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Television may have been bad for Hollywood in general, but it was pretty good for adolescent kids in the late Fifties and early Sixties. That's because those kids were exposed to a bunch of classic horror films that they likely would never have seen without the presence of the Boob Tube. When the kiddies of that era and those old fright films met, it was fright at first sight--and love, too, as the young 'uns went bonkers for the classic monsters. That condition, as we saw in last month's issue, only grew stronger and eventually led to the...
By DON MANKOWSKI (Author’s Note: In December of 1957, a package of old horror films was made available to U.S. television stations as Shock Theater. I’ve been looking at this series through the eyes of a six-year old viewing on Chicago’s Channel 7, WBKB. In our last exciting chapter, I’d just seen Son of Frankenstein in an April installment of the weekly series.) Summer rerun season was settling in for the prime- time programming, and the late-night alternatives similarly went into their doldrums, probably due to some marketing policy. Shock Theater’s May, 1958 lineup consisted of: 3
May Calling Dr. Death (Universal, 1943) We got two minor (if solid) horror sequels, mixed in with three of the strange "Inner Sanctum Mysteries," these based upon a radio series. These latter films exceeded my young attention span, and I recall very little of them, except for the extremely disturbing scene in Dead Man’s Eyes wherein Chaney gets careless and uses concentrated acid as an eyewash. The older folks were always warning us not to do this or that or some other thing, because "ye’ll put yer eye out." Good Lord, it can happen!
Tomb and Returns were decent sequels; it was good to see old Kharis again, even if a sizable piece of this film was flashback lifted from The Mummy’s Hand. Kharis (now played by Chaney Jr.) is here relocated to New England. I’ve always been impressed by how the conclusion of Tomb manages to negate the happy ending of Hand, killing off the heroes of the earlier film rather swiftly. I learned that the good guys don’t have to win, at least not when you can count upon the short memory of your censors. In the other film, I got to meet Vincent Price--someone I’d get to know rather well -- as a new Invisible Man. Funny, but he looked the same as the old one when you couldn’t see him. I would be seeing Price again, at my local theater in The Fly later that same year!
These films were fit into a 90-minute time slot. There were commercials, but not at the rate you see today: I suspect there were a couple of two-minute breaks per half hour. Surely, thought the sponsors, the people wouldn’t stand for any more! You’ll note that a 70-odd minute feature would still come up short of 90 minutes under that formula. I suppose that one of the excuses for the onscreen "host" would be to provide small segments of varying length to pad the short films and make the length of each night’s package more uniform. Now, Son of Frankenstein runs well over 90 minutes, and that’s quite long compared to the other films mentioned here: most of these clocked in between 58 and 72 minutes, now and then as much as 75. Yet, I see no evidence that WBKB lengthened the time slot for this film. I guess that the host involvement was minimized. Still, either it ran overtime unannounced, or it was trimmed to fit. We will probably never know. 7
Jun Son Of Dracula (Universal, 1943) Son Of Dracula was a favorite, even though this couldn't be the "real," Dracula, could it? Never mind, in those days I thought that Lon Chaney Jr. must have been the best actor of the bunch, what with being able to play the Wolf Man, the Monster, the Mummy and Dracula. Lon went and did things rather than standing around and talking, or just looking mysterious. Chaney's bulky, bulletproof Dracula didn't overcome adversaries with reasoning or hypnotic charm, he just grabbed 'em and choked 'em and threw 'em across the room. He turned into a bat onscreen, and could materialize from smoke. I would later become aware of Lon's limitations as an actor, yet sought out any film with his name on it. Still do.
The Cat Creeps, House Of Horrors and Pillow Of Death...I have no salient memories of seeing these. Sorry. Maybe I had summer recess on my mind. Creeps is a haunted house thriller from Universal, curiously lacking any of our favorite players. Horrors has Rondo Hatton in his "The Creeper" form. Pillow is another "Inner Sanctum" effort. I’ll catch up with these some day. I haven’t yet said anything about the fellow who introduced the movies. It was a bland, crew-cut fellow done up in a dark suit over a dark turtlenecked sweater, his eyes distorted by coke-bottle eyeglasses. He called himself "Marvin," and was supposed to represent a beatnik, a really "hip" dude. You dig, man? He was vaguely familiar. In time, most of us kids figured out that he was the same guy who, during the daytime, hosted a kids’ show called The Jobblewocky Place. His name was Terry Bennett. Without the funky Marvin garb he looked just like your older brother or younger uncle. I think he was a ventriloquist, but I really didn’t pay much attention to that other show.
