Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Rick Baker & David J. Skal

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

It’s Halloween in July as Gilbert and Frank celebrate the 90th anniversaries (1931-2021) of Universal Studios' original "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" by welcoming Oscar-winning makeup creator Rick Baker and author-historian David J. Skal for a fascinating conversation about sympathetic monsters, mad scientists (real and imagined), the origin of horror films, the genius of Jack Pierce and the premature deaths of Colin Clive, Dwight Frye and Lon Chaney. Also, David interviews Carla Laemmle, Rick turns Martin Landau into Bela Lugosi, Glenn Strange appears in Boris Karloff's obit and Bram Stoker's widow tries to kill off "Nosferatu." PLUS: Ghoulardi! "Man of a Thousand Faces"! The influence of Forrest J. Ackerman! Bette Davis (almost) plays the Bride of Frankenstein! And the boys (once again) try to make sense of "The Black Cat"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. Well, 90 years ago this year, Universal Studios released two motion pictures that starred a pair of virtually unknown actors named Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Those pictures were Dracula, released in February of 1931, and Frankenstein, released in November. Both films would go on to become beloved classics of the genre, terrifying audiences, inspiring horror fans as well as other filmmakers, and paving the way for dozens of imitators, homages, and even parodies. And because we're discussing two unforgettable films, we need two experts to get the job done. Rick Baker is an occasional actor, a designer, a gorilla expert, a monster maker, an Emmy

winner, and a seven-time Academy Award winner, and perhaps the most admired and celebrated makeup and special effects artist in the history of cinema. His contributions to the form take hours to list, but here are some. The Exorcist, It's Alive, King Kong, An American Werewolf in London, Harry and the Hendersons, Ed Wood, Men in Black, Gremlins 2, Gorillas in the Mist, Planet of the Apes, Hellboy and the Wolfman. The man even worked on a movie we love to talk about on this show, The Thing with Two Heads. color, two volume, 700 page extravaganza highlighting his 50 year journey through Hollywood. David J. Skull is a cultural historian, critic, filmmaker, and the author of numerous books that are required reading for fans of this podcast, including Hollywood Gothic, The Tangled Web of Dracula, from novel to play to screen, The Monster Show, A Cultural History of Horror. V is for vampire. An A to C guide to everything undead.

Dark Carnival. The secret world of Todd Browning. And in association with Turner Classic Movies, Fright Favorites. classic movies, fright favorites, 31 movies to haunt your Halloween and beyond. He's also the writer and director of the essential documentaries, The Frankenstein Files, How Hollywood Made a Monster, The Road to Dracula, She's Alive, Creating the Bride of Frankenstein, and Monster by Moonlight, The Immortal Saga of the Wolfman. Frank and I are excited to welcome to the show two lifelong monster kids who might be more obsessed than we are. Rick Baker and David J. Skoll.

Gentlemen. Yes. Are some of those things true? A few of them. Are some of those things true? A few of them. I want to start. Now, David, I guess we've never met.

No, not in person. Yeah. But, David, I think it's you who had this theory of what made people initially fascinated with monsters. Oh boy. People have always liked to be scared for a variety of reasons. But in terms of monster movies, they all kind of came out of cultural trauma. They came out of World War I, to be very specific about it. And monster movies, horror entertainment, evolved in tandem with other art forms like surrealism and expressionism. And they all dealt with grotesque images, and they were trying to make sense out of a world that seemed to have gone crazy. And so this is the thesis of my book, The Monster Show, that horror entertainment constitutes

a secret history of the 20th century and that every time there's a big cultural trauma, a war, a depression, an epidemic, it just inevitably sets forth identifiable ripples in the entertainment industry. I think we like to process all of these terrible things without looking at them too directly. And then we can get on with our lives for a little bit longer until the next trauma. And you were saying like before, before World War I, you know, medicine had advanced. So before it's like somebody had their legs shot off, they were dead. And then it kept these people alive. And it's like, so people were looking at basically monsters.

It was, people didn't want to look at them. World War I was the first completely mechanized war in human history, and the destruction it just brought down upon the human body was terrifying to behold. But the same scientific advances that made all of the death and destruction possible brought forth medical advances that could keep these people alive. Almost everything we know about plastic surgery today came out of that terrible experience. And it's not too hard to see a lot of the classic monster movie faces.

In France, the disfigured veterans would always lead the armistice parade, and they called themselves the Union of Bashed Faces. And they were a grim reminder of what, and I think part of the reason, you know, the public flocked to the Erzatz disfigurements, you know, created by people like, you know, Jack Pierce at Universal and later people like Rick Baker, was that this information, this terrible trauma, had to be processed somehow, had to be looked at, but again, not too directly. So you can line up pictures of any number of World War I mutilated faces with the creations of Lon Chaney Sr.

And you can say, my God, that does look like the Phantom of the Opera. And my God, that guy does look like Quasimodo. But they were the forgotten men. And this happened too many times in American military history. The people who gave everything don't get anything near what they

deserve. In fact, they're shunned. It's heartbreaking. It's still happening. Rick, talk a little bit about, we want to get into some monster kid origins here, but in your book, in your wonderful book, which we plug Metamorphosis, which people, our listeners, should get, you recount the story of becoming aware as a kid, aware of a movie called Frankenstein.

And if I have the story right, your dad letting you stay up late because it was a school night? Yeah, well, my dad saw Frankenstein in the cinema when it came out, and he had told me about it way before I ever saw it. Most of the movies I saw were on television, you know, the shock theater package, you know, but for some reason, Frankenstein wasn't shown for, seemed like forever, and these are back in the days when you'd have to get the TV guide and go through every, you know, thing to try to find a monster movie. But there was one time I went through a TV guide, and there it was.

Frankenstein was going to be showing on Channel 9, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, which was past my bedtime. But we actually, that night, my parents went out to some friend's house, and they took me with them. And when we got back, Frankenstein was already on. So my dad let me watch a little bit of it. And it was the scene where Dr. Valdman was about to dissect the monster when he's on the table. And then he kills Dr. Valdman and then goes to the different doors to try to get out. And that was my first introduction. And from then on, I was hooked.

But interestingly, and tell me if I have this story right, it was a transformative moment for you, but you didn't suddenly realize you wanted to be a makeup artist. You realized you wanted to make monsters as a mad doctor? Yeah, I was basically willing to be a mad scientist. A mad scientist. You know, I mean, for, you know, the beginning, you know, up until age 10, I kept saying to my parents that I wanted to be a doctor, you know. And you, this still, I can't make sense out of. You used to make money making monsters. So now you're retired so you could make monsters and not get paid for it.

That's right. And it's so much more fun. Are you an asshole? It's so much more fun because now I can make, it's, I feel, I mean, I've been retired now for I think five and a half years and I feel like I'm a kid again. I mean, I was in love with makeup and doing this stuff as a kid and it was my hobby and it's like I'm a kid again. I mean, I, you know, I was in love with makeup and doing

this stuff as a kid and it was my hobby and it's how I had fun and it became my job. And then I realized when it was a job that you have to please other people and there's other people involved with it and they have opinions, which a lot of times I don't agree with, you know, but they're the boss, you have to do that, you know? And it got to the point now where, you know, I always say this, like, every movie now has 47 producers on it, you know. Yeah. None of them can make up their mind about what they want. Used to be, you know, you'd go into Dino De Laurentiis' office and go, Dino, what the hell you're talking about? You can't build a giant robot. It's not going to work. It's going to be me in a suit, you know. And he would say, shut up and go build a suit and leave me alone, you know, but at least you'd get

an answer. You know, a little late, the last few films I did, you know, I wouldn't get an answer from anybody. And your time was just, you would have adequate time to build it if someone would tell you what you had to build and make a decision. And they would wait until the very last minute and then you'd be working day and night to try to make it the best you could possibly make it. And it just, you know, it got so frustrating.

I was starting to hate this thing that I loved. And now I'm so in love with it again. I mean, I'm just having the best time. Now you have the time to recreate Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory in your house. And in full scale and in miniature both, yes. Which we'll talk about. And David, getting back to the thing with World War I, you mentioned the film Jacuzzi. Jacuzzi, yeah.

Yes. It's an anti-war film made in France. of it are all of the dead and disfigured soldiers rising from their graves to march upon the cities of the world. And, you know, damn it, if it doesn't look like a monster movie. It's really an extraordinary moment. Did they use the real soldiers? Yes, they did. They had the same ones who marched in the Armistice Parade. I can't look at stuff like that. It's funny. Everybody thinks because I do monsters and I've done gory things that I like that kind of stuff.

And the real stuff just bothers me. I mean, I've looked at it, you know, as a researcher. They are really disturbing. Yeah. What can happen to a human face. And still survive. And there are people like this. And even still, but we still don't like to look at them too much.

