Farewell, Michael Sarrazin - much more than a pretty face

I was very sad to hear yesterday that actor Michael Sarrazin passed away, aged 70, after a brief illness. He had a face you don't forget easily. But his good looks and huge eyes were backed by talent. His versatility as an actor meant he could carry all types of movies - romantic, horror, comedy...

After memorable roles such as The Flim-Flam Man, Eye Of The Cat, the young actor ended the 1960s starring in the superb Oscar-winning They Shoot Horses, Don't They? This is his most-acclaimed film. But while he's top-billed opposite Jane Fonda, the story is an ensemble piece with a strong cast playing the many hopeful marathon dancers trying to keep standing long enough to win the prize money. A cruel way to earn a crust in depression-era America, the movie was actually shot in a ballroom where these actual spectacles took place. I was shocked to learn that Dracula-director Tod Browning used to live in Venice Beach and came to watch some of them on the pier. He wanted to film the story when it was published in 1935.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is the best way to remember Sarrazin, but I've always been intrigued by his sci-fi/horror films, a steady vein throughout his career. I've already mentioned Eye Of The Cat - a superb horror/thriller scripted by Joseph Stefano (Psycho) where he plays a character paralysed  by a fear of cats. His performance made me wary of them for years! He also displays a mischievous and wicked sense of humour, as well as effortless sexuality in clinches with Gayle Hunnicutt. Interesting that the brief LA Times obituary mentions that he narrowly lost out on the role of Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, which would surely have propelled him into bigger projects.

His good looks also extended to regularly being half-naked in many roles, at a time when leading men didn't always look good with their shirts off (sorry, Mr Heston). He was ideal for the doctor's beautiful creation in Frankenstein: The True Story. It was also rare to see the creature look like a perfect human specimen (as in the book) rather than a monster. This was before The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The two-part TV movie caused quite a stir at the time, though I don't think it's aged well, just like this Frankenstein's pet project. This tribute from the Frankensteinia blog likes it a whole lot more.

Horses set Sarrazin up for continual but not stellar success through the 1970s. From light comedy, opposite Barbra Streisand in For Pete's Sake (an attempt to recreate the success of What's Up, Doc?), to weird thriller The Groundstar Conspiracy.

Sarrazin's character is an enigma, almost blown to smithereens in the opening scene. Like Who? and The Man Who Fell To Earth, the story is about proving whether he's a lab assistant, a saboteur or a even an alien... An intriguing curio which I return to because I keep forgetting the solution. There's nothing in it as eye-opening as the premise or the gory paperback cover.

The Gumball Rally was and is one of his most popular films, but again he's getting lost in an ensemble. Following Death Race 2000, there was a road rash of trans-continental race movies, inspired by an actual, illegal event (the only way to win was to break the speed limits). Gumball is far funnier than its 1976 rival Cannonball (also known as Carquake) but was completely overtaken by The Cannonball Run movies (1981, 1984), which needed a truckload of extra star power in order to inject fresh fuel into a treadbare format. A bunch of wacky characters, endless stuntwork, road movies lite.

But while Sarrazin gets lost in the mayhem, he was the main event in The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud, which I still really like. While the central mystery can easily be solved by reading the title, it's quite a hypnotic film, helped hugely by Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack. We sympathise with Peter's plight when he realises that stuff in his dreams actually exists. The plot thickens when he stumbles into a passionate relationship during his quest for the truth. Once again, Sarrazin plays a lost soul searching for his identity.


The eighties saw him depend on TV, including frequent sci-fi roles (The Outer Limits, Deep Space Nine) and it was a long time before I saw him again in anything, in the later Harry Palmer movies Bullet To Beijing and Midnight In Saint Petersburg, opposite Michael Caine. His last movie was a horror, FearDotCom.

I'm so sorry to hear that he's gone now. And sad that some of his more interesting films are so hard to see - The Groundstar Conspiracy is long out of print on DVD. Eye Of The Cat and The Reincarnation Of Peter Proud have never been on DVD.

Farewell Jill Haworth - a favourite scream queen

A visual reminder of Jill Haworth's horror roles...