Many are fanatic about the local "Horror Host" of their youth -- famous ones like Vampira, and Zacherley, and a multitude of fly-by-night imitators. I’ve seen enough of the latter in my time and I didn’t like most of them. Because I had always loved horror movies and taken them seriously, I had no patience with no-talents who rudely ridiculed the films. I know that I would have been absolutely enraged had any "host" interrupted or talked over the film at any point, as some of them did, or so I am told. Terry Bennett (1930-1977), however, was a good host. He confined his humor to the introductions and commercial breaks. He didn’t depend upon a loud voice or an absurd accent that would get annoying within minutes. He was dour, quietly amusing, and most of his sketches could invoke a chuckle. The running gag was Marvin murdering his wife in various ways, on a weekly basis. When the producers decided to give him more screen time, they didn’t lengthen the breaks or meddle with the film, but rather let him go on for some time with music and special guests (the "Shocktail Party") after the film was over, and this was all right. 5
Jul The Mystery Of Edwin Drood (Universal, 1935) Weird Woman was another "Inner Sanctum" offering that I barely remembered; it’s adapted from the same Fritz Leiber story that later inspired the excellent film Burn, Witch, Burn (1962). I don’t recall Drood, nor have I managed to see it since. It’s based on Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished novel, and features Claude Rains. A real treat was Columbia's attempt to emulate the Universal formula with Return Of The Vampire. It probably would have been called Dracula Meets The Wolf Man had not some cooler head at the studio warned them of a sequel entitled Plagiarism: The Lawyer's Curse. Bela Lugosi is there with all the Dracula trappings, but he's really -- wink, wink -- Armand Tesla. He has a werewolf servant, played by an actor who resembles Lon Chaney Jr. The script was by Griffin Jay, who also wrote for Universal.
The first few times I saw this one I figured that's got to be Dracula, and that was enough for me. Of course, I had no idea that it was a rival studio; only later did I learn the truth. In any event, it's a good effort, bringing the supernatural horror up against the very real horror of War on the home front. It has a fine score and very atmospheric visuals, and what with Lugosi at his best and a werewolf bonus, it’s the perfect Halloween flick, though just fine for a July night as well. (MGM's Mark Of The Vampire wasn't part of the Shock package, but it did run a couple of times on another Chicago channel. Again, I thought of this as a Dracula movie until older and wiser, but it cemented in my mind the idea of Lugosi as the main man amongst movie vampires.)
I’d seen and admired the RKO production King Kong in one of its last theatrical revivals. Therefore, I found Son of Kong truly special with more of the convincingly animated dinosaurs. It was a perfect continuation to its parent film, with again, a very sad ending. The Shock movie was usually followed by an hour of pro wrestling (which was sham, even in those days), a final generic prayer by some local minister, and the national anthem, going dark by 12:30 or 1 a.m. That prayer, that anthem and the static that followed always made me feel lonely. The kids who kept to regular, reasonable bedtimes were spared this experience … the poor devils. 2
Aug Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (Universal, 1943) What can one say about the title Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man? It’s direct and literal, but very busy, even with that lame verb "meets." This was no small thing. Even given the occasional sequel, each major character in the Universal Universe occupied its own world, its own time line... until now. Now it became clear that these creatures existed in the same dimension, and could interact. To hell with Superman and Batman and World’s Finest Comics, this promised to be the greatest crossover ever! Well, it was pretty good. My Dad pointed out ‘way back then that Lugosi had no business playing The Monster, and that was to be the historical consensus. The film is fun.
I was surprised to find The Body Snatcher on the list, as I don’t recall it as part of the Shock series. I had always assumed I’d seen it for the first time many years later. Perhaps I had been hoping for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a film I that loved, and switched it off once I learned this wasn’t it. Today, The Body Snatcher is one of my all-time favorites, a literate, elegant film, a close adaptation of a classic story of real life horrors (the anti-science attitudes not the least of these). Karloff and Henry Daniell are just great, and Lugosi contributes. With Lugosi at his most hysterical, The Raven is loopy fun. You get a disfigured Karloff and a house full of torture chambers, all at a manic pace. I guess that this was for me a backhanded introduction to Edgar Allan Poe. For the remainder of my school years, I would survive many an English course by doing book reports, projects and whatnot on ol’ Edgar’s stuff. He saved me from Walt Whitman and Herman Melville.
She-Wolf Of London is a perennial disappointment, a boring mystery from Universal’s declining years, with just a few horror trappings. It has notoriety from being reissued along with the quality films in Universal home video sets. The Strange Case Of Dr. RX I’d totally forgotten. I had been taught that "Rx" indicates a drugstore, and used to think that the title was a typo for Doctor X or The Return of Dr. X. I did manage to catch a screening at the 2005 Monster Bash, and enjoyed the film. It centers upon a detective played by Patric Knowles and assisted by Anne Gwynne and involves mysterious murders and brain transplants. The comic relief players Mantan Moreland and Shemp Howard steal the film. Shemp, that Other Third Stooge was always less popular than his brother, but I doubt that Curly Howard could have successfully carried off Shemp’s roles in films closer to the mainstream.