And therein lies a tale. and therein lies a tale. There's horror entertainment's all about, you know, not paying too close attention to things we don't want to see, but the repressed always has to come back, and it does as our favorite monsters. And Chaney, Chaney Sr., it's funny, he never actually played a monster. He was always deformed people. and the supernatural from the very beginning of the cinema.

In America, it was just felt people would just laugh. They wouldn't buy it. And a lot of the movies in the 1920s used a formula that was adapted from the stage, the drawing room mystery melodramas where there would be spooky goings-on and terrifying characters characters but they'd all be revealed at the end to be part of a criminal conspiracy or a plot to embezzle an inheritance or or that sort of thing i always hated that when i'd watch a movie like that because i want to see monsters i totally don't tell me it's some guy with a sheet over his head pretending to be a ghost it's true i want a ghost well it took it took hollywood a long time to do that

because they they had that there's this uh there was this big stage success called dracula and all the studios said well maybe we should make a movie out of it. But we can't. This isn't a criminal conspiracy. This is a real 500-year-old demon from hell. And they went around and around. All the studios were considering doing it. And it finally came down to Universal and MGM. finally came down to Universal and MGM, and Carl Lemley

Sr. told his son, Carl Lemley Jr., who he had given over the reins of the studio to, that, okay, you can do it, but you have to get Lon Chaney because he's the only bankable star. This is too risky a proposition. And so he bought the rights to it, and

Lon Chaney promptly dropped dead. It was one of the big...no, it was one of the big best-kept secrets in Hollywood that he was dying of lung cancer in the summer of 1930 when all of these negotiations were taking place. And so Dracula had a real bumptious kind of road to the screen. And it was one of Universal's biggest hits in the worst year of the Great Depression. A lot of people think it saved the studio from bankruptcy. And they followed immediately with Frankenstein. And we have Pearl Jr. to thank for it because the old man didn't really have a taste for horror films. And we have Carl Jr. to thank for it, because the old man didn't really have a taste for horror films.

No, he didn't. But Jr. was—people were divided in their opinion of him. In fact, his own family thought he was a spoiled brat. I didn't realize until reading your book, David, that he wasn't even born Carl Jr. No, he was Julius. Right. Julius Lemley, and on his 21st birthday, he got the keys to the kingdom, took over the running of Universal Studios, and the gift he gave back to his father was his own name.

It's interesting, you know, you said the Cheney pictures made money. Obviously, Dracula was a big hit on the stage, and yet the studio still found the material repellent. Oh, yeah. They were still avoiding it. Even before the production code, they said, this is unfilmable. How do you do all this blood drinking and steak pounding? Yes, the book is famous

and it's sold millions of copies around the world, but will people flock to it? And the answer was yes, they did. And everybody was surprised. And it wasn't just Universal who decided to rush a lot of these type of films into production.

But over at Paramount, they got Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde out just at the very end of 1931. And then the rest of the 1930s, you know, is kind of history. Monsters were put on the map. Yeah, golden age. Yeah, absolutely. Rick, I learned in your book, too, that you used

to do a Dracula impression in front of the mirror. Do you actually have, do you have strong memories, clear memories of seeing these for the first time, of seeing Dracula for the first time as well? Not so much Dracula. I mean, definitely remember Frankenstein.

You know, what I remember more than anything else is like weird, like the Million Dollar Movie, which we used to have where it would be the same movie every night, you know, but they would have things like Kautiki the Immortal Monster and, you know, Atomic Submarine and, you know, ones that weren't the classics so much.

This is upstate New York, right? No, I actually grew up in California. I was born upstate New York, but I grew up in California. Oh, born upstate, born in Binghamton, right. My parents, yeah, Binghamton where Rod Serling was born. There's actually a carousel in Binghamton that had been redone by Cortland Hall. Do you know who Cortland Hall is? The guy that has that museum of monsters?

Oh, yes, the Witch's Dungeon. Yeah, Witch's Dungeon, yeah. Anyways, he restores carousels, and he did it Twilight Zone-themed, and he did the one where Burgess Meredith, you know, wants to read all the time, and he's in the safe in the bank when it blows up. He painted him up there and he has a stack of books. And one of the books that he put on there, because I was born in Binghamton, says The Art of Makeup by Rick Baker.

So my name's in Binghamton, even though I haven't been there since I was like six months old or something. Binghamton, even though I haven't been there since I was like, you know, six months old or something. Did you, you guys both have local monster hosts? And David, I know you're from the Cleveland area. Were you watching Ghoulardi? Ghoulardi, Ernie Anderson himself. I actually was on the Ghoulardi show. Wow. Great. I went to an event and they were taping it and I held up a picture I had drawn of him and he pulled called me up on stage and he signed it for me and and then went on with the attack of the 50 foot woman. They didn't I fell through this crack with the Universal Monsters because in Cleveland they showed them like in 1958 and 59 and and I was about six years old, and I remember vividly. I think it's the first movie I ever saw or can remember seeing was Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. It's a good one. And it really stuck with me.

And then a blackout. For almost 10 years, Cleveland television did not show the Universal Classics. And but there were magazines, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Castle of Frankenstein, and fan clubs and when there were science fiction conventions, there was always a cohort of monster fans you could actually meet in person at these things. And that's what the 1960s were like for me. And I somehow got it into my head that Dracula must be the greatest movie ever made only because it was so hard to save. In my imagination, it just took on amazing dimensions.

took on amazing dimensions. And I finally saw Dracula and Frankenstein in a movie theater in Cleveland, an old revival house in 1968. And Dracula really kind of, it's like, is that it? I mean, no, no, there's got to be more here. And I think that has something to do with my obsessive quest for everything having to do with the backstory of that film. And when I found out there was this alternate Spanish language version that only existed in a complete print down in Cuba at the Cinematheque de Cuba in Havana. I got a publisher interested in my doing a book on it

and went down on a State Department visa. And lo and behold, I viewed the only complete print of the Spanish Dracula in the world. They let me do frame blowups of it. They were very nice. They were very flattered that somebody thought so much of this old film. But Universal did have the original negative, but one reel was completely gone to nitrate gunk. And they thought the thing could never be restored or brought out again. And they were able to. Now, this showprint from the 1940s, it was on safety film at least, but it was pretty ragged. But at least there was a whole film.

It was the whole transition from Transylvania to London. You really couldn't show the movie without it. And somebody at Universal tried to stop it, saying, no, people are going to ask for their money back if we put this thing out there. And a long internal political story at Universal about this. But in the end, it did come out at the same time that Francis Coppola's Dracula came out, the same week. And it sold better for Universal than Spartacus on home video and opened up this whole Hispanic market for the studio. And it's been a favorite ever since.

I can't tell you how many screenings I've been invited to. And I can't tell you how many screenings I've been invited to. And I can't resist anymore. You mentioned Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman. So whenever I hear that title, all I could think is, come one, come all, and sing this song. Far, oh, love, far o' lay For life is short and death is long Far o' love, far o' lay

There is no drinking in the tomb Okay, stop, stop. You've got the right audience here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The song's too long in the movie as it is. It was the festival of the new wine and i remember it was it's one of those things where you go this is it's really freaky that where's the monster but then uh the frankenstein monster played by Bela Lugosi, who was originally supposed to play it in the 1931 film.

Yeah, we'll talk about that. He finally got to do it, and he stomped in, and as usual, monsters ruin everything, at least in the movies. They don't ruin everything for the fans. But I remember the thing that I remember most about that film, watching it. It was a Saturday afternoon. The thing that I remember most about that film, watching it, it was a Saturday afternoon. They would show these films, like Cable today, they weren't quite on demand, but they would show them several times in the course of a week. And mostly late at night, but they would do these matinees.

And I remember sitting there with my uncles watching Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and watching Bela Lugosi being brought back to life. And as the electricity goes into him, this big grin comes over his face. And that is my first really strong memory of a moment in a horror film. Well, speaking of – go ahead, Gil. in a horror film well speaking of it go ahead go ahead gil no the funny thing about it is i mean legosi really got screwed on that uh because it was following ghost of frankenstein where the monster spoke and the monster was blind so way Lugosi is playing it looks stupid because they changed their mind halfway through saying no, we'll make him able to

see and not be able to speak. We keep hoping that footage shows up somewhere. I know Joe Dante was saying... Are you talking about the test footage, the early test footage? No, not that. Just the footage of Lugosi talking as the monster. And they probably discarded it because these films weren't thought of in terms of ever being revived.

They were, you know, programmers that went out there. Yeah. But the Lugosi, the original Frankenstein's monster test on Lugosi, I mean, I'd love to see that even though everybody talks about it. That was something else that turned to nitrate gunk. Yeah. What do we know about that, Rick? Because on the DVD, they're talking about, you know, that it was kind of a golem-like getup. That's what I've always heard, yeah.

