superjett_1

Late one summer night in Cleveland, Ohio, circa 1978... Our parents have gone to bed & my 2 younger Brothers & I are sitting on the floor in front of the television impatiently waiting for the Saturday night Creature Feature to begin. In our dimly lit living room I remember watching almost angrily as a local TV-news team wrapped up the evening news in what appeared to be slow motion, it really seemed as if they were taking forever but then we had been waiting all week to see this movie. We had seen it advertised following the one they had shown the previous week & it looked really interesting, scary & hopefully gory. So as I turned off all the lights in the living room the news FINALLY ended & then after several very boring & very time consuming commercials the Saturday night Creature Feature finally began... Now on Cleveland's Channel 5 the film was shown as Twisted Brain but never mind the title, my Brothers & I were not disappointed, in fact about half way through my youngest Brother wanted to turn on at least one light in the living room, well he was just 5 at the time. Anyway, the lights stayed off until the movie ended.

The core basis of this episode is very much like the true story of when in the 1950's the sadly forgotten Bela Lugosi, the legendary star of such horror classics as 'DRACULA', 'WHITE ZOMBIE'& 'MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE' came to work for the sadly inept film director Ed Wood Jr. The chemically dependent, financially strapped & down on his luck Wood figured that a big name star being attached to his films would surely bring in big money at the box office so therefore he injected the chemically dependent, financially strapped & physically ill Lugosi into several of his schlocky projects, including the infamous 'PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE', the horrible horror/sci-fi bomb which many film fans & critics alike have given the title of WORST FILM EVER MADE! Now I am a huge fan of horror/sci-fi flicks & I even have a soft spot for the really bad ones, in fact, I own every Ed Wood Jr. film on DVD, including PLAN 9, digitally re-mastered for best picture & sound. Anyhow, I enjoyed this episode very much because of it's similarities & connection to the Lugosi/Wood story.

The cable company here in Indiana just had the channel added and it has now become my favorite. There are old TV shows on there that I hadn't seen in years including. Great television Classics like Kung Fu, The FBI, The Man From U.N.C.L.E, The Green Hornet, Superman, My Favorite Martian, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside Six, Hawaiian Eye, F Troop, The High Chapparal, Lancer, The Legend of Custer, Jesse James, Daniel Boone, The Rifleman, The Lawman, Bronco, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Bourbon Street Beat, The Wild, Wild West, The Courtship of Eddie's Stepfather, S.W.A.T. , The Rookies, Harry O, Welcome Back Kotter, The Incredible Hulk, Chico and The Man and many others. All of these shows Call your cable company and ask for The American Life Network! If you are a classic TV nut and love the feeling of nostalgia that a favorite episode of an old TV show can give you, well, You will just love The American Life Network!