Stephen Bowie’s Classic Histroy TV Blog about casting what ifs if Mad Men was actually produced in the 1960s is a big hit. Here are my new choices if done by 20th Century-Fox ca. 1963-65:
Click here to access Stephen Bowie’s The Classic TV History Blog where he turns recasting Mad Men into a sort of Fantasy Football game. Who would you cast in the roles if Mad Men was actually aired during the mid-Sixties? Below are my choices for 4 mad men and all the mod women (from my staple of starlets):
AMC’s Mad Men is one of my favorite TV shows (no surprise there). But now it is really cooking for me as it is summer of 1966. The premiere episode Sunday was really good but what stood out for me were the ladies decked out in such wonderful mod clothes and hair styles. And I don’t mean the lead ones who play Peggy and Joan. They were both outclassed by Don’s new go-go bride Megan, who looking like Yvonne Craig in a slinky long-sleeved black minidress, seductively sang in French to her birthday boy husband at his surprise party in their fabulous NYC apartment complete with terrace; and Roger’s gorgeous wife Jane who looked like she stepped right out of the Valley of the Dolls complete with bitchy barbs thrown with a drink in one hand and her husband in the other.
I can’t wait for more and hope we see lots of Megan and Jane this season!
In 1966, Roger Corman’s The Wild Angels roared onto the big screen. Released by American International Pictures, it is a graphic and violent look at the Hells Angles motorcycle gang. At the time, Roger Corman commented in the New York Times, “Everything in the film is based on fact, on something that has happened with the Hell’s Angels…People who don’t believe the stuff that’s in the film should know about the stuff I had to leave out!” Fact or fiction, the mainstream media blasted the film for its brutality and its glorification of hog riding hoodlums. However, it became a cult artistic triumph receiving praise from some film critics for its cinema-verite realism. Grossing over $6 million at the box office, The Wild Angels spawned a flock of imitation biker films. Devil’s Angels, Hells Angels on Wheels, Born Losers, The Glory Stompers, Hell’s Belles, The Savage Seven, Angels from Hell, The Mini-Skirt Mob, Hell’s Angels ’69, The Hellcats, Satan’s Sadists, The Cycle Savages, etc. were just a few of the films to hit the drive-ins across the country. For the most part, they all featured senseless violence and gratuitous sex ensuring their popularity among the younger audience. The motorcycle gangs were usually the villains but beginning in 1968 more anti-hero cyclists began to emerge such as in Run, Angel, Run, Easy Rider, and C.C. and Company.
A number of leading actors became synonymous with biker movies including Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Adam Roarke, Ross Hagen, Jeremy Slate, Tom Stern, and William Smith. As the leaders of the motorcycle gangs they were usually supported by such actors as Gary Kent, John “Bud” Cardos, Gary Littlejohn, Paul Prokop, Robert Tessier, and Larry Bishop, among others who appeared in multiple biker movies.
Not so the Hollywood actresses who made biker movies. Usually it was a one-shot gig and very rarely did any of them pop up as the leading lady of a second one. This is most likely because the women cast (i.e. Nancy Sinatra, Diane McBain, Jocelyn Lane, Conny Van Dyke, etc.) looked more like glamorous beauty queens than real-life biker chicks. Sultry brunette actress Valerie Starrett stands out because she not only co-starred opposite burly William Smith in Run, Angel, Run (1968), but she also wrote the script. Her character of Laurie is another biker chick who begins to yearn for something else other than the open road.
