{"id":16464,"date":"2023-10-09T16:06:02","date_gmt":"2023-10-09T20:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/?p=16464"},"modified":"2023-10-11T11:30:46","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T15:30:46","slug":"halloween-countdown-day-6-going-bananas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/?p=16464","title":{"rendered":"Halloween Countdown: Day 9 &#8211; Going bananas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The unconvincing gorilla suit was a staple of stage and screen dating back to at least the late 19th Century.  <\/p>\n<p>Need an exotic menace for an old dark house?  Someone to send a slapstick ensemble into a state of comedic terror? A zany bit of zest for a struggling sitcom? Just throw someone with the right dimensions and pantomime chops into a tatty looking ensemble of faux fur, visible eyeholes, and disturbing pleather plates representing the chest and abs of the Grade Z ape.<\/p>\n<p>That such a sorry assemblage could be a thing of wonder of menace might seem like a mystery, but the short answer is &#8220;because audiences were acclimated towards accepting it,&#8221; &#8212; at least up until the second half of the 1960s, when the astounding practical effects in <em>Planet of the Apes<\/em> and <em>2001<\/em> brought the simulated ape game to a whole new level.<\/p>\n<p>Old school gorilla suits hung on in comedic circles for a while longer, though even those had embraced the new technology by the dawn of the 1980 outside everything except low grade kiddie fare and the deliberate affectations of Jim Henson&#8217;s workshop.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why I was both delighted and surprised to discover that &#8220;Hatred Unto Death,&#8221; the main segment of the final <em>Night Gallery<\/em> episode, served up a classic simulated simian in May 1973.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/img\/231009\/1009.jpg\" width=\"590\" height=\"382\" title=\"UNCHECKED JUNGLE FURRY.\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Because nothing screams &#8220;terror&#8221; like a creature you&#8217;d normally see swooning over Mrs. Howell&#8217;s perfume, chasing around the crew of the <em>Seaview<\/em>, or trying to talk Serena into changing him back into Darrin Stephens again before Samantha gets home from shopping.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommended listening:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_M7byhoubWE?si=SlDsmxmet9k_vcPE\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The unconvincing gorilla suit was a staple of stage and screen dating back to at least the late 19th Century. Need an exotic menace for an old dark house? Someone to send a slapstick ensemble into a state of comedic terror? A zany bit of zest for a struggling sitcom? Just throw someone with the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198,9,668,15],"tags":[1065,2870,74],"class_list":["post-16464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-culture","category-halloween-countdown","category-music","tag-gorillas","tag-nostalgia-fuel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16464"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16471,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16464\/revisions\/16471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}