Now That Would Be A Nightmare

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I remember when I was a little kid, my parents would dress up my brother and I in pajamas for a fun time at the drive-in movies. It was great because the Drive-In would show 2 movies,the first movie would be for the kids and the second movie would be more for adults.

I guess the drive-in owners figured that the kids would all be asleep by the time the second movie got to playing so they could have more intense showings.

Skip the babysitter, just bring them on out in the backseat of the car!

Of course, my brother and I would always pretend to be asleep in the backseat and watch the second movie as well.

Well, this one particular time here I am, 6 years old in my pajamas, pretending to be asleep and the second movie starts up. The movie title lights up on the big drive-in screen and it’s “Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte” with Bette Davis.

Now it may not seem like much of a scary movie now days, but when I was 6 years old in 19…mumble mumble, this was an intense movie!

It had Betty Davis playing this batty old lady that lives in an old southern mansion. The plot is that her daddy was involved in killing her boyfriend because of Southern Honor when she was 16, but now all that is coming back to haunt her now. It has a couple of hand chopping scenes and a head rolling scene. Plus the over the top drama of Bettie Davis.

I was terrified!! I couldn’t move in that back seat for fear. On top of that, because I wasn’t moving my foot, it had fallen asleep and I got some weird thought that MY foot had been chopped off.

I know, I know….wild imagination.

Anyway it gave me nightmares for 3 weeks after that but I kept it too myself.

Now fast forward to me at 17 years old talking to my mom and for some reason the topic of nightmares comes up and I tell her about my nightmares from that movie when I was 6. She actually remembered the movie and we laughed about it for a while.

Seemed really stupid when I was telling it at 17 years old.

So I asked her if she had any similar nightmares from movies when she was younger. She thought about it for awhile and then she said no, not from a movie but from something that she saw on the Ed Sullivan show.

At first I thought she was joking but I could tell that her mood had changed. I asked her what it was and she described very little about it and wouldn’t say much else.

Even though it had been a lot of years, she was still spooked about it!

I tried to find out over the following years what it was but never could. I mean “The Ed Sullivan Show”?? Was it some scary looking clown or maybe an ugly juggling monkey or something? What the hell?

Well, I had always wondered what it was. I would forget about it then remember about it 5 years later. That sort of thing.

The Ed Sullivan show was a talent/variety show where they would have everything from jugglers to dancing dogs. But the program was not all rock and roll and hand-puppets, however.

Over the years, in addition to the usual rotation of pop musicians, jugglers, trained animals and comedians, Sullivan threw a few highbrow curveballs at his audience like poet Carl Sandburg, artist Salvador Dali, opera star Maria Callas and ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev among many others.

On May 27, 1956 the host threw more than just a curveball. He broadcast a short clip to the nation

Yesterday I found the clip and found out what it was that she saw.

Now I understand…

The short clip was called “A SHORT VISION”.

This was shown on Prime Time national TV in the 1950’s. It is very dark and left a lot of impressions on a lot of people.

There is a web site dedicated to the thoughts and feelings of the baby boomers that happened to see this clip…. The Short Vision Legacy Project

After the clip showing, with the stunned audience silent in horror, Ed goes immediately to the next act….

Ladies and gentlemen, here is this brilliant young English singer. We brought him over, two years ago, David Whitfield, because of his recording of ‘Cara Mia.’ Now he’s going to sing a song from MY FAIR LADY. David Whitfield, let’s have a very big hand for David.

Can you imagine having to come out to sing “My Fair Lady” after that showing?

Now that would be a nightmare!

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13 years ago

This is truly good shit. And gee! We did the drive in pj thing too! Must have been a Good Housekeeping article? Or were folks just that affable and easy with each other that things ‘went around’ so easily? It was really swell. 🙂

The clip is tremendous! Good shit Krell. btw, Hush Hush got me too…. on a Sat afternoon on the tv. Scared, man.

Reply to  Gwendolyn H. Barry
13 years ago

That’s great Gwen. Pj’s in the back seat.

Funny thing in that as I mentioned in the post, I had nightmares for about 3 weeks after seeing the “Hush Hush”.

The only way I was able to to stop the nightmares is that I learned some simple lucid dreaming techniques. Didn’t know what it was called at the time, but I could actually change what I was dreaming by a mental routine before I went to sleep.

Mother Hen is the master of that. She can control her dreams so well by lucid dreaming that she can actually put credits at the end of her dreams.

osori
13 years ago

Following my dad’s passing a year earlier,my mother remarried when I was five years old. That would have been 1956. I remember watching a TV show set in a studio and the announcer telling the viewing audience children should leave the room, and despite my protest being ushered into a bedroom until I was told to come out again.

I’d often wondered what it was about, my mother never wanted to talk about it. Now I think I know.

Thanks Krell, great one.

Reply to  osori
13 years ago

I bet that was the one, Oso.

Probably a lot of Moms didn’t want to talk about it.

Check out that link that I put on the post. It has a lot of people saying basically the same thing. Things like…I remember this one thing I saw when I was a kid, I don’t remember where it was from but it was scary.

It must have left an impression on a lot of people.

13 years ago

…another shag?

I’ll take sloppy seconds…especially if they’re my own!!!