And at other points it's referred to as like some hairy monster. Was it Lugosi doing his own makeup? Was Pierce in the picture? I think Pierce was in the picture, but I think Lugosi was saying, I want you to do this and do this, you know. I think Lugosi was saying, I want you to do this and do this. I think Lugosi wanted more of his face to be visible. I think that's the most reasonable. They originally wanted Lugosi to play Dr. Frankenstein.

At least he thought that's what he was going to play. And there was never a real, you know, stable treatment. And the script that Lugosi was offered was not the one that James Whale directed. And the monster had no hint of pathos whatsoever. It was just a killing machine.

And it was a thankless part. And Lugosi apparently told people, you know, I'm an actor, not a scarecrow. And that footage was probably destroyed as well. No, it was saved. Really? Paul Ivano was the cameraman, and he kept the reel in his garage.

And when people finally approached him about it, he said, oh, yeah, I've got that. And he went out and there it was, you know, completely congealed together like the third reel of the Spanish Dracula. Oh, that's too bad. And that happened too much. And I think one of the reasons I've written a lot of my books is because people missed the chance to document this stuff. People interviewed Paul Ivano. People interviewed Edward Van Sloan, who was in the screen test with Lugosi. And they just did not ask specific questions.

And not long after, they were all gone. Carl Laemmle Sr., a lot of people don't know this, he got an awful lot of people out of Germany very quietly. He didn't make a big showy thing of it, but he gave people work at Universal. He gave them housing on the lot. people uh work at universal he gave them housing on the on the lot uh and uh he is uh you know posthumously was was recognized in germany there's a little museum now uh dedicated to fascinating man of his stuff yeah fascinating life we will return to gilbert gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.

Rick, just talk a bit about the makeup in Dracula. And interestingly, Pierce is not credited. I mean, he's listed on IMDb, but he's not credited anywhere on the title card. And was the story about Lugosi wanting to do his own makeup because he had done it on stage? That's what I've always heard. Isn't that what you've heard? I've heard that. There's that picture of him sitting in front of a mirror, you know.

Well, yes. I mean, because that's— Yeah. Of course, they did not publish his real makeup. White zombie, they work together. No, he did have to have the hairpiece with the slight widow's peak put in. He did a fairly good job of that. It doesn't really jump out as a rug. It's no Frankenstein's monster.

No. It's no Frankenstein. I mean, you know, Frankenstein's monster, you know, had such an effect on me. When I saw Dracula, it's like, it's an old guy with a tuxedo on you know it's like you know and it's like you know it's like i mean it's it's not frankenstein i mean i mean mind you i i love bail in that film and and and everything else but you know it was you know like gilbert said earlier you know one of those movies that you have somebody in a sheet you know i can't tell you how many movies i sat through you know an hour and a half before they finally show the monster for two seconds you know and that's why you went to see the movie

you know and it's like you didn't you know you didn't go to the kitty matinee to see all the talking you know it's between people you want to see the monsters you know and and getting back to how they change frankenstein meets the wolf man uh You know, he's walking. Well, there are scenes where he's moving his mouth because there was dialogue. Yeah, they couldn't cut everything out. So there are some snippets of Lugosi's mouth flapping. And Lugosi is walking, and that created the Frankenstein walk. With the arms out. Yeah, with his arms out.

No other actor was doing that. That's total Lugosi. Lugosi was trying to show that the monster was blind with the brain of Igor now stuck in his head. How disappointing that had to be for him to have played it one way and then have all that stuff cut out and you look like an idiot. But the... And Lugosi was blamed for a lot of that. played it one way and then have all that stuff cut out and you look like an idiot. But the – But most of the movies –

And Lugosi was blamed for a lot of that, the performance being ridiculous. But he was playing it the way the original script was. Well, and so much of it is Eddie Parker anyways, isn't it? It was true. His best part at Universal, Igor in Son of Frankenstein, it wasn't even scripted. It was half improvised. There is no shooting script that has that part in it. It was really an inspired thing, and Lugosi probably should have been able to do more improvisation.

He got paid scale or something. It was only for a couple of days originally, right? And then the director decided he loved him so much that he kept adding stuff and keeping him on so he got more money and stuff like that. Yeah, Universal always... That's Lugosi's best part as far as I'm concerned. Universal always knew they could...

It's his finest hour. Yeah. They could take advantage of Lugosi. And Lugosi, I heard they wanted to hire him for a week. Yeah. On that. And then the director said, no, no, he's staying. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. And Lugosi, when he's playing Igor, looks like he's having fun. He does. Oh, my God. Even though he's working for scale.

Well, he's having the time of his life as an actor, for God's sakes. I mean, his range was quite amazing. If you look at the stuff he did on the stage in Hungary and in silent films, he only gradually moved into playing the heavy. gradually moved into the, you know, playing the heavy. And, but he made such an impression as Dracula without makeup and without, and it was his voice, it was his face. And after that, audiences and studio executives saw Lugosi, they saw Dracula. And it's just one of the saddest examples of, you know, typecasting, just kind Dracula. And it's just one of the saddest examples of typecasting, just kind of strangling somebody's career. Even though he

only played that part, do I have this right? Twice. Twice, yeah. Twice on screen. Where's Dracula? As Dracula, once in a comedy. Oh, in Return of the Vampire, he's basically Dracula, but not called that. Mark of the Vampire, he's a fake vampire. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he wore capes in a lot of other films too but but it was all always uh no legosi is that guy with the cape and who sucks next you know let's gilbert have you seen my uh me made up as igor have you seen any of that footage of me as ig? No! Oh, you'll have to send it to us, Rick. Oh, wow! It's on my Instagram. I did a... I always loved Igor, so I actually wrote a song about Igor, and I

did a makeup on myself and filmed some stuff. If you type in Bela Lugosi Igor for images, an image of me will come up, and it's been used on DVDs and a whole bunch of stuff. And I think it's because they just type in Bela Lugosi, and it's a high-res image. It's the same thing. There's a CG model of Dracula that I did years ago when I was testing the software

and I did a very detailed rendering and that shows up. People are selling it as a high resolution image of Dracula. I just saw that. I was doing my research. I also found your Schlitzie. Oh yeah. Which Gilbert would appreciate being such a fan of Freaks.

I thought you were going to say being such a pinhead. I remember in Ghost of Frankenstein, I mean, because he was very funny as Igor. And I remember he wants his brain put in the monster's body. And they say, no, we'll put Dr. Bowman's brain in the monster's body. And Igor says, no, then he'll be your friend. Nicely done, Gil. Rick, I saw you in David's doc in The Road to Dracula.

You were a terrific doc, by the way, David. Oh, thank you. And my favorite Hope Crosby picture that was never made. That was a joke. Rick, you were saying... You were saying you might have... I laughed silently. I know, you laughed inwardly.

You were saying you might have... You would have been fascinated to see what Chaney had done with the character. How'd he live? With Dracula. Yeah, it would be really interesting to see. But, you know, I mean, the thing is, I mean, Lugosi is Dracula. I mean, I can't imagine a Dracula without Lugosi.

You know, I mean, that whole, that time, everything about it. Lugosi, you know, I mean, that whole, that time, everything about it, you know. Cheney, I mean, it was great to see Cheney in the Unholy Three, the sound version, and he seemed like, didn't seem like a period actor. When you see him, he seemed like he'd be a contemporary actor. He was really great, his performance, you know. So I'm sure it'd be a totally different thing. Well, Gilbert and I were on the phone last night, and I asked the question. Chaney was such a star.

Had he not died when he did, is it safe to assume that he perhaps would have played both of these parts? That he would have ended up being both the Count and the Monster? And then there's a possibility that we wouldn't know Karloff and Lugosi as icons today. What we don't know is whether he would have come back to Universal. He had such a horrendous experience with Phantom of the Opera. And they wanted to get him to do Dracula and The Return of the Phantom, which was never made. And part of it was his illness, and part of it was...

Go read the history of the Phantom of the Opera, the part of it was go read the history of the Phantom of the Opera, the production of it. It was one of the most embattled productions of the whole silent era and Cheney ended up directing most of it himself. I can't believe they tore that stage

down. I'd worked on that a number of times. Oh, that was such a crime. Which stage did they tear down? The Phantom of the Opera stage. Stage 28, the Phantom of the Opera stage. The Opera House was still there. I shot in there in the Nightmare Professor, I shot in there in the Grinch.

I went all through it. I was looking around for somebody. I was hoping I said Lon was here somewhere. No, I've got my dear late friend, Carla Lemley, who also took Uncle Carl's first name as her own, feminized. Her first name was Rebecca. She speaks the first lines of dialogue in Dracula. And she narrates your talk, too.

Yes, that was so much fun. She didn't remember doing it originally. I found her listed in a casting list somewhere, and I said, my God, I wonder if she's still around.

