Part of my “day job” as Copy Specialist for the PCS Stamps & Coins division of MBI, Inc. is to license images for use on our various collector panels and other products, so I had occasion today to contact the New York Public Library in that capacity for the first time. Lo and behold, the guy whose own day job is Manager of Rights & Permissions for the NYPL, Tom Lisanti, is not only a fellow McFarland author (e.g., Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema: Interviews with 20 Actresses from Biker, Beach and Elvis Movies; Film Fatales: Women in Espionage Films & TV 1962-1973), but also a fellow contributor to Cinema Retro whom I met in Manhattan at a delightful get-together for Retro writers hosted by our own “Dear Leader,” Lee Pfeiffer, at the Players Club (founded by 19th-century Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes) a couple of years back. Tom is a capital fellow who helped me with some advice while I was writing Richard Matheson on Screen, and duly appears in my acknowledgments. Those interested in the skull-splintering output of quintessential shlockmeister Larry Buchanan–and who isn’t?–will enjoy this article on Creature of Destruction from his website. Great to renew your acquaintance, Tom!
Sabres win, Bradley posts. Could the night get any better?
The man is the blog, the blog is the man.
Thanks for the link to the Buchanan piece. Watching a Larry Buchanan flick is like eating an entire jar of peanut butter. It’s hard going down but it’s tough to stop! I have fond memories of watching Year 2889, Curse of the Swamp Creature, Eye Creatures, and Zontar on The Ghoul’s show in the early 1970s.
My pleasure. My earliest Buchanan memories are: 1) Watching THE EYE CREATURES without knowing anything about him and, as the picture progressed (if that is the word), going, “Oh, my God–this is INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, but worse!” and 2) Watching “IT’S ALIVE!” without knowing it had anything to do with Matheson (or even much about Matheson himself, for that matter), and being in such a state of disbelief at how awful it was that my eyes probably bugged out as far as those of the monster, which he’d recycled from CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION. In fact, when it comes to recycling (of scripts, footage, costumes, etc.), you could probably say Larry was ahead of the curve. Of course, the fact that in those days we had no choice but to watch those pictures in the wee hours of the morning presumably only enhanced their weirdness. I remember being so fascinated with the wretchedness of “IT’S ALIVE!” (and probably eager to confirm what my eyes had beheld on my first viewing) that I was actually disappointed one night when I discovered that, contrary to the TV GUIDE, they were showing Larry Cohen’s IT’S ALIVE rather than Buchanan’s.