The Halloween That Almost Wasn't

The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t first aired as an ABC-TV special in October 1979. Kid-friendly and stacked with popular TV stars, the 30-minute comedy special would go on to seemingly perpetual reruns on the Disney Channel through the late nineties.

Though freighted with clichés and mercilessly stuck in time with its Disco references, it’s a good-natured romp with over-the-top performances by its principals. Judd Hirsch, famous for his part in the hit sitcom Taxi, wildly hams up his Dracula as a Borscht-belt Bela, and Mariette Hartley, a TV regular who won an Emmy playing the woman who married The Hulk, is terrific as a headstrong Witch. Henry Gibson, of Laugh-In fame, plays a fright-wigged Igor.

The story travels familiar terrain. Hartley’s Witch, feeling unappreciated, won’t fly over the Moon, effectively canceling Halloween. A desperate Dracula calls all the great monsters to his castle for a meeting. That’s the plot on which writer Coleman Jacoby, a veteran of the Milton Berle and Phil Silvers shows, would hang a bunch of jokes.

The assembled monsters include a sleepwalking Zombie, a nondescript stumbling Mummy, veteran actor Jack Riley as a Cowardly Lion-like Werewolf and, the brightest spot in the collection, John Schuck in fine makeup as a classic Frankenstein Monster. Borrowing a joke from Arsenic and Old Lace in which the Jonathan Brewster character was given Boris Karloff’s scarred face after the drunken plastic surgeon had seen “that movie”, Schuck’s Frankenstein has taken to tap dancing after seeing “that movie”, a reference to Young Frankenstein, made just five years earlier.

Dracula and his gang are constantly foiled by the Witch who uses her powers to teleport out of harm’s way and make The Three Musketeers pop out of a painting to defend her. There’s physical action, monster pile-ups, and even a speeded-up sequence in a corridor where characters go in one door and out the other, a comedy device that was already old by 1925. Nevertheless, the unabashed silliness and the sheer energy of the players keep things hopping.

There’s a distinctive look to the show, due to its being shot on location at Lyndhurst, a spectacular Gothic Revival mansion on the Hudson at Tarrytown, New York. Its narrow hallways, arched windows, vaulted ceilings and corkscrew staircases serve alternately as Dracula’s castle and the Witch’s lair.

In the end, the recalcitrant Witch is convinced to fly her broom and kickstart the Halloween celebrations by tear-jerking, trick or treating kids who profess their love for her and all things deliciously spooky. The credits roll as Hirsch and Hartley channel Saturday Night Fever on a Disco danse floor.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t earned four Prime Time Emmy nominations, singling out Mariette Hartley’s enthusiastic performance, producers Richard Bartley and Gaby Monet and editor Arthur Ginsberg, with an award going to Makeup man Bob O’Bradovitch for Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Children’s Program. O’Bradovich’s credits include The Werewolf of Washington (1973), Blood Sucking Freaks (1976), and doing Boris Karloff’s makeup for a 1962 TV adaptation of Arsenic and Old Lace.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t was a TV staple for nearly twenty years. It was committed to VHS in 1992 under the title The Night Dracula Saved the World. Today, it survives on YouTube.

In 1988, John Schuck would gamely climb into the Frankenstein boots again, succeeding Fred Gwynne as Herman in a re-thread series, The Munsters Today, that somehow managed to run 72 episodes, two more than the original.

The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t on YouTube: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.

Lyndhurst Mansion

Rue Morgue's Halloween Party

Boris and his prom date make a charming couple, all dressed up and inviting you to attend Rue Morgue’s 12th Annual Halloween Party tonight, in Toronto.

Great graphics, as usual, from Rue Morgue. It’s not only a fabulous horror magazine, Art Director Gary Pullin makes it one of the best looking magazines of any genre on the newsstands.

Halloween Party info

Rue Morgue Magazine website

Halloween 2009 Round Up

Time, alas, is running out on this year’s big Countdown to Halloween. Click the link to discover a cornucopia of blogs, many of which, I guarantee, you’ll want to bookmark and continue following. Congratulations and thanks to John Rozum who, with a generous assist by Shawn of Branded in the 80s, has pulled off a truly spectacular blogging event!

This year, I really enjoyed the photographer blogs, notably All Eyes and Ears —which is outstanding year-round, not just at pumpkin season. Visit and you’ll see beautiful cemetery gates and tombstones, creepy statues and eerie topiary, and The Tomb of Frankenstein, no less, decorated with a baby pumpkin.

