Remember the thread on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Rankin/Bass? This movie is by the same folks, though not as highly acclaimed. Still, it’s a weird little piece of stop-action animation done at the time of the craze created by the Munsters and the Addams Family television series.
I downloaded it from Dish Network’s free movie selections and watched it yesterday. The Phyllis Diller character got quite irritating quite fast, though she was a hoot back in the 60’s. But I still loved to hear Boris Karloff speak.
I see on Wikipedia that Jack Davis, of MAD magazine fame, designed the characters, and Harvey Kurtzman of the same magazine wrote it.
Anyone else remember this film from their childhood?
Not only do I remember it, I paid to see it in the movie theater. And I own a copy on DVD.
You can clearly see Jack Davis’ work in the character design (Davis also did several series of “bubble gum” trading cards, including one series of “Monster Laffs”. And he did lots of monster gag cartoons for Mad magazine. The Monster Force was strong with this one). On the plus side, it had the voice talents of Boris Karloff himself, and of Phyllis Diller (as the literal Bride of Frankenstein). Unfortunately, it also had the work of the too-cute-by-half team of Rankin-Bass (whom I always think of as Rank and Base).
Ignore the songs and the goody two-ashoes soda-jerk hero. The monsters are fun, and the vampy femme fatale with her hefty monobosom is sexy, if not particularly monstrous (why didn’t they make her a vampire, or something?) It can be used to kill an evening.
I remember one of those series, from almost 60 years ago. One card had the caption, “Think–before You Louse Things Up!” with a picture of some fool with a brace and bit, drilling a hole into a beehive! :eek:
Hijack: Jack Davis is a huge fan of the Georgia Bulldogs and is a member of our large tailgate party before the games. He used to do an enormous amount of illustrations for the school and Athletic Department and still does the occasional piece for them.
Anyway, we use a medium-sized moving truck to haul our equipment to and from the games, and Jack was kind enough to cover the whole thing in painted UGA illustrations. You can spot it from a mile away.
He lives in Savannah and doesn’t make it to very many games any more, but he is one heck of a generous and nice guy.
They did make her something. She’s a “Frankenstein’s monster” or maybe robot would be a better term. At the end, she says that eventually she’ll “wind down”. She’s sad because she thinks that means she can’t be with her human love, Felix. Then Felix says, "Gee Francesca, nobody’s perfect…is perfect…is perfect…so that you know he’s a robot too.
When I was a kid in New York, in the late Sixties and early Seventies, I used to watch the Saturday night “Creature Feature” on WNEW-TV, channel 5.It was hosted by The Creep (real name: Lew Steel, an otherwise ordinary WNEW announcer).
Mostly they showed old Universal horror movies with Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney. But once in a blue moon, they’d show something like*** Mad Monster Party ***as a goof. Or, if an old movie couldn’t be padded to a full 90 minutes, they’d have a “Creature Treat”- usually a cartoon short (like one of episodes of the Beatles’ short-lived cartoon series) that happened to have a monster theme.
The inspiration for Blade Runner! Tho I don’t recall his glitch. I just took from it that he’s reassuring her because after all, even if she’s a robot, she’s also a babe & loves him.
Btw, not only did I see it in the theatre on release, I also HAD the comic-book tie-in, which of course, I read until it was in tatters.
Tho I don’t recall his glitch. I just took from it that he’s reassuring her because after all, even if she’s a robot, she’s also a babe & loves him.