And I... Lupita Tovar gave me the name of another Lemley relative, and I called him. And she said, oh, yeah, Carla's around. Here's her phone number. And I called her up, and she answers the phone and the voice. I recognized the voice as the girl in The Coach and Dracula. Wow.

And I tell her about it. I said, my gosh, I'm doing this book about old Hollywood Gothic. And she said, Dracula? No, I'm not sure I remember Dracula. I was in The Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney, though. She didn't

remember having the first line in Dracula. Well, she didn't remember because literally, they just kind of grabbed her. Somebody from Costume came over, grabbed her. They gave her this little travel booklet with the lines written in it. And that was it. She doesn't remember meeting Todd Browning.

But, of course, once we showed her the film, of course that's me. And she did all kinds of small parts at Universal. And it's funny. And she did all kinds of small parts at Universal. And it's funny. It's like in a thousand years from now, if you say to someone, do a vampire voice, they'll go into a Bela Lugosi imitation. And he was absolutely the last person that Universal wanted. You're totally correct on that. They wanted Cheney,

and everything else was a disappointment to Carl Sr. after that. And they looked at all the actors who'd done it on stage. They turned down Lugosi Flat a couple of occasions. I've found copies of the telegrams from Carl M Emly Jr. to one of the agents,

not interested Bela Lugosi present time regards Carl Emly Jr. And it was like the stage play. They couldn't find somebody to do it in New York. It was like the stage play. They couldn't find somebody to do it in New York. The play originated in London, and the actor Raymond Huntley, who I got to meet, that was—I've had some wonderful time machine moments. I was telling Gilbert you got to meet David Manners, too. I did.

I really became friendly with him. It was just crazy. with him it was uh it was just crazy and then i actually talked more with all these people about other aspects of their lives and life in general than than these movies because david david manners and we've discussed it frank and i have discussed the movie the black cat many times we both love Both love. And there is a scene in that movie where Lugosi is talking, saying the prison that he went to and how he survived the prison and all this. And you're seeing reaction shots of David Manners. And it always amazed me, his acting there. He looks like he's really listening it wasn't acting listening it was he looks like he's paying attention he and he was and he told me that was the only film he did at universal where the actors were treated with respect were told

what was happening in the scene. He said, otherwise they were just telling you to go find your marks, and they shot things out of sequence, and the actor wasn't in control of anything. He was a me the story about the moment he decided to leave Hollywood. And it was the day his agent told him he was going to do a movie with Joan Crawford. And he said, I told you, I never want to work with that woman because of her reputation. never want to work with that woman because of her reputation. And he said, well, if you don't want to do it, you take the script back to her. I'm not talking to her again.

And so he went over to Metro and asked where her bungalow was and went for it and saw her. And she saw him just briefly. And then she disappears inside. And he comes to the door and knocks. She opens it. And he said it was the ugliest thing he had ever seen, this beautiful woman just broken to some of the most, the filthiest tirade and are we

not safe for work on this podcast? No, no, you can say anything. He encourages profanity. Please say fuck. I'm impatient. Who do you think you are, you faggot cocksucker? You know?

I'm impatient. Who do you think you are, you faggot cocksucker? And it just went on and on and on until she was spent. And he was just kind of stunned. And he said he just knelt down, put the script at her feet, and got up and went back to his car. And then the anger hit him. And he sped off of the lot i mean to the point where they called the uh jeez the studio police and we were following him and he just sped and sped and sped and he went way out into the desert and um and he stopped and he decided i'm moving out here where there aren't any people. And he and his partner did start a guest house in the desert, a very secluded place.

And they would have people like Greta Garbo or Albert Einstein. I mean, it was really wild. And Dracula was just such a little blip in his life. Like I said, we talked about all kinds of stuff. It was a lot more interesting to him and, frankly, to me. You said in the commentary that he didn't care for Lugosi much, that he found him unapproachable and aloof. He said he was just being the very odd man that he was.

I see. And, you know, it could have been a language thing, too. You know, I mean, he could have been in character. But, you know, what David Manners should have told Joan Crawford that, you know, in a number of years, you're going to be in trog. Now, how much how much English did Lugosi know? He didn't start taking formal lessons in New York until just before the time he was doing Dracula on stage. And his English was really rough. In fact, he got into trouble with Actors' Equity for claiming he could act and direct in English in the early 20s, and he really couldn't, and got called up on equity charges.

But the— Can you ride a horse? Yeah, of course. Yeah, right. And he—but he learned a lot of his—it was a crutch. He learned a lot of his roles phonetically, especially early on. And on stage, it really created some problems. If somebody threw him the wrong line, he was just off.

The whole thing was off, and that happened a few times in Dracula. But his son told me that he said, my dad never learned to think in English. It was always being translated. And that happens when you're nearly 50 years old and you're taking foreign language lessons for the first time. Your brain just can't handle it. You've really got to learn foreign languages when you're a kid to become completely fluent. So what we have isn't exactly a Hungarian accent, but it's a Hungarian actor speaking English phonetically in some of those early films.

That very deliberate manner of speaking. Rick, David says on the commentary that when television, when these films came to television, that he thought, he believes that Lugosi would have had a career resurgence had he not died in 56. Do you agree with that? Yeah, probably so. I mean, all the monster kids, you know. I mean, how old are you, David? I'm 69. 69.

Okay, so I'm actually 70 and a half today. It's my half birthday. Oh, happy half birthday. Half birthday. But yeah, I mean, all of us who grew up in that time, you know, in the 60s, the monster craze was so much a part of our life. I do know that he was approached, even before Vampyra made her debut, he was approached to host some horror pictures on television. I think he actually did something that has not survived in any form. But in a way, he would have been a wonderful horror host.

It would be like Glenn or Glenda. Him sitting there. That's exactly how he could have done it. Would have been a great host. I remember talking to Forrest Ackerman, and he met, he was a kid, and he met Lugosi, and he spent the day with him, helping him, you know, travel around and holding the door. And he said, Lugosi said to him at one point, very confused, he said, why are you young people so nice to me? And so he would have had a career. It's nice to think of that.

Oh, I think that's nice to believe that. Oh, here's something, here's something I, I, I, with the Munsters. Lugosi was already gone by then, but how come they never had Karloff or Cheney on the Munsters for a guest appearance? I don't know. I think Karloff had probably... He was pretty old at that point. He had probably gone back to England by that time, and he wasn't really a Hollywood player.

Karloff died in 69, right? In 69. And the Munsters was what? 64? 64, 65. So it's about five years earlier, but like his daughter told me,

it didn't matter how sick he was, how much oxygen tank he needed on the set, he would do it. Yeah. Half a lung or whatever it was he had. He didn't want to, he did not want to retire. He didn't want to say he couldn't do it. And it was just a matter of personal pride

or personal terror to him. That is a good question. I mean, if Cheney was around and Arloff was around, it would have been great to see them on the monsters. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been wonderful. Didn't John Carradine?

Yeah, he was the boss. Mr. Gaiman. Right. And he's in the movie, too. He's in the movie as the funeral director. Here's another thing. A friend of mine sent me a photo of a Frankenstein head mask, and the face looked like John Carradine.

So was he ever up for either that or Herman Munster, maybe? Not that I know of. Well, given the chance, he would claim he was up for everything. He claimed... I don't think any human being had more IMDb credits than John Carradine.

No. Something like 700 films. And, you know, I don't know why he felt the need to pad his... But he did claim that he had been considered for the monster in Frankenstein. There's no documentation of that anywhere that I've been able to find. He does show up in The Black Cat, and he shows up in Bride of Frankenstein. Yes, yes. But he was... What do you guys think in The Black Cat and he shows up in Bride of Frankenstein. Yes, yes. But he was...

What do you guys think of The Black Cat? I mean, as long as we're on the subject, otherwise we'll forget to add it at the end. I'm sure we asked you last time, Rick, but it's a kinky favorite of Gilbert's and mine. No, I know you guys like it. I mean, I love the fact that Bela and Boris are in it, but there's no monster...

The art direction is interesting, too. The art direction is great and all that art deco kind of stuff, but there's no monster. No. It also doesn't make any sense. What's so funny, usually when I watch a movie and something doesn't make sense, I get angry. But with The Black Cat, I love angry. But with the black cat, I love that nothing at all in it makes sense. You know, for me, if it's visually interesting,

I don't care if it makes sense or not. You know, I mean, I... There you go. I'm not an intellectual like your friend here. I respond more to visual stuff. For what it is is it's very stylish Elmer treated his actors like actual creative people

in their own right so Manners did have a good time for at least the few weeks that film was made and of course the whole theme of it about these two monstrous men who became that way because of World War one you know you know are not we the ones

who whose bodies were torn asunder are not we the living dead you know it just underscored all of those points that i was trying to you know make in my in my books i do have i it's not all sociology for me though you know i i really i uh i i'm a monster kid i think they are just fun yeah and i'm having in my old age, I'm having a lot of fun. I remember in Black Cat, Lugosi says, many men went there. Few have returned.

