Friday the 13th...eh

Since I'm not Gilgamesh hunting through the underworld for my dead friend Enkidu, scary numbers aren't a phobia of mine. Me, I'm scared of artificial humans like mannequins or ventriloquist dummies. A few TV shows and films that cemented my phobia? Oh yes, I want to share them with you.  I'll post all the links I can find so you can watch at least clips if not the entire show or film.

Kolchak was a favorite of mine and the episode with the moving mannequins really got me.  I know the effects weren't perfect, but the episode scared me.

Oh, and yes the effects are cheesy, but you've got to love a character like Kolchak... Who else would crawl into the resting place of a zombie only armed with a needle and thread, some candles, matches, and a container of Morton's salt. He was the best monster hunter.



Ventriloquist dummies are another creepy thing. Who the heck ever thought these things were cute needs to be smacked.  The Devil Doll just scared me to death. Let's see evil magician who can stuff his victim's consciousness into his little friend and force the animated dummy to do all kinds of nasty things.

Wouldn't you just love to see this little creep by your bed in the middle of the night?

Oh I do have to admit that there is one ventriloquist dummy I like. If you have never seen the Canadian comedy Puppets Who Kill, you should. A rehab or halfway house for killer puppets may seem an odd idea for a comedy. but it's quite funny. The dummy Bob is as evil as I think ventriloquist dummies are so he doesn't scare me.. go figure.

So if you want to watch something scary on this oh so frightening Friday, check out one of these.

Okay, the Devil Doll as a complete movie is here but the MST3000 version has the cleanest images.
MST3000 Devil Doll

The Kolchak The Trevi Collection episode...
Kolchak-The Trevi Collection

oh and as a bonus... The Zombie episode
The Zombie

Puppets Who Kill
Puppets Who Kill Episode 1

So, let me know what you think!

Strange Fears....

Yes, I see that the cars are secured and I acknowledge that they won't fall off.

BUT!  My lizard brain is not as confident. I get behind one of these suckers in traffic and I am just waiting for that car on the end to suddenly decide to break away and throw off it's chains and squish me and my Ford Focus like a bug.

Now my phobia about things pretending to be human? That's easy...... Old tv Shows like Kolchak the Night Stalker with magicked mannequins just about did me in as a kid.

Kolchak-The Trevi Collection

There was definitely a lot of cheese served in these episodes and the effects were 70's tv cheap, but McGavin and the cast made it work...at least for me.

Oh and Kolchak climbing alone into that junkyard car to kill a voodoo zombie..... Yow!

You can look that one up yourself....Shudder...

Ultraman Ultra Strange

As a kid, I used to watch Ultraman regularly. My husband did too. Recently we got the DVDs of the show. I never realized how many strange things went on in that show.

What was up with those tiny shorts that all the little boys wore?
Why did the Science Patrol sleep in their cheesy orange uniforms?
Why didn't the Beta Capsule that turned Hiata into Ultraman, come with a clip so he could attach it to his belt? He was forever losing that damn thing.

And where the heck did Ultraman put the beta capsule when he was trouncing the poor alien of the week? Did it become the Ultra butt plug? I mean look at his Ultra suit in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD4q7KFEp6k
Can you see a pocket?

The Aliens and Monsters - I always felt bad for these guys. Ultraman tore them to bits most of the time. I liked the Toho(movie studio that did the Godzilla etc films) solution to monsters... they got captured and put on a nice island. They even had their own medical staff to look after them.

I watched one episode this weekend where the Science Patrol had a memorial service for all the defeated monsters... it was nice, but a far cry from a private island. As an adult, Ultraman makes me sad now, but I still like all the old Toho movies. They seemed to have more respect for their monsters.

Scary Monkeys... Part two

Now evil monkeys can be scary, but these monkeys I'm talking about here like the trained chimps in Lancelot Link. Lancelot Link -the Doctor Goes Ape. They're scary only in the sense of the creepiness of dressing up and training fairly intelligent animals to imitate human behavior.

Don't get me wrong, I  am not like some people who are intimidated by animals closely related to us.  In many ways Chimps seem like humans with even less impulse control than we have.....which is why they can be so violent when provoked. We, as humans, often have such a thin veneer of civility and compassion that dressing up a so called lessor being and forcing it to act like us seems hypocritical. In many ways, we're so much more cruel.

                                                                         Now this sadness or revulsion I have about trained apes was why I had my alter ego Chat Noir create magical apes with their own set of abilities and regret it.  The saving grace of her chimps is that they are tiny and not stronger than a human so if they get really angry they aren't quite as dangerous as a real chimpanzee.

It's funny, but I feel odd about even making these figures sometimes.  Art you make even though it upsets you is hard to do.