Do You Remember When..,

.., Crappy Aligator Man wrestles an actual Alligator in ‘The Alligator People’ (1959)?

Man fights drugged up gator

‘The Alligator People‘ is a pretty solid 50′s sci-fi, creature flick. Ok there’s some pretty racist characterization in places (which you see coming from a 1959 film that has the tag-line “Terror In The Bayou”) and some very unexpected woman slapping and near rape. These moments of exploitation cinema sit rather uneasily In a film which, otherwise, is a fairly standard example of 50s B-movie sci-fi. So as you can imagine there are many-a-memorable moment to be found in ‘The Alligator People‘. But one moment sticks out in particular. After the titular Alligator-person goes from guy with bad skin condition (actually very good makeup effects) to full on man-gator (not so good), he takes off into the darkness of the bayou in his flimsy alligator rubber mask. Apparently man-gator is so pissed off by his ludicrous costume that he takes his frustration out on a real alligator (which is either dead or drugged). Cue fabulous scene of stuntman in crap rubber outfit wrestling catatonic reptile.

Do You Remember When..,

.., Kong smiles as he blow-dries Jessica Lange in ‘King Kong’ (1976)?

Gurning Idiot. This is the face of a sex offender

Horny Kong strikes again! King Kong has a 80 year reputation for abducting and thoroughly molesting blonde starlets. But that’s just Hollywood for you. In 1976 Kong got very excited as he dipped a scantly-clad, hot as jalepenos, Jessica Lange under a waterfall. A kind of Skull Island wet t-shirt competition. Surveying Lange, in all her wet glory, Kong puffs out his huge inflatable cheeks to give her a little blow-dry and grins profusely from ear-to-ear as if he’d been up all night smoking dubes and watching Ren and Stimpy. He then goes on to poke and prod her like most men do to women when they try picking them up in bars. Good work Kong, good work.

EFFECTS! Even dodgy 70s effects can stop the grinning

Note: yes that is Rick Baker in that suit, and yes those are his sex offender eyes (disclaimer: Rick Baker is NOT a sex offender).

Big In Japan?

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)


Back in the early 1960s producer John Beck sold the rights to make a new King Kong film to Japanese Godzilla outfit Toho. The ‘man in suit’ brigade then set about putting a plot together whereby their new acquisition could face their stable money maker Godzilla. Aside from the film being a total balls up and making Kong look like an ass clown in a rubber suit (rather than stop motion, a feat of stupidity matched again by Dino De Laurentiis in 1975), it also got one massive Kong factor wrong, his height. For a moment here let’s get our geek on. In the 1933 movie Kong was either 18 feet or 24 feet tall, let’s go with 24 to give the big guy a break. In the 1954 original Japanese film the radioactive lizard is 164 feet tall. So at best Kong is lacking some 140 feet. You’d need to drink a lot of Saki to make that error in calculation. Oh yeah -  and he looks like a monkey with severe brain trauma and alopecia who can’t stop smiling the whole time…, that’d be the Saki.


Like Kong looking like a stupid moron? Also see: King Kong Strikes Again (1967), King Kong (1976), and King Kong Lives (1986)