I alone have returned. Not to kill you, to kill your soul. Kill your soul slowly. That was the line. Yeah, there are great lines in that. They're just moments.

There are just attitudes. That's the stuff you remember. I remember there's no monster. There's no monster so it doesn't float your boat. There's one part, part two where you could see legosi you know fucked up one line and because i'm sure they either had like both they tried both tear the skin off your body or fray the skin off your body so legosi says i will fray the skin off your body. So Lugosi says, I will frayer the skin. That's the worst thing you can do to somebody's skin.

Rick, I've heard you say that you always found Karloff to be a more fascinating performer than Lugosi. Do you think he would have made an interesting count? You know, I don't think he, I don't think it would have been the same as Lugosi for sure. I mean, Bela was Dracula. He almost did it.

Karloff? Karloff agreed to play Dracula for Richard Gordon around the same time he did The Haunted Strangler, and it was going to be filmed in England, and it was derailed by the Hammer film. Well he did that

Baba film that where he played a vampire. The Wordlock. Yeah the Wordlock. But he said he said well I guess I'll do it but only if I don't have to imitate Balaam.

And the producer told that to me directly, so I believe it. Okay, here's something I want to know, too, because I'm a big Cheney Jr. fan. I get the impression Cheney Sr. was a a horrible father that's kind of what i got too yeah that's what um i couldn't get him to open up too much about it but i asked uh kurt siadmak about um cheney and his father and he said that cheney Jr. was a tortured person and that his father was a sadistic man. And I've heard other stories that aren't safe for work, and I'm not going to go into them here. Wow. But there was no love lost between them.

He certainly didn't want his son to become an actor. Or Cheney Jr. That was universal insistence yeah it was i remember reading a quote of lon cheney jr where he said if i could i would adopt every child in the world because there's nothing worse than growing up unloved. And it really shows. Well, he certainly loved Janet Ann Gallo. Yes. Who we had here on this show, by the way. Yeah.

Rick, here's a question a little off the subject, but I also heard you talking about Nosferatu, the 22 Nosferatu, and saying that the makeup and the design should not work. And yet it does. It does. I mean, it's such a classic image, but when you look at it, he's got this ridiculous

big, you know, hook nose. It's a Commedia dell'arte. It's Punchinello from the profile. That and Shylock kind of mix together in this really yeah i mean it's way it it it shouldn't work but it does and i mean i i think also it's the fact that the film itself is

just so well made and that the design of it and everything is it just all works you know but i remember that's a film i do remember seeing on television for the first time oh you do yeah and it was like i hadn't really i i'd seen pictures in famous monsters but i didn't know that it was dracula you know and i'm i'm i'm watching it and i'm going this movie's dracula this is this is dracula you know it's exactly dracula you know it's like and uh bram stoker's widow figured that out real quick yeah that story is well told in your book. Oh, thank you.

In Hollywood Gothic and how she got a lot of prints destroyed. She got them ordered destroyed. It didn't fortunately happen, but my gosh, even when she had captured a print in London, she refused to look at it. It was something beneath also no pressure to no prince were destroyed at all i thought the ones that it should ship to the states where the ones that were safe no are universal box uh...

the one print that was floating around the states and they bought it quote for purposes of destruction i'll because they corrected because they bought the copyright to Dracula. But they didn't. And actually, they used a couple of snippets in a short subject called Boo. It's on some of the Universal discs. And you look at it and it's like, God, that's the most pristine clip from Nosferatu I've

ever seen. And it was from the original negative. Clip from Nosferatu I've ever seen, and it was from the original negative. But that, with all the other universal holdings, you know, in the 1940s, probably did go into the fire. It's funny, we were talking about how Karloff would have been as Dracula, but the mummy always struck me as a remake of Dracula. Oh, yeah. John Balderson, who wrote the stage play of Dracula, knew exactly what he was doing. You know, he was working with a formula that worked. If it's not broke, don't fix it. And it's remarkable. You've got this undead creature come back from the grave to possess the soul of a young woman who is being guarded by Edward Van Sloan and David Manners. That one delivers the creeps.

The mummy. It does. It's really nice. It still works so well. Directed by Freund, who some people think may have directed Dracula. And Mad Love. Mad Love is great. I love it.

Mad Love is great. Mad Love is wonderful. And Tito Lori is amazing in that. It's such a great film. It's a creepy moment in Mad Love where he shows up with, he's pretending to be like a guy. Rolo the knife thrower. Yes, and he's wearing a neck brace and metal hands. That's very creepy.

Welder's goggles and the stuff. Yes. It's very cool. Yeah. That's one of my favorite pictures. 1935 was... 1931 and 1935, and I guess 1939. Beginning, middle, and end,

there were really some spectacular films in the 30s. And it's funny that Dracula, although so much of it is just the camera pointed at the stage play, every now and then there's a scene in it where you go, wow, that was really good. Oh, yeah. Maybe the scene's Freund was in charge of.

Yeah, probably so. The camera was moving. Well, what David Manners told me is that, and people said, oh, he must have been senile. He was 92 when you talked to him. Well, I've got a recording of an interview he did in 1972 where he made the same point. He said, somebody asked me who directed Dracula, and I had to tell them, I don't know. It wasn't Todd Browning. He didn't direct anything that I, any of my my scenes it was Carl Freund who did anything

I could call directing on that movie and it was very disorganized shoot and he and Helen Chandler both felt it was ridiculous and they loved snickering about it. Well it's called movie making.

I'm always amazed that any movie ever gets finished let alone turns out to be good. It's a miracle when a movie's good, you know. They're always train wrecks. When you saw the monster as a kid, and I've heard you say that you didn't find him scary. You found him sympathetic. Well, I think most kids, monster kids did. I mean, I think that's the appeal to, and those are the kind of monsters I like.

You know, I mean, I'm not a splatter movie kind of guy, you know, and, and, uh, uh, I like those sympathetic monsters, you know, Frankenstein's monster, uh, Charles Lawton Quasimodo. I mean, it's, it brings me to tears, you know, it's, uh, such a great performance from by Lawton and a great makeup, you know, and those are the kinds of monsters I like that you, I mean, you, you feel for him and, you know, and those are the kind of monsters I like that, I mean, you feel for them. And, you know, he wasn't, he didn't ask to be put in this situation. And I think, you know, as a kid, you know, you relate to that. Yeah, kids, you know, they tend to gravitate to, teenage boys especially, they very often like the more obvious things about the wolfman and the Frankenstein monster, the hair sprouting, the uncontrollable urges, the rejection by women.

But then there's Dracula, who's not any of those things. And he was the one I gravitated toward. And I think it was because he was in control. And I discovered monsters in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I heard you talking about how the Monster Mash was the big hit at that time. It was. It was the number one during those

12 days or whatever. It was number one on the charts. It's still number one on my charts. Yeah, mine too. Dance of Death, read by a mad scientist. It was funny like frankenstein when carloff he was a complete character that carloff was in frankenstein and then frankenstein became like you know by the time uh glenn strange was doing it um

it was like the stupid monster who comes to life at the end and fucks everything up. Dumb brute. It was. And it's really awful that so many of the stock photography companies have Glenn Strange photos identified as Karloff. That when Karloff died, I think even the New York Times ran a picture of Glenn Strange as the monster. I remember when I was a kid, I saw that in a paper and I said, that's Glenn Strange. That's not Karloff.

You know, it's the people who pick these pictures, you know, you would think they would have, they would know this stuff. I mean, it's funny, like, even the funny. Even the people today who are doing stills that they release, when I did the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes, they had a lunchbox image that was an unfinished makeup of Tim Roth. He didn't have his hair on. And that's what they chose to put on the lunchbox. It's like, what the hell?

But yeah, when people who are supposedly experts saying, you know, Boris Karloff's dead, here's a picture of him, you know. Unforgivable. You have kind of an indirect connection to Bela, Rick, but a big one in pop culture, and that's turning Martin Landau into Bela. We talked about it a little bit last time, but tell us something. Tell us what was most memorable,

what stands out to you about that challenge. You know, when I heard that that film was being made and that Martin Landau was going to play Bela, I said, I have to do this. You know, I have to do this. And I talked to Tim and I, cause I, I'd known Tim and, and, uh, I said, you know, I'll, I'll do this for free if I have to, you know, and my stock answer is he pretty much took me up on that. You know, I didn't, he got a, he got a good deal on it, you know, but it was just such a pleasure. Unfortunately,

I was doing another job at the time and I couldn't apply the makeup on a daily basis. So my friend V. Neal applied it. But I did the initial test in the design and sculpted the pieces and stuff like that. But it was the first time I made up. Martin was just such a pleasure, you know, because, you know, he was the makeup guy on Mission Impossible, you know. All at hand. Yeah, and he's in the outer limits, you know, and all this stuff, you know, Space 1999, you know. And he loves to talk about all that stuff, you know.

