stantheembryo.com

"MAKING THEIR SECOND APPEARANCE ON STANTHEEMBRYO.COM, HAILING FROM BIG SUR, CALIFORNIA....."

Yes, I paid tribute to Brother Joseph and Brother Jerome, the jobber tag team known as “The Peace Brothers,” last December. Please tune in to Slamminstan next Thursday at 7:00 PM Pacific Time when Fredo and I pay tribute to our favorite jobbers throughout the years, from the regional territory beat-ables to the national era understudies. We want to salute the widest variety possible of pindown characters: Scrap-Iron Gadaski, Joe Turco, The Outlaw, The Mulkeys, The Hangman, Pinky Larsen, Cougar Jay, Ira Reese, Pedro Godoy…  you name ‘em, we hope to cover them (bad pun intended).

Any jobbers in your histrionic database you want to mention? E-mail me at Lyger@aol.com or phone in next Thursday night at (347) 324-3764.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/slamminstan

Join us on Thursday, July 2 at 8:00 PM Pacific Time for the third episode of Slamminstan. Alfredo and I will talk about all things Negro Casas, AAA, CMLL, LSD, BBC, KCOP and “5 Minutes To Live DVD.” We’ll delve further into wrestling urban lore, and will try to put less emphasis on pro wrestlers’ (literal) pissing matches! Plus I will review the most obscure zombie flick I have ever come across, “Voodoo Swamp!”

CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE!

Negro Casas, Felino, and Mr. Niebla! It’s as if the spirit of Martín Karadagián flew into the vaults of Something Weird Video, and sprinkled it with a touch of Johnny Legend! This is one of the greatest wrestling entrances I have ever seen! Thank you to Alfredo Esparza for turning me onto this great CMLL phenomenon!

1994: El Físico Nuclear Cuts The Locks Of Vandal Drummond!

Well, Fredo and I braving the waters and launching a podcast of our own! Our debut Slamminstan show will be Thursday night at 8:00 pm Pacific time. Hope all you hepcats will listen in, and refrain from chuckling too loudly if the first show is a disaster!

What is on The Slamminstan Show, you ask? Well, we will discuss the finest points of all things lucha libre, puroresu, rasslin, and the sweetest organic spiritual hallucinations brought about by the cyber-fairies that sprouted from your brain cells and surf throughout your souls for eternity. All of this is true, we have learned this through meditation.

On top of that, we will discuss any way-out pop culture that we dig. Listen in, we plan to make this show a weekly fun ride. Any suggestions? You can e-mail me (Vandal Drummond) at Lyger@aol.com .

Access Slamminstan on Blogtalk Radio by clicking here.

Have a way-cool day!

UFC 99? What stuck out to me about UFC 99 was the blatant and offensive misuse of the potentially super-heelistic fighter Mostapha Al-Turk. Once again, Mostapha entered the UFC cage wearing a knee support. This time, however, the referee failed to announce that the knee support must be checked for foreign objects!

And don’t get me started on Al-Turk’s facial transformation. Pre-match photos showed Al-Turk sporting his villainous goatee, but when Al-Turk entered the ring, the fucking whiskers were shaved off, lending him a babyface aura! What the fuck?

So into the cage walks Mostapha, the soft-faced fighter with a knee support that do-gooders are paying no attention to. On top of that, he fights Mirko Cro Cop! So Cro Cop begins pounding the lesser talented Al-Turk into oblivion, and then he steals what little heel heat there is left in Al-Turk by poking him in the eye before finishing him off! NO! NO! NO! That’s NOT how it works! Mostapha Al-Turk was outclassed, on the brink of losing, so he should have committed the eye-poke spot and then covered Cro Cop for the 1-2-3 pinfall! Yeah, I know it’s MMA, there are no pinfalls, but at this point in the game some TNA booking illogic applies, so count the fucking pinfall!

No matter, though. Cro-Cop still got over gangbusters with the West German fans. Plus, when it all was said and done, Dana White learned that Cro Cop was possibly ditching UFC for the opposing Dream MMA promotion, causing Dana to flip out and tirade-away at a press conference interview that would have caused Judo Gene LaBell to throw his hands in the air and scream “WOOOOOOOOOWWWWW!”

In a Wonderful Land, Long, Long Ago, ,Judo Gene Fights The Bear!

