Here’s the 81-year-old Clara Peller performing her iconic line for Wendy’s restaurants, “Where’s the beef?!” This was arguably the most memorable ad campaign of the 1980’s.
The commercials are pretty funny — the first two are, anyway. All three aired in 1984. Peller, who had emphysema, went on to star in other commercials, including those for Prego spaghetti sauce, Praise dog food, and Ben’s insect repellent. All were allusions to her breakout role for the restaurant (and were presumably unauthorized); Wendy’s then ended its relationship with her.
These commercials were ubiquitous in the 1970’s. If you were a small child, you could rattle off the trademark slogan without even understanding what it meant, and adults would find it extremely funny. (The ad actually isn’t terribly funny by itself. The 1980’s had a plenty of inspired commercials. but the few I can remember from the 70’s were generally lame.)
Anyway, fast-forward about 12 years to when I was a senior in high school … a buddy of mine actually handed me a can of V8 and dared me to pound it in one gulp. (For those not in the know, the product is a phenomenally awful beverage concocted from vegetable juices.) I took the dare. And I wound up projectile vomiting like a god damned fire hose — all over the rear bumper of that 1972 Plymouth Duster that I loved so much.
I suppose that I could try to blame my lifelong abhorrence for vegetables on that experience, but I hated greens even when I was a kid. (I was endlessly sneaking them to the dog at the dinner table; I wrote a story about it in the second grade that my parents nevertheless found amusing when I brought it home.)
The V8 vegetable drink is still around; the company is owned by Campbell’s. Somebody should find out where it’s canned, break into the place at night and just machine-gun all the cans in the same manner as Ripley shooting all the alien eggs at the climax of “Aliens” (1986). It would be a public service.
So this meme about Nestle’s Quik was making the rounds on Facebook this week. (It apparently originated on the realestateispower Instagram page?) I grew up loving Quik in the 80’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are millennials who do not recognize it — it was a powder you mixed with milk to get a flavored treat. (It’s okay … when I was very young, I didn’t really know what this Tang was that adults occasionally referred to — it was just something that was popular a little before my time.)
Now, please understand … when I say Quik, I do not mean the peculiar strawberry-flavored variant that you see pictured below. I and every other self-respecting kid in my neighborhood appreciated the chocolate variety. Strawberry was for … Russian kids. Or maybe hippies. Or girls, possibly.
Anyway. it turns out I’m not the only one who deliberately put too much mix in, so that I was rewarded with that delicious chocolate mud at the bottom of the glass. Facebook has informed me that was machination employed by others as well.
Hot damn, did I love getting these from my Dad when I was a little kid. I haven’t seen a box of Cracker Jacks since then — though the Internet informs me that they are still sold in abundance. (It seems to me that a box of the classic treats would pale in comparison to those giant tins of caramel corn that you can buy at Walmart or Costco around Christmastime.)
Anyway, I was joking on Facebook yesterday that I needed to run out and buy a box, because I heard that the prize inside was the Medal of Freedom.
“Wooly Willy” is takin’ it waaaaay back. I remember this children’s toy from my early childhood in the 1970’s. (I was thrilled to receive this damned thing. The gimmick, if you can’t tell, is that you used a magnetic pen to draw features on Wooly Willy’s face out of those magnetic filaments encased over it. To a little boy, that seemed like magic.) I’m curious if anyone else remembers this guy.
These first hit shelves in 1955, according to Wikipedia, for the princely sum of 29 cents.
I keep wanting to correct the spelling of “Wooly” to “Woolly,” because I’m old and I hate fun, I guess.
Today’s Throwback Thursday is something that I don’t actually remember — the trailer for 1973’s “Westworld” was a bit before my time. But this was too good not to share. (I’ve been on a weird “Westworld” kick lately — probably because I recently happened across this quite promising trailer for the brilliant HBO remake’s third season.)
It’s funny seeing the same plot setup and motifs for the campy-looking original film (which was, surprisingly, written and directed by Michael Crichton). I must say that Yul Brynner looks like he made a pretty decent bad guy, though.
I found the picture below floating around Facebook — it’s part of the selection of masks advertised in The Johnson Smith Company Catalog, probably sometime in the late 1970’s. (As I’ve mentioned a few times here at the blog, I cherished that catalog and anything I could afford to buy from it when I was a kid.)
If memory serves … these were more expensive by the time I got my hands on the catalog in the early 1980’s. Maybe the prices went up by then? (I thought the masks sold for $20 or $25. I desperately wanted several of them, but my spending range capped at maybe $10 when I was a second or third grader.)
It was the monster masks that excited me. (Characters like the “Dirty Old Man” or the presidents had their genesis in some kind of weird grownup humor that befuddled me as a kid.) That “Skull” mask was one that I desperately wished for. (I also remember some sort of screaming skull face with sharp teeth that I wanted even more badly. It had a protruding mouth and a black cloth over its head, maybe?) The “Werewolf ” also would have attracted my attention.
