The Newlywed Game

Love it or hate it, THE NEWLYWED GAME began in '66 and has pretty much been around ever since. Hosted for many years by former deejay Bob Eubanks (he can actually be heard on THE BEATLES LIVE AT HOLLYWOOD BOWL album), it was a new kind of game show with somewhat risque answers that became more so as time progressed.

The concept was that you had 4 newly married couples. The host asks the wives a question about their new husbands and then the husbands have to match what the wives answered. Hilarity naturally ensued and couple soften bickered on-air. Into the seventies, the questions became purposely a little more leading with the goal of getting embarrassing personal answers and the public ate it up.


THE NEWLYWED GAME has been revived a  number of times since the original run ended.

Billy the Kid Vs Dracula

A consistent nominee for worst film ever made, BILLY THE KID VS DRACULA came out in '66 with a no-name cast but for the presence of John Carradine as the bloodthirsty Count. Although an actor of considerable skill, Carradine had long since proven to be an actor who would take any role offered to him. He had played the vampire Count two decades earlier quite memorably in HOUSE OF DRACULA and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. This film was quite a comedown but his portrayal was to fall much further when he took the part yet again in NOCTURNA and VAMPIRE HOOKERS in the seventies! He did play Dracula memorably one last time. It was, of all places, on the final episode of TV's McCLOUD where he was an actor who thought he really was a vampire...or maybe he was!

Creepy

 The great horror comics boom of the 1950's ended in mid-decade when public sentiment and the Comics Code literally drove most of the companies that were producing them out of business. Both the pulpy, bloody violence of the worst offenders as well as the lush, literate and now-classic EC Comics vanished overnight. By the end of the decade, there were already half-hearted efforts at recreating them for a more adult market. It wasn't until James Warren's CREEPY came along a full decade after the Code that a successful black and white horror comic for adults (even though kids bought them, too) came along. CREEPY brought together many of the old EC artists and recaptured the light-hearted feel of the originals, all captured under a succession of amazing pained covers. In 1966, with the exception of one by Dan Adkins, all of CREEPY's covers were from Gray Morrow or the legendary (even then) Frank Frazetta!

Mike Hazard Double Agent

 One of my all-time favorite action figures was '66's MIKE HAZARD, DOUBLE AGENT, who came with all of the spy equipment seen here. Long after I'd lost it all, I was still using Mike to make modified superhero characters including the Golden Age Hawkman, completed by stretching a yellow balloon over his head and with wings made from shredded paper towels taped over bendy straws.

Nancy Sinatra French EP's

Batstuff # 15

Don't Bring Me Down-The Animals