Even the Moon is Frightened of Me: The Invisible Man (Monster Memories)

An invisible man must be one of the more bizarre choices for a monster. First of all it’s not really a monster, not in the classical sense anyway. He is, after all, just a man. A deranged man, sure, but just a man nonetheless. There is nothing supernatural about him, no unnatural resurrection or

By |2023-01-10T09:46:37-07:00October 6th, 2022|Features, Halloween, Monster Memories|0 Comments

I Mistrust My Own Judgement: Dracula (Monster Memories)

Tod Browning’s 1931 adaptation of Dracula is the granddaddy of them all, the film the launched the Classic Monster films of Universal. The Universal cinematic universe if you will. I try not to judge these old films by modern standards or how a film has come to be perceived over the decades. I attempt,

By |2023-01-10T10:35:47-07:00October 2nd, 2022|Features, Halloween, Monster Memories|0 Comments

Even a Man Who is Pure in Heart: The Wolf-Man (Monster Memories)

By 1941 Universal had been making monster movies for over a decade. It had now become a well-oiled machine and while not quite formulaic just yet was well on its way to becoming so. The Wolf-Man still retains the moodiness and the harsh shadows emblematic of German Expressionism that characterizes the earlier films. But

By |2022-10-01T10:24:52-06:00October 1st, 2022|Features, Halloween, Monster Memories|0 Comments

Thou Doth Protest Too Much: The Silent Night, Deadly Night Controversy

Picture this: the year is 1984 and you are an impressionable youth watching an episode of Three’s Company or Little House on the Prairie when during a commercial break this comes on the TV: Obviously after this there was no going back. Your childhood was over, years of therapy ensued, and

By |2021-11-29T11:19:52-07:00December 2nd, 2021|Monster Memories, Thoughts & Notions, Xmas|0 Comments

Fruit Flavored Terror: Monster Memories

As a kid I loved monsters. Not the ones that hid under the bed or lived in the closet obviously - those were terrifying and nightmare inducing if one actually managed to get to sleep - no, the ones I loved were the safe ones. Your Draculas and your Frankensteins* and your Wolf-Mans (Wolf-Men?),

By |2023-08-01T13:54:47-06:00October 26th, 2021|Ghosts, Halloween, Monster Memories, The Harvest|0 Comments

Cobbled Together: The Monster of Frankenstein

In 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, the comic book industry was under scrutiny for being a corrupter of youth and an inciter of crime. And according to the book Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Werthram all of the issues of teenage delinquency could be traced back directly to the reading of comics. Senate

Godzilla Heisei Era: I Think I love These Movies (Part I)

As a kid, I was a big fan of Godzilla movies. They were a mainstay on weekend afternoon television while I was growing up and they were always a treat. Sure, they were cheap, often silly, but there was an inherent charm to them. They were captivating and enjoyable in only a way a guy

Creature Double Feature: My Saturday Monster Time

Growing up my Saturday afternoons would be spent with creatures, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, murderers, and mad scientists. Beginning around one o'clock I would settle down in front of our 17" Sony Trinitron (complete with simulated wood grain plastic sides) with a soda (typically Frank's grape or ginger ale) and a bowl of buttered macaroni noodles

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