So we had a great time, you know, chatting. Here's a question. We tried to get him on the podcast. Yeah. We would have loved to have Carla, too. She passed away the year we started this in 2014 oh god she was um her stories were just just fantastic she would have been oh and i think i think um i always remember martin landau said that he picked up the award that was uh men

for bale legosi yeah i don't remember him saying that. That was right. And they cut him short. He was saying something very complimentary about Lugosi, and the music came up, and he was whisked off. You know, I always hate when you do that music thing, but this last year's Oscars, when people went on and on and on and on and on.

Oh, God. They need Iden. Now you're missing orchestra? Yeah, I was like, where the hell is the music cue? You know, they tell you, where the hell is the music cue? You know, because, you know, they tell you, you got 30 seconds. You know, when you get up there, there's a big clock that starts counting down from the time they do your name. So you get up there with your 30-second speech that you memorized, and you look, and it's on 25, you know, and counting down.

It's horrifying, you know, but, you know, it's a necessity, apparently. Rick, here's a question you can answer. I worked on the film Gods and Monsters. Love that picture. Oh, I'll come back and talk to you about that, too. Oh, we love it. What's the one, Shadow of the Vampire? The one about Shrek is good, too. Yes, that followed it.

Ian McKellen told us that he had been approached at some point about playing Lugosi in Ed Wood. I never heard that. You never heard that? No, I never heard that. And obviously it didn't go very far, but he said he read the script and said he didn't know how to get into a Hungarian mind or something like that. Well, if you read the script, I'm surprised you didn't do it,

because I thought the script was brilliant. You know, Scott and Larry who wrote that script, I thought, did a great job. There's a music video in which Ian plays a Nosferatu-like vampire, and it's really quite, I only saw it for the first time this year. It's quite wonderful. You must have felt a lot of gratification, personal satisfaction, when Landau won the Oscar, Rick. I did, yeah. And it was just, I just wish that I wanted to be on the Bride of the Monster set.

Don't all of us want to be on that set. And I was doing Wolf and Megan of Jack Nicholson at the time, and I couldn't do it. And I was like, damn, that's one of the whole reasons I wanted to do this movie just to be on that crappy set you know with the painted blocks on the wall and the refrigerator and stove or whatever it was and shout out to Scott and Larry

friends of this show we will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast but first a word from our sponsor. Here's a question from a listener, Wallace Matthews. David, I know you've written that horror films of the 30s were symbolic of the horrors of World War I. Do you think in any way that Henry Frankenstein's obsession with creating not only life,

but a race of living dead men, in some way foreshadows the horrors of Nazi Germany. Well, World War I foreshadowed Nazi Germany. I mean, it was, war was this endless process. And what was interesting, I thought about a lot of the American horror films in the late 30s and early 40s is these mad scientists who were conducting on screen the same kinds of experiments that Yosef Mengele was doing in the camps. I mean, here it was, again, American evasion, America not wanting to get too down and dirty, but still having to face these ugly realities and then kind of laugh it off as escapist entertainment. but yeah you see you see the well Kurt Siedemach we talked about before

when he wrote The Wolfman he had Nazi Germany in mind when he had if you become a werewolf you were marked with the star and the palm and he did that very intentionally

and it's quite And he did that very intentionally. And it makes that film. I think those touches really make The Wolfman into a film. Here is this Europe, this modern Europe, in which there are no Nazis at all, but there's a werewolf behind every tree. You know, Larry Talbot must have had a really big mother because his father wasn't very big. Why did he turn out to be so large? And see, Kurtzi Admark, when he was talking about that, said it's very much his own life. He was, I mean, he said his prayers by night and through no fault of his own, he became this hunted person. But in his case, it was because he was a Jew.

And it was through nothing that he did. And that's what Lawrence Talbot was. He didn't do anything wrong. And this was thrust on him. and this was thrust on him. Yeah, it's one of the earliest examples of a really conscious historical parable being inserted into one of these monster movies. I don't think we saw it again really

until Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which again knew exactly what it was doing. Oh, and you said in one, I think in Monster Party, I think you said that the original script for the cat people was going to be Nazis invading this village? Nazis invading this village? Yes, that was one of the original concepts that was discarded. But I always thought cat people and the Wolfman ought to be on a double bill. I don't think they've ever been. Oh, that's interesting. And I heard you said that the cat people are supposed to be the Nazis invade this village and they're all killed by cat people.

Yes, and that is, I think, typical of the kinds of treatments that, you know, it's really, you think it's going to be the treasure trove of all time to get into the universal vaults and start looking at these old treatments and, and all the discarded concepts for these films. And there was a lot of just terrible writing. I'd like to see the cat people attack and kill Nazis. I think that sounds like a good one. When I read that, I thought the same thing. It's like,

I wish someone would remake cat people with that script. I mean, you know, that cat people in me, I mean, all the Val Luton fans are not like me for this, but you know, it's like,

where's the fucking cat people, you know? I mean, it's like, you know, I'm sitting through this movie and there's like, you know, the scariest thing is like the sound that the bus makes when it stops,

you know? And at that point, and it's like, where's the cat people? I, you know, the scariest thing is like the sound that the bus makes when it stops, you know, at that point. And it's like, where's the cat people? You know, I wanted to see cat people. That's why, you know, when I did Michael Jackson's thriller, I made him a cat person instead of a werewolf. It was more of a cat because I wanted to see the cat. Oh, you were scratching an old ditch there. Yeah, that's right. And when Kurt Ziadmach wrote The Wolfman, it was originally a psychological horror that we never know if he really was the Wolfman or not. Again, I didn't want to see that movie.

No. And Universal said to him out and out, no, we want a monster. And that's how it became. Thank goodness. want a monster and that's what it became thank goodness here's one for you rick from a listener john leary a big monster kid uh what would this is a difficult question maybe but what would rick's frankenstein makeup have looked like if he was assigned to do it way back in the day oh and you would have been dealing with the materials of the day the collodion that you speak about and the cotton and the everything that poor Jack Pierce had to rely upon. I have, you know, I've always wondered what a Frankenstein would be if I did it, you know,

but without having the Karloff image in my head, you know, the problem is, is the Karloff image is burned in my brain. And I can't conceive of the Frankenstein's monster without the Karloff and Jack Pierce makeup, you know? Uh, so yeah, I really don't know. You know, I, it's funny. I mean, I, the original film, the 1931, uh, makeup is my favorite and, and Karloff is my favorite Frankenstein. I mean, I think he looks the best in that because I think he's the most cadaverous you know and and uh but I mean I also like the way he looks in the brighter Frankenstein I like how he looks in the center Frankenstein you know I was not a big Glenn Strange fan when Glenn came along as the monster first of all I mean the monster he'd evolved into

the big brute that doesn't you know have the sympathy and stuff yeah he lost his personality i i just didn't think the makeup worked as well on him until abin costello made frankenstein when the bud mess westmore regime and it's funny i got in a big discussion with i mean first of all benicio del toro and i got in a big fight about you know the who's the best frankenstein when i was doing the wolfman because you know benny's a big fight about, you know, who's the best Frankenstein when I was doing The Wolfman. Because, you know, Benny's a big monster kid. And he would come in with all these monster magazines and quiz me on stuff, which I got every answer right. When he started saying that Glenn Strange was the best Frankenstein ever, I was like, oh, you know, I left the makeup trailer. And when Glenn Strange, by that time, Glenn Strange would go crazy at the very end because that's when you're waiting for. And and then you'd see Lon Chaney Jr. destroying the laboratory from Ghost of Frankenstein.

And and him being hit by a girder knocked to the ground in Frankenstein. Yeah. No, they were all interchangeable as far as the studio was concerned, I think. And the angry crowd from Phantom of the Opera would be chasing him. Getting back to Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, originally Chaney was supposed to play both monsters. Yeah. And they figured out that was going to be a logistical nightmare and a very long shoot.

And so Lugosi finally got to play the part. Yeah, he finally got it. And it was going to be a speaking part. And he just got totally screwed halfway through. You know what I like? When Cheney, when Lawrence Talbot finds the monster frozen in ice, and it's Eddie Parker, and he's breaking the ice. There's a scene where he's breaking that piece, and there's a huge chunk of ice that hits him right on the head. Have you ever noticed that? No, it's like he's there, and he's trying that piece and just a huge chunk of ice hits him right on the head. Have you ever noticed that?