So where is Judo Gene? Perhaps his wild-eyed lockerroom interviews are the only missing ingredient that could make UFC the single greatest entertainment entity in the galaxy.

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From an inappropriate Mostapha Al-Turk to a misbehaving child. I finally watched Something Weird Video’s 1977 Harry Novak zombie flick The Child. I heard good things about this film from fans of campy movies, but this flick is one of those disasters that fails to come off as “enjoyably bad cinema.” I can’t help but think that some of these folks gave it a thumbs-up simply because they saw cult film pioneer Harry Novak identified as producer of the film. If that’s the case, well— the emperor has no clothes, and The Child has lame drawn-out sequences, laughable acting, and the same bloody effects over and over.

The Tender Side Of Rosalie

The Child is a little girl in the boondocks named Rosalie. Rosalie loves sacrificing animals to her zombie friends in the graveyard, and her daddy loves a good laugh over a story of local boy scouts who were poisoned and died after eating oleander. So, nobody explains why the brother -who lives with them- is relatively normal, and doesn’t seem to think his family’s behavior is at all strange.

Enter Alicianne, played by Laurel Barnett ( a TV actress during the 1970s- she is one of the few in this film who has more than one credit to her filmography). She moves in with the family to become Rosalie’s nanny. Rosalie, still bereft over her deceased mother, resents Alcianne’s presence. Suddenly, and with little explanation, Rosalie begins to resent everyone else in her vicinity, so she calls her walking dead buddies from the graveyard to butcher everybody one by one.

You see very little of the zombies, and much of the carnage consists of a victim disappearing off camera, then re-emerging with their faces half-eaten. Aside from the bloody munched faces looking comical, the actors just pose and scream in horror; it looks posed, as if moving their head or body too much would risk the gory make-up effects falling off their faces.

Like the earlier Ray Dennis Steckler flick Rat Fink A-Boo-Boo, this would be fun camp if somebody cut about thirty minutes out of the movie. The stalking and chase scenes in The Child are so lengthy, so drawn out, that you will find yourself grumbling “Will you zombies just kill the person already?”

This is not to say that this Something Weird Video release is a total loss. While The Child is the feature flick on the box, one of the extras on this DVD includes a film called I Eat Your Skin. Originally titled Zombie, this film was shot in 1964, and apparently sat in a film canister for six years with no distributor. A fellow by the name of Jerry Gross unearthed it, and retitled the film so it could play as an accompanying double feature to his film I Drink Your Blood.

If skin-eating zombies are what you envision by the title, then you will be disappointed. The zombies do indeed kill, but only upon command; this was four years before George Romero created the notion of the wayward flesh-eating cadavers.

I Eat Your Skin rocks this DVD because the acting is hysterically over-the-top. I’m not talking bad acting. The actors’ delivery is so animated that you feel like you are watching, well— animation. The grins are winning, the scowls are fiery, and the laughter is so “ha-ha-ha” loud that it gives the film a flavor of old Speed Racer or Flintstones cartoons.

The film opens with studly adventure author Tom Harris reading the erotic excerpts of his latest novel to a bevy of bikini beauties at a hotel swimming pool. He begins making out with a perky brunette, when along comes Duncan Fairchild, his publicist. Duncan informs Tom that he has a special project for him, that they must embark right away. But Tom Harris is so lusciously lip-locked with his gal pal that he tells Duncan to shoo.

TOMMY ON THE MAKE!

IT'S MY HUSBAND!

C’mon Duncan! Take Me Away To VOODOO ISLAND!

What then should appear? Why it’s an enraged middle-aged business man running toward Tom Harris. “My husband!” Tom’s make-out partner exclaims. Harris suddenly likes Mr. Fairchild’s plan to leave immediately. Off they run from the angry husband! The angry husband is wearing a business suit, so of course he takes a wacky bump into the swimming pool, gets out and resumes the chase in his wet clothes. Tom and Duncan escape into a taxi, and they explode with laughter while the soggy husband chases after the taxi, laughter that is so perfectly pronounced that the “HA-HA-HAs” sound like words read off a cue card.

Well… that’s just the first ten minutes of the film. It is also the best ten minutes of the film. Also my favorite ten minutes! Now THAT’S the kind of campiness I love; a director tries to create legitimate comic relief, but plays his hand so badly that he unintentionally creates sheer comic camp history.