A different take on the genre, Run, Angel, Run directed by Starrett’s then husband Jack Starrett a fixture in biker movies features Smith as Angel a former member of the Devil’s Advocates who not only left the gang but sold his story to Like magazine infuriating his former biker buddies (“Our Angel baby burned us real bad!”). Angel is roaring down the highway (as Tammy Wynette sings the title song) to pick up is $10,000 payment from the publisher inSan Francisco when he is jailed for speeding in a school zone. He phones his flame Laurie a part-time go-go dancer and hooker. She picks up a few tricks and is able to spring the biker with some cash left over causing Angel to sarcastically ask, “What’d you do? Form an assembly line?” They travel a ways when he realizes the Devil’s Advocates are in hot pursuit. Thinking of her safety, he drops Laurie off in a small town only for the biker gang to spot her and begin terrorizing her in the film’s most exciting sequence shot in split screen with sometimes as many as five on-screen panels. Having a change of heart, Angel returns to pick up Laurie and saves her in the nick of time as the duo makes their escape by hopping onto a freight train where they are confronted by three hobos one of whom tries to rape Laurie.
Despite jumping on Angel’s bike in a mini-dress, Laurie has a number of costume changes during the trek north. Perhaps her tiny purse doubled as a suitcase? The pair winds up in a small town where they decide to they lie low after Angel retrieves his money, which he takes in cash stuffed into a bag. They rent a small house from Dan (Daniel Kemp), a motorcycle riding rancher, and Angel takes a job as a handyman. Fighting his uncontrollable urge to be free, which results in a few arguments with Laurie, Dan shows the former gang member the benefits of a traditional family life. Realizing he loves Laurie and wants a more tranquil life, Angel asks Laurie to settle down with him. Unfortunately, the Devil’s Advocates have picked up Angel’s trail again when they find one of the hobos wearing Angel’s jacket. At a drive-in frequented by teenagers gang leader Ron (Gene Shaw) meets Dan’s naïve teenage daughter Meg (Margaret Markov) admiring his hog. She stupidly goes on a joy ride with the bikers and reveals that Angel is staying on her parent’s land. The hoods then viciously gang rape her leaving the poor girl for dead. The Advocates find Laurie and brutally beat her. Angel takes them on and is about to be killed by Duke when Dan appears with a shot gun and blows the gang leader away leaving unanswered if Laurie decides to remain with Angel or not.
Because Run, Angel, Run did not glorify sex and violence as a number of biker films did at the time, reviews were better than average. Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas, who seems to have had a warm spot for the genre, remarked, “Smith… and Miss Starrett are able, attractive performers of considerable promise” and he found the film to be “a good low-budget picture.”
Actress Valerie Starrett had a few TV appearances under her belt (Dan Raven, Death Valley Days, I Spy) when she wrote co-wrote the screenplay and co-starred in Run, Angel, Run. Shortly after, she began her long run playing scrappy waitress-turned-nurse Diana Maynard Taylor on the popular soap opera General Hospital. In 1977, fans were outraged when Starrett was let go and replaced by actress Brooke Bundy. As for the character of Diana Taylor, she went from the show’s heroine to a grasping, desperate woman who would do anything to keep her adopted son from his biological parents. Four years after Starrett left the role, Diana was found murdered lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen. Valerie had a happier ending and after retiring from acting she became co-owner of a successful bookstore inMalibu,California.
How did you come up with the idea for Run, Angel, Run?
It was rather a coincidence that I did this. I wrote it for a specific purpose as opposed to thinking I would be part of another biker film. I was married to Jack Starrett at the time and he was cast in the movie Hells Angels on Wheels. We were also friends with Tom Laughlin who was working on his owner biker film, The Born Losers. We knew a lot of actors and actors who wanted to be directors who were part of this new genre. It was just part of our consciousness. I was looking for a vehicle for Jack to switch from acting to directing because that’s where his strengths and interests laid. In the era before the Al Pacino’s and Dustin Hoffman’s, Jack was too atypical in looks to get work as an actor. I thought, ‘Why struggle to be an actor when he could be a great director?’
Had Jack Starrett directed before?
Run, Angel, Run would be his first film with director credit. He previously appeared in this low budget movie called The Girls from Thunder Strip with Jody McCrea that was filmed in theLakeIsabella region. The frustrated director walked off the picture. Jack stepped forward and said, ‘I could do that.’ He finished the film. He was a brilliant man and could do anything. There were no dollies for the cameras so he used wheel barrels. It was a horrible shoot but he did remarkable things to compensate for having no budget. He was one of the most original thinkers and did whatever needed to be done to get the shot.
