1965 - Allied Artists - D: Robert Gaffney - S: Marilyn Hanold, James Karen, Lou Cutell
In The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Michael Weldon's review of Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster said it all in the first two sentences: "Don't miss. It's the worst." The plot is about a Martian princess and her flamboyant dwarf assistant coming to Earth in search of women to help repopulate their planet. They both have hilariously un-subtle homoerotic undertones. There's an android astronaut named Frank (the "Frankenstein" of the title), who ends up fighting the Martians' giant monster they keep chained up in their spaceship (played by an uncredited Bruce Glover). There's also some groovy soundtrack music, including "That's the Way It's Got to Be" by the Poets. And that's pretty much it. All in all, a mindless but fun flick that cruises along and delivers plenty of laughs. This was Gaffney's only credit as a director, but he later showed up as the DP on Superfly T.N.T. in 1973. Enjoy!
Mike Vraney and Lisa Petrucci, photo credit: Lars Erik Holmquist
Shocking news awaited us as we awoke this morning. Mike
Vraney, the founder of Something Weird Video, had passed away from lung cancer
at the age of 56. An official statement from SWV said, "Mike was a very
private person and didn't want anyone, except his closest friends, family and
colleagues, to know about his illness. He went through aggressive chemotherapy
and radiation treatments for over a year, but sadly the cancer spread and
cruelly took him from us."
The news hit those of us who have been fans of
his life's work for the last three decades like a ton of bricks. You see, his was not merely just another home
video company. Founded by Vraney in Seattle in 1990, Something Weird unearthed
thousands of films and entire b-movie and exploitation sub-genres from the
dustbins of history. Especially back in the early and mid-90s, when information
on the kinds of films he championed was not widely disseminated or easily
found, the Something Weird Video catalog was a revelation. The films were
categorized under headings like "Untamed Video", "Sexy Shockers
From the Vault", "Grindhouse Follies", "Spies, Thighs &
Private Eyes", "Crime Wave USA", "Sci-Fi Late Night
Creature Feature Show", "Wrasslin' She Babes", "Nudist Camp
Classics", "Twisted Sex", and the perfectly succinct "Big
Bust Loops". I and countless other intrepid cinematic explorers poured
over those catalogs, with their eye-catching graphics, tidbits of biographical
and historical information, and original ad mats and poster art, like holy
grails. We ordered these films through the mail, and some of us were lucky
enough to live near adventurous mom and pop video stores that actually carried
them. My own local mecca was Scotty Cooper's Video Bazaar in Metuchen, NJ, who
always stocked a large collection of SWV titles on VHS, their colorful spines
practically jumping off the shelf and into my curious hands, enticing me to
take them home and dive into a world that had been lost to time, or may have
existed only in the mind of a single, twisted auteur who died penniless and
unknown, but whose life's labor was finally being presented to a
(comparatively) wide audience.
He brought the films of people like David F. Friedman,
Herschell Gordon Lewis, Andy Milligan, Doris Wishman, and Harry Novak to public
attention and helped spread the gospel of the "forty thieves", a
loosely-affiliated cabal of roadshow impresarios whose traveling exploitation
shows in the early decades of cinema played fast and loose with local vice ordinances as they zig-zagged back and forth across the
countryside. And he didn't merely do it on a subterranean, cult level. In the
early 2000's, he pulled off something that we all would have thought impossible
just a few years earlier (and which would have been impossible only a few years
later), when he made a distribution deal with Image Entertainment which led to the then ubiquitous Borders Books chain to stock Something Weird
Video DVDs in their big box stores nation-wide. Suddenly, middle Americans
looking for the latest Adam Sandler or Sandra Bullock movie might accidentally
come across The Monster of Camp Sunshine, Color Me Blood Red, or Satan in High
Heels. He also got the films exposure on mainstream television, first with a
series on the USA Network in the mid-90s, Reel Wild Cinema (hosted by Sandra
Bernhardt), and more recently with the Something Weird On Demand channel
available through Comcast cable. Today, we take it for granted that these kinds
of movies are part of our collective kitschy Americana, but Vraney blazed a
trail, without a map, not knowing how it was going to end up. His was a mission
fueled by personal passion, and without his work, we'd all be living in a less
interesting world.
Mike is survived by his wife, Lisa Petrucci, and two
children, Mark and Danielle. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family, his
friends, and everyone else who will miss him.
Now lets take a look at some of the familiar images that we
may never have even known about if not for Mike Vraney via the famous classic
opening bumper that kicked off every Something Weird Video release.
The Imperial Hotel at 355 Peachtree Street in Atlanta was home to a succession of nightclubs in the old days, and my fellow Ichiban stalwart Greg G has shared many great ads for them in the past, both here and at his invaluable Atlanta Time Machine site. But to the best of my knowledge, he doesn't have this particular one!
