hysterical staggeringly-unfunny character called Beverly Hills who would pop up from time to time (in a look seemingly stolen later by Sylvia Miles for Evil Under the Sun, 1982!)

You thought I was just being snarky, didn't ya? I mean... look at this!

Anyhoo... The other family playing against The Kennedys was The Carters.

Meet Roselyn, Miss Lillian, Billy and on the far left (I'm not making this up), Walter Mondale!

Again, I think they did well with the (now) former First Lady.

Dawson's custom of kissing every female contestant was included. Roselyn allowed a peck on the cheek...

Jackie was having none of it...!

Walter seemed down with it, though...! That was probably quite an image on TV for 1980. Now, believe it or not, all this Family Feud stuff was just a prelude for the thing this post is truly about. Once I watched this, I began to peruse a few other episodes and was scarcely prepared for what I found in one.

From Dickie Dawson's kisses on FF, we turn to the legendary rock band Kiss. They were a guest on one installment. (Fridays featured all sorts of acts from Devo to Pat Benatar to Journey to Paul McCartney) Seen here are Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley and, on drums, spanking new member Eric Carr, who replaced the more famous Peter Criss.

Carr's makeup scheme/character was The Fox. In one of those bizarre coincidences, I had JUST seen his official introduction to audiences while looking up Kids Are People, Too, a show I was checking out after seeing it's host on Whew! Carr remained with the band until shortly before his death at 41 from heart cancer in 1991.

I'm not able to claim significant fandom for Kiss, though I did play the hell out of a 45 I owned of "I Was Made for Lovin' You" back in 1979. They often showed some chest, but for this gig, Paul Stanley wore no shirt at all for the second number! The biggest surprise for me, though, was the guest host of this episode, someone I just would never in a million years connect with Kiss (or any music group, really, except maybe The Beach Boys, who also did this show.)

Yes, that's our Tab Hunter, seen here choking his chicken on national television.

He played the ultra-WASPy villain in a sketch about two Orthodox Jewish secret agents. Having captured them, he puts them on a counter, Goldfinger (1964) style, with razor-sharp matzo spinning threateningly as it closes in on their crotches... 

In a striking coincidence, this same episode features a short film about UFOs and alien invasion that starred Aldo Ray. (The five-minute piece is so obscure that it doesn't come up at all on Ray's imdb.com page!) In 1955, Ray and Hunter had costarred in the then rather racy war romance Battle Cry, based on a Leon Uris novel.

Ray, five years older than Hunter, had been through the career and personal meat-grinder, including having his Columbia Pictures contract dropped after chief Harry Cohn's death and grappling with a severe alcohol problem. Though he worked and worked, he could not overcome financial obligations (to three ex-wives) and the urge to drink, yet there were periods of sobriety. He died in 1991 of throat cancer at age 64. 

One bizarrely amusing sketch, which could only have happened in the '80s, was a take-off on Hollywood Squares called The Hollywood Cubes.

The game was hosted by Larry David (yes that Larry David, who went on to help create Seinfeld.)

Instead of the usual 9-person celebrity panel who were used as points on a tic-tac-toe board, this game was played on a gigantic Rubik's Cube (!) with 54 (!!) celebrities located on the thing.

In a bizarre twist, considering how many celebs were already being impersonated (and the didn't attempt all 54 for obvious reasons), Tab was playing himself, the famous actor, rather than a regular contestant.

Much like Squares, the contestant would call on a star and then either agree or disagree with the person's response to a question.

If he was successful in agreeing or disagreeing with the celeb, he earned a turn at solving the Rubik's Cube by calling out the move and then performing it on a remote cube at his station. This act caused the large cube to rotate around, throwing all the people involved to and fro!! Ha ha! It was strange, but sort of clever considering how hot that puzzle was in its day.

That's gonna do it for this hideously random post, but I leave you with some shots of Paul Stanley during the curtain call. (And I'm sorry Paul, but it's just not the same with that Linda Lavin hairdo in place of all the long, curly, rocker locks!)

Straight as he is, his movement and behavior during this sequence was gayer than a picnic basket (and speaking of baskets, his was on display in those flimsy tights!)

Should you wish to partake of this episode or any of the others which have seen the light of day (despite rumors that Michael Richards had it in his contract that they would never be released in any home video format), you can check it out at Tubi (free with ads) right here! Till next time!