If you look closely, you can see that some of these masks aren’t all that impressive. The “Alien” is probably a little less menacing than its designer intended, and “Santa Claus” feels problematic. “Frankenstein” is just sad; he looks like Michael Myers fathered a child with Smurfette. Oh, well.
“Gargoyles” (1972) was a fairly corny made-for-television creature feature that’s still remembered fondly by a lot of older horror fans. Despite its predictably campy nature, this weak-premised ABC Movie-of-the-Week just … inexplicably worked. There are still people today who comment about how badly this scared them when they were kids. It didn’t exactly terrify me when I saw it rebroadcast in the 1980’s, but I definitely found it pretty thrilling when I was in the second grade or so.
I think that there are a few elements of this apocalyptic monster flick that combined to make it effective — at least for impressionable youngsters. The first was its garish costuming by Thomas S. Dawson; the film’s eponymous monsters looked kitsch, but nonetheless creepy. The second was the movie’s sound editing — the bad guys’ grunts and electronically distorted voices could get under your skin. The third was film’s dark, desert setting, and the fourth was director Bill L. Norton’s choice to film the attack sequences in trippy, 70’s-tastic slow motion.
Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think that “Gargoyles” is frightening by today’s standards. But back in the day, it was unusually good for a made-for-TV horror film. (You can find the entire movie for free on Youtube if you want to see for yourself.)
Postscript — that is indeed a young Scott Glenn in the trailer as one of the movie’s heroes.
Below are the trailers for all four major film iterations of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Though these movies enjoy varying degrees of fame, they all remain close to my heart. There is just something about Jack Finney’s original paranoia-inducing story idea that’s timeless and frightening. (Finney’s 1955 novel served as the basis for the first film, directed by Don Siegel, a year later.) And I always thought that the identity-stealing, alien body snatchers were an elegant monster concept too, because they can be rendered effectively on film with little or no special effects.
The first trailer is for the original 1956 classic, which still holds up surprisingly well. (If you haven’t seen it, then you might discover that it’s got more urgency and less camp than you’d expect from a typical 1950’s alien invasion flick.) The second trailer is for the genuinely frightening 1978 remake, which is, quite simply, one of the top science-fiction/horror films of all time.
I was introduced to both of these movies by my “movie uncle,” Uncle John. I remember thinking the original was far better than I’d expected for an “old black-and-white.” (I’d had a an adolescent’s predictable skepticism about old movies.) And the dour 1978 masterpiece got under my skin and stayed there forever.
The 1993 installment, simply titled “Body Snatchers,” is probably the least well known — I’ve never heard it mentioned outside of horror fan circles. I myself had never heard of it until I stumbled across it in a video store more than a decade following its release. It had a very limited theatrical release, and it sometimes feels like the most generic of the “Body Snatchers” movies — like maybe a made-for-television movie or an especially good entry for the first revival of “The Twilight Zone” (1985-1989).
I love it. You could tell it was a labor of love for its screenwriters and its director, Abel Ferrara … it was obvious that they truly “got” Finney’s concept, and that they set out to deliver just what genre fans wanted. This “Body Snatchers” was freaky, fast-paced and unsettling, and I still feel it deserves a broader following.
The fourth trailer is for the most maligned and recent adaptation of Finney’s novel, 2007’s “The Invasion.” (My god, was this really made 13 years ago? Tempus fugit.) People really dislike this movie, despite a cast led by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. It was generally panned by both critics and audiences, and I sorta understand why. It’s got its share of flaws — most notably a hasty happy ending that feels tacked on by the studio. I don’t quite love it, but I really like it quite a lot — it’s stylish and ambitious and has a lot of creepy moments. And if you think Nicole Kidman is easy on the eyes, as I do, you’ll see that she looks like a million bucks here.
If you really enjoy these films and are hungry for more, there are two other alien invasion movies that seem to channel the same muse as Finney’s. The first is 1994’s “The Puppet Masters” by Stuart Orme. (It should not be confused with its soundalike contemporary, the “Puppet Master” (singular) horror franchise, which depicts demonic dolls.) “The Puppet Masters” is campy, but still very cool, and it adapts the eponymous 1951 novel by Robert A. Heinlein.
The second recommendation I’d offer is 1998’s “The Faculty.” It’s an even campier horror-comedy aimed more at mainstream audiences, but it’s still a lot if fun.
I hope that you are all looking forward to a rockin’ New Year’s Eve. It’s hard to believe that we are not only ringing in a new year, but also a new decade — “2020” still sounds like science fiction to me.
Where does the time go? Somewhere irretrievable.
Anyway, here’s a couple of Pinterest finds for my fellow 1980’s nostalgia nerds. (We’ve got a nice little subculture goin’ on Facebook.) These are a few covers from January 1, 1980 (or in the case of the weekly TV Guide, the decade’s first full week). Try to wrap your head around the fact that, in a few days, the decade will have begun a full forty years ago.
Oh … I couldn’t resist throwing in a couple of comic book covers dated January 1980, too. I actually had that issue of “Battlestar Galactica.” I still remember it sitting in a stack at the bottom of my closet, with one or two others — vastly outnumbered by “Sgt. Rock” and various “Archie” titles.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 