Oh What Could Have Been by Dave Goode

K. Gordon Murray presents...

Being a fan of masked wrestler movies I sometimes imagine the genre taking off here in America during the 1960s. I imagine some Hollywood producer seeing the success K. Gordon Murray had at American matinées with his re-dubbed Santo flicks and decided to make a series of homegrown movies. The results would probably resembled the Superargo series from Europe that starred Giovanni Cianfriglia under the Americanized name Ken Woods.

 

Samson Burke in action

 The logical choices to star in these movies would have been the expatriate North American bodybuilders who went to Europe to star in sinew & sandal epics. Some of the more athletic stars like Dan Vadis, Brad Harris, and Gordon Mitchell could have nailed it. Samson Burke had been a pro wrestler under his real name Sammy Berg. Frankly I'll never understand how he didn't take the name "Samson Burke" when he began his career as a wrestler. It was a natural.

 

Gordon "Tarzan" Scott

Gordon Scott who starred as Tarzan and appeared in a number of peplum pictures would have been a good choice too. A former member of the U.S. Military Police and an expert in hand-to hand combat Scott would have been great playing a pro wrestler. The problem with Scott or Steve Reeves or Mark Forest playing a masked wrestler would be that they would spend 60% of the movie mask-less. And one of the things that makes the masked wrestler genre is that the heroes wear masks. But they had no secret identities. Something that the writers of the Superargo series understood.

Sundown Cinema has a great video about Superargo. Click HERE to see it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

 Did you dig that comic? If you click>>>>HERE<<<<you can get a comic book full of great fun featuring Dr. Judo, Mr. Incognito, the Golden Adonis, and the Phantom Gorilla! Plus fantastic articles and much more fun!

King Tut's Gorilla by Dave Goode

Of all the Bat-Villains that were created specifically for the Batman television series of the swinging sixties my favorite was King Tut. I could easily picture the character in the comic books. Actually I would have loved to have seen him in the comics. A King Tut would be added to the list of Bat-Villains in the comics. But that would be decades after the series was canceled. And that Tut had very little to do with the over the top character portrayed by Victor Buono on the 60s TV show. That of schizophrenic William Omaha McElroy,professor of Egyptology at Yale who when conked on the noggin imagines himself the reincarnation of King Tut.

Buono's leering and lecherous Tut set a new standard for scenery chewing on a series that was known for over the top performances. I personally thought he would have been great playing Nero or some other decadent despot in an Italian costume melodrama.

One of the things that I found sorely missing from the Batman series was a gorilla. Think about it. This show was aired during the Silver Age of Comics. But it never featured one of the Silver Age's most popular tropes. Now I'm not suggesting that there should have been episodes that featured Karnak,the Living Beast-Bomb from Detective Comics No.339. But one of the Bat-Villains could have owned a pet gorilla. The logical choice would have been the bad guy who thought himself the reincarnation of an Egyptian pharaoh. The only question would be who would play the beast. George Barrows or Janos Prohaska?

 

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The World's Most Famous Movie Monster? by Dave Goode

 

My introduction to the classic Universal monsters (Dracula,
Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man)was in Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein at a Halloween party when I was about five or six.It's one of my favorite all-time movies.It's both funny and terrifying.In some places it's both at the same time.Just check out the scene in the sub-basement in the "house of Dracula".Or the film's exciting climax.

 

 

 My first Frankenstein movie was I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN ( a follow-up to I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF). This variation of the familiar story has a descendant of the original Dr.Frankenstein, portrayed by the great Whit Bissell, following in his ancestor's footsteps. The twist has him assembling a creature from recently deceased high school athletes.

 The creature is portrayed by Gary Conway, an actor who began his career as a model in "physique magazines". I thought that this version of the monster with a fullback's legs and wrestler's upper body would have made a great adversary for a comic book hero without super-powers or for a Mexiluchahero.

 The theme was touched on in several masked wrestler movies with the heroes squaring off against variations of the Frankenstein monster. In some cases, the Frankenstein's monster itself as in Santo & Blue Demon vs. The Monsters. It's sort of like Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein without the laughs. It does have laughs....but they're mostly unintentional. 

