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You're Gonna Be in Movies Again, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts Gang

November 2015 will be when an animated Peanuts film drops on America from Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios. Steve Martino will direct, with the script written by Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz & Cornelius Uliano (those two as a team.) Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz are Schulz’s son and grandson, and will also produce along with Uliano.

I love Peanuts, so I am cautiously optimistic, especially since the Schulz family is heavily involved. But I can’t leave well enough alone, so here are 5 obscure Peanuts characters that we should demand be featured in the new movie:

5, aka 555 95472 – 5 is a character introduced in 1963, whose father became frazzled over the increased use of numbers in peoples’ lives, and signaled his giving in by renaming his entire family numbers. 5 has twin sisters, 3 and 4, who appear briefly and sort of look like Peppermint Patty. Beyond his introduction, 5 was there as a major minor character through the 1970s, and then faded away in the early 80s. As far as I remember, he didn’t do anything significant after being introduced in the strip. On TV, he’s best known for his rocking dance moves:
Peanuts Dance
seen here with one of his twin sisters, either 3 or 4.

Patty – No, not Peppermint Patty, this is the OG Patty. The original Patty. the first female character in the strip. She was a background player for years but eventually faded away as she had no real personality and was overshadowed by Lucy, Sally, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and even Violet (who also got overshadowed by Lucy!). Patty had a role in the You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown musical, but that was later changed to Sally Brown (who wasn’t born yet when the musical was written, IIRC.) Patty was the prototype strong female character, which meant she occasionally punched boys, but it took the more advanced Lucy models to threaten to knock their blocks off.
Patty Peanuts

Charlotte Braun – Originally a joke character that was an extreme female version of Charlie Brown, Charlotte Braun barely appeared in the 1950s and then vanished into the ether. No one would have remembered her until in 2000 a letter surfaced that showed a fan wrote to Charles Schulz and demanded to remove Charlotte Braun from the strip. Schulz replied, agreeing to do so, but the fan was now responsible for “the death of an innocent child”, including with the letter a drawing of Charlotte Braun literally getting “the ax”! This letter rules, is now part of the Library of Congress, and you can see it online here. Thanks to @rwmead for reminding me of that story!
Charlotte Braun

Lydia – Lydia is a girl who would occasionally bug Linus, both because she referred to him as an older man (he was a whopping two months older than her) and she constantly changed her name. I had to look up what her original name was, as all I recalled was her changing her name again and again. Lydia was probably one of the last major cast additions. It’s hard to find any pictures of her.
Lydia Peanuts

Olaf – Snoopy’s brother isn’t as famous as his brother Spike, but played a pretty major role in the strips near the end. Olaf first appeared with a bag over his body, and for the longest time the joke was he was so ugly that he was entering an ugly dog contest. he eventually proved his staying power with his sharp wit.
Olaf Snoopy

Of course, characters like Miss Othmar or Charlie Brown’s Pencil Pan were never scene, but it would be fun to mention them as well. Or else!

via Deadline

Ghidorah

Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (Review)

Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster

aka San daikaiju: Chikyu saidai no kessen

1964

Starring
Yosuke Natsuki as Detective Shindo
Yuriko Hoshi as Naoko Shindo
Hiroshi Koizumi as Professor Miura
Akiko Wakabayashi as Mas Selina Salno, Princess of Sergina
Emi Ito as Shobijin (Twin Fairy)
Yumi Ito as Shobijin (Twin Fairy)
Takashi Shimura as Dr. Tsukamoto
Akihiko Hirata as Chief Detective Okita
Hisaya Ito as Malmess, Chief Assassin
Ikio Sawamura as Honest Fisherman
Kenji Sahara as Editor in Chief Kanamaki
Directed by Ishiro Honda

It’s a Special Edition of Ghidrah – The Three-headed Monster! From the depths of the 1980’s comes a flash from the past, TBS Superstation’s Super Scary Saturday! Yes! Back when TBS would show monster movies every Saturday morning, hosted by none other than Grandpa Al Lewis, from The Munsters! Several select movies from the Godzilla series still survive with the Grandpa Al Lewis hosting on VHS tapes of mine. As they were part of the experience when I saw some of these for the first time as a tyke, I am including them in the recaps for March of Godzilla so you, too, can join in the experience. This is the first one of the series to be on TarsTarkas.NET, so it will get the most introduction.


The actual film is Ghidrah – The Three-headed Monster, a classic in the Godzilla series. This film introduced the most notable monster villain in the history of the G-series. It also features the first monster team-up against a greater monster force, as well as Rodan and Godzilla’s first meeting, and the introduction to the theme Godzilla saving Earth from greater threats. Mothra, Rodan, and Godzilla were Toho’s big three, and this star-powered film set a large standard for films that later entries in the series couldn’t match. Films directly following this one still came off great, but by the Showa-series’ later years, the Godzilla formula had gotten pretty stale. In keeping with theme, we’ll call those the “Jet Jaguar years.”


The Super Scary Saturday Logo Commercial plays, with graphics of various monsters, aliens, and ugly people flying by as the words “Super”, “Scary”, and “Saturday” float by in red. Finally, after a buzz by the 1950’s War of the Worlds‘s Martian craft, we get a scream, followed by the conclusion “Super Scary Saturday” graphic, as the TBS theme plays. This jumps us right into Grandpa, who opens with his line “It’s me, Grandpa!” which he seemed to say every week. This week, it’s light on the skits, as Grandpa digs through dusty old film reels, searching for this week’s film. We get some lame jokes on the caliber of “Heaven Can Wait. Believe me, it can wait, it can wait, it can wait, it can wait, it can wait, it can wait!” We get to our film, promised as “One of the monstrous tag team battles of all time!” and “This creature is living proof three heads are better than one!” Grandpa rattles off all the monsters that will soon be stomping across the screen, then remarks “If I had a dollar for every monster in this film, I’d have more money than Transylvania T&T!”

I love Grandpa.

Grandpa sits in his movie set, the one next to him always empty (only two seats) because it’s the seat for you, the viewer at home. “Roll it, Igor!” he shouts, to the often unseen Igor (I can’t remember if he ever shows up, but I have some more of these on tape, so maybe he does pop in on one.) and the movie begins…


Ghidrah The Three Headed Monster!