View-Master: ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL

After finding success with psychedelic live-action Saturday morning kid’s shows like H.R. PUFNSTUFF, LIDSVILLE and THE BUGALOOS and a prime time variety show starring Donny & Marie Osmond, producers Sid & Marty Krofft combined the two formats and came up with THE KROFFT SUPER SHOW, which ran on ABC from 1976 to 1978. A children’s variety hour hosted by the fictitious (and irritating) bubblegum rock band Kaptain Kool & the Kongs, this “super” show consisted of several 15-minute live-action programs that were threadbare even by Krofft standards and probably wouldn’t have flown on their own in a 30-minute timeslot. One of the more tolerable segments was ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL, a female knockoff of Batman and Robin done on a $1.98 budget, starring future soap opera celeb Deidre Hall and pigtailed Judy Strangis (Helen from ROOM 222) as reporters Lori and Judy, respectively, who transform into the titular super heroines and use an array of wacky gadgetry to protect humanity from such cut-rate villains as the Spider Lady (Tiffany Bolling, featured in this View-Master pack), the Genie (Sid Haig), the Empress of Evil (Claudette Nevins), the Pharoah (Peter Mark Richman), Ali Baba (Malachi Throne), King Alex (Michael Blodgett), and the Sorcerer (Strangis’ ROOM 222 co-star Michael Constantine). The Kroffts may have envisioned these spandex-clad cuties as role models for little girls, but we're willing to bet the real audience for EW & DG were their older, teen-aged brothers.

For whatever reason, ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL was dropped from the show at the start of the second season (along with DR. SHRINKER) to accommodate two newer segments, BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY and MAGIC MONGO. Kaptain Kool & the Kongs were replaced by the Bay City Rollers for the third season, when the show moved to NBC and was re-titled THE KROFFT SUPERSTAR HOUR. Eight episodes later the "Superstar Hour" was shortened to 30 minutes and renamed THE BAY CITY ROLLERS SHOW, but that format lasted for only five episodes before the show was axed altogether. The Krofft name wasn't seen on Saturday mornings again until five years later, when Sid & Marty tried to turn Richard Pryor into a kiddie show star (!) with PRYOR'S PLACE.

It's been a long time since we’ve done one of these View-Master entries, and unfortunately we still haven't figured out how to post any the eye-popping 3-D images. However, the booklet that was issued with the pack has been scanned for your amusement. Enjoy.

View-Master: THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE

Cartoonist and children's author Ted Key is best remembered today for creating the Mister Peabody & Sherman characters for Bullwinkle & Rocky as well as the long-running Hazel comic strip (which itself was the inspiration for a successful TV series), but the TOS crew first encountered his name during the 1970s when he wrote a trio of live-action animal comedies for Walt Disney Productions: THE MILLION DOLLAR DUCK (1971), GUS (1976), and THE CAT FROM OUTER SPACE (1978). A big fan of the first two movies, Po-Man was an age-appropriate Disney die-hard when he saw the third during its theatrical run, and even then found it as lackluster and formulaic as its title, despite a cast of familiar faces and old pros (Ken Berry, Sandy Duncan, Harry Morgan, Roddy McDowall, McLean Stevenson, Jesse White, Alan Young, Hans Conried, James Hampton, Howard Platt, William Prince, Hank Jones, Rick Hurst, Sorrell Booke, and Ronnie Schell, who has an onscreen role and provides the voice of the titular feline). That still didn't stop him from buying the Pocket Books novelization -- also penned by Key -- or this neat View-Master packet, which is more enjoyable than the movie itself thanks to brevity and 3 reels of eye-popping 3D images. As for the booklet, which has been scanned and posted below for your amusement, please note that top-liners Berry, Duncan, and the darn cat are nowhere to be found in any of the photos.

View-Master: DR. SHRINKER and WONDERBUG

After finding success with psychedelic live-action Saturday morning kid’s shows like H.R. PUFNSTUFF, LIDSVILLE and THE BUGALOOS and a prime time variety show starring Donny & Marie Osmond, producers Sid & Marty Krofft combined the two formats and came up with THE KROFFT SUPER SHOW (1976-1978, ABC). A children’s variety hour hosted by the fictitious (and irritating) bubblegum rock band Kaptain Kool & the Kongs, this “super” show consisted of several 15-minute live-action programs that were threadbare even by Krofft standards and probably wouldn’t have flown on their own in a 30-minute timeslot. Our favorite was WONDERBUG, a dime store cross between Disney’s THE LOVE BUG and Hanna-Barbera’s SPEED BUGGY that managed to make those trashy SUPERBUG movies from West Germany look like David Lean productions by comparison. Schlep Car, a junky dune buggy with a mind of its own, is rescued from the scrap heap by three bell-bottomed young people who discover a magic horn that transforms the sputtering Frank Welker-voiced wreck into a glistening candy apple red crime fighting machine with rolling headlight eyes and the ability to fly. If this show is remembered at all today, it's because one of the stars is the late John Anthony Bailey, who played Ritchie’s friend Sticks on HAPPY DAYS before a cringe-inducing career in '80s shot-on-video porn under the name "Jack Baker."

