Saturday, March 29, 2008

Frankenstein View-Master Part II

Back on Oct. 28 I made a post about the Frankenstein View-Master by GAF from 1976. I included scans of the packet and the read-along booklet. But, I couldn't copy the frames from the reels. Thanks to blog-reader Neal Snow for copying most of the frames and giving me permission to use them (frames one through four are missing). I've included the captions from the reels under each picture. Here's Neal's original message --

My Frankenstein reels are not the best in quality, but here they are anyways.
http://budcolbert.multiply.com/photos/album/13
To see the images at full size, click once, then click on "zoom".
BTW, feel free to grab these and post them here if nobody comes up with any better images.


Thanks again Neal. If I ever find the first four frames, I'll add them to this post.

(This cover is different than mine)

A1 Dr. Frankenstein, his wife and son were happy...

A2 ...until the day lightning struck their tree.

A3 As Frankenstein watched the tree burn...

A4 ...the lightning's power gave him an idea.


A5 He was building a man in his laboratory.

A6 He invented a lightning machine.

A7 Its power brought the monster to life!

B1 The man walked! Frankenstein shrank in fear.

B2 The monster lurched by them and escaped.

B3 He hid in the woods beside a cottage.

B4 He peeked in the window at the family...

B5 ...a blind man and his two grandchildren.

B6 The boy, in fear, struck the monster!

B7 "You're a beast for creating me, Doctor!"

C1 He followed the Doctor's son to a cliff.

C2 Frankenstein saved the boy just in time!

C3 The monster spied on the Doctor, then...

C4 ...seized his wife, Elizabeth!

C5 She fell over the cliff to her death.

C6 The Doctor lured the monster to his lab.

C7 Lightning struck the castle and destroyed it!



20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry about the first four frames, but I couldn't get a decent image from them since they were pretty much ruined. When I get my hands on a better set of reels I'll redo the whole set. Many of the images, as you can see, have fading and discoloration issues.

Erick said...

Neal, I appreciate all the work you've done on this. Let me know if you find better reels.

Anonymous said...

Will do!

Wil Wheaton said...

This is absolutely magnificent, and was a much-needed ride in the wayback machine for me. Thank you so much for posting it.

Erick said...

You're very welcome Wil. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Jon K said...

Great job to both of you on these... since I came across a listing for one of these sets on eBay a while back, I've been hoping someone would do this!

My own blog on Fridays features Give-A-Show Projector slides, and my images don't look nearly as good as these do... any tips from either of you as to the best way to do this kind of thing? I've just been putting my slides on the scanner (which doesn't have a transparency adapter) and messing with 'em afterwards.

I've posted a link back to this post in my own blog, too!

thanks again,

Jon

Pierre Fournier said...

Oh crap! I just spent most of the evening writing and laying out a post about this. LOL!

I couldn’t possibly improve on the great job you did, Erick. Bravo! Thanks to you and Neal for sharing this wonderful stuff.

I’ll be linking to this later this week!

Erick said...

Jon -- I'm not sure how Neal did this. Hey Neal, can you offer any tips?

Pierre -- Thanks for the kind words. For anything you ever wanted to know about Frankenstein, be sure to visit Pierre's blog Frankensteinia.

John Rozum said...

Erick, Neal, Thank you so much for sharing this. Great job.

I, too am curious about how this was done. I have a box of old vm reels I wouldn't mind figuring a way to scan to share.

Anonymous said...

I wish I could say that I had some wham-bam technique, but all I did was set the reels on my Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner (on professional mode) and hit the scan button.

amity8 said...

Wow,I had totally forgotten about this viewmaster set. Thank you so much for posting these. -Michael

Dave said...

Awesome job on these VM slides. I still haven't tried it out on anything yet.

Speaking of projectors - guess what I just won on ebay. An extremely hard to find Talking Viewmaster Projector. And it didn't cost me and arm and leg to win either. Now if I can just find one of those darn Show N Tell Viewers that works.

Dave

Mr. Karswell said...

It is indeed great to see these reels scanned so beautifully. Guess I need to purchase a Epson Perfection 4490 Photo scanner too, as the last time I tried to scan a view master reel it came out very dark.

Polo said...

Perhaps it's not necessary to try and find a set that looks better that this one. See what you can do with 2 clicks in Photoshop Elements (not the professional Photoshop, just a simple, $99 program).
http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=7&u=11986290

Anonymous said...

awesome. if you want i can fix the first couple if you need...

i am a photoshop junkie!

jeremy

evilsunshine.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

In C6 the monster actually looks like Herman from the Munsters. These reels were awesome to look at...thanks for posting them!

JeffDmetalgod said...

I had the Monster pak set with Frankenstein,Dracula and the Wolfman...

Anonymous said...

I can't believe I just found this online! Great Job!!! When I was young (probably around 1983), I found reel A laying on the steps of a church in my neighborhood. To this day, I still look at it when I need a quick escape from the real world! My only question...my reel has some additional images AND is missing some of the images you show. For example, I have A5, A6, A7, B2 and 3 additional images on my single reel. Any idea why that is??? Thanks again!!!
Shaun

Erick said...

Hi Shaun,

Does your reel have either of these numbers on it? RP-1181 or RP-1182. If it does, it's a "Reel Pack" reel. Here's an explanation I found while doing some research --

In the mid-1960s Sawyer's began tentatively to exploit the large View-Master back-catalog by issuing a series of "Reel Packs," collections of seven reels sold in long cellophane-fronted cardstock packages. GAF greatly expanded the practice throughout the 1970s by marketing reel collections in flat plastic cannisters or packaged with a viewer or projector in cylindrical tubs.

Essentially re-issues, Reel Pack reels carried the prefix "RP" either appended to the numbers of previously-issued reels or as part of newly-assigned numbers. RP reels were either reproductions in whole of earlier single or packet reels or compilations of individual scenes from earlier reels; previously unissued images occasionally may have been included. Many individual scenes and whole reels were used in Reel Packs more than once and were issued with different RP numbers.

evenspotspeaks said...

I have a few Veiw-master packs my brother & I got them growing up around the late 60's to early 70's.
I like to scan them but not sure they will work on my scanner. I don't have a top light on the lid only bottom light scanner.
I know I tried it on a slide that didn't come out. Well I still have my view-master viewer. That's the only thing my brother left me. He took all our matchbox cars which was close to 80 cars and the suitcase city that unfolds then years later his wife threw them out when my nephew got older. If I knew that I would ask for them back!