Boris Karloff had the acting chops, but Glenn Strange had the look. His portrayal of the Frankenstein Monster is the one monsterkids in the 1960s saw the most on merchandise. He's my favorite Monster.
Photograph courtesy of Professor Kinema
There are four actors I like in the role of Count Dracula: Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Louis Jordan, and Jack Palance. Palance played a tragic Dracula in Dan Curtis' 1974 production, Bram Stoker's Dracula, for television. Jordan played a more suave and sexier Count in the 1977 BBC production that aired here in the States on PBS' Great Performances. To most fans of the vampire mythos in modern cinema, it is either Lugosi or Lee as the definitive night-stalker.
It's a tough call, but my vote goes to Lugosi. Both in Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's novel, the Count is a noticeably different person from those around him, a difference that does not fit in well with the social scene. Lugosi made Dracula the evil that works among us easily. So easily. And but for one brief observation he makes regarding true death to be glorious, all those worse things than death seem to make him very content, indeed.
Keep your tragic vampires, your Goth vampires, your vegan munchers, your neutered vampires who imbibe synthetic or animal blood to get by, in an altruistic but vane struggle against the savage urge, hoping to retain their humanity as best they can.
I like my vampires to be deceivers in the night, stalking among us, ready to pounce and corrupt because they relish their evil without regret or angst.
There's nothing like mixing comedy and horror, but plain old comedy comes close.
I was very young when I watched Ghost Catchers with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, on television, and not old enough to have caught their zany Broadway show called Hellzapoppin'. I'm a pushover for sight-gags, witty and cheeky repartee, and downright insouciance. Olsen and Johnson scored big on all three. Here's the show's program, courtesy of Professor Kinema's archives. It's a good reminder that, aside from Ole and Chic, there were other acts that kept the show moving.
Broadway critic Brooks Atkinson wrote: "Folks, it’s going to be a little difficult to describe this one. Anything goes in Hellzapoppin — noise, vulgarity, and practical joking. Olsen and Johnson make their entrance in a clownish automobile, and the uproar begins. There is no relief, even during the intermission, when a clown roams the aisles. You can hear some lymphatic fiddling by rotund Shirley Wayne who looks as though she has just finished frying a mess of doughnuts. It is mainly a helter-skelter assembly of low comedy gags to an ear-splitting sound accompaniment. If you can imagine a demented vaudeville brawl without the Marx brothers, Hellzapoppin is it … and a good part of it is loud, low, and funny!"
The show consisted of two acts with 25 scenes, during which the audience was bombarded with eggs and bananas. Then when the lights went out, the audience was besieged with rubber snakes and spiders. A woman ran up and down the aisles shouting out in a loud tenement voice for "Oscar! Oscar!" Meanwhile, a ticket salesman began to hawk tickets for a rival show (I Married an Angel). The Broadway madness ran for a record breaking 1,404 performances. (Charles Stumpf in Classic Images)
Here is an 8 page pressbook for the Vault of Horror. I always smile when I look at Glynis Johns (remember her in Mary Poppins?) brandishing that hammer with such malicious glee. The screamiere promotion gimmick is smart: a scream and one ticket buys two seats to see the movie.
Now I just scream after buying a ticket and a snack at the concession stand.
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There's something special about this model kit. Hard to pin down, but maybe it's the skull locked in a never-ending scream, or maybe how the tattered clothes reveal the rat-picked bones underneath. It's shades of The Cask of Amontillado and hints of The Count of Monte Cristo.
Although he was lucky enough to escape…
Welcome to Death, a new category for an old theme. Professor Kinema‘s funereal tendencies provide such a wealth of material on Death-speak in the movies, you’ll just die with morbid delight.
Dracula (1931)
Dracula: “To die, to be really dead, that must be glorious.”
Mina: “Why, Count Dracula!”
Dracula: “There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
Lucy Weston: “Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there. Quaff a cup to the dead already. Hooray for the next to die!”
The Lost Squadron (1932)
Arthur von Furst, giving instructions to background players in a battle scene: “Listen men, when I take that scene, those who are supposed to be wounded, act like wounded. Those who are supposed to be dead, act like dead. Don’t move!”
Babes in Toyland (1934)
Stannie Dum (to the evil Barnaby): “You better come up, dead or alive.”
Ollie Dee: “Now how can he come up dead when he’s alive?”
