Memory Bank: Where's the Beef? (January 1984)

Twenty-nine years ago this month, eighty-one year old Clara Peller (1902 – 1987) first uttered the immortal words “where’s the beef?”for a Wendy’s Restaurant TV commercial, and instantly emerged a pop culture sensation. 

In the advertisement titled “Fluffy Bun,” which first aired January 10, 1984, the diminutive Peller and two other prim-and-proper old ladies approached a fast food restaurant counter and expressed disappointment with the proffered burger.  It was all hat and no cattle, so-to-speak.

The zinger, “Where’s the Beef?” proved so popular that it became the focal point not only of the restaurant’s ad campaign for at least two years, but also made Peller a celebrity.  She appeared (un-credited) on Saturday Night Live, appeared in the 1985 horror movie The Stuff (in a fictional commercial, naturally) and participated with Coyote McCloud on his single “Where’s the Beef?”  

Her slogan, meanwhile, appeared on T-shirts, Frisbees, and bumper stickers.  I remember the era quite well, and how "where's the beef" became ubiquitous even in regular, daily life.  Teachers would ask it regarding a book report in class, and on and on.

In the 1984 presidential election, “where’s the beef” also played an unlikely role. Confronting opponent Gary Hart in a primary debate, democratic candidate Walter Mondale quipped: “When I hear your new ideas, I’m reminded of that ad: where’s the beef?”

Ugh.

Clara Peller passed away in 1987, but Wendy’s revived a variation of the slogan  in 2011. 

But it just isn't the same without that little old lady. Perhaps this is proof that you just can't go home again.  

Or that zippy TV catchphrases are best uttered by gravelly-voiced old women in pearls... 

Memory Bank: Jaws Mania (1975 - 1976)

Following Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster adaptation of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel Jaws in 1975, "Jaws-Mania" hit America hard.  The film was rated PG -- which is hard to believe today -- but this fact made the (bloody) horror movie fair game in terms of merchandising and toys.  Soon, toy stores added Jaws-inspired items to their racks, and kids could relive the thrills and screams of the movie.

Prime among these toys was Ideal’s The Game of Jaws, which I’ve featured here before. 

Designed for 2 to 4 players (ages 6 and up), the game box noted: "It's you against the great white shark...One wrong move, and the JAWS go snap!"  

The goal of this game was to utilize a probe to fish out contents from the shark's stomach without those fierce jaws snapping closed.   Some of those stomach contents included a human skull, a fish skeleton, a tire, a camera, a pistol, a glove, a boot, a walkie-talkie, and a wagon wheel (!).  In the version of the game I own today, these delicacies are all molded in white or blue plastic, but the game box shows different colored items.

Addar, a model kit company, featured Jaws in its “super scenes” product line in 1975 as well.  Here, young modelers could create a detailed diorama from the movie...in a bottle.  Addar described this kit as an “exciting replica from the movie Jaws.”  It featured a miniature oceanographer, a diving cage, the great white shark and a full-color background.

I also remember a Jaws-Mania collectible that I found at the school Book-Mobile when I was in kindergarten, and promptly purchased.  It is a book from author Phil Hirsch titled 101 Shark Jokes: Biting Humor From Our Funny, Finny Friends (1976).  This book featured page after page of ridiculous, terrible shark-related puns and jokes like: What makes an ideal shark breakfast?

Captain Crunch.

I can’t stress enough how much I absolutely loved this book as a six year-old kid, and I must have read the darn book a dozen times.  For a spell, I took 101 Shark Jokes with me everywhere, especially when my Mom went shopping at the Fabric Ville store in Cedar Grove, NJ, which always seemed to take forever.  

The funny thing about the book, looking back on it, is that it featured a lot of pop culture references that, at six, I couldn’t possibly have recognized.  For instance, one joke included a reference to a shark game show, Tooth or Consequences, which would have been an allusion to Truth or Consequences(1950)…which I never saw.

I also remember with envy that my friend Stephen who lived on Ridgewood Avenue wore a custom-made Jaws Halloween costume to kindergarten that year. I don’t remember what I wore for Halloween in Kindergarten, but I absolutely remember every detail of that huge, canvas, toothy shark head costume to this day.  Also, Collegeville released a standard plastic costume of the Shark from Jaws for those kids without the wherewithal to create their own.