I also loved Warren Harold's THAT… was my foot. His Halloween-themed photo series was both haunting and humorous, which is the whole idea of Halloween, isn’t it.

Frankenstein is always popular at Halloween, natch, and numerous blogs carried Frankenstein film reviews, film stills, and Frankenstein merchandising. I love the Frankenstein image — at the top of this post — from a General Telephone ad of 1970, found on The Gallows. And then there’s this giant-size Frankenstein toy from Imperial, courtesy of Geek Orthodox.

Boris Karloff was also in evidence in many Halloween posts throughout the Countdown. Consider the outstanding caricature by Scott Brothers reproduced here.

And, speaking of Karloff, there’s the Boris Karloff Blogathon, coming this November 23, right here on Frankensteinia! Reaction to my announcement has been flat-out flabbergasting. Check the list of scheduled participants on the sidebar, currently standing at 68 blogs, and still growing!

Film critics, pop culture bloggers, horror experts and Karloff fans will review films and discuss Karloff’s life, career and his ongoing influence. There are artists who will be creating original pieces, illustration and 3-D art, especially for the Blogathon. We’ll even have foreign language bloggers participating, with contributions in Spanish, Portuguese, French and German!

I am amazed and grateful for the interest shown already, and I can hardly wait for the great Boris Karloff Blogathon!

Meanwhile, have a spooky weekend. Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday, Elsa Lanchester

The Bride of Frankenstein was a redhead.

Elsa Lanchester was born in London on this day, October 28, in 1902. As a child, she studied dance with Isadora Duncan and by the time she turned 20, she was active in cabaret and avant-garde theater. She appeared in a handful of silent films, notably a trio of shorts written for her by H.G.Wells. She married actor Charles Laughton in 1929, their parallel careers crossing now and then, notably in a 1936 stage production where Lanchester was Peter Pan to Laughton’s Captain Hook.

Relocated to Hollywood, Lanchester was celebrated as a character actress able to handle any type of part, and she was twice nominated for an Oscar. Some of her best-remembered performances include the Golden Globe-winning part of Miss Plimsoll in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), a comic witch in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and a Nanny in Mary Poppins (1964). Lanchester appeared extensively on television in comedy, drama and variety programs, and she pursued a singing career, recording bawdy British music-halls songs and even performing a duet with Elvis Presley in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967). Her career extended well into her seventies. She passed away in 1986.

Elsa Lanchester’s most famous role, of course, was her brief but spectacular turn as the Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. Though she is on screen, all told, for barely 12 minutes, The Bride’s appearance is indelible. Late in life, Lanchester would joke, “Can you imagine an actress being overexposed by a picture she made 40 years ago?” She was a good sport about it, even revealing in a 1975 interview that she would have gladly returned to the part had there been a sequel.

Makeup man Jack Pierce constructed Lanchester’s Nefertiti hairdo by combing the actress’ own hair over a light wire cage. Witness Lanchester’s blazing hair color in a detail from a 1925 portrait by her friend Doris Clare Zinkiesen, a costume designer who, by the way, was engaged for some time to director James Whale. Lanchester’s flamboyant hair is also on display on one of her album covers.

There are no color photos from the Bride set to prove it, but it does seems like Karloff’s Monster fell for a redhead.

The Zinkeisen painting of Elsa Lanchester at the National Portrait Gallery.

Related:
The Short, Apocalyptic Life of The Bride of Frankenstein
The Bride Speaks
The Bride Foreseen
Posts tagged “Bride of Frankenstein”

Frankenstein Audio Adaptation

With only four midnights to Halloween, it’s time to revisit Craig Wichman’s excellent audio adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, produced by the Quicksilver Radio Theater troupe.

Craig wrote, produced and also stars as The Monster, surrounded by a sterling cast and recording crew under the direction of Jay Stern. The play is available again for listening or downloading through the Radio Drama Revival site.

Treat yourself to this one, you’ll love every chill of it.

The Monster’s portrait, above, is by the great Kerry Gammill.

The Art of Frankenstein : Eric Joyner

Mad scientist windup robots use donut power to revive the Frankenstein Monster. And I’m not making that up. Eric Joyner did. Look at the painting, see for yourself!

San Francisco-based illustrator and painter Eric Joyner describes his works as “narrative, painterly & realistic, with a pop/sci-fi twist”. On why tin robots and donuts dominate his art, Joyner says he abandoned commercial illustration after it became too tedious, and he decided to paint only things he liked.

