Monster Rally

We’re making it no secret in the moviehouse that we love words. Crossword puzzles offer more right-brained challenges and enlightenment than the papyrus-dry world of sudoku puzzles. Truth is, numbers scare us. That’s what calculators are for. There are only so many numbers, 0-10, if you think about it. That pales in comparison to the wondrous spectrum of words in global languages. "Language," 18th-century British writer Dr. Samuel Johnson noted, "is the dress of thought."

One of our favorite words is "versus." The dictionary defines versus as "against, used especially to indicate an action brought by one party against another, as to denote competing teams or players in a contest." The word comes from Latin, not surprisingly for our purposes, since we first encountered "versus" in the titles of Italian-made sword-and-sandal adventures that aired in the Saturday afternoons of our youth on a Twin Cities TV program called "Epic Theatre."

A staple of "Epic Theatre" was "The Sons of Hercules," a syndicated franchise that repackaged several musclemen-in-togas sagas under the umbrella title along with a snappy theme song:

"The Mighty Sons of Hercules
Once thundered through the years;
These men of steel could never feel
The curse of a coward’s fears!

The Mighty Sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be;
They burned with dreams and turned their dreams
Into history!"

Several films in the series featured "versus" in the title, among them "Mole Men versus the Son of Hercules," "Ulysses vs. the Son of Hercules," "Medusa vs. the Son of Hercules" and "The Beast of Babylon vs. the Son of Hercules." In the years since, when these movies were released on VHS and DVD, "versus" was sadly changed to "against." Maybe distributors thought the films would be confused with legal dramas like "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "The People vs. Larry Flynt."

Aside from movies that pit a mythological hero against a monstrous foe, what we find vastly more entertaining are scenarios that toss two bad guys into the arena for a no-holds-barred brawl. Tonight’s features in the moviehouse provide exactly that kind of diversion.

We have to start with 1943’s "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man." Although "versus" isn’t in the title, it might as well have been, in this fourth sequel to "Frankenstein" and first follow-up to "The Wolf Man."

On the heels of his successful portrayal of "Dracula," Bela Lugosi seemed the natural choice to play the Monster in the 1931 production of "Frankenstein," but the Hungarian-born actor either snubbed the non-speaking role or was passed over when original director Robert Florey was replaced by James Whale. Florey later recalled that Lugosi "didn’t show himself very enthusiastic for the role and didn’t want to play it." The little-known Boris Karloff stepped into the star-making part that he repeated in two subsequent films.

In 1938, Lugosi joined the Frankenstein franchise as the creature’s deformed companion Ygor (above) in "Son of Frankenstein," repeating the role in "Ghost of Frankenstein" (1942), when Lon Chaney Jr. replaced Karloff as the Monster.

Chaney’s unique notion of portraying both Larry Talbot (his character in "The Wolf Man") and the Monster in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" was short-lived due to budgetary and logistical restrictions of the time. Lugosi, at the age of 60, was asked to take on the role he was supposed to have originated. The initial script contained dialogue for the Monster, but, according to screenwriter Curt Siodmak, a preview audience found Lugosi’s thick Hungarian accent unintentionally funny. Most of the scenes in which the actor speaks were cut, although brief shots remained in which his mouth can be seen moving without sound.

Bela Lugosi (above) suffered from exhaustion during production. His physical limitations and absences from the set necessitated the frequent use of stand-ins and stunt doubles. The Monster is, in fact, onscreen for only a few minutes, putting the spotlight on Chaney’s tormented Wolf Man.

The Wolf Man emerges as the sympathetic antagonist in the ultimate, albeit too brief confrontation. With no Dr. Frankenstein in sight (the name is given the slightest of nods in the presence of actress Ilona Massey as Baroness Frankenstein), Patric Knowles, a frequent costar of Errol Flynn’s, appears as the token mad scientist who tries to cure Larry Talbot and revives the Monster. The two escape to fight in the film’s final moments before they are drowned by villagers who blow up a nearby dam.