Harris accompanies Duncan and his wife to Voodoo Island, where a scientist working on creating a cure for cancer via cobra venom. Turns out this venom can turn people into macheti-wielding zombies.

Oh, and the scientist has a beautiful daughter named Jeannie who lives on the island with him. And of course, Tom Harris falls in love upon meeting her, delivering the great line “What cloud in Heaven did you fly down from?” And of course, there is a Voodoo cult on the island who want to sacrifice her, and the venom-invoked zombies are their henchman.

I Eat Your Skin is an enjoyable cheapie romp that makes this SWV release worthwhile if you can get it cheap. On the other hand, the film is available dirt cheap as part of a DVD four-pack called Flesh Feast at Amazon.com, and also contains The Severed Arm, The Undertaker, and Slave Of The Cannibal God.

Mostapha Al-Turk, reclaim your villainous ways in the cage!

Mondo Video A Go-Go On Vermont

I recently made a “cruising for burgers” trek out to Hollywood to check out my favorite haunts like Hollywood Book & Poster, the newstand on Cahuenga, and the few used record stores still in existence. I was very bummed when I hit the netherworlds section of Melrose to browse through Mondo Video A Go-Go, only to find that the crew there had shut its doors.

A few days later, I began Googling about for any sign that my favorite video store still existed in some shape, size, or matter. I eventually found the Mondo Video A Go-Go (or Mondo Video Au Go-Go, if you prefer) page on MySpace. About two weeks ago, I reconnected there with Col. Rob Shaffner,who along with his brother Bruce, ran the strangest and most addicting shop in the L.A. area. I learned that the shop closed down on Halloween in 2007, but that they have plans “up their sleeves.”

My heart sank a week later when I browsed the Mondo-MySpace page and learned that Bruce Shaffner, whose grizzly voice, wild eyes and mischevious smile was an essential piece of the shop, had died. Bruce passed away on May 28, the same day that we lost John Tolos, another great contributor to Southern California Pop-Culture.

I was introduced to Mondo Video A Go-Go through my comrade in arms Dan Farren in 1995. Dan contacted Los Mondos in regards to promoting a wrestling show in the parking lot of Rob and Bruce’s shop, which was located in the Los Feliz district on Vermont at the time. Along with our late friend Lucha Larry Doyle, we ran a fun show that was sparsely attended, but was a fucking blast. It was a bitchin’ party that included wrestlers like The No-Mercy Man, The Dixie Demon, The Lone Gunman, Frankie Dee, El Hijo de Golden Boy, SoCal’s pride & joy Superboy, Acero Dorado, Cápitan Oro, and of course, our own El Físico Nuclear. The funky-ass Rocket Boy worked as my manager, and notables in attendance were Hermester Barrington, Wade Rockett, Reverend A.T. Ripper, Brick Bosso, and a few future local boys: Supreme, Kaos, and Crayz.

That show was to be the beginning of many rasslin’ block parties, but some vigilant asshole from one of the neighboring shops snitched to the building’s landlord that Mondo Video was running the show without consent, and any future shows were nulled.

It was the end of Cal-International Wrestling shows at Mondo Video A Go-Go, but it was the dawning of video discoveries and fascinating visits for Vandal Drummond. Rob, Bruce, and their cute gal-friends turned me on to a plethora of totally cool videos I had yet to encounter.

Mondo Video A Go-Go was easily the strangest shop I ever frequented, and each visit was a treat. Now— there are plenty of stores and clubs in the Hollywood region that work really hard to convince you that they are “WEIRD! SHOCKING! UNORTHODOX!” but these guys didn’t have to put any effort into it. These cats were simply way out there! Rob and Bruce were sincerely happy-go-wisecracking anti-establishment folks who would oppose anything for the sake of opposition. The more extreme something was, the more they liked it.

