From Zombos' Closet

Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin (1941) Theater Program

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)

 

Vault of Horror Pressbook

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.

Captain Company Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare

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...

 

 

Professor Kinema's Favorite Movie Death-related Lines

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.”

Captain Company Warrior Battle Jacket

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.)

Bela Lugosi at Home

Captain Company Dracula's Dirt

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."

Ballantine Paperback Covers: Glimpses into the Fantastic

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.

Mexican Lobby Card: El Monstruo Resucitado

"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 Legend of Hell House (1973) Pressbook

The 13 pages promoting The Legend of Hell House do not appear in their printed order, but this is the complete pressbook. 

See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.

 

 

On the Set With Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man

Photograph courtesy of Professor Kinema

Bela Lugosi Graveside

by Professor Kinema (Jim Knusch)

In one of life's little oddball quirks, it's truly ironic that a man who's most famous alter ego, Count Dracula, repelled by a crucifix or holy cross, would find his final rest in a place named the Holy Cross Cemetery. He was born Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania).

In 1931 he became an American citizen, taking the name Béla Lugosi.

On August 16, 1956, at the age of 73 he died, alone, of a heart attack in his home, an apartment on a street named Harold Way, off of Hollywood Blvd. His fifth wife of one year, Hope (more than 30 years his junior), had gone out to buy some groceries. She returned around 7 pm to find him dead.

He had been working with Ed Wood on a loose film project that was supposedly to be called The Ghoul Goes West, or The Phantom Ghoul, or Dr. Acula, or something equally as wacky. Richard Bojarski, in his book The Films of Bela Lugosi, also mentions The Vampire's Tomb and Revenge of the Dead as working titles. Accordingly (some sources say) Lugosi was clutching a copy of the script for yet another wacky Ed Wood project titled The Final Curtain.

The final film he lived to see and benefit from was The Black Sleep. The final film listed in his filmography is, of course, the appropriately wacky Plan 9 From Outer Space. The existing final footage of Lugosi that was ultimately tacked into this film gives no clue as to what project Wood had in mind when he was shooting it. Ironically at least, it does show Béla spreading his Dracula cape onscreen for the last time--possibly the cape he is buried in.

Hope Lininger, a clerk in a film studio editing department and devoted fan, had met Béla while he was in drug rehab and soon after married him. According to some reports, a good portion of his medical treatment was paid for by Frank Sinatra. Consequently, Bela's burial costs were also paid for by Sinatra. Some reports say Sinatra considered Béla a 'pal,' while others state that he had never even met him. Around 60 people attended Béla's funeral, including his son Béla Jr, fourth wife Lillian, Ed Wood, director Zoltan Korda, actress Carol Borland and 'Unkka' Forry Ackerman.

While continually playing Dracula for one theatre group or another throughout his life, he possessed a few appropriate outfits. One, complete with cape, he took with him to his grave. Another made it's way to the vast collection of Forry Ackerman. At one point, during one of my few visits to the Ackermansion, I wore the cape for a few minutes. Tim Burton's film Ed Wood correctly shows him in his coffin decked out in one of his Dracula outfits, but incorrectly shows only a few people attending the funeral.

At Holy Cross Cemetery, in Culver City, LA (not far from LAX) his plot location is Grotto, L120, 1. Nearby are the final resting places of Bing Crosby and Sharon Tate. While visiting the gravesite, I could only wonder, He died alone, he's here alone. Will any family members still alive eventually be buried here with him?

Yet perhaps the biggest irony associated with Béla could be one of his noted quotes - that could almost serve as his epitaph: (on playing the 'undead' Dracula) "It's a living, but it's also a curse. It's Dracula's curse."