833.) Revisiting a favorite vintage Halloween episode, digitized for the current era (and unseen since 1998): A night of rarities, as we salute my favorite holiday in fine style. First, Alice Cooper featured in his sickliest-looking, punk-drunk phase in a rare 1981 French television special. Then we go South of the Border, for a Mexican holiday TV special that mixes up Rocky Horror, Falco, prefab adolescent bands, and face masks that make Ben Cooper appear sophisticated. The final clips salute the intersection of the immortal Boris Karloff and rock ’n’ roll. First, his appearance on Shindig (not the “Monster Mash” that everyone agrees occurred, but no one has footage of, but another pop favorite of the period) and his guest turn on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. More artifacts proving that Boris was the coolest “monster” ever.

834.) In honor of the man’s passing, this week I present part one of my interview with one of the most lovably silly kiddie hosts in TV history, Soupy Sales. The Soup reveals what it was like growing up as a Jewish kid in the South, talks about our fave cut-rate puppets (the fact that he refers to hepcat lion Pookie as “he” is just one more reason to love the guy), and his immutable laws for the throwing of pies. We also cover the famous Rat Pack piefight, appearances by other show-biz names (sadly not preserved on either video or kinescope), and his pals, White Fang and Black Tooth. He may have had some health troubles in the past few years, but his mind (and sense of timing) is still razor-sharp, as befits a TV comedy legend.

835.) Vintage episode: Part two of our friendly chat with a man who livened up many an afternoon in NYC (and around the country), Soupy Sales. In the concluding installment of the chat, we talk about Soupy’s decision to leave Metromedia TV and call it quits, his movie vehicle Birds Do It (“used as punishment in several states,” sez Soup), a noted Rat Packer (who missed the pie fight) in same, his return to TV (in blazing-red-sweater color) in the late ’70s, and his days in NYC radio on WNBC-AM. All that and plenty of vintage clips—including a guest appearance by the father of "shock rock," Alice Cooper, and another (on his variety show pilot) by Ernest Borgnine “as Judy Garland” (the lady herself then wanders out, and that’s what makes-a da clip history, boss).

836.) There’s no greater curse than receving the Oscar, and so this week I pay tribute to a filmmaker/comedian whose work I still love, but who has been pretty much forgotten here in the U.S. since his Academy Award win more than a decade ago. The gent in question is Roberto Benigni, who I see as the modern era’s only tangible link to the great American (and, natch, Italian) screen comedians of the Golden Era. First up is a short scene from the latest Benigni film, The Tiger and the Snow, which received a cursory theatrical release in the U.S. and which I discovered when it cropped up at odd times on the Sundance Channel. Next we turn to one of the best Benigni films that has remained unreleased in the U.S., his 1985 collaboration with a fellow controversial Italian TV comedian, the late Massimo Troisi. Functioning as a terrific comedy team, the two play dolts who land back in the late 15th century, where they decide to prevent the discovery of America by Columbus. This plot device may be the reason the film has been so underseen on these shores, but the pic is a terrific low key comedy that boasts one of my favorite titles *ever * in movie history (esp. for a comedy), Nothing Left to Do But Cry. We finish out with a film that is legally available here but no one knows it exists: the crazy, vulgar, Marxist comedy Berlinguer I Love You (1977), scripted by and starring Benigni. The film’s plot is unrecountable, but it does feature Roberto as a Mama’s Boy who is looking for political enlightenment, as well as a private place to masturbate to his scarecrow rendition of the leader of the Italian Communist Party (whom Benigni did actually support in real life). Top that, awful Saturday Night Live alumni....

837.) The Kuchar Brothers’ importance in the “underground” film scene of the Sixties cannot be underestimated. That’s why I’m proud to present this week part one of my interview with Mike Kuchar, the more visually inclined of the brothers, and the man who gave us the deranged mini-feature Sins of the Fleshapoids (more on that cult classic in part two!). In this installment of the interview, Mike discusses his latest “pictures,” which are elegantly stylized shorts shot on mini-DV and edited with a digital effects editing box (much as the Funhouse itself is). He reflects on the “underground” label, and also dispenses his philosophy of filmmaking. In addition, he supplies recollections of his youth in the Bronx, his love of Hollywood product (both A- and B-grade), and the use by he and his brother George of their voluminous collection of records to “score” their 8mm, super 8mm, and 16mm films.

