Love At First Bite (1979)

October is here! This is the only time of year you can talk non-stop about werewolves and candy corn and Ray Bradbury and nobody looks at you sideways, and I intend to take full advantage of it!

We’re starting with an underrated gem in which George Hamilton plays Disco Dracula and Susan Saint James is his pot smoking lady love.

The 70’s were a culturally awesome time for horror, much in the way the 80’s would nail the fantasy genre. In 1972, American International Pictures made a movie about an African prince who visits Transylvania, gets turned into a vampire and sealed in a coffin until awakening in modern day Los Angeles. In 1974, the late, great, forever in our hearts Gene Wilder teamed up with Mel Brooks to astound one and all (including their investors) when they made a hit comedy out of a Christmastime release of a black and white spoof of Universal’s Son of Frankenstein. Sitting happily between Blacula and Young Frankenstein is 1979’s Love at First Bite.

I wouldn’t go so far to say it’s as good as either film, but it is good.

The story begins when the Romanian government commanders Dracula’s castle as a gymnastics training center for Nadia Comaneci. He has two days to pack up his coffin and his cobwebs and get out before they put in the balance beams.

It’s not the worst thing that could’ve happened to this version of Dracula. A sort of dusty gothic ennui has taken him over, and he’s been bored. Not to mention terribly lonely. One of his few enjoyments comes from American magazines that feature his latest obsession: fashion model Cindy Sondheim.

Dracula is convinced that Cindy is the reincarnation of his great love, and had been Mina Harker in a previous life. In order to turn her fully into a vampire so she can share his monstrous eternity with him, he has to bite her on the neck three separate times. Getting kicked out of the castle spurs him into action. He – along with his semi-immortal, bug eating sidekick Renfield (played delightfully to the hilt by Arte Johnson) – are going to hit up New York high society and find Cindy.

A lot of the comedy thereafter is about an out-of-touch European relic trying to blend into the nightlife. But even more of it is about how the expectations of movie audiences changed between 1931 and 1979, in the same way Young Frankenstein had explored genre shifts, but a little less elegantly. A running gag revolves around whether or not Dracula has seen Roots, and there are constant sly winks that hint the Hollywood version of 70’s New York is authentic as the Hollywood versions of 1930’s London or Transylvania in any time period.

There are terrific cameos from The Jeffersons; Sherman Hemsley turns up as a corrupt preacher whose funeral service is interrupted, and Isobel Sanford is an unsympathetic New York judge. Dick Shawn plays a haggard police detective who doesn’t particularly want to believe in vampires, but has to face facts, and Susan Tolsky gives a great, brief performance as Cindy’s agent. There’s more than a little Sue Mengers in it.

George Hamilton is a charming, clever Dracula, weighing the scales just right to evoke everyone’s memories of Bela Lugosi, but taking into account the necessary angles to make him seem both human enough to carry the story and inhuman enough to be funny.

If you’re of the camp that gets extremely annoyed by Susan Saint James, I’d still suggest giving this one a try. I know several people who can’t stand her, and a direct quote from one of them was: “I didn’t want to punch Susan Saint James in the face in that Dracula thing you lent me.” If you usually like her, you might enjoy seeing her with a very different look, as she sports fluffy blonde supermodel hair and ultra-glam nightwear throughout.

The absolute highlight of Love at First Bite, for me at least, is Richard Benjamin as Dr. Jeffrey Rosenberg. Jeffrey comes from the Van Helsing family, but changed his name for professional purposes. He’s a psychiatrist to the rich and famous, and very happily strings Cindy along in a commitment-free affair – until Dracula appears and he almost instinctively transforms into an obsessive vampire hunter. Except he can't quite remember how it's supposed to work. Vampires are the silver bullet ones, right?

It’s worth adding, though, that a serious familiarity with Universal’s 1931 Dracula helps the humour a lot. So if you’ve never seen the movie that started the sexy vampire craze to begin with, start there. (Interesting tidbit: makeup artist William Tuttle worked on both the 1931 Dracula and Love At First Bite!) Otherwise, consider adding this one to your lighthearted Halloween roster.

I Dream of Jeannie 04x10: How to Marry an Astronaut

I got an email request to do a recap of this specific episode of  I Dream of Jeannie, and of course I was stoked! If there’s ever an episode of something you’d like me to recap, then feel free to email me at jvonhalsing@gmail.com. I might not have access to what you want, but I’ll certainly try!

The last time we checked in on Jeannie, she was squaring off against her sinister lookalike sister, Jeannie II. Major Nelson was oblivious to subtle details, Roger was being blinked to every corner of the earth, and Dr. Bellows was convinced that he was hallucinating James Bond outfits on the people at work. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for Cocoa Beach.

