March 5. E.E.F. Facebookery. Bostonians, as we know from the recent tragic events, are no strangers to real-life horror. Three were killed and 264 injured when 2 pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon atrocity in 2013. Today in 1770 the “Redcoats,” British regulars, shot and killed five colonists on King Street in Boston. The tension had been growing since the King’s troops first appeared in “Beantown” in 1768 to enforce tax laws, but some say that the scuffle that day was sparked by the accusations thrown at one of the British officers that he didn’t pay his wigmaker’s bill. In essence, it’s possible that the colonists and soldiers wouldn’t have flipped out if the bill for a hair piece had been paid on time... Flash forward to WWII Hollywood. Waaay back in the’40’s the idea of Universal pictures mixing and matching monsters supposedly began as a joke made by screenwriter Curt Siodmak at the studio commissary when he blurted out “Frankenstein Wolfs the Meat Man.” The producer George Waggner overheard him and, according to Siodmak, visited him two days later: “You have a job. Write FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN. You have two hours to accept.” Siodmak, who had written the fairly literate script for THE WOLF MAN (1941) dutifully cobbled together Universal’s first “Monster Mash” hybrid. F M T W, the 5th in the Franken-series, opened today in 1943. By my reckoning the action takes place four years after the WOLF MAN and an indeterminate time after the GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN (1942) when crazy Ygor’s brain was transplanted into the monster, but this film kisses off all continuity. When I saw it on TV as a kid none of that mattered. God, I was credulous and easily amused. Nothing in the movie makes sense (even by supernatural Transylvanian standards), starting with the incredibly moronic grave robbers who break into the Talbot family crypt one moonlit night to steal the cash allegedly hidden in the coffin of the late Lycanthropic aristocrat Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.). When they open it up, they find that Master Larry’s 2 or 3 year old corpse hasn’t decayed in the slightest and is surrounded by a big pile of wolfsbane which they idiotically remove from the coffin. These knuckleheads are both so focused on their task that they dont notice the moonlight strikes LT.s face, waking him and turning him into the hairy Wolf man who attacks them and then goes on a killing spree. Gloomy Gus Talbot spends most of the film existentially longing for his own demise. If this movie obeyed the lycanthropic lore in THE WOLF MAN movie he probably could have solved the problem by committing suicide with a silver bullet and arranging re-interment in a pauper’s grave…..but then we wouldn’t have a fun “monster mash,” would we? This is the Frankenstein movie with the “ Festival of the New Wine” 3 minute song and dance number in which a far-too-enthusiastic singer (Adia Kuznetzoff) leads the whole village in a romping sing along with the metaphorically suggestive lyrics Life is short but death is long, faro-la! faro-li! It’s so horrible even The Wolf Man can’t stand it. The plot is full of kinks, but I’m not kvetching. It’s a fun fable. Chaney Jr. owned the role and continued his quest to put to rest his wolf-self in HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1944) and HOUSE OF DRACULA (1945). Mercifully, he did his last moon dance in ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN (1948). Incidentally, during the war makeup artist Jack Pierce had a tough time importing enough Yak hair for all those Wolf man makeups. War is Hell, which reminds me, Ill be updating the situation at the Alamo tomorrow.... 03.05.14 E.E.F.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:54:06 +0000
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