The mid-1970s also brought the Jaws knock-off movie by the veritable boatload.  There were sea-based movies such as Orca(1976), Tentacles (1977), Tintorera: Tiger Shark (1977), Barracuda(1978), Piranha (1978), and Killer Fish (1979).  There were also land-based knock-offs, including William Girdler’s Grizzly (1976) and Day of the Animals (1977).

Television programming wanted a piece of the profitble Jaws action as well.  Chevy Chase memorably appeared in a Saturday Night Live skit during its first season in 1975 as a “land shark,” an “urban predator” capable of “disguising its voice”(!) and striking at any time or place.  On a more serious note, a 1977 episode of The Six-Million Dollar Man featured the Bionic Steve Austin (Lee Majors) tangling with sharks.

By 1978 and the franchise sequel, Jaws 2, the shark-based merchandising effort was at full steam ahead with photo-novels, trading cards, a novelization and the like, but by then, the manic moment had passed.  Today, I recall this spell of my youth with tremendous fondness, especially as Jaws-Mania occurred pre-Star Wars, and  shared the pop-culture with Bicentennial Fever, Space: 1999, and Logan's Run.

Below, a few videos that reflect 1975 and 1976, the great age of Jaws-Mania.

 

Memory Bank: The Variety Show, 1970s Style

One form of television entertainment or programming that seems to have largely fallen out of favor with the American public -- but which I remember from my childhood in the 1970s -- is the variety show. 

For those who don’t remember variety shows, they represent an unholy blend or combination of genres, but usually feature both comedy skits and musical production numbers.

The seventies represent the last age of variety programs on the tube. Why did these programs begin to diminish in popularity in the decade of Nixon and Carter? One can only speculate, but the musical form lost its relevance perhaps because of the new film “reality” aesthetic of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Popular films featured more violence and seemed more gritty and realistic, as in the case of the blockbuster hit The French Connection, or even Jaws. The musical form -- which is all about artifice -- became less and less relevant in age which prized naturalism over theatricality or artifice.

It may also be that, in the 1970s, there was a growing belief among viewers at home that the conventions of the variety show -- now colored in polyester and bell bottoms -- had grown stale, and were threatening to descend into full-on, high-camp.

Still, in disco decade, some variety programming managed to remain popular for a time.  The most successful of these programs was no doubt Donny and Marie (1976 – 1979) starring the Osmonds. 

This ABC series ran for several years and featured the likable, smiling young hosts singing both country and rock-and-roll songs.  I recall that, as a kid, I watched the show for its relevant if not particularly good pop culture skits.  In its time, Donny and Marie parodied Star Wars and ABC’s Battlestar Galactica, for example. The former featured R2-D2 and C3PO, plus Red Foxx (as Ben Kenobi) and Kris Kristofferson as Han Solo.

ABC attempted to duplicate Donny and Marie’s breakthrough success with a second musical duo on The Captain and Tennille, which saw such guest stars as John Travolta, Leonard Nimoy, Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope. The series was canceled after a year, but the ratings never dropped, and several Captain and Tennille specials followed.

Interestingly, both Donny and Marie and The Captain and Tennille were considered popular enough to merit toy merchandise.  Donny and Marie had action figures and a TV studio available from Mattel, and Captain and Tennille Action figures were manufactured and sold by Mego.  Today, these items are all highly-prized collectibles.  One of the best toy/nostalgia blogs, Plaid Stallions, recently featured a look at the 1977 Donny and Marie Catalog, here.

One of the truly bizarre variety shows of the 1970s was The Brady Bunch Variety Hour,a spin-off of the popular sitcom, and sponsored by Sid and Marty Kroftt.  The series featured the mixed-family in the unlikely role of disco singers and hosts.  It (mercifully) lasted only a handful of episodes before a prompt cancellation and today remains a strange television artifact.  The singing and dancing are awful for the most part, and more often than not the Bradys are decked out in the tightest jump suits humanly possible.

Just about the last prominent variety show I can think of also came from Sid and Marty Krofft: 1980’s Barbara Mandrell and The Mandrell Sisters.  This country-themed series ran for two successful seasons, and I remember watching it every week in my house.  I don’t know exactly why that was the case, since I’m not a huge fan of country music…except that my family didn’t own a VCR yet.