Did Hells Angels on Wheels inspire you to write your own screenplay?
My daughter and I accompanied Jack on location to Bakersfield, Californiawhere they were filming the movie. We were friends with Jack Nicholson and Adam Roarke who were starring in it. While observing the making of the movie, I thought the biker genre hadn’t peaked yet and decided I could write one with Jack directing keeping the budget lower than all the others. Rather than having Sonny Barger and the real Hells Angels in it like they were in Hells Angels on Wheels, I started recording Sonny and his biker buddies. They fascinated me especially the women. I taped them talking about what they did and it was a subculture that seemed amazing and fascinating to me. The director had a hard time because some of the Hells Angels would go out at night and get drunk. They would then ride their bikes and crash. They were absolutely fearless and would show up the next day all beaten with their faces all torn up.
How did Run, Angel, Run end up being produced by Joe Solomon’s Fanfare?
After finishing the screenplay, I knew Joe Solomon so I submitted it to him and he was very interested in producing it. The deal was though he had to accept Jack as director. He did but it was a leap of faith for him. At that time Jack and I started divorce proceedings. As the marriage broke-up I traded full writing credit for a chance to screen test for the female lead. Jack was absolutely wonderful but terrible with money. Knowing that I would may have to go back to work to support my daughter I thought I better protect myself by having some current film. Joe was testing two other actresses whose names escape me. I hadn’t acted in a number of years and was extremely nervous due to the strange marital situation. I think by default I was the best at the time. It wasn’t the right vehicle for me and certainly doing every scene in one take was not the best format for me since I hadn’t acted in awhile. Anyway, I did it.
Your character longed for a settled life and not one careening around on a motorcycle. Did the biker girls you interviewed express that view?
No, the only way I could conceive of getting the movie made on the cheap was to remove the two lead characters from the pack so that way we didn’t have to hire a whole contingency of bikers. It was a plot device. Plus I realized it would be a stretch for me and it would be easier as an actress to have a strong yearning for something different that would make it more interesting as a character. Some of the ladies I interviewed weren’t terribly bright or interesting so I thought I’d make my character more remarkable.
This did set it apart from the other biker movies released around that time.
I wanted Run, Angel, Run to be a very different but to use a commercially viable subject that would attract the exploitation film backers while trying to make it fresh.
How did William Smith come to be cast in the lead? He had never done a biker film before.
Joe Solomon asked me to read with a bunch of different actors. One of them was Tom Skerrit who gave an absolutely wonderful audition. Talking with Joe, Tom wasn’t really physically marquee type for a biker film. Then Bill Smith came in and he was marquee biker ready and could ride a motorcycle quite well. It was one of those decisions in retrospect I regretted. I would have gone with Tom who was my first choice but I am not sure how much weight that would have had with the producer. Perhaps the film would have been a lot more interesting. Not that I have anything against Bill Smith who was fascinating and I really, really liked him, but Tom was so appealing against type. For a formula film it was a reach to put me in it and if Tom was cast it would have been a different movie.
Did you have a hand in casting the rest of the roles?
I wrote the parts for all the people I knew and in my mind I already had it cast. I knew Gene Cornelius from when I was living in Carmelwhere I started in theatre. We did Caesar and Cleopatra together. All of the minor players were personal friends. Most roles were pre-cast except for the Angel and the young girl who gets raped by the bikers. That role was played by Margaret Markov who had to test for it and she was an inspired choice. She was just marvelous in it and I just saw her in 2009 at an art show she hosted at her Hollywood Hills home. We talked for a long time. She retired from acting years ago and has a great life.
The split screen montages were very cool. Was this Jack’s idea?
This was all Jack. He was quite amazing and had to be innovative working with such a low budget. Everything was one take and then he’d say, ‘Move on, move on.’ It was shot so cheaply that though there are references to theRussianRiverof NorthernCaliforniabut it was all shot inMalibuCanyon. Those endless shots of us on thePacific Coast Highwaywere all inMalibu.
