Windmills Are Less Dangerous Than You Think

Not only did Victor Frankenstein survive being tossed from the windmill in Frankenstein, his critter survived in the basment, as told in more pages from the Universal coloring book.

"I was gonna make espresso!"

Ghouls with Attitude, Volume 2

Here is the second installation of Oddio Overplay’s Halloween record.  As I said last Monday, the comps are sadly no longer available from them!

Here are the tracks:

1)  Billy DeMarcus - Drac's Back

2)  Movie Trailer - Ghost In The Invisible Bikini

3)  Peter Pan Singers  - Theme to Casper the Friendly Ghost

4)  The Creatures - Mostly Ghostly

5)   Tyrone A' Saurus & his Cro-Magnons - The Monster Twist

6)  Mann Drake - Vampire's Ball

7)  Movie Trailer - The Return of Count Yorga

8)  The Hamburger Brothers - Omar The Vampire

9)  The Zanies - The Mad Scientist

10)  The Cool Ghoul - You Can't Ghoul Me

11)  Ted Cassidy - The Lurch

12)  The Detergents - Igor's Cellar

13)  The Milton the Monster Show - Theme Song

14)  Movie Trailer - Graveyard Tramps

15)  Cathy Mills - Monster Hop

16)  Glen Ryle - Wolf Gal

17)  Movie Trailer - Dr. Jeckyl and Sister Hyde

18)  Ralph Marterie and His Marlboro Men -  Alfred Hitchcock Presents

19)  Lois Prante Ellis and Mary Ann Parker - Troll At The General Meeting

20)  Jimmy Cross - I Want My Baby Back

21)  Count Baltes & The Egors - Opening The Coffin

22)  Sounds of Terror! - The Exorcism

23)  Al Zanino - The Vampire Speaks

And here is the link:   http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XB3JJYVJ  

  See you again soon!

from October 1964

My copy of this magazine has no cover any more, but I found an image of it somewhere.  Here it is, along with a seasonal song.

Trick-or-Treat Twins and a Poem

From the October 1965 Golden Magazine:

Even if she had help from Mom and Dad, that's still a fine effort for a nine-year-old.

Frankenstein Is Colorized!

...courtesy of my daughter Melissa, who was about 8 at the time.

Universal Monster Stamps

In 1997, the USPS issued these stamps featuring some of our favorite guys.

Ghouls with Attitude, Volume 1

The Oddio Overplay website no longer seems to carry this anthology of fun and “scary” music.  Glad I found it first to share with you!

This is Volume 1.  Next Monday will bring Volume 2.

Here are the tracks:

1 Tarantula Ghoul and the Gravediggers - Graveyard Rock   

2 Don Hinson and the Rigamorticians - Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsatured Blood   

3 Movie Trailer - Vampire Playgirls   

4 Bobby Bare - Vampira   

5 The Crewnecks - Rockin' Zombie   

6 Griz Green - Jam at the Mortuary   

7 Movie Trailer - Monsters Crash the Pajama Party   

8 The MSR Singers - Monster Man   

9 The Abominable Surfers - Monster Surfer   

10 Bobby 'Boris' Jones - Surfer Smash   

11 Jupiter Jones - The Spook Spoke   

12 Bob McFadden and Dor - I Dig You Baby   

13 Movie Trailer - The Mind of Mr. Soames   

14 Albert DeSalvo - Strangler in the Night   

15 Kenny and the Fiends - House on Haunted Hill   

16 Winchell's Donut House Halloween Record - Hear the Monsters (Spooky Sounds and a Spooky Tale)   

17 Buddy Morrow and His Orchestra - The Raven   

18 The Modernaires - The Rockin' Ghost   

19 Bob Rosengarden & Phil Kraus - Satan Takes a Holiday   

20 Boris Karloff and Friends - Ha Ha Ha / The Bride of Frankenstein   

21 Movie Trailer - Brain Eaters   

22 Groovie Goolies - Goolie Garden   

23 Hap Palmer - Haunted House   

24 Bruce Haack and Norman Bridwell - The Witch's Vacation   

25 Sounds of Terror! - Burned at the Stake    

26 Louise Huebner - Intro Orgies, a Tool of Witchcraft   

27 Marty Manning and His Orchestra - Night on Bald Mountain   

28 Criswell (The Legendary) - Someone Walked Over My Grave  

and here is the link:     http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WVXUPCF2

A Halloween Mix-Up

More from the October 1964 Jack and Jill. 

See you Monday with some high-voltage music!  Until then, may all your music be mixed-up.

Color a Monster

Here are the first few pages from the Universal Monsters Coloring Book.

What happens when the lightning strikes (as if you didn't know)?  Stay tuned!

October 1965 Golden Magazine - Dora Gives a Party

See yooouuu tooomorrow!

Book Review: Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend

Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend is by Mark Collins Jenkins, who is listed on the jacket flap as a National Geographic historian.