Kitten Natividad

Whenever I entered the shop, the shop owners’ cigarettes would be lit, but the scent of tobacco was eclipsed by the incense they were perpetually burning. Rob and Bruce would be in a relaxed but grinning state, often with their their big white pup Ilsa in tow. Bruce usually had a big-ass Thermos next to him (which I assume contained coffee), and the store was plastered with posters that would shock the shit out of the average customer. Okay— I’ll confess— some of them shocked even me, especially the nude girlie pin-up of a double-amputee. Plenty of items lined the walls and shelves: pornographic pics, a bizarre black & white poster of a Titus Moody film called “The Last Of The American Hobos,” plus SoCal pieces of memorabilia like a fan club certificate for the 1970s Los Angeles TV show Seymour’s Monster Rally, not to mention magazines like American Grizzly. Block parties were thrown outside the store, and were attended by such notables as Margaret Cho, Kitten Natividad, Russ Meyer, the late El Duce, and Titus Moody.

Los Mondos Proudly display their county health code grade!

While it seemed that Rob and Bruce’s favorite items to peddle were the videos and the shocking works by GG Allin and Anton LaVey, my favorite items were the scores of out of print (or never released) films and homespun videos that I never knew existed. The Internet was still in its infancy, so the wild frontier of cult movies was not just a click away, which made the hunt for these flicks more enjoyable. I rented videos from Los Mondos like Alice In Acidland, The Blast-Off Girls, Sony Bono’s classic “educational” film on the dangers of smoking pot, Miss Velma’s Christmas Special, Tribulation 99, Hell American Style, kooky Christian vids decrying rock music and cartoons as Satanic, cool queer cinema like The Meatrack, classic B&W exploitation flicks like The Cocaine Fiends, scores of kung-fu flicks featuring long tongues and fighting gorillas, multiple collections of crazy ranting TV evangelists, videos on every conspiracy theory imaginable, and classic era kink featuring the brilliance of sex-goddesses like Annie Sprinkle and Candy Samples.

Rob and Bruce turned me on to two especially cool flicks. One was the 1968 Otto Preminger film Skidoo, in which Jackie Gleason plays an ex-mobster who takes a life altering LSD trip while in prison. The film features a who’s-who of stars like Carol Channing, Mickey Rooney, Cesar Romero, George Raft, Carol Channing, Peter Lawford, John Philip Law, the gorgeous Donyale Luna, Frankie Avalon, Slim Pickens, Richard “Jaws” Kiel, and Burgess Meredith (many of these vetran actors also trip on acid in the film!). It is also the final film performance of Groucho Marx, and the last thing you see him doing in the film is smoking “oregano” in a rowboat with Austin Pendleton. Skidoo is easily one of the most underrated films known to mankind.

The other obscure gem they turned me on to is the 1967 Robert Carl Cohen film Mondo Hollywood. This film is a look into the characters of Hollywood who are not cult figures, but beyond-the-fringe cult figures. Many of them are gone, some still thrive, but too many of these folks are overlooked in the annals of Southern California pop history. The existence of Mondo Hollywood is a funky look into Hollywood’s Hall Of Tripiness figures like Gypsy Boots, Rudy Gernreich, Jimmy Carl Black, Margaretta Ramsay, Ted Charach (who is, in my opinion, the ultimate hepcat in this flick!), Dr. Richard Alpert, Peanuts The Transvestite, Valerie Porter, Lewis Beech Marvin III, Jennie “Bazoom” Lee. This is but a partial list, and I really gotta do a thorough review of this film that will do it justice one of these days.

And on top of that, you could find every mainstream delight on video or vinyl (they had a fuckuva rad LP collection) from Sean Cassidy, ABBA, The A-Team, Jerry Springer, Marlo Thomas, and The Banana Splits. There was nothing too normal or too strange to belong in Mondo Video Au Go-Go.

I rarely visited the shop without shopping and visiting with The Schaffner brothers for at least an hour. I think my record visit there lasted nearly three hours. It was always hard leaving the shop; not only were the brothers and their babes fun to chat with, but so were the folks who frequented the store: the guy who loved to speculate whether the guys who played the brothers in The Brady Bunch “got it on” with each other in real life, the African-American woman who ordered white supremacy literature through the store (”You’ve got to read this shit so you can know what these motherfuckers are plotting!”), the kinetic wannabee wrestling promoter whose other passion was going in costume to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the lad who saw conspirators in everybody from police to the drifters frequenting the boulevards.

I hope Mondo Video A Go-Go returns in some fashion, but if it does, there will be a void without Bruce Shaffner. Thank you for some great memories, Dude!