Perhaps the most successful variety program of the 1970s is the one still airing today: Saturday Night Live (1975 - ).  The series is billed today largely as a comedy, but pretty clearly it remains a mix of music and comedy, and just tries to avoid the old-fashioned label of “variety” show.

Below, please enjoy some of the weirder moments of the mid-1970s variety shows.  They remain a (mostly) extinct relic of a time long gone, and an aesthetic that has lost its relevance in the pop culture.

Memory Bank: Alien (1979) vs. Prophecy (1979)

To this day, I boast a very distinct memory of being in a Ben Franklin-type store with my parents and sister in the year 1979, and sneaking over alone to the book rack to steal a look at two "scary" literary titles: Prophecy by David Seltzer and Alien by Alan Dean Foster.  

Of course, both books were based on film screenplays, and I remember thinking --- as a fourth grader -- that both seemed absolutely terrifying.  

I also remember feeling amazed and kind of free, maybe even giddy, that I could turn to any page in either book and read something that would torment my imagination for days and weeks to come.

And then I tried to imagine how scary the movies would actually be.  I had to imagine that factor because my parents are good ones, and they would never have let me see R-rated movies at the tender age of nine.  So if I was going to *know* about these horror stories...I had to read the books.

I didn't see either film until I was older, though I did read and enjoy Foster's Alien first.  Seltzer's Prophecy is also better than the movie, I think.

Today we know, of course, which of the two films has better stood the test of time: Ridley Scott's Alien over John Frankenheimer's Prophecy.  The former is a celebrated classic, and the latter is a kind of...hoot, a camp-classic. 

But interestingly, both films came out in the same year, and in very broad terms boast a few similarities. Both films involve reproduction, and a threat to human reproduction, in the form of something unknown and homicidal  And both films also involve a gigantic nemesis whose form is not immediately known or understood.  Prophecy draws its life force from American history and the American past, while Alien draws its energy from the future, and cosmic unknowns.

The advertising from both films, as you can see from images above and below (in the trailers), highlight images of eggs, and something evil growing inside an egg.  I think that was probably the key scare factor for me at age 9.  Something horrible was going to hatch in both stories. 

In terms of how it succeeds or fails Prophecy -- sometimes grandiosely termed "the monster movie" -- is really about the "past" of horror movie-making in 1979 terms: about a cinematic story scuttled by a ridiculous and unconvincing monster suit.  In contrast, Alien represents the defining line in modern horror  film where monsters became believable, even when shown on-screen for a long duration. 

Similarly, Prophecy is earthbound, while Alien looks to the stars.  

I know it probably seems odd, but today when I think of one film, I inevitably think of the other  one because of that experience in the book store, I suppose.  I'm sure this linkage has to do with where I was in my development at that time, gaining an awareness of books and movies that I wanted to see, but which I also knew would likely scare me.  I remember very vividly seeing commercials for both films on television and feeling truly conflicted.  Like I had to see both movies, and yet was afraid to see both movies.

At the age of nine, I couldn't have predicted that Prophecy would be a bust in terms or scares, or that Alien would generate approximately one million and one imitations.  I just knew that, for some reason, Hollywood was giving us two horror movies at the same time that seemed to have a broadly similar appeal.

Evil Eggs.

Memory Bank: Archie Bunker

The 1970s was a strange era for television, even for mainstream network television. 

Two of the most popular characters of the era were very unconventional or non-traditional ones. 

On ABC’s Happy Days (1974 - 1984), there was the Fonz (Henry Winkler): a leather-jacket wearing, motorcycle-riding reformed hoodlum with quasi-magical powers.

And on CBS’s All in the Family (1971 – 1979) and later Archie Bunker’s Place (1979 – 1983), there was Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), an ignorant, working-class bigot from Queens, NY who spewed toxic malapropisms…and yet was widely beloved by audiences.

I’ve written some about the cultural impact of The Fonz, here. 

But today, I turn my attention to Mr. Archie Bunker, a character who spawned board games, political buttons (Vote for Bunker!), record albums, and even, on one strange occasion, a toy baby doll (“Archie Bunker’s Grand Son, Joey Stivic.”) 

The TV series also initiated many spin-offs, including The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maude and Gloria. 

Today, Archie’s beloved living room chair is installed like some king’s throne at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.