We’re now into season four, and there’ve been a few changes worth mentioning: Jeannie II has appeared a couple of times since her last visit, so some of the grudges you might expect to resurface are water under the bridge; Dr. Bellows’ wife, Amanda, is now a regular feature on the show; and Roger’s character has been turned into a cartoonish playboy instead of a realistically girl-crazy astronaut. It’s all the usual characterization fatigue you see on sitcoms. The really bizarre changes start in season five.

And, even though a genie and an astronaut almost get married in this episode, this isn’t the one where Major Nelson and Jeannie tie the knot. The title, “How to Marry an Astronaut”, is a take-off on How to Marry a Millionaire, the classic Lauren Bacall film that was turned into a TV series in 1957, with none other than Barbara Eden in the role originated by Betty Grable.

One day, I’ll subject you to an episode of that, but right now we’re sticking with Jeannie. Or Jeannies, as the case may be.

The pink and gold bottle that Jeannie calls home is resting in its usual place on the desk, and we see that inside, Jeannie is rocking out to some ragtime on her Victrola while she reads Brides Magazine. Her Victrola is very cute, painted with pink and red flowers that match her outfit, but it’s also a weird choice. She lives in the 1960’s and was trapped in a bottle for a hundred and fifty years, so where’d she get it and why doesn’t she want a record player instead?

These urgent questions are swept aside, when the living room fills with a distorted version of Jeannie’s blink sound, and Jeannie II appears. She calls a few times for her sister, pacing the room with a hip-swishing sashay that sets her harem pants rippling like water. Barbara Eden changes the whole vibe of that costume just by altering her body language. It’s really impressive.

Jeannie II notices the open bottle, the stopper sitting right next to it, and raises an eyebrow at the universe.

“Oh…” she smirks, “That’d almost be too easy.”

Still, you can’t take the spots off a leopard. Jeannie II pops the stopper in, and as her trapped sister realizes what’s going on and starts to stomp her feet and call for help, she advises getting some kind of alarm system. After all, she notes, Jeannie gets stuck in there an awful lot.

Tabatha (Unaired Pilot)

A little while ago, we took a look at the first episode of the short-lived Bewitched spin-off Tabitha, starring Lisa Hartman. That show aired in 1977, and it was a retooling of an unsold pilot for a series called Tabatha starring Liberty Williams.

We learned on Mother’s Day that spelling it “Tabatha” is painful to Elizabeth Montgomery’s soul, but that’s how they chose to spell it for this production, and we have to respect that? I guess?

Surprisingly, I like this pilot way more than the one that was actually sold. I’m of the opinion that it’s better to mimic story elements rather than character dynamics if you’re going to ease people into a show by knocking off your source material. This first pilot, helmed by Bewitched director/producer William Asher, captures the spirit of a ‘70s single girl update while keeping some fresh ideas in there, and he does this not by trying to recapture the “types” of characters, but by calling back to structure of “I, Darrin, Take This Witch, Samantha.”

The episode opens with scenes of steep hills and charming cable cars, letting us know that the newly grown-up Tabatha Stephens now lives in glamorous San Francisco. (When we see the size of her apartment, you’ll know that a hell of a lot of witchcraft is involved in keeping her rent down.) Tabatha herself looks every inch a career girl of the times, with her Dorothy Hamill haircut and her brown pantsuit, as she races across the street to hail a taxi.

I feel like I should explain that in days of yore, when our mothers were teenagers, there was a major Battle of the Haircuts. You were either a Dorothy – a variation on the short wedge cut made popular by figure skater Dorothy Hamill, or a Farrah – barrel curls and volume in the style of Farrah Fawcett. The Dorothy was shorthand for being practically minded, while the Farrah meant you liked to have more fun. This was a serious conflict, and I’m shocked that it isn’t taught in history class.

I Dream of Jeannie 03x02: Jeannie or the Tiger

Why not follow up last month’s double bill of doppelgängers and this month’s Bewitched entry with the episode of I Dream of Jeannie that introduces her lookalike sister? Sounds fun, right?

Yes it does, don’t be difficult.

I Dream of Jeannie is a 1966 sitcom about an astronaut (very chic at the time) finding a genie in a bottle on a remote island in the Pacific. He’s a handsome astronaut played by Larry Hagman, and she’s a warm-blooded young genie played by Barbara Eden, so she’s constantly making moves on him that – for some baffling reason – he turns down. We establish pretty quickly that he’s straight, btw, so that torpedoes the usual theory.