"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" opened the floodgate for subsequent "monster rally" motion pictures from Universal Studios, including "House of Frankenstein" (1944), which added John Carradine’s looming, gaunt presence as Dracula, with Chaney as the Wolf Man and Glenn Strange (best known as Sam the bartender on "Gunsmoke") as the Monster, a role he reprised in "House of Dracula" (1945) and "Abbott and Costella Meet Frankenstein" (1948,) featuring the return of Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Boris Karloff, who played a mad doctor in "House of Frankenstein," supposedly coached Glenn Strange in his portrayal of the Monster.

Nearly 30 years after "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man," Lon Chaney Jr. made his final screen appearance in "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" (1971), directed by schlock auteur Al Adamson. The Golden Turkey Awards, published in 1980, offered this tongue-in-cheek synopsis: "The evil count and the mad doctor strike a pact…to rid the world of hippies, Hell’s Angels and Las Vegas showgirls." Like most of Adamson’s output, the film, intended as a ‘70s version of classic monster movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, was made piecemeal over a period of years. At the least, the low-budget feature did boast impressive lab equipment used in the original "Frankenstein" movies.

Both Chaney and costar J. Carroll Naish, a venerable character actor whose many memorable roles included Rasinoff, the weaselly informant in the 1939 classic "Beau Geste," were terminally ill at the time. Naish portrayed the descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, while Chaney, suffering from throat cancer, hulked through his role as the doctor’s mute henchman. Chaney’s heavy drinking compounded his exhaustion, forcing him to lie down between takes. "They’re all gone," he lamented of Hollywood pals long passed. "I want to die now. There’s nothing left for me now." A crew member recalled walking by the dressing room Chaney and Naish (below) shared and overhearing the former say, "Well, I guess we’re going to die pretty soon," and Naish said, "Oh, shut up, Lon!" This was, as well, Naish’s last film.

The supporting cast included Regina Carrol (director Adamson’s busty wife who appeared in most of her husband’s films), Russ Tamblyn (the athletic costar of the screen musicals "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" and "West Side Story" who found renewed popularity as Dr. Jacoby on "Twin Peaks"), Jim Davis (best known as the sagely patriarch Jock Ewing on "Dallas"), Angelo Rossitto (a busy dwarf actor whose last movie role was "The Master" in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome"), and, in a cameo, Forrest J. Ackerman, editor and publisher of the magazine "Famous Monsters of Filmland."

Anthony Eisley, star of the early 1960s TV series "Hawaiian Eye," played the hero, only briefly, before getting killed in a plot twist brought on by the fact that Adamson couldn’t afford Eisley for additional scenes. The Afro-wigged Dracula was portrayed by someone Adamson dubbed Zandor Vorkov, in real life Roger Engel (above), a Wall Street stockbroker who was helping to finance the production. The putty-faced monster was, in fact, John Bloom (below), a 7’4" CPA who was always in a hurry to get off the set because it was tax season.

In The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, author Michael Weldon commented, "Al Adamson’s most famous celluloid atrocity is an embarrassing mixture of old actors and ideas with modern exploitation devices." It was a box-office success.

Sixty-year-old John Carradine (above), sporting a top hat and goatee, revived his portrayal of the infamous vampire in "Billy the Kid vs. Dracula," a low-budget thriller that shared the drive-in theater marquee in 1966 with "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter." What is fascinating about these curiosity pieces is not the peculiar hybrid of western and horror but the fact that they were the last two features directed by William Beaudine, one of the most prolific filmmakers in American history.

William Beaudine began his career as an actor in 1909. He was an assistant to the legendary director D.W. Griffith on the silent-era epics "The Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance." By the age of 23, he had directed his first movie, and he made at least 30 films before the sound era began. One of his most popular films in the early 1930s was the W.C. Fields comedy "The Old-Fashioned Way." Following a successful sojourn in England, Beaudine returned to Hollywood in the late ‘30s and churned out numerous, pleasantly entertaining, if unremarkable, program fillers for the B-movie studio Monogram Pictures, including outings for the East Side Kids, Charlie Chan and the Bowery Boys. Asked to rush the completion of a particular Monogram quickie, he dryly responded, "You mean someone out there is actually waiting to see this?"

