By MIKE DECAPITE

(For Alex Stromsky)

Did you get Famous Monsters Of Filmland when you were a kid?

I loved that magazine. My grandmother took me on Saturdays to a deep, dark drugstore at Fairfield and West 11th so I could pick out a few comic books or a magazine. Mr. Lach, the owner, wouldn’t let me look at Creepy, Eerie, or Vampirella because the covers were similar and he couldn’t tell, from behind the soda counter, which was the sexy one. If I got too close to them he issued a grunt of warning, which carried also a note of apology for having to stock this kind of thing.

But I only cared about Famous Monsters Of Filmland. I couldn’t understand why they released it monthly. My relief at the appearance of a new issue was undercut by the knowledge that I’d have to wait a month, whatever that meant, for another. I didn’t know why they didn’t just release them weekly. Or—what the hell—all at once. Just let ‘em go! We need to know this stuff! We need pictures; we need information about the various Frankensteins, Mummies and Sons of Mummies, Mr. Hydes, and the whole Hungarian diasporas of vampires.

How can we live without freshly-uncovered stills from the lost London After Midnight—Lon Chaney with his beaver hat, talc-white face, and jack-o’-lantern grin? Okay, we can live, but is it really living without hard facts about The Mummy’s Curse, and what exactly befell those foolhardy archeologists—to a man—sometimes long after each had returned to his life and family at home? Oh sure, it looks like he slipped in the bathtub.

What powers did the silent Golem possess? What are the different biographies of Nosferatu and Dracula? Which one would win a fight? Who would win between the Wolf Man and the Werewolf of London? (I finally settled this question last night, reviewing a VHS tape of The Werewolf Of London as part of my extensive research for the present article. The Werewolf of London looked way cooler with his widow’s peak, but before leaving the house he threw on a scarf and hat, which seems a delicate touch, and every person he attacked was nearly able to overpower him. One of his victims knocked him over with a stick!

What, the Wolf Man needs a silver bullet, and all it took with this British hopeful was a branch from a dead sycamore?) Would we ever know more about the Frankenstein Monster’s time in the Arctic? Does the Invisible Man deserve to be included in this pantheon? Is he just a man like the rest of us with an unhappy burden to bear, or does he mean us harm? Was the Hunchback of Notre Dame simply misunderstood? Of the three Phantoms of the Opera—Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbert Lom—which told the real story, got closest to the secret sorrow at the heart of the matter?

What exactly was going on in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari? Was he more to be feared than the mysterious Dr. Phibes? And the Mole Men—what are they really doing down there? Are they well-supplied in their underground city? Self-sufficient? Do they just want to be left alone?

This was long before home video, so the movies were unavailable except by the narrow trickle allowed by weekend monster movie hosts. Because he’d seen a few of them on their first release, I regarded my father as a crucial link, a documentary witness, and I peppered him with questions and plagued him with a continual stream of trivia ("Bela Lugosi spoke so little English when he first played Dracula that he had to learn his lines phonetically!").

I sent away for the Famous Monsters Speak LP—one side Frankenstein, one side Dracula—recorded by the incomparable Gabe Dell, a former Bowery Boy turned impressionist. Great cover: against a livid red background, Karloff’s Frankenstein monster stood with his arms hanging at his sides, looking sort of fatigued, beside Lugosi’s Dracula, who was holding a candle, with his other hand upheld in the familiar arthritic, hypnotizing gesture.

I even obtained, through a family friend who was acquainted with Dell, a signed headshot of the man himself ("Mike, I vant to suck your blood...").

The ads were as good as the articles. You could buy Super-8 films...Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon feet...Mole-Man hands...supposedly the real thing. Meaning, I guess, just like the real Mole Men. And those Aurora models? Forget about it. I had the Dracula and the Mummy in my room.

But I was haunted by The Forgotten Prisoner of Castle Mare. A skeleton chained to a dungeon wall. They forgot about him down there—it troubles me to this day. A skeleton about whom nothing seemed to be known. There were no feature articles, no tributes or stills, no synopses, there was no data, just the ad. My whole life I searched for the movie. It was only as an adult that I found out it was never a movie, only a model. Cruel hoax!

About ten years ago I found someone selling the model online, a comic book store in Pittsburgh. There it was, just as I remembered it: The Forgotten Prisoner of Castle Mare, shackled to the wall, suffering for eternity, laughing across the ages—demanding recognition if not release—clothed in rags. $180.

I called the store. The guy working there was eating a sandwich. He didn't know what I was talking about. I described the item. He put the sandwich down and went away to look for it, I heard him rummaging around. Finally he came back. I heard him blow the dust off the box.

He said "Yeah, we got it. It's still in the box, it's never been assembled."

"What else can you tell me about it?"

He said "It's a skeleton chained to a wall by his neck. Stone wall. And it looks like there's a couple of other skulls by his feet."

I thought it over.

I said, "Is it scary?"

He said, "Well…yeah, it's kinda scary."

In the end I didn’t get it, I balked at the price. I decided it was worth more to me as a dream.

But probing research for this article revealed that these models are on sale. After all these years! I wasn’t the only one—there must’ve been a demand! They’re back in production—rolling off the line— waiting to be reassembled—they’re rising again!— twenty bucks each!—including The Forgotten Prisoner...

I quote from the product description:

He’s the last remaining prisoner from years gone by. Long since passed, and now all that remains are his bones as proof to his existence. His crimes have long been forgotten. His sentence fulfilled. However, this unfortunate prisoner was lost in the system, and now his bones are the only remains that hang from the dreaded shackles of his prison cell. Until now. Requires plastic cement.

The person who wrote that feels just like I do—you can hear it—he’s been wrestling with this for thirty years...

You can’t keep a dream down.