Did you have any favorite scenes in the movie?
No, the actual filming was extremely painful and I hated all of it. It is one thing to envision a rape and another to be the active person in it. Gene Cornelius is bursting through a window and it was so laughable to me. That scene was hard to do. There was another scene at the railroad station—which was actually a great action piece—where as I am running I accidentally fell and banged up my knee. For most of the rest of the filming I was in excoriating pain. It was all very odd.
For a low-budget biker film Run, Angel, Run received a lot of press when released.
Yes, that’s true. We had the premiere in a big theater in New York City. Joe Solomon paid to fly the Hells Angels to New Yorkand we had a parade down Fifth Avenue. Bill Smith and I rode in a limo. Then a wonderful review came out in Time Magazine, which was absolutely mind-blowing that it would even cover a biker film. The critic said the movie was ‘curiously better than it should have been.’ Bill and I went to three or four other cities to open and promote the movie. It became a financial hit and made a lot of money for Joe.
Joe Solomon must have been pleased with its success because he hired Jack Starrett again to direct.
Joe piggy-backed the making of three films based on the success of Run, Angel, Run. One was The Losers [a.k.a. Nam’s Angels] that he tapped Jack to direct. They did ride motorcycles in it but it was about these renegade soldiers who were assigned by the CIA to rescue an agent captured by the Vietcong. William Smith, Adam Roarke and Gene Cornelius were in it. Jack even has a wonderful role at the end. It is such a interesting film crossing genres. It was due to this film that Jack worked constantly thereafter until his death.
You never did another movie but landed on TV’s General Hospital in 1969. How did you make that leap from biker film to a daytime soap opera?
I was in my early thirties when I did Run, Angel, Run. The only place—at least in my thinking—for me to work again and support a daughter was something steady. I had film offers but when I was offered the soap I thought, ‘Okay, regular life. I can go back to the PTA.’ I would be able to raise my daughter and not have to deal with the film world again.
Actors always say acting on a soap opera is one of the hardest jobs in show business.
Yes, the soap life is a very difficult one. Back then we shot on live tape, which means you couldn’t break tape even if there was a mistake like a chandelier falling. You just keep rolling. I had a scene where this guy was trying to rape me in my kitchen and I had to reach for a frying pan to hit him over the head. They set up the prop in such a way that the handle wasn’t out so I had to finally reach for the rim of the pan and of course it barely made the actor’s face. Even so the blood ran down. It was an absurdity.
You were one of the General Hospital’s most popular actresses during the seventies. Fans were outraged when you left in 1977. Was it by choice?
I left—I love this term—because of creative differences. Tom Donovan replaced the director I had always worked with. It was a volatile relationship. I didn’t fall into the mix nor would I meaning that I rarely said the lines as written. I had always been sort of the darling of the previous director and I was the antithesis of that with Tom Donovan. It was amazingly bloody. I remember being called to his office right before I was let go and he screamed at me, ‘You’re Marilyn Monroe!’ I yelled back, ‘You’re worse!’ It was not a happy relationship.
Then you retired from acting.
Within less than a year after I left General Hospital I opened a bookstore with my brother in downtownMalibu. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
Warner Bros. just released the trailer to Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows due for release this summer. As the trailer began I was intrigued and then quickly became horrified. Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins looks like a cartoon character trapped in an unfunny farce. However, rewatching it some more I realized that was what Burton was going for. He has turned Dark Shadows into a ’70s Saturday morning cartoon with its fish-out-of-water vampire mingling with the humans in a sea of colorful day-glo. It’s like the Brady Bunch meets the Addams Family animated-style. Or when Sabrina the Teenage witch arrived in Riverdale and spooked Archie, Reggie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Moose, Big Ethel, Midge, and the rest of the gang.
