THE GOODS: MONSTER-MONTH: A COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 23)

(Click to Frankensize)

“It’s thrilling and chilling,

and oh so shock filling,

The Milton the Monster Show;

It’s daring and scaring,

you’ll find yourself staring,

at Milton the Monster’s Show;

Your flesh will creep,

your heart will thump,

the sites will paralyze;

But then you’ll see the strangest things

that ever met your eyes!

It’s loony and goony,

and practicallyswoony;

You’ll shake and you’ll quake,

at the sights that they make,

on The Milton the Monster Show!

Introducing the star of the show, Milton the Monster.

He blows his stack

when he flips his lid;

Although he’s a monster

he’s just a big kid;

And now he’s ready to go,

on The Milton the Monster Show.”

(Hear it here: http://www.cartoonscrapbook.com/_sounds/The_Milton_the_Monster_Show_-_1965.wav )

The Milton the Monster Show is an animated television series that ran on ABC-TV from October of 1965 to September of 1968 and was produced and directed by Hal Seeger, who also created Batfink.

Some felt that Hal Seeger’s Milton was an attempt to capitalize on the 1964 horror/comedy craze which included The Munsters and The Addams Family TV series. However, Milton the Monster had been in production long before those two series aired and it was slated to debut in the fall of ’64 until production delays pushed it back until October 1965.

(Click to Frankensize)

The series starred Milton the Monster, a Frankenstein-looking monster with a flat-topped head which seemed to emit white steam or smoke based on his mood or the situation. Milton was created by Professor Montgomery Weirdo and his assistant Count Kook who live on Horror Hill in a haunted house.

Milton has a pleasant disposition due to an error in the Professor’s work in creating him--he used too much “tincture of tenderness” to temper his potential to do harm to his creator. Milton was created through a process that combined liquids such as “essence of terror” and “sinister sauce” in a Milton-shaped mold.

(Click to Frankensize)

Bob McFadden provided the voice for Milton, which owed much to Grady Sutton’s Og Ogglby character from W.C. Fields’ film THE BANK DICK. McFadden also voiced Professor Weirdo and his resident monsters Heebie, a skull-faced top hat-wearing zombie with a Peter Lorre voice, and Jeebie, a dumb one-eyed hairy green creature with one sharp tooth.

Professor Weirdo’s enemy was Professor Fruitcake, another mad scientist who lived in a castle on an opposite hill. Fruitcake’s creation was Zelda the Zombie. Other characters in the series include Fangenstein, a biker monster inspired by Marlon Brando, his sidekick, Ambercrombie the Zombie and Professor Weirdo’s aunt, the witchy Aunt Hagatha.