Droids: The Great Heep!
If you’re old like me, you may remember how Star Wars paved way for both the Ewoks and Droids cartoons on Saturday mornings.
In the case of Droids, the show actually ended with an ABC prime time special — an hourlong mini-movie called The Great Heep, which aired on Saturday, June 7th, 1986.
I was pretty much born a Star Wars addict, so nothing was gonna keep me from watching this. Incredibly, though I’ve only seen The Great Heep that one time, I can still remember the basics: Something about a giant evil droid that acted as a mobile prison camp for other captive droids.
(I’m probably off on the particulars, but something in that area.)
If you’re a Star Wars fan and you’ve never seen the old Saturday morning cartoons, they’re worth a watch, even if only for curiosity’s sake. Both Droids and Ewoks also inspired their own dedicated lines of Kenner action figures, which had the neat byproduct of extending the shelf life of the regular Kenner Star Wars figures by a good two years!
Yet More Tales from the Darkside!
Happy spooky Sunday! Have some more Tales from the Darkside!
In the first season episode, Answer Me, a woman is driven mad by the ceaseless ringing of her neighbor’s phone. I’ll say no more, but this one gets weird. 😯
…and then from the second season, here’s Ursa Minor, which is easily among the most famous episodes of the series. It’s about an evil teddy bear, after all!
As with most Tales from the Darkside episodes, the stories were secondary to their atmospheres. Imagine being 9 or 10, up late, alone, in the dark, and with this creepy show on your bedroom television. That was my experience, and I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to recreate that old mix of excitement and dread.
Lady in White!
Got a good one for ya tonight. Here’s Lady in White, from 1988:
Now granted, I’ve never seen it, but Jay’s always raving about this movie. You might remember it from one of the early episodes of the podcast.
The key point is that the titular ghost is played by Katherine Helmond — goddamn MONA of Who’s the Boss? fame. So there’s really no way it’s bad.
In sadder news, today I learned that my hometown dropped a Toys “R” Us and one of its oldest movie theaters. (Maybe THE oldest, come to think of it.)
They were right next to each other in a really iffy strip mall.
This wasn’t my main TRU, but over the years it served as an awesome backup. It was also one of the rare TRUs that had a truly (TRUly?) great clearance section, stuffed with all sorts of old stock. I’m gonna miss it. Every TRU has its own identity, so it’s not like I can get the same exact flavor from another store.
The movie theater is an even bigger loss. Don’t get me wrong: It was wretched even in its heyday, to a locally legendary degree. But that was also its charm. It was notoriously small and unkempt, but in a world where every theater is getting bigger and more advanced, it was nice to have one that looked like the set of a breakup scene from an ‘80s sitcom.
The last movie I can remember seeing there was Spawn, back in ‘97. Which was pretty much the perfect movie to see there.
Wish I’d gotten to experience these places one last time before they imploded, but I guess getting to take photos of their corpses is a nice consolation prize.
PS: If you missed it, Dino Drac’s April Funpack is now on sale!
Slugs!
Hey, it’s Friday night! May you spend it with wine and pretzels and some dumb old movie.
I can help with part of that:
Here’s Slugs, from 1988. The title doesn’t mince words, but in case you didn’t know, yeah, it’s about killer slugs. Killer mutant slugs, at that. It’s gory as hell, so I wouldn’t recommend watching it while eating pasta or anything.
If you’re not into Slugs, let’s try a survey tonight, too. (No idea if it’ll sail since I’m keeping quiet about Dino Drac After Dark until I prove that I can update it regularly again, but whatever, if only two people respond, only two people respond.)
In the comments: Name your favorite dead store chain. (If it’s local, make sure you tell everyone what they sold!)
This isn’t my favorite, really, but I’ll give a shout-out to Waldenbooks. I can’t remember the last time I saw a smaller-sized bookstore in a mall, and I miss the hell out of them. Way back when, Waldenbooks was my preferred supplier for Far Side books, Garfield treasuries, wrestling magazines and the occasional video game strategy guide.
