Dracula Is A Dickhead

Real talk, I love Pepsi. You might have noticed. You might have noticed I love the Universal Monsters, or even the reason we're here right now. Halloween. I love all three. For a while in the 90's Pepsi and Universal Studios had a partnership with some sort of promotion usually around Halloween. It was great. Normally you could win tickets to Halloween Horror Nights or free snacks. Pepsi products even had great clip out art of the monsters. Times were good. 

The point I'm about to make isn't about the good times, it's about Dracula needing his ass kicked. I hope you've already watched the above clip. There's Frankenstein (let's not be that guy) carrying a Pepsi truck. Really struggling too. Sure he's strong, but you know that thing is heavy. As a big guy, I often get stuck carrying the heavy thing while the others just walk the fuck off. I feel your pain Frankenstein. 

Then he gets to the party where everybody else is having a good time. He brings some soda and chips and what does Dracula say? "What? No dip?" Look at his face, I felt that. I FELT THAT. FUCK YOU DRACULA AND YOUR STUPID CAPE. Take your fake fancy ass down to Kroger and get some your own damn self. Fucking asshole.

What did the Wolfman bring? Weed? Great, like a small portion of the party is going to enjoy that while the rest just try to pretend they aren't uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the Phantom is really upset about it. What if the cops come? What if I get a random drug test at work tomorrow and that second hand shit makes me fail it? I have bills man! You know the Mummy brought a snack tray and everybody saw the Aldi label. He's like royalty or something. I'm not saying he should have went to Whole Foods or anything, but come on. Seriously.

Know what Dracula brought? Jack shit. He just showed up acting like Mr. Cool and everyone just loved him. He's that guy who shows up late and just takes charge after everyone has been working the whole time. Did you decide to bring everybody donuts? He's the one who's going to complain that it's not another brand. Know what, I hope Frankenstein got some dip with a lot of garlic. Fuck that guy.

Friday Night Frights- The Phantom Of The Opera

The Universal Monsters, a particular favorite group of mine and it's a fine Friday Night to take in one of the very best! The Phantom Of The Opera was released in 1925, 95 years ago this November! That's a long time, and like the long passage of time, there's a lot of history in this movie. For starters, the opera house. That set stood on Universal Studios grounds for 90 years before being torn down in 2014.

Bela Lugosi as Dracula filmed scenes here, as well as various scenes from The Bride of Frankenstein. Even the 1943 Phantom of the Opera remake by Universal was filmed on this set. That movie stared Claude Rains as The Phantom. Claude also appeared in other Universal Monster movies, Sir John Talbot in The Wolfman and Dr. Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man! Hey, you think there's a transparent inspiration for tonight's edition of Friday Night Frights? A ton of TV shows and movies were filmed on the set. So many that it's rumored to be haunted. A caped figure has been seen in the catwalks leading to speculation of Lon Chaney haunting the set of his most famous movie.

What's really interesting about this movie is, well, it just doesn't exist anymore. Nope. The version you're watching above or on video perhaps is a cobbled together reconstruction. It's a close appropriation of the original film made by editing together clips from various editions of the movie. It's a silent movie, but you'll notice around minute mark 1:00 in the above clip the guy holding the lamp is clearly talking to the audience. That scene is likely from one of the sound versions of the movie stuck in sans audio.

Weird huh?

The movie is public domain and chances are you've seen it sitting in a discount movie bin from time to time. My aunt saw a copy of it in one of those and I still have that VHS tape to this day. I wonder just how much of the original movie is on that tape that I watched countless times growing up?

Phantom Of The Big Apple

Friday Nights are usually pretty busy for me, but it's always a good time to share something with you all.

Remco X Universal

Nothing better than to get some Universal Monsters in the perfect scale for an adventure this Halloween. These days Super 7 has you covered with their excellent ReAction line, but back in the day Remco brought the noise with these superb figures. At that scale they can pilot the Millennium Falcon. Think about that. Gillman behind the wheels with Phantom manning the guns. Somebody give Dracula a light saber!

Thinking about these toys and Halloween gives me warm memories of those lucky years when Halloween was on the weekend. Spending all Saturday playing in anticipation of going trick or treating later in my Kooky Spooks green face with black eyes and robe costume. What the hell was I supposed to be? Who knows, but I damn sure was it and damn sure got some candy. I can't think of a better way to spend Halloween day than with some sweet Universal Monsters action figures. Or any day for that matter.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

I grew up watching The Phantom of the Opera on a VHS tape given to me by my aunt over and over again. I was an early lover of the Universal Monsters and the Phantom was one of the first members of the crew. I like to look back at the movie, because it's just so damned weird. The Phantom is human (spoilers, almost 100 year old movie), but seems like some demonic ghost due to his presentation. It doesn't help that the overall presentation of the movie comes off like some macabre art project, only aided by the quirks created by film making of the time.

Frame rates and low resolution make for unnatural movements performed by ghoulish looking people. The opening title screen of the movie with the ghost floating about over the opera house is scary enough alone. It's funny, this trailer almost seems like a cursed video and not like the advertisement for a big production studio movie. Considering the actual original movie is lost to time and whatever version you can watch now is loosely stitched together from odd clips... it could be a cursed video at this point.

Phantom of the Opera trailer