Lidsville

When I was 3 years old or so, I watched a Sid and Marty Krofft show called Lidsville. It's about a kid who falls into a magic magician's hat and enters a world inhabited by anthropomorphic hats.
This show freaked me out as a kid, apparently. It's also one of my earliest memories. But unlike other freaky TV show memories from my childhood (Count Iblis turning to a pig-faced demon in the original Battlestar Galactica, for example), I haven't been able to watch this program since I was three. Why? Unlike H.R. Pufnstuf, and other Krofft "works", as far as I know this show hasn't been broadcast in decades (I've had a "Lidsville" season pass on my TiVo for five years, and it hasn't picked up anything). I didn't even know what the show was called until I was in my mid-twenties. But the creepy memory of the show has sat in the back of my brain all these years.

But this week, my copy of two episodes arrived on VHS.

And now I'm going to watch, and blog my comments live (more or less).

7:30: Hook up the VCR (I just disconnected my VCR and put it in the garage two months ago, as "I don't use it anymore").

7:35: Make myself a lemon-drop with the new cocktail shaker I bought today.

7:40: Hit "play"

7:41: The FBI doesn't want me to copy this video.

7:42: Commercials for other Krofft videos.

7:43: The opening is like I remembered, basically. The hat grows big. The kid ("Mark") falls in. And at the end of the title sequence they're all singing and dancing (?!?)

7:44: Title: Let's Hear it for Whizzo

7:46: There are good hats, who are Mark's friends, and bad hats, who work for the evil magician ("Hoo Doo") that rules over Lidsville.

7:50: Mark and his genie friend ("Weenie") are lost in a "hair forest". What the hell were the writers smoking?

7:52: Could the "oriental chef" hat be any more stereotypical? (Or the "indian" hat?)

7:53: Could Hoo Doo, aka Charles Nelson Reilly, be any more gay?

8:04: First episode done.

8:05: Second episode: Is There a Mayor in the House?

8:09: In the first episode, the Lidsville inhabitants are evicted for failing to pay back taxes. In this episode, the good hats are upset that they're being taxed by Hoo Doo. So they hold an election for mayor that Hoo Doo steals. The mayor then tries to raise taxes to make himself rich. Do I detect the seeds of the Reagan revolution?

8:23: Hmmmm. Hoo Doo has a phone that is a "hotline". It is, in fact, literally hot. So hot that he needs a potholder to hold the receiver. I remember seeing that as a kid, but I had always assumed it was from the 1960s Batman.

8:30: And we're done.

Good Lord almighty, what a strange show. No wonder I was creeped out as a kid.

I just noticed that entire series came out on DVD earlier this year. While watching a couple of episodes was interesting, I think I'll pass on the whole series.