Over the years, All in the Family earned four consecutive Emmy Awards for best comedy series, and across the considerable catalog of episodes, Archie Bunker raged vehemently against liberals, atheists, women, African-Americans, Jews, Puerto-Ricans, Catholics, homosexuals, hippies, democrats, and even blood transfusions. 

In doing so, he often looked like an absolute fool, and his rampant ignorance, while funny, knew no bounds.  Among his wit and wisdom: "No bum that can't speak perfect English oughta stay in this country...oughta be de-exported the hell outta here!"  and "I ain't got no respect for no religion where the head guy claims he can't make no mistakes. Like he's...inflammable."

The question becomes then, what makes this TV character, despite his blustery, bigoted, bullying ways, so beloved by a generation?

It’s a complex question, but in the end it comes down to one fact of life. 

Everyone knows a man like Archie Bunker.

He may be your father or your grandfather.  Or he may be the uncle you avoid like the plague at Thanksgiving dinner.

But we all know a man who is set in his ways, believes certain things to be true (whether they are actually true or not), and expresses ideas that are, simply, repugnant.

Yet here’s the thing:  This guy you know is probably a relative, either by biology or by marriage, and perhaps he has shown you more than a glimmer of kindness or generosity on an occasion or two.  This fact makes it utterly impossible for you to hate him entirely, no matter how much you hate his viewpoint and his mode of expression.

Or perhaps, unexpectedly, you caught a surprise glimpse of your particular Archie Bunker’s (unhappy) childhood, or otherwise witnessed some vulnerability in him.  So suddenly, you understand what makes him tick.

I know that this has happened in my life at least a few times, and so I credit Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin and the late, great Carroll O’Connor for creating such a true “human” character.   I once knew a man who had snide epithets for everyone he met who was even slightly different from himself, and I watched, as he grew old and frail, how utterly afraid and fearful he was of almost everything in his life.  Once I saw and recognized that vulnerability, my opinion of him changed

In contending with an Archie Bunker, it’s not that you want to cuddle a bigot…it’s that you come to see that there is more to the character (or your relative) than those admittedly unattractive, bigoted qualities.  Underneath, there is something deeply wrong, unfulfilled, wounded, or afraid.

So I submit that the popularity of Archie Bunker is a testament, in fact, to how kind and patient most people really are. 

Those he constantly puts down, insults, and demeans are able to do something Archie rarely does...tap into their compassion. 

This capacity makes them-- the disenfranchised -- ultimately superior to Archie. 

Bunker thinks of himself as the bread-winner and patriarch of his house at 704 Hauser St., but he owes  a lot to the love of his wife, Edith (Jean Stapleton) and to the enduring patience of nearly every person he encounters, from doctors to Catholic priests.

On a related note, perhaps the most frightening people I’ve met in my life are those viewers who watch All in the Family and don’t comprehend that Archie is deliberately an anti-hero.  They actually believe all the things he believes, and are just glad someone told it “like it is” on TV, warts and all.  

That is truly scary.  Compassion for another human being is one thing, and I'm all for it.  But climbing on-board the ignorance train is something else entirely.

Memory Bank: TV-PIXX (1981 - 1982)

I was watching my six-year old son Joel play Galaga on Roku last week, and I wanted to tell him when to fire his rocket's weaponry.  So I started spontaneously shouting “Pixx! Pixx! Pixx!”and he looked at me from across the sofa like I had gone nuts (or "mental" in his terminology).

“Daddy, why are you shouting Pixx?” he asked me.

I was shouting Pixx, of course, because I was remembering a weird telephone game show TV program from the early 1980s called TV-PIXXX. 

This “Ultimate New Game Show” aired on WPIX-11 (“11 Alive!”) in the early 1980s, often on afternoons following school.  I understand that this particular game was based on another telephone-based video game program called TV-POWWW, which first aired in Los Angeles on KABC-TV in 1978.

The TV-PIXXXprogram was hosted by Ralph Lowenstein, and lasted only a few minutes per episode, running essentially as filler between television series. But the premise of this game show was that the studio would telephone a kid at home while simultaneously broadcasting an Intellivision video game. 

Once the game began, the contestant on the telephone would have to shout “Pixx!” at the appropriate moment to shoot a ball in a basketball hoop, or fire a laser in some Asteroids game knock-off. 

