That's actually pretty amazing. The U.S. system was somewhat unique vis a vis compatibility with old B&W sets. Actually, that's one of the main reasons the FCC eventually picked RCA's system over CBS's (CBS's was also electromechanical, which would have been sort of a step backwards). Of course, it also meant U.S.…

That game was truly amazing. If I recall correctly though, the artwork was more based on the film franchise.

You can see the original Addams Family cast in color (minus Blossom Rock, who played Grandmama) and on videotape if you watch the 1977 Adams Family Halloween Special, which appears to be available on Youtube. You can also see Wednesday and Pugsley all grown up, as well as a very tired looking and sounding Jackie…

Or how about all the ones that reference dated bits of pop culture, yet somehow are still funny? Like,
"Jim never vomits at home." Or,
"They bought the tickets. They knew what they were getting into. I say, let them crash."

McCroskey: Johnny, can do you make of this?
Johnny: This? Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl…

"I haven't seen anything like this since the Anita Bryant concert."

Pity, not a single ZAZ moment in the bunch. I could just link to a copy of the shooting script for "Airplane," but one that always springs to mind is when the guy in the control tower says to Robert Stack, "Maybe we oughtta turn on the searchlights now," at which point there's a dramatic inflection in the score, Stack…

I've always thought of "Backdoor Pilot" as a fundamentally different beast from "Spinoff." Spinoff takes an established character and puts him/her in a new setting with different characters. The spunoff character still shares his or her history on the old show as a "backstory," though how much really varies. Thus…

The only one of these I was ever subjected to was the first one on VHS at a really bad daytime summer camp. I was still very young, but I learned an important lesson: If adults ever try and push anything labeled "family" or "kid friendly" on you, run like hell! Because odds are that (a) whoever made it doesn't have a…

When Harold Ramis died, A.V. Club dismissed Vacation in the overview of his work because it was very mean spirited, or something like that. But I think for a lot of people (including myself), it just managed to capture so many universal aspects of the middle-class, family road trip vacation that no film had before,…

That's another part of the movie which is great is there's one hell of a cast: In addition to the aforementioned cameos you've also got Brian Doyle Murray, Carol Cane, David Johansen (aka Buster Poindexter), John Forsythe, Bobcat Goldthwait, John Houseman, Lee Majors, Robert Mitchum, Bob Goulet, Jamie Farr, Mary Lou…

Scrooged was was written by Mitch Glazer and Michael O'Donoghue, the latter of which has a cameo as the priest in the cremation scene. Much of the darkness and cynicism of the first 2/3 are fairly in line with O'Donoghue's sensibilities, but he later denounced the project, claiming only about 40% of the original…

Eh, I think there's also a little bit of white suburban nerds at those places finally finding an environment where they can get together with other nerds and not live in constant fear of being stuffed into a locker. Oh, and they can also drink and dabble in various drugs and so-so sex, which lets them at least feel…

"Harvard makes mistakes too, you know. Kissinger taught there." Woody Allen.

"[B]ut I wonder if he has trouble with the budget and the fact that he's stuck in L.A." I bet he's fine with L.A. He opted not to re-relocate to N.Y.C. after he got fired from the "Tonight Show," and he did some of the best work of his career in L.A. as a writer for "The Simpsons." Anyway, it's not like everybody who…

The slayer photo looks like the guy had somebody scratch up his back with a dull knife, then color over it with sharpie. Which isn't technically a tattoo, just self-mutilation.

I'm kind of lost as to the point of this, besides, "Hey, aren't cheesy special effects really funny?" I mean, it's one thing to assemble clips of big budget movies with CGI effects that were really advanced for their day but look clunky now to showcase how far we've come. But then they throw in non-CGI era stuff like…

Ugh, two months after the end, and I'm so desperate for it not to be over that I'm clicking on articles based upon the flimsiest of premises, such as this one. I guess the next step is summoning up the courage to cue Mad Men on Netflix, only to chicken-out at the last minute, and doing a double-take and feeling twinge…

This is why I never cared for mysteries, or at least the sort of books that were labeled as "mysteries" in my school's library, as a young reader. Like any red-blooded adolescent American male what I wanted was lots of gore and a decent amount of action - stuff that would keep me up all night in terror, basically.…

Ray Velcoro? Did he go bad after witnessing the death of his first partner, Bob Tefolon?