Smashing Robots in 4000 A.D. by Dave Goode

 My favorite Silver Age sci-fi comic book was Gold Key's Magnus Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. That first issue stood out from everything else on the stands. That fantastic cover that featured what appeared to be, serial & B-Movie star, Buster Crabbe smashing a robot with a "karate chop" defending an Ann-Margaret lookalike cowering in the background. 

 Over the decades since it's first appearance back in 1963 the Robot Fighter feature has become a cult favorite. I attribute this to three things...

 First and foremost was the art. Not only did you have Russ Manning, one of the all time great comic book/strip illustrators drawing the stories ,but you also had wonderful painted covers that gave the title the look of science fiction paperbacks.

 

 Secondly you had robots. Nothing, except for dinosaurs and gorillas on a comic book cover,  was guaranteed to sell a mag like robots. And with a title, like Magnus, Robot Fighter, you were sure to have plenty of robots.  

 Thirdly, there was karate. It was that karate stuff that we had been seeing more and more of in movies and on television. It was never stated that Magnus was using karate, but the reader had little doubt.  I imagined the Robot Fighter was using the form of karate developed by the legendary Mas Oyama - kyokushin.

 Interestingly, Magnus' creator, Russ Manning, didn't originally conceive of Magnus destroying robots with shuto blows. That idea came from his wife. However she originally suggested the idea of Magnus leaping up on the shoulders of robots and unscrewing their heads.

 Manning originally imagined his "Tarzan of the Future" using a stone hammer and not tameshiwari techniques to turn robots into scrap metal. After reading about that. I re-imagined Magnus wearing something different than the "red mini-skirt and white go-go boots". Like something out of a gladiator movie. Even with the stone hammer, it's impossible not to think of Magnus using karate, if only as a back-up.

Faux fun by Vance Capley

For years fan-boys have imagined a live-action Magnus movie. Today, with CGI, that's even easier to imagine. But back in the 60s, we could only imagine Ray Harryhausen and a team of stop-motion animators bringing Magnus' robot antagonists to life. That or you'd have to trade down and use the type of robots seen in Target Earth. Casting the leads for the Robot Fighter movie might have proved a bit easier. Someone once told me, when casting a hero, just go with Ron Ely.

In this case, that was more than just good advice. Ely, who would star as Tarzan on television, would have been spot-on as Manning's "Tarzan of the Future".

 

Connie Stevens or Mimsy Farmer could have played his love interest Leeja Clane.

Steve Holland...Manly Man Model by Dave Goode

  Holland was a male model turned actor. He was best known for portraying "Doc Savage" on the Bantam paperback series for artist James Bama. Bama called him,

 "the world's greatest male model."

 

  Holland portrayed Flash Gordon in 39 episodes from October 1 1954 to July 15 1955. The syndicated television series was filmed in West Germany.

 

  He also stood in for a number of other heroes. He appeared on photo covers as Bob Colt Fawcett's western comic book series. A series created because Fawcett Comics didn't want to have to license the likeness of a cowboy star. 

 

You can see him on several of Gold Key's Magnus,Robot Fighter 4000 A.D. covers as well as posing for a couple of Phantom covers as the "Ghost who Walks".

  On the covers of Warner's revival of that popular 30s pulp hero, he portrayed the Avenger. He was The Man From O.R.G.Y , The Executioner and judoka Jason Striker just to name a few.

 

  

  Holland was probably best known as the "manly man" on men's sweat magazines.One month you might find him as a U.S.Marine in the Pacific rescuing nurses from fiendish Japanese soldiers. The next he might be a British commando captured and tortured by a Nazi dominatrix.

   It was entirely possible to find him on several different covers in the same month. As a jungle explorer on safari, an American soldier fighting Nazis or a private eye rescuing a comely co-ed from white-slavers or bikers. And the titles for these stories were just as much fun as the illustrations themselves.

"I Found the Pleasure Geishas of Kamikaze Island and Death Cruise of the Cuban Cuties.

