Universal Monsters Monday IV

Taking a break from the cards this week. First, though, it was a full moon with total quiet and hot weather, just like at the beginning of summer when I saw Harry's ghost. It was actually a quiet train ride from the readings over all, Mike Martinez, Joe Weintraub, and I talked about old Polish bakeries and Lithuanian restaurants until they left me at Grand and Harrison, respectively. I had a few extra minutes and so I got off at Roosevelt to get a big bottle of Fiji water, and on the way back I went down an alley to take some photos of the old Cleopatra bar, but they may come out dark. Over the years, from the elevated stop, I would watch the logo peel away over the back alley. It dawns on me that it was likely the fact that I then got on a more quiet train when I was again in the subway. So there you go.

I scanned some pages from UNIVERSAL MONSTERS 1931-1946, published by McFarland Press in 1988. I knew of the book and ended up buying it from Dennis Druktenis, publisher of SCARY MONSTERS magazine. (I wrote a tribute to John Agar after he died for SM, the magazine is still going strong and they sell it at Borders.) I cut a deal but still paid $60.00 for the book, which was totally fine with me, as it took me that entire summer to read. Lots of facts, like how and where Maria Ouspenskya died, and the fact that Dwight Frye (Renfield from DRACULA, above) died on his 41st birthday after he stepped off a bus and was hit by a car.

The book starts with my lookalike, FRANKENSTEIN, and ends with the film, THE BRUTE, with my OTHER lookalike, Rondo Hatten. There are many, many full page photos. The book even covers the Abbot & Costello films and the INNER SANCTUM series which starred Lon Chaney Jr.

Next week I'll get back to the cards. I really want to do THE MUMMY, but I should go back chronologically. So Dracula it will be. And, as you can see in the last image, I shrank each of these scans. And I will shit you not, I've always seen the scans at 2250 or 1215 on EVERYTHING. So where the hell did 1111 come from? Go ahead, Renfield, laugh it off. You ghoul.

Dell Universal Monsters

How could this have gone so wrong? Of the above book, in the first image, I bought FRANKENSTEIN at WizardWorld when it was still the Chicago ComiCon (WW does not mention Chicago on their badges or ads, the dicks). When I was in my teens, there were those machines where you saw the comics displayed in a huge vending machine, much like the snack machines in the present. Whatever comic came sliding out, there'd be a different one now showing. Completely random. It might go from BEYOND THE UNKNOWN to LITTLE LULU. This is where I encountered those other nutty books, and I bought them strictly for the names, just as a lot of kids my age in 1972 did. The vending machines were at the now-demolished Fairway, which had always been closed for health violations, and the Zayre department store over dere by Southwest Highway and Mr. Shrimp. Frank N. Stone was a guy who was a superhero who fought wearing a green mask like his ancestor (?) and I think was a lawyer, too. Dracula is the goofiest of the bunch because his series last the longest, seven issues, although issues 5, 6, and 7, reprinted issues 1, 2, and 3 with the price hike from 12 to 15 cents. No reprint of issue 4 and no issue 8. Of course, back then it took longer to see the sales numbers come in, so it could be that by the time #4 was out, Dell realized that that series was doing the best of the three. WEREWOLF was the best, if you could call it that, because the guy was a secret agent and he wasn't a werewolf. But he had a German shepherd named Wolf. I think his series last two issues. It's crazy that I have most of these issues--if I really looked, I'll bet I'm missing three issues out of all the books--but I haven't run into the one-shots. Oh, I just remembered, I have THE CREATURE, too, but someone gave that to me. Oh, Dell, where did you go wrong? Well, even with bad artwork, at least WEREWOLF was worth it.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Your Television...

I'll get back to my photo adventure tonight, but several people brought up the old Outer Limits trading cards, Jelly Man in particular. Here's my set, though my favorite is a tie between The Thing From Mercury and the Xanthi Misfits (which were wasps with heads like Norman Fell). One day, I'll do a post on my Univeral Monsters trading card set, of which I'm missing only three out of 106. And no trading card posting would be complete without me showing myself in a 1992 trading card that Greg Loudon did for the AIDS Awareness series. If Greg could one day do a zombie card set, I don't think I'll have to do much more than just show up and make my nose bleed...Wayne