Joyner’s lush oil paintings depict giant tin robots standing forlorn among city skyscrapers or strolling Elysian autumn landscapes, hobo robots riding the rails, and the Lost in Space robot contemplating raygun suicide. A superb series of paintings depict the iconic red and blue Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robots dukeing it out in a smoke-filled arena. And through it all, donuts. Giant custard donuts towering over landscapes, cinnamon roll flying saucers, chocolate donuts as big as mountains, strawberry glazed donuts with sprinkles appearing in the clouds, and the occasional cruller that, somehow, manages to look menacing.

Joyner often mixes pop culture characters into his works, like the aforementioned Lost in Space robot, or Forbidden Planet’s Robbie, famous toy robots like Mr. Atomic, and non-robot figures like Godzilla, Tintin, a Sam Spade-like trenchcoated private eye or, as seen here, the Frankenstein Monster.

Eric Joyner’s website is loaded with fabulous art, and here’s an interview with the artist.

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi’s Monster gets jacked up to full power — “The strength of ten men!” — in a scene from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).

It’s Bela’s birthday today, October 20. In 1942, he celebrated his 60^th on a Universal set, playing the very part he had famously refused in 1931.

It was a harrowing shoot for the actor. Poor health and the exhausting makeup and costume led to his collapse on November 5, with ten days left in the shooting schedule. A tag team of stuntmen and stand-ins helped to fill out The Monster’s scenes.

Adding insult to injury, Lugosi’s dialog was ultimately edited out, leaving The Monster mute. Without dialog to explain that The Monster is blind, Lugosi’s stiff walk and cartwheeling arms appear awkward. In the photo above, The Monster’s curious, canny smile originally indicated that the climactic experiment had succeeded and The Monster’s sight had been restored.

In a rare moment of reprieve from the difficult shoot, Lugosi got a loving hug from his visiting five-year old son, Bela Jr.

Related:
When Frankenstein Met the Wolf Man

Son of Frankenstein, 70th Anniversary Year

Ygor cowers in the grip of the immense, fur-clad Frankenstein Monster. Horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are reunited in this publicity still from Son of Frankenstein (1939).

It’s barely a week now since I announced that I would be hosting a Boris Karloff Blogathon in November, and the response has been fantastic. It’s going to be huge. We already have well over 40 bloggers signed up, with more to come, and there is much diversity. Not only do we have the expected horror and film blogs, we have actors and filmmakers, writers and artists participating. We have bloggers from all over the world who will be posting in several languages.

A Blogathon is a great way to discover new blogs, but you don’t have to wait until November 23 to start exploring. Just click around the list of Scheduled Participants on the sidebar. I’ll be updating the list as new blogs come aboard.

If you have a blog and you want to join the Karloff celebrations, check the Blogathon post for info and send me an email. Simple as that.

The Posters of Frankenstein : Young Frankenstein

The celebrated Polish School of movie posters is a curious case of creativity flourishing under Communist rule. In a system allergic to commercialism, artists had to come up with novel ways for advertising films. Experimentation with graphics, typography and illustration techniques yielded unique and often startlingly original solutions for communicating the content and meaning of films.

Jerzy Flisak, who passed away last year, was a prolific poster and book illustrator. Created in 1979, his poster for Young Frankenstein (1974) may be the most original illustrated interpretation ever made for that film. Flisak chose the hooded, wall-eyed Igor as the focus of his poster, with half of his face cut away to reveal the grinning skull beneath, suggesting the macabre nature of the film’s humor. A semi-robotic hand evokes the Frankenstein concept. It’s an unusual poster, atypical but enormously satisfying.

In 1989, the era of highly symbolic illustrated posters came to a sudden end when film distribution was privatized. Today, cinemas in Poland carry the same bland, star-centric, mass-produced movie advertising materials used all over the world.

Galleries of Jerzy Flisak’s fabulous film posters, on Cinema Poster and Polish Poster.

Announcing The Boris Karloff Blogathon!

CLICK HERE FOR THE COMPLETE BORIS KARLOFF BLOGATHON ARCHIVE.

Karloff portrait by Jack Freulich. Source: Heritage Auctions.

I am calling on my fellow bloggers to join me in a celebration of Mr. Boris Karloff.

Beginning on November 23 — Karloff’s 122nd birthday — and on through the 29th, bloggers far and wide are invited to post something about Boris, his life and his wide-ranging career.