No, it's like he's there and he's like, you know, trying to be like unconscious. It's a piece of ice that goes, bam! Oh! Yeah, you watch it again, you'll see that. And the other thing that, you know, I used to love the castle films, you know, before, you know, there were video recorders and stuff.

We had the little eight millimeter, 50 foot rolls at castle films and Edmund Costello meet Frankenstein, you know, it was the scene at the end where it looms on the table and all that stuff. Even in the little 8mm thing, I could see when Glenn's laying on the table and he

lifts his head up and turns to look at something and you see the electrode get ripped off his neck because it's got a clamp clamped in the wire on it. You see the foam rubber ripping. And then he moves back real fast, you know. Love it.

Yeah. What is that thing? I saw an interview with you, Rick, talking about the flat head, that you were always confused by Pierce's choice. And you were saying something about how Pierce himself was studying burial techniques and surgical techniques. Well, I mean, you know, again, it's probably all, you know, made up by the publicity department, you know again it's probably all you know made up by the publicity department you know i say you know yeah i mean there's the whole thing about you know hanged

men and the blood going down to the lower extremities and that's one reason he's got the black fingernails and stuff which makes sense but he said you know it you know frankenstein not being a trained surgeon would take the easiest way to cut to get the brain out of the head which is just cut the top of the head off. So he takes the top of the head off and then puts it back on. So it's like a box. So he's flat like a box. It's like, well, no.

If you, you would, it would maybe be an eighth of an inch flatter than, well, you know, less high than it was, but it wouldn't be flat unless you just totally left that part off. And then you'd have a flat head that was like here, you know, but it makes no sense whatsoever but it's it's but it's the it's the iconic image you know that that's going to outlive all of us you know and i think in the case the monster was really likely a true collaboration between pierce and with a lot of in input from whale i'm sure because whale uh the monster has too much there's too much going there, too much of the artistic zeitgeist of the time.

The art moderne, art deco stylization. I saw a portrait somebody had done of Mussolini that ran in papers in early 1931. And my God, it's the monster. It's all this, it's this cubistic thing there. And it looks like Russian constructivism, which was very big movement on the stage. Whale was a stage designer. He was a painter. He knew about stuff that uh uh pierce probably didn't and uh i don't know i mean and pierce

apparently didn't like to work with other people i would love to know what that collaboration was like and i it seems like i i heard like james whale hired colin Clive because Dr. Frankenstein was a tortured soul, and so was Colin Clive. So what do you know about Colin Clive? They wanted Leslie Howard, didn't they, David? Leslie Howard and Betty Davis were considered for Frankenstein and Elizabeth. How different that would be, huh? Yeah. And Carl Laemmle Jr. said that Betty Davis has all the sex appeal of Slim Somerville. Oh, my God. And so that didn't happen.

There are so many near misses. This is like Eric was saying, it's impossible that movies get finished or made or that are really iconic films like The Wizard of Oz, the stuff that was considered and discarded that would have just ruined it. Or that Casablanca casting that they had in mind. Oh, yeah. Another great example. Another great example. But I heard that Colin Clive went a little wacky toward the end of his career. Well, he wasn't wacky. He was a longtime alcoholic. Yeah.

He died very young, right? He did. He was in his 30s. Forrest Ackerman went to see him in his at the funeral home and they had him on a funeral bed he said it looked just like uh he had in uh a bride of frankenstein in that uh bedroom scene at the beginning and um don't know a lot about him he was tormented uh he may have been sexually tormented. He was married to a French lesbian for some reason.

But the drinking is what really did him in and was the cause of his death, alcohol-related. And yet it's a wonderful performance. Oh, no, he's great. And he's great in Mad Love, too. Great in Mad Love. Yeah. I've for for a long time,

been saying I'd love to see a remake of Man of a Thousand Faces with Bryan Cranston as playing Lon Chaney. Oh, how interesting. Because I think he'd make a great Chaney. Mind you, he's a lot older than Chaney was when he died, even. But facially,

you know, the structure's very similar. When I first saw him, I went, I could make him up like Cheney, and that would be great. Cheney Jr. said they interviewed him before making the movie, and he told them all the facts of the story, and he said they changed absolutely everything. Well, it's the Hollywood version of his life. I'm sure he didn't write Jr. on the makeup kit on his deathbed you know that's the most ridiculous part of it you know i actually i i enjoy that movie uh i'm not crazy about the makeup so you know i mean the original chain makeups were so much better you know than what they ended up with. I like Ryan Cranston. They did one of Cagney in London After Midnight,

and it only survives as a still photo. Apparently there was no footage, but it was it. He really caught it. Well, unfortunately, I mean, a lot had to do with the fact that Cagney had the wrong face. I mean, you couldn't do the family opera. We like the idea of Cranston. Oh, no, I think it'd be great. Actually, I had

dinner with him and talked about it to him. He and what's his name? Vince Gilligan. Breaking Bad. Yeah. They both thought it was an interesting

idea and he was kind of intrigued. I can't get it out of my mind now that you mention it. He's the only actor who could do it today. Because he's a good actor. He's a great actor. Who would go see it is the problem. I can't see a studio being

interested in it because a kid doesn't know who Lon Chaney is. He made a movie about Herman Mankiewicz. Yeah, well, that's true and i remember too in uh also i enjoy man of a thousand faces as a movie i know it's a total fairy tale and his makeup as the phantom of the opera is ridiculous the nose is too big the forehead's too high up yeah no it's again it's you know i think the makeups work so well partly on i mean the cheney makeups the original one partly because of the limitations that he had he couldn't do the things that you could do with foam rubber, but because of that, it has a reality.

It's based in more of a reality. There's a lot more of a real face going on there. And it comes through so much better. Torturing his own flesh. Yeah, well, that's it. I mean, you know, I doubt that Cagney would like his nose pulled up like Chaney had and all that. But, yeah, it's, again, unfortunately, you know, it's the new improved, you know, material and makeup, which isn't as good as the old version.

Rick, we alluded to it at the top, we have to ask about Kenneth Strickfadden and what you've done in your own home. Okay. The way you are using your time in retirement, and it's on YouTube, it's absolutely fascinating what you've done. Well, I don't know what's on YouTube, but my original Frankenstein room wasn't done in my retirement. It was done probably 30 years ago. And again, this all came out of my being a monster kid. I remember going to Movie Land W museum and and oh yeah buena park they had a uh frankenstein's monster that didn't look anything like boris karloff but it had a flat head

you know they had one you could pose with you know that's like in an electric chair you could take a polaroid with you know but it was like why don't they make the monster look like the monster you know and i go i'm gonna someday i'm gonna to make a Frankenstein that looks like Boris Karloff in the makeup. And I'm going to it's basically a life size Aurora model kit. You know, I mean, it was like and I and I, you know, I copied, you know, well, I mean, I at this point I had a crew of a lot of amazing people that were good electronics and machine machinery and stuff who made the machines for me, you know, um, under my art direction, but I basically copied the Strickfadden stuff. And I, when you're talking about, you know, missed opportunities, I had met Strickfadden. I went to Strickfadden's house and he, in his garage, he still had a whole bunch of his stuff

and he turned them on and, and, you know, made all the noises and did all this stuff. And I told him, you know, I've always been fascinated by these machines. This is before I built the Frankenstein room. And I said, I want to build, you know, a Frankenstein's laboratory someday. And I want to copy your machines, you know. And he said, I have a whole bunch of spare stuff here. You should come over some weekend and we can put some machines together, you know. And I never took him up on it.

And shortly after that, he died, you know. And I went, damn it, Rick, you Rick, you got to follow up on this stuff. And there's been so many occasions like that. I had old friends in the business that had great stories about filmmaking in the days. And they'd go, I got to record this and get it down before it's gone. And then it goes. And, I mean, we did a photo shoot for Empire magazine about gremlins. And, you know, Dick Miller and Chris Whalers were there.

And Zach was there. And I said to Dick Miller, I go, I want to take some photos of you. Because he kind of, he looked a lot like my dad looked. And I said, I want to take some cool photos of you. Dick lives, well, lived, I should say, a few blocks from my house. I didn't do it. You know, and I was like, damn it. You gotta, when you say you got to do these things, you got to do them. That's why we do this show is to preserve this stuff.

Yeah, no, it's great. We had Dick here, you know, and, you know, and then we had Sarah Karloff. We had, we had Donnie Dunnigan a couple of months ago. Janet Ann Gallo. Janet Ann Gallo. I mean, we try to hang on to this stuff. Oh, there's so many great stories. And get some kind of record of it. Yeah, so many great stories get lost, you know.

They do get lost. The stuff that Kenneth Strickfaden created, it was just new wave art. Yeah. And because when you watch the movie, when you think about it, you think, they got that much electricity out of a thunderstorm well yeah again and they have all these electric machines but they don't have a telephone or uh or anything else and like where the hell is it and what time period is it you know but who cares you know it doesn't matter and i think in bride of frankenstein dwight fried takes out a walkie-talkie. And so there's no light bulbs.

