Frankenstein was one of the first movies i ever saw & definitely the first one where terrible things happened to innocent characters. The monster accidentally drowning the girl, the monster being burned alive in the windmill, left very strong & emotional impressions in my young mind. At that time, my central heroes were Animal from the Muppet Show, Lou Ferrigno's Incredible Hulk & Popeye. There wasn't enough kid oriented Frankenstein stuff around for me to really obsess over him. The Munsters & the Groovie Goolies weren't on TV anymore neither! Frankenstein, 1931
Bride of Frankenstein really brings the whole Frankenstein thing into totality. While alot of people interpret the Frankenstein story as having something to do with man fooling around with the power of God & what happens if you do that sort of thing, my gut tells me that since the whole story is written by a woman, Frankenstein is actually about giving birth to an ordinary human child & the feelings of powerlessness & revulsion that can arise from a depressive control freak witnessing your standard things in life. Frankenstein is on his own & must go up against "the community" who decide that he is not fit for living. Bride of Frankenstein, 1935
I have an almost subconscious theory about the USA & Frankenstein's Monster as well. New York Dolls, Frankenstein
I've got an exciting announcement to make, which is that Mr. Sean's Cartoon Club will now be making an appearance online on Brain Storm Blog every sunday. To get us ready for what is to come, here's some Mickey Mouse from 1929, "Haunted House".
The Screaming Skull Genuinely freaky ghost story about a young newlywed couple & a dead ex-wife & insanity & a SCREAMING SKULL! Also features a creepy retarded groundskeeper for added scariness. Holds up completely.
The Last Man on Earth Vincent Price stars in the first adaptation of the story "I am Legend" which later becomes The Omega Man & "I Am Legend" with Will Smith. This is probably the best version of this story of a world infected with viral born vampirism & the trying, lonely life of a man who must fight for survival & normalcy every day.
The House on Haunted Hill Vincent Price stars as an eccentric millionaire who has a sleepover in his haunted mansion on the hill. Whoever stays the whole night (alive) wins a big stack of money! Scariness ensues. Features a walking skeleton & a pit filled with acid in the basement. Not to be missed.
You know that tough-ass jacket Iggy Pop is wearing on the back of the Raw Power sleeve? You know, the one with the scary looking leopard? It was made by these characters called Wonder Workshop & sold through the legendary Paradise Garage & was only one of five ever made! Anyhow, so the jacket is made famous on the Iggy sleeve & then made famouser to me by being worn by Stan Lee of the Dickies in this photo that was the only photo i'd ever seen of the Dickies AND the first place i saw the jacket appear. Stan Lee got it from a dope dealer who had gotten it from Iggy Pop. Amyhow, i became obsessed with that leopard face the first time i saw it because it's just dead powerful, like the famous shot of Karloff as Frankenstein or a Mickey Mouse face or Bettie Page's smile or Iron Maiden's Eddie or whatever. Super tough.
"We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new." From a piece in the faulty Adbusters. Poetic, dramatic, dispairing, wrong. When was the last cultural movement that was actually "new" & didn't embody elements of the past? Yes, the present-day Hipster cult says everything in quotation marks, but that's not a fault of the kids of today, it's a reflection of the managerial culture & the hesitant, cautious, politically correct culture that has taken over America. Where does one step? Where is the safe path? When people are afraid to even define their antagonisms, rebelling becomes all the more difficult, & with that, one must dwell on what the value of that rebellious mode was in the first place. Power? Dynamism? Contrast? Raw sexual energy? Danger? Yes, & more. This list of terms is not unlike everything i've heard about prefabricated youth subcultures since they began in the 40s. Specifically, the Hippies were described as adding nothing new & just adopting elements from the past: dressing like wild west dandies, playing folk music, superficially adopting the philosophy of the Beatniks. The whole thing has been compared to the German "Nature Boys" & their Lebensreform from a hundred years ago. The Punks were the Blank Generation, Generation X, claiming to destroy Rock & Roll when obviously breathing life right back into it. One of the better Punk documentaries is called "Decline of Western Civilization". They wont say this about Black subcultures, because in our society they do not define the great mass, they are always outside & then used as flavor & novelty to give the mass culture a little punch. Here's the deal, Western Civilization is always in flux, going up & down, it's never "the end". I would argue that a new thing will be born out of this time period, which is what i have been writing about in this blog & elsewhere, which is the aculturation of all of the mass media trash that has been created in America during this boom period which will then become a new American Roots Culture. It has been happening for a while, just adding onto itself, but the point is that the youth culture is not the defining point for anything anymore, because it has gone its course. There will always be youth, they will always rebel & try to distance themselves from their parents & find themselves & something novel to play around with, but ultimately, this is just a short bump in the ride of life.
I have a running theory about the Addam's Family & the Munsters & monsters & America in general. Centrally it's that America & Americans are akin to Frankenstein's Monster, who i want to call Frankenstein, but have equally conflicting voices discussing the matter in my head. America was created out of a hodge-podge of parts, sewn together, saturated with alchemical weirdness, maybe accidentally given the brain of a criminal & then shocked to life with electricity. Its Mad Scientist creator freaks out at his creation, as does the rest of the world & they spend the rest of their time trying to kill the Monster, America. In this way, we are also King Kong & we are Godzilla, who despite being Japanese, is probably a physical embodiment of America constantly rampaging all over Japan, who initially thinks Godzilla is an enemy, but soon becomes a hero to Japan. In the Munsters & the Addams Family we have what are essentially total eccentrics & bohemians who are disguised as Monsters. They are shunned by the judgmental & conformist Americans who don't understand the reality of the real American dream, & want peace & quiet & conformity, when the real America is about sticking your finger in a light socket, drinking potions made out of speed & cyanide, firing up all the engines & gunning that sucker through the 6th dimension! PEDAL TO THE METAL! FULL SPEED AHEAD! DON'T LOOK BACK! The Addam's Family
To prove my point, the Munsters have not one, but TWO hot-rods. The Munsters
This show gives me a head-ache, like alot of Filmation's cartoons, i think they put some kind of weird patterns or audio signals in their shit. The Jackson 5 cartoon used to really mess me up. Still, bubblegum monster joke show, how can you go wrong? The Groovy Ghoulies
Spin-off of Danger Mouse, Count Duckula takes us back to the mother country & the peasants aren't any more pleasant there either. Count Duckula
Frankenstein was one of the first movies i ever saw & definitely the first one where terrible things happened to innocent characters. The monster accidentally drowning the girl, the monster being burned alive in the windmill, left very strong & emotional impressions in my young mind. At that time, my central heroes were Animal from the Muppet Show, Lou Ferrigno's Incredible Hulk & Popeye. There wasn't enough kid oriented Frankenstein stuff around for me to really obsess over him. The Munsters & the Groovie Goolies weren't on TV anymore neither!
Bride of Frankenstein really brings the whole Frankenstein thing into totality. While alot of people interpret the Frankenstein story as having something to do with man fooling around with the power of God & what happens if you do that sort of thing, my gut tells me that since the whole story is written by a woman, Frankenstein is actually about giving birth to an ordinary human child & the feelings of powerlessness & revulsion that can arise from a depressive control freak witnessing your standard things in life. Frankenstein is on his own & must go up against "the community" who decide that he is not fit for living. 
Posts
