You can tell the film’s blazing 1970s topicality by reading
the “Sound by” credit.
And, yes, the Technical Advisor’s name is a deliberate
portmanteau of Marvel’s Stan Lee with the director Stanley Kubrick.
As our story opens, David Rush as the Mad
Scientist/Burgomeister is performing a delicate experiment.The secret formula will, in fact, lead to
*gasp* several deaths.
It’s deliberate that David resembles Groucho Marx.(That’s a greasepaint moustache.)
The Mad Scientist’s lab was set in my parents’ garage,
complete with a Visible Man model and my big brother’s chemical set.
Cued by his hunchbacked assistant—played by Bill Hughes
(seen again later)—, the Mad Scientist welcomes his gawky guinea pig.
Yep, yours truly.I
looked like this in the senior photo taken later, in fall of this year:
By the way, that chapeau atop my dome was purchased at the
OSU (OK State University) bookstore.
It’s bright orange.I
had worn the thing previously in our church’s presentation of Godspell,
in November, 1972.
Our sucker subject has come to the Doctor because of
a bad headache.A perfect prospect for
the Doctor’s formula!
And now, after some amateur stop-motion hand-hair-growing, a
full reveal of the monstrous transformation!
Wait a minute!That’s no wolfman!
Nope, for some reason we didn’t use a werewolf face ... we
used a thin rubber skull mask, augmented by a glued-on beard and my glasses,
crowned by the OSU derby.
When the “wolfman” makes a pass at the astounded Doctor, the
scientist tries to ward the creature off with some scissors.
This line refers to the creature’s originally intended
hirsute state.
And, of course, the “little snip” business is another
Marxist reference, to the infamous barber scene from Monkey Business, when a
moustache trim ends in a tiny Hitlerian bristle.
You may notice that the transformed monster (that’s me)
doesn’t do a lot of damage to the laboratory.Director David Rush explains:“One
memory is, I recall Bill [Hughes] and I wanted you to be more violent once you
turned into the monster but for some reason you didn't want to wreck your
parents’ garage. We compromised with
your energetic kick of the plastic bottles under the table.”
After the “wolfman” escapes, he participates in another film
homage, this time to the sequence in 1931’s Frankenstein.
Of course, our scene was more rudely hewn.And, I’ll have you know, Terror of the Wolfman
parodied Frankenstein a FULL YEAR before Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks did
it in Young Frankenstein!So
there!
By the way, Kathy our mermaid was a swell sport.
The Lonesome Lover seeking his lost mate.
After this foul deed, our “wolfman” runs away, and directly
past Bill Hughes, our sheriff with a rifle.Talk about Instant News!No
sooner does the fiend leave the maiden’s body behind ... than it’s front-page
news on the newspaper the same day!
EXTRA SPECIAL UPDATE:We are now able to pinpoint the shooting of the movie (or at least the newspaper scene). The Headline "Nixon Believes Field Unlimited, Sources Report" undoubtedly is from May, 1973. Nixon's 2nd Attorney General, Richard Kleindienst, resigned on April 30, 1973. Then-Secretary of Defense Elliott Richardson was tapped for the AG slot at the end of May, 1973. This newspaper (thus the scene) came from that interregnum of AGs.
Strangely enough, the “wolfman” clambers into his home and
becomes mysteriously delivered of his affliction.Maybe the eldritch draught wore off?
Never mind, because he’s been tracked down and will pay the
price for his dirty deeds.You can also
get a good glimpse of Sheriff Bill Hughes.
He developed the film and edited it.As far as the dubbed music soundtrack, he
writes, “For the record I lifted the music from these sources:DVD of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu – DVD of The
Third Man, directed by Carol Reed with Joseph Cotton and Orson Welles –
Marx Brothers music found somewhere on the Internet.”
And now you, my friends, may
view Terror
of the Wolfman!
That's all, my friends, until the beginning of October. Come back on Monday, October 1st, for BLOG-O-WEEN!
