By JOE WINTERS

Yes, another election year, and with it, the question of having made the wise choices on who we want to lead our nation, our states, our towns, and so forth. Only time will tell if we chose the lesser of two evils, as we’re so fond of saying. I really wish we could come up with some new clichés, but campaigns themselves are so clinched, it’s hard to respond any other way.

So, as we stand at the threshold of a new millennium…ooh, there’s a good one…right up there with "it’s time for a change," a favorite slogan among non-incumbents, even when things are going good for us. Anyway, as we cross that bridge to the 21st century (wait, we did that with Clinton) to those thousand points of light (no, that was Bush), ask not what your country can do for you, but let me make this perfectly clear. You have nothing to fear, but the buck stops here.

Where’s the outrage? Where’s the beef? Okay, before some former candidate says "well, there you go again," let's use the medium of film, horror films, to cut through the rhetoric and re-examine our political roots by exploring the distinguished careers of some of HORROR-WOODS' more celebrated politicos.

We’ll start on the local level, years ago when quaint, peaceful European villages seemed easy to maintain…on the surface. From time to time, however, villagers had their share of problems, often at the hands of a certain Baron Frankenstein, his heirs and followers, each determined to revive the Baron’s infamous creation. It was then that a firm hand was needed to deal with such a crisis…especially in an election year.

And nothing stirs up enthusiasm among potential voters like a blustering Burgomeister (Lionel Belmore in 1931’s "Frankenstein") shaking his fist and bellowing "Get him alive if you can…but get him!" And thus, with pitchforks, torches, and pointed sticks in hand, an angry populace begins the first in a series of perilous pursuits against the poor, misunderstood Monster (Boris Karloff).

You’d think Belmore would be a shoe-in for re-election, but it seems he was replaced overnight with E.E.Clive in 1935’s "Bride of Frankenstein." Here we have a less boisterous, yet even more re-assuring man in charge.

Well, re-assuring to himself at least. As far as maintaining order was concerned, he proved as ineffective as his predecessor. I mean, if you can’t keep village loudmouth Una O’Connor in line, what chance do you have keeping the Monster under control?

For the record, previous Burgomaster Belmore won a similar post in another town in 1933’s The Vampire Bat. Here he was his usual bombastic self, proclaiming "Vampires are at large I tell you…vampires!" He was proven wrong, of course, but not before an out-of-control mob sent poor innocent village idiot Herman (Dwight Frye) to his death.

By the time of 1939’s Son Of Frankenstein a recurring hot potato issue was dropped into the hands of yet another Burgomaster (Lawrence Grant) and his council (with familiar faces including two-time loser Lionel Belmore, who apparently was back after being kicked out of his previous post and town). Here the burghers wrestle with the problem of what to do about the new Baron Frankenstein (Basil Rathbone), just arrived in their town of Frankenstein. You’d think they’d change the name of the town for starters, just as you’d think they could get a simple hanging right, but broken-necked Ygor (Bela Lugosi) outwits them at every turn, cleverly killing them off one by one with the help of the Monster (Boris Karloff again), who, like Ygor, apparently wasn’t registered to simply vote them out.

Lawrence Grant was still in charge, though now referred to as Mayor in The Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942). The villagers and councilmen, including good old Lionel Belmore (whose character was killed in the previous film, so this must have been a twin), still whining over their misfortunes and blaming it all on the Monster’s curse, are given official permission to blow up the castle, causing Ygor (Lugosi again) and the Monster (Lon Chaney Jr.) to re-locate in sunny Vasaria.

In Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (1943) the Mayor (Lionel Atwill) of Vasaria urges his fellow citizens to pretend to be friends with the Monster (now played by Bela Lugosi). The response from one cynical citizen is "Sure, why not elect it Mayor?" Hmm, there’s a thought. It wouldn’t have been the first time a monster was elected in that neck of the woods, and besides, the campaign posters might have become collectors’ items.

We’ll never know, for the same villager who made the sarcastic statement opted instead to blow up the dam, ending (well, postponing) the threat of two monsters.

The Monster (Glenn Strange) and the Wolf Man (Lon Chaney Jr.) turned up the following year, however, in House Of Frankenstein along with Dracula (John Carradine), whom mad doctor Niemann (Boris Karloff) unleashed upon his own old enemy Burgomaster Hussman (Sig Ruman).

And so it went during the good old days where elected officials were lucky to be rejected at the polls, for they were otherwise rarely allowed to simply retire from office. Our esteemed leaders would be equally unfortunate in the space age Fifties, when power-hungry invaders, with their own ideas of government, had entirely different plans for figures of authority, from mayors to generals. In movies like It Conquered The World (1956) and The Brain Eaters (1958) monsters from other planets and from beneath the Earth would take over the minds of town bigwigs as an efficient means of hastening the sinister agenda of enslaving town after town. Usually, the aliens never got further than one town before being stopped, thanks to the diligence and dedication of our elected…oh, who am I kidding…it was either the army or the scientists or the teenagers who saved the day.

Of course, foreign powers of the human variety could prove quite ambitious, setting their sites on United States presidents as puppets in evil schemes to take over the free world in films like The Manchurian Candidate (1962). Satan himself threw his hat (or horns) into the ring when he sired a son in The Omen (1976). That son would one day stalk the halls of power, and perhaps provide naughty officials with the old excuse, "the Devil made me do it."

Not to be outdone, other forces from out of this world would try the subversive approach in films like The Hidden (1987), where a slimy alien whatsis transfers in and out of the bodies of various human hosts, which when inhabited, become nearly unstoppable engines of destruction. Following a series of mishaps, the alien decides to inhabit the body of a popular Presidential candidate. If such was the case in real life, it might explain the behavior of several Presidents.

Presidents must be prepared for anything, on screen and off.

In director John Carpenter’s Escape From New York (1981) the President (Donald Pleasence), on his way to a conference to save the world, escaped a sabotaged Air Force One, only to find himself trapped in the Big Apple, which unfortunately had been converted into a maximum security prison.

In Dreamscape (1984), nasty White House aide Christopher Plummer sent a psychic psychopath into the very dreams of the President (Eddie Albert) to assassinate him from within. In these films, our chief executives are saved by stalwart heroes Kurt Russell and Dennis Quaid respectively. In both films, however, it is the Presidents who strike a death blow for liberty to their antagonists. President Pleasence guns down the self-styled Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes), and President Albert impales his would be assailant (David Patrick Kelly) while said villain is in serpent form! Another Commander-In-Chief (Bill Pulman) who starts off as a wimp, then rises to the occasion to kick some alien butt is on hand in Independence Day (1996), along with more stereotypical Earth people than you can shake a death ray at.

In most cases, our elected officials would seem to have the best interests of their constituents at heart. Take the Mayor of Amity Cove…please.

In Jaws (1975), Hizzoner Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) was not about to let a little thing like a hungry marauding shark disrupt the tourist trade,

the town’s major source of income. You’ll notice, though, the Mayor himself stayed out of the water and was back for another term in Jaws II (1978). Politicians, like sharks, can be quite smart when they have to be.

It’s up to the voters to be just a little bit smarter.

Thanks, Joe, for ferreting out the political overtones (and political characters) that make the films we love just that much more scary.  Now, if we could only convince the folks in Washington to move Camp David to Amity Island...

Article copyright © Joe Winters

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