Boy, is National Geographic in trouble!

The book itself is an interesting enough read, but it’s mostly a rehash of stuff you can find elsewhere.  It’s a Discovery Channel or History Channel digest of a much more involving and fascinating topic (viz., the origins of worldwide belief in vampires).  That’s not necessarily an insult, but it is definitely NOT a great compliment.

This book really only spends a few pages dealing the topic suggested by the title.  That is, putting the lore of vampirism under the medical microscope.

If you want to read an authoritative book about this, I cannot highly enough recommend Paul Barber’s  Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality.

Barber’s book is the real deal, explaining how the actual behavior of corpses could have given rise to middle-European vampire legendry.

But if you are in the mood for the literary equivalent of Count Floyd explaining vampires (but without the silliness), read Jenkins’s book.

Here’s what I mean about National Geographic being in trouble.

The book contains several errors that SHOULD NOT APPEAR in this book, ESPECIALLY in a book by a supposed historian, and a book sponsored by National Geographic, supposedly an educational-type set-up.

On page 48, in his discussion of Stoker’s Dracula, Jenkins refers to the vampire version of Lucy Westenra as “the Blooper Lady.”  DUH!  Lucy was called by her child victims a “bloofer lady.”  Bloofer (with an F) was Stoker’s representation of a Lucy’s child victims saying that she was beautiful.  So, by using BLOOPER, Jenkins has committed a BLOOPER.

On pages 51-52, Jenkins narrates the controversy stirred by FW Murnau’s 1922 silent film Nosferatu, and Florence Stoker’s quest to have it eradicated.  Jenkins says, “Bram Stoker had died in 1912, but when his widow, Florence, got wind of Murnau’s changes, she tried to shut the production down.  Royalties from Dracula were her main income, and she found the German film a thinly disguised pirating of the novel.  So she sued.”

Jenkins is correct that Florence Stoker sued, and that Dracula’s royalties were her main source of livelihood.  But her legal action wasn’t because she got wind of “changes” to Stoker’s story being made in the production of an in-development film.  Mrs Stoker DID NOT try “to shut the production down.”  There was no production going on.  No, Nosferatu was already made, and in distribution, when Mrs Stoker “got wind” of it.  She wasn’t mad about “changes.”  She was mad because, despite the changes, the film was indeed a “thinly disguised” version of SOME of Dracula’s plot.  She wanted money (which wazs entitled to, as Stoker’s heir).

Horror fans everywhere are happy that some of the prints survived the court-ordered destruction.

On page 195, Jenkins gives an incorrect definition of theological dualism.  He says that the Bogomil sect “was one in a long line of dualist religions – faiths that considered all matter as evil and revere all spirit as good.”  Right word, wrong definition.

There is a branch of “philosophy of mind” called Dualism, that indeed relates to the relationship between mind and matter.  However, the spiritual, or religious beliefs labeled “dualism” are concerned NOT with matter and non-matter, but with more primary forces.  These powers may express themselves through matter, but are spiritual forces.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Dualism: “First, the name has been used to denote the religious or theological system which would explain the universe as the outcome of two eternally opposed and coexisting principles, conceived as good and evil, light and darkness, or some other form of conflicting powers. We find this theory widely prevalent in the East, and especially in Persia, for several centuries before the Christian Era.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05169a.htm

So, Jenkins is using the incorrect definition of Dualism in his discussion of various European sects.  But the main problem is that he is “informing” his less enlightened readers by defining theological Dualism – with a wrong definition!

On page 229, Jenkins draws an incorrect inference from the location of the Egyptian Pyramids.  “Possessing the most elaborate funerary complex of them all, as the pyramids have reminded countless visitors, the Egyptians so purified, embalmed, mummified, memorialized, and mythologized their dead that surely they must have told tales of their occasional return.”

This is an common, though wrong, conclusion --  that the Pyramids’ primary function is to be giant mausolems.  The pyramids do indeed remind visitors to Egypt of death, by their location, not through any actual use as centers of death.  Not a single burial has ever been found to have taken place in an Egyptian  pyramid.  The pyramids were NOT tombs.  They may have been astronomical markers, centers for ritual religion, and monuments to human vanity, but they were NOT tombs.  Which is what Jenkins is implying here.

These bloofers (I mean BLOOPERS) show that National Geographic needs some historians to check up on their historians.  If “little” errors like these get into print, how much else of the book can be trusted?  Now, that’s perhaps an exaggeration.

But just because a book has a respectable implied endorsement, don’t simply trust what it tells you -- check for yourself!

So, this book doesn’t really add much to the scads of books already out there about vampires and the rise of vampire belief.  I paid $5 for it, and you can buy it for less from Amazon.  Feel free to peruse it, just don’t be impressed by the “credentials” prominently displayed on the cover.