While WONDERBUG accounts for two of the three reels in this View-Master packet, the third is dedicated to DR. SHRINKER, the lamest of the three Krofft "super" segments. A trio of young people crash-lands their airplane on a remote island where the titular mad scientist (played by Hollywood's favorite Caligula, Jay Robinson) and his assistant Hugo (Billy Barty) are experimenting with the doc's latest and greatest scientific advancement, a shrink-ray, which they plan to sell to any nation that will shell out the exorbitant asking price. Predictably, the three youths are shrunk to 6 inches in height and spend the rest of the show's one-season run (16 nearly identical 15-minute episodes) trying to return themselves to normal size while repeatedly escaping the evil - and hammy - clutches of Shrinker and Hugo. Evidently we weren't the only kids unimpressed by DR. SHRINKER, because it was dropped from the show at the start of the second season (along with ELECTRA WOMAN AND DYNA GIRL) to accommodate two equally crappy segments, BIGFOOT AND WILDBOY and MAGIC MONGO. We still tuned in for WONDERBUG but otherwise had little interest in Krofft's increasingly flimsy offerings. Kaptain Kool & the Kongs were replaced by the Bay City Rollers for the third season, when the show moved to NBC and was re-titled THE KROFFT SUPERSTAR HOUR. One of the awful new segments, LOST ISLAND, actually brought back Robinson and Barty in their Shrinker and Hugo roles, only this time they were known as "Dr. Deathray" and "Otto" and instead of the miniaturization gimmick the segment offered lots of nonsensical guest appearances by Pufnstuff, Sigmund the Sea Monster and other slumming Krofft characters. We clearly remember turning off the first episode in disgust shortly after the halfway mark, pretty much forgetting about Sid & Marty from that point on, and therefore had no idea until we read the Wikipedia entry a few minutes ago that LOST ISLAND was killed after 8 episodes so the "Superstar Hour" could be shortened to 30 minutes and renamed THE BAY CITY ROLLERS SHOW! That format apparently lasted for only 5 episodes before the show was axed altogether. The Krofft name wasn't seen on Saturday mornings again until 5 years later, when they tried to turn Richard Pryor into a kiddie show star (!) with PRYOR'S PLACE.

It's been a while since we did one of these View-Master posts, and unfortunately we still haven't figured out how to share the eye-popping 3-D images with all of you. However, the booklet that was issued with the pack has been scanned for your amusement. Enjoy.

View-Master: JULIA

Two weeks ago at the Cinema Wasteland convention we heard Fred Williamson proudly recount how he smooth-talked producer Hal Kanter into giving him the recurring role of Steve Bruce, steady boyfriend of nurse and single mom Julia Baker (Diahann Carroll) on the TV show JULIA, and we made a mental note to dig up this View-Master packet from the Temple archives. Controversial at the time but in retrospect viewed as something of a joke, despite the fact that it was the first program centered around a black professional woman in a non-demeaning role, JULIA ran on NBC from September 17, 1968 until March 23, 1971 (86 episodes) and had a number of product tie-ins including paper doll books, a lunchbox, Colorforms, a line of Mattel dolls (including a talking Julia doll) and this View-Master pack issued in 1969. Carroll took a lot of heat from large segments of the black community because of the show's safe, lighthearted, nonpolitical and unrealistic depiction of African-American life, but we'll bet JULIA plays better nowadays than it did during the turbulent sixties. It looks great in steroscopic 3-D anyway! We can't post any of the pictures, sadly, but below is the booklet that was issued with the pack. Enjoy!

View-Master: PIPPI LONGSTOCKING

Pippi Longstocking is the creation of Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren, who wrote four very popular books in the 1940s about this mischievous, obnoxious little girl with superhuman strength. A successful television series based on the books was produced in Sweden in 1969, written by Lindgren herself, and four feature films were later edited together from the original 13 episodes. These films were presented in the U.S. by Nick "N.W." Russo, producer of the syndicated '60s fishing series Gadabout Gaddis ("The Flying Fisherman") and president of Gadabout-Gaddis Productions (later G.G. Communications). Prior to going the kiddie matinee route, Russo/G.G.P. had released Bava's A HATCHET FOR A HONEYMOON, a couple of spaghetti westerns (FIND A PLACE TO DIE, THE MAN FROM NOWHERE) and sexy European thrillers like THE EXQUISITE CADAVER, MARTA, and Fulci's ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER.

PIPPI LONGSTOCKING arrived in American theaters in 1973 and was followed by PIPPI IN THE SOUTH SEAS (1974), PIPPI GOES ON BOARD (1975) and PIPPI ON THE RUN (1977). These horrendously dubbed G-rated films were matinee attractions well into the 1980s, even after Video Gems issued them on videocassette (Russo's final kiddie acquisition, THE PINCHCLIFFE GRAND PRIX, found its biggest success on cable). PIPPI LONGSTOCKING is our least favorite of the four Pippi movies, but it's the only one to have a View-Master tie-in. We still haven't figured out how to post any of the eye-popping 3-D images, but the booklet that was issued with the pack has been scanned for your enjoyment.

View-Master: METEOR

METEOR (1979) was American International Pictures' too little, too late and wayyyy too lame entry in the disaster movie cycle of the '70s. Directed by Ronald Neame seven years after he helmed THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and featuring an all-star cast led by Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, and Henry Fonda (as the president of the United States), METEOR got terrible reviews and barely earned half of its $16 million budget domestically, making it one of the biggest -- if not the biggest -- failure in the 25 year history of AIP. A Sandy Howard/Run Run Shaw co-production, it doesn't even rate a mention in Arkoff's autobiography, Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants. Sadly, it's also the only AIP release to be marketed with a View-Master tie-in. We can't post any of the eye-popping 3-D images, but below is the booklet that was issued with the pack.


















In addition to the View-Master tie-in, there was a METEOR novelization from Warner Books...


...an official METEOR movie magazine from Warren Publishing...


...and a METEOR pinball machine from Stern!