I still possess vivid memories of hearing young contestants endlessly shout “Pixx!” at the TV screen on TV-PIXXXin hopes of winning a station-brand T-shirt or a ten-dollar savings bond.  I remember that prospective contestants for the program had to send in stamped post-cards with their names and addresses printed on them if they hoped to be picked to play on the air.

I also remember sending a postcard to the station myself, but I was never selected to play Intellivision and shout Pixx at the screen. 

And yet, the (admittedly odd…) memory of this unusual game show has never left me, even after all these years.  I tried explaining this all to Joel, but it was just too bizarre.  He wondered why we wouldn't just play the games we wanted on the TV, or on the iPhone... 

Below, a recent retrospective of TV-PIXXX, and then a brief commercial, courtesy of YouTube.

Memory Bank: Thanksgiving, WWOR, and Monsters

When I was growing up in the New Jersey burbs during the seventies and early eighties there was a great Thanksgiving Day tradition that I’d like to share with you today, on the eve of the holiday. 

Every year, WOR Channel 9 would broadcast King Kong (1933), Son of Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949) on Turkey Day.

Then, on Friday, the same station would host a Godzilla marathon consisting of such films as King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster (1971) and many others.  Some years, if memory serves, War of the Gargantuas (1968) also played.

I remember showering and dressing early on those Thanksgiving Days, so I could be lodged near the TV when the Kong movies started.  Meanwhile, my Mom and Dad would be busy in the kitchen preparing a great meal of turkey, stuffing, baked carrots with cinnamon, and home-made biscuits.  The house would fill with the delectable aromas of the feast, and even downstairs --while glued to WOR-TV -- I could feel my appetite for dinner building.

Our guests, usually my grandparents and aunts and uncles, would arrive sometime in the early afternoon, around 1:00 pm and I would socialize with them, and then sneak back to the family room for more King Kong.  Sometimes my uncle Larry, a horror fan after a fashion, would join me.

Then the meal and dessert -- a chocolate cream pie and a pumpkin pie -- would be served, and we’d all enjoy each other’s company over the delicious food.  After an appropriate interval of visiting and socializing, I’d high-tail it once more back down the stairs to watch more of the movies.

I’m certain my description of Thanksgiving makes it sound weird and anti-social, but you must remember that in the seventies, there were no VCRs (let alone DVRs or movie streaming), which meant that if you wanted to see a movie like King Kong, you had to seize your moment, or else wait for another year.

I believe it took me the better part of four Thanksgivings to see all of King Kong, and then not even in chronological order.  I actually saw the entirety of Son of Kong first, perhaps because it was often scheduled between our early afternoon dinner and dessert course.

This tradition of King Kong Thanksgiving and Godzilla Black Friday continued over a long period at my house -- the better part of a decade -- so much so that I still irrevocably associate the Holiday season with WOR Channel 9 and its monster movie broadcasts.  

I still remember, a bit guiltily, forcing my parents to watch the 1970s Godzilla movies on Fridays, while we ate Thanksgiving leftovers in the family room.  My folks liked the King Kong movies, but when it came to Japanese monster movies, they weren’t exactly big fans.

To celebrate this tradition I’ll be posting reviews of King Kong, Son of Kongand Mighty Joe Young here tomorrow, on Thanksgiving, and a review of Godzillas (1954) on Black Friday.

That line-up ought to start the 2012 Holidays just right.  Make sure to bring the pumpkin pie...and Happy Turkey Day!

Memory Bank: Gauntlet (Atari Games; 1985)

During my freshman year at the University of Richmond in the fall of 1988, there wasn’t a whole lot to do, socially-speaking.  I was a skinny kid in big glasses who didn’t go out for sports and liked Star Trek.  I had no interest in fraternities or the school’s religious clubs (though, truth-be-told, I did have an ever-so-brief flirtation with a Baptist Bible Study group, which helps to account for my knowledge of Scripture…)

Anyway, I met my beautiful wife, Kathryn, at the beginning of my sophomore year and my life changed for the (infinitely) better.

But before that ever happened,  I spent an inordinate (and probably unhealthy) amount of time in the Pier, the campus Student Building, playing a classic arcade game from Atari, called Gauntlet (1985).

As you may remember, Gauntlet was unique in that it was a four player arcade game.  Intrepid gamers could play as the Warrior, the Valkyrie, the Wizard and the Elf, at least originally.  The idea was to battle enemies such as ghosts and demons while traversing dungeon-like labyrinths and environs. 

