"Vow, kids, vasn't it SCARY vhen Leonard the gravedigger
killed off those four cans of Hamm's beer?"
~ Count Floyd
'Monster Chiller Horror Theater'
I met Old Weird Eric on the second day of 5th grade and we formed a friendship that lasted through high school and beyond. (We've since kind of lost track of each other, living in different states.) Eric and I used to love the old monster movies on late night television. We were always catching the showings of 'War Of The Worlds', 'The Monster From The Black Lagoon', and 'Frankenstein', et al.
And there was always some Horror Theatre host - a B or C-list celebrity - like Vampira, Elvira, Sinister Seymour, and years later, The Crypt Keeper.
My all-time favorite Horror movie host, however, is COUNT FLOYD, the fictional character from Second City Television (SCTV).
SCTV ran at the same time Saturday Night Live did, but it was a godzillian times funnier than SNL. I didn't learn about it until about 1988 or so. My then-girlfriend The Countess turned me onto it and I love it still. SCTV was supposed to be a day in the life of a third-rate television station with a nonexistent budget. The show had a ton of great comedic talent and they performed a lot of spoofs or parodies of just about everything one could think of, from movies and TV shows to singers and news broadcasters.
See, like this:
'TAXI DRIVER'
With WOODY ALLEN :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihHw3de86xs
My favorite recurring character was Count Floyd (played by Joe Flaherty) of 'Monster Chiller Horror Theatre'. The station was always supplying him with horror movies that were total dogs, and poor Count Floyd (who howled like a werewolf, despite being a vampire) would have to work his cape off trying to convince the kids that they'd seen a "vedy skedy" movie.
One of the running gags was Count Floyd's showing of 'Doctor Tongue's 3-D Horror Movies'. The problem though was that the movies were so cheaply produced that they weren't really filmed in 3-D at all. So the actors would occasionally shove objects toward the camera to try simulating a 3-D effect. If you don't think that's funny, kids, you'd better not go to college!
To celebrate "Happy Halloweenie", which is just around the corner, I decided to share with you some great Count Floyd moments and "skedy" movies.
Movie Clips: 'THE HESHE FROM TRANSEXUALVANIA' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi0PseJrro0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-mLO0ZgOwc
WHOA! Hold On! That really WAS scary!
This is supposed to be funny, NOT skedy.
Let's try this again, shall we?...
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE -
'Dr. Tongue's Evil House Of Pancakes' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R3G_beQccA
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE -
'Dr. Tongue's 3-D House Of Stewardesses':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SJY6w0HD50
SCARY MOVIE PREVIEWS
With COUNT FLOYD & WOODY TOBIAS, JR. :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WovdOOngTeo
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE -
'Blood Sucking Monkeys From West Mifflin, Pennsylvania':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEjdt_n1l-4
MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE -
'Whispers Of The Wolf':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMVrMHQk95s
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
Pretty funny stuff. I probably have watched SCTV on occasion, but it wasn't my regular viewing. But I didn't have much regular viewing in the 70's, 80's, and 90's for the most part. I do recall seeing that back and forth to the camera 3-D gag at some time in the past.
ReplyDeleteI watched a couple minutes of the video about Michele Obama being a man and that was kind of funny. You didn't put that up, but it was one of the other suggested videos after the first Michele one you posted.
Lee
A Faraway View
BOIDMAN LEE ~
DeleteYeah, I loves me some Count Floyd and those high-tech 3-D effects. Pretty scary, eh, kids?
Not as scary as 'The Heshe From Transexualvania', but still vedy skedy stuffs!
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
I hate that I missed this stuffs back in the day!
ReplyDeleteI went to YouTube and watched every Count Floyd vid I could find. Man, that is a GREAT character! Tickled me as much as anything has in a long time! The howling is simply genius, and the variation he puts into the howling cracks me up, too. If something is not vedy skedy he emits a whimpy half-howl. THANKS Brother, for "x-posin'" me to this!
SHEBOYGANBROTHER SIX ~
DeleteMan, x-posin' you to Count Floyd was the least I could do for the guy who x-posed me to BOB & RAY. (Or is it RAY & BOB? Somehow I seem to have forgotten all the good grammar I learned while studying Feminism, Communism, and Black Liberation Theology at Princeton and Hahvahd.)
I love how when Count Floyd is completely at a loss for words he always resorts to another howl.
Those SCTV folks were brilliant. Totally off the wall, similar to Bob & Ray (or Ray & Bob?), although they came much later. I mean, combining 'TAXI DRIVER' with WOODY ALLEN?! Who thinks like that?!
Since you liked Count Floyd, I'll give you a few more SCTV skits to check out. No 'Count Floyd' here, but there IS Floyd the barber from 'The Andy Griffith Show' meeting the Godfather and needing a favor...
SCTV - 'FIVE NEAT GUYS' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMjtvSABQ3Q
'FIVE NEAT GUYS' - GOLD :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDJGAG98GEE
SCTV - 'THE GODFATHER' :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZOmjdAFGCU
Got a great song lined up for BOTB tomorrow. Hope to see ya there, Sixgun.
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
I used to love watching Crypt Keeper. I'm trying to recall the other cheesy one I used to watch - I can see a hand come out from the dirt of a grave in the opening credits. Chiller Thriller maybe.
ReplyDeleteLoved the clips of Michelle. Southside in the house! hahaha
ELSIE ~
DeleteHa! Yeah... "in the Howwwwse!"
I love how she says "Let me tell you who ME and Barack are". Trying real hard to undo all that proper grammar she learned at Princeton.
And then shortly afterwards we learn that she's "the product of a working class UPBRINGIN'." She really stresses the point that she dropped that last "g".
Hell, she's every bit as phony as BaROCK.
