Afraid of The Dark

A long time ago, in a place far away, I was a kid.

No there were no dinosaurs roaming the earth and the lava from the Big Bang had cooled some what, (It was Texas after all and the heat from Summer and the Big Bang weren't all that different), so things had settled down a bit and there had been time for all sorts of inventions like cars and washing machines and Red Baiting and Television.

Oh yeah, television, that tiny box with the twelve inch screen and the images in living black and white and except for the occasional Charlton Heston now there was no reason to leave the comfort of your home. You had your pipe, your slippers, your dog and Uncle Milty. Man, that's living.

But as with all things television changed. After a few years the novelty wore off, everyone had a set so there were no neighborhood television parties and even the fights weren't enough to keep the folks out of the theater.
Mike Todd might have had something to do with getting the folks back into the theaters, he created Todd-AO the first successful wide screen format for film and made seeing things on the giant theater wall-sized screen the thing to do. You can't appreciate the parting of the Red Sea unless Charlton is ten feet tall and standing on twenty foot rock.

But the real problem was radio. Yes the same thing which now brings you your golden oldies and morning dive DJ was once the center of the entertainment industry. What you think Radio City was built just for the Rockettes? Okay the Rockettes deserve their own theater but Radio City was actually built for the radio programs and the Rockettes were just the filler between shows.

You see a whole three generations had been raised on radio. They grew up listening to radio and all of the wonderful things you can only do on radio. You want an invasion from Mars? You got it and no worries about making the Martians look silly cause it was all in your imagination. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers could have space ships which flashed across endless galaxies and never had to stop at the filling station for a top-off of jet fuel, The Inner Sanctum can bring you the most terrifying of creatures, the deadliest monsters and the weirdest mad scientists because you can't see them and in your mind's eye they never look clunky, made from leftover model car parts or have lines so the puppeteers can manipulate the tentacles.

Radio trained a whole generation to have high expectations and early television with its limited viewing area couldn't compete with Todd-AO or make interplanetary travel look oh so real.

What to do, how to keep the folks in their homes and not let the fledgling television industry die at birth.

Then along comes Universal Studio in big trouble and needing a fast injection of cash and they decide to stop fighting television for the public's attention and sell them something they can use in place of Old Gold game shows. They sold the rights to television to broadcast their vault of original monster movies!

You know the old ones with Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Henry Hull, Warner Oland, Charles Laughton, and Claude Raines,the whole European exile community from Universal's back lot.

And what a collection of characters they were, from Karloff's elegant British gent to Peter Lorre's slimy, unctuous toady, Mae Clarke's chic and oh so wan heroines, Una O'Conner's wildly funny and frazzled maids, char women and floozies. They filled our minds with the core images our imagination made nightmares of for generations. They were fun, fun, fun.

But as we aged, they next generation cared more for the splatter flick with Jason and Freddy and Hellraiser doing dastardly deeds to screaming teenagers.

And that's what horror movies have become, scream fests for horny teenagers, cause nothing gets the blood pounding like a big jolt of blood and gore. And that's what teenagers go to the movies for, getting their blood pounding cause there is nothing more likely to get them in the mood than a near death experience so long as it isn't too near death!

But some of those old fright flicks have held up wonderfully and you could do yourself and the neighborhood kids a big favor by hosting a Halloween-a-thon of great monster flicks.

The Universals are the best, especially the original eight, Dracula, sure it creaks a bit but so will you when you get to be eighty-one years old, Frankenstein, which is the name of the man and not the monster, The Werewolf of London, which is the first and the best werewolf movie, The Invisible Man, don't let the dentist give you Monocaine! Then there's Boris Karloff's Mummy, less staggering and more creepy, Boris and Bela in the Black Cat, international intrigue, more kink that a party at the Playboy mansion and Boris and Bela again in The Invisible Ray. This one should have been written by Jules Verne cause Captain Nemo's secret power source gets discovered and misused, again, The Bride of Frankenstein, much scarier and even Collin Clive has a reason to be mad, mad I tell you with fear and terror. There's one more Frank, The Son of Frankenstein and another Mummy, this time the Curse, and the scariest of all of a scary lot, Dr. Moreau's Island of Lost Souls. Remember the house of pain!

If you see all of these in one week, there are few more worth your time, Hammer's first five, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula. They have the best horror hero of them all in Peter Cushing, the one and only Van Helsing. Besides, even the horny teenage contingent will appreciate Hazel Court, who created a whole sub-genre of heaving bosoms. Try the Hammer Mummy if you prefer your undead staggering and Egyptian, stretched Christopher Lee's acting ability to the max, but he did eventually learn to stagger convincingly. And the Curse of the Werewolf harks back to the real, original Henry Hull werewolf makeup so it is a shade better than any of the Chaney wolves.

There's one more you should have in your fear festival, the Howling, a werewolf reboot in a modern sort of way. It's too gory and the makeup is overdone but the cast makes up for a whole bunch of sins. The last line is worth the price of admission. No, I'm not telling you, you'll just have to do without or rent it and find out.
No list of scare fare would be complete without mention of the lighter side of spooky. Old Boris himself did two spooktacular comedies, You'll Find Out and The Bogeyman, Will Get You. More recent and just as good, Arsenic and Old Lace is still the best and Practical Magic is. Catherine Bell's The Good Witch series is well worth watching if for nothing else but the twinkle in Catherine's eye. You know she could suit up in that harem costume and redo I Dream of Genie if she weren't so busy.
Throw in two Scifi flicks, Them and The Thing, Jim Arness version only and you have a complete package of wonderful films for the holiday season.
What do they have to do with art? Jack Pierce's makeup for Universal is art of the first order, a good story with great images is always art and these are the arch-typical visions of all our own fantasies. Don't you want to pass them along before the kids decide that Freddy and Jason are the only thing scary is about?

So on All Hallows even when things go bump in the night you can shudder and nod and the kids will understand, there's a reason to be afraid of the dark.