I looked Gauntlet up on Wikipedia out of curiosity and it is apparently part of a genre called “hack and slash,” a phrase that pretty well describes the game’s content as remember it.

Among other things, Gauntlet is also apparently famous because it had a kind of computerized narrator who would voice warnings (“Your life is running out”) and reminders (such as “shots do not hurt other players…yet.”)   I can’t say as I remember much specifically about game play, only that we would play the bloody thing for hours, and lose a hell of a lot of quarters in the process.   It’s a good memory from a year that, in some respects, I’d rather forget.

In terms of characters, I always played as the Valkyrie -- the female warrior in the foursome -- in honor of my enduring love of the same-named character from Battle Beyond the Stars (1980). 

I can’t remember why we did so, but on one memorable night in 1988, my pals and I drove downtown instead of to the student building to play Gauntlet at a bustling city arcade in Richmond, one very close to the now-defunct Byrd Theater, if memory serves. 

I should have been studying for an upcoming computer science exam, but instead, I think we were out at the arcade from midnight to 2:00 am, and I blew twenty-five dollars on the infernal machine.

Ah, to be eighteen and dumb as shit again…

Anyway, I harbor a dream that one of these days, I’m going to thoroughly clean out my garage and convert it into an arcade entertainment center/rec room for me and Joel.  We already have a pool table and a foosball table (which Joel and I play a lot…), but I’m thinking I really need a restored Gauntlet arcade console to go with those stations.

That…and an air hockey table, but that’s the subject of a different post.  I'll just close this one by saying I recently visited the University of Richmond campus for the first time in probably a decade, and was deeply disappointed, though not surprised, to see that Gauntlet was long gone.

Memory Bank: Trick or Treat (for UNICEF)!

Given my penchant for horror films, it won’t surprise you to learn that Halloween is a big holiday at the Muir house. 

I still dress up with Joel every October 31^st, and head out into the neighborhood collecting candy.  We have one amazing neighbor up the street who only gives out “movie”-style candy, giant, over-sized boxes of Raisinets and the like.  I pretty much have to muscle my six year old out of the way to get to them.

Just kidding. I let Joel get the loot.  Really.

My love of Halloween goes back to my earliest memories in the seventies.  I grew up in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, a picturesque Essex County suburb, and the trick-or-treating there was pretty great.  Glen Ridge is a small town, so a kid could cover a lot of ground in one night, if he or she was willing to do a lot of walking.  

My sister and I would get started on Halloween at about 4:30 pm (in costume), trick-or-treat for an hour, eat dinner, and then go back out and trick-or-treat until nine o’clock at night.  

Then, we’d return home, dump our bags out on the kitchen table, and assess the sweet loot.  For many years, it seemed, we went trick-or-treating “for UNICEF” (United Nation’s Children’s Fund) as well, and I still remember carrying along those little orange boxes filled with change.

Part of the fun of Halloween in the 1970s involved those classic, if flimsy, Ben Cooper costumes, as my Pop Art post earlier today hopefully illustrates.  One year, I went out trick-or-treating as Ben Cooper’s Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man.  As you can tell from the photograph, however, I look more like President Ronald Reagan than Colonel Austin.  

Another year, I went out as Ben Cooper’s Darth Vader, and the next year, as the same company’s Cylon from Battlestar Galactica.  If I’m being honest, these costumes weren’t really very good, and certainly not “show accurate” to any degree.  And after a long night of wearing those masks, they always smelled like sweat.

I still went trick-or-treating in high school, and one year dressed up as Freddy Krueger.  I had an Indiana Jones fedora, a red-and-white sweater, a Freddy glove and a pull-over mask.   Instead of focusing on trick or treating, however, I focused on scaring my sister.  I remember that I waited until it was about 8:30 pm, and I found a great perch at the nearby railroad tracks where we had often played as children. The tracks were near -- I kid you not -- a graveyard. 

As my sister crossed the railroad tracks on her return journey, I jumped out from behind a tall signal post and scared the heck out of her.  And man, was it fun.

It’s Halloween.  Everyone is entitled to one good scare, right?

Actually, I had my own bad scare one year while trick-or-treating in Glen Ridge. 