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
Some veddy good funny stuff here.(But not scary, which is okay by me.) Scary for me was working overtime in our lab the bowels of an old hospital building. It was creepy enough during the day.
ReplyDeleteSUSKI ~
DeleteWell, I'm with you. I like vedy funny better'n vedy skedy anyhow.
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
AGH, I'm really starting to hate Blogger! It's no longer showing me f-fff posts in my dashboard. In fact, the only reason I even knew this post was here was because I thought, "Huh, I wonder if there's any new f-fff posts?" and came over manually. So excuse my extreme tardiness.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I love the Count's mention of Graveyard Shift and poor unfortunate Leonard (not unfortunate for what happened to him, but unfortunate for drinking Hamm's).
Also, I've never heard of SCTV, nor of Count Floyd, but these were fantastic. John Candy? Rick Moranis? Ahhh, the golden age of comedy. Vedy, vedy funny stuff.
Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but this was listed as a comment on one of those Count Floyd videos and I got a kick out of it, if only because the laugh track DOES seem rather arbitrary. And because of it, if you watch the clip while knowing that, it actually seems funnier - especially when laughter erupts over seemingly nothing.
"The laugh track is off-putting to some folks - don't care for it myself - but when SCTV was working out of Edmonton, they said the laugh tracks were put in by the guy producing the morning farm reports, who just added them at arbitrarily-spaced intervals. That adds a wonderful level of weird to things, I think."
Also... Michele Obama is a man? Now THAT'S something I don't want to see in 3D.
A-WOOOOOOOOOOO!!
~6B-Scurred
6-B ~
DeleteI've also noticed some weirdness with Blogger's Dashboard feed recently. When I posted my BOTB on the "other" blog on November 1st, MY OWN post was not showing up in my Dashboard, neither was Arlee Bird's BOTB post, even though I knew it existed because I'd already voted on it. It took 4 to 6 hours before his post and my own showed up in my Dashboard.
I've also noticed that sometimes certain blogs' posts are occasionally disappearing from my Dashboard after they had previously been showing up for a day or two. For example, Susan Swiderski's posts suddenly stopped appearing, so I had to click on her blog title specifically in my Dashboard, which then showed me ALL of her prior posts, while excluding all the other blogs I 'Follow'. Buggy Blogspot, Beer Bro, buggy Blogspot!
I had wondered if you'd gotten my joke when I used a (fake) Count Floyd quote to close out my review of your book 'The Graveyard Shift'. That was my favorite part of the review, and here you wuzn't even gettin' it 'til now. That's vedy skedy!
The laugh track... Hmmm... I seem to remember some SCTV commentary on a DVD where they said they didn't use a laugh track at all. So I was assuming that the laugh track found on some of these clips had been added by 'Comedy Central' who had re-broadcasted them. Man, you got me on that one.
Oh, yeah, Mrs. Obama... I think he got the idea to change from a man to a woe-man after he saw how successful it had been for Serena Williams (who was probably originally Samuel Williams, like Michelle was originally Michael, or so "they" say).
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
For once I'm glad to see that you're kind of neglecting this blog - it gave me a chance to get by here and leave a comment, even if it is incredibly delinquent.
ReplyDeleteI loved SCTV (of course, why wouldn't I, coming from the 'second city' and all). some really great comedians came out of that show. For my money it was far more innovative that SLN, and all that without the big rock start or movie actors hosting.
As far as M. Obama goes, well I can tell you one thing she did not come from the same South side of Chicago that I did - not by a long shot. Who do these people think they are kidding? With respect to the whole he/she thing, well, I'm not even gonna go there, frankly, she scares the bejeus out of me.
FAE ~
DeleteWell, if you were REALLY from the South Side of Chicago, Michael Obama wouldn't scare the bejeezus outta ya. It would take a Bad, Bad Leroy Brown to do that.
I have watched the various YouTube videos now about Michael/Michelle Obama and for me, the jury is still out. However, stranger things have happened.
But the one that's got me thinking the most is the one about Serena Williams. I have been saying for the longest time that there is absolutely no question but that "thing" is bloated on more steroids than Ahnold Schwarzenegger could have ever even afforded.
But, the more I think about it, the more I begin to lean toward the idea that Serena might really have been a Samuel (or some name like that). In fact, Serena might even be a Samuel gone under the knife and THEN bloated with steroids. Either way - a Serena on steroids; a Samuel made Serena; or a Samuel made Serena AND on steroids - it has not been fair competition for the 8% of professional female tennis players NOT on steroids.
Someday, the truth will come out.
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'
The backstory for the Dr. Tongue 3D gags was a little more complicated than just "zero budget". '50s vintage 3D required two synchronized projectors and special viewing glasses to work. When those movies were shown on late-night TV many years later, they were naturally shown without either element, and had no 3D effects, but various scenes staged to show off those effects were naturally still present, and looked even more ridiculously gratuitous -- Thus all the bits where the story pauses so Dr. Tongue can thrust a cat or steak entree at the camera.
ReplyDeleteAll hail SCTV!
I remember watching old 3-D movies on late night television, sans the necessary 3-D glasses. (Yeah, I'm old - in my mid 50s.)
DeleteBut I read somewhere - or perhaps I learned it from one of the commentary tracks on one of the DVDs - that SCTV's idea behind the 'Dr. Tongue 3-D movies' was that they were supposed to have been so cheaply produced that they never really were truly 3-D in the first place, so they just had to do their best to "fake" the effect. Which, if so, makes the skits even funnier.
And, rather than getting something cool coming toward the viewer (e.g., a fast thrusted sword, a fast flying bat or arrow, etc.), the Dr. Tongue movies gave us a slowly raised glass of brandy, a slowly waved food item, etc.
Either way and regardless, indeed... ALL HAIL SCTV!
~ D-FensDogg
'Loyal American Underground'