I like to keep things strange and eclectic on Saturdays. The featured image comes from the cheesy 1956 alien invasion movie Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. It fits our weird and freaky era because sometimes it feels as if aliens have taken over and landed on us. Splat. Thanks to President Pennywise, we have government by freak show.

I’ve had the OG version of The Fly on my mind of late. Why? We have a bumper crop of house flies this year. I’m glad to not be a Buddhist otherwise I couldn’t swat the pesky insects. Perry Mason does his bit, but he can’t keep up with the volume of flies. There’s a big difference in our technique: He snacks on fly, I toss them. So it goes.

Why does an image from a cheesy sci-fi flick adorn this week’s Saturday post? Our theme song, that’s why. Inca Roads is about an alien landing in Peru. It was written by Frank Zappa for the 1975 album One Size Fits All. It’s my favorite Zappa album. What’s not to love about a band with George Duke, Ruth Underwood, and the man with the best moniker ever, Napoleon Murphy Brock?

We have two versions of Inca Roads for your listening pleasure: the studio version and a 1974 live version.

Frank dug cheesy Fifties sci-fi movies so much that he wrote a song inspired by It Conquered The World:

While we’re at it, here’s the scene Frank describes in his Cheepnis intro:

Let’s break up the Zappa-ness of it all with this tune:

Feeling alienated?

We begin our second act with a segment about the family of the man who wrote this week’s theme song.

Zappa Family Values: I somehow missed a piece by Geoff Edgers in the WaPo last August about the mess that the Zappa family finds itself in. Frank died in 1993. His wife Gail died in 2015. Since then, their kids Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva have been at odds over the disposition of the Zappa trust.

Frank wanted the estate divided equally among his children. Gail’s will favored the younger two and reduced Moon and Dweezil’s share to 20%. They’re not entirely sure why but it resulted in hard feelings and estrangement among the siblings. I get it. Something similar happened to me. Long story, not sharing it.

The irony of the situation is that Dweezil is the one who has kept Frank’s music alive with his band, Zappa Plays Zappa. They get the last word of the segment:

The Conqueror: Hollywood Fallout is a fascinating documentary about the making of one of the worst movies ever. It bombed at the box office, which was fitting because it was filmed near a nuclear test site in Utah. Many cast and crew members died of cancer that’s at least partially attributable to the fallout. I say partially because luminaries such as John Wayne, Dick Powell, and Susan Hayward were heavy smokers.

For some reason, producer Howard Hughes considered this mess his masterpiece. Oy, just, oy.

I’m keeping this brief because I’ll be writing about The Conqueror tomorrow.

Here’s the trailer:

Grading Time: The documentary is much better than the OG film. I give it 3 stars and an Adrastos Grade of B. It’s streaming on Amazon Prime.

The last word of our second act goes to The Five Stars:

We begin our third act with our favorite stolen feature.

Separated At Birth Casting Edition: You’ve all surely seen Leonardo DeCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator. In the 1977 TV movie The Amazing Howard Hughes, Tommy Lee Jones played the bonkers billionaire:

Here’s a Bob Geldof song about Hughes in his recluse period when he watched The Conqueror a gazillion times.

Your Weekly Oscar: Yesterday was OP’s 100th birthday. I forgot until reminded by my friend The Emir of Kaos, never to be confused with the Kaiser of Chaos.

Back to the music. There aren’t any OP alien songs but he did compose a mountain tune with the word giants in the title.

Have I told you lately how much I love Oscar Peterson?

Best Of TCM: Are you ready to attend Space Camp? I am as long as the word camp isn’t meant literally. I camped once in my life and wound up with ants in my pants; literally, not figuratively.

Saturday GIF Horse: I was astonished to learn that they colorized Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. Why bother? Somebody must really dig cheesy movies.

Not-so Classic Movie Trailer: I refuse to post anything else colorized so here’s the trailer for Earth vs. The Flying Saucers in lieu of the film itself.

Films like that are what The Tubes had in mind with this song:

Toon Time: The Kaiser of Chaos showed signs of his mental decline by stating that he was meeting with Putin in Russia, not Alaska. Did he punch Vlad’s irredentist hot buttons? Cartoonist Bill Bramhall certainly thinks so.

I’ll let Dwight Yoakam sing us out of this segment:

Let’s close down this virtual honky tonk with a cheesy alien invasion movie.

Saturday Closer: Since I couldn’t find a black and white version of the saucer movie, let’s conquer the world together:

That’s all for this week. The last word goes to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.