By Robert Gibson Jones [Pulp Covers]
Sunday, October 06, 2013
31 Werewolves | Dell's super spy
At the height of the monster nostalgia craze in the early '60s, Dell published a series of one-shots adapting Universal's most popular monster movies: Dracula in 1962, then Frankenstein and The Wolf Man in 1964. A couple of years later though, they decided to turn the characters into monster-themed superheroes.
Dracula and Frankenstein were no problem as long as Dell didn't use the Universal likenesses. They even continued the numbering from the one-shots, starting the superhero versions with #2 issues. Since the Wolf Man name was trademarked by Universal though, Dell renamed that series Werewolf and started with a new #1.
Unlike Dell's Frankenstein and Dracula heroes, who had some story ties to their namesakes, Werewolf was an all-new character with no connection to the monster of folklore. In fact, with Bondmania in full swing all over the world, Dell broke further with the other two by making Werewolf more superspy than superhero. He was an Air Force pilot named Wiley Wolf who got amnesia and was adopted by a wolf pack after he crashed his plane. Traveling with his wolf pal, Thor, he used the skills he learned with the pack to join the CIA and become a secret agent in a black bodysuit with high tech enhancements.
Like the Frankenstein and Dracula series, Werewolf only lasted three issues.
Back in 2010, my pal Pax Holley at Cavalcade of Awesome wrote about Werewolf during his lycanthrope-themed Halloween countdown. He's got lots of additional details, plus scans of the issues, including a schematic of Werewolf's suit. Check that out, but then also check out the rest of his posts from that month. It's great companion reading to 31 Werewolves.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
31 Werewolves | Eddie Munster
Universal's monster movie output settled down after the '40s (with the exception of the Creature from the Black Lagoon series), but popular interest in the classic monsters didn't fade. Thanks to Hammer Studios, the '50s saw a resurgence in the genre. Though Hammer focused primarily on famous, public domain characters like Frankenstein and Dracula, they did make one werewolf movie, 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, based on the novel The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore.
Sadly, Curse didn't make my list, but Hammer is important for keeping the love of monsters alive into the '60s where nostalgia kicked in and made the Universal monsters wildly popular again. That's when Universal's parent company MCA decided to make use of them with a TV show about humorous versions of the Universal trinity: Frankenstein-lookalike Herman Munster, his Dracula-inspired wife and father-in-law, and his werewolf son.
The origin of The Munsters actually goes back as far as the late-'40s when Looney Tunes animator Bob Clampett pitched Universal a series of cartoons about a monster family. The idea was kicked and passed around for a decade or so until MCA decided to run with it as a live-action show. When word got out that ABC had locked down a series based on Charles Addams' popular comic strip about a macabre family, MCA got moving and CBS got buying. The Munsters and The Addams Family both ran for the same two years and were cancelled within a month of each other, due to the popularity of Batman and color TV in general.
She-Wolf of London (1946)
Who's in it?: June Lockhart (Lost in Space, Lassie), Don Porter (Night Monster, Gidget), Sara Haden (The Shop Around the Corner, The Bishop's Wife), Jan Wiley (Citizen Kane, The Brute Man), and Eily Malyon (Going My Way, Basil Rathbone's The Hound of the Baskervilles).
What's it about?: A young woman (Lockhart) begins to think she may be the werewolf that's been terrorizing the local park.
How is it?: I'm going to have to spoil the movie to talk about it, but that's for the best. Though marketed as a werewolf movie (the title is a deliberate reference to Werewolf of London, the theatrical trailer plays up the werewolf angle, and my copy came in a DVD set with Universal's other werewolf films), She-Wolf isn't. It's a mystery/psychological thriller in the tradition of Gaslight, a hugely popular play in the late '30s that spawned two film adaptations (one in 1940 and the other in 1944) and lots of mid-'40s imitators like Dangerous Passage and this film. The play's plot, in which a young woman is made to think she's going insane by someone close to her, even gave its name to a clinical term in psychology so that "gaslighting" is "a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity."
In this sub-genre of psychological thrillers, She-Wolf at least has the advantage of the villain's using a local werewolf legend as a major tool, but sadly there is no actual werewolf, which makes the movie a bait-and-switch. And the mystery of who's persecuting poor June Lockhart isn't that great either, since the key to unlocking it is clumsily revealed early on in the story.
There are some great sets and Lost in Space fans may find it fun to watch young Maureen Robinson, but there's not much else to recommend it.
Grade: D+
Friday, October 04, 2013
Tarzan 101 | Tarzan of the World Wide Web
Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.
Griffin's chapter on Tarzan's Internet fandom includes information on the founders of important sites, especially Bill Hillman of the massive (and massively useful) ERBzine, but it's probably most useful for me to just give links and send you to Griffin's book if you're curious about background. There's plenty to explore.
Official Sites
Official Edgar Rice Burroughs site
Tarzan.com
Tarzan.org
Burroughs Family
John Coleman Burroughs
Danton Burroughs
Fandom
ERBzine
Burroughs Bibliophiles
Edgar Rice Burroughs Chain of Friendship Listserver
ERBmania!
Movies
Tarzan Movie Guide
Tarzan.cc
Johnny Weissmuller
Humor
The Barsoomian Blade: A Tabloid Paper of Mars
31 Werewolves | The Return of the Vampire
Some folks apparently consider 1944's The Return of the Vampire to be an unofficial sequel to Universal's Dracula starring Bela Lugosi in 1931. They argue that Lugosi is playing Dracula again in all but name (his name in Return of the Vampire is Armand Tesla) and that it's only because the movie was produced by Columbia, not Universal, that it's not a legitimate sequel.
But there are several plot differences that keep Return of the Vampire separate from Dracula, in addition to the title character's name. First of all, Tesla's enemies don't have any direct analogues to characters from Dracula. I suppose it's possible to draw comparisons between Dracula's Mina and Ven Helsing and Return's Lady Jane and Professor Saunders, but not without a lot of stretching. And there's no one to represent Jonathan Harker or Dr. Seward.
The difference that's important to this post though is the vampire's servant, a werewolf named Andreas who does Tesla's bidding and protects his coffin. This isn't a serious werewolf movie by any stretch (actor Matt Willis' makeup is more cute than frightening), but it goes to show how big a deal werewolves were beginning to be after the success of The Wolf Man. For another B-movie werewolf story from the same time, check out my review of 1942's The Mad Monster.
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