838.) The Kuchar-fest continues with the second and final part of my interview with Mike Kuchar. In this episode we focus on his work with his brother George on a series of wonderfully outlandish no-budget 8mm and super-8mm shorts, shot in the apartments (and streets, and on the roofs) of the Bronx. Mike reflects on the Kuchar Brothers’ relationship to their contemporaries (Jacobs, Warhol, Mekas), and the wonderfully kitschy humor they exhibited in their finest works. We move on to discuss Mike’s Sixties masterwork, the no-budget, robots-with-human-emotions 16mm cult classic Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965), which is currently the only Kuchar film available on U.S. DVD (out of literally hundreds that the brothers have made). We close out with Mike’s thoughts on working as a cameraman for other “underground” and low-budget filmmakers, and the Kuchar “legacy.”

839.) Following on the heels of my recent foray into the unknown work of the once-fashionable-but-now-sadly-forgotten-in-the-U.S. Roberto Benigni, this week I offer a look at two as-yet-unreleased films by the multitalented Takeshi Kitano. “Beat” Takeshi, as he is known to fans, was also a very fashionable figure on the arthouse circuit in the Nineties, but his last three films have gone undistributed in America. Kitano cuts an imposing figure as a performer, but is a mercurial filmmaker who is as likely to go for a deadpan joke as he to tug at the viewer’s heartstrings or offer a moment of brilliantly elided violence. His 2007 film Glory to the Filmmaker is his own 8 1/2, an odd meditation on what his next film should be, that includes parodies of several genres on its way to becoming an extremely bizarre sci-fi parable involving an eccentric mother and daughter duo. His last release to date as a filmmaker, Achilles and the Tortoise, is two art-world satires in one: the film begins as a touching study of a boy who loves to draw but doesn’t have much talent, and winds up a series of bizarre deadpan sequences about a painter, played by Kitano, who wants to find fame at any cost.

840.) In the 21st century Christmas specials are dim specters of what they used to be. A collection of Yuletide songs sung by celebs, or a tongue-in-cheek evocation of the variety-show excesses of the past can’t compare with the real thing, so this year I’m reaching back to one of the past masters of “family” Xmas special-dom, Andy Williams. Williams, whose variety show lasted from 1962-69, was second only to Bing Crosby in terms of presenting a family Christmas show that served as both a perfect time capsule of its era (whenever that might’ve been) and also a complete refutation of it (in favor of the Norman Rockwell/Currier & Ives American Xmas that never, ever existed...). I’m presenting clips from Andy’s 1971 Christmas outing, from a “mail-order” copy that is quite possibly the worst visual quality of anything I’ve ever shown on the Funhouse. But content is what matters here, so never mind the loss of color (we watched most of these shows on b&w sets anyway), the occasional video “quiver,” and the spooky, spectral quality of the copy (being a foreign country, the past is always slightly spooky anyway). The special itself revolves Andy and his clan performing the holiday rituals – no wrapping of presents, but there is the unwrapping and the inevitable big family dinner. I excerpted a few of the show’s musical numbers, which oddly, given the family bent of the program, are performed by Andy solo in the empty house, pre-Xmas celebration (Williams’ variety show had a similar Andy-is-to-be-onstage-as-much-as-possible quality). Thus, we have Williams warbling some of the hits of the year to delightfully kitschy effect, plus – yes, I had to include it, even though it is perhaps the most haunting and lyin’-est Xmas song of all – performing his beyond-ubiquitous holiday hit, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” His delicate-voiced, then-wife Claudine Longet duets with him on a then relatively new John Lennon tune; I’ve learned since we shot the show that the two were already legally separated for a year when this special aired – making them the equivalent of the post-divorce Sonny and Cher. To offer some non-seasonal Sixties weirdness, we explore “the gift that keeps on giving” with clips from the episode of the sitcom The Mothers-in-Lawthat featured a very rockin’ appearance by the Seeds (fronted by 2009 D.A. Sky Saxon). The clash of the “old” and “new” in Sixties culture is in full effect in this show, and that’s what the holiday season on TV used to be all about.

