Even More POSTOBERFEST
"Gory Gory Transyl-WAIN-Yaaah, As We Go Stumbling Through" Dept.:
I scared EASILY as a child. I think part of that came from living in an emotionally loud household, and part of it came from having a very active imagination, and being just naive enough as a child to really believe in monsters for a very long time. I couldn't watch a lot of the tamest kind of horror movies as a kid because the dread of being afraid of something really scary would actually preceed the stuff that was supposed to be scary.
That being said, I loved THE HILLARIOUS HOUSE OF FRIGHTENSTEIN.
When Canadian television and commercial producer Mitch Markovich met Billy Van he realised that this was a talent that he could exploit. Van who had been the baby of a vaudeville family and worked extensively in improvisation and music and through a number of Revue-styled productions could jump from character toi character and improvisation to improvisation in no time flat. They hit on the 60's monster craze and combined it with LAUGH-IN with psychedellic black out sketches shot on a single set that would be dressed after a group of 50 scenes were shot on them and Billy had gone to make up - then they were struck and re-dressed so that the same thing would happen all over again, and then it was all edited together as a 60 minute show. All of the characters seem to be loosely based on the Aurora Monster Model Kits that were MANDITORY for every young boy to own at the time.
They did 122 episodes in two months. They got Vincent Price to do all of his work in a three day weekend, memorising his introductory doggerel poetry in a 30 second memory burst and then doing it on the spot - often goofing with the cameramen (and he was happy to because he recognised the educational content of the show and wanted to be in a kids show for years at this point).
I could blather on about this one forvever. Thank you SPACE for running the series daily again on Canadian television, and thank you to the dozens and dozens of fellow Frightenstein fans who saved the episodes from its original; SHOWCASE airing that have the now-verboten Wolfman sequences. This is one of those episodes.
If you are someone who hasn't seen this before, I envy you the pleasure of the first "what the f%$#! is THIS"!
Dig in, Gang.
http://www.youtube.com/v/dQVdzvd7kLk
Part The First (of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/v/ziLNIxsRymw&mode=related&search=
Part The Second (of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/v/9GoTkE8KUV8&mode=related&search=
Part the Third (of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/v/XHxnI-qUS0M&mode=related&search=
Part the Fourth (of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/v/8KTU0HTalU8&mode=related&search=
Part the Last (of 5)
Tomorrow
Gaze upon the face of TIM BOO BA!