At the time of his retirement in 1967, the 75-year-old Beaudine (above, with silent film's sweetheart Mary Pickford), with nearly 350 known films to his credit, was Hollywood’s oldest active director. "I’m a commercial director," he once said. "I know how to save money and get something on screen. I let those artsy guys shoot scenes through chandeliers or from behind the wine glass."

The title of the 2005 animated adventure "The Batman vs. Dracula" is self-explanatory, while 2008 saw the release of the quirky "Bonnie & Clyde vs. Dracula." The independent film, written and directed by Timothy Friend, starred Tiffany Shepis (below), a popular scream queen who got her start in low-budget horror films from Troma Entertainment, beginning with a supporting role in the cult favorite "Tromeo and Juliet" (1996).

"King Kong vs. Godzilla" (1963) was the third in the Japanese film series about the atomic radiation-mutated Godzilla (Gojira to the Japanese). Thanks to a nuclear submarine, Godzilla is freed from the Arctic iceberg that entombed him in 1959’s "Gigantis the Fire Monster" (AKA "Godzilla Raids Again"), while Kong is abducted in a publicity stunt by a pharmaceutical company and ballooned to Japan.

Featuring the first full-color, widescreen looks at both King Kong and Godzilla, the film was initially intended as a light satire of commercialism, highlighted by thrilling clashes, often played for laughs, between the two titans.

The idea for "King Kong vs. Godzilla" was originated in 1960 by Willis O’Brien (above), the stop-motion special effects animator for the original "King Kong" (1933). O’Brien created a treatment for "King Kong vs. Frankenstein," in which Kong would battle a gigantic Frankenstein’s monster in San Francisco (depicted below in a sketch by O'Brien). Fearing that Universal Studio had a lock on the rights to the name "Frankenstein," O’Brien changed the title to "King Kong vs. the Ginko" (whatever a "Ginko" is). The truth is, Universal only had a legal claim to their creature’s unique makeup design.

O’Brien hooked up with John Beck, a producer who had the 1950 James Stewart comedy "Harvey" to his credit. Beck promised O’Brien he would find a studio to make the film, now retitled "King Kong vs. Prometheus." (Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was subtitled The Modern Prometheus.) The cost of stop-motion animation discouraged American studios, but Beck managed to interest Toho, the Japanese studio behind Godzilla. Toho, which had desired to make a King Kong movie of its own, wanted to replace Frankenstein’s monster with Godzilla, picturing it as an ideal way to celebrate the studio’s 30th year of production.

Beck’s business with Toho was done behind Willis O’Brien’s back, and poor O’Brien, who died in 1962, was never given credit for his idea. Meanwhile, Merian C. Cooper, co-producer and co-director of the original "King Kong," tried unsuccessfully to sue Beck, claiming that he outright owned the Kong character.

In the early stages, director Ishiro Honda entertained the notion of using O’Brien’s animation technique instead of the "suitmation" process (man-in-a-rubber suit), but the budget limited the stop-motion effect to the attack of a giant octopus. Toho wanted to move the Godzilla series toward a broader audience, specifically appealing to children’s sensibilities. The special effects team subtly altered Godzilla’s rubber suit to make it less frightening. At the time, King Kong was more popular in Japan than Godzilla, who was still considered a villain, so it was only natural to not only give Kong top billing but to depict him as the apparent winner of the climactic fight.

When John Beck sold the "King Kong vs. Prometheus" script to Toho, he was given exclusive rights to produce his own English-language version of the film. Not being a fan of the comedic slant of the Japanese original, Beck tried his hardest to remold it into a straightforward, if confusing, science-fiction movie. He replaced many deleted scenes with new footage featuring dull American actors, directed by Thomas Montgomery, a TV director whose résumé included episodes of "Dobie Gillis," "Gilligan’s Island" and "My Mother the Car." Beck also replaced the Japanese score with library music from older American films, including "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man."