841.) To ring in the New Year, I offer up a vintage episode that celebrated a different sort of New Year many, many years ago. The ep in question features Stan Freberg’s 1962 special “The Chun King Hour,” which was shown on the eve of Chinese New Year, and is one of the smartest, craziest TV “spectaculars” ever. Freberg does indeed hawk the full line of Chun King products, but he also offers wry commentary on the “vast wasteland” that was TV in the early Sixties (how little we knew back then about where it was all gonna end up); laugh tracks; old movie clichés; violence on TV; and “Sing Along with Mitch” (spoofed in a very mind-blowingly Mad mag style). Along the way we see and hear from Stan’s repertory company of talented folk, and a guest star (who used to have Stan open for him on the road) shows up as a Chinese food-loving messenger boy. Freberg rarely attempted this kind of long-form weirdness, and the show was never rerun on any subsequent Chinese New Year’s Eve….

842,) As a follow-up on my episodes saluting the unreleased works of once-in-fashion/now-nearly-forgotten-in the-U.S. arthouse faves Benigni and Kitano, this week I show a vintage episode centered around three movies from Aki Kaurismaki that were never officially released in the U.S. Kaurismaki’s movies come in two varieties and we’ve got ’both this evening: Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana, is one of his deadpan tales of backwoods hicks (Scandinavian hicks, that is) encountering life outside the sticks, while Drifting Clouds is a touching character study of a married couple trying to make ends meet. Along the way, they may turn to Kaurismaki characters’ usual pastimes – smoking, drinking, and listening to grungy rock’n’roll – but this time ingenuity (and, yes, a cute dog) is added into the mix. The final feature I Hired a Contract Killer retells a common theme for noirs – a man hiring a killer to murder himself, and then reconsidering – but adds a neat twist. Namely, a laid-off French office-worker (Funhouse icon Jean-Pierre Leaud) hiring his depressed killer in a run-down working-class section of England. All three movies haven’t played anywhere in the U.S. except at film festivals and in one-shot screenings at rep houses, so we’re proud to show scenes from them for the first time on U.S. television. I love these pictures.

843.) The Sixties and early Seventies variety shows were all about the blending of the absolute best and the positive worst in American culture; they also saw the old colliding with the new, in a gloriously awkward fashion. I’m thus extremely pleased to review on this week’s Consumer Guide episode three relics from the era. The first, The Mama Cass Television Program, is a 1969 special that finds Cass dueting with some of her immaculately talented folk-rock friends, as well as sharing the stage (and yes, singing) with Buddy Hackett and Martin Landau and Barbara Bain (why? Because!). The second recent release is Pat Paulsen’s Half a Comedy Hour, a 13-week wonder from 1970 that found the deadpan perennial presidential candidate welcoming various guests and participating in a number of fairly off-the-wall sketches. The final relic is by far the most extreme, the 1967-69 Jerry Lewis Show, edited so that only the comedy sketches are showcased. From Mama’s quiet, lovely melodies to Jerry’s knockabout farce is quite a steep drop, but that’s the kind of thing that the variety show was all about.

844.) This week’s vintage episode is the second part of my interview with very busy character actor Antonio Fargas. In this installment, Fargas talks about his memorable turns as gay characters in Car Wash and Next Stop, Greenwich Village, and his work for Louis Malle in Pretty Baby. We close out the chat with a discussion of films like I’m Gonna Git You Sucka that have paid tribute to the blaxploitation era Mr. Fargas was a part of.

845.) Vintage ep from 2008: The 15th anniversary of the Funhouse is celebrated with an episode that is not a “clip-show” of past episodes, but instead works like a birthday program in which I indulge in three objects of obsession. The clips are all new to the show and are wonderful (I can say that because I didn’t make ’em). First up is yet another tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, featuring melodious moments from the film that united him for the first time, and quite a long time, with Jane Birkin, Slogan (capsule review: it’s a better soundtrack than a film). Next we turn to the indefatigable Mr. Sammy Davis Jr., with snippets from YouTube offerings of some of his rarer TV appearances. And closing out the program is my mini-mix of lesser-known Monkees tunes as they were presented on the TV series (but rechanneled for stereo by some overly generous bootlegger).

