I don't "do" ghosts on this blog, but digging up movie spirits of an era gone by works for Halloween month. Today:
An obvious pose from the original "Invaders From Mars" (1953) makes the aliens look like pajama-clad lifeguards. From the 1950s TV series "Superman," George Reeves is either fighting or dancing with a gorilla-like creature.
"This Island Earth" (1955) was "2 1/2 years in the making," according to its famous publicity campaign. Shown are Faith Domergue, Rex Reason and Jeff Morrow with a "mutant" worker. It took me years to realize that Rex and Rhodes Reason (brothers) were two different people, as they seem so much alike. Jeff Morrow was a great actor and came to my little town one day to perform in a play about Abraham Lincoln.
1940 brought us the film, "Dr. Cyclops" starring Albert Dekker. Dekker gained even more fame in later years when he was discovered dead, hanging from a shower curtain and clad in women's undergarments. The circumstances were said to be mysterious. Hmm. Some of you will probably ask me, and I don't know, if young actor Thomas Dekker (of TV's "The Secret Circle" and "Terminator") is related to Albert. But I'll say this much -- if I were Thomas Dekker's agent, I'd invent a family relationship as soon as possible. You can't buy publicity like this for a career enhancement! It never hurts to have a "funny uncle" in the family tree, and since Thomas Dekker has already written, directed and starred in a movie entitled "Whore" and played Lance Loud in a production about the famous Loud family, whose lives were tracked and filmed for 1970s TV, he could only benefit from such additional publicity. Now I ask you, how would you know these things if I didn't use Halloween month to impart important thoughts of this nature?