I've stopped writing tributes because it was turning into a full-time job. I also prefer to write about my favourite movie people while they're still alive, and that's what I was hoping to do for Jill Haworth, having written to her last year with a few questions. For whatever reason there was no reply, but I still held out hope of perhaps seeing her at a convention or a public interview. I wasn't expecting her to pass away this young, at 65, earlier this week.


Many obituaries and tributes have lead with her biggest role in Otto Preminger's Exodus, opposite Sal Mineo. Or that she originated the role of Sally Bowles in the first production of Cabaret. But I was always more excited by her work in the horror genre. While most of these films were low-budget, they were made with a cast who'd take them seriously. No matter how silly the script or the situation, some of these films were awash with great talent.


While my taste for horror films includes the cheaply-made, I tune out really quickly if the acting is poor. This restricts what I enjoy quite severely - I'm unreasonably demanding low-budget horror with good casts. I'm also more likely to watch an actor in their low-budget roles rather than their biggest movies.

THE OUTER LIMITS
'The Sixth Finger' (1963, TV episode)

After Exodus, Jill's major film roles soon gave way to TV appearances like this. She played opposite David McCallum (The Man From UNCLE, The Invisible Man) in this tale of a scientist meddling with evolution in a Welsh mining town! As Cathy, she witnesses the past and the future of humanity...

IT! (1967)

Returning to England, Jill again found leading roles in movies, albeit in low-budget horrors. But at least she was playing opposite Hollywood star Roddy McDowall. She plays Ellen, who discovers that Arthur, a local museum curator, has unearthed the legendary Golem and knows how to control the indestructible creature. As Arthur falls in love with her, despite the protests of his dead mother (!), she finds herself in an impossible situation - not being able to say no to a man with absolute power...

 More about IT! here.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (1969)
(also called Horror House or The Dark)

Although she gets top billing under Frankie Avalon, this and Tower of Evil are more ensemble pieces. A small crowd of young people lined up for serial killing shenanigans. Only when the crowd thins out a little, that she really gets a chance to shine. Her final moments in the film are some of the most horrifying I've seen, purely down to her performance.

More about The Haunted House of Horror here.

TOWER OF EVIL (1972)
(also called Horror on Snape Island or Beyond the Fog)

Another horror film that predates Black Christmas and Halloween with a crowd of youngsters battling a monstrous evil that carries pointy weapons. Again Jill has an amusingly bitchy character, but still evokes sympathy when she gets into trouble. The kind of trouble where you're being chased around an old lighthouse by some thing with an efficient-looking sacrificial blade...

More about the wonderful Tower of Evil here.

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

(1972, TV movie)

Only just passes as horror nowadays, but fascinating for seventies TV. They spill as much blood as they dare, when a pitchfork murderer is stalking around in a yellow raincoat! Plot twists courtesy of Joseph Stefano (Psycho, The Outer Limits), direction by John Llewellyn Moxey (The Night Stalker, City of the Dead). A definite attempt to assemble actresses from horror films. Only young Sally Field is new to the world of slashers, but she sure can scream like a pro! A treat to see Eleanor Parker (Eye of the Cat), Jessica Walter (Play Misty For Me), Julie Harris (The Haunting) all together,with Jill easily holding her own. Some formidable scenes of duress and madness push some of the cast over the top, but that's all part of the fun.

THE MUTATIONS (1974)

(also called The Freakmaker)

The Mutations is hard to recommend, because of the variable acting and a queasy presentation of sideshow performers as 'monsters'. But it still draws an audience because of Donald Pleasence as a mad scientist, and future Doctor Who Tom Baker as a mutated killer (already wearing The Doctor's hat and scarf), plus some ambitious giant killer plants. Jill is knocked down the cast list to merely a co-star, no longer the leading lady. Julie Ege takes the starring role, willing to strip down for the part.

So how many horrors qualify you as a scream queen - surely these are enough? And she really could scream...



Jill Haworth's page on IMDB.

Much more about the making of The Haunted House of Horror here on director Michael Armstrong's own website.Finding photos to illustrate Jill's horror roles wasn't easy - but Monster Magazine World has dug up some great publicity photos for these movies.



Farewell, Frank Sidebottom - the death of a clown

Monday evening, I was shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Chris Sievey, a man whose face I'd never seen.