I truly wished Burton would have gone the dark, spooky atmospheric route with Dark Shadows and not have gone for the laughs. However, I do love Johnny Depp in anything and will give it a try. From the trailer though disappointing is Eva Green as Angelique who just doesn’t register evil like Lara Parker did; Michelle Pfeiffer who doesn’t seem to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard as the grande dame the way Joan Bennett did; and Chloe Moretz as a way too immature Carolyn Stoddard played by the more sophisticated Nancy Barrett in the soap. I did however like Helena Bonham Carter as a droll Dr. Julia Hoffman.
Here’s just hoping that Dark Shadows is better than Burton’s awful Planet of the Apes reboot.
In 1965, actor Aron Kincaid snagged his first lead movie role in The Girls on the Beach. With his sun-drenched blonde hair, All-American good looks, swimmer’s physique and quirky charm, he epitomized the surfer boy image so prevalent during the mid-Sixties so it is no surprise that he quickly followed this with a number of sand-and-surf movie appearances, Beach Ball, Ski Party and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. But once the beach ball burst and the youth market’s taste in films shifted to biker and hippie movies, Aron Kincaid found himself starring in one of the now most popular “worst movies of the decade” Creature of Destruction (1968) directed by self-described schlockmeister Larry Buchanan.
“Larry Buchanan was huge in stature and miniscule in the areas of charm and talent,” remarked Aron. The director had a deal with American International Pictures, which Kincaid was contracted, to remake a number of their 1950s horror opuses for limited theatrical release and TV broadcast as part of a syndication deal. Among the prior films he shot on miniscule budgets in Texas were The Eye Creatures (1965) with John Ashley; Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966) with John Agar; Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966) with Francine York; Mars Needs Women (1967) with Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig; and In the Year 2829 (1967) with Paul Petersen and Quinn O’Hara.
Kincaid became involved with Buchanan because of contractual problems with AIP due to his scheming manager (described by Aron as “a real devious son-of-a-bitch”) who never sent the studio his client’s signed contract. Kincaid just landed a small role in Walt Disney’s The Happiest Millionaire. His manager wanted him out of the AIP deal. When the studio wouldn’t increase Kincaid’s weekly pay for the second year after picking up his option, the manager wanted to use this to break the contract. Aron would not go along feeling loyalty to AIP, but he was forced to sue the studio and the matter was settled out of court. Kincaid confesses, “It is virtually impossible to describe what a legal battle with a motion picture studio can do to your life, your nerves, your family, and your sanity. After American International offered an out-of-court cash settlement, I was so relieved to see an end to the ordeal that the studio’s request for two more “play or pay” films from me seemed a small concession, considering that I was becoming physically ill from this seemingly endless army of people [managers, agents, lawyers] fighting over bits of meat.”
Feeling Kincaid was not right for the myriad of biker and hippie movies they were now producing (“Rightly so,” agrees Aron. “If they had offered me the third lead in The Wild Angels I don’t think I would have done it. I wasn’t into saying ‘Hey, man’ over and over.”), all AIP could come up with was the horror opus Creature of Destruction (1968) from Buchanan. This was an even lower-budget remake of the no-budget She-Creature (1956), which starred Chester Morris, Marla English, and Tom Conway. The film told the story about a hypnotist named Dr. Basso (Les Tremayne) who transforms his lovely assistant Doreena (Pat Delaney) back to a former incarnation, which is linked to a murderous prehistoric creature (actually a stunt man in a full-body wetsuit with a ridiculous mask head consisting of two bulging eyes and what looks like chop sticks for teeth). The mad doctor’s plan is to find fame and fortune by predicting the monster’s next murders and having the monster through Doreena carry them out. A third-billed Kincaid played stoic Ted Dell, a parapsychologist famous for his work in “combat psychosis” engaged to the daughter of wealthy country club owner Sam Crane (Neil Fletcher). Ted rejects his future father-in-law’s offer to exploit the murders and Basso’s predictions. Instead he decides to try to solve the crimes and to help Doreena resist Basso’s hold on her. She does but pays for it with a bullet in the back from Basso who then turns his gun on himself. As Doreena draws her last breath, so does the creature of destruction.