"Viewers who attend the ridiculous melodrama," critic Eugene Archer wrote in The New York Times, "should know exactly what to expect and get what they deserve. The one real surprise of this cheap reprise of earlier Hollywood and Japanese horror films is the ineptitude of its fakery. When the pair of prehistoric monsters finally get together for their battle royal, the effect is nothing more than a couple of dressed-up stuntmen throwing cardboard rocks at each other."

The fur-covered rubber suit and mask created for Kong has been derided over the years as one of the most ridiculous-looking gorilla costumes ever seen on film. Ray Morton, author of King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon, called the mock-up "an unqualified disaster," noting, "The baggy body suit with mangy-looking fur was bad enough (and looked even worse when it was wet), but it was the poorly sculpted, expressionless mask with sunken, lifeless eyes that really torpedoed it. Kong not only doesn’t look like an ape, but he doesn’t look like any other creature on the face of the planet either."

In Japan, the film has the highest box-office attendance of all the Godzilla movies. Toho wasted no time in announcing a sequel, unceremoniously titled "Continuation: King Kong vs. Godzilla," but the project never got past the announcement.

New Line Cinema, the studio responsible for the "Nightmare on Elm Street" franchise, and Paramount, the studio behind the series of "Friday the 13th" films, tried to launch a Freddy Krueger vs. Jason Voorhees project as early as 1987, but the two studios couldn’t agree on a story. In 2003, after 15 years of on-and-off development, which incurred $6 million and involved 18 unused scripts from as many as a dozen writers, the crossover slasher "Freddy vs. Jason" was released (perhaps a decade too late), directed by Hong Kong-born Ronny Yu (Yan-Tai), who made the 1998 horror-comedy "Bride of Chucky."

Picking up after the long-forgotten story lines of "Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare" (1991) and "Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday" (1993), the confusing plot finds Freddy (Robert Englund) trapped in hell and pissed off that the kids in the old neighborhood have forgotten about him, rendering him powerless to make a comeback. He tracks down fellow hell-mate Jason (played by Ken Kirzinger, a 6’5" tall stuntman the filmmakers found more physically imposing than a disappointed 6’3½" Kane Hodder, who had portrayed the hockey-masked fiend four times) and tricks him into rising again to slaughter teens and allow Freddy to be remembered and resurrected himself. Huh?

The New York Times critic Elvis Mitchell noted, "The mildewed, rusted aroma that archaeologists encounter when unearthing a tomb is the same that will hit moviegoers attending ‘Freddy vs. Jason,’ an idea whose time has come - and gone." He added, "The only way that ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ might have been any fun is if these two avengers from beyond the grave decided to team up and go after the cast of ‘American Wedding.’"

On the other hand, Mitchell enjoyed the director’s sense of dark humor, stating that Yu "has an enormous amount of fun with the climactic battle." Yu’s "frenzied B-micture magic realism…brings such insane liveliness to the movie that it’s a shame the film waits until the last half-hour to pit the title characters against each other."

In 2007, a six-issue comic book series debuted, called "Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash," which continued where the movie left off and threw the chainsaw-wielding hero of the "Evil Dead" trilogy into the mix.

Speaking of comic books, the idea for "Alien vs. Predator" began with a 1989 comic book series, which was followed by a toy line, video games and trading cards. (In 2000, the comic book series "Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator" appeared, followed in early 2007 by "Superman and Batman versus Alien and Predator.")

