Saturday, September 8, 2012

That's When the Monsters come out!

When The Cos spoke those immortal words he was referring to Ten O'Clock, but to me it means October! Every year at this time I get the urge to revisit All the Monster movies of my youth and more accurately my imagination. When I was young we didn't have 500 channels of Television, DVR's, and Blu-Ray players. We didn't even have DVD or Laserdisc players, in fact until I was about Seven we didn't have a VCR. What I did have though was a Dad and an Imagination, and in a way that was better. I wouldn't want to rely on my imagination now but I don't think I'd be quite the same person I am, if I hadn't had to as a child.

 I love Movie Monsters, particularly the old Universal Studio Monsters from the 30's and 40's. The weird thing is, I loved them before I'd ever seen one of the movies they appear in. I learned of the Monster's; Dracula, The Wolfman, and Frankenstein's Monster from my Dad and Library books. I can remember car rides with my father at night when I was young, probably five or six. It's dark in the car the only lights coming from the dash and the lit Kent 100 in his mouth. I don't know how the stories would start, either to keep me awake until we got home, or to keep me and my brother and sister quiet and stop the bickering that seemed to constantly go back and forth. It doesn't matter how they started what matters is what the stories told, which was basically the plots of the Universal Monster films. But the key thing is, they were better than the films. Anyone who watches those films now is more likely to get tired than scared. Those films, as exciting as their plots are and the posters appear, are a bit on the creaky and slow side. This is especially true of the earliest films, Dracula and Frankenstein both 1931. But as muted as they appear now to modern audiences, I still thrill to them. Out of nostalgia? Sure to some extent, but really it's because the films that played in my imagination, while my father told the stories, were dynamic and dark, scary and action packed, and they had thrilling musical scores (a little dig at Dracula there). When I watch these movies again, to some extent, the films that played in my mind overlay what I'm actually watching.

The films themselves got better. In Fact the second film in the Frankenstein series, The Bride of Frankenstein, is probably the best of the solo Frankenstein films, maybe of all the Monster films put together. The later films also got more exciting in the retelling, because now rather than the tale of Frankenstein, there were stories of Frankenstein, meeting the Wolfman and Dracula, All the Monsters together. Add in a Hunchback and a mad scientist and hell the story tells itself. What was really fascinating about the films, as they were told to me, was that each movie began with an explanation of how the creature had escaped it's almost certain demise in the previous film. They didn't pretend the last film didn't happen they simply came up with a plausible way (at least to a young child's mind) that the monster had survived. This burned into my imagination and made for hours of fun for me as I played with my Monster action figures and playset and created films in my mind that picked up where the stories I'd been told left off.

The greatest toys ever!!
Hours were spent reenacting the tales told by my father, expanding on them raising the stories to levels that the films could never live up too. When you are playing with action figures there is no limit to what you can do and there's really no need at all for boring dialogue or some trumped up love story to throw in the mix. The only thing missing were little Abbott and Costello action figures, because Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was one of the first three Monster films I ever saw. We were able to rent VHS tapes of Dracula and Frankenstein, in around 1980 or 81, that was the first time I saw those two. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was on TV at some point, probably a Sunday afternoon on TBS or WGN. The Wolfman would have been the 4th I'm sure, but that as well seems to me was at a later date. I remember a couple of times there being specials on TV that showed clips of the old monster movies, as well as clips from the later Hammer films of the late 50's thru early 70's. Aside from that, it was Junior High School before I ever got to see any of the later films, House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula, also around the same time I saw Nosferatu (the silent German film which is the first screen telling of the Dracula story) for the first time. I believe it was channel 29 in Minneapolis that ran a bunch of these films late at night and I was able to record them. Up until that point it was library books that gave me my best visuals of the monsters and filled in the stories for me.
These are the Crestwood Monster series books and I must have spent about 137 hours pouring over each book in the series. It was these books that fanned the flames of my Monster loving brain. It was also here that I first heard of the second cycle of Monster films, the Hammer films, but that is another entry. This is about the characters and the stories that first enlivened my imagination, that created this life long love of "the Monsters". I can also see it as the genesis of several of my personality traits. I cannot watch anything out of order. I can't watch a TV show, drama, sitcom, whatever, if I've missed an episode. What I love about TV series is the continuity , what you might call the soap opera aspects of a show. I see this as a direct continuation of my obsessions with how each movie linked to the one before in the Universal films. I'm much too forgiving of any film that tries to adapt these characters or uses these characters, because I long so much for them, like old friends that are now gone. Give me Dracula and a creepy castle, Frankenstein's Monster and a mountain laboratory, The Wolfman and a fog drenched forest on a full moon night, and you can pretty much forget about the story or pacing, I'll still buy a ticket and get it on Blu-ray. You see I can't help it, I love them thar Monsters.

If you've never seen the films do yourself a treat and watch them, here's the order to do so in: Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Son of Dracula,  House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula,  Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

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