The 1897
military march “Entry of the Gladiators,” by Czech composer Julius Fučík, is
instantly recognizable as “circus music.”Since the early 1900s, this flamboyant piece has been used as a screamer
march for circuses and shows as the acts enter the arena.The tune’s familiarity has led to its being
included in many a pop song—over 60, according to whosampled.com.Just a few of the acts to include riffs or
melodies from “Entry”:
·“The Show Must Go On,” Three Dog Night, 1974
·“Merry Go Round,” Keith Sweat, 1990
·“Goodbye Cruel World,” James Darren, 1961
·“Hokus Pokus,” Insane Clown Posse, 1997
·“Tight Rope,” Leon Russell, 1972
·“Don’t Get It Twisted,” Gwen Stefani, 2006
·“Killer Klowns from Outer Space,” The Dickies,
1988
·“Yakety Sax,” Boots Randolph, 1963
·“Amusement Park,” 50 Cent, 2007
·“Palisades Park,” Freddy Cannon, 1962
·“Rhymin’ Man,” Frank Zappa, 1988
·“Chaos and Disorder,” Prince, 1996
·“Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n
Roll),” Elton John, 1973
You will also
encounter “Entry of the Gladiators” in films such as:
·Mary Poppins, 1964
·Octopussy, 1983
·Madagascar 3, 2012
See you
next Monday, with a devastating exposé on a long-lost horror classic!
Many futuristic inventions have come to pass,
while some may never be realized.
REPLACEMENT PARTS
One angle on cloning is the idea of
growing perfect spare organs. If your heart is likely to fail, why not
have a new one waiting in a vat somewhere? The well-known 1997 photo
supposedly showing a human ear growing on a mouse actually depicted a construct
of mold-injected cow cartilage.
In fiction, however,
organic spare parts often come from unwilling donors. As narrated by John
Byrne in the 1987 World
of Kryptonminiseries, Krypton
fought its Clone War over body farms and the question of humanity. Larry
Niven’s 1967 story “The Jigsaw Man,” first printed in Dangerous Visions, concerns a society
that condemns people to death over things such as traffic violations, in order
to harvest organs for the well-to-do. The concept is still resonant in
books, as in Michael Marshall Smith’s 1998 novel Spares.
Taking the spare-parts idea to
its farthest extreme, the computer RPG Xenogears theorizes that
humanity was begun to provide spare parts for an immense bioweapon (called
Deus, no less).
***************************************
SONIC WEAPONRY The concept of weaponized sound has been around since the
storied Battle of Jericho.
In more recent times,
fictional examples include Warhammer 40k, Kate Bush’s 1986
song “Experiment IV,” and Ayn Rand’s Project X in Atlas Shrugged. The
Men Who Stare at Goats depicted Barney’s
song as musical torture (accurate, no?); but what could be worse than A
Clockwork Orange’s perversion of the music of Ludwig van?
In 1990, it took a month of
blaring rock music for the US Army to spur Panama’s Manuel Noriega to
surrender. BBC news reports alleged a similar employment of western music
against Iraqi prisoners during the Second Persian Gulf War in 2003. The offensive use of pulsed
sound waves is a reality.
The Long Range Acoustic Device has been invoked for such mundane goals
as dispersing birds from airports or wind farms, or for more ad hominem tasks —
against political protestors and Somalian pirates. A plane with an LRAD
device was sighted above the 2012 Olympics, but it’s not known if the device
was deployed. Extremely high-power sound waves can disrupt or destroy the
eardrums of a target and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually
sufficient to incapacitate a person. Less powerful sound waves can cause humans
to experience nausea or discomfort. The next time you yell at somebody to
turn down their loud music, you can back your request up with science!
I was born at a very early age, in a hospital to be near my mother. After appearing in productions of both GODSPELL and JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR in the 1970s, I found a wonderful wife and wrote many love songs to her, but not as many love songs as I write to God my Savior and Redeemer. We have three kids (one of each) -- wait for it -- blonde, brunette, and redhead.
