Frankie's Holiday

The Monster is a reliable TV pitchman, a Halloween favorite, here making a rare Christmastime appearance. Beautifully done, genuinely touching, this one just might be an instant classic.

Frankie’s Holiday was created by TBWA for Apple, with a judiciously cast Brad Garrett — all of 6’8” and deep-voiced — as The Monster. Garrett is perhaps best remembered for his supporting role in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.

The Christmas electrodes are a nice touch.

Happy Holidays!

"Good Night, Whatever You Are"

John Zacherle died, having just turned 98, on Thursday, October 27, a few days short of Halloween, a holiday he essentially personified.

First as Roland out of Philadelphia, and more famously as Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul, in New York, he was a pioneering TV Horror Host. He was among those who introduced the Universal Classics to the first generation of Monster Kids. He was a revelator and, through the years, he remained a touchstone, a direct link back to one’s own adolescence and our love of monsters. For those of us who never had the privilege of seeing him as a TV Host, we learned about him from Famous Monsters magazine and his horror-themed novelty records. Right to the end, he was proud of his accomplishments and still wore his long undertaker’s coat to convention appearances.

Zacherle had not seen the 1931 FRANKENSTEIN until he introduced the film on his show. He would go on to present most of the Universal Frankensteins over the years, and he would go on to a cameo as a TV weatherman in a Frankenstein film, Frank Henenlotter’ FRANKENHOOKER (1990).

To understand Zacherley’s impact and enduring importance, I urge you to read David Colton’s touching tribute on the Classic Horror Film Board.

See Zacherley in action on YouTube. 

Here is an obituary from The New York Times.

The Fiancée de Frankenstein

French actress Audrey Tautou, perhaps best know as the shy and gently eccentric heroine of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s AMÉLIE (2001) posed for the May 2006 issue of Elle magazine as a goth Bride of Frankenstein in a red satin cocktail dress.

The same month, a New York Times article entitled “Sans Makeup, S’il Vous Plaît” discussed the French “Le No Makeup Look”, directly referencing the Elle issue as the cover featured Tautou, “the anti-star”, sporting what they called the “Le Bare Face Look” in direct contrast with her powdered face and dark-eyed, frizzy-haired appearance within, suggesting, perhaps, that overdone makeup is only suitable for Frankenstein’s Fiancée.

 If you ask me, both versions of Ms Tatou look great.

Red Frankenstein by Darryl Cunningham

The movies’ flattop and bolts Frankenstein Monster rocks his Che Guevara t-shirt and pulp culture icons of the twentieth century are monster-mashed into this wonderful sketch by cartoonist Darryl Cunningham — previously profiled here as the author of Uncle Bob and the Frankenstein Monster.

Darryl posted this recently, with a shout-out to Frankensteinia, on his Facebook page. I just had to share it on the blog. 

Best of the Holidays, everyone, and here’s to a great New Year!

80th Anniversary BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN series The Bride's Rhymed Review

By the time BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN came around in 1935, not quite four years after the original FRANKENSTEIN, The Monster was already a pop culture icon, recognized worldwide, referenced and often spoofed in musical shorts or animated cartoons. Reflecting this new, comfortable attitude towards the very Monster that had once awed or disturbed critics, many reviews of the new film, almost universally positive, were lighthearted and peppered with jokes. The Monster was a Romeo, the Bride wore an “asparagus-tip hairdo” and a sequel would invariably be “Frankenstein’s Baby”.

One of the most unusual and whimsical reviews appeared 19 July 1935 in The Newcastle Sun of New South Wales, Australia. It was one of a series of “Rhymed Reviews” penned by writer and critic Robin Slessor, whose knack for amusing verse was no doubt triggered by his older brother, Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971), hailed as one of Australia’s greatest poets.

Here, to facilitate reading, is a transcript of this unique, fun, touching, and very special Rhymed Review.

Bride of Frankenstein, by Robin Slessor

A year or two ago, in mortal fear I fear, we gripped the seat

And trembled at the mere approach of Karloff’s heavy feet

The monster made us shudder, as around the countryside

He blundered, wreaking havoc ‘mid the people far and wide.

Though striking far more terror than the worst of all banditti

He tinged our human horror with a modicum of pity,

The sequel to this horror film of man-created life

Shows Frankenstein, assisting in the moulding of a wife —

A mate for his monstrosity — a partner to command,

Who wakes in him a feeling that he cannot understand. 

