Monster Mash - 1957-1972!

Let me state for the record that I am not a "Monster Kid", that generation of youngsters (almost all boys it seems) who were just the right age (ten or eleven or thereabouts) to suck in the delectable badness of monsters when the craze broke in 1957. I was too busy being born that year to concern myself with such things as Frankenstein and Dracula and other beasties of the night. But when I did finally sprout up in the middle 60's there was still enough of of the old monster glamour to attract my attention and then in the early 70's there was final burst of monstery awfulness to glom onto before it sputtered out for a time. Mark Voger in his Twomorrows tome Monster Mash-The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972 touches on many if not most of the aspects of society which were touched or transformed or even given birth by the shocking interest in monsters. 

Like so many things in our culture the sudden and abiding interest in ghouls and goblins was television's fault. It began with "Shock!", a package of fifty-two horror and mystery films from Hollywood's golden era making its way to the small screen. These tepid films, mild by almost any era's standard, were still seen as just possibly too much for the tender psyches of America's youth and to avoid widespread condemnation but yet still reap some profits the folks who put this together didn't offer it to national TV but rather to regional stations in syndication. Those individual stations hired ghost hosts of sundry kind and put the shows on at the least objectionable hours they could find in the television landscape. Still the youth found these movies and gobbled them up with glee. Suddenly Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman and the Mummy among many others were shambling around in America's living rooms and it was good...for business. 

The cavalcade of monster items was...well monstrous in size. There were masks, board games, card games, comic books, television shows, toys, candies, cards, paperbacks, and even specialty magazines dedicated utterly to the fad. First and foremost among these magazines was Famous Monsters of Filmland from Warren Publications. In fact Famous Monsters of Filmland is the outcropping on which Jim Warren built his little black and white empire that eventually gave us Uncle Creepy, Cousin Eerie, and most importantly Vampirella. Forry Ackerman was Jim Warren's partner of sorts in the venture and in fact it was the "Ackermonster's" vast collection of horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies which was the essence of the magazine. The "Monster Kids" had a leader and in the letters pages of FM, a place where they could congregate and compare notes. Other mags like Castle of Frankenstein and Monster World are given some space as well. 

One of the amazing things about Famous Monsters though was that as influential as the articles and stills might have been, the Captain Company might have been even more so to the collective memories of the "Monster Kids". Captain Company was the mail-order side of the Warren operation and showcased many monster and fantasy products that kids might order and certainly would want to order. Like the wishbook from Sears every Christmas season, this was a poor kid's window into what was possible. 

I wanted so many things from the Captain  Company but perhaps nothing so much as the life-size posters of Frankenstein by Jack Davis. There's one for Vampirella too by Sanjulian but who'd dare bring that into a home overseen by a God-fearing Mamma! Not me. 

A lot of space is spent discussing and showcasing the wonderful Aurora model kids which allowed "Monster Kids" to actually collect and build their own versions of these awesome monsters. 

That extended to such strange quasi-monster things such as Rat Fink created by car designer and artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Rat Fink's imitators are given some space as well. Goofy and gruesome about covers it. 

Marvel monster comics get a few pages with my personal favorite Atlas-era monster "Fin Fang Foom" getting a page all to his titanic self. But aside from the monsters there's no coverage of Marvel's other supernatural and monster endeavors nor is there any talk of DC's revival of mystery and ghost tales at their shop. Perhaps this has to do with the somewhat arbitrary cut-off point of 1972 but still there was much done by the "Big Two" before then. 

Getting a lot of love though and properly so are the Warren magazines which followed on after the success of Famous Monsters. Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella all get some discussion and some tasty artwork from Jack Davis and other talents of the time. 

A great many pages are devoted to the TV monsters such as The Munsters and The Addams Family. Voger suggests the appearance of these two shows almost simultaneously on home screens marks the apogee of the monster craze in America and it's hard to dispute this point, though monster stuff stayed around for a long time in some form or other. The John Astin interview was a highlight and there's much more on the actors in both series. 

And clearly the author was a monster fan of Dark Shadows, the ABC television soap opera which weirdly normalized the vampire and made it suitable faire for the living rooms of America. The succees of Barnabas Collins and other stars of the show are discussed at length and several interviews or portions of same are highlighted. Voger and his late wife have talked to a lot of folks over the years and that material bears fruit in this tasty tome. 

