The Polaroid Swinger was one of the cutest cameras ever made. It was also the first inexpensive instant camera at only $19.95. Add to this its beautiful, sleek design, with built-in flashgun and its ‘YES’/‘NO’ function in the view-finder, allowing users to know when the exposure was set, all ensured it was one of the biggest selling cameras of all time.

Before finding fame in Love Story, a young Ali MacGraw makes an early appearance in this advert for the Polaroid Swinger, from 1965.
 

 
Bonus poster, ‘Meet the Swinger’, after the jump…
 
With thanks to Neil McDonald
 

 
O, Vincent Price - wasn’t he fab? He had this terrific ability to sound both menacing and amused at the same time. It was part of the reason why his performances were always so enjoyable to watch, he brought a dark humor to the most chilling of horror, as seen in Theater of Blood, Tales of Terror, or House on Haunted Hill. No matter how gruesome the thrill (pet dogs fed to their owner, a puppet skeleton scaring a victim into an acid bath), one instinctively knew that at heart Price was fun, guaranteed to always be good company. As can be seen from this short interview from French TV in 1986, where Mr Price talked about working with Roger Corman, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, James Whale, reminiscing about past successes and unmitigated failures.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Part deux of Monsieur Price, after the jump…
 

 
Hilarious!

Dig Gretchen Carlson! You know, I’ve always thought she was acting. Look how flustered she gets here trying to wrap her befuddled brain around the latest Fox News poll that shows Obama besting Romney or Gingrich. Maybe she IS as dumb as she seems? Is that even possible? I thought it was an act, like Gomer Pyle?

No?

The other two, for sure, are as dumb as they seem.
 

 
Via Crooks and Liars

“Christmas has come early for Doctor Who fans. Expect us to tweet some very – no REALLY exciting news in just a couple of hours’ time ...”

Last night in a series of tweets, the BBC’s official Doctor Who Twitter account sent word to fans that two long-thought lost 60s episodes of the show have been recovered.

“Two previously missing episodes of 1960s Doctor Who returned to BBC. Galaxy Four pt 3 & The Underwater Menace pt 2. Details soon.”

“Galaxy Four,” part three (of a multi-part story arc) is a William Hartnell-starring episode from 1965, while “The Underwater Menace” part two, was aired in 1967 and starred Patrick Troughton as the second incarnation of the Doctor.

Both episodes had been thought to be lost—the BBC infamously did not archive its programs until 1978—but were found in the vaults of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

According to The Telegraph, League of Gentleman actor/writer Mark Gatiss, who has both written and starred in Doctor Who episodes, added:

“Christmas has come early for Doctor Who fans everywhere. It’s always wonderful when a missing episode turns up but it’s been years since the last one so to have two is just brilliant. Add to that a proper bit of action from the legendary Chumblies (and the horrifying Rills!) plus the utterly mesmeric Patrick Troughton on great form. Well, what more could we all ask for?”

How about a clip of Patrick Troughton from “The Underwater Menace”? (More here)
 

 
British psychedelic prog. rockers Curved Air perform “Propositions” and “Vivaldi (With Canons)” on the classic German TV show Musikladen, March 1971.

This is the first incarnation of Curved Air, which consisted of Sonja Kristina - lead vocals; Rob Martin - bass; Francis Monkman - guitars, keyboards; Florian Pilkington-Miksa - drums; Darryl Way - violin, backing vocals. Their appearance on Musikladen came a few months after the release of their debut album Airconditioning, a pioneering work, which reached number 8 in the UK charts, but did little elsewhere. It was also the first picture disc, released in a limited edition of 100,000.

Their second album Second Album captured Curved Air’s unique mix of Progressive Rock and acoustic folk music, and netted the band their first hit single “Back Street Luv”. The band then went through various changes, including stints with Mike Wedgwood as bass guitarist, and Eddie Jobson on keyboards and violin. Wedgwood went onto fellow Prog Rockers, Caravan, while Jobson went on to Roxy Music.

Curved Air has continued under various line-ups and still play today, but this is them near the beginning, when they were considered “one of the most dramatically accomplished of all the bands”.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Bonus clip of Curved Air’s ‘Phantasmagoria’, after the jump…
 

 
John Belushi left Saturday Night Live in 1979 but agreed to appear on the show on Halloween of 1981 if one of his favorite bands, Fear, was hired as the musical guest. SNL, which was in a ratings slump, didn’t hesitate to agree to Belushi’s terms. Fear got the gig.

In order to create some excitement during Fear’s upcoming performance, Belushi contacted Ian Mackaye, who was fronting Washington D.C.‘s Minor Threat at the time.

“This is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with Saturday Night Live that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did Decline of Western Civilization and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.”

Mackaye agreed to pull together some of his friends to go to New York. Little did he know that he would be in the center of one of television’s great rock and roll moments.

In an interview with Nardwuar, Mackaye describes what happened:

It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where Saturday Night Live was being filmed. The password to get in was “Ian MacKaye.” We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the Touch and Go people and a bunch of DC people – 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. Henry (Rollins) was gone. He was living in LA at this point. So we went to the show. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they were going to not let us do it then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So, during the actual set itself, they let us come out again.

During the show – before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song, you’ll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he’s just getting ready to smash it. And that’s when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. I didn’t think it was that big of deal.

They said they were going to sue us and have us arrested for damages. There was so much hype about that. The New York Post reported half a million dollars worth of damages. It was nothing. It was a plastic clip that got broken. It was a very interesting experience and I realized how completely unnatural it is for a band to be on a television show – particularly a punk band – that kind of has a momentum to suddenly be expected to immediately jump into a song in that type of setting. It was very weird. Largely unpleasant. Made me realize that’s not something I’m interested in doing.”

Belushi was also among the moshers.

Fear’s SNL debut cost them future gigs with the show, clubs wouldn’t book them, and reputedly an offer from Belushi for the band to do the soundtrack of his next movie Neighbors was rescinded by the studio producing the film after Belushi’s death. All for the love of rock and roll.

“It’s great to be here in New Jersey!”