Wednesday, February 20, 2013

An Alternative History: What If Batman Never Became A TV Series?


In the 1960s the Batman movie serials from the 1940s were shown in the Chicago Playboy Club. This lead to ABC commissioning a Batman TV series, that lead to Batmania, and lead to a boost in the sales of Batman comics, which had been lagging for years. But, what would history be like if the Playboy Club never showed the Batman serials? What if the Batman TV show never got on the air? The following is my opinion on how history would have played out.

-A Night With Batman And Robin is not shown at the Chicago Playboy Club in the mid-1960s.
-Yale Udoff never gets the idea to make a Batman TV series from watching the reaction of the audience at the Playboy Club.
-Batman never becomes a TV series in 1966. Batmania never grips the nation.
-Adam West acts in commercials, and some TV appearances, before moving back to Hawaii to run a local TV station.
-Bert John Gervis, Jr. never becomes Burt Ward, never gets an acting gig, and becomes a real estate agent in the San Fernando Valley.
-The Batman comic is canceled in in 1967. The Batman character has backup stories in Detective Comics until D.C. stops using him altogether in 1970. He makes infrequent appearances in Justice League from time to time. His last appearance ever is in 1979 in the background of one panel in an issue of Action Comics.
-ABC television passes on a cartoon about the Justice League called Super Friends starring D.C. Comic’s best known heroes, Superman, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and Flash.
-Denys O’Neil and Neal Adams work together at D.C. Comics, but never find a project that makes an impression. Denys leaves comics to become a high school English teacher. Neal Adams returns to advertising art. No one cares what he has to say about the Earth being hallow.
-Jim Aparo works in romance comics, before also returning to advertising art.
-MEGO eight inch superhero figures fail to catch on, and MEGO drops its line of toys after one year.
-With no one to help fight for creator’s rights, older comic book creators never get either credit or compensation for the characters they created. No one knows the names Siegel and Shuster.
-Attempts to make TV series based on The Incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman never go anywhere.
-D.C., seeing a decline in sales of comics overall, cancels a planned Crisis On Infinite Earths event to fix continuity problems.
-Frank Miller leaves Marvel to work at D.C. in the mid-1980s. After several projects fail to get off the ground he returns to Marvel. His remaining days at Marvel are uninspired, and, after quitting comics in 1993, he is never heard from again.
-The Justice League comic is canceled in 1987. It is never revived.
-Director Tim Burton does some comedies before returning to Disney Animation, where he doesn’t make waves. One Disney executive calls Burton’s work, “unimaginative.”  
-D.C. sees no reason to take a gamble on a comic idea by Alan Moore for a series called Watchmen.  Alan Moore, disillusioned with comics, later becomes a rock critic and has a column in Rolling Stone Magazine. His bizarre behavior and enormous ego get him fired. Some people say he works in a coal mine today.
-Nearly all direct market stores are closed by 1989 since there is little interest in comics.
-Comic books are never collected in trade paper editions. The only way to get old comic issues is to buy old comics, which are cheap.
-Due to low comic sales in the industry, Marvel Comics closes its doors. Characters are sold off, mostly to animation studios. Spider-Man is bought by Archie Comics. Peter Parker is moved to Riverdale, where he goes to school with Archie and the gang. Eventually, the Spider-Man persona and powers are dropped. Archie’s Pal Peter Parker, a comic about high school student Peter Parking who suffers from bad luck, runs for years and is sold in digest form in supermarkets.
-Mark Hamill works mostly in dinner theater and autograph shows after failing to get voice over work.
-Warner Bros. Studios, without any big hits in the late 1980s, has to sell D.C. Comics (they keep MAD Magazine, moving it to its periodical division). D.C. is sold over and over again to different corporations during the 1990s.
-Kevin Smith makes a movie about clerks working at a store. Since the characters have nothing interesting to talk about, people find the movie boring and it never finds a distributor. Smith never makes another film and becomes a yoga instructor.
-No superhero films are made in the 1990s, since comics are nearly extinct.
-A TV show based on Superman’s relationship with Lois called Lois And Clark is not picked up. One TV executive says, “Comic book heroes have never worked on TV.”
-Director Joel Schumacher is considered a film genius and racks up a bunch of Oscars for his movies.
-The Family Guy animated series has a character called “Mayor Don Adams”. The character is not popular with the audience or the writers, and is only used four times. Get Smart’s Don Adams sues Family Guy for using his name and image, and wins. The show is cancelled. Seth McFarlane becomes an animation director for Cartoon Network, where he hires an out of work Tim Burton to do storyboards.
-Director Christopher Nolan makes character driven dramas that never seem to make any money. He eventually turns to directing TV to make ends meet.
-D.C. Comics spends most of 1998-2005 selling reprints of old comics instead of making new material, before the company ends all operations in 2007. Superman is sold to Nickelodeon cable channel. They do little with the character after trying to make a new cartoon series fails.
-In 2013, my daughter finds an old issue of Batman, that belonged to my dad when he was a kid, at my mom’s house. She says, “Holy riddles, Batman!” as she reads it. I have no idea what she is talking about.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

The Ormsby Holiday Special (2012)

On Christmas Eve a mother tells her daughter about Ormsby, The Clones, Mother and Duck-Boy in a tale of Monster Christmas trees. All four parts are collected here for your enjoyment.



Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!

Monday, June 4, 2012

Ormsby The Official Film Emcee For The Macabre Faire Film Festival


The Macabre Faire Film Festival will be having our own Ormsby as its Official Film Emcee.  The festival is June 22nd through 24th at Best Western Mill River Manor, 173 Sunrise Hwy., Rockville Centre, NY 11570. 