There is much to explore… His film work spanned five decades. He clocked some 75 films through the silent era before he landed and nailed the iconic part of The Monster in Frankenstein, a film that is almost 80 years old and still seen and admired. The sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, is a motion picture classic. In his path through the history of horror films, Karloff collaborated with James Whale, Val Lewton, Mario Bava and Roger Corman. He proved equally at ease in all genres, including comedies.

Away from films, Boris Karloff became a Broadway star with Arsenic and Old Lace, The Lark and he was Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

He enjoyed a successful radio career and he was one of the first Hollywood actors to embrace television, appearing in live drama, in his own series — notably Colonel March of Scotland Yard and Thriller — and as a frequent and popular guest on talk and variety shows. He was the model and the Grammy Award-winning voice of The Grinch. He made numerous spoken word records, reading fairy tales to children and, in print, he lent his name to horror and mystery anthologies and a line of comic books.

In real life, Boris Karloff was a gentleman, a cricket fan and a brave founding member of the Screen Actor's Guild.

It’s been forty years since Boris Karloff passed away, yet his star shines as bright as ever. This November 23, bloggers will come together and share film reviews, profiles, images, thoughts and remembrances and, I am sure, surprises. I, as a reader, am looking forward to it.

Elvis Meets Frankenstein

The Frankenstein Monster is more popular than the King of Rock n Roll, signing autographs for admiring bobbysoxers as a befuddled Army Elvis looks on.

Monsters were all the rage in 1958, a phenomenon sparked a year earlier when Universal released its catalog of classic horror films to television. The trend percolated into the publishing field, notably with the launch, in February 1958, of the highly influential Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. In my previous post, we looked at Monster Parade, the first of countless FM-inspired titles, but the rise of monstermania was not limited to monster movie magazines in the FM mold.

In April 1958, Headline Publications’ Super-Science Fiction digest proclaimed a “Special Monster Issue!” in bold letters over its title. Stories like Vampires from Outer Space and The Abominable Creature signaled an editorial shift, mixing horror, and more specifically monsters, into its science fiction pulp. Three more issues appeared before the title folded, all of them announcing MONSTERS on their covers.

In May of ’58, a Mad magazine knockoff appeared, complete with its requisite mascot. The magazine, published by Counterpoint, Inc., was called Thimk and its Alfred E. Neuman was Otis Dracenstein, a flattop, scar-faced, bolt-necked Frankenstein featured on the covers and in cartoon strips within. In a reverse gag situation that heralds elements of The Munsters (1964), Otis is a perfect gentleman and his monster friends are “normal”, while regular people act like horrible monsters. In September ’58, the “Special Monster Issue” of Thimk had Otis and his pal Dracula on the cover sharing an ice cream soda.

The magazine’s title is a reference joke mostly lost on us today. In the first half of the 20th century, “Think!” was the motto of the IBM Company. Mad magazine spoofed that as “Plan Ahead! Thimk!” Seems like Mad not only inspired Thimk’s format, but its title as well.

Elvis appeared in Army uniform on Thimk’s December cover. The draft-era Presley had been inducted into the military on March 24 and the U.S.Army’s public relations branch made the most of it, releasing a steady stream of the rockin’ G.I.’s photographs to an insatiable press. The cover would have recalled widely distributed shots of the American star in dress uniform mobbed by fans in Germany, where he was stationed, or on leave in Paris.

Thimk is largely forgotten today, one of countless Mad clones. Glimpses of its contents found online suggest that Thimk, for a humor magazine, wasn’t all that funny. Of course, time and context are factors. Maybe Thimk played funny and cool for youngsters in 1958. Then again, maybe not. The magazine only lasted one year, six issues in all.

Thimk is mentioned, along with its Horror Host connection, Sir Rodger, on E-Gor’s Chamber of Horror Hosts by George Chastain.

Excerpts from Thimk on Jay Stephens’ Monsterama.

Elvis gags from Thimk on the Rare-Elvis site here and here.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Monster Parade No. 4

Frankenstein shows good hoop form, the Teenage Werewolf is digging it but, alas, Count Dracula doesn’t have a clue.

In February 1958, Warren and Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland harnessed the gathering Monster Fad that would sweep America. The magazine’s phenomenal success effectively created the monster movie magazine business, setting the stage for the inevitable imitators and bandwagon riders. In September of ‘58, Monster Parade was the first title out of the gate, beating out World Famous Creatures by a mere four weeks.

