Sunday, January 26, 2014

Blondes vs. Brunettes #14 - False Advertising and Breaking News

First the breaking news, to me at least.



Linda Evans, one of TV's
classic blondes
Maybe everybody knows this already, but the question has been posed before regarding the catfight between Stefanie Powers and Linda Evans in the 1974 McCloud episode “Butch Cassidy Rides Again”, the question being:  did the dialogue indicate that the catfight would continue after Dennis Weaver left the scene? 

Since that episode of McCloud isn’t available on DVD and, until recently, the show had not been seen in re-runs for nearly a quarter of a century, it was one of those questions that seemed to remain forever unanswered, especially since the one clip bandied about on the internet stopped when the fight was interrupted by Weaver.

But then came along Cozi-TV, a digital over-the-air TV network.

I first heard of it this summer.  Like “Retro-TV” Cozi-TV, owned by NBC, features a lot of old programming and some of that old programming, like “Mr. and Mrs. North”, features catfights.   For me though, the issue was that I couldn’t figure out how to record the shows and if I couldn’t record the shows, then Cozi-TV wasn’t doing much for me.



The fantastic Stefanie Powers
My specific problem was that I couldn’t solve the riddle of the digital antenna, the WinTV card sitting in my computer, and the Windows Media Center that comes with the Windows operating system.  Media Center alone has driven me to near insanity just getting it to work my DirecTV box.

After fiddling with the unholy alliance of the antenna, the card, and the dreaded windows application over the course of a few different weekends, I gave trying to make it work a couple of months ago.  That is, until this weekend, when I notice that the McCloud episode featuring the Powers-Evans fight was scheduled for today, Sunday 3PM EST.  So I was back to fiddling.  Finally, about 15 minutes into the program I figured out what I was doing wrong. It was a real “D’oh, I can’t believe I screwed this up moment.” and, *presto* just like that, McCloud was on my computer screen. I hit the record button and captured (almost) the entire episode.  Most importantly, I recorded the fight scene and yes, after Dennis Weaver leaves, Powers explains what he did to her (locked her up in a bathroom) and instead of expressing sympathy, Evans, who thought that Weaver was cheating on her, says “How sweet.” Powers, now angry again at Evans, appears to start the fight again as the scene cuts back to the city of New York. So that, I believe, answers the question.




Uploaded to You Tube, DailyMotion of course!!
 
 
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1e3qqd_mccloud-cozi_shortfilms

Or if you want to download, go to the Media Fire link here
https://www.mediafire.com/?yg3tpxd3f28vi0u


False Advertising


So everybody knows it’s against the law to advertise a product that clearly does not live up to its claim.  Which leads me to some great movie posters advertising scenes that never occurred and then wondering why the producers weren’t tossed into the clink.


The first and maybe the most infamous is “Women of the Prehistoric Planet” which is one of the dumbest films of all time.  I’ve watched it forward, backward, and upside down and haven’t got the faintest clue what it was about.  Here is how Wikipedia explained the plot:

“A space faring crew from an advanced civilization is preparing to return home after an extended voyage. The crew includes "humans" (represented in the film by Caucasian actors and actresses) and "Centaurians" (represented in the film by Asian actors and actresses). The Centaurians have been rescued from their home planet after a catastrophic event, not explained in the movie, has devastated their planet. They are being brought back with the space faring explorers with an expectation that they will be assimilated into their new parent culture. One of the ships in the fleet is hijacked by a few of its Centaurian passengers and crash-lands on a prehistoric planet in the "Solaris" system. Countermanding orders, the rest of the fleet returns to search for survivors after the crash. In the film's "twist", by the time that the rescuers (traveling at fast sublight speeds) are able to return to the planet, they are encountering the descendants of the original crash survivors - explained in a simplified version of time dilation. Linda, a Centaurian from the rescue ship, falls in love with Tang after he saves her from drowning. After fighting with the planet's indigenous species (1960s-era special effects including giant iguanas meant to represent dinosaurs), Tang and Linda are marooned on the prehistoric planet - the latter revealed to be the captain's own daughter. In the film's coda, this savage and primitive planet is revealed to be the Earth.”
Got that?  I didn’t think so.

Now you might be wondering why, if the movie sucked so bad, did I watch it so many times. 

At this point, let me introduce you to the movie’s poster.
Not one, but two catfights are shown.
Two!! And one of them is a tough looking brunette, tearing a blondes head off.  Wow! What a fight that must be in the movie.
Not.
There is not a single fight in this movie. In fact, the women, Merry Anders and Irene Tsu don't even argue with each other. 
Savage planet women battle space invaders?
Bull-shit.

And now you know why it's false advertising.


And then sometimes it's just misleading...

 

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment