Vampires, Spaceships, and Rock ’n’ Roll (Oh, My!): My Life in the Analog Graveyard
A Writer’s Love of Music and Movies
My love of horror films — the creepy, Gothic variety that left the “terror” in your imagination, and not the films from the slice ’n’ dice eighties of American cinema spawned by Halloween, John Carpenter’s 1978 homage to the Italian Giallo works of Dario Argento, or Paramount Studios’ mainstream homage to the genre (particularly Mario Bava’s Twitch of the Death Nerve) with Friday the 13th — grew from my watching American television as a young boy and teenager.
Those born in the sixties in the United States matured in the now bygone era of UHF television. These were locally-programmed stations with on-air hosts (much like the nationally-syndicated cable programs of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark in the eighties) who introduced an eclectic mix of cheesy, low-budgeted horror and science fiction, juvenile action and teen dramas.
It was in this entertainment environment where this writer was first exposed to the films distributed by Britain’s Amicus and Hammer Studios; their cinematic Gothic tales themselves inspired by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P Lovecraft, Nikolai Gogol, and Sheridan Le Fanu; to name a few of my favorite authors — tales rife with witches, warlocks, demons, zombies, and vampires.
Then there were those criminally reedited and dubbed films from the European mainland — that I came to know as “Italian Giallo.” While most originated from Italy, along with many Giallo-inspired facsimiles from Spain, these films concerned the nefarious, nocturnal activities of unseen black-gloved killers adorned in rain slickers; their minds haunted with a variety of anti-social, religious-based psychosexual hang-ups.
These films broadcast on those UHF television stations had their initial showings at the American local drive-in, an environment where no one exited a car to enter an air-conditioned movie theater (and not the 24-screen behemoths of today; but indoor venues with one screen, sometimes two). You sat in your car to brave the warm summer night, fiddling with a crackling speaker that dangled off your car door’s window, as you inhaled the aroma of a smoldering mosquito coil more effective at irritating nasal passages and inducing one’s gag reflexes, than keeping nocturnal pests at bay. The American drive-in: a bygone variety of entertainment proliferating across America — until the Home Video boom of the burgeoning, early-eighties killed off the drive-in — was the American-way to watch movies.
Those local UHF channels blazed the trail for the national “Superstations” of the late-eighties; a phenomenon birthed out of those same UHF stations that came to embrace burgeoning cable technologies. This new technological broadcasting breakthrough brought forth stations such as the USA Network, American Movie Classics, New York’s WOR, Chicago’s WGN, and the grandfather of them all — Ted Turner’s TBS Atlanta. These stations embraced the programming economics of their UHF brethren: they also acquired packages of cheap films to program their airtime.
Then, a new technology birthed: the home VCR — the Video Cassette Recorder. Overnight, video stores blossomed across America in the eighties, their shelves stuffed with VHS (and BETA) cassette versions of all those films originally screened at the drive-in during the fifties and sixties, later rebroadcast on UHF stations in the seventies and cable television in the eighties.
With the VCR, consumers of schlock (such as this writer) could program personal film festivals within the privacy of their home: a cinematic celebration of low-budget worlds rife with revenge-seeking, damsel-rescuing, kung-fu-kicking saviors and Vietnam-era ass-kicking bikers rebelling against society. You could jet into the stars on toy rocket ships and battle rubbery monsters on distant planets; then watch those same latex horrors pester delinquent teens fueled by a lust for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll; teens who also ran for their lives from gooey zombies who arrived as harbingers of the coming apocalypse.
Those were the days: the days of rock ’n’ roll broadcasts on the airwaves of locally programmed, progressive FM rock radio stations; the days of the communal environs of the local record store slinging vinyl records, analog cassettes, and 8-track tapes — the days of a non-digital world. Yes, those days existed: lands not sullied by home computers or the Internet; an analog utopia where no digital technologies delivered entertainment to homes.
Today we exist in a world where less and less people wax nostalgic; our world is now populated with people unaware of the joys of mosquito-infested drive-ins selling dried, shriveled hotdogs at the concession stand; people unaware of the joys of watching quirky television personalities dressed as vampires and ghouls to introduce movies on UHF television; of the joys of staying up late to watch rock ’n’ roll films on USA Network’s Night Flight, or seeing the rocking adventures of Bill Haley and the Comets and Herman’s Hermits broadcast on American Movie Classics. Those born in the digital cloud wax oblivious to the joys of renting cheesy T&A teen flicks from the neighborhood video store to catch their first sight of a breast; deprived of seeing an infamously gooey, zombie movie taboo from Italy, or discovering the latest post-apocalyptic, Mad Max knock-off rumbling in from Spain, Italy, or the Philippines.
It’s all about this writer’s affection for the “evil” world of rock ’n’ roll: A love of attending pot-permeated concerts; of collecting vinyl records; of spending late nights listening to a radio station over a transistor radio with speaker-crackling disc jockeys that actually played requests and bantered on the trivia of the music. It’s about the elation of not fixing your music and movie news cravings on a handheld, technological wonder; instead, you received monthly-by-mail magazine editions of Starlog, Famous Monsters, Hit Parader, Creem and Circus. It’s about growing up to become one of those musicians, record and video store clerks, and one of those disc jockeys and, eventually, one of those music journalists, screenwriters, and novelists.
That’s what possesses a person — this writer: years of what many classify as useless, unimportant recollections of films and music that germinates. Information that seeks a cranial escape to paper for an opportunity to say: Don’t forget about us!
It’s said that some “times” are best forgotten. It’s also said that those who forget “the past” are doomed to repeat it. Decades of memories can’t be forgotten; and if they are forgotten, would repeating those times be such a horrible fate?
And through my writings — both in the screenplay, fiction, and non-fiction realms — I “repeat” with a smile on my face and joy in my heart. That’s why I wrote this article you’re reading now; it’s why I wrote The Ghosts of Jim Morrison, the Phantom of Detroit, and the Fates of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Second to my love of horror and science-fiction films: rock ’n’ roll — both on vinyl and celluloid. That’s where it all began.
Although the American swing, jazz, big band, and country musicians of the twenties, thirties and forties starred or performed in comedic, suspense and dramatic films with musical plot lines set in nightclubs and radio stations — it was the year 1955 that set the stage: 1955 is the year that birthed rock ’n’ roll films. (And changed this writer’s life forever — and for the better.) The origins of those reels of musical celluloid trace back to Blackboard Jungle — the first film to feature rock ’n’ roll on the soundtrack, and the first film to make the correlation of juvenile delinquency as a byproduct of rock music.
The song featured in Blackboard Jungle, “Rock Around the Clock,” by Bill Haley and the Comets, holds the distinction as the first “rock song” featured in a Hollywood movie. When the song rose to #1 on the charts, it also became the inspiration for the first film to be scripted around a rock song: 1956s Rock Around the Clock; its success, in turn, spawned a quickly assembled sequel in Don’t Knock the Rock, released that same year.
Another influential film was James Dean’s second of his three films: Rebel without a Cause. Released the same year as Blackboard Jungle, the film served as the blueprint for numerous rock ’n’ roll-based flicks throughout the years. In fact, it’s alleged Elvis Presley was in consideration for the Dean role; it was to serve as Elvis’s big-screen debut. Elvis, the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll”: the first musician to successfully combine county music and the blues of the American Southeast into a new form of music: Rock ’n’ Roll.
Elvis Presley’s first starring role in 1956’s Love Me Tender borrowed the marketing scheme of Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock: use the artist as the “star” and utilize their hit song as the title of a movie. And with that, any rock band with a hit song found themselves appearing in, or having films crafted around their group and songs. Just ask the members of Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Cliff Richard and the Shadows, and, of course, the Beatles.
However, the crafting of films around successful musicians — or creating dancing-and-swimming sing-a-long musicals starring Fred Astaire or Esther Williams — wasn’t born in 1955. The first musician on “sound” film was Al Jolson, who starred in 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length, nationally distributed motion picture with talking sequences, music and sound effects. Movie goers could see and hear Al Jolson perform “Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’ Bye),” “Blue Skies,” and “My Mammy.”
Country-western star Cindy Walker carved a prolific career not only in music, but in film as well. Cindy Walker holds the distinction of charting Top Ten hits in every decade — from the forties through the eighties. Cindy sold her first song, “Lone Star Trail,” to Bing Crosby in 1940, which lead to her own record deal with Decca Records. She soon found her songs recorded not only by Bing Crosby, but by Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison, Kenny Rogers, and Elvis Presley. Her best known song, “You Don’t Know Me,” charted three times: first in 1956 for Eddie Arnold; in 1962 for Ray Charles, and again in 1981 for Mickey Gilley. Cindy’s music continues to exist into the 21st century, with the song’s most recent appearance in the Jodie Foster film, The Brave One.
As result of her writing 39 songs for producer Bob Willis’s western movies of the early-forties, Cindy transitioned into an acting career with the western musicals Ride Tenderfoot, Ride and Frontier Vengeance in 1940, 1942’s Bearcat Mountain Girl, and 1944’s Ti-Yi-Yippe-Aye, then made her final appearance in 1953’s Oil Town, U.S.A. Even one of the bands starring with Cindy in Oil Town, U.S.A, country-western legends Sons of the Pioneers, carved out a film career of their own — long before Billy Haley arrived in 1955 — beginning with 1935’s Slightly Static, up through 1951’s Fighting Coast Guard. (And yes, they all appeared on U.H.F television to the delight of this wee-rock ’n’ roller.)
Another film that utilized chart-topping musicians and music as a plot device — long prior to the rock-movie craze initiated with Rock Around the Clock — was the 1943 comedy Reveille with Beverly. The film provides an early peek into the screen career of Frank Sinatra — before his rising to the Hollywood A-List with his star-making turn in 1953’s From Here to Eternity, which served as his acting debut.