Jonathan Frid's vampiric mug is a great way to wrap up this month-long Halloween celebration. Mark Voger has fashioned a fun look at the monster craze, a fad that lingers still in the general background of modern American society. While monsters have become less faddish, they have become oddly normalized in a way that 1960's America would've found stunning. Voger's fannish book does a decent if incomplete job of showing how that happened. 

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All The Munsters Fit To Print!

This Halloween month of October I was finally able to finish a project that has eluded me for many years --- watch all of The Munsters. I picked up the episodes on DVD many years ago and have watched them off and on over the years, but never all the way through and never with a mindset to see the development of the short-lived series. The Munsters and its similar-themed competitor The Addams Family was a shout out by the producers of television to the "Monster Kids", the generation of Baby Boom youngsters who had rediscovered the classic monsters of the vintage Universal cycle thanks to the burgeoning medium of television. 

The Munsters appeared all over the place at the time, such as TV Guide and especially in the pages of magazines like Monster World dedicated to bringing home the monsters in a limited way in those primitive days before home video was ubiquitous. Watching The Munsters it's easy to see how the series started, revved up into an exceedingly high and entertaining gear, and then slowly but steadily began to lose energy as the gags became repetitive. It would have worse by far for the series to have dragged on and subsequent attempts to mine the property have only proven this to be the case. The series was lightning in a bottle, great in its moment but not long for the world. 

But that didn't stop folks from trying. Munster, Go Home was an attempt to get the property into the theaters on the big screen and in garish color. It failed because of some ham-handed handling, but also because the jokes again and again felt all too familiar. The talent involved in this show was mighty indeed, with the practiced duo of Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis providing outstanding moments of exquisite comedy timing.

The Munsters did find some traction in the other pop culture outlets of the era. A couple of novels from Whitman for youngsters were created sporting handsome covers by Arnie Kohn. I have the second one titled The Last Resort around here somewhere, and have had it since I was a boy.  I need to get the other one, if only for the handsome cover art. Whitman's comic book branch of Gold Key tapped the characters for a respectable run which as was typical of the time sported photo covers.

The Munsters produced by the same fellows who gave the world Leave It To  Beaver, was a product of its time, a time when monsters were so commonplace that they were seen as fit for humor. That hasn't gone away with movies like Hotel Transylvania and its sequels proving quite popular. But never forget that when it comes to a comedy riff on classic monsters, The Munsters was the original.

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The Monsters Among Us!

Who could imagine that an utterly egotistical preening megalomaniac could some day hold the fate of the world in his depraved hands? That's something that could only happen in the overheated environs of the vintage pulps and their progeny the comics. No one in the real world could imagine the entire destiny of the globe to be teetering on the whims of a self-loathing, self-absorbed madman.

But be that as it may, let this month, one dedicated in many ways to inversions, see things here at the Dojo flip and instead of valiant heroes which is the norm, let's take a closer look at evil, the villainy which makes heroics necessary.

This month is dedicated to the bad guys and to evil creatures, and any resemblance to current chief executives of major western powers is merely coincidental.

Also this month I am taking a fresh gander at the delightful television show full of the most civil and polite monsters you'll ever run across -- The Munsters.

If time permits I might also tear into The Addams Family. I have not visited 1313 Mockingbird Lane or 0001 Cemetery Lane in far too many years. So look for references to those vintage shows from time to time perhaps, from a time when the monsters on our TV screens were entirely fictional.

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Strolling Down 1313 Mockingbird Lane!

Vic Prezio
I tried this last year and for whatever reason didn't complete it. So this year I'm once again going to try and tear through the complete set of Munster episodes I bought a long time ago.

They might be just the item to leaven out all the 1950's radioactive mayhem I'm enjoying otherwise. A combo of 50's schlock and 60's shtick seems a flavorful combination.

Wish me luck!


Update: I was watching the 13th episode, "Family Portrait" and it seems clear to me that the photo used as the cover for Event Magazine was the one which Vic Prezio used to inspire his artwork for Monster World. That or another from the same shoot, probably an early picture session for the series.

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Munsters Once More!

I've been wondering what I might do this October to get into the proper Halloween mood. Then it struck me that I've had this complete dvd set of Munster episodes sitting on my shelf and I've only barely sampled them. So the mission is that I will enjoy an episode or two a night right through the month and that should get me thinking those appropriate monstery thoughts!


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