Stannie Dum: “Let’s drop a rock on him, then we’ll make him dead, when he’s alive.”
Ollie Dee: “Now you’re making sense.”
Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935)
Ambrose Wolfinger (WC Fields), after his pistol accidentally goes off and his wife (Kathleen Howard) faints: “Did I kill ya?”
Ambrose Wolfinger : “My poor mother in law died three days ago. I’m attending her funeral this afternoon.”
Secretary: “Isn’t that terrible Mr Wolfinger!”
Wolfinger: “Yes it’s terrible. It’s Awful. Horrible tragedy.”
Secretary: “It must be hard to loose your mother in law”
Wolfinger: “Yes it is, very Hard. It’s almost impossible.”
After the company head decides to send flowers, condolences and a mention to the press of Wolfinger’s mother in law…
Peabody: “By the way, what did she die of?”
Malloy: “Bad liquor.”
The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Pretorious: “Do you know who Henry Frankenstein is and who you are?”
Monster: “Yes, I know, (he) made me from dead. I love dead, hate living.”
Pretorious: “You’re wise in your generation.”
Monster to Pretorious in laboratory: “You stay, we belong dead.”
It’s a Wonderful Life (1947)
Old Man Potter to George Bailey (the key statement that proves to be totally false): “Why you’re worth more dead than alive.”
Clarence: “So you still think killing yourself is the best idea?”
George: “Well, it seemed like it at the time”
Scrooge, A Christmas Carol(1951)
Opening narration: “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I’m going to relate.”
The Thing From Another World (1951)
Carrington: “I doubt that it (the Thing) can die…at least how we understand dying…think of what we can learn from such an advanced creature!””
Scotty: “The only thing we can learn from it is a faster way to die.”
I may be wrong, but I don't think this really was "perfect for everywhere wear." You'd have to be pretty spaced out to wear this to school or the disco. Just make it easy on yourself and paste a kick my ass sticker to your butt and save the expense.
Then again, I'd go all Battlestar Galactica for a chance to wear this at a sci fi convention. Geeky chicks dig geeky older guys in space adventure battle jackets, right? Get your whole family to dress up, too. How cool would that be? Beats going all Klingon mug-ugly and anti-social*.
(*Not that there's anything wrong with that so please don't beat me up again, okay? I promise not to joke about your Bat'leth, even though you seriously look silly swinging it like for real. Know what I mean? I never have these problems at horror conventions.)
Call it what you like, dirt is dirt. But boy, didn't every Dracula fan want one of these? I wonder who went around the castle digging up the dirt for this "unusual offer."
After posting the Penguin Paperback horror book covers, I rummaged through my shelves to find these Ballantine paperbacks I've had so long I forgot about them. Of course I've read them; Bradbury, Lovecraft, and Burroughs had probably the strongest influence on me as I slid headfirst into teen age.
The last book from ACE, Edgar Rice Burrough's Back to the Stone Age: A Castaway in Pellucidar, is the first paperback book I ever read. I picked it up at Phil Seuling's comic book shop off of 86th Street in Bensonhurst Brooklyn. I picked up a lot of books, Warren magazines, and comics at Phil's. I would ride my bike after school to get there. Phil was a great guy. His wife was wonderful, too. When they hit a rough patch after he started playing around with a younger girl, things sort of faded away, quietly. It wasn't much fun going to the shop after that.
The second I pulled these books from their mylar bags I couldn't resist opening Back to the Stone Age and sticking my nose inside, close to the spine. There's a scent, of browning paper, fading ink, and living memories, also browning and fading, you'll never get from a Kindle. That's a shame.
"In 1953, Mexico mounted its first-ever serious treatment of the Frankenstein myth, El monstruo resucitado. Directed by Chano Urueta, El monstruo resucitado presents Spanish actor José María Linares-Rivas as a deranged plastic surgeon who keeps an ape-monster in his basement and successfully reanimates a corpse, albeit as a mindless zombie. El monstruo resucitado was a success in Mexico. Suddenly, the Western was taking second place on screen to the Horror genre films." (Wikipedia, Horror Films of Mexico )
And this lobby card art is to die for. Oddly though, for a movie that contains gory medical scenes, these photographs are tepid.
The 13 pages promoting The Legend of Hell House do not appear in their printed order, but this is the complete pressbook.
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