The film is far more thrilling than the former one, and yet

Despite the man’s repulsiveness, one cannot quite forget

The pathos of the story of this manufactured twosome, —

The tragic side is curiously mingled with the gruesome.

The Great Frankenstein/Wolf Man Presidential Debate

With federal elections coming up this month in Canada and the US presidential contest a year away, North Americans are being bombarded with attack ads and portentous messages, political posturing and the inevitable debates. As citizens, we will be called to decide who will lead us but — let us admit — there is no challenge as monumentally important as the horror-battle between the two most terrifying creatures of all times, the Titans of Terror: Frankenstein and the Wolf Man!!! (Hyperbole shamelessly lifted from a 1942 ad for FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN).

Here’s Dan Roebuck as Lon Chaney as Larry Talbot as The Wolf Man going up against Perry Shields as Bela Lugosi as Ygor’s brain in Frankenstein’s Monster, which altogether makes more sense than anything in the current, real-life political discourse.

Roebuck and Shields are professional actors and unreserved Monster Kids, and they give their all in what proves both a Valentine to the Universal Monsters, and a genuine Halloween treat.

Enjoy!

Frankenstein Marionette

Towering 22 inches tall from its big black stomper boots to the top of its flat head, here’s a Frankenstein Monster with strings attached.

This unique creation from Czech Marionettes is entirely hand-made from sculpt to paint to sewn outfit and carefully assembled into a fully functional, high-quality string puppet. The high price — $590USD — reflects the superior craftsmanship of this piece.

Click through to the site for more pics of the Frankenstein marionette, a fascinating history of Czech puppets and tons of beautiful work including a dragon, winged skeletons and a Nosferatu puppet.

With thanks to Jeffrey Eernisse

Monster Mischief

Poor Mrs. Fradence Frankenstein of London, inconvenienced by pranksters and inconsiderate twits playing upon her fine name. 

At 90, how long had the widow suffered the crank calls before finally seeking respite? And did she ever expect her name and her reasonable request for some measure of privacy to be sent out around the world as amusing newspaper filler material — here from The Straits Times of Singapore, 5 september 1964 — courtesy of United Press International? Surely that was the unkindest prank of all. 

The Female Frankenstein of Fifth Avenue

“Without ghoulish make-up… she’ll freeze the blood of every motion picture fan…"

One year before BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), there was The Female Frankenstein of Fifth Avenue! That’s how Paramount Pictures pitched Mary Morris' character, "the vicious, venomous New York aristocrat" named Victoria Van Brett, as the sinister star of the 1934 chiller, DOUBLE DOOR.

The story yanks the familiar Old Dark House setting away from its traditional windswept moors and plunks it down in turn-of-the-century Manhattan. The banal title refers to a secret, airtight and soundproof room — the tale's murder weapon, as it were.

"Mary Morris… a specialist of sinister roles begins where Frankenstein and Dracula left off… The deadliest menace the screen has yet known!"

DOUBLE DOOR came to Hollywood via Broadway, with Morris reprising her showy role. The notices had been fairly good but the play ran only 143 performances in late 1933. Likewise, the film scored favorable reviews, followed by a very modest box office showing.

The New York Times called the film "a careful and intelligent copy of the original", building "an atmosphere of gloom, hysteria and malignant evil". Morris' Van Brett, variously described as a "grim and fish-eyed mistress", "a model of up-to-date witchcraft" and a "cruel old witch", stole the show. The NYT critic noted how a rowdy balcony crowd heckling the screen-bound villainess was ultimately silenced when, "with lighted candle and enigmatic smile", she lured the heroine into the mystery chamber.

“Frankenstein, Dracula and all the other male monsters are sissies compared to Victoria Van Brett… Mary Morris without trick make-up or other artifices is the deadliest menace the screen has yet portrayed!”

And so, briefly, in '34, Mary Morris was billed as The Female Frankenstein, the name used as shorthand for chills and monstrous evil. As it turned out, DOUBLE DOOR would be the formidable Mary Morris' first and only motion picture! Upon wrapping, she promptly returned to New York where she enjoyed a distinguished stage career that spanned a full forty years.

A review of DOUBLE DOOR by David Cairns on Shadowplay.