Jeannie uses her powers to try and improve her beloved Major Nelson’s life, but it never goes well. Nine times out of ten, it’s Major Nelson’s fault because he never adequately explains why she shouldn’t just use her cosmic powers to fix things.

(What is your actual deal, Major Nelson? How can you be trying to go to the moon while ignoring the possibilities this type of magic can bring to mankind?)

Rounding out the cast was Bill Daily as Major Nelson’s best bud, the reasonably greedy and excitable Roger Healy. Roger is also an astronaut, and the only person who seems to grasp that Jeannie is a magical super-being. He’s a pretty good guy, but he tends to use Jeannie’s powers for personal financial gain like anybody would, let’s be real. Everyone is a Roger.

Their chief nemesis was Hayden Rorke as NASA psychiatrist Dr. Bellows, an uptight and rigid professional who has no time for everyone bending the laws of physics when there’s a moon to land on. He usually thinks the boys are going insane, or that some kind of Russian sabotage is in play, but he never does anything about it except shout and look confused.

Bewitched 02x18: And Then There Were Three

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Mother’s Day than watching Bewitched. I watched it with my mother, she watched it with her mother, and one of the central relationships is – despite them having fantastical powers – one of the best TV depictions of a relationship between an adult daughter and her mom.

It’s not mired in remorse or resentment like you always see in dramas, the mother isn’t ditzy or sweetly old fashioned like in sentimental comedies. Samantha and Endora are both fully realized characters as individuals, and their personalities dictate the style of the frustrations and joys that come with their love for each other. In the later seasons of the show, both of them were painted with pretty broad strokes and a lot of the stories were rehashed from earlier episodes, but in the first two seasons, both witches and the business of being a mother and daughter were wonderfully nuanced.

The episode we’re watching today introduces two new characters to the Bewitched universe. The first is Cousin Serena, a dual-role for Elizabeth Montgomery, and a fun addition to her extended witchy family. The second is baby Tabitha, who transforms the mothering dynamics in a pretty significant way.

For all of the second season so far, Samantha has been pregnant. It’s been pretty smooth sailing, apart from briefly losing her powers thanks to a black Peruvian rose, and that time Endora gave Darrin all the discomforts of pregnancy because he wasn’t being sympathetic. (He deserved it.) It all coincided with Elizabeth Montgomery’s real life pregnancy with her second child. Her first pregnancy had also been while she was filming Bewitched, but the network thought it was inappropriate for newlyweds to have a baby in the first year. I don’t know why.

But this is it.

The big day for a lot of people.

Lucy Before Lucy: Room Service

In May of 1955, a tiny piece of television history happened when Lucille Ball and Harpo Marx did their famous mirror routine in “Lucy and Harpo Marx.” (Episode titles weren’t a big deal on I Love Lucy.) For those of you who haven’t seen it, I suggest watching it right this second and then coming back for the rest of this post. For those of you who can’t watch it for some reason, it goes like this:

Lucy and Ethel have convinced their friend Caroline that they hobnob with celebs 24/7 in glamorous California. Caroline decides to come meet one for herself, only the whole thing is a lie, so there are no celebrities available to come visit. Luckily, Caroline is blind as a bat without her glasses. The solution is obvious – well, obvious to Lucy, regular humans would probably do something different. Caroline will “lose” her glasses, and Lucy will impersonate various celebrities to amuse her and keep the lies alive. One of the celebrities she chooses is Harpo Marx, who Ricky and Fred have asked to come over, and Harpo arrives just as Lucy is pretending to be him. In order to keep the hopeless charade going, she mimics his every move, pretending to be his reflection.

But that classic moment wasn’t the first time Lucy and Harpo had worked together.

I have to confess to not knowing too much about the Marx Brothers. There are only so many hours in a day, and I watch a lot of things. (I should probably choose to watch something other than Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein the next time I’m sad, though. Spread my wings a little.) What I do know is that it was unusual for the Marx Brothers to play characters that hadn’t been specifically written for them, but after 1933’s Duck Soup, Zeppo Marx stopped performing and began managing the act. He found a Broadway play called Room Service, and negotiated with RKO to purchase it for the Marx Brothers’ next project. This was some fancy footwork on Zeppo’s part because, at the time, the Brothers were under contract with MGM to make a picture a year.

The play was written by Allen Boretz and John Murray, and according to reliable sources like Wikipedia and IMDB, it’s a pretty faithful adaptation. Also, one time, Jack Lemmon was in a 1953 revival and played the Groucho role. The things you can learn when you’re double checking release dates…

Lucy, somewhat disappointingly, has a straight role in the film. She plays the leading lady of Groucho’s new Broadway play, which may or may not exist, and she brings an eager young playwright to the hotel that Groucho lives and works out of to invest. Zaniness ensues.