Explaining why he agreed to do the movie, Kincaid wrote in Scarlet Street magazine, “Off the cuff, it sounded as if it might be sort of fun. I knew Les Tremayne for years and wanted to work with him—little did I know what was in store when the script arrived. Within one day of shooting, I was wishing that I were back with the lawsuit. It had been heaven in comparison.”
Before leaving for Texas, Kincaid called Tommy Kirk and Yvonne Craig to get a gist of what was in store for him working with Larry Buchanan. “They confirmed what I had feared from the beginning—I was in for fourteen days that would make my three-month boot camp stint in the U.S. Coast Guard look like a Sunday school picnic.” After arriving at the Dallas airport, Aron was picked up by limousine whose driver gave him a tour of Dallas on the request of Larry Buchanan. Then it was off to LakeT exoma where the filming of this opus was to take place.
“The crew was sloshed to the gills when we pulled into Lake Texoma’s Tanglewood Country Club around midnight,” recalls Kincaid. “It wasn’t to be any different for the next two weeks. What’s worse, I was to become one of them in an effort to survive. I had just checked into my cottage when Mr. Buchanan came to the door to welcome me. The prop man, who was fussing over an object he was carrying in his arms, accompanied him. It looked to be a large rubber frog suit with zippers all over it. I was told that this was the creature and that when a head was added and the body filled out with a human, it would be quite serviceable. I fell back in a fit of laughter that vaporized when Buchanan said my hair was to be darkened to a dark brown in the morning to de-emphasize my youth.” Cast as a parapsychologist, Buchanan felt that Kincaid’s teenybopper appeal had to be minimized.
On the first day of shooting, Kincaid wandered onto the set with dark green hair and a deadly hangover from Grand Marnier. The shoot quickly ran into a problem as constant jet traffic from a neighboring Air Force base kept ruining take after take. (“I figured with my green hair nobody would notice a few jets.”) Buchanan made a fast trip to the base and returned with a captain’s uniform. Kincaid’s character now became Captain Ted Dell, a parapsychologist in the Air Force. Now Buchanan was able to leave the roaring jets on the soundtrack while inserting a few shots of planes hurtling across the sky.
Still determined to squelch any appeal the handsome actor may still have to the female teenage population, Buchanan made sure that Kincaid had a cigarette dangling from his mouth at every opportunity. It was the first time Aron had smoked on screen. “In some scenes there was so much smoke that you couldn’t see my lower face,” he laughs. “Too bad it didn’t cover some of the dialogue. The uniform was ill-fitting, the humidity unbearable, my green hair was turning burgundy, my bar bill was astronomical, and everything was covered with a film of tobacco smoke!”
Thinking things couldn’t get any worse they did. Buchanan was setting up shots around the clock in order to bring the project in on time. Featured players were brought in fromDallasor just recruited off the road to Texoma. Kincaid thought the shoot was improving when eighty elegantly dressed extras showed up to film various scenes in the country club’s main dining room as Dr. Basso’s hypnotizes Doreena on stage. “I couldn’t believe such production values until somebody showed me an ad from the local newspaper heralding a free buffet dinner at the club to anybody who showed up in fancy clothes. Once they were packed inside, Buchanan literally sealed off the exits until he had completed four or five hours of incompetent filming. Many of the freeloaders had tried to leave, but were told that they already had been ‘established’ in the master shots and that they must stay to the bitter end. Everything seemed to go awry. Just as we thought we were finished, a crew guy would say we had to do it again because something was wrong with a camera or the sound or whatever. Finally, around one in the morning, the sweat-soaked ensemble was told that they could go to their cars, but that they must run and look terrorized while doing so. The direction was hardly necessary, as the nearly 100 Texans quickly raced to the parking lot in an effort to flee their first encounter with the worst kind.”