Richard Kiel (1939-2014)

Actor Richard Kiel passed away on September 10, just a few days short of his 75th birthday. Kiel parlayed his towering size — due to a hormonal condition known as acromegaly — into a film and television career playing gigantic strongmen, mountainous henchmen, colossal aliens and mammoth monsters. When given a chance, he showed he could also act really well, too.

Kiel’s credits include many memorable parts. Early on, in 1962, he was the giant caveman, EEGAH, and the unforgettable alien in the classic TWILIGHT ZONE episode, TO SERVE MAN. His TV work included appearances on THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., THE WILD WILD WEST and KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER.

Kiel was the original actor chosen to play Bill Bixby’s green alter-ego in THE INCREDIBLE HULK (1978), but he was replaced a couple of days into the pilot shoot in favor of the more muscular Lou Ferrigno. Kiel was happy to bail, having found the full-body makeup and the thick contact lenses most uncomfortable. He was also offered the part of Darth Vader, but the role went to David Prowse after Kiel chose, instead, to play the steel-toothed “Jaws” opposite Roger Moore’s James Bond in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977) and MOONRAKER (1979). It would be the character he’d be most remembered for, though he earned himself a whole new generation of fans with a celebrated turn in HAPPY GILMORE (1996).

Kiel is one of a handful of actors to play two different iterations of the Frankenstein Monster. In 1967, billed as Dick Kiel, he had bolts sticking out of his ears in I WAS A TEENAGE MONSTER, an episode of THE MONKEES in which the boys try to turn The Monster into a pop star. With a bit more to do than just look big and menacing, Kiel demonstrated a fine flair for comedy.

Kiel’s second pass at The Monster had him in full, classic makeup with blue face, flattop — and a bow tie — as a Haunted House club manager in the first season, first episode of THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES (1977).

In recent years, soldiering on despite a serious car accident in 1992 that left him with reduced mobility, Kiel enjoyed appearing on the convention circuit, happy to meet fans and generous with his time. Richard Kiel was a giant man who, by all accounts, had a heart to match.

Both of Richard Kiel’s Frankenstein appearances are on YouTube. Here are the full episodes of THE MONKEES: I WAS A TEENAGE MONSTER, and THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES: THE MYSTERY OF THE HAUNTED HOUSE.  

Meet Senator Frankenstein Fishface

The gentleman with the exploding mustache is Senator Frankenstein Fishface, a radio personality of the early Forties. A self-professed “foolosopher”, The Senator ran for President on the Pussyfooter’s Party ticket and promoted nudism under the auspices of the Open Pore Nudist Cult of Bareback Gulch, Pa. He also ran for Mayor of New York, promising “to put a radio, overstuffed furniture and a featherbed in every jail cell in our city. That's so our jails will attract a better class of people!"

The Senator was Elmore Vincent (1908-2000), a Texas-born entertainer who first broke into show business as “The Texas Troubadour”. Relocating to Seattle, Vincent got into radio in 1929 on KJR’s Mardi Gras, a daily, 90-minute variety program, appearing as “The Northwest Shanty Boy”, singing lumberjack songs with yodel accompaniment. Having to support his family through the dark days of the Great Depression, Vincent expanded his repertoire, performing comic sketches as a blowhard, word-mangling politician. The show’s director, Ivan Ditmars came up with the name “Senator Fishface” and it is assumed that it was Vincent who added the Frankenstein surname.

In 1934, NBC came calling and persuaded Vincent to bring his act to their San Francisco station. Going out over the Blue Network on the daily Carefree Carnival show, Senator Frankenstein Fishface was a nationwide hit. When the show was cancelled in 1936, Vincent took Frankenstein Fishface on tour, performing live in trademark mustache, a baggy suit and a crumpled high hat. Along the way, he voiced “Pa Scarecrow” for Tex Avery in a Warner’s Merrie Melodies cartoon, I’D LOVE TO TAKE ORDERS FROM YOU (1936).