But not quite as much zaniness as previous Marx Brothers outings. The larger-than-life, absurdist personalities that audiences had grown to love didn’t work for the pipe laying necessary in a more mainstream and subdued comedy, even if that comedy happened to be a hotel farce. It’s not a very potent mix, and with history’s hindsight, Lucy feels squandered in a thankless role.

Also, there’s a distinct note of ickiness going on by way of Ann Miller. When Ann Miller was 13 years old – 13 – she told the people hiring showgirls at the Black Cat Club in San Francisco that she was 18, and totally cool to work there, so they hired her because it was the 1930’s and nobody had time to double check things, a war was looming. A year or so later, she was discovered by Lucille Ball and RKO talent scout Benny Rubin, who she also told she was 18, and then she got a contract at RKO who also believed her to be not 14 years old at this point.

In this movie, which she made at age 15, we all get to watch her make out with her 30 year old love interest played by Frank Albertson, who probably didn’t know how old Ann Miller actually was because good god, Ann Miller, that was not okay! There are reasons for these age gates in society!

(It’s like Sullivan’s Travels. I don’t enjoy it, I just shake my head at Veronica Lake and wonder where the hell her parents were.)

Room Service is a disappointment for a few reasons, but it’s not the worst Marx Brothers movie. I’m told that one is called Go West. Still, it’s worth it to see Lucy forging the relationships with the male comics of the era before TV, creating a thread that would allow them all to last longer than they would’ve otherwise.

Lucille Ball was known for her work ethic and professionalism, even if she was a sometimes difficult personality because of a notorious lack of tact. But she was dogged in rehearsals, on time, and deeply committed to her material. 17 years after Room Service, this reputation brought Harpo Marx back to the studio at age 72, while he was recovering from a heart attack, and he and Lucy put smiles on countless people then and now, and for who knows how many generations to come.

So if you hear somebody complaining that Room Service isn’t as good as Duck Soup, tell them that it doesn’t have to be, because it brought Lucy and Harpo together. Then dump a milkshake down their pants or something.

Tabitha 01x00: Tabitha

Recently, we watched a kind of follow up to I Dream of Jeannie where Barbara Eden disguised herself as a Middle Eastern princess to trick her neighbours into not reading her mail. (Find it here.) It reminded me of Jeannie’s unofficial sister show Bewitched, and it’s depressingly lackluster sequel, Tabitha.

So that’s what we’re doing today! Put on your witch hats and forget everything you know about the Stephens clan!

And I mean everything…

Despite being made in 1977, Tabitha has the daughter of Samantha and Darrin Stephens all grown up and owning a car and wearing bikinis in the title sequence. But wait, you might be thinking, didn’t Bewitched end in 1972 and wasn’t Tabitha like eight years old or something? How is this possible?

It’s not. You can’t even use the excuse of magic, because we all know that Darrin was big on doing stuff the most difficult ways possible, and I’m pretty sure that would include growing up. Besides, they’re witches, not Klingons. They live a long time, but – if anything – it takes them longer to age than normal people.

Harper Valley P.T.A. 01x03: Mail and Female

Harper Valley PTA started out as a 1968 radio hit for Jeannie C. Riley, about a widowed single mother who isn’t bothering to conform to small town standards because she wears miniskirts and laughs at jokes. According to the local PTA, this makes her a floozy and her degenerate ways must be stopped, so they send her a cease and desist order in the mail. She goes to their next meeting, airs the town’s dirty laundry and, metaphorically, flips everyone off before she goes back to living her life as she damn well pleases. Great song, very catchy.

In 1978, it was made into a drive-in movie starring Barbara Eden. If it had starred literally anyone else, it probably would have been lost to the sands of time. But the same piece of casting that saves it from obscurity dooms it to not making any sense. Barbara Eden, even in the most mini of skirts, doesn’t seem as a scandalous figure, or the kind of woman that other women would be venomously jealous of. Like, if she ever played a serial killer, the general response would be: “Aw, leave her alone, FBI! She’s fun!”

And when you’re turning a three minute song into an eighty minute movie, you have to pad the story. So there’s car chases and kidnappers are hired, and then people have to get disguised as nuns, and there’s a subplot about a real estate mogul who threatens to foreclose on women’s houses if they don’t make out with him, and it’s a lot. Which means when, in 1981, they decided to turn the film into a television show, they had to take a lot of stuff back out, and the end result is that the general premise gets a little lost in the shuffle.

