Eegah!

(Arch Hall Junior plays a song on his guitar)
Servo: Should write for Sergio Leone.

Sergio Leone is known mostly for his spaghetti westerns—cheap westerns made in Italy, usually starring Clint Eastwood. Now, cheap doesn’t actually mean bad, like in this movie—some good spaghetti westerns are The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, A Fistful of Dollars, and Once Upon a Time in the West. He also made a great non-western titled Once Upon a Time in America. He almost always (if not always) hired Ennio Morricone to write the music for his films. But Eegah!—damn. It should have been called Egads! What a Crappy Movie! You might have noticed, though, that the soundtrack to this movie is the same as the soundtrack of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. And, hey, wasn’t that Ray Dennis Steckler—the director/star of The Incredibly Strange Creatures…—who was thrown by Eegah into the pool? Why yes, yes it was. And not only that, but he was kissing the alcoholic dancer from the same film! I smell a conspiracy. Why do bad filmmakers travel in packs? Steckler and Arch Hall Sr., Tony Cardoza and Coleman Francis…hmm…if only Gone with the Wind figured into the equation…


(Arch Hall Junior is running around the desert with a gun)
Joel: Stay alive, whatever may occur! I will find you!

I love how Joel says that line. It’s a reference to the drama The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day Lewis. Daniel Day Lewis is British. He plays a Mohican. He actually does a pretty good job with the accent—he doesn’t sound at all like Joel or, later on in Eegah!, Tom Servo. Actually, up in North Carolina, not too far from here ("here" being where I live), there’s a walk in a state park taking you to the exact waterfall where Daniel Day Lewis and Madeleine Stowe hide. Pretty cool stuff. My mom showed me a picture of it. Didn’t recognize an inch of it from the movie. But, you know, the brochure says that that’s where they filmed it and those things never lie.


(a guy in a pith helmet walks around in the desert)
Joel: “The Old Indiana Jones Chronicles”

Okay, while this is actually a TV show ("The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"), the show is based on a movie. So, uh…actually there have been some guest stars who eventually became big movie stars. Catherine Zeta- Jones was a guest star who went on to star in movies like Traffic, Chicago, and the new Zorro movies. She married Michael Douglas and was named one of the most beautiful people in 2001. Timothy Spall, a great British character actor (late of Enchanted and the Harry Potter movies) had a small recurring role, and Daniel Craig (now James Bond) had a bit part on an episode as well. The star of “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” (by the way, that’s the name of the show), Sean Patrick Flannery, was in the movie Powder and some others. Oh, and Harrison Ford guest-starred once. Yep.


(Arch Hall Jr. and Roxy go dune buggy driving)
Servo: On the road to Thunderdome.

Reference to Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the sequel to Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior; all of which starred Mel Gibson in the title role. Both movies took place in the Australian outback, after a nuclear holocaust. In Beyond Thunderdome, Mel Gibson fights in this kind of gladiatorial game—he and his opponent are strapped up to bungee chords that are attached to the top of a dome that they’re in. They go running around, flying, and trying to kill each other. Tina Turner watches over them all. I remember my parents playing this movie’s soundtrack for me (back in the days of cassette tapes). Although I haven’t seen the movie or heard the song in about twelve years, I still know most of the words to Turner’s “We Don’t Need Another Hero”. Sad really.


(Roxy and Arch Hall Jr. are arguing)
Crow: When Edward Albee dabbles in beach movies.

Edward Albee is an accomplished playwright; his most famous play is probably Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—which was made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton—which is what Crow’s referencing. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is every newlywed’s nightmare; it’s about a married couple (Burton and Taylor, ‘natch) who argue every moment of every day of every year etcetera etcetera. Taylor won an Oscar for her performance, but Burton didn’t, which is a shame, because it’s arguably his best performance. His not winning is at the top of Academy Award snafus (with Saving Private Ryan losing Best Picture to Shakespeare in Love at the top of the list—right up there with Raging Bull losing to Ordinary People in 1980). Feh.


(Eegah [!] runs through some weird mall/tunnel)
Crow: Where is he now, The Third Man?

The Third Man was a v. v. good suspense movie starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton. If you’ve ever heard of Harry Lime, this is where the name is from. It’s about an American (Cotton) who goes to Vienna to search for the man who killed his friend (Welles). What follows are many many twists and turns, and some famous scenes—like when Cotton finally finds the “third man” (insert zither music here) and the climax in the sewer, which is what Crow is referencing. Which reminds me—where is Eegah running? It seems like the underground main hall of a school: there’s the school carpeting and trophy cases lining the walls. Hmm.


(Eegah walks to his cave with some daisies in his hand [for cute!])
Tom (singing in a gruff voice): I have often walked down this street before.

Before I start explaining the reference, may I ask just one question? Where the hell do you get daisies in the desert? Huh? Does Eegah have a little greenhouse out back? He might seem primitive, folks, but he actually has a wonderful assortment of tea roses. Uh huh. Anyway, the song is “On the Street Where You Live,” from the movie My Fair Lady, which happens to be one of my favorite musicals. “On the Street Where You Live,” is the only song sung by Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who is played by Jeremy Brett (he doesn’t do his own singing though), better known as TV’s Sherlock Holmes. On first viewing, I actually thought this was the weakest song of the lot, but have since warmed up to it—who knows why, really. While not my favorite song, I do know the words, and don’t feel badly about singing it as loudly as possible in public. The funniest thing to do is to stand outside a stranger’s house and sing it. It really weirds them out. Fun stuff. Until they call the cops.


(Eegah walks back into the cave after his Night of Passion [ewww…])
Joel (singing): Good morning, good morning, we’ve talked the whole night through.

Wow, another musical reference, sung in more or less the same gruff voice. That voice being Eegah’s. He’s a very musical person; you can tell by his sing-song voice. Anyway, the song is “Good Morning” from Singin’ in the Rain, starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor. I’ve already written about this movie, so I’ll say just one thing about Gene Kelly (which I find amusing): my favorite quote of his is: “If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando”. Funny stuff, I think, for some reason.