ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

If you're not a member of All Sci-Fi, registration is easy. Just use the registration password, which is —

gort




Attention members! If you've forgotten your password, just email me at Brucecook1@yahoo.com.
______________________________________________

All Sci-Fi member Rick Smith shares a "monsterkid memory" about the movie below.

Click on the title below to go to the thread and add a reply.

This, of course, is how it works for ALL the Featured Threads. Everybody knows that . . . right?

_______________
______________________________________________

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957 England) (<— link)




This was a biggie for me. It was the first horror film I ever saw in a theater. It was the first color horror film I'd ever seen. Matter of fact, it was only the third film of any kind I'd seen in a theater, and only the second color film of any kind I'd ever seen.

I was 9 years old, but only a few days shy of my tenth birthday. One of the best things about my dad leaving us (and, frankly, there were several) was that my mom loosened the restrictions and I was allowed to go to the local bijou, so long as a friend went with me.

So that Saturday in January of 1960, my friend Bill, a year older than me and well-experienced in moviegoing, accompanied me to the LeRose. We arrived a few minutes early, found our seats and waited.

Now...I had seen the poster. I think I had seen the trailer. I know I'd heard a lot from my friends about CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. And what I'd heard was that it was the bloodiest, scariest, most extreme, most out-of-control monster movie ever made. They told me that this movie showed EVERYTHING. No horror was too horrible, no scene too outrageous. They said it would all be on camera, nothing would be hidden or cut away from. It would ALL be shown. And in color.

So, with this in my not-quite-ten-year-old brain, I sat and waited. The LeRose always played mellow music over the speakers before movie time. There would be Tony Bennett and Johnny Mathis and The Lettermen. I heard it, but it didn't register. Bill was talking at me nonstop, but not a word sank in.

I was petrified. The movie hadn't started and I was already shaking with fear. I was sure that I wasn't up to this. I was sure that a nine year old kid was not capable of surviving through this. My heart was pounding. I could feel it, too loud and too fast. I was worried that I'd die right there in my seat before the first frame of the movie was projected. And if I made it into the movie, well, the horrors contained therein would absolutely kill me.

I had a bizarre fantasy of my friend Bill knocking on the door of our family home and telling my mom, "Well, Mrs. Pruitt, Rickie...uhh...well, shoot, Rickie died. CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN killed him!"

I gave serious thought to just leaving. Hopping up, running up the aisle and going home. But...come on, that wasn't possible. I'd never live down an embarrassment like that. Better to be dead than to be eternally branded as a chicken.

So I sat and waited for my heart to burst. The movie started. Really colorful. Pretty gross. But not fatal.

I've always felt that CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN is a disappointment, but I've never been sure if that feeling didn't spring from the mere fact of my living through it. I mean, how much more can you expect of a film beyond it killing you? So, yes, my expectations were sky-high. But I lived. So, ehhh...

Nowadays, I like CURSE, but it's far from my Hammer favorite. Probably not in my top 10 Hammers. But I recognize its vital importance in horror film history and honor it for that.

It's a good movie, not a great one. And it's not, thankfully, a Killer movie.
_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)