While World Famous was a straight clone of Famous Monsters, Monster Parade went its own grab-bag way, mixing monster movie news and photos with horror comic reprints and mildly titillating horror fiction. Publisher Irwin Stein’s Magnum Publications was a reboot of the Royal Publications imprint he had just recently shut down, along with Science Fiction Adventures digest. Fiction editor Larry Shaw followed Stein into his new venture, bringing along his stable of writers that included future mainstream bestselling author John Jakes, and the young, wildly prolific Robert Silverberg who would contribute several stories per issue under different names.

Monster Parade only lasted four issues. A sister magazine, Monsters and Things, two. Irwin Stein’s monster movie magazine experiment lasted all of eight months. In 1961, Stein and fellow publisher Walter Zacharius, with editor Shaw still in tow, created the Lancer Books imprint, a downmarket paperback house that went ballistic in 1966 when it brought out Robert E. Howard’s Conan series with iconic covers by Frank Frazetta.

The first three covers of Monster Parade featured damsels in distress. Issue No. 1 combined a painted monster with a photo cutout of a blonde with deep cleavage, apparently model/actress and one time JFK date Arlene Dahl.

The hula-hooping monsters graced the final cover (March 1959), a pop culture image that perfectly captured it’s time, overlapping the now waning Hula hoop fad introduced in America by the Wham-O Company — selling over 100,000 hoops in 1958 — and the nascent Monster Mash era.

Monster Mags, The Early Years

A look inside Monster Parade, on Magic Carpet Burn

Monster Parade reprints from Scary Monsters

The Art of Frankenstein : Al Parker

At a Halloween party, a teenager in a stiff Frankenstein mask steals a kiss.

The artist, Al Parker (1906-1985), was a giant among American illustrators. Beginning in the late Thirties and on through four decades, Parker’s sharp, sophisticated art proved wildly popular and massively influential. In the Forties, his covers for The Ladies’ Home Journal shaped popular fashion trends in America and his sparse, modernistic style was so highly praised and widely imitated that he became known as The Dean of Illustrators.

Ever experimenting, staying ahead of the curve he himself had drawn — the so-called “Parker School of Illustration” — the artist amazed his fans and constantly challenged his peers. Famously, in an act of sheer virtuosity, using pseudonyms and working in five different styles, Parker illustrated every story (including Ray Bradbury’s The Swan) in the September 1953 issue of Cosmopolitan. Even Norman Rockwell wrote him a fan letter, stating, “While the rest of us are working knee-deep in a groove, you are forever changing and improving.”

The Halloween cover for the November 1, 1959 issue of the American Weekly newspaper supplement is a superb example of Parker’s urbane wit and typically dynamic composition. The subjects are cheated off center. The girl leans diagonally across the page, her gaze and the costume’s sweptback rabbit’s ears pointing to the large negative space at left. The girl’s costume and the boy’s blazer are also abstract shapes, fields of flat color, with the bold orange pumpkin anchoring the composition, its color picked up in a napkin, the pie, coat buttons and tie, and the teenage monster’s eye.

An interior illustration is a black and white variation of the cover, using the same elements, with the boy revealing his face. The over-the-head Frankenstein mask and monster hand gloves were items widely available in novelty shops or in the back pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland.

The illustration’s theme and the issue’s 1959 date make this an important cover, an early acknowledgement by mainstream publishers of the gathering Monster Boom ignited by the Universal Monsters revival on late-night TV. Monster magazines were just getting underway and, soon, trading cards, Aurora kits and countless monster toys would saturate the marketplace.

Al Parker’s fabulous illustration signaled that Monster Kids had arrived.

Al Parker bio on Wiki and Illustration House.

Artwork by Parker, and A Visit with Al Parker on the excellent Today’s Inspiration.

Al Parker on Lines and Colors.

Parker art: on Deadlicious, and a wonderful Flickr set collected by Leif Peng.

American Weekly illustration found on The Percy Trout Hour.

The Countdown to Halloween is on!

‘Tis the season to be spooky! Click the pumpkin on the sidebar to access an amazing list of bloggers — over 100 participants! — who are counting down the days to All Hallows’ Eve. Lots to see and enjoy, and tons of great sites to discover.

I’ll be cranking up the number of posts here on Frankensteinia through Halloween and the fall season, and I’ll continue posting on a daily basis over at Monster Crazy! Go look, I’ve got some illustrations up by Justin Parpan that will knock you out.

Countdown to Halloween is 31 days of trick or treating. Bring a flashlight, be careful when crossing the street, let Mom and Dad check the candy before you eat it, and don’t forget to cut breathing holes in your Frankenstein mask!

Frankenstein pop