In the alternate universe that I sometimes find myself inhabiting A.I.P made a series of low-budget action movies adapted from these stories and starring Steve Holland.The reason they cast Holland was because he already appeared on the cover illustrations that saw double-duty as movie posters.Starring opposite model/actress Eva Lynd who appeared with him on several sweat mag covers,Ginger Grant,Starliss Knight and several other B-Movie actresses he rose to cult movie stardom.

    

Graphic design and layout by Vance Capley

Ginger Grant: Drive-In Movie Queen by Dave Goode

  

 Let me start off by saying that I'm a Mary Ann guy*. And yes I prefer Betty to Veronica too. I never thought Ginger was prettier than Mary Ann. Dawn Welles who played Mary Ann Summers, the sweet Winfield Kansas farm girl had been a Miss Nevada winner and a contestant in the 1960 Miss America contest for gosh sakes. Ginger was just more glamorous. But then she was a movie star.

 

 I always imagined Ginger Grant as a B-Movie actress. A drive-in movie queen. Someone who was the damsel in distress in sci-fi flicks, jungle adventures and horror movies. She was the sultry saloon singer in westerns. The captive slave-girl in peplum movies. And the other woman in potboilers. A graduate of Hollywood High, Ginger got her first job in show business upon graduation working as a magician's assistant.

 From there she began to get modelling work appearing on the covers of "true romance" magazines. Discovered by a movie producer while working as a nightclub singer she was soon seen in a number of low-budget crime dramas as eye candy in bit parts.

    From 1960 to 1964 she was co-starring opposite stars like Vince Everett,Troy McClure,Dash Riprock and Deke Rivers in THE HULA GIRL AND THE FULLBACK, BELLY DANCERS FROM BALI BALI, THE RAIN DANCERS FROM RANGO RANGO and THE BIRD PEOPLE MEET THE CHICKEN-PLUCKERS.

 After her mysterious disappearance in 1964 along 5 other passengers and the crew of the S.S. Minnow tour ship her movies became cult classics. There was a biography written by Richard Welle that became an instant best-seller.

  Three years after the book's publication there would be a documentary made about her life, rise to stardom and mysterious disappearance. Her disappearance and those of the other people, who were on the Minnow when it set sail on a three hour tour in fall 1964, remains a mystery to this very day to anyone who doesn't own a television set.*

*Editor's notes

• I'm a "Tina Louise - Ginger" guy. 
• In 1978, Rescue from Gilligan's Island, the castaways made it home...only to be lost once again on Gilligan's Island. (Judith Baldwin as Ginger)
• In 1979, The Castaways on Gilligan's Island, the castaways are found. Mr. Howell turns the island into a resort. A sequel was made in 1981, The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. (Constance Forslund as Ginger)
• The show was revived in animated form in The New Adventures of Gilligan in the '74-'75 tv season with Jane Webb as Mary Ann and Ginger. In the '82-'83 tv season, Gilligan's Planet launched the castaways into outer space with Dawn Wells as both Mary Ann and Ginger.

Retro book covers (and Ginger fan) Vance Capley

WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN ANYWAY? by Dave Goode

There aren't too many film genres as entertaining then the masked wrestler movie. Nothing epitomizes the similarities between pro wrestling and comic books quite like them. Muscled men in masks (say that 3 times fast) fighting the forces of evil using the same skills that made them champion grapplers to fight werewolves,vampires,mad scientists and their creations,alien invaders from space and sometimes organized crime.

 The majority of these movies come from Mexico. And so sometimes they are referred to as Mexiluchahero movies by fans of the genre. But in that alternate universe that runs through my head, I can see American comic book companies purchasing the rights to these flicks to produce 4-color adaptations of some of the best-known of these movies. And then continuing with a series of comics featuring the stars. An el Santo series  drawn by Steve Ditko. A Blue Demon series illustrated by the tag-team of Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson. A Tinieblas feature drawn by Jack "the King" Kirby and Gil Kane drawing a Mil Mascaras comic. Of course Mexico had their own masked wrestler comics starring Santo, Blue Demon and others. I just can't help but think of how great versions drawn by the premiere arts of the Silver Age of comics would have been. 

Enjoy the short adventure below featuring an American comic book fan turned masked wrestling hero.

Grab Judo Comics today! Click the pic: