TIKI CULTURE

Halloween, Cartoons and Halloween Tiki Cocktail Recipes

Hey rockin’ daddy-O’s and krazy little mamas! Halloween is right around the corner…And this time of year I get so busy with decor and parties, I don’t have a lot of ticks left to write posts. So here are some kookie, fun vintage spooky videos and cocktail concoctions for the season of the witch, to get you through the next couple of days…

Betty Boop and Cab Calloway, Minnie The Moocher

Squirrel Nut Zippers, The Ghost of Stephen Foster

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Oogie Boogie’s Song

Tiki Cocktails Recipes for Halloween (and some spooky movies!)

The Original Zombie

Red Devil

Red Death

Pumpkin Martini

Frozen Zombie, Dracula’s Blood & The Michael Myers Halloween Cocktail

The House on Haunted Hill, 1959 for Mod Movie Monday

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned 1950s horror flick to get in the Halloween spirit. And when Vincent Price is in the mix, you can be sure it will be spooky, fun, and even a little cheesy in a good way.

One of my old favorites is

The House on Haunted Hill, 1959

Vincent Price plays an eccentric millionaire who invites 5 guests to a “haunted house” for an overnight party, promising each of them $10,000 if they can make it through the night alive. Ghosts, murder, and a walking skeleton terrorized the guest until morning.

It’s also fun to point out that the “haunted house” exterior used in the film is The Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924. They mention that the house is 100 years old, but it’s so obviously not that it makes it really funny. The house is imposing though, and the procession of “Funeral Cars” that take the guests there is a nice touch.

This B&W classic gets my vote for a fun and creepy midnight movie. Sit back with a box of popcorn and Hershey bars, turn out the lights and prepare to be creepified!

Drinks: Only the best for Vincent Price’s guests. Crack open a bottle of champagne with your popcorn. And don’t forget your .45 automatic.

-Tiki Chris reporting from the screening room

Here’s the Trailer…

Murder on the Orient Express, 1974 for Mod Movie Monday

Not all detective stories feature a tough guy in an old fedora, lugging around a .45 caliber piece of iron and bedding every hot dame that crosses his path. One of the best and most entertaining characters in the realm of Who-dunnit mysteries is that of Hercule Poirot, the wax-mustached Belgian detective created by Agatha Christie. Without doubt in the top ten of the most famous detectives ever in print, Poirot is absolutely most known for his role in

Murder on the Orient Express.

Originally written in 1934, this masterpiece of murder was transformed into an all-star movie by director Sidney Lumet and screenplay writer Paul Dehn 40 years later. Dig this lineup:

Albert Finney Hercule Poirot
Lauren Bacall Mrs. Hubbard
Martin Balsam Bianchi
Ingrid Bergman Greta
Jacqueline Bisset Countess Andrenyi
Jean-Pierre Cassel Pierre
Sean Connery Colonel Arbuthnot
John Gielgud Beddoes
Wendy Hiller Princess Dragomiroff
Anthony Perkins McQueen
Vanessa Redgrave Mary Debenham
Rachel Roberts Hildegarde
Richard Widmark Ratchett
Michael York Count Andrenyi

Shot in an old, classic-era Hollywood style, the film is a nice diversion from some of the grittier, dirtier movies of the 1970s. It’s also a nice look back at the way life was at a time when people took trains instead of cars or planes to far-off destinations. The story is intriguing and the acting top notch, as you might expect from such a hip roster of stars.

Finney is great as the somewhat strange Poirot, playing the part much older than his actual age. And of course the ending…the resolve…is one of the most famous in history, with dozens of other books and movies borrowing from it or parodying it. (I won’t give it away here).

Don’t forget this was a book first…watch the movie, then read the book.

Food & Booze: I would suggest an aperitif, perhaps a Champagne Cocktail or Negroni to go with this upper-crust flick. Roast chicken, Brussels sprouts and Waldorf Salad should make an entertaining dinner. Then again, a pizza and beer works just as well.

Here’s the original trailer from 1974:

Tiki Chris reporting from the terminal at the Orient Express

Too Hot To Tiki?

Just a short musing…

While the rest of the country is looking forward to cooler fall weather, we here in South Florida are smack dab in the middle of hottest time of year. Our “summer” lasts long after Halloween is over, and “fall” is just a concept in our minds. The end of August means hot, humid days and rainy evenings are promised for at least another month.

Now don’t you cats & kitties get me wrong…I ain’t complaining. I love the heat and the screwy weather. It’s just that when it’s 85° at 9:00 o’clock at night, it’s not so nice to sit out on the lanai and drink booze at the outdoor Tiki bar. Unless of course you can jump in the pool.

-Tiki Chris P.

The African Queen 1951 with Bogie for Mod Movie Monday

This week we take a trip down the river with Humphrey Bogart and Kathrine Hepburn on

The African Queen, 1951.

Noir at heart but filmed in Technicolor, The African Queen easily fits under Noir and Mod Movie Monday categories as it definitely deals with the darker side of humanity. Swing back to North Africa, 1914. News reaches a small German settlement that the Fatherland is at war. British missionaries are suddenly caught in the crossfire, and when Kathrine Hepburn’s character’s brother dies, she leaves the burning wreckage of her church with none other than alcoholic captain Bogie on his beat-up old jalopy of a steamer, The African Queen. Together they trek down a treacherous river full of all sorts of nasty things, including Germans with those funny little spikes sticking up out of their helmets. They catch wind that a German warship is anchored at the mouth of the river, and Hepburn does all she can (in the eyes of God) to sober up Bogie and get him to help her find a way to destroy the ship.

The African Queen

One of Bogie’s finest roles, he is very convincing as a gin-swilling roughneck. That may have something to do with the fact that while they filmed this flick in the jungles of Africa, Humphrey Bogart and director John Huston stuck to a steady diet of baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. There was a method to their madness…they were the only two from the cast and crew that made it through filming without getting dysentery or malaria. This included Hepburn, who drank only water and had dysentery so bad they had to keep a bucket next to the camera.

There is some great trivia on The African Queen at IMDB.

The African Queen dry-docked in Key Largo, FL

Just as the ’58 Plymouth Fury was a character in Christine and the pimped-out Dunham Coach Eldorado was a character in Superfly, so was the little steamer The African Queen (I suppose this turn of the name was to indicate the double meaning, as Hepburn’s character also acted like the Queen of Africa). The boat had already been in actual service for 4o years when they used it for the film, and went on for many years after working hard along the river. Today the boat is still in service…it’s docked in Key Largo, FL just off the Overseas Highway (US 1). It’s on display, looking very close to the way it did in the movie, and is available for charters. It’s really no where near as big as it looks in the movie. Kind of funny that it would end up in Key Largo, with Bogie’s connection to that island with his 1948 movie.

Booze: Gin. British Gin.

Here’s the trailer from 1951…

- Tiki Chris reporting from the jungles behind The Pirate’s Cove Tiki Bar, South Florida