In speaking of Frank Sinatra: Billy Haley and Elvis Presley would not have made the transition to film, and Elvis would not have had an acting career, if not for Mr. Sinatra blazing the trail. Mr. Sinatra first appeared on the silver screen as a member of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra/Band in 1941’s Las Vegas Nights and 1942’s Ship Ahoy. After earning his first screen credit as a solo artist with a music performance in Reveille with Beverly, he moved onto his now classic roles in From Here to Eternity, Von Ryan’s Express, and Ocean’s Eleven.
An interesting point on Reveille with Beverly: the setting inside a radio station also served as the plotline utilized in numerous, early rock ’n’ roll films. The film stars noted dancer and singer Ann Miller (the Madonna/Britney Spears of the day) as disc jockey “Beverly Ross,” who cons her way into a gig at a military radio station charged with entertaining the troops. While there, she organizes a big band/swing show with performances by some of radio’s biggest stars of the day: Frank Sinatra, Freddy Slack and his Orchestra, Duke Ellington, the Mills Brothers, and Count Basie.
America’s fascination with the radio not only provided Hollywood with a plot device for films; the “voices” of the radio also transitioned to the silver screen. Prior to the radio careers of disc jockey Alan Freed in the fifties, Wolfman Jack and Casey Kasem in the sixties, and Rick Dees in the seventies transitioning from behind the microphone to the front of the camera, Hollywood made an actor out of legendary Los Angeles radio personality Fred Crane.
Best known for his cameo appearance as one of Scarlett O’Hara’s beaus in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind, it is Fred Crane’s voice that opens the film with the line: “What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war is going to start any day now.”
Crane began his radio broadcasting career as the staff announcer for Jack Benny’s radio program on the NBC Radio Network. In 1946, Crane began his prolific radio career in Southern California on 1330 AM KFAC Classical Radio. He remained with the station, placing frequently in the Top Five for drive-time ratings, until the station’s demise in 1988. During his 40-plus years on KFAC, he segued into a television acting career with the series Hawaiian Eye, The Lawman, Lost in Space, 77 Sunset Strip, Surfside 6, The Twilight Zone, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and was a regular on General Hospital in the seventies. His film roles include 1949’s The Gay Amigo, and a co-starring role as the henchman “Duke” in the theatrical version of the hit TV Western, The Cisco Kid.
As with the films of the fifties, the musically-plotted films dating to the thirties and forties served as showcases for the current music stars of the day. These progenitors to the rock ’n’ roll films of the fifties also padded their short running times with concert clips and/or on-screen performances, due to the film’s lack of a real script or plot.
Film was the perfect medium; a marketing tool in a world not yet exposed to today’s multi-channel universe of cable television and Internet-based marketing. Television was not a necessity of the masses; it was a luxury not afforded to every household in America. The same goes for the attendance of music concerts. The most cost-effective and affordable entertainment to the masses was the local movie house or drive-in theater (and that portable radio perched on the top of your grandmother’s refrigerator or that transistor radio in your pocket); both served as the only way many Americans could see their favorite music stars of the radio perform — in person.
Oh, yeah . . . the horror and science-fiction films. After those first television viewings of Universal Studios’ monster trio of Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Wolf Man (which resulted in the nightly, pre-bedtime ritual of this writer’s younger self: ensure all closet doors were closed and chair-barricaded, a scarf was wrapped around the neck, and a flimsy metal cross received for Holy Communion was under the pillow and the Holy Bible was planted bedside), along came those “sequels” from Hammer Studios that featured Peter Cushing and his creations, along with Christopher Lee’s quest for fresh infusions to continue his reigns of terror from the Carpathian Mountains. Then there were the new horrors from Amicus Studios: tales of damsels tortured by the desires of witches and warlocks, along with the Eccelesiastical-ignorant fools who received their comeuppance from beyond the grave.
Then along came the U.S Apollo Moon landings and two new milestones in science-fiction film: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running (that transported this writer into his love of Russian science-fiction films and books, by writers such as Stanislaw Lem); both seen in one of those old-styled, majestic, one-screen movie theaters. Meanwhile, on television, this writer consumed American International Pictures’ (and other studios’) low-budget precursors to those milestones: The Angry Red Planet, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, Journey to the Seventh Planet, Planet of the Vampires . . . the list goes on. . . .
And that is how this writer began his journey down the yellow brick road: on a bumpy, pot-holed, not-so-golden pavement through a career in radio, lugging amps, guitars and drums as a roadie, in music and movie retail, in acting and screenwriting — and this book you are now reading.
If it fulfills you emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually, the journey is a righteous one; time is on your side and you never lose — naysayers be damned. And with that, it’s back to the keyboard to write more about the vampires, spaceships, and rock ’n’ roll that I love.
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You can learn more by visiting the Author’s Facebook Page for R.D Francis.
He’s published the Gothic, psychological horror novels: The Devil’s Anatomy and The Small Hours, and Luminosity, a science fiction adventure.