To the world he was mainly known as an alter-ego, his true identity as successfully shielded as Batman, for many years. Frank Sidebottom was his comedy creation, first on radio, then stage then TV. The characters he created for Manchester's Piccadilly Radio were as inventive and funny as those Kenny Everett created for London's Capital Radio. But Frank was even more anarchic, never pretending that his sidekick, the demented Little Frank, was anything more than a puppet made of cardboard.

Their adventures in space, football, pop music (Little Frank released records as well) and Sherwood Forest were little more than sound effects and library music, with Chris and a few friends ("Lard!") doing the voices, but they were as evocative as any radio play, and side-splittingly funny.

Having fronted bands before, notably The Freshies ('I Can't Get Bouncing Babies by The Teardrop Explodes'), it was easy for Chris to take Frank on stage to sing his songs, play his banjo or cheap synthesizer, and argue with Little Frank. The best joke was that Sidebottom's skills at ventriloquism were completely hidden by his mask. The huge proportion of Frank's head was due to the character originally being a schoolboy, broadcasting Timperley Radio from his mum's garden shed.

Frank's crap puppetry was all part of the fun. But if he invented a new character, the audience expected to see them up on stage too. Even Breville Toaster Puppet could make a grand entrance, riding in an Action Man jeep.

Frank's escalating popularity seemed to peak when he hit National Children's TV, like as a regular part of Saturday Morning's TX, presented by Tony Slattery. I thought this was the start of the big time for Frank, but no.

He continued touring, (supporting John Cooper Clarke earlier this year) but his music is only represented as a couple of belated compilation CDs, of his best songs and unforgettable medleys (A Tribute to Queen). Apparently, he had fans in the US and I'm pleased to hear his appeal travelled so far. Now that he's gone, I expect to fill in the gaps of just what he got upto through the years.

My fondest memory isn't of seeing Frank in concert, but when he recreating the madness of his radio sketches in one of his Christmas Pantomimes at a packed Timperley Labour Club. Effortlessly funny, he could create a whole evening's entertainment out of cardboard. If anything went wrong, he could improvise his way out, or simply blame Little Frank.

I was hoping one day to see an interview with the man behind the mask, and see Chris actually doing 'that voice', finally linking up the man to the character. But perhaps it's better this way.

Sadder news came later in the week, in that Chris was flat broke at the end. But his many fans are making sure he'll get a fitting send-off. Here's a fuller career obituary from The Independent. A picture gallery from The Guardian. Frank's blog is brimfull of all his recent works and remains online.

One of my favourite records was this medley of Frank's favourite sci-fi shows, bashed together into a medley.

There's still plenty of Frank Sidebottom on YouTube - clips of his TV shows, pop videos, live performances and even an animated visualisation of Frank's world, entirely made of cardboard.

Chris, Frank, I thank you.

Charlton Heston - goodbye to THE OMEGA MAN

It had to happen eventually, but I was hoping to write this tribute before Charlton Heston passed away.

Before Star Wars came along, he was my sci-fi hero of the seventies. While he'd made a name headlining the hugest of Hollywood epics (Ben Hur, El Cid, The Ten Commandments), I was far more interested in his futuristic/apocalyptic films, all still re-running in cinemas. Towards the end of his A-list career, he bravely entered the genre that was rarely taken seriously. But with Heston starring, it helped persuade audiences to take a new look at sci-fi.

His gravitas helped make Planet of the Apes (1968) a hit with critics and audiences. Rod Serling's brilliant script illuminated the parallels between a fantasy world of intelligent animals, and the problems of real-life America, as well as providing a compelling futuristic adventure. Heston returned to reprise his role as Taylor in the gritty sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which is just as good.


He then hit a sci-fi groove, first starring in The Omega Man (1971), an adaption of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, that's heavily influential on the current Will Smith version. Though if you want better villains, more action and a better ending, you should see Charlton Heston as Robert Neville.

There's also Soylent Green (1973), a reminder that ecological disasters have been on people's minds for decades. Heston plays a detective trying to solve a murder in a massively overpopulated city, stricken with a permanent heatwave. The depiction of metropolitan food riots and voluntary euthanasia are not easily forgotten, as is the ghastly secret of Soylent Green itself.