I think I must have been nine or so at the time.  I’m pretty sure it was the year I went out as a Cylon.  There I was in my costume, collecting candy in Glen Ridge, when I approached a large suburban house from the side. 

I should have stayed in the light, and out on the front walk.  Instead, I ran up the side yard trying to beat the other kids.  I ran by a large hedge, and then quite unexpectedly fell into a seven or eight foot hole, dug right out of the yard.  It was quite a shock.  I remember wondering what the hell happened, but fortunately I was rescued after about a minute or so “buried alive” in that ditch. 

One good scare indeed!

Just a week until Halloween now, and I’m super excited to go out trick-or-treating with Joel.  He’s dressing up as Swamp Fire from Ben 10, and I’m probably going as Mr. Spock, as I often do. 

I’ll make certain, however, we both stay on the path, and avoid any ditches…or dream demons.

Memory Bank: The Battle of the Bonds

The year 1983 was widely termed -- at least in genre circles -- “The Battle of the Bonds,” because Sean Connery was returning to the silver screen as agent 007 for the first time in over a decade (since Diamonds are Forever in 1971).

However, in a strange quirk of scheduling, Connery’s film, Never Say Never Again was set to go head-to-head with Roger Moore’s sixth outing as James Bond, Octopussy.  

Originally, both films were to be released in the same summer, which meant that audiences would have the opportunity to -- head-to-head -- size-up the Bonds and their performances.

Never Say Never Again, however, blinked first, and it was moved back to the autumn of 1983.  This shift left 007 some space at the box office, and Octopussy was a major hit in the summer of Return of the Jedi, Superman III and WarGames.

But I still remember the term “Battle of the Bonds,” and a special "Double Bond" Starlog Magazine cover of the celebrity death match.  There were also heated debates in my middle-school cafeteria about which Bond was definitively the best.

Although I had grown up with Roger Moore, I had discovered the Connery Bond movies on ABC TV reruns and come around to the thinking that while Moore was a heck of a lot of fun, Connery was really tops.

My friends in the sixth grade didn’t agree, and they let me know it. 

I remember them stating that Connery was too old to play Bond (though, actually, Roger Moore is a little older, if memory serves), and that his films lacked the special effects wizardry and humor of the Moore epics.  I responded that Connery was tougher, and that his films had greater virtue in terms of style. 

I would like to think the lunchroom battle was a draw, but I was the only one taking up Connery’s cause, so I probably lost.  I think what finally did me in was an exchange in which I noted that Roger Moore used stuntmen too much.  My best friend promptly replied that Connery only needed stunt people…in the love scenes.

Ouch.

After that point, all was lost.  I occasionally wonder what my friends, all-grown-up, think today, if they happen to even remember these particular conversations.  Did their opinions change?  Or did later Bonds Dalton, Brosnan and Craig supersede Moore in their affections?  I do know that my best friend and I were both huge Dalton fans after The Living Daylights (1987).

In terms of the actual movie battle between Never Say Never Again and Octopussy,I felt that Never Say Never Again won on character, thanks in large part to Klaus Maria Brandauer, Barbara Carrera and Connery himself.  But Octopussy scored higher on action, spectacle, and score.  

In terms of Bond performances, Connery carried the day not because he is a better actor necessarily, but because Never Say Never Again allowed him to (charmingly) acknowledge his age, and he showcased a grace and ease that indeed comes with age.

By contrast, Roger Moore in Octopussy wore his pants hiked-up over his belly-button like a senior citizen and yet still had to play the physically-perfect, non-aging, white dinner jacket version of James Bond.  I have no doubt that Moore could have more-than-adequately pulled off some of the same humor that Connery did in his film, but the Octopussy script simply afforded no opportunity.

Again, my buddies beat me like a drum in arguments over the two films. They insisted Never Say Never Again was dull and lacking in action.  Meanwhile, none of them could stop talking aboutOctopussy’s (admittedly-brilliant) pre-title sequence involving the mini-plane called an Acro-Star. 

So, in my middle school cafeteria, anyway, Roger Moore won the Battle of the Bonds hands down, and if I’m not mistaken, Octopussy also won out at the box office.  I still prefer Never Say Never Again and Connery’s portrayal, though I freely acknowledge my deep affection for Roger Moore and his 1973–1985 era.

Do you remember the Battle of the Bonds?  And if so, who was your winner?