Just a note: it's entirely possible that some of these films got pre-empted by a sports event or critical news coverage. Of course, it's not as if the next day’s newspapers would have recorded the switch, so I cannot swear that they were all shown as scheduled. The record will surface one day, but I won’t be holding my breath. It's also possible that I managed to entirely miss one of the films of which I have no memory. I can't see how I would let that come to pass, but there were family visits that may have left me without a TV set on Saturday night, power failures that may have made watching impossible, important events on a Sunday that may have required me to turn in early . . . I just don't know. I did do other things in those days, really. I just don’t remember the other things as well. I do know that my folks never sent me to bed early, or without supper: that simply wasn’t their style. They commanded respect in other ways, so their disapproval was punishment enough. I should have turned out a really bad sort without the tried and true discipline, but somehow I became a respectable citizen, albeit with some peculiarities, such as writing for horror ‘zines. 6
Sep The Mummy's Ghost (Universal, 1944) It’s Kharis again, with a superbly arrogant John Carradine. The Mummy’s Ghost has an unusually tragic ending, with the young woman undergoing instant aging, and that stayed with me a long time. The Brighton Strangler was another mostly boring mystery. The Undying Monster was an unusual, non-Universal werewolf tale that I remembered fondly but rarely got to see thereafter.
A repeat of Frankenstein was a welcome event. A curious thing: most of the adults I knew back then scorned the idea watching a movie more than once. "I’ve seen it," was a way to end a conversation about what to watch. "Rerun" was a dirty word. You have to be crazy, they thought, to watch a film two, three or more times in your life. That attitude must have changed; else home video would never have taken off as it did, so I figure that I stand vindicated. I always maintained that I’d rather watch a good old one again and again than watch something lousy simply because it’s newer. 4
Oct I Walked With A Zombie (RKO, 1943) I’d later learn to appreciate I Walked With a Zombie, one of the moody Val Lewton-produced classics, though it was hardly a favorite back then. Night of Terror, I find, was a 1933 Columbia offering with Lugosi and Wallace Ford. It might have been Yogi and Whitey Ford for all I can recall about it. On the other hand, Bride Of The Monster was something else! It had an odd look to it, and a very creaky Lugosi in it. Of course, it turns out that it was only a few years old, and extremely cheap, even when compared to the lesser films of this series. This must have been my introduction to the cinema of Ed Wood, but so help me, I thought the film was okay. It stumbled along at a nice clip, and Tor Johnson was an effective monster.
I don’t know just what they showed on November 1: the listings have only the noncommittal word "film," and as you’ve probably determined, my memory’s not that good -- or no good at all, I forget which. Indeed, we may never know, so the first year of Shock ultimately ends in mystery. The new season would begin November 8 with--drum roll, please--The Bride of Frankenstein. So, there’d be new (to me) chapters in those great series, plus repeats of the best of them. I needn’t tell you that I continued to watch every week, whenever I could, meeting old friends on the tube and expanding my knowledge of fantastic cinema.
There were few things that my family watched together as often as those films. Mom and Dad worked long hours in their grocery store. My brother and I had school during the day and determined ball playing and whatever in the evenings. But Saturday night was a family event. Because I learned at once that the monsters were great (usually) actors in great (usually) makeup, I would never be afraid of such things again. Fascinated, yes, but afraid never. In those days, we first-graders at St. John the Baptist (the school was Catholic despite that name) Elementary were expected to gather at the church on Sunday morning for Mass. Our folks would drop us off, and we’d loiter in the parking lot until the appointed hour. The school was co-educational, but there was de facto segregation by gender, and we wouldn’t want it any other way, not in those days at least. I mean, who wanted to talk to girls?
I do know that we little boys would talk of nothing else but last night’s Shock Theater. We’d recite the dialogue, sometimes play out the scenes. "I’m Frankenstein…die, Ygor!" we’d say, pushing the other kid off the little stairway on a harrowing three-foot fall into imaginary molten sulfur -- all of this while done up in freshly shined shoes, pressed pants, clean white shirts and little neckties. Now, I’m not sure why the good sisters who ran the school didn’t call in the bishop, or the saintly Cardinal Stritch himself to put a stop to it. Let me play psychologist here: I believe that the "monster" business provided a creative outlet for mild misfits, the socially awkward kids. We practiced reading with Famous Monsters Of Filmland, or better still Castle Of Frankenstein. We developed some critical skills here in evaluating these films, learned of cameras and lenses and makeup and special effects.
We were introduced to some great literature, and learned to express ourselves in letters to the editor. But since our genre was the ghetto of the film business, we couldn’t get too snooty about it. Most of the like-minded people I’ve met since then are pretty nice folks. The real monsters settled elsewhere. Alas, the monster business probably couldn’t help the real losers who were on their way to a life of crime, and those who were programmed to be exemplary citizens from the start probably didn’t need it. But I really do believe that it helped a lot of us. (Don Mankowski dedicates this to his excellent mother, Marcillia.) Thanks, Don. This has truly been a nostalgic trip through Monster Boomer Memory Lane for a lot of us, and it's much appreciated. As you said, the Monster craze of the Fifties and early Sixties, sparked by the release of the Shock Theater horror movie package to television, gave countless youngsters lots of fun, chills, and even taught them a thing or two. It's too bad that this kind of innocent enjoyment isn't available to the kids today. But, then again, perhaps it is...if they're lucky enough to have parents who themselves were Monster Boomers. Article copyright © Don Mankowski |