Heston then went all 'disaster movie' in Earthquake, Airport '75 and Two Minute Warning. Despite chaos, danger, and the dam about to break, with Charlton Heston running around, you knew things were going to be all right.

Seeing these all on the big screen, cemented him in my mind's eye as a cornerstone of essential seventies cinema.

Come back, Chuck...

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Good night, Deborah Kerr...

A colour publicity still for the black-and-white film,
The Innocents

Here’s a farewell I’ve been dreading for years, the lovely Deborah Kerr has passed away. I was aware that she was unwell and liked to avoid the public eye, but had heard little else recently.

While many obituaries focus on her famous roll in the surf with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity, and her dancing with Yul Brynner in family favourite The King and I, I’ll also remember her for the extraordinary performances in weirder movies, to be enjoyed down here in the Black Hole.

She could easily play a pillar of virtue, a beacon in the dark. In Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947), where she has to wrestle with another nun’s failing faith as they are both tempted by sins of the flesh… There are many reasons that this sumptuous sixty year old film still plays today, and Kerr is definitely one of them.

Despite being typecast as the voice of reason, Deborah wasn’t afraid to play against type, notably her guardian in Jack Clayton's The Innocents (1961), whose wavering sanity threatens the very children she’s supposed to be caring for. It's another extraordinary role, so complex, that viewers are still unravelling whether the film is actually a ghost story, or a portrait of madness...

Another cult horror that is less remembered, is Eye of the Devil (1966). But it's thick with atmosphere, and watchable for the cast alone, that also includes Sharon Tate, David Niven and David Hemmings. The film's theme of satanism proved to be a premonition of Tate's ghastly fate...

Lastly, the crazy sixties psychedelic James Bond comedy with a huge budget. I always look forward to Deborah's segment in the first Casino Royale (1967), also playing against David Niven (as Sir James Bond). Her character has a Scottish accent, some lively physical comedy, and even sends herself up, as she again appears in a nun’s habit…

Beyond being a great actress, she helped create memorable characters that continue to intrigue and impress, long after the films are over.

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R.I.P. Gareth Hunt - Avenging no more

Gareth Hunt passed away two weeks ago. He was 65.

As action hero Mike Gambit, in The New Avengers, he stepped into a very difficult role and made it his own - the third member of The Avengers. He succeeded in breaking the traditional mould of 'John Steed plus a female sidekick', and making the famous duo into a trio.

Because TV repeats were rare in the seventies, I had hardly seen any of The Avengers. The New Avengers made far more of an impression on me as a teenager - particularly with the advertising ballyhoo and the midweek primetime TV slots. Their foes included plenty of genre fodder, with a giant rat, bloodthirsty birds, sleeper agents, and even a killer cybernaut. Car chases and convincing stuntwork were complemented by offbeat camerawork, witty direction and sharp editing. Sights now very rare on British TV. Laurie Johnson's atmospheric score was the icing on the cake.

As the strong arm of the team, Gambit was a tougher and deadlier breed of Avenger, carrying a gun, which Steed (Patrick Macnee) tried to avoid. But more than being an action man, Gareth had a great comic touch. His timing was perfect and the interplay between him and Joanna Lumley, as Purdey, was hugely enjoyable. Lumley is often regarded as a late developer as a comedian, when she surprised many with her outrageous comic turn as the ageing trendy Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous. But her comedy talents were on show decades earlier, in the role of Purdey.

The New Avengers only ran for 26 one-hour episodes. The first 13 are the classic ones I'd really recommend. They are often looked down upon by fans of The Avengers, which is a hugely difficult act to follow. But in its own right, The New Avengers is head and shoulders above most other British action series from any decade.

The series is poorly represented on DVD - it has yet to be remastered properly the way The Avengers has, but at least it's available.


I don't think that Gareth had as big a success in his career after The New Avengers. The British film industry was in a poor state at the time, and had very little work to offer him, let alone memorable roles.

He kept working steadily in theatre though, and I saw him in Deathtrap (adapted as a film in 1982 - Gareth played the Christopher Reeve role). It was a success in London's West End and on a national tour.