In New York, Vincent hooked up with NBC again for another 2-year stint, now in his own series co-starring writer-comic Don Johnson as “Professor Willbert G. Figgsbottle”. As a measure of the Frankenstein Fishface character’s enduring popularity, Vincent was recruited to appear in a pioneering test program of RCA’s television system in 1937, beaming out to all of 60 TV sets in New York, live from Radio City. It was Senator Frankenstein Fishface last hurrah. In years to come, Vincent occasionally revisited the character under new names. He was called “Durwood Zinkafoose” in 1949, and “Senator Bolivar Gassaway” in 1961, otherwise Vincent developed a new specialty playing crusty old men. In ’44-45, he played Phineas Peabody on radio’s Lum and Abner, and soon transitioned to television, where he played grandpappys, old janitors and farmer types on classic TV series like DRAGNET, SKY KING, TALES OF WELLS FARGO and THE REAL McCOYS. He played Santa Claus in a 1955 episode of HIGHWAY PATROL and Doc Appleby on THE DUKES OF HAZZARD in 1982. His last TV work saw him play old-timers, including the recurring character “Floyd” on LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, 1980 to ’82.

Elmore Vincent never quite retired, reprising his old man character — in actual old age — for Dinner Theater plays and speaking engagements. He passed away in 2000 at 91. 

Senator Frankenstein Fishface was a precursor of the double-talking, comically illogical experts and phony politicians such as Red Skelton’s San Fernando Red, and satirists the likes of Pat Paulsen, Prof. Irwin Corey and even Brother Theodore. Plugging “Frankenstein” into the character’s name was good fun and symbolic of the name's ubiquitousness.

A fascinating bio of Elmore Vincent on the Lum and Abner site.

Dick Smith, 1922-2014

With great sadness we learn that special effect makeup master Dick Smith has passed away, July 30, 2014. He was 92 years old.

Dick Smith was a giant in his field, an innovator, and massively influential, though he might be best remembered for his generosity as a teacher and a mentor to aspiring makeup artists. He was even willing to share his knowledge with the very youngest monster movie fans as he did in 1965 with the magazine-format Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook published by James Warren’s Famous Monsters.

Here, reposted, is an article I wrote back in 2010 about Smith and the Handbook.

Dick Smith's Frankenstein

For first generation Monster Kids in 1965, Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-up Handbook was the holy grail. There had never been anything like it before. Here, incredibly, was a step-by-step guide on how to turn yourself into a monster, written in simple language, easily understood, and published in an inexpensive magazine format by Famous Monsters!

I sent away for the book and would spend the next year or two experimenting with monster makeup. I hunted down the suggested ingredients, esoteric stuff like spirit gum, collodion and thick, smelly liquid latex.

Soon, I could lace my arms with disturbingly realistic scars and give myself a bubbly burned face using corn syrup and breadcrumbs, adding red and blue strings for veins. I could arthritically deform my knuckles using glue and cotton matted down and shaped with acrylic paint. I even made a bald-head skullcap, painting liquid latex on a balloon, and worn to hilarious effect.

Smith’s book described a number of makeups, from an easy Weird-Oh character and a painted on split-skull face to more elaborate jobs, stepping up the difficulty level as he went on.

I never attempted the complex werewolf or the book’s pièce de résistance, Smith’s New Frankenstein Monster, which took its cue from Mary Shelley’s description, “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.”

I can’t imagine how any kid could achieve this one without infinite patience, helping hands, and uncommon talent. The full-head job required hammering out a metal skullcap, carefully building up facial muscles with cotton and mortician’s wax (an anatomical diagram of facial muscles and arteries was provided), and covering everything with a transparent gelatin skin. The finished effect must have been stunning. Smith admitted that it did not photograph well, writing “the weird transparency of the skin is more apparent to the eyes than to the camera, but it was most effective.” The whole thing would theoretically peel away easily, though Smith suggested using baby shampoo to clean the red stains off your face!

Dick Smith’s book is symbolic of his generosity and his eagerness to share his knowledge, an avowed reaction to the wall of silence he encountered as a fledgling makeup artist in the late Forties. Hollywood makeup men wouldn’t share their secrets. “None of them would give you the time of day,” Smith said. Throughout his life, Smith was kind to fellow artists, most notably in his mentorship of Rick Baker, who was guided and encouraged by Smith when still a teenager.

Amazingly, when Dick Smith wrote his Handbook in 1965, his best work was still ahead. Smith would go on to create the latex appliance methods still in use today. He introduced the use of bladders for breathing effects, spurting blood, and the crawling skin transformations seen in Altered States (1980). He created the ultimate “old man” makeup, still a reference, for Dustin Hoffman’s Big Little Man, a design also used on vampire Barnabas Collins in House of Dark Shadows, both made in 1966. Smith designed the gruesomely realistic effects of violence in Coppola’s Godfather pictures, Scorcese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and, in what is perhaps his masterpiece, he created the astounding makeup effects on display in The Exorcist (1973).

Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup Handbook, in both its original Warren magazine format and an updated book edition from 1985, is an expensive collector’s item today. Still available is a 40-minute demonstration video, Monster Makeup Hosted by Dick Smith, directed by John Russo.

 

Scans from the original Warren edition are on view over at the Magic Carpet Burn blog archives. Here’s The New Frankenstein Monster. Click and scroll around to see the rest of the mag.

  

Dick Smith’s website.

Still online, an abandoned blog, Max and Courtney Make Monsters, attempted to recreate every makeup described in Smith’s Do-It-Yourself book.

  

Related:
Dick Smith’s makeup for TV’s Arsenic and Old Lace.

Frankenstein Cannot Be Stopped!

Art/Horror filmmaker Larry Fessenden, Spirit Award winner and Fangoria Hall of Famer, knows his Frankensteins. We previously posted his Frankenstein Mashup, a glorious edit of 27 different Frankenstein films — Be sure to follow the link if you haven’t seen it yet! Now, Fessenden revisits The Monster with FRANKENSTEIN CANNOT BE STOPPED, a music video for the New York-based band Life in a Blender.

The classic Monster is evoked with a rigid, kabuki-like mask, with lighting, shooting angles and context bringing it to life. Fessenden also uses an animated puppet to introduce The Monster, and again at the end for its fiery demise in the requisite burning windmill.

“I have always loved the design of the classic flat-top Frankenstein Monster,” Fessenden says, “and as I patched these images together I was amused to see how subtle differences in the performance of the puppet and of Mike Vincent in the mask would evoke specific cinematic incarnations of the monster.”

The filmmaker had Frankensteinia readers in mind! “I thought of your readers...” he writes. “Who else could distinguish between Karloff, Glenn Strange, Herman Munster and the Aurora model kit!”

The clip is a loving homage to the James Whale original, and the song is a tragic ballad of The Monster’s disastrous flower game with the little girl.

With thanks to Larry Fessenden.

Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix Productions

Life in a Blender website

Related:

Frankenstein Mashup by Larry Fessenden

Robby Hecht's Melancholy Frankenstein

The Monster and his Bride have enjoyed a busy music video career as stand-ins for star-crossed lovers, often to comedic effect. Here, set to Robby Hecht’s plaintive, country-styled “Soon I Was Sleeping”, the tone is downright mournful as our jigsaw couple’s perennially problematic love affair is irrevocably wrecked by alcohol. Brian T. O’Neil plays the beat-up Monster and Kayla McKenzie Moore is the ethereal Bride. Ryan Newman directed in appropriately moody black and white.

Robby Hecht is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter whose insightful compositions have made him an important new voice in contemporary folk. With a talent for surrounding himself with blue-chip talent, he is accompanied on the song at hand by Canadian vocalist Rose Cousins. “Soon I Was Sleeping” appears on Hecht’s new album, released in March.

Robby Hecht’s website.

Reviews on the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy, UK’s The Telegraph, and USA Today.

Related:

The Rockabilly Bride of Frankenstein

The Country Bride of Frankenstein

The Rockabilly Bride of Frankenstein

Though her total time on screen, way back in 1935, was limited to a brisk 12 minutes, the Bride of Frankenstein remains one of the most famous movie characters of all time and is still a reference 79 years on. The Bride, sporting her spectacular hairdo, has appeared in everything from commercials to musical reviews and pop videos.

Here, she is stunned back to life again to the tune of It’s Good to be Alive, the first single off an upcoming album by Imelda May, a roots and rockabilly artist by way of Ireland.

In this revisionist version, The Bride and her Monster fall head over big boots for each other and go on to the ups and downs of marital life. I don’t really think it’s a spoiler for me to say that in the end, love conquers all.

Related:
The Country Bride of Frankenstein

Frankenstein's Vodka

The classic, flattop Frankenstein Monster has been hawking Heineken, Twizzlers, Shinola and all manner of products for some 50 years by now. Here’s an early pitch, from Halloween of 1967, advertising the Smirnoff Bloody Mary.

