Rocketship Weird Retro Captain's Blog - Weird Retro

Kids TV: Inch High, Private Eye

17/3/2015

On a bit of a nostalgia roll with these Hanna Barbera Saturday morning animation series from the 1970s. Inch High, Private Eye "The world's biggest little detective", appeared in 1973, and ran for 13 episodes until 1974. It received regular syndicated into the 80s, and more recently on cable and satellite cartoon TV channels. The titular character of Inch High, Private Eye was literally a one inch tall detective. He would solve mysteries with the help of his niece Lori, her boyfriend, the muscular Gator (who reminded me of the comic strip character Lil' Abner) and their dog Braveheart. As with most formulaic animation series characters that solved mysteries, they had a special vehicle, in their case the Hushmobile. The Hushmobile, was a streamlined car that makes virtually no noise while being driven, making it perfect for following criminals unnoticed.

Inch High, Private Eye worked for The Finkerton Detective Agency (a wordplay lampoon of The Pinkerton Detective Agency), and his boss was of course the cantankerous A. J. Finkerton, constantly dreamed of the day that he will find a reason to fire our thumb-sized hero. He was married to Mrs. Finkerton, another regularly featured character. Despite his less than intimidating size, Inch is a gun-ho, no nonsense P.I. who takes what he does very seriously.

Popular voice actor Lennie Weinrib (also the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf, and the original Scrappy-Doo) was the voice of Inch High. His voice was a perfect blend of comedy legend Jack Benny and Don Adams' Maxwell Smart character from Get Smart. In fact, Inch High can often be heard exclaiming "Now cut that out!" or "Sorry about that, Chief!", signature catchphrases of both Benny and Adams, respectively.

Kids TV: The Funky Phantom (1971)

15/3/2015

The Funky Phantom was one of the plethora of Saturday morning cartoons that appeared during the early 70s. Produced for Hanna-Barbera by Australian production company Air Programs International in 1971 for ABC.

The show followed the formula of the time, with a group of teenagers, and spooky comedy horror theme, a side-kick animal and in this case the eponymous ghost the funky phantom. All driving around in a cool custom jalopy. Think Fangface, Captain Caveman, or Scooby-Doo. They all pretty much followed the same formula. Even the 1970s live-action TV show Ghost Busters, that was later made into an 80s animation series, followed this same well trodden path. Where Scooby-Doo blazed the trail in 1970, Funky Phantom followed close behind.

The Funky Phantom of the show was a Revolutionary War-era ghost named Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore. While hiding from Redcoats during the revolution, Mudsy and his cat Boo had hidden in a clock. Unfortunately the pair got stuck inside and eventually died in there, until three teenagers stumbled across the clock and released them by setting the hands to midnight. Thus begins the show, in a slightly macabre and creepy fashion. The rest is as formulaic as you would imagine from a Hanna-Barbera animation, as the gang get caught up each week in a series of misadventures. Accompanied by their ghostly friends and that 70s canned-laughter track, that animations of the period always seemed to have.

The show only ran for 17 episodes, which were regularly repeated right into the 80s. The voice of Mudsy was done by Daws Butler and was identical to his voice work for the character Snagglepuss, down to the use of Snagglepuss's catchphrases. The voice of Skip, was provided by Mickey Dolenz, the drummer and singer of manufactured 60s band The Monkees.

Kids TV: Help!... It's The Hair Bear Bunch!

8/3/2015

First shown between 1971 and 1972, this Hanna-Barbera animation was a regular on Saturday morning TV programming throughout the 70s and into the 80s on the BBC in the UK, but apparently not hardly seen in the US after it's cancellation by CBS in 1974. Making it a firm childhood favourite for many Brits, but a slightly obscure series in the Hanna-Barbera canon for many on the other side of the pond.

The show's original run was a short 16 episodes, from September 1971, to January 1972. It featured the 3 eponymous "hair bears": The leader Hair Bear, an afro-haired, fast-talking, cool-dude of a bear. Square Bear, the laid-back, gentle giant. And Bubi Bear, A hyper, double-talking bear that speaks in a bizarre gibberish. The bears were always scheming, planning escapes from the zoo, and get-rich-quick schemes. All the while being pursued by Mr. Peevly and his side-kick Botch.

I loved the "Hair Bear Bunch" as a kid, it was one of my all time favourite Saturday morning shows, along with The Banana Splits. Mad-cap mayhem all the way for me as a kid in the 70s. Help!... It's The Hair Bear Bunch!, was one of the first ever animations to use a canned-laughter track, which became the standard of so many Saturday morning animation shows during the 1970s.