But I was later surprised to see him back on TV in Night and Day, a long-running soap opera that ran for two years on ITV from 2001. He played pub landlord Charlie Doyle, brother to Lysette Anthony's unlucky mother. I was probably one of the few people who watched the soap from beginning to end. Its offbeat Twin Peaks take on the genre, with a central ghostly character, adult-themed late-night versions and madly ambitious mystery story arc, made it the only soap opera I've bothered with in recent years. But even an unreleased theme tune by Kylie Minogue failed to boost its popularity. Hunt's character was occasionally mysterious but again, like The New Avengers, usually humourous. I had no idea that he'd be leaving us so soon after that series.

I just wanted to say that I think he was hugely undervalued.

Do you want to know more?

A great site for The New Avengers is here, which includes an episode guide, info and images.

An old, but interesting site, including a battered mp3 of the Kylie theme tune, for Night and Day is here.

R.I.P. Freddie Francis

Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis, David Lynch and Freddie Francis, working on Dune

Freddie Francis has passed away at the age of 89.

There are many obituaries online, like from The Independent, but I'd like skew my own towards his horror credits. To me his name was quickly connected with my love of horror films at an early age. As I started watching them, his name kept coming up...

In all, Freddie Francis seemed to have had three careers one after the other – each of them impressive. It makes for a formidable IMDB entry.

His black and white cinematography for gritty British dramas won him an early Oscar in 1960. But I loved his work on The Innocents, which ensures this as easily the best film version of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. It’s an edgy ghost story that still works today. The Governess of two small children (Deborah Kerr) is either being haunted by evil spirits with a debauched past, or is imagining it all as a result of her own inhibitions.

Tiring of being told what to do, (not to mention low wages), Francis broke into directing, salvaging The Day of the Triffids (1962) without earning a screen credit. But he became typecast as a horror director. In contrast to the critical, artistic successes he worked on as a director of photography, he was soon villified for making ‘schlock’. But I’d argue that many of his ‘horrors’ will easily last as long as his acclaimed mainstream work. Critics look through his films and quickly point to Trog (1970) as being awful, but I don’t think he ever needed to be told! Even though it’s not at all typical of the quality of his many horror films, it’s still highly enjoyable and is about to be remastered on DVD.

The films he directed for Hammer Studios, and it’s many rivals, read like a catalogue of my favourite late-night TV horror film experiences. For me his name became a guarantee of something interesting.

His best are The Skull, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Creeping Flesh, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors and of course the superb Tales from the Crypt. Inventive and unusual camerawork, an intelligent and imaginative approach, elevates unlikely supernatural material to effective and shocking cinema.

Among his own favourites is a rare movie that ought to be more widely seen – the perverse black comedy Mummy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

As British cinema declined through the seventies, he reluctantly went back to cinematography, for the third phase in his working life. But this again produced some of his finest work and another Oscar, for Glory (1989) of which he is rightly proud.

But for me, it’s his work with David Lynch that was so important. His work in widescreen black and white for The Elephant Man (1980) is exceptional. It enabled Lynch to make a mainstream film, while remaining partly in the atmospheric universe of Eraserhead.

Lynch again wanted a team of familiar faces on Dune (1984), an entirely different scale of project, though Francis was undaunted by the challenge of making a special-effects heavy science-fiction epic.

A third project with Lynch was Francis’ final film, as cinematographer on The Straight Story (1999), for which he had an agreement to get shorter working days as a compensation for his advancing years. This was a request Lynch was happy to oblige, especially since leading man Richard Farnsworth was in his seventies.

Seeing Freddie Francis interviewed about his work at the NFT in London, he was unpretentious and almost dismissive about his directing career in horror. But he knew from the constant interest that they were still enthusiastically appreciated. A clip was shown, from Torture Garden, of Peter Cushing being out-manoeuvred by Jack Palance in a quest for Edgar Allen Poe memorabilia. The scene was intense and gripping, and left the audience begging for more. It was my first chance to see even a glimpse of something he’d directed on the big screen, and it was gratifying that it still worked so effectively.

He was obviously proud of the great films that he’d lensed, and that working with the likes of Scorcese, Lynch, Karel Reisz and Jack Clayton meant that his work was appreciated both technically and artistically.

To me it’s amazing that his career was so schizophrenic, balanced between arthouse, mainstream and low-budget horror. He knew when the scripts were poor, the titles daft, the money tight, and the schedules rushed, that the critics wouldn’t be amused. But to me it was the heights he elevated the material to. Like the acting of Peter Cushing, he could take an awful script and make it both believable and thrilling.

