The Beginning

Welcome to CaptainStargood.com! If you’ve found your way here, you are likely already something of a fan of the good Captain, maybe even fancy yourself an expert. But I think it’s safe to say you’re about to learn a whole lot more than you already know. If you’re the impatient type, click the video link below to dive in and enter the re-discovered world of … Captain Stargood!

For the rest of you kind or bored enough to keep reading: This site represents the culmination of a journey that began one Saturday morning in May of 2008 with the arrival of a battered, cardboard box at my door. It looked as though it had been dropped out of an airplane (or five) before finding its way to me. I didn’t recognize the shaky handwriting on the front of the package, or the return address — a P.O. Box in Bolivia — so I eyed it nervously, trying to decide whether or not to hold it underwater before opening. Finally, deciding I’d probably lived long enough anyway, I gave in to curiosity and ripped it open.

Inside, nearly buried in crumpled newspaper were eight metal, 16-mm film canisters, dirty and pitted with age; a dog-eared, smudged manila envelope; and a bundle wrapped in brown paper, tied with string. I picked up the envelope, thumbed it open, and took out a single scrap of paper, scrawled with the words: “Still here. More to come.”

Still no wiser, but now thoroughly hooked, I pried open one of the cans, brought it over to the window and unspooled several feet of film leader before reaching the first few frames with anything discernible. I could just make out what looked like a small, rocky moon against a field of stars, emblazoned with two tiny words: “Captain Stargood.”

Now, at this point, I figure I’m having one of those happy, fuzzy, wish-fulfillment dreams — the ones where you find all that keen old stuff you lost as a kid, or never had, but wanted. I mean, that had to be it, right? This stuff was SO long gone it might as well have never existed.

Like most fanboy geeks of a certain age, I was familiar with at least the “legend” of the Captain Stargood TV show, which aired for a brief period in the fall of 1963, then was unceremoniously yanked by outraged network execs after a few weeks. “Yanked” isn’t even the right word. Nuked maybe. Obliterated, torched, slashed-and-burned. I mean this show was g-o-n-e gone, save for a few fuzzy publicity stills and vague memories of those who claimed to have seen it. Sort of like Bigfoot. Or Cher before surgery.

Legend had it that the shows creators, early-1960s wunderkind puppeteers and filmmakers Oswald Larsen and L. B. Laurence, fresh from the success of a popular series of animated commercials, were approached by studio execs anxious to cash in on the growing national fascination with the Space Race. Given carte blanche to produce a sci-fi puppet show for kids, untold thousands of dollars were spent, resulting in a mere handful of episodes that horror-stricken executives infamously later described as “unwatchable,” “twisted,”  and “utter sh*t.” Threatened with massive law suits, the two young filmmakers fled with what they could grab and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Fearing massive legal action from concerned parents, the studio promptly destroyed the remaining prints and set about attempting to pretend the whole thing had never happened. You can read more of the whole sad tale here.

But I digress. So I untie the afore-mentioned brown-paper bundle to find sheaves of yellowed, carbon-copied script pages — with titles like “Captain Stargood and the Super Soldiers;” “Captain Stargood  and the Balls of Mystery.” — this was all becoming too much to believe. I needed confirmation from a witness that I hadn’t just slipped off the rails heading into Happy Town, so I phoned fellow inveterate sci-fi geek Larry Basinait and related my story.

“And next you’re going to tell me you also found a missing Zapruder film — and oddly enough, Captain Stargood was the second shooter.”  he said.

“Dude, no, I’m serious, get your ass over here and see for yourself.” About six hours later, he showed up looking harried and pissed-off. I dragged him over to the make-shift light table I had set up, tossed a loupe at him and pointed to the small pile of film I had unwound. He pored over it for about 30 seconds, looked over at me and said, “We need a projector. And a drink.”

Long story short, we got both. And the first pass through that projector was both thrilling and heartbreaking. Thrilling: we were seeing what most thought didn’t exist anymore, and some claimed never even HAD existed. Heartbreaking: they were in rough shape. Scratched film, magnetic sound-striping that had flaked off or was seriously deteriorated, some to the point of no return. Undeterred, we enlisted the aid of some talented friends and set about finding out how to restore our footage.

By my estimation, we succeeded. But MY estimation wasn’t what I was worried about. Somehow, for reasons still unclear to me, these things had made it to my doorstep, and here we were brazenly attempting to “restore” them to what WE thought they should be. Somewhere out there, there was someone who KNEW what they ought to be. Larsen? Laurence? An heir, maybe — who knew?

Hoping that whoever was at the business end of that P.O. box might still be there, I fired off a copy of our efforts to the address and waited. Far sooner than expected, a postcard arrived, on the back of which was written, in that now-familiar scrawl:

“Utter sh*t. Go.”

And so, we went. Thanks for coming along this far. Hope you like ‘em.