Kids TV: Jamie And The Magic Torch

28/2/2015

A tripped-out British TV show from the 70s. Think a AA battery powered Alice In Wonderland, featuring a little lad (Jamie) and his per dog Wordsworth. The show told the stories of Jamie and Wordsworth's adventures in Cuckoo Land, where they would go after lights out, by way of his magic torch. There were two very memorable things about the TV show, that it was really trippy and it had a rocking theme tune. Even to this day, some nearly 40 years after it was first shown, I still find myself singing the theme tune randomly to myself.

The show first ran from 1976-1979, and was repeated during the 1980s, on ITV in a lunchtime slot.

The series was created by Cosgrove Hall, who would go on to produce the kids cartoons Dangermouse and Count Duckula. The series was written and narrated by Brian Trueman, who both wrote and narrated a number of children's TV shows during the 70s and 80s, including the weird Chorlton And The Wheelies. The awesome theme music was written by Joe Griffiths, who also did the theme tune for Chorlton And The Wheelies.

Kids TV: Dick Spanner, P.I. (1986)

26/2/2015

Mild-mannered robot private detective Dick Spanner was the suitably square-jawed titular hero of Dick Spanner, P.I., a tongue-in-cheek British series produced the Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson. The series was made up 22, 6 minute episodes, that followed two story arcs, "The Case Of The Human Cannonball" and "The Case Of The Maltese Parrot". The show parodied hard-boiled detective noire movies. Set in a highly stylized, futuristic universe, the tongue-in-cheek show has Dick cracking jokes as he's immersed in the bizarre mysteries.

The programme was originally broadcast in the UK as a segment of the cult Sunday morning magazine TV show Network 7 on Channel 4, and was later repeated in a late night slot.

The series was created, co-written and directed by Terry Adlam, who worked on the special effects for the Anderson series Terrahawks in the 1980s. The voice of Dick Spanner, was provided by Canadian actor Shane Rimmer, who was the voice of Scott Tracy in the most famous Anderson series of the 1960s, Thunderbirds. Another piece of trivia about Rimmer is that he has appeared as a bit-part actor in more James Bond movies than any other actor.

Kids TV: The Ghost Busters

21/2/2015

Before the eponymous 1984 movie, there was the 1975 Saturday morning kids TV show, The Ghost Busters. Only 15 episodes were filmed of this slapstick comedy show, featuring Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch as Kong and Spencer, along with Tracy the gorilla. The characters they played were similar to those they had played in the popular late 1960s satirical sitcom F Troop. However in The Ghost Busters they played bumbling paranormal investigators, that paid homage to the Golden Age of monster movies. The formulaic show, had the gang invariably coming up against a parody of one of the classic Universal monsters. Filled with bad sets, over-the-top acting and the cringe-worthy laughter track, so much a feature of 70s TV comedy. Unrelated to the famous 1984 movie, Filmation revived the characters from the 1975 show in a 1986 animation series.

In fact to make the 1984 movie, the makers had to obtain that rights to use the name "Ghostsbusters", and would call their subsequent 1986-1991 animation series The Real Ghostbusters. Sometimes referred to as Filmation's Ghostbusters, to avoid confusion, the series ran for 65 episodes. Reviving the characters of the live-action TV show, as their animated sons. Like The more famous Ghostbusters catchphrase of "Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!", each episode of Filmation's version used the catchphrase, "Let's Go, Ghost Busters!"

Charley Says... Don't Tweet About Things Nobody Gives A Shit About!

6/2/2015

On Twitter? Are you a Twitter Twat? Do you use your 140 characters for spreading banal bollocks into the Twitterverse? Facebook is bad enough for facile status updates about what people are having for the dinner, and their thoughts of the possibility of rain later today. But with Twitter the torrent of trivial tweets, takes on a whole new level of lame. Especially with the whole "FOLLOW BACK", #MGWV crew, just spamming the whole of Twitter, in their desperate attempt to collect followers. I mean, what the fuck is all that about? And don't get me started on Follow Back Friday stupidity!

While researching for the Weird Retro article Charley Says... Don't Do Stupid Shit Kids! I came across this brilliantly funny parody of the well known British public information films of the 1970s. The animation from the website www.thepoke.co.uk warns of not posting tweets things "nobody gives a shit about"!

