FRANKENMONTH

Happy My Favorite Month everybody! The month of sanctioned spooky fun and, here in Arizona, a gradually waning inferno is blessedly upon us again.

The Wife did her usual fine job of bringing macabre festivity to Hacienda del Moorhead:

MeTV's old-school classicist Svengoolie favors us with a Franken-Fest throughout the month...

...kicking off tonight with 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, with its wonderful animated bat transformations, Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolf man, Glenn Strange as the Monster, and the great Bela Lugosi, excellent in his final screen turn as Dracula. It wraps up on Halloween Eve with the 1965 rib-tickler Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster.

Your Humble Narrator is a lifelong fan of ol' Frankie myself; a few years ago I did a "listicle" for New Times online about the strangest versions of Frankenstein. Since then I might have added this can of ginger ale...

...meant to promote one of the Hotel Transylvania sequels, in which the monster looks like a member of a boyband.

Anyway, a safe and happy October to us all, and many happy returns.

REVENGE WATCHING

Since we were discussing MeTV last week, allow me to point out that the vintage network's old-school horror host Svengoolie, who's been on a welcome Godzilla kick lately, shows Godzilla's Revenge this Saturday.

I have exceptionally fond memories of that one (released in the U.S. in 1971), as my sister Priscilla took me to see it at the Warner Theater in Erie when I was about nine.

So...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...let's acknowledge Gabara, the monster who acts like a jerk to Godzilla's kid Minya in that film...

Excuse the spoiler, but needless to say, both Godzilla and son get their revenge...

TUNNEL VISION

Your Humble Narrator is a fan of the vintage network MeTV, in no small part because they play silly, nostalgic old-school ‘60s and ‘70s sci-fi on the weekends, including Irwin Allen’s ridiculous The Time Tunnel.

This week’s scheduled episode is “Chase Through Time,” in which our epoch-hopping, stock-footage-fleeing heroes James Darren and Robert Colbert find themselves, among other eras, back in prehistory. So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …let’s acknowledge the primordial titan that threatens them in that episode…

…obviously played by an unfortunate alligator with fins and horns attached. It appears to have been recycled from Allen’s own 1960 version of The Lost World.

TREKKING BALL

Happy 50^th Birthday Star Trek!

Yes, that’s right, fifty years ago today my favorite TV show, the original Star Trek, debuted on NBC with “The Man Trap.” This Saturday evening retro network MeTV celebrates the auspicious anniversary by showing “The Man Trap,” after which their horror host Svengoolie presents the Star Trek pilot The Cage—later abridged into the two-part original series episode “The Menagerie”—as his feature selection. Talk about your must-see TV!

Obviously a Star Trek monster is called for this week, and since the hideous salt-sucking shape-shifter (or shape-sucking salt-shifter?) from “The Man Trap” was a MOTW just last year, how about…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this snarling beast…

 

…from “The Cage,” played by Janos Prohaska, who also designed and played The Mugato and The Horta!