As George Harrison said, “Think for yourself, for I won’t be there with you.”



CD Creepies

A little shivering music, Maestro!  -- or should it be Monstro?

These are the tracks:

1)  Contata and Fugue  

2)  Frenzy #1

3)  Torment

4)  Psycho

5)  Private Lab    

6)  The Unexpected

7)  Night on Bald Mountain     

8)  Angel of Death

9)  The Devil Rides       

10)  Lucifer's Choir

11)  Troubled Voices    

12)  Sinister Street

13)  Spinecharge

14)  Omen

15)  Marked Man 

16)  Sleeper Awaits

  time 33:25

17)  Thunder and Rain  

18)  Bats Flying in Cave

19)  Electric Lab  

20)  Mad Man Laugh

21)  Witch's Laugh        

22)  Church Bell Toll

23)  Wolf Howl     

24)  Owl Hoot

25)  Beast Roar   

26)  Heart Speeds Up

27)  Creaky Door 

28)  Rattling Chains

29)  Monster Scream

30)  Laboratory Chemicals

31)  Crazy Machine       

32)  Barking Blood Hounds

33)  Attack Dog Fight    

34)  Squeaking Rats

35)  Eerie Wind   

36)  Terrified Crowd

37)  Woman Ghost (Sad)        

38)  Poltergeist (Happy)

39)  Cat Meow     

40)  Horrified Woman

41)  Horrified Man

42)  Water Drip In Cave

43)  Hounds Of Hell      

44)  Castle Footsteps

45)  Haunted House Creak     

46)  Kookaburra Bird Laugh

  time 19:07

47)  Monster Story        

  time 11:33

total time 1:04:05

And here is the link:  http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WQK2G5O2

Monsters 1991 Coloring Book

Here we have generic Monsters, with no actor-specific faces.

More tomorrow!

More from Golden Magazine

It's October, 1965.  Do you know where your childhood is?

Puzzle Me This!

Here are a couple of jigsaw puzzles.  As you can see, Universal wasn't afraid to depict actual peoples' faces here.  Interesting though to note that they used Glenn Strange's Frankenstein Monster instead of the "genre-defining" critter as played by Karloff.

Golden Magazine, October 1965

In October 1965 I was nine years old and in the fourth grade.  I was reading on a Senior High School level, but still enjoyed kiddie stuff, like the various kids' magazines such as Jack and Jill, Highlights, and Golden magazine.

Here is some stuff from the October 1965 issue of Golden.

See you tomorrow, spooks!

MA-16 - Ghos-terrific Sounds

Here is your 2011 Halloween compilation of scare-tastic fun.

These are the tracks:

1        Mr After Halloween Costume Shop Salesman      Al Lowe       1:00

2        "The Return of Dracula": The End     Gerald Fried         4:08

3        Teenage Frankenstein  Alice Cooper        3:27

4        Trick or Treat       Andrew Gold        3:23

5        Everybody Loves You When You're Dead Stranglers   2:39

6        Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon      The Cramps      3:12

7        Count Dracula      All About Halloween       1:09

8        Halloween in Heaven     Type O Negative  4:50

9        The Nightmare Before Christmas      Pharaoh Atem      1:37

10      Godzilla (Album Version)         Blue Oyster Cult   3:42

11      Halloween Parade         David Berkeley        3:16

12      Gigantor      Helmet          4:12

13      Surfin' Halloween Big Chopper         1:27

14      Count Dracula      Robbie the Werewolf      5:09

15      Halloween Monster Mania       stAllio!           7:55

16      Planet of the Apes         Frankenstein Drag Queens       3:00

17      The Legend of Wooley Swamp         Charlie Daniels       3:56

18      Spooks of Halloween Town       Yoko Shimomura           1:20

19      Hand of Blood      Bullet for My Valentine   3:37

20      Casper, the Friendly Ghost          Peter Pan Singers    0:53

21      Scary Song Frankenstein Drag Queens        2:37

22      Zombie Stomp           H. Zombie featuring Toño Pneumo        4:14

23      Halloween Party       Sue Schnitzer  3:54

24      Frankenstein Rock         Eddie Thomas      1:50

25      I Want a Monster      Prairie Dawn     2:12

Here is the link:   http://www.megaupload.com/?d=21I92JFY

See you tomorrow with more Blog-o-Ween fun!

 

Welcome to Blog-o-Ween!

To begin this year's celebration of the scary and silly, here is an image I drew in high school.  The original was from Famous Monsters of Filmland, of course -- a still from Bride of Frankenstein.

See you Monday with our new music compilation.

Overstreet and Superman's 50th -- final part

See you on October First for BLOG-O-WEEN!

Overstreet Celebrates Superman at 50 - 4

All I can say, is "Oh, Lois -- va-va VOOM!"

We'll have the rest of this interview with Joe & Jerry on Thursday.