THE COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN: DAY 12

(BOOB-TUBE BLOOD-SUCKERS: PART 2)

So where was I?  Oh yeah, SALEM'S LOT...

the television adaptation of Stephen King's epic vampire novel.

It was great and for a television show in the late 1970s trying to be scary--it succeeded.

Moving on, or should I say back, one cannot mention vampires or the supernatural without mentioning the Dan Curtis daytime drama, DARK SHADOWS!  Now I'm not a huge fan of this series mainly due to the general format of soap operas' extremely decompressed storytelling.  The kind of thing that tends to bring some viewers back for the next thrilling episode only to have that episode merely be filler for the Friday cliffhanger, well, you get the picture.

Nevertheless, everyone seemed to like DARK SHADOWS a helluva lot more once the mysterious vampire, Barnabas Collins came to town!

Thus, the cult following began and the show kept taking on stranger and stranger twists and turns.  Fans couldn't seem to get enough of the gothic romance mixed with horror--until some storylines that didn't sit right with the viewers and once the movie wasn't successful.

After 5 years and over a thousand episodes, it faded away like a wampir in the daylight.

Only to be resurrected years later

(though for a mere handful of episodes)

In Episode 12 of the first season of BUCK ROGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY, our hero must face off with, perhaps, the strangest of all television vampires--the Vorvon!

That's right, kiddies, A SPACE VAMPIRE!

Unlike your average blood-sucking fiend, this guy is an energy drainer, he sucks the life essence out of his victims.

Poor Buck Rogers can't convince anyone that the guy's real, even as the creature makes it clear that all it wants is our lovely Wilma Deering for breakfast (and, honestly, who didn't?)!

Is it the way he uses his pinky, the link sausage earlobes or the furry monobrow that most terrifies Wilma?

Hmm...

The pubic hair monobrow?

Ah, I see!

Anyway, a strange and twisted episode enjoyed very much by this viewer at the time!

Next up is probably one of the most obvious vampires to make this list, it's your grandpa...

Grandpa Munster, that is!

One part Dracula, one part mad scientist and completely vaudeville, Al Lewis' Grandpa Munster set the table for many of the plots of the series.  If he weren't scheming or inventing or just plain trying to get away with something, there would be some fairly boring episodes of  THE MUNSTERS.

And the perfect straight man (woman, actually) for his hijinks was his own daughter, who is herself one of the undead:

Yvonne DeCarlo as Lily Munster had to play it straight for both Grandpa and Herman and she did it seamlessly, all the while keeping her home as dusty and dingy as possible!

Finally, the first vampire most kids meet is a friendly guy who happens to love to crunch numbers more than the necks of his victims...

The Count!

And with that, we end Part 2 of our focus on those vampires we invite right into our homes without thinking twice about it, those monsters that come right in through our televisions!

Stay tuned for Part 3 tomorrow night, same bat time, same bat channel!

MONSTER-MONTH: COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN (Day 3)

For our third focus on Frankenstein's Monster, we must take a closer look

at the most benevolent of the Frankenstein Monsters, Fred Gwynne's

HERMAN MUNSTER!

(Click to Frankensize)

The comedicaly gifted Fred Gwynne was an actor, author and artist, but he left his mark as Herman, head of the Munsters family.  His version of the Monster was, in a word, goofy.  And it was that goofiness, that childlike awkwardness that would endear him to his audience.  If he weren’t so harmlessly goofy, his temper tantrums and larger than life expressions may’ve come off as scary to the intended audience.  He was, after all, a huge presence with all of the padding and heavy boots strapped to his six foot five inch frame topped off with green make-up and neck bolts, the seven foot tall Herman Munster could’ve been a true terror.

Of all the post-Karloff Monsters, Fred Gwynne’s comes the closest to the classic Universal look--in fact, it is so similar that a few adjustments to the make-up (darkening under the eyes, furrowing of the thick brow and an expressionless stare) and one could easily see Gwynne as a serious Frankenstein Monster.  I mean look at this expression here and tell me that it doesn’t project “sinister”:

(Click for Frankensize)

Anyway, as I was saying, THE MUNSTERS’ Herman was safe in attempting to pull off the universally known look of the UNIVERSAL PICTURES’ Frankenstein Monster because they were also owned by that very same picture company.  No threat to the copyright and so they had a free pass.

FIVE FRANKENSTEIN FUN FACTS:

1. Gwynne’s Monster had one brown eye and one chartreuse.
2. Herman Munster was a fan of Huckleberry Hound and Pat Boon albums.
3. Herman Munster was built in Germany by a Dr. Frankenstein, but was adopted at an early age and raised in Shroudshire, England by a family named Munster.
4. The idea of a family of funny monsters was first submitted to Universal Studios in the late 1940s by animator Bob Clampett, who wanted to make a cartoon series.  The project wasn’t developed until the early ‘60s, when ROCKY & BULLWINKLE writers Burns and Hayward submitted a similar treatment.  Norm Liebman and Ed Haas wrote the pilot script, “Love Thy Monster” when it was still undecided if the show would be live-action or animated.
5. Herman Munster is a U.S. Army veteran of Wrold War II.

Citations...

http://www.munsters.com

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0028728/quotes

(Click to Frankensize)

This is an interesting final note--the test pilot for THE MUNSTERS that was never used.  Interestingly, it was shot full color (the show itself doesn’t even use color, but for the test pilot they go with color?).  Nonetheless, it is an unfinished, unpolished dress-rehersal where the interaction between the characters, their make-up and the tone of the show is  sampled.

It comes off as darker, by far, than the final product.  Perhaps more in the vein of THE ADDAMS FAMILY than they wanted.  Yvonne De Carlo’s Lily Munster does not appear, instead Herman is married to a Vampira look-alike named Phoebe played by Joan Marshall.  Eddie in this piece is played viciously by Happy Derman--surely his take was a little too scary for what the show was to become.

Neat stuff, check it out...

Gwynne retained fond recollections of Herman, saying in later life, "... I might as well tell you the truth. I love old Herman Munster. Much as I try not to, I can't stop liking that fellow."

(Click to Frankensize)

As you may or may not know I do enjoy the heck out of the old horror films that Turner Classic Movies provides we humble viewers with every October, so I will be including (when I can remember it) listings of the night’s treats and boy are there a few grand ones on tonight:

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

8pm

THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM (1933)

9:30pm

DOCTOR X (1932)

11:00pm

MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935)

12:15am

HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945)

1:30am

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957)

2:45am

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968)

4:30am

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

And one more thing...?