Put On My Graveyard Suit

Been to three wakes in six weeks. My dad's partner Big Bill, from a few entries back, lost his sister, but sandwiched around that, his wife Joan lost bother her parents. It was weird tonight, seeing the empty chair the old man had sat in back in November. Bill keeps trying to get dad to go to these monthly cop gatherings, but my dad just wants to forget most of it. What the hell, I'm the one telling all the stories, including the one that pushed him over the edge, the crack mother who rolled over on the mattress and melted her baby into a coil heater. The funeral home is in Archer Heights, still a pretty big polak enclave. An Apteka is a kind of drug store. Lots of Zimne Piwo OLD STYLE signs on the taverns. I have a Bobak Sausage jar that I use to keep heads in (my twin nieces' broke a lot of things when they were tykes, and I stopped complaining once I realized how fun a head jar would be. Because all my work clothes now consist of jeans and t-shirts, all smelling of ink and odors not found in the Aqua-Dots from China, I've only worn my suit four times this year. Yeah, that one above. I miss wearing my ties, my Universal Monsters tie, my Casablanca tie. I bought that really creepy tie with the swimmers at the thrift store, but I've yet to wear it, not having any clothing to match it. Perhaps I'll wear it when I'm on the 66th Floor of the Sears Tower screaming "I AM SPARTACUS!" I'll bet the news choppers will zoom in, thinking the tie is a clue....Wayne

House of Monsters

Bob caught this with only the images, which i sent from home. We had been talking about various shops full of goodies like dinosaurs and old books and vinyl records, and I thought of the House of Monsters, which closed about three years back. It was on the third floor of the Flatiron building at North and Milwaukee, the ground floor of which had several intriguing businesses such as The Quaker Goes Deaf, an oldies record store (sadly flooded during heavy rains in the late 90s) and a few small restaurants and tiny shops. The upper floors, accessible from a massive stairwell or the clown-painted hand crank elevator, were artist lofts. This area of Wicker Park was a haunt to Nelson Algren and has been regentrified to the point that nothing is as recognizable now as it was even ten, well, fifteen years ago. Ah, but House of Monsters. I still have a Universal Monsters tie I bought there, a Godzilla one was badly stained by some nasty coffee. Everything one could want, most I could not afford. I found copies of Fangoria I did reviews for and its sister magazine, Gorezone, which had my stories in it, back in the day. 16mm Japanese films, Frankenstein stamps and mousepads and keychains. Dozens of models and ready-made dolls and articulated scary things. Ceiling high racks of VHS tapes ranging from Murders in the Rue Morgue to Nightmare on Bare Mountain, which takes place at a nudist colony. I was able to locate the original version of Carnival of Souls there, about the creepiest, cheaply made film that I've ever seen and highly recommend. I don't know if HoM is selling online now, but i really don't care, because there is no real experience, and joy, and pleasure, as walking up that Frankenstein's castle stairwell and opening the door on such claustrophobic madness.

I'm Not Growing...You're Shrinking!

I'm still listening to that cassette and there's a great trailer from THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, as stated above. I just wished I had thought of posting Col. Glen Manning (after being exposed to a plutonium blast) at the same time I put David Hasselhoff out there. The best part of the film is that, when actor Glenn Langen grows and starts wearing that diaper, everybody normal-size sound like the Pillsbury Doughboy to him. He terrorizes Las Vegas, falls into Hoover Dam after being shot, then appears in the sequel as The Amazing Colossal BEAST, with pretty much half his giant-size face a grinning skull. The man-diaper stayed on during the fateful fall.
Back to last night: Screaming Yellow Theater was on WFLD Channel 12 (now Fox)on Friday nights, starting in 1970, and hosted by Jerry G. Bishop, a radio DJ. Dressed as Svengoolie, he was a hippie vampire with long green hair and red and white striped bell bottoms, and a red sweatshirt and peace medallion. He'd sing the goofy lyrics above and did a bunch of gag jokes, car commercials, and then all of Chicago would see, what seemed like every other week, a Vincent Price movie. In the 80s, Rick Koz took over as Son of Sven, eventually dropping the Son part with Bishop's well wishes as the latter retired to Florida. Koz is one of the coolest, most patient fellows who has hosted or guested at maybe six conventions I've been to this decade. But we had two night of greatness, if only one horror host, as Creature Features aired on WGN Channel 9 Saturday nights at 10:30. The theme was, as Richard Chwedyk emailed me, Mancini's "Experiment in Terror," which was also used in a Sherlock Holmes film. The best thing about CF was that every single film they showed was a Universal Monsters film. The Old Guard themselves, Dracula, The Monster and His Mate, poor Larry Talbot, with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde tossed in along with Abbott & Costello...fun times, a long, long time ago.