My Living Doll

Have you ever let Amazon talk you into buying something? Like it keeps coming up in your recommendations, probably because you bought My Favourite Martian and Bewitched? And it seems so weird and also kind of like it might be terrible, but terrible in a way you want to discover? This is going to come as a surprise, but I’m asking these questions because of a recent personal experience where I bought a weird old show. It was all because of recommendation list trickery and the fact that Julie Newmar is in it, and who doesn’t like Julie Newmar?

It’s called My Living Doll and it’s really… not good.

And I now own every available episode on DVD! And I will tell you all about it so that you never have to watch it!

In 1964, CBS was very big on half-hour comedies, and they were looking for a new project for Jack Chertok, who had produced My Favourite Martian. Desilu, Lucille Ball’s company (she was always big on genre shows), got involved, and they wound up with the idea of a feminine robot learning how to be human. Julie Newmar, fresh off a Broadway success and impossibly good looking, would be the fembot. (This was the same season Bewitched debuted, and a year ahead of I Dream of Jeannie. They called the genre “novelty sitcoms” because science fiction and fantasy were for nerds. Same problem as today.) The show would be called The Living Doll, and it would have lots of zany mix-ups and Atomic Age humour. So far, we’re doing okay. This could be a lot worse, right?

Well, the fembot needed a supporting cast. There were a lot of names being kicked around, but they settled on Bob Cummings. Cummings had been the star of his own show (called The Bob Cummings Show – this is foreshadowing for a problem) back in the 1950’s. When that was over, he got a second show (called The New Bob Cummings Show) that flopped. Hard. And it flopped because it was just The Bob Cummings Show all over again and everyone had already seen that.

But, on his second show, he’d had a zany flying car, and he was hugely into aeronautics in his real life, and CBS liked him, and they thought he’d be a good fit and not oppose the sci-fi elements.

Problem Number One: The show was called THE Living Doll, like it wasn’t about Bob Cummings, and it had to be about Bob Cummings if Bob Cummings was in it. So, shouldn’t it be HIS Living Doll, or BOB’S Living Doll, so that people would know who the main character really was?

Hence the small but not-so-small change to My Living Doll.

Next up, all the press was about Julie Newmar having a TV show and not about Bob Cummings – noted and tested TV star – returning to America’s living rooms. Besides which, he really needs more screen time, don’t you think? I mean, who is this show really about? Who’s going to bring the audience, you know?

The story becomes about a Space Center psychiatrist who gets saddled with a secretly built android when the android's creator is unexpectedly transferred to Pakistan. Because the robot is patterned after a woman, the psychiatrist takes it upon himself to make certain that her emerging personality is docile, obedient and servile. Thankfully, the android doesn't really care about gender politics, and does whatever she wants, even though the 60's anti-feminism undertones remain disturbingly present throughout. (According to Julie Newmar, the Galatea and Pygmalion themes were much more obvious in the original concept. You can't build a perfect woman, because there's no real definition of perfection in human beings.)

Once the reviews started coming in, they all said that Bob and Julie had zero chemistry, and that he seemed too old for her, and his character was creepy, and the show should be more about the robot lady because everyone likes her. So Bob Cummings decided to write his own episode. Back on The Bob Cummings Show, the audience had always reacted really well to the episodes where he played his own grandfather – in the script he wrote, his ninety-three year old grandfather from Missouri, who was a veterinarian back home, would fly himself in with his 37 horsepower Taylor Cub. The robot would be at the beginning of the episode to meet “Grandpa,” and at the end of the episode to wave goodbye to him. The rest of the story would be, basically, Bob Cummings playing two characters talking to each other.

Jack Chertok said that this wasn’t going to happen. (Rightly so, because that idea was terrible.)

Bob Cummings quit and announced his intentions to sue CBS.

It was a step in the right direction for the show, but by then timeslot issues had struggled to find it viewers – at first it was on at the same time as Bonanza, and you can’t fight season five of Bonanza, that was like the best season. Then they moved it to Wednesdays to lead in to The Beverly Hillbillies, but it followed Mr. Ed, so the lineup went: talking horse with weirdly amazing chemistry with its co-stars, lady robot show being wrecked by male lead, surprisingly beloved redneck ensemble. See where the flow is breaking?

It wasn’t renewed for a second season.

The 35mm negatives of the series were destroyed in a 1994 earthquake, and the DVD collection available has only eleven episodes recovered from 16mm copies recovered from private collectors. (Always keep old tapes of weird things, history might call on you one day.) The Chertok Estate is searching for any other available episodes, so if by some freak chance you know of any, give them a call!

Oh! And Star Trek: Voyager fans might be interested in knowing that Julie Newmar’s character begins the series without a name, only a number. And that number is 709.