846.) A vintage Deceased Artiste episode spotlighting three actors from different countries. The first is Japanese actor Ken Ogata, best known for his work with Imamura and for playing legendary renaissance man Yukio Mishima in Paul Schrader’s splendid Mishima. Next up I salute Guilluame Depardieu who left us at the rather young age of 37 after having had a tumultuous life in and out of the shadow of his famous father Gerard. I interviewed Guillaume when he was in town promoting Leos Carax’s dense and inscrutable Pola X, so I’m glad to pay tribute to him by re-airing segments from the chat and clips indicating his range as a performer. Finally we hit a mega-star, Paul Newman. Instead of showing the usual sublime clips of Newman’s biggest movies, I show scenes from two of his lesser known works: the terrific Bicentennial flop from Funhouse favorite Robert Altman, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, and the never-ever shown 1955 musical TV version of Our Town in which Newman appeared in the male lead role, playing opposite Eva Marie Saint and “Stage Manager” Frank Sinatra.

847.) The Funhouse was constructed on the medium of VHS, and so I’m glad to return to it for trash and treasures the relate to the Sixties, which is (again) “the gift that keeps on giving.” We start off with sequences from two short films made in 1969 starring Diana Rigg, in which she plays a sort of Emma Peel spy-girl being placed into a series of predicaments which she escapes using her wits, charm, and a lethal judo flip. The Avengers they ain’t (for one things, there’s absolutely no dialogue, only music), but she’s as gorgeous (and ass-kicking) as she ever was. Next it’s one of the stranger artyfacts, Savages, a Merchant-Ivory film (yes, a Merchant-Ivory film, featured on the Funhouse) that attempts to channel the spirit of the times with a totally oddball tale of a group of primitive tribesmen and women who search for the “narotic leaf,” but find instead the sartorial and leisure-time pleasures of the upper crust in 1930s Long Island. Funhouse favorite Michael O’Donoghue co-scripted this one, and it could only have come from the cinematic bonanza of strangeness that was the Sixties. We close out with Beyond the Doors, Larry Buchanan’s incredibly strange 1984 conspiracy theory pic, in which it is posited that Jimi, Janis, and Jim were all killed by a CIA plot. The pic features some really awful soundalike music (copyright, the bane of all no-budget cineastes) and some really wonderfully rancid dialogue. Turn on, tune in, drop out, be here now. Just don’t miss it.

848.) From enlightenment (of a kind) to art on the show this week, as the Consumer Guide department features compilation DVDs released on the Kino label (now Kino Lorber). The first two items are a pair of comp discs wonderfully assembled by the “A/V Geeks Film Library”: How to Be a Man and How to Be a Woman. The first collection emphasizes how educators and establishment-types saw every teenage boy as a potential juvenile delinquent or impregnator of girls; the second spotlights the ways in which girls were seen as future consumers who could be sold to while they were still attending grammar and high school. The films are utterly delightful, and feature the usual weird signifiers of the eras they were made in, as well as some awesome location footage and some suitably cheesy rock and approximations of “things to watch out for” (namely pornographic materials and loose women). The featured set up for review is Kino’s third collection of Avant-Garde and Experimental Cinema. Included are several warped renditions of fairytale material, shorts inspired by silent cinema, filmmakers obviously infatuated with Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks, and yet another great Lettrist feature-length provocation (this time with pretty young lasses).The range in material is rather wide here, but that’s what we’re happiest with in the Funhouse.

849.) A vintage Consumer Guide episode finds me once again pouring over the work of a Funhouse favorite, the singularly obsessed Italian cineaste Marco Ferreri. The occasion is the release of the Koch Lorber box The Marco Ferreri Collection, which contains remastered versions of eight of the manic maestro’s works, as well as a rare Italian video documentary, and… the Funhouse interview with him, now enhanced by accurate Italian subtitles! Hopefully the box will earn Ferreri some new American viewers, as it features not only his most notorious features (La Grande Bouffe, Don’t Touch the White Woman, Tales of Ordinary Madness) but two VHS-only releases (El Cochecito and Seeking Asylum starring a young Roberto Benigni), and two impossible-to-find rarities (the no-budget apocalyptic Adam-and-Eve saga The Seed of Man and the fascinatingly touching yet cruel senior-citizen romance The House of Smiles). If all that weren’t enough, also included is a film I’ve featured time and again, the one and only Bye Bye Monkey. I review the box, and then present the TV premiere of parts of the subtitled Ferreri interview (I’m fascinated and baffled by his mention of the oil crisis’s connection to La Grande Bouffe). This is the first official “archiving” of a Funhouse interview, and I’m proud to be a small cog in a wheel that might make some folks aware of the very singular, very strange, and extremely obsessive Marco Ferr