Monsterfest 2014

Got off to a lame start this afternoon.

Every September-October I like to DVR some age-appropriate spooky stuff to watch with the little ones.  And – to be honest – teevee has been failing me somewhat of late.  Only thing I’ve recorded since mid-summer has been Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman and The Planet of the Apes.  That’s it, and that’s what’s called slim pickin’s. 

So we watched 1943’s Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman, and it was even more mediocre than I remembered from when I was a kid.  Yeah, the girls like it, sorta.  Not as scary as a Vincent Price vehicle, but it surprisingly held their interest for such a boring flick.

Apes is not really spooky / scary; it kinda falls in the rich “classic Sci-Fi” vein I want to mine with my children.  Stuff I enjoyed as a youngling, that they might appreciate.  So we’ll get to that one of these days.  The wife is insisting Patch won’t be able to handle it as a six-year-old, but I think she could.  (Note: she’s been sleeping through the night without them nightmares for two or three weeks now.)

Little One herself (turning 10 in a week) has expressed interest in Hitchcock’s The Birds.  The movie came up in a show we were watching earlier today, and I happen to have it as part of a Hitchcock collection I received as a birthday gift one year.  I might just allow her to see that with me.  Definitely off-limits for Patch, but Birds might be a worthy Monsterfest 2014 headliner for this year.

Dunno what else to see with them.  Since TCM seems classic-horror-adverse of late, might have to rely on oldies-but-goodies at one of the local libraries.  I’ll have to see.  Maybe research some more Vincent Price online to see what flicks of his we haven’t seen yet (and we’ve seen about half-dozen).

And as far as Frankenstein vs. the Wolfman goes, Bela Lugosi’s monster was a far, far cry from Karloff’s classic portrayal (short, fat, and myopic vs. tall, scary, and menacing) and what the heck was with that musical number in the middle of the flick???