Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Creepy Autographs Part 4

This is the last of my creepy autographs.

I met actor Michael Berryman at the Twisted Nightmare Weekend in 2006. I seem to have misplaced his autograph. If I ever find it, I'll add it to this post.


Lloyd Kaufman - President and co-founder of Troma Entertainment. I e-mailed him and he sent me this autograph.


Local horror host Son of Ghoul
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My Son At Halloween

Here's some pictures of my son, Kenny, through the years. Was he ever that small? He's 15 now and taller than me.
Scarecrow

Freddie

Grim Reaper

Pirate

Universal Monsters Wolfman

My Son, The Vampire

Zombie

The Headless Butler

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Movie Monsters

One of my favorite books when I was young was Movie Monsters by Alan Ormsby. It was released by Scholastic in 1975 and features "A Ghoulery of Monster Greats", which are little bios on everybody's favorite monsters --

LON CHANEY -- Man of a Thousand Faces
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
THE WOLFMAN
THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
THE MUMMY
KING KONG
TWO DRACULAS
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
BLACULA
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN

The next section of the book is "How to Make a Monster", which includes make-up and recipes for monsters --

WARTS -- BLOOD -- SCARS
MELTING MAN'S AND MUMMY'S HANDS
DRACULA -- BLACULA -- COUNTESS DRACULA
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
WOLFMAN -- MR. SKULL
THE PHANTOM
BROWN BAG FRANKENSTEIN

I remember my brother and I made this Brown Bag Frankenstein a couple of times. Unfortunately, we never saved them or took any pictures.

The last part of the book is "How to put On Monster Shows". It features the script for a short sketch that incorporates the Monster Recipes. It's called --

"The MONSTER of FRANKENSTEIN!"

Frankenstein Meets Dracula and Mr. Skull in the House of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...

We never attempted to do the show, but we used to make plans like we would.

You can read John Rozum's post about this book here.

Alan Ormsby on IMDb.

Alan Ormsby on Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Ormsby also created Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces.One of my favorite toys when I was a young pup. Read a post I did about Hugo here.

Below is a mix based on the monsters in the books. It features the main title music and some trailers from the movies. A special thanks to Universal Horror Sounds. Some of these tracks originally appeared on his blog.

Track Listing

1. Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957) - Frank Skinner
2. The Phantom Of The Opera (1925) - Lee Erwin
3. The Wolfman (1941) - Hans J. Salter & Frank Skinner
4. Frankenstein (1931) - Giuseppe Becce & Bernhard Kaun
5. The Mummy (Trailer)
6. The Mummy (1932) - James Dietrich
7. King Kong (Trailer)
8. King Kong (1933) - Max Steiner
9. Dracula (1931) - Phippip Glass
10. Horror Of Dracula (Radio spot)
11. Horror Of Dracula (1958) - James Bernard
12. Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1931)
13. The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) - Franz Waxman
14. The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) - Hans J. Salter
15. Blacula (Radio Spot)
16. Blacula (The Stalkwalk) (1972) - Gene Page
17. Young Frankenstein (1974) - John Morris

Click the link below to download --

--> Movie Monsters <--

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde by The Who



Here's a song by The Who called Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. I had this on a 45 when I was a kid and used to listen to it all the time. It was the B-side, but I don't remember what the A-side was because I never really listened to it. This song was originally released on The Who's 1968 album Magic Bus - The Who On Tour.

Click the link below to download --

--> Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde <--

Song Lyrics

Hyde, Hyde

Someone is spending my money for me,
The money I earn I never see,
In all things I do he interferes,
All I know is trouble as soon as he appears.

Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Hyde

When I drink my potion my character changes,
My whole mind and body rearranges,
This strange transformation takes place in me,
Instead of myself everybody can see...

Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Hyde

Whenever you're with me make sure it's still me,
I've got to the stage I can't tell which I'll be,
The loveable fellow who'll buy you a drink,
Then when he's drunk he'll change in a wink into...

Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Mister Hyde, Hyde

Monday, October 29, 2007

Porter Wagoner, RIP

I just found out that country music legend Porter Wagoner has died. I'm glad my family and I got to see him perform at the Grand Ole Opry a few years ago. He was a wonderful entertainer.

"Porter Wagoner, a Grand Ole Opry institution and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, died Sunday (Oct. 28) at 8:25 p.m. at Alive Hospice in Nashville.

Known as the Thin Man From West Plains, he was 80 and had been hospitalized since Oct. 15. An Opry spokesperson announced on Oct. 21 that Wagoner had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He was released to hospice care on Friday (Oct. 26)."


Read the full story (including a nice bio) here.

Visit The Official Porter Wagoner Website

Here's a chilling song by Mr. Wagoner called "Rubber Room". You may even want to include it in your Halloween mix.

Read about the song here.

Click the link below to download --

--> Rubber Room <--

Frankenstein View-Master

Here's the Frankenstein View-Master by GAF from 1976. Included are scans of the front and back of the packet and all of the pages from the read-along story booklet. I tried scanning the little pieces of film on the reels and zooming in on them, but they wouldn't come out. I even tried to take close-up pictures of them with my digital camera. No luck.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Trick-Or-Treat, Smell My Feet...

They had trick-or-treat (or beggar's night as my mom used to call it) city-wide here in Akron Saturday from 5 to 7 PM. The weather started out OK (the temp. was in the 50's) but around 6 o'clock it started raining. When I began handing out candy I had 142 pieces. At the end I had 70 left. Sunday afternoon they are having trick-or-treat on our street. Maybe I'll give out the rest then. ***UPDATE*** Sunday I only gave out three pieces of candy.

I'm ready to give out the treats


The front of my house


Skeleton groom and bride


My first trick-or-treater at around 5:30 PM
It was a girl in a pretty cool skeleton costume


Left over candy in the cauldron

Monster Movie Music Request

Does anyone have, or know where I can find, the theme music to Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and Dracula? I need the ones from the original classic black & white movies. Thanks for any help with this.

I also would like to thank everyone for visiting the Wonderful Wonderblog during The Halloween Countdown 2007. I really do appreciate it. I'm sorry if I don't respond to all of the messages in the comments section. I've been working a lot of overtime and trying to make a post-a-day plus reading all of the other excellent Halloween blogs has taken up most of my time. Thanks again and Happy Halloween.

I know this has been shared on other blogs, but I think it's really cool --

I-Mockery.com's Monster Initial Stickers Name Generator!

My brother and I had tons of these when we were kids. I still have a notebook somewhere with these stickers stuck all over it.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Creepy Autographs Part 3

Over the past 11 years I've got many autographs at The Pittsburgh Comicon. Comic book artists and writers, Star Wars actors, etc. These are the ones that fall into the spooky genre --

Scream Queen Brinke Stevens
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George "The Animal" Steele (well, he did play Tor Johnson in the Ed Wood movie)
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Thrash metal band GWAR
My son and I got our pictures taken wearing actual GWAR costumes
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Artist Joe Jusko (autograph on a Mephisto trading card)
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Linda Harrison (Nova from Planet of the Apes)
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Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk's a monster, isn't he?)
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Butch Patrick and Pat Priest from The Munsters