The only people that made this shoot minutely bearable for Aron were his co-stars Les Tremayne and Pat Delaney. Kincaid had been an admirer of Tremayne since he was a little boy and saw him on the big screen in The War of the Worlds. Fans of 1970s Saturday morning television remember Tremayne as the Mentor to Captain Marvel on Shazam! for three seasons. “Les had a wonderful sense of humor and the stories of his early days in radio helped me through this mess immeasurably. Pat Delaney was a lovely woman. The script called for her to be in various stages of hypnotic trance throughout the entire film. In a situation like this, a trance was a great form of protection plus she barely left her room when we weren’t shooting”
Meanwhile back on the set, Buchanan was filming thirty to forty takes per scene. The actors became grips when half the crew walked off the picture and headed back to LA when their paychecks stopped coming. Kincaid was contracted to work fourteen days and he was elated when that last day finally arrived. “I told Buchanan that I would be leaving the following morning on the first flight out of Dallas for home. He became outraged and bellowed, ‘Don’t you realize that we still had three days of shooting left?’ I told him to check my contract. The next day Buchanan accompanied me to the airport. Sitting in back of a taxi, he had me read the un-filmed portions of the script into a tape recorder. I couldn’t imagine how he could use any of it in the picture.”
Creature of Destruction is s full of production gaffes, scenes horribly enacted that drone on endlessly, and bloopers such as seeing Larry Buchanan failing to pass himself off as Aron Kincaid in an early scene where the character Ted and his girlfriend Lynn are walking along the shore or seeing Pat Delaney’s throat keep moving as she is supposed to be dead.
Surprisingly, the best part of this talky not very scary horror movie is the nonsensical musical interludes provided by local Dallas singer Scotty McKay and his Quintet. At a country club dance he performs two catchy songs called “You Know I Love You Baby” and “Batman.” Later on the beach, he sings solo a sad ballad about contemplating suicide over a lost love, but it doesn’t stop his teenage audience from jumping to their feet to dance to it! He then drives off on his motorcycle only to be mauled to death by the Creature of Destruction when he gets stuck in the sand.
Though the movie was produced for television it did play the bottom of double bills in Southern drive-ins before going into syndicated television. Explaining his third billing behind Les Tremayne and Pat Delaney, Aron says, “Since I won my law suit versus AIP they had nothing vested in me anymore so they could have cared less how I was billed. To be honest, I wish they would have left me off the credits and I could have been the mystery leading man!” And despite their agreement, AIP never asked Aron Kincaid to do another film.
Determined to put the whole trying experience behind him, Kincaid made a succession of TV guest appearances on such shows as Hey, Landlord, Get Smart, Death Valley Days, The F.B.I., The Beverly Hillbillies, and The New People. He then quickly jumped at the chance to star in the adventure film Black Water Gold (1969), which was filmed on location in the Bahamas. Returning to LA after a month-long shoot and thinking the Creature of Destruction was dead and buried, a friend of Kincaid’s living inSan Diego called him after seeing a listing for the movie on local TV. Curious to see how this mess of a film turned out, Kincaid booked himself into a San Diego hotel and settled in for the start of the movie. “What I saw left me numb. The movie was even worse than I had thought possible! Buchanan had squeezed his 6’5” bulk into my size 40-medium uniform and finished the film by playing my part in long shots, with the muffled voice-over from our taxicab recording session. The zippers on the rubber monster glittered in the moonlight as it stalked victims, the entire cast sounded like a junior-high drama class on drugs, and I stumbled around looking smoky, green, and drunk. It by far has the worst acting, the worst direction, the worst production values, the worst soundtrack and scoring of any motion picture ever made on this planet! This was the professional low point of my entire career.”
A movie this bad has to develop a cult following and to Kincaid’s chagrin it played on Los Angeles television every three months without fail for years. Reportedly, groups of teenagers would watch while chanting the awful dialog along with the actors. In the early Nineties, Kincaid bought a copy of the movie. He explains, “I just wanted to make sure there would be one less print in the world. The seller was wonderful. When I told him I wanted to buy it, he said, ‘Are you sure? Have you…uh…ever seen it?’”