13 years ago

Holy shit! What is it with you an me on Fridays. Bizarre tells of foibles and aliens. I’m trying to imagine a poor crowd of the Greatest Generation sitting in the audience, and the looks on their faces after the lights came back on after the that nihilistic piece.

Reply to  C.H. McDermott
13 years ago

I think it requires another intense well cooked Ribeye and Scotch drinking session to figure this out.

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

And smoking psychedelic cow patties.

13 years ago

Three days in an elevator with Paris Hilton is a nightmare? Oh come on!!! That bitch would shag anyone with a pulse and money!…If you’re stuck in an elevator for three days with her then you get to shag a celeb.

Gimme an elevator!!!

Oh dear Dinners….you are so so lost…;-)

Reply to  fourdinners
13 years ago

But after I shagged her, what would I do with the other 2 days 23 hours and 58 mins?

I’ll git me coat….

Jess
Reply to  fourdinners
13 years ago

Well ok I’ll give you the shagging, but I’ll raise you, that you are still in there and she will want to talk to you after, maybe even cuddle. See, yeah you didn’t think about that didya? 🙂

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

That would be a nightmare! She doesn’t look very cuddly.

My only saving grace would be I would get to show off my hand farting the Manilow “Copacabana” song. Her name was Lola..she was a showgirl…Pffft Pffft Pffft

13 years ago

Fear is so relative. I will show this to the kids and see what they say. My eldest, on viewing the chestburster scene in Alien “Oh- look at the little thing! It’s all tiny and pink and cute”; my daughter when seeing it only worried about the safety of the cat. My youngest has only seen Aliens, which is more of an action movie, but he still watched it unflinching. (He remarked that the guy who turned the facehuggers loose was “a butthole who deserved the aliens getting him”)

If they could even sit through “Hush Hush” I doubt they would find it even remotely frightening.

Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

Oh, I know it wouldn’t phase them. But imagine the most that you have seen in 1956 is howdy doody or something like that. While you are messing with your secret decoder ring, you see this on TV, showing a reality that everybody practiced against and drilled in their grade school.

It’s one thing to see a imaginary 2 mouthed alien on TV and knowing that it goes away when you turn off the TV.

It’s another to see what may be in all likelihood your fate, and it can start anytime. The second you hear a warning siren in the background, you have about 5 minutes before you look just like what you see on TV.

Jess
13 years ago

Krell, here is a nightmare. You are stuck in an elevator for three days with Paris Hilton, that Snooker person and Lindsay Lohan all talking about how famous they are. While in the background, you can hear Barry Manilow on a loop, singing one of his bleeding ears inducing songs.

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

ROFLMAO! And they all are reading out loud their favorite parts of a Twilight book while chewing and snapping gum.

Jess
Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

I would just kill myself with the elevator cable and safe myself the agony.

13 years ago

I am old enough to remember David Whitfield, now that is scary.

Reply to  Holte Ender
13 years ago

So you were born in 19…mumble..mumble?

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

A little earlier than that actually.

SJ
13 years ago

Krell, many, many thanks for sharing this. I’m an animator as well as a comic book artist and I love this kind of post-Harryhausen 2D work.
In a bizarre coincidence, I am sitting in my office right now, -across the street from the Ed Sullivan theatre.
Cheers Krell.

Reply to  SJ
13 years ago

Cheers to you SJ. So that means you are working across the street from the David Letterman show now? You must be some famous illustrator/designer!

Funny you mention Harry Hausen in that my family were all yelling things at the Kraken on the new Clash of the Titans movie.

Mother Hen and I were actually refusing to watch the remake movie in respect for the first COTT movie and Harryhausen’s work. But if you don’t go in watching the remake with the idea that it has to follow the first one, it wasn’t a bad summer flick.

Unleash the Kraken!

SJ
Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

Yes, They are constantly shutting down the street for one of Letterman’s show related stunts. It’s generally good fun on a monday afternoon from our window.
I love all the Harryhausen movies from ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ onward. btw, here’s a proposal animatic of mine with dialogue from 2006, it’s fairly violent stuff from a possible feature length animation on one of my more well known comic book characters at this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBNJLnuqzjY
==again, thanks for sharing this vid Krell, I love this kind of work and actually want to bring some of these techniques back into my own work, the stop motion effects in particular.
-SJ

Reply to  SJ
13 years ago

I watched it- and it was very cool! I am a huge horror and anime fan. Not such a big fan of thermonuclear nihilism though. That “Short Vision” would have freaked me right the fuck out had I seen it on Ed Sullivan, let me tell you. But I wasn’t born yet 😉

SJ
Reply to  Mother Hen
13 years ago

Thanks Mother Hen, it’s an adaptation of a comic book I did in the 1990s. When the next issue returns (next year) I’ll let everybody know.

Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

Wasn’t Harry involved with King Kong.

Krell
Reply to  Tim Waters
13 years ago

Not romantically

SJ
Reply to  Krell
13 years ago

That’s genius.
btw his full name is Ray ‘Harryhausen.’ He wasn’t involved with King Kong (he was only thirteen so he was only a minor -yuk-yuk) but he’s still alive, and still working as an active producer believe it or not he’s in his 90s, I think only Stanley Donnen is of the same generation and still actively working in Hollywood.

13 years ago

….and Four Dinners was born the following year….

…oh eck….I’ll check my head for 666…;-)

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