Passages

[Lemmy Caution]

Joe Melson, 91. Helped re-direct Roy Orbison from rockabilly to operatic pop singer. Along with the Big O, Melson co-wrote Only the Lonely (1960), Running Scared & Crying in '61, Blue Bayou and other songs. That's Melson contributing the dum dum dum, dumby-doo-wa on Only the Lonely. Wrote songs for many artists and had his ow small solo career.

[Aunt Peg]

English born Australian actor Terence Donovan, 90, star of the small & large screen: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-19/ ... /106933112

[beamish14]

William Wisher, co-writer of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Exorcist: The Beginning/Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist, and The 13th Warrior

[okcmaxk]

Peter Lassally

Born in Germany, went to school with Anne Frank, survived two concentration camps and WWII proper (all before he was 18!). Ended up being the actual producer of Carson while De Cordova schmoozed, then did the same for Letterman/Ferguson. What a life.

[Buttery Jeb]

Kaylee Hottle, the young deaf actress who appeared in the last two Legendary Godzilla films.

[Gregory]

Saxophonist Plas Johnson, known for solo on The Pink Panther Theme, dies aged 94

My kids watched the Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection DVD set many, many times, and I was usually in the room or the next room, so I logged countless hours with that song, which was usually used as background music in those cartoons, but I never got sick of it.

[Roger Ryan]

Saxophonist Plas Johnson, known for solo on The Pink Panther Theme, dies aged 94

My kids watched the Pink Panther Classic Cartoon Collection DVD set many, many times, and I was usually in the room or the next room, so I logged countless hours with that song, which was usually used as background music in those cartoons, but I never got sick of it.

Not mentioned in the obituary notice is the fact that Plas Johnson was a notable LA session presence on pop and rock albums throughout the 60s and 70s; his woodwinds work is featured on half of the tracks off the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album including the single "Wouldn't It Be Nice".

[hearthesilence]

He's got a pretty humongous resume, which is probably given for a top session player. I scanned what's likely an incomplete list, but personal favorites include Boz Scaggs's Silk Degrees, Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On, three of Ella Fitzgerald's great "songbook" albums for Verve (the ones for Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer), Dr. John's Gris-Gris, Ry Cooder's Paradise and Lunch, and quite a few of Sam Cooke's latter day studio recordings (not the pop ones, the great soul/R&B ones).

Nothing against Pink Panther though, for whatever reason the Pink Panther cartoon was all that played on a cafeteria's TV monitor whenever I had my freshman year lunch breaks, and that became a ritual for maybe eight straight months: lunch watching the Pink Panther with a humongous pink lemonade to go with it. (Somehow I can't remember a single episode.)

[Aunt Peg]

English Australian actor Mike Preston (aka Michael Preston), 93?, known for TV and films such as The Last of the Knucklemen (1979) & Mad Max 2 (1981) passed away in Florida in early June: https://variety.com/2026/film/news/mike ... 236817624/

I'm only posting this because it is from Variety. imdb has Preston listed as being born in 1938 but Wikipedia has him listed as being born in 1934 so I am only posting in this based on the Variety obituary. There was no mention to my knowledge in Australian media. I may have missed it but reporting of the passing of Australians in public life regardless of what they did (from politicians to sports to the arts) is very poor at the best of times. The Australian media is pathetic.

[beamish14]

Chuck Russell, director of A Nightmare on Elm Street III: The Dream Warriors, The Blob (1988), and The Mask (1994)

[colinr0380]

Chuck Russell, director of A Nightmare on Elm Street III: The Dream Warriors, The Blob (1988), and The Mask (1994)

I'm very sorry to hear that. I was not too big a fan of The Mask even at the time, perhaps strangely for the same reasons that I love his remake of The Blob and Dream Warriors, because there was a dark edge to the mania there that just put me off a bit from just enjoying the goofy fun of it. But that live action Looney Tunes mania along with the Jim Carrey performance (and the discovery of Cameron Diaz, particularly with her entrance into that film) all seemingly worked to make it a massive hit, so I have to respect that!

I really love the remake of The Blob, because I caught its UK TV premiere during the Christmas period of 1993 at the very impressionable age of 13. It was probably one of the first visceral 'body horror' films I had ever seen at that point, completely unexpected just through randomly catching it on television, a year before seeing Tetsuo: The Iron Man, and two years before John Carpenter's remake of The Thing (though I seem to remember seeing the Cronenberg remake of The Fly earlier that year, when it also received its UK television premiere). That has quite a nasty and gloopy tone to it as well, especially in the first section with the Psycho-esque swap out of one leading man for another as the clean cut Steve McQueen figure (but played with a bit of preppy edge to him by Donovan Leitch, and his reprobate pal: "Ribbed") gets replaced by the delinquent biker (Kevin Dillon, from the period when he seemed everywhere as a slightly younger member of a replacement Brat Pack generation)

So some of the set piece deaths that occur in that film were really impactful (even with the nerve to bump off a kid in the carnage as well), particularly the movie theatre scene and the diner one (which features Candy Clark's spectacular phone booth exit moment as her sweet tentative subplot romance with the local Sheriff comes to a sudden conclusion), and whilst some of the action in the final battle against a lot of hazmat suited soldiers and scientists gets a bit far away from the one to one horror, it still has a couple of well defined members of the army in those suits, including a well-spoken guy who nevertheless entirely deserves his comeuppance as the ultimate bad guy played by Joe Seneca! And it does have a darkly amusing poke at religion at the end, which may have been a set up for a sequel that never came!

Weirdly, the closest film afterwards that ever came close to capturing the tone of the remake of The Blob (including the turn into it being a big scientific operation at the mid-point after the intriguing Silent Hill-anticipating exploration of the empty town) is that adaptation of Dean Koontz's Phantoms a decade later! (Which has Peter O'Toole in the Joe Seneca equivalent part!)