Mr Francis, your work has been a great pleasure and I’m very sorry to see you go.

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R.I.P. - Shirley Walker steps down from the Bat

SHIRLEY WALKER (1945 - 2006)

It’s not very seasonal, but I only just heard about this. A sad loss for the world of soundtrack music: Shirley Walker unexpectedly passed away at the end of November, aged just 61.

She was the most prolific female composer of TV and movie soundtracks, after making her name orchestrating for Danny Elfman and conducting some of his most famous scores, including the superb and influential Batman (1989) and Edward Scissorhands (1990).

I was particularly fond of her own work for Batman - the Animated Series(1992), where she was the supervising composer, continuing the brooding atmosphere of the two Tim Burton movies. The thrilling result, using a full orchestra, helped raise a children’s animated TV series to a dramatic level that adults could enjoy.

For me, her best work for the animated Batman was the superb score for the first animated spin-off movie Batman - Mask of the Phantasm (1993). One of my favourite tracks, ‘First Love’, for a scene where Bruce Wayne remembers a teenage romance, perfectly evokes a melancholy memory of what could have been.

For the follow-up series that took the character into the future, Batman Beyond (1999), she worked with a team of composers that upped the tempo, shrieked with electric guitars, and propelled the viewer into the future with a more 'electro' sound. The soundtrack to the series is unique and exciting, even surprising the programme makers, that a respectable-looking bunch could effortlessly ‘rock out’. Shirley also performed on the synthesizer, something she had previously done in her earliest film work, on Apocalypse Now (1979), a landmark of audio presentation, due to Walter Murch's innovative sound design.

We always looked forward to hearing her work whenever her name came up in opening credits, and were selfishly looking forward to many more years, especially now she was on higher profile projects, like soundtracks for the Final Destination trilogy, and the recent remakes of Willard and Black Christmas.

I’m very sad that she’s gone, and thinking of what could have been.

Sayonara, Tiger Tanaka

Tetsuro Tamba, Akiko Wakabayashi and Sean Connery

in You Only Live Twice

I don't do this every time one of my favourite people passes away - maybe I should - but in this case it's certainly relevant to these pages.

Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba passed on September 24th. I just learnt the news on TwitchFilm.

I saw the fifth James Bond epic You Only Live Twice on the big screen before I was ten. It was my first glimpse of Japan, and of Tetsuro Tamba. As far as I knew then, Tiger Tanaka was M's equivalent, the head of the Japanese Secret Service and he did have his own private monorail under Tokyo, and he did have a castle just for training an undercover ninja army and he did have a helicopter with an underslung electro-magnet specifically for picking up baddies' cars from the roads for dumping them into Tokyo Bay.

Of course I was impressed, and always assumed he was a very important actor. Indeed, recently I learnt that the role was originally turned down by no less than Toshiro Mifune, before Tamba got the role.

It was only by getting into Japanese films recently that I also discovered that, forty years later, Tamba was still working, when I saw him in the wonderful Sakuya, Slayer of Demons. Indeed, his last film The Submersion of Japan has only just been released in Japan, and I've yet to see it.

If you're a fan of samurai movies or Yakuza thrillers or even Happiness of the Katakuris, chances are you already know his work. Some online obituaries have said that Tetsuro Tamba, (sometimes credited with the spelling Tanba) appeared in over 300 films, and I don't doubt it. I just wonder how many of them we'll get to see.

Unfortunately for us, he only lived once.


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News update: PUFNSTUF - THE MOVIE (1970) now available on DVD and CD

Last November, while I was lamenting that this movie wasn't on DVD, I mentioned that the soundtrack was only available as the old vinyl release.

See my review of the movie here...PUFNSTUF - THE MOVIE (1970)
But now there's been a new CD release containing all the tracks from the old album. It's composed by Charles (BARBARELLA) Fox and includes songs sung by Mama Cass Elliot ('Different') and Jack Wild, of OLIVER fame.




On a sadder note, in the same week that I finally got the CD soundtrack, I learn that the child star of Pufnstuf, Jack Wild, has passed away, aged only 53. I miss you already, Jack, but I'll never forget you.