Films being shown include: The Deadfather; Monster Brawl; Schism; Frankenstein: Day of the Beast; Tell Tale Heart; The Turnpike Killer and many, many more (click HERE for a list of films and show times).

Cleve (SyFy’s The Monster Man) Hall, Douglas Tait (stuntman and monster actor), Salvatore Rizzo (The Deadfather himself), Eileen Dietz (The Exorcist), Gene Snitsky (WWE Wrestler), and author/actor Michael Alonisi are the celebrity guests.  There are also some great live acts performing, like Baron Misuraca, Cello Mike, Nightmare Machine, and more!

Get your tickets before they sell out, and make sure to say hello to Ormsby if you go.  He’ll be the short green fellow.

Until Next Time,
Stay Insane!!!

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Cinema Insane Presents The Ape Man (1943)

Here in one place are all four parts of Ormsby's Cinema Insane Presents The Ape Man (1943) starring Bela (Sexy Pants) Lugosi.

And don't forget to subscribe to our Bliptv channel (you can use your Facebook account to log in if you so choose).

Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:


Part Four:


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Ormsby mentioned on The Game Station Podcast!!!

In the latest The Game Station Podcast #11, Jesse Cox mentioned us (as he drank out of his Ormsby Cinema Insane coffee mug, available at our Zazzle store).

He called us, "...the single worst Youtube channel ever".

BEST ENDORSEMENT EVER!!!

(The part about me starts at about 1 minute and 30 seconds in)



Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Ormsby at The White House Correspondents Dinner

This is Ormsby's full speech from The White House Correspondents Dinner from Saturday. 

We hear that he will not be asked back.

Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Ormsby Interviews The Geek Girls

Ormsby got to interview the burlesque troop known as The Geek Girls (www.geekgirlpro.com) at the recent Macabre Faire.  The interview happened in their hotel room inside of a pillow fort they had built.

Until Next Time,
Stay Insane



Monday, April 9, 2012

The Giant Rubber Monster Movie Special-LIMITED TIME ONLY

In honor of Thomas Berdinski's The Giant Rubber Monster Movie winning the 2012 Rondo for Best Short Film, we are re-showing our special from last year (with a new intro) FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY until May 6th.  So sit back, grab some stink beetles and popcorn and enjoy.

Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!


Sunday, March 25, 2012

The Giant Gila Monster Part Four

Here is part 4 of The Giant Gila Monster episode of Ormsby's Cinema Insane.

Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!


Saturday, March 24, 2012

Monster Man - Monstrous Reality Show

I don’t like (un)reality TV, it just isn’t my cup of tana leaf tea. I don’t care about the people in the shows and it seems so blatantly staged that it grates on my nerves. Maybe it's because I like documentaries, that the scripted reality offends me in some way. I did like Making Monsters on the Travel Channel, about the people who work at Distortions Unlimited (the mask and Halloween people). Mainly I liked it because it stayed on making the masks and props, which interests me.

The SyFy Channel (I know, I can’t say or write it without laughing to this day), which seems to be a waste basket of cheap rip-off-direct-to-video movies and reality shows, has a new program that combines both. Monster Man is set around practical effects man Cleve Hall as he works with his family (ex-wife and two grown daughters) at SOTA Productions for Roy Knyrim.

On the surface this should be a show I would love. Monsters, practical (not CGI) effects, and a veteran makeup man to bring it all to life. After watching two episodes I’m a little less than thrilled.

Part of the problem with this show is it has all the reality show tropes that tick me off. Everything seems staged, to the family strife to the drama with making the monsters. In the first episode Cleve has to make a two headed shark for 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012). The client comes in with the shark’s heads stacked on top of one another (bunk sharks?), and Cleve shows him how having the heads side by side would be better. The whole scenario felt scripted to me. I could see a producer going to the client and saying “So come in and tell them you want bunk sharks, and Cleve will save the day by showing you a better design”. Maybe it wasn't, but that's how it felt to me.

So if I don’t like the reality show part of it, what do I think of the monsters?

The second episode they had to make a werewolf for Hallow Pointe. The werewolf head came off looking like a high school football mascot with a huge schnoz. I know effects are meant to be filmed, and don't look as cool in the harsh rays of daylight, but this head was almost comical. I'm a big fan of practical effects, and I applaud Hallow Pointe director Thomas J. Churchill for going that route instead of crappy CGI. Still he shot it in the best angels to make it scary, which is quick cuts where you hardly see it.

Another thing that annoyed me was that the titular Monster Man, Cleve, hardly did anything creative with this werewolf build. His daughter, Constance, designed it. The sculptor did the clay version, and the molder cast everything and did the foam. If he’s the Monster Man, would think he would do more than do painting and gluing fur (Don’t get me started on the visit to the guard dog school to get “inspiration” for the werewolf-staged, staged staged). If he's the monster man, I want to see him more hands on throughout the whole monster making process.

I think SyFy missed an opportunity here. They could have shown the episode of Monster Man where they create the effects, and follow it with the actual film they worked on. It could be a Saturday movie event each week. I'd tune in for that.

I did like the parts where they were fabricating the creatures and I wish they would concentrate more on that. I also like the backdrop of a struggling effects company trying to make it in a world where CGI has almost all but replaced them.

I really wanted to like this show, and I’ll probably watch the remaining episodes with the hope it gets better, but in the end it doesn't get this monster kiddo excited. Given SyFy’s track record I shouldn't be surprised that I’m let down.

Until Next Time,

Stay Insane!!!