Video of the Week: “Beach Blanket Bingo” closing credits

As we near the end of May, our hearts lightly turn to thoughts of summer. Well, up here in the Northern Hemisphere at least. I have already recommended Bikini Beach (1964) and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) on these pages for mindless summer fun, with Timothy’s pool-cue-slinging South Dakota Slim as an added bonus (and as we all know, the best thing in both movies). To reinforce that idea, we present the closing credits of Beach Blanket Bingo as our Video of the Week.

Slim has been overtaken by the voluminous cloud of billiard chalk created by Eric Von Zipper’s (fellow Brooklyn boy Harvey Lembeck) tendency to overdo things. Tim’s son Romeo once said in an interview that his father was a big fan of silent movies. As Buster Keaton has a cameo here, I like to think that Timothy got to indulge in a huge fanboy moment, sitting down with Buster and enjoying a long talk about the good old days of Hollywood.

Video of the Week: “Making Sinner”

This week’s video is a preview trailer of sorts for Making Sinner, the forthcoming documentary by Tim’s son Romeo Carey on the exercise in barely controlled chaos that was the filming of The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962).

I have to say, I’m not a big fan of the rap music accompaniment. I think some gut-bucket rockabilly would have been more appropriate. Your mileage may vary. At any rate, it’s all worth it for the shots of God Hilliard entwined in the coils of The Snake, attacking his guitar like a man possessed. Wow…

Video of the Week: Frank Zappa on the Steve Allen Show, 1963

This week we present something slightly different. This is a young Frank Zappa appearing on the Steve Allen Show in 1963. He talks about his involvement with Tim and the scoring of The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962). He is not exactly complimentary. Then he plays a bicycle. Take a look:

“Around the same time he [Zappa] was on the Steve Allen Show,” Timothy said in the Psychotronic interview in 1990. “That’s where our friendship stopped. Steve asked him what films he did. He said, ‘I did The World’s Greatest Sinner, the world’s worst film and all the actors were from skid row.’ It wasn’t true. The press said I was the world’s greatest ham, and that The World’s Greatest Sinner was a travesty of the arts. Zappa didn’t like that and he started to get on their bandwagon. The opening night at the director’s guild, he was in complete awe. He walked into the window and banged himself in the head. He didn’t even know there was a window there.”

Video of the Week: “Speedtrap”

This week’s video is a segment of Earl Bellamy‘s Speedtrap (1977), the goofy drive-in smash-’em-up starring Joe Don Baker. This section includes the classic moment when Timothy suddenly appears in the back seat of Joe Don’s car, trains a gun on him and intones “Good eeeeevening.” It’s priceless. The famous “library” scene follows shortly thereafter.

Bellamy was a hard-working television director who also directed Tim that same year in the Starsky and Hutch episode “The Velvet Jungle.”

 

Video of the Week: “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” – in Italian!

EDITOR’S NOTE 05/25/12: Another one lost due to accusations of copyright infringement. My apologies!

It’s time for this week’s video, and it’s a good one. It is John Cassavetes‘ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), in its entirety – dubbed into Italian!

This is actually the 1978 director’s cut. I know that half-Italian Timothy would have enjoyed this very much. Hope you do too! Prego!

Video of the Week: “Who Is Timothy Carey?”

This week’s video is a short-and-sweet fan-created piece highlighting some of Tim’s memorable appearances throughout the years. Not sure who did the musical accompaniment; it’s pretty cool.

“A True Original” – couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

Video of the Week: “The World’s Greatest Sinner,” “Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena,” and other cool stuff

Our video of the week is a little gem that can be found as a bonus on the DVDs that are available over at Absolute Films, Timothy’s official site run by his son Romeo. It features scenes from The World’s Greatest Sinner (soon to be enjoying a major release on DVD, but the bare-bones version is still available), the as-yet unreleased Tweet’s Ladies of Pasadena, and the work-in-progress documentary.

It’s an Absolute Films demo reel, you might say. Hope it makes your day that much more awesome. Toodle-oo!

Video of the Week: ABC promos, 1977

Videos featuring Timothy that we haven’t posted yet are getting harder to find, unfortunately. This week’s video isn’t up to our usual standards, but it’s a bit of television history that we don’t get to see much anymore. This is a promo that ABC ran for its Wednesday night line-up on January 19, 1977. At about 0:41 in we can catch a glimpse of Tim as El Greco in the Baretta episode “That Sister Ain’t No Cousin,” which first aired that very same evening.

The promo is narrated by the great Ernie Anderson, staff announcer supreme at ABC for many years. He became famous as Cleveland’s legendary late-night horror host Ghoulardi in the 1960s.

Video of the Week: “Bayou/Poor White Trash”

This week’s video presents the final showdown between Timothy and Peter Graves in Bayou (1957), re-edited and re-released in 1961 as Poor White Trash. Ulysses has come to take Marie (Lita Milan) away, and no sugar-talking dirty punk Yankee city fella from swell country is going to stop him!

This scene really could have benefited from the classic Star Trek fight scene music, I think. The following year, Tim would duke it out on the small screen with Graves’ brother, James Arness, on Gunsmoke.

Video of the Week: “Francis in the Haunted House” trailer

Our video for this week is the trailer for Francis in the Haunted House (1956), directed by Charles Lamont. See Tim as as Hugo, silent lumbering servant of the castle, literally getting his butt kicked by Francis the Talking Mule! Francis is voiced by the great Paul Frees, whom Timothy would later hire to provide the silky smooth seductive tones of The Snake in The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962).

Timothy’s IMDb filmography also has him listed as appearing in another Francis film, Francis in the Navy (1955), as “Auctioneer’s Helper (uncredited).” I have seen the film several times, watched the one auction scene carefully, and I do not see him anywhere. Unless there is compelling evidence that he is indeed in the film, I believe it should be removed from Tim’s filmography until such evidence, if any, can be presented.