I’m in DVD heaven. Between a birthday, the upcoming Father’s Day (EMMA and JOSIE always spring for something nice) and an incredible sale at Amazon I have a nice stack of DVD’s to watch.

Tonight I’m checking out the first season of the Wild, Wild West, which is not to be confused with that weak piece of dung Will Smith made a view years ago.
This is the real thing with Robert Conrad and Ross Martin from 1966. Think James Bond meets Gunsmoke.

I watched another movie today, but I have to explain a few things to the uninitiated…
I love Drive-Ins. I always have. That means over the years I seen some bad B-Grade pictures. Most of them were science fiction and horror films.

Today’s was right in that vein…FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER.
I remember watching it as a small boy on the Million Dollar Movie at 4:30p.m., one afternoon on WDBJ. It was hosted by weatherman George Bassett.
I thought it was one of the scariest things I had ever seen…. the movie, not George.
I must have been REALLY young.

The basic plot is Mars has been devastated by nuclear war. Now its women are sterile, so they send a space ship to pick up new breeding stock…so you see MARS NEEDS WOMEN!

However they shoot down an American astronaut who is really a robot. He’s Frankenstein. He loses half his face and that was the image I always remembered.

Anyway watching it today, it has bald headed aliens and all the women they kidnap are wearing bikinis!

Not so scary after all.

But I did learn something interesting. There is a LOCAL CONNECTION to FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER. It came with a booklet talking about the movie.

It was written by three men, two of whom were graduate students at UVA. I thought that was interesting enough…but it also turns out that one of them is a very accomplished writer who has taught 32 years at Hollins University, which is less than two miles from my home. R.H.W. Dillard has credits that include some prestigious works… Frankenstein meets the Space Monster is NOT listed among them. Still isn’t a small world?