Curious Alice: The 1971 Anti-Drug PSA

2/2/2015

Curious Alice is a genuine what-where-they-thinking PSA from 1971. Created by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, it's just about the most tripped-out 12 minutes you'll ever see. Rather than turn you off drugs, it would send you running to your nearest dealer to get loaded, so you could watch it all again. Although aimed at kids, it has become cult viewing among stoners.

As if Alice In Wonderland wasn't a subliminally drug soaked kids story already, the makers of this little beauty brought the drugs front and centre. As Alice "drinks" the potion and enters Wonderland, we encounter all the characters we are familiar with. Only this time, rather than the nudge-nudge wink-wink drug references we are generally used to in some retellings of the story, they slap us in the face with a cool psychedelic trip of an animation. There is no way, that the animators weren't sniggering themselves stupid in a stoner haze when they handed this beauty over to the US government.

The characters Alice encounters are just precious. Of course we have the pot smoking Caterpillar, jeez even the Disney version has that cool dude drawing on his bong! But here we also have the heroin pushing King of Hearts, waving a giant loaded syringe around. And that's all before Alice gets to the "tea party", where we meet the tweaking speed freak, the Mad March Hare, the downer Dormouse and the acid-head Mad Hatter.

Top Ten: Weird Alice In Wonderland Movies - From the early days of silent cinema, via musical porn and surrealist European cinema to Japanese anime. We certainly ain't talking Disney here.

Alice In Wonderland At Weeki Wachee 1964 - The bizarre underwater ballet theme park in Florida, that was one of the top tourist attractions in the United States in the 1950s.

Kids TV: Mr. Rossi

2/2/2015

Mr. Rossi is a popular cartoon character from Italy. Mr. Rossi was an everyman, an ordinary guy looking for excitement and adventure in his life, which he found through meeting Harold (Gastone in Italy) the talking dog. The pair of the them would go on surreal misadventures together, in a series that was known as "The Fantastic Adventures of Mr. Rossi" in English speaking countries. (It was known as "Il Signor Rossi cerca la felicità" in Italy.) Mr. Rossi had been around since the early 1960s in Italy, appearing in animation shorts, which goes some way to explaining the often trippy style of the cartoon. However what most of us remember is the feature-length movies, from the mid to late 70s, which were cut-down into 10 minute episodes for English-speaking countries. Oh and that awesome theme tune!

The unforgettably catchy Mr. Rossi theme tune, called “Viva La Felicita”, was composed by Italian composer Franco Godi. He became known as "Mr. Jingle" for his prolific commercial output. He has also worked on movie scores, and television shows, but what he's most well known for outside of Italy is the very cool Mr. Rossi theme tune. A tune that lights-up many a cool dance-floor around the world.

***WARNING***
This song will make you feel happy, and may lead to you dancing around with joy.

Kids TV: Toxic Crusaders (1991)

4/1/2015

Pretty much everyone is aware of The Toxic Avenger, the camp over-the-top schlock horror movie released in 1984 by Troma. The movie was initially all but ignored by the mainstream cinema in the beginning, yet soon found a cult audience in the mid to late 80s. But how many people are there that remember the short-lived kids TV animation spin-off? Called Toxic Crusaders, the animation featured the eponymous Toxie and a gang of new mutants heroes.

The stories all revolved around Toxie and his band of misfit mutant superheroes saving the planet from pollution. First appearing on TV screens in 1991, the show mirrored other popular animations with an environmental message of the time, such as Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and mutant themed superheroes like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And like the aforementioned animations, Toxic Crusaders spawned a whole range of kids action figures, despite only lasting for 13 episodes before it was cancelled. Playmates, the same company responsible for Ninja Turtles action figures, released a line of similarly styled Toxic Crusader figures in 1991.

As well as the heroes, the company produced the cartoon villains from the series, that hailed from the planet of Smogula. Dr. Killemoff and Czar Zosta were cockroach-like extraterrestrials, who wanted to turn Earth into a polluted planet, like their own. Killemoff, like most bad guys in animations at the time, also had a seemingly endless army of useless sidekicks called Radiation Rangers. Similar to Shredder's Foot soldiers in the Turtle animation series.

Yes, Toxic Crusaders was formulaic, part of the cookie-cutter animations of the period. However due to only lasting 13 episodes and the cult film it was loosely based on, Toxic Crusaders has since in itself become somewhat of a cult classic. More so in many ways than the other animations that sit along side it.