Saturday, October 31, 2015

GHOST THE GAME

I found this photo on another website of a Ghost game. Ghost is a word game. I had heard of Ghost because of a trivia book I had as a child. That book spawned my interest in trivia. There was a section of trivia having to do with ghost. It mentioned a TV game show called Super Ghost, hosted by someone name Bergen Evans. I did some quick research on line about both after seeing this game.

Here is the best explanation I could find of how to play Ghost and Super Ghost. From some other photos I've seen, this came with letters and score cards.


There is wealth of information about Dr. Bergen Evans (above). He was a professor of English at Northwestern University. He hosted another game show called Down You Go, as well as two other shows called Of Many Things and The Last Word. He also wrote several popular reference books and newspaper columns, many aimed at increasing peoples vocabulary. While you can find information about Dr. Evans, two other things are hard too find: a photo of Bergen Evans with out a watermark and video of his TV shows. I managed to swipe this photo and enlarge it. Archive-dot-org has one of the only known copies of Down You Go in existence.

Ghost has gone modern too. You can find Ghost game apps on Google Play and online.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

HALLOWEEN MUSIC PODCAST RECAP


I had fun this year putting together the Halloween music podcast. I have mentioned on this blog (and to some people I know) that I would love to write a book about this music that could be used in Halloween celebrations or for radio programmers who want to add music for Halloween to their playlist.

Here are the links to the post containing my podcast. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast as well. You can listen to the music while trick or treating or eating you Halloween candy.

Halloween podcast 1
Halloween podcast 2
Halloween podcast 3
Halloween podcast 4

I didn't have a chance to list the music on the special, hour long, forth podcast. Here it is:
  • "Welcome to My Nightmare" - Alice Cooper
  • "The Mummy" - Bob McFadden & Dor
  • "The Walls Keep Talking" - Gene Krupa Orchestra with Anita O'Day
  • "Midnight Monster Hop" - Jack and Jim
  • "Boris the Spider" - The Who
  • "The Spider & The Fly" - The Monocles
  • "Alligator Wine" - Screaming Jay Hawkins
  • "Dinner With Drac" - John Zacherly
  • "She's Fallen In Love With A Monster Man" - Lord Sutch & his Savages
  • "Ghost Town" - The Specials
  • "Children of the Grave" - Black Sabbath
  • "Midnight Stroll" - The Revells
  • "Mr. Were-Wolf" - The Kac-Ties
  • "The Witch Queen of New Orleans" - Redbone
  • "Monster Mash" - Bobby Boris Pickett & The Crypt Kickers
  • "Nightmare" - Artie Shaw Orchestra
I apologize if the sound level varies at times. I'm using equipment that is used by several people over the course of a week and month. They change the settings from time to time.

SCARY RANDOM HORROR TRIVIA



Stuntman Alex Stevens was the werewolf (top photo) on Dark Shadows. He also was the clumsy baker (bottom photo) at the end of the counting sequences on Sesame Street. On Dark Shadows, they used a sound effects for the growl (sometimes badly slip cued). On Sesame Street, they overdubbed the voice of Jim Henson, announcing the number of fancy pastries he was going to drop on the way down the stairs.

Speaking of baking, Vincent Price's grandfather invented baking powder.

At the time he was making Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and his Image Ten production company was also making the "Picture Picture" sequences for Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

The mid-60s British horror film The Deadly Bees, features an uncredited appearance by the British band The Birds (referred to on MST3K as "The Skinnys") which featured guitarist Ron Wood, later of the Jeff Beck Group, The Faces and the Rolling Stones.

Actor/director Paul Naschy wrote several paperback Western's under the name Jack Mills.

Donnie Dunagan, who played Basil Rathbone's son in Son of Frankenstein, was also the voice of Bambi.


At the time she made The Brain That Wouldn't Die, actress Virginia Leith (above), who played "Jan in the Pan," was married to actor Donald Harron, best known as KORN newscaster Charlie Farquharson on Hee Haw.

Actor David Hess, who played Krugg in the original Last House On the Left, wrote Pat Boone's hit song, "Speedy Gonzales."

Lon Chaney Sr. made more than 150 movies in his lifetime, but only 40 of them survive intact. One of the lost films is London After Midnight, which was remade as Mark of the Vampire.

The 70s Ghost Busters

The 70s Monster Squad

Besides being cult horror comedies of the 80s, Ghost Busters and The Monster Squad both share their names with live action Saturday morning TV shows of the 70s.

Wes Craven named Freddy Kruger after a kid that used to beat him up in school.

The term "horror" as a movie genre was not used until 1934.

To make his face appear sunken, Boris Karloff took out his bridge work, while playing the Frankenstein monster.

Valarie Hobson, who was in Werewolf of London and Bride of Frankenstein, was later married to British politician John Profumo, who was involved in the sex scandal that was the subject of the 1989 film Scandal.

Mexican actor German Robles was the first movie vampire to have fangs. This was in the 1957 film The Vampire. The second was Christopher Lee in 1958's Horror of Dracula.

Fredric March was the first actor to win an Oscar for a horror movie for the 1931 version of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde.

Speaking of Fredric March: A play by Alberto Casella, "La Morte in vacanza," was filmed twice. First as Death Takes a Holiday (1934) with Fredric March and Meet Joe Black (1998) with Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt also lived in a mansion March had built while he was making Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

The 1932 film The Mummy was not based on a fictional work but an original idea from Universal Pictures. Much of the film was parallel to the 1931 movie Dracula. The ankh was used a substitute for the crucifix. Edward Van Sloan's character, Dr. Muller, is similar to Dr. Van Helsing, which he also played in Dracula. Both use Swan Lake as their opening theme song.


The original design of the Creature from the Black Lagoon was based on the Oscar statue. The final design was created by a woman named Millicent Patrick (above), who was also an artist for Disney. She was not given credit for the design.


In an interview, actress Lenore Aubert (left) said making Abbott & Costello Meets Frankenstein was stressful because she was suffering from stomach flu and most of her wardrobe for the film consisted of white dresses.

The human characters from Scooby Doo were originally designed for a cartoon based on the TV series The Many Loves of Dobbie Gillis, to cash in on the success of the Archie cartoon series.

Bette Davis was unavailable to overdub some of her dialog in the made for TV horror film, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home. She asked for it to be overdubbed by actor/comedian Michael Greer, who stared in the horror film The Messiah of Evil. She had seen his imitation of her on the Tonight Show.



Artist Gene Colan based the look of the Marvel Comics Dracula on actor Jack Palance. One year later, in 1973, Palance played Dracula in a made for TV movie. 







 
  


Tuesday, October 27, 2015

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