For the next seven days, I've decided to go with a theme within a theme. Maybe it's because the heart of my childhood happened during the waning years of the monster boom, when monsters were all the rage, but I've always felt that halloween and monsters went hand in hand, particularly the Universal Monsters: Hunchback of Notre Dame, Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, the Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the others.
These are the monsters that have stood the test of time. No matter how many versions of Dracula, or Frankenstein are made, they all try to look like the Universal versions to some extent. My favorite movie monster of all time is the Frankenstein Monster from Universal pictures. No matter how many people have redesigned the characters in the years since 1931, none of them have ever come close to competing with make-up genius, Jack Pierce's startling design. It's also real apparent that all of these redesigners have that version stuck in their minds as weel. Even kids who have never had the good fortune of having ever seen a Universal horror film can identify Frankenstein.
This was not the first sympathetic monster to grace the screen, but unlike others such as Quasimodo, the Frankenstein monster has a real presence of strength and menace and that criminal brain that seems to always be his undoing. No matter if played by Karloff, Chaney, Lugosi, or Strange, I love them all.
So for this entire week, pretty much everything is going to be Frankenstein, the movies, the riddles, links, and pictures of stuff from my own collection including this plastic top to a tube of candy I picked up, I'm guessing, about 15 years ago.
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