Sadly, Aron Kincaid passed away from heart failure on January 6, 2011. This was my last interview with him. He was a wonderful friend and is sorely missed.
Good news this week that The Poseidon Adventure will finally be released in April on Blu-Ray for its 40th anniversary. Hurrah! Exclusively through Walmart. Boo!
20th Century-Fox is not doing anything special for the movie. Boo! No boxed set or booklet. No deleted scenes. Nothing. So if you have the deluxe DVD that came out a few years ago, might be just worth sticking with it. I am despite The Poseidon Adventure being my favorite movie of all-time.
Cinema Retro magazine though will be doing a special feature on the movie in its Fall issue. Hurrah! Moi has contributed a piece titled “A Nod to Nonnie.” No surprise there that I would write a tribute piece about Carol Lynley and her terrified pop singer character.
I just returned from shooting the Spring Break Film Festival introductions at the TCM studios in Atlanta and boy do they know how to pamper their guests. We had a car service waiting for us from home to airport and then from Atlanta airport to the Four Seasons hotel where they put us up. Friday morning at 8:45 am car was there to drive me to the studio less than a mile away. I was met by a PA and walked to the soundstage where I was warmly greeted by Gary, the segment producer, and Sean, VP of production, who initially contacted me to do this. They introduced me to the crew (all of whom were really nice particularly the sound guy and camera man) But I hit it off with the researcher Alexa who is a huge movie buff as you would expect in a job like hers. She even copied an article from the LA Weekly for me about the death of Yvette Vickers because Carol Lynley was interviewed in it.
I was then taken to my dressing room (more of a oversize closet LOL) and the Stylist helped me pick out my first outfit to wear before taking me to makeup. Back on the soundstage, I was told the set for Ben Mankiewicz’s intros was brand new and I would be the first guest on it. Finally met Ben (pictured below) and he was super cool.
We immediately began shooting. Ben would read an intro off the teleprompter and welcome me. I had to say somethig like “Thanks Ben. Great to be here.” He then would start the discussion. After the first two intros for Gidget and Gidget Goes Hawaiian, I was told I needed not to blink during my response to Ben as I was in my closeup, Mr. DeMille. I tried but I think I failed a few times as the shoot continued. Hard with those bright Klieg lights shining down on you. As for the interviews, Ben made it real easy. We flew through 8 intros and then a wardrobe change.
I asked how I was doing and got good feedback. We did 2 more than lunch, which was a catered affair in a private lunchroom for TCM only. Alexa gave me a tour afterwards and told me that was not their normal soundstage. She brought me over to the more luxorious TCM area, but it was being used for something else. We did 5 more before the last wardrobe change and wrapped an hour early.
I think I did better with some of the intros than others. Wasn’t sure what Ben was going to ask me. Made sure I told stories from the actors I interviewed like Aron Kincaid, Gail Gerber, Pamela Tiffin, Christopher Riordan, Linda Rogers, Ed Garner, Luree Holmes, Darlene Tompkins, Chris Noel, etc. I am sure some were better than others and they will edit to make me look good. LOL
Overall, I had a lot of fun. However, I am not sure I will watch myself right away. I will DVR them but hold off from viewing until I get some feedback and the courage to take a look.
Had no interest in this year’s Academy Awards until I learned that Mother Dolores Hart of Where the Boys Are fame will be attending. A film about her life entitled God Is Bigger Than Elvis is nominated for Best Short Documentary. I usually don’t watch the Red Carpet pre-shows but these I will tune in for and then skipping the awards ceremony. Click here to read more.
Gardner McKay as Don
Carol Lynley as Betty
Stuart Whitman as Roger
Juliet Prowse as Peggy
Richard Beymer as Pete
Millie Perkins as Trudy
Roddy McDowall as Lane
Jane Wald as Jane
Dana Wynter as Mona
Wende Wagner as Megan
