S1E9 - Space Races w/ Top of the Heap (1972) & Queen of Outer Space (58)

Floyd Webb of the Blacknuss Network joins us as we blast off to the stars for two wildly and weirdly different cinematic visions of space travel in a sprawling but mellow talk that goes from usual movie and weed convo into the mysterious deaths of NASA's Black astronauts, Floyd's experiences with Melvin Van Peebles, and so much more. This episode takes small steps and giant leaps PLUS it's dropping on the 53rd anniversary of the US Moon landing! Bob assures us that OMFYS is far too disorganized to have our Black astronaut conspiracy episode posting on NATIONAL MOON DAY and that this is purely coincidental, but is it!?! Blaxploitation and Afrofuturist longings collide in our first film, TOP OF THE HEAP (1972), where producer/writer/director Christopher St. John stars as George Lattimer, a Black beat cop in Washington D.C. who lapses into hallucinatory dreams of landing on the Moon. However, even his interstellar fantasies are no escape from his real-life anxieties. His badge makes him a pariah in his own community and earns him no respect from his white co-workers. His marriage is falling apart and things aren't going much better with his lounge singer girlfriend. And if that wasn’t enough to cause a break with reality, his teenage daughter is doing drugs; and he is avoiding his mother's funeral in Alabama. Virtually lost for decades, Floyd gives insights into his quest to rediscover it and make it available on Blacknuss.tv. And OMFYS goes from the sublime with "Top of the Heap" to the ridiculous with Zsa Zsa Gabor in QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958) where square-jawed, horned-up American spacemen crash land on Venus, which is of course run entirely by 50s pinup models with Forbidden Planet surplus ray guns. Their leader is a masked and man-hating space Queen hellbent on using her space ray to destroy the Earth. Can Zsa Zsa as a rebel leader scientist free the Earth astronauts so they can save their home world? Will everyone stop making out long enough to disable the death ray and put Zsa Zsa on the throne? And what kind of weed do you smoke with all this mid-Century nonsense? We have the answer to the last question at least somewhere in the vast expanses of this episode after Floyd blows our minds with his tale of seeing "Queen of Outer Space" in a segregated theater in Mississippi when it was first released. Top of the Heap is streaming on Blacknuss, a streaming service focused on Black independent filmmakers from around the world. You can start your free trial at https://blacknuss.vhx.tv/ and it's just $3.99 a month after that. $3.99! Queen of Outer Space is available for $2.99 on Prime or on Dailymotion if your conscience can bear it it. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21o27r Special Guest: Floyd Webb Co-hosts: Bob Calhoun and Greg Franklin Audio editing: Cory Sklar Contact Email: oldmoviesforyoungstoners AT gmail dot com Twitter: OM4YStoners Instagram/Facebook (Meta): oldmoviesforyoungstoners Mastadon: [email protected]