Harlow Hickenlooper: One Man, a Striped Jacket, a Straw Hat, Three Stooges, Hundreds of Pies, and Thousands of Adoring Fans

2008 documentary

Rating: n/r

Plot: A look at the life and work of Indianapolis independent children's entertainer Hal Fryar, better known as Harlow Hickenlooper. Includes lengthy stories from Fryar and a ton of old clips.

From what I can gather, a Hickenlooper fan named Steve Pyatte put this together and gave it to Fryar as a gift. It's not exactly a professional work, so I didn't feel like giving it a rating, but I'm sure glad I watched it as a Hoosier. I'm only marginally familiar with Hickenlooper, but it was great watching the 80-something year old Fryar talk about his work and his colleagues with such enthusiasm. Even though his stories were all over the place and at times almost like jokes that only he would get, the guy is so likable and excited that you want to listen to him for hours. From how he got his first television gig (a guy who played a cowboy character quit and at 6'2", Fryar fit in the costume) to working with William Shatner and Shari Lewis (both using the show as a platform to peddle their own work) to behind-the-scenes footage of his work with the Stooges in The Outlaws Is Coming! this is a wonderful look at a time and television genre that won't exist again. As Fryar says, without whining, kids living in a world where everything is automated just wouldn't appreciate this sort of thing. As an Indianapolis guy, I enjoyed seeing crackly footage of Fryar flying a kite at Brookside Park (I've disc golfed there) and walking through a haunted house at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. My favorite moment: Hal Fryar talking about how excited he was when he showed up on the set of the Three Stooges movie and seeing a chair with his name on the back of it.

As a bonus, there was some stuff about another local television personality named Sammy Terry who I remember very fondly. That guy was great! He showed terrible horror flicks and had a terrific creepy laugh.

Space Master X-7

1958 sci-fi

Rating: 10/20

Plot: "Satellite terror strikes the earth" when a deadly space fungus is brought back to our planet. A scientist investigates the fungus, dubs it "blood rust," and then dies. Suddenly, a woman hunt is on as the authorities search for the scientist's ex-wife Laura who was visiting so that this movie could have a plot.

A couple sidebars:

1) Moe Howard is in this. He plays a taxi driver. I couldn't find any other Stooges.

2) Paul Frees plays the scientist. He was Dr. Vorhees in The Thing from Another World, but is mostly known for a ton of voice work including a bunch of things I watched as a child. He was Burgermeister Meisterburger! And the Ghost Host in Disneyworld's Haunted Mansion ride! And he did voice work for The Abominable Dr. Phibes. He also did "various voices" for the Jackson Five cartoon. From the credits, it actually seems like he did every voice on the show that wasn't a Jackson brother.

The worst thing about this movie is something that is quickly turning into a movie pet peeve for me--unnecessary or oppressive narration. This story is told by a senator, and his all-too-frequent narration just gets in the way. It's lazy storytelling. There's really not much to the weirdly named Space Master X-7 although it's actually got a pretty cool story. I like the noirish hunt for Laura. She thinks she's wanted in a murder investigation, and there's a nifty race against the clock as they try to find her before "Blood Rust" kills everybody. Unfortunately, there's not really a movie to go along with that story. There's not anything blatantly awful about the movie. This isn't bad enough to be an entertaining bad movie. The acting's fine, the writing's fine, the minimal use of special effects (the expanding fungus thing) is fine, the camera work is fine. In fact, Space Master X-7 just might be the most fine movie I've seen all year. But it's the same kind of "fine" that I am whenever somebody asks me how I'm doing. "How are you today, Shane?" I'll always answer "Fine" even when I'm smart enough to know that times are dark and getting darker and I'm more depressed than I was the last time the same person asked me how I was doing when I was really depressed. So, if a person I barely know and probably wouldn't want to see asked me, "Hey, Shane, how's Space Master X-7?" I would answer "Fine" but really not mean it. Recommended only to Three Stooges completists.