The Smirnoff brand, originally produced by a Russian immigrant in Bethel, Connecticut, effectively introduced vodka to North American consumers. The small-scale outfit was taken over in 1933 by Heublein’s, a distiller that had survived through Prohibition by selling A1 steak sauce, but vodka, rebranded as “white whiskey”, was a tough sell and it would take another twenty years before it caught on. Heublein’s innovative president, John Gilbert Martin, repositioned vodka as a cocktail ingredient to be mixed with anything and everything from beef bouillon to ginger beer and launched a now legendary series of glossy magazine ads featuring a who’s who of contemporary celebrities such as Groucho Marx, Julie London, Robert Goulet, Benny Goodman and Della Reese. The most celebrated ads included one with Buster Keaton, and repeat appearances by a young standup comic, Woody Allen.

A late entry in the long-running campaign, the Frankenstein ad stars Paul Ford as “the friendly monster”. A character actor with a long list of choice screen credits, Ford was best known for his stint as the clueless, long-suffering Colonel Hall opposite the flimflamming Sergeant Bilko of the hugely popular Phil Silvers Show (1955-59).

The heavily retouched photo has Ford wearing a high forehead and wig, with the green color most likely painted on top of the still. In fact, the head may have been patched on — dare I say Frankenstein-like — to a body double. A similar trick appears to have been pulled in an ad for the Smirnoff Screwdriver featuring Vincent Price, seen reflected in a small mirror, otherwise sitting with his back (or perhaps the double's back) to the camera. 

Comic Book Trivia: Frankenstein's Fingertips

A trifle of trivia and a cartoon done in a few quick pen strokes make for an unusual Frankenstein sighting.

Panel cartoons combining pen and ink portraits and trivia were a popular feature of newspapers in their heyday, mid-century, with the best-known, most influential and oft-copied series being Robert Ripley’s collection of bizarre facts, Believe It or Not. Panel series were also devoted to sports or movie star gossip, notably Feg Murray’s Seein’ Stars. Charles Bruno’s Star Flashes was another celebrity feature, distributed through the Bell Syndicate to newspapers across America. Considered “used up” after their initial run, the daily panels were sold cheaply — “dumped” — to comic book publishers as filler material, where they were done up with garish colors over the original black and white art.

The page seen here, combining four daily panels, with date, syndicate copyright and original logo removed, appeared in Heroic Comics number 2, October 1940, published by the Eastern Color Printing Company of New York. Eastern operated as a comic book company from 1933 to the mid-Fifties, producing such classic titles as Buck Rogers, Jingle Jangle, Movie Love and the legendary Famous Funnies. Heroic was your typical comic book of the times, 68 pages for a dime, crammed with a wild mix of adventure, humor, science fiction, airplane, fighting marines, superhero and baseball strips. Headliners were Gene Byrne’s Reg’lar Fellers, a popular “Our Gang” type strip featuring street kids with names like Puddinhead, Pinhead, and the requisite dog, called Bullseye, with a black ring around one eye. The Fellers pushed an athletic summer camp organization and crossed over to radio, books, merchandizing, animated shorts and a film with Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, closing the circle on the “Our Gang” connection.

Heroic also featured a bizarre crime/horror strip, The Purple Zombie by Tarpé Mills, a pioneering woman comic book artist, just one year away from creating her most famous character, Miss Fury. The story includes a startling panel where the title character appears strapped to an electric chair with a hood and a metal skullcap over his head, and trousers slit up the side to accommodate electrodes. He’s a zombie, so the attempted execution merely turns his skin purple. Another strip, Don Dixon, is a slavish Flash Gordon knockoff, complete with a Ming clone called The Destroyer.

The book’s cover boy and resident superhero was Hydroman, a costumed crime fighter who can turn his body into a geyser of living water. Hydroman wears a leather flying helmet and goggles, a steel collar, red shorts and see-though pants and shirt made of “Translite”. Harry the sidekick scientist says, “It’s like cellophane, but tough. Nothing can penetrate it, not even bullets!”  The Hydroman strip was created, written and illustrated by Bill Everett, who would go on to create The Sub-Mariner, the first iteration of Simon Garth/The Zombie, and co-create Daredevil.

