film – Bill Gibson, II

I don’t watch many horror movies but came across this one that appears to have been made outside of Hollywood and in the South. A beautiful girl was telling a scary story and at the end she said something like, “Boo” and everyone jumped and then laughed and this reminded me of something I did many, many years ago.

I had a couple of younger friends, Tracy and Jane, who were best friends. There must have been a concert in Charlotte, North Carolina and someone loaned me their station wagon so that we could all go. I was driving. This car had power windows and I had never had a car that had power windows.

We went and had a good time and then came the long drive back to Jacksonville, North Carolina from Charlotte. The drive took place at night. We made it back to Elizabethtown and then got on the road to Burgaw. This was ages ago and there were long stretches of that road that had no houses on it.

It did for many years have a very tall TV antenna. I think I read that this was used by a Wilmington TV (WECT 6 Raycom) station. And, I do recall seeing an online video several years ago when they demolished the tower. This was a tower so tall that if you were near it’s base, you would hurt your neck bending it back to look all the way up to the top. But on this night the tall TV tower wasn’t the main event.

We started telling scary stories in the car. All the windows were up and as I said there were no houses, no lights along a long stretch of road. I’m not good at telling scary stories, and I was having to make one up on the fly but I had an idea for a surprise ending.

I told a story about a creature that lived along this stretch of road and it would abduct people driving along the road, snatching them from their vehicles never to be heard from again. So, I set this story up. Seems like there were 3 other people in the car. Tracy, Jane and I don’t recall the third girl.

Well, I get to the end of the story and it was dark in the car, but I had quietly moved my left hand over onto the 4 power window buttons, and at the finish of the story I pressed all four buttons and the windows came down and the air rushed into the car, and everyone let out a scream, and then laughed. What fun!

I’m looking at the credits for the horror movie, “Death Screams,” I was watching and it was a 1981 movie made in Shelby, North Carolina. That’s funny.

Susan Kiger (Playboy Playmate 1977) who did “hard core” porn before she became a playmate.

Andria Savio was married to Tony Curtis for several years.

I just replayed the ending of this movie and I still don’t know who the killer was. I just didn’t pay enough attention to the movie other than making a comment to myself that there were a bunch of good looking women in it. I think I made a comment about Kiger having “Hallmark Channel Movie” beauty. And she did, but now that I know how rough she had been prior to making this film, I wouldn’t expect her to have ever done anything great in acting. *She stepped away from acting right after “Death Screams” and has been living in California ever since. She is just a couple of months older than me, and is a very attractive woman still.

NOT SO DEEP FAKES

A few days ago I came upon a YouTube video about how the actor, Denzel Washington, had argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and impressed the court with his legal acumen. I listened to the end of the video and found it extremely inspiring. I was just re-watching the demolition video embedded above and for some reason was reminded of the Denzel Washington video and I thought to google to see if the video was actually real… and it wasn’t. The story was almost completely made up. Washington hadn’t earned a law degree from Howard University and he never argued any case before the Supreme Court. How disappointing that some mook, and I use the term “mook” in the least favorable way,… some mook wasted my time vie,wing his creation of fiction. I can only hope that he or she will at some point in the future have their time wasted in a similar fashion. But the video, if it had been true would have been extremely inspiring.

*Just a few days ago and weeks after I had viewed the above video, I came across a story, online about a young woman police officer who disappeared in the 1970s. They were showing a picture of an attractive woman officer in uniform, and beside that pic was a picture of a rusted hull of an automobile, at the rocky sea shore. The word “POLICE” prominently displayed on it’s passenger side door. I began to read the story but as I did “little things” began to register. Notably, they mentioned the make and model of the patrol car the woman officer had been driving the night she disappeared, and when I looked at the rusted hull, I didn’t think that matched the named type of vehicle. And then it came to me to look for the key phrase at the start of this article… and yep, there it was, something to the effect that “the following content is fiction.” Okay, it doesn’t say that explicitly, but that is what the phrase means. Believe me, the little fictional stories made up to pique people’s interest, and waste their time following the stories as if the fiction was real has gotten to be a slick delivery tool.

I am watching the first episode (“Mountain Fortress”) of the TV show “Cheyenne,” (1955) with Clint Walker (Cheyenne Bodie) and L.Q. Jones as his sidekick. A US Calvary patrol is coming up the gulch, and then I realized that the young lieutenant is James Garner. Now there’s two handsome men, Clint Walker and James Garner, both in their virile youth. *I just googled and see that James Garner appeared on several episodes of “Cheyenne.”

L. Q. Jones is one of those iconic cowboys that appeared in many Westerns (movies & TV shows). He had a distinctive look and voice (as most of the actors of the time did).

Ann Robinson is playing “the damsel in distress” in this episode, who is the Lieutenant’s love interest. Although this show is in Black & White, she has a distinctive face (dimpled chin) & red hair, that I remember from “The War of the Worlds” where she played Gene Barry‘s love interest as they were being attacked by Martians. The actress had a cameo appearance in the remake of “The War of the Worlds” 2005.

I run through periods where I like to watch Westerns, both movies and TV series. A few years ago I watched a bunch of episodes of “Laramie” with Robert Fuller and John Smith. In the episode, “Run of the Hunted,” I first recognized Charles Bronson, and then R. G. Armstrong and finally Richard Kiel. But even with this impressive cast, the real surprise was the house they were using for an insane asylum. The building was the set that was used as the Bate’s home in the movie “Psycho.” This set is located on Laramie Street, in Universal City.

Not too long ago, I realized how short Charles Bronson (5’9″) was. He was walking next to some other actor, and the way they filmed the two highlighted that Bronson was several inches shorter. I guess he was like Tom Cruise (5’7″). Now 5’7″ is a girly size, but you wouldn’t know it from all the action movies Cruise has been in.

R. G. Armstrong has a distinctive face and voice and I think I recall that he attended Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) along with Andy Griffith about 1945.

Cheyenne – Now, the bunch of good guys are being chased by a larger group of blood thirsty Indians, and I’m half expecting to recognize one of the Indians as maybe Chuck Connors. Somewhere in my mind I’ve seen Connors playing an Indian, and biding his time before becoming “The Rifleman.” But here come the Calvary to the rescue. Oh, good Cheyenne, L.Q., Ann and James all survive and wave goodbye to each other at the end.

Oh, and that’s Chuck Connors as Geronimo (1962).

I’m not through writing this posting and now see Rod Taylor in the third episode of Cheyenne. Rod Taylor was one of my favorite actors appearing in “The Time Machine” and “The Birds.”