As an in-joke in "Predator 2" (1990), the trophy room inside the creature’s spaceship includes the skull of the Alien. "Alien vs. Predator" (AKA "AVP"), the film itself, reached the screen in 2004, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson ("Mortal Kombat," "Resident Evil," "Death Race"). The script, co-written by Anderson, was inspired by Aztec mythology and the writings of Erich von Daniken, whose musings about extraterrestrial influences on early human history by ancient astronauts, popularized in bestsellers like Chariots of the Gods?, became a fad in the late 1960s. With more than a passing nod to H.P. Lovecraft’s classic 1930s novella At the Mountains of Madness, the screenplay’s ludicrous premise revolves around the discovery of a subterranean pyramid in the Antarctic which is revealed to be an ancient hunting ground for Predators who killed Aliens in an Aztecan rite of passage. The movie earned a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Remake or Sequel.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as the governor of California allegedly prevented him from committing to a cameo in "AVP" as Dutch Schaefer, his character from "Predator." As for Sigourney Weaver, whose participation in 1992’s "Alien 3" (condemned by fans of the franchise as an obscenity) and 1997’s "Alien Resurrection" (which prompted one critic to remark, "It’s time they quit killing the aliens and just killed the Aliens series altogether") could be viewed as vanity projects, since she co-produced both sequels, she reportedly expressed her happiness over not being in the movie, saying the concept "sounded awful." When James Cameron, the director of "Aliens," learned about "Alien vs. Predator," he believed it would "kill the validity of the franchise." He said, "To me, that was ‘Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.’ It was Universal just taking their assets and starting to play them off against each other…Milking it." (In an opening scene at a satellite receiving outpost in "Alien vs. Predator," "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" is playing on a television.) Cameron later admitted, "I actually liked it a lot," ranking "Alien vs. Predator" his third favorite among the then five "Alien" films.

Despite critical slams, the movie was a box-office success and led to a sequel of its own, "Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem" ("AVP:R") in 2007, directed by brothers Greg and Colin Strause. Inspired by "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," the two moved to Los Angeles to break into the movie business and eventually started their own special effects factory, Hydraulx. They contributed special effects to several films, including "The Nutty Professor," "Titanic," "Volcano," "X-Men," "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," "The Day After Tomorrow," "Fantastic Four," "Poseidon," "300," and "Avatar." Coincidentally, the brothers had earlier and unsuccessfully pitched an idea for the first "Alien vs. Predator" film.

"AVP:R" introduced a new creature, a silly hybrid of Alien and Predator called "Predalien." The film was nominated for two Golden Raspberry Awards, losing to "Daddy Day Camp" in the Worst Prequel or Sequel category and losing to "I Know Who Killed Me" in the category of Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie.

Our final bout is the deliriously absurd "Boa vs. Python," a 2004 television movie produced for the Sci- Fi Channel (now dumbed down to SyFy) as a sequel, more or less, to the network’s "Python" (2000), which featured Casper Van Dien (star of the "Starship Trooper" films), "A Nightmare on Elm Street’s" Robert Englund, Wil Wheaton (from "Stand by Me" and "Star Trek: The Next Generation"), Dana Barron (one-time child star - the original Audrey Griswold in "National Lampoon’s Vacation" - now grown up…and out), and Jenny McCarthy. "Python 2" followed in 2002 and starred absolutely no one of note.

Obviously too many questions were left unanswered by those two giant-snake movies. In "Boa vs. Python," a poached 80-foot python escapes to wreak havoc in "the city" (actually sites in Bulgaria, the location of choice for a number of SyFy productions). Wise scientists unleash a 70-foot bio-engineered Boa constrictor to track and down and destroy the rampaging serpent, only to be shocked when the two reptiles fall for each other and crank out a nestful of snake eggs before their climactic showdown.

Directed by David Flores, who went on to make the SyFy "Original" "Lake Placid 2" (filmed in Bulgaria with John Schneider, of TV’s "The Dukes of Hazzard," and Cloris Leachman), "Boa vs. Python" stars David Hewlett, best known as Dr. McKay on "Stargate SG1" and "Stargate Atlantis." According to a review on the worldwide web, "The real lesson at work here is that crappy (computer-generated-imagery), cheap Eastern European actors, and giant animals are all it takes to get money from the SyFy Channel."

Postscript:

Our editors are well aware of the existence of the age-old conflict between vampires and werewolves as played out in the "Underworld" series of films and in the "Twilight" franchise - "Underworld" depicts a centuries-old war between vampires and Lycans (werewolves), while "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" introduces shirtless male models as a clan of the northwestern Native American Quileute tribe, long regarded as shape-shifters who transform into "spirit wolves" to protect humans from vampires - but frankly, we’re tuckered out from all this fighting.