Universal Monsters Tribute

Courtesy of Fright Night Cinema

MONSTER PHOTO FUN 2016 PART 2

More ghoulish goofiness. As always, click on the photo to enlarge it.

MONSTER PHOTO FUN 2016

You knew it was coming. More Monster Photo Fun. The spawn of the old Cracked Magazine monster issues and the Topps You'll Die Laughing Cards. As always, click on the photo to enlarge.

Only a true monster movie fan will get that joke.

Here are links to the previous post featuring Monster Photo Fun.

Monster Photo Fun 1
Monster Photo Fun 2
Monster Photo Fun 3
Monster Photo Fun 4
Monster Photo Fun 5
Monster Photo Fun 6
Monster Photo Fun 2015

BTW, you will notice an improved quality, thanks to my new computer. Enjoy!

FRANKENSTEIN GIF

HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES!
AND BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN 2016

It is time again for the Countdown to Halloween. I enjoy this because I get a great amount of traffic to this blog, but also because I get to write about monster movies and horror related music. Enjoy and leave a comment to let me know you visited.

I found this cool horror movie collage on Tumblr. If I found out whop posted it, I'll give them credit. I'll have to go back and look.

70s HORROR COMICS

I bought these 70s horror comics last month, but thought I would wait until Halloween to share them with you (Sorry, I'm a few hours late).

SCARY RANDOM HORROR TRIVIA

Stuntman Alex Stevens was the werewolf (top photo) on Dark Shadows. He also was the clumsy baker (bottom photo) at the end of the counting sequences on Sesame Street. On Dark Shadows, they used a sound effects for the growl (sometimes badly slip cued). On Sesame Street, they overdubbed the voice of Jim Henson, announcing the number of fancy pastries he was going to drop on the way down the stairs.

Speaking of baking, Vincent Price's grandfather invented baking powder.

At the time he was making Night of the Living Dead, George Romero and his Image Ten production company was also making the "Picture Picture" sequences for Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

The mid-60s British horror film The Deadly Bees, features an uncredited appearance by the British band The Birds (referred to on MST3K as "The Skinnys") which featured guitarist Ron Wood, later of the Jeff Beck Group, The Faces and the Rolling Stones.

Actor/director Paul Naschy wrote several paperback Western's under the name Jack Mills.

Donnie Dunagan, who played Basil Rathbone's son in Son of Frankenstein, was also the voice of Bambi.

At the time she made The Brain That Wouldn't Die, actress Virginia Leith (above), who played "Jan in the Pan," was married to actor Donald Harron, best known as KORN newscaster Charlie Farquharson on Hee Haw.

Actor David Hess, who played Krugg in the original Last House On the Left, wrote Pat Boone's hit song, "Speedy Gonzales."

Lon Chaney Sr. made more than 150 movies in his lifetime, but only 40 of them survive intact. One of the lost films is London After Midnight, which was remade as Mark of the Vampire.

The 70s Ghost Busters

The 70s Monster Squad

Besides being cult horror comedies of the 80s, Ghost Busters and The Monster Squad both share their names with live action Saturday morning TV shows of the 70s.

Wes Craven named Freddy Kruger after a kid that used to beat him up in school.

The term "horror" as a movie genre was not used until 1934.

To make his face appear sunken, Boris Karloff took out his bridge work, while playing the Frankenstein monster.

Valarie Hobson, who was in Werewolf of London and Bride of Frankenstein, was later married to British politician John Profumo, who was involved in the sex scandal that was the subject of the 1989 film Scandal.

Mexican actor German Robles was the first movie vampire to have fangs. This was in the 1957 film The Vampire. The second was Christopher Lee in 1958's Horror of Dracula.

Fredric March was the first actor to win an Oscar for a horror movie for the 1931 version of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde.

Speaking of Fredric March: A play by Alberto Casella, "La Morte in vacanza," was filmed twice. First as Death Takes a Holiday (1934) with Fredric March and Meet Joe Black (1998) with Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt also lived in a mansion March had built while he was making Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.