On the Star Flashes filler page, the celebrities depicted were all big names in the late Thirties and early Forties. The elegant Constance Bennett, comedienne Martha Raye, actors Otto Kruger and George Bancroft, and comic genius W.C.Fields all enjoyed sterling careers. Kruger is remembered for his leading man role opposite DRACULA’S DAUGHTER in 1936. He was also in COLOSSUS OF NEW YORK (1958) and an episode of TV’s THRILLER, hosted by Boris Karloff. The other then-current celebrities seen here are forgotten today.

Juanita Quigley was a child star known as Baby Jane. She appeared, all of three years old, with Claude Raines in THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD (1934). Ten years later, as a teen, she worked with Erich von Stroheim in THE LADY AND THE MONSTER (1944), the first screen adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s Donovan’s Brain. Quigley quit pictures shortly thereafter.

Gwen Kenyon was a young model who made it to Hollywood in 1937 as a supporting player, often uncredited, in dozens of B-movies. She had a small part in THE CORPSE VANISHES (1942) with Bela Lugosi. Her entire screen career lasted eight years.

Artist/writer Charles Bruno filled in his Star Flashes margins with one-liner trivia and small, dashed off drawings: Hollywood payrolls, electric clocks in films, tapestries on burlap, and — look at the upper left-hand panel — Boris Karloff’s fingernails painted black as part of his makeup.

The name of Frankenstein is not given and the illustration is so small that the artist didn’t have enough space to draw a face, but the flattop head, the neck bolt and the dark suit are unmistakable. It’s clearly Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster. It might have been too grisly to specify — notwithstanding the electric chair scene elsewhere in the issue — that the blackened fingertips were meant to suggest a hanged man’s hand, with blood pooled in its extremities.

Related:

Scrapbook Frankenstein

Feg Murray’s Frankenstein

The Halloween Candy Bride of Frankenstein

I can’t think of a better, more Halloween-centric image: The Bride, created out of Halloween candy! Look closely; those are M&Ms, Skittles, Kit-Kats and all manner of candy packages serving as color pixels, like a Manet or a Seurat painting in pointillism.

The artist is Eric Millikin — a longtime friend of Frankensteinia —  who has created a gallery of crazy candy-art monsters first revealed on his blog at the Detroit Free Press. Characters include Elvira, Freddy Krueger, Nosferatu and, of course, The Bride’s beau. The illustrations, each one using thousands of candy wrappers, also include a hidden, see-if-you-can-find-it spider.

We’re super-happy to see Eric’s work all over the net this week and featured on such sites as Huffingtonpost and Ellen Degeneres’ Good News blog on Yahoo. Thanks to Eric, everybody is celebrating our favorite holiday with candy, great art, and favorite monsters!

See all the candy-art monsters on Eric Millikin’s Detroit Free Press blog.

Happy Halloween!

Frankenstein Hits the Jackpot

Here’s a Halloween-appropriate video combining classic monsters, pop culture and, well, slot machines!

The Monster Jackpot machines rolled out to casinos in the spring of 2012. No idea if they are still operating, but anyone who ever played one of these was treated to a surreal gaming experience featuring “Your Favorite Universal Monsters in One Exciting Slot Game!”. Present are “Frankenstein” and a sashaying Bride, Dracula and Mummy, Wolf Man, a cackling Invisible Man and the Creech from the Black Lagoon. The object of the game is to capture monsters and move up the castle wall, all the way to the big payoff.

Images include videoclips and movie posters from the classics, animated vampire bats, lightning strikes, sizzling labs and peasants wielding torches. The soundtrack features lines from the films, shrieks and Swan Lake from the original Dracula score.

Silly fun.

WMS Gaming’s Monster Jackpot page.

The Country Bride of Frankenstein

Here’s a perfect Countdown to Halloween musical interlude!

Edna’s Kin, as the name reveals, is a family band. Warren Koontz and sons Daniel and Andrew play roots music — old time, bluegrass, blues and traditional Irish. The Kin, based in Sag Harbor, has enjoyed YouTube success with their folksy version of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man drawing over 90,000 views. Here’s their followup, an original composition called She’s Got Pulchritude, staged as a heartfelt homage to our favorite Bride.

As video director, fiddler Andrew Koontz studied the classic film and pulled together a fun little package featuring castle wall backgrounds, a mad lab, a Karloff cameo and a neat performance by New York actress Megan Larsen who hisses on cue, in requisite black and white.

Kick back and enjoy The Country Bride of Frankenstein!

Edna’s Kin Facebook page.

Band profile on the Sag Harbor Express site.