The 1932 film The Mummy was not based on a fictional work but an original idea from Universal Pictures. Much of the film was parallel to the 1931 movie Dracula. The ankh was used a substitute for the crucifix. Edward Van Sloan's character, Dr. Muller, is similar to Dr. Van Helsing, which he also played in Dracula. Both use Swan Lake as their opening theme song.

The original design of the Creature from the Black Lagoon was based on the Oscar statue. The final design was created by a woman named Millicent Patrick (above), who was also an artist for Disney. She was not given credit for the design.

In an interview, actress Lenore Aubert (left) said making Abbott & Costello Meets Frankenstein was stressful because she was suffering from stomach flu and most of her wardrobe for the film consisted of white dresses.

The human characters from Scooby Doo were originally designed for a cartoon based on the TV series The Many Loves of Dobbie Gillis, to cash in on the success of the Archie cartoon series.

Bette Davis was unavailable to overdub some of her dialog in the made for TV horror film, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home. She asked for it to be overdubbed by actor/comedian Michael Greer, who stared in the horror film The Messiah of Evil. She had seen his imitation of her on the Tonight Show.

Artist Gene Colan based the look of the Marvel Comics Dracula on actor Jack Palance. One year later, in 1973, Palance played Dracula in a made for TV movie. 







 
  

DESDINOVA's HALLOWEEN PODCAST 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER

The final Halloween podcast of 2016. I've had fun doing these and hope to do more next year. I've been considering writing a book on the subject of Halloween music.

MONSTER PHOTO FUN 2015

Click to enlarge

I decided to create some more of these little creations for your entertainment. These are inspired by the Cracked magazine "For Monsters Only" issues. They say great minds think alike. Gilligan over a Retrospace has a similar post. Check it out.

Okay, the last two have nothing to do with monsters, but I saw those photos and could not resist. Those jokes just wrote themselves.

COUNTDOWN TO HALLOWEEN 2015 - WHAT TO DO THIS YEAR

It is that time of year again...the Countdown to Halloween.  I love participating in this blogging event, because I get to unleash to monster kid in me. The only draw back is that all year long I have great ideas for blog post and then I think, "I'll save that for the Countdown to Halloween." Of course, now that the Countdown to Halloween has come around, I've forgotten those ideas.

One thing for sure, I will have a podcast involving Halloween music. I'm debating whether it will feature full length songs or a mix or maybe TWO podcast this month.

Last year, I had a great idea for a post. It also took up quite a bit of time with some extra research and film viewing (not that I'm complaining). That tongue in cheek and incredibly tacky post, entitled "Horror Film Damsels Who Probably Had Accidents," over the past year, became one of the most popular post from last year's the Countdown To Halloween. I've actually found some more examples that could be used in a second post on this subject.

The most fun I had last year was making Monster Photo Fun post, which were inspired by the old Cracked magazine "For Monsters Only" issues. I made six post of these wacky creations. Unfortunately, it seems those didn't receive very many hits. That isn't going to stop me from creating some more. So apparently, people are not interested in corny captions on horror movie stills, but they like reading theories about the bodily functions of women in horror films.

I found it is easy to pull interesting photos from Pinterest and Tumblr. Of course, video and audio from YouTube is always good too.

I hope you have as much fun reading this years post as I do putting them together.



       

#THROWBACK THURSDAY - SUPER 8 MONSTER MOVIES

I always wanted a movie projector, so I could get these Super 8 monster movies and watch them. They were sold locally at K-Mart and in the back of Famous Monsters, Creepy, Vampirella and Eerie magazines. They were severely edited versions of the original and even had different titles. Here is a photo of some boxes I found on Pinterest.

CASTLE DRACULA FUN HOUSE COLORFORMS

Some of my favorite toys as a child were the many Colorform playsets I had. Castle Dracula Fun House was one I especially loved. What set this one apart from the others was the working doors in which you could hide the cartoonish versions of the famous Universal monsters behind, so you could torment the goofy guy in the ugly pajamas. I would like to know the artist name. I wish I knew what happened to my set, I would love for my 4 ear old great-nephew to play with it. You can click on the photos for a larger look.