Oh, when she's in the cave and it was like... Yes, no light bulbs, nothing, but he has a walkie-talkie. This electronical device, yes. So none of this wireless phone, yeah. None of it was borrowed from Strickfad and you just basically found people who could reproduce a tesla coil and these transistors and you know we i i had a guy who was like my woodshop guy in in in you know

who built the tables and stuff and i had him building you know i would go and i want this wall like this and i would put two by fours up in the angles that i wanted them and then i'd come in after coming home from work and it was like, oh, I straightened this out for you. And I go, no, you know, it's not supposed to be straight. So I was like, you know, I made him watch the movie, you know, and go see this, you know, but you know, it's funny. I mean, the strict fed machines show up in so many things, you know, and, uh, I actually, you know, was offered, uh, you know, after he died and this guy, I think his name was Ed Angel, inherited the machines. And numerous times they were being sold.

They wanted a million dollars for the Frankenstein machines. And I went and looked at them, and there was nothing original from Frankenstein. All of them had been cannibalized and redone. I see. You know, it's like Ray Harryhausen would cannibalize armatures, you know. And I went to an auction house and house i went you know you're claiming this stuff is all from frankenstein none of these things were in frankenstein i'm telling you because i know and somebody's going to buy this and they're going to watch the film and they're not

going to find any of this stuff and they they kick me out you know they go oh wow and the funny thing is, getting back to the mad scientist plot, you realize Jurassic Park was meddling in things man should leave alone. And that was that plot, the old mad scientist thing. Playing God. Yes. Yes. And in one of them, what the hell's his name? That actor who was in Law and Order, who was in one of them. He was in Full Metal Jacket. Oh, Vince Onofrio? He is in one as an army sergeant, and it is directly out of the old movies where he says, imagine like an army of these things. And that they used to do in the movies a lot. They create they talk about an army of these monsters.

Well, it goes back to all that war stuff, I guess, too. Yes. Well, one of the original treatments for the Invisible Man at Universal, nobody was actually going back and reading H.G. Wells. They forgot that he was going to get approval of the script. But one of the treatments had an army of invisible rats that would spread bubonic plague in Manhattan. Wow. I told you, they're not all masterpieces.

Speaking of rats, David, what's the deal with the armadillos and the possums in Dracula? Rick wants the monsters. Where are the rats? The rats! The, uh... Well, there was... I did see one studio memo that objected to rats because they called the... Rats are not, quote-unquote, good theater. And... Oh, my God.

But Browning had used armadillos in London After Midnight. They're described in some reviews of the film. No, there aren't any photographs. But Balfour Manor was, you know, scuttling with armadillos. And Browning loved to just use things over and over. It was almost like a fetishy thing. And he did it so many times that it's not an accident, but he recycled them for Dracula. Well, it was his pet, and he charged him for it. He rented the armadillo. That's how he

made money. And I heard when they shipped him the animals, they shipped armadillos and snakes, They shipped armadillos and snakes and all in the same box. So a lot of times they'd receive it and the armadillos were all dead, having been bitten by poisonous snakes. I thought you were going to say the armadillos were fat and there were no snakes in the box. Last question for you, Rick, from a listener, Gary Gerani, our friend Gary Girani, a big monster kid, too. I want to ask Rick about various remakes of Creature from the Black Lagoon that had been planned in the 80s. I believe Rick was asked to create a prototype Gilman suit for the proposed remake, but updated. Can he provide any thoughts here? I was approached probably four or five

times about creature remakes. One was John Landis and Joe Dante version. The one was Ivan Reitman was involved. I forget who was going to direct it. The one that actually

I got a little money and did some designs for was the John Carpenter version. John Carpenter was going to do a remake and I did some designs. There's pictures in the, uh, in my book of the creature that I designed. Um, and I, I, it was very true to the original creature. I think the original creature is a great, you know, the concept is fantastic and the suit's great. And, and, uh, I didn't want to vary too far from that you know i still wanted to keep you know an attractive male physique kind of a thing to it but it very much looks like

the creature just slightly updated you know i i i remember in the ivan reitman version when they were talking to me about it i had lunch with the director at a local restaurant and he was saying oh we want the creature to be part dinosaur, part and he just was naming off all these animals. And I go, it's the gill man. It's like a fish man. It has nothing to do with a dinosaur.

And all these different creatures. Well, we want a little bit of all that stuff. We just think it'll make it better. It's like, I'm not interested. And not to bring you down, Rick, but Octoman just turned 50. Is true yeah 71 oh my god i mean people can check back on the previous time you were here to know what i'm talking about and i i always remember as a kid uh watching the monsters and the creature of the black lagoon shows up and his name is uncle gilbert there you go let's get some plugs in here david your books uh the monster show hollywood gothic the definitive book on dracula um i learned much. The whole Lord Byron connection to Dracula, I didn't know,

with his former protege. Very wonderful stuff in there. And the documentaries, The Frankenstein Files and Road to Dracula, both of which Rick is in, the TCM book. Rick, your incredible two-volume coffee table book. It's heavier than an actual coffee table, by the way. That may take me a lifetime to get through table book. It's heavier than an actual coffee table. By the way, that may take me a lifetime to get through that book. That is the densest book. Yes, they sent that to me, and I thought it was

like a refrigerator. Thank God. Well, you know, it's a book about me, and I'm pretty dense, too, so it makes sense. These are wonderful reads, and we can't recommend these these labors of love uh enough and and thank you fellow monster kids for uh for coming and being a part of this and celebrating these these iconic movies you know what's going to happen when all these old

monster kids pass away are there still going to be monster kids do you think god i hope so i hope so too we owe we all owe a debt to Fari Ackerman, don't we? That's for sure. Because it wasn't just the movies. It was also the magazine. Oh, yeah, and he's the one that... Because in that magazine, it told me that Jack Pierce

got paid to make monsters. I have it on good authority that there are a good number of monster kids who are actively indoctrinating their children and grandchildren. There are monster kids who are actively indoctrinating. Oh, good. Children and grandchildren. There are monster kids who I know who, and it's funny, whenever they'll meet or work with a famous actor, they'll say to me, oh, he's one of us. Yeah.

Meaning like he's a fan of the old monster. Do you guys know Kirk Hammett from Metallica? Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. He puts us. Yeah. Meaning like he's a fan of the old monster. Do you guys know Kirk Hammett from Metallica? Oh, yeah. Oh, boy. He puts us to shame. He gave me a white zombie guitar, one of his guitars. Oh, what a nice gift. Yeah. It's funny because there's so many rock and roll guys that are big monster

fans. John Fogerty, who's a friend of mine, we became friends over the fact that he's a monster kid. I heard Max Weinberg was, too, from the Springsteen band. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah, he is. Yeah, no, for sure.

Yeah, the drummer, yes, definitely. I met him, too. And we bonded right away over Famous Monsters and all those things. It's amazing. And there's a belief, there's a belief or rumor that as much as the Westmores got credit for the uh creature of the black lagoon it was this woman makeup artist yes it was not she's not a makeup artist she's a designer sketch artist uh millicent patrick uh who designed it yeah she she also designed the melania mutant and

and and most of the stuff that they did out of there. Yeah, I mean, you know, the whole Westmore regime, you know, Bud wasn't necessarily the person really, the artist behind it. He was the department head who got the credit, you know. But you had people like Chris Mueller who sculpted the creature from the Black Loon head anyways and parts of it, you know, and Millicent Patrick and a lot of creative people, Jack K of it, you know, and Millicent Patrick,

and a lot of creative people, Jack Keevan, who was the lab man, but it's the Westmore name that got the credit. We're glad she got her due. How's our friend Bob Burns doing? Anybody in touch with him? He's struggling. He's still around.

He's old, you know. It's tough getting old. We love that guy. Yeah, everybody does. Bob has a lot of people that love him. That's a monster kid. Frank and I were talking about how I think John Houston used to be a writer on some

of the horror films. He wrote something He wrote one of the unused curtain speeches for Frankenstein. And Sloanan speech. And I've seen the original and there it is and his name is on it.

They didn't use it. So it wasn't his that they used. I heard there, somebody told me there was a scene meant for the wolf man where he sticks his finger into the holy water

and it starts bubbling like it's boiling. And then later on, that got used in Devil's Advocate, where Al Pacino puts his finger in water. I worked on that movie. I hadn't heard that. It's a nice bit, though. So did it come in when he goes to see Bela's funeral? That's the only place it could have been.

Gilbert, we could go on for hours. Oh, my God. If it's about old monsters. When you're talking to a couple old monsters. We want to thank you guys for schlepping to Burbank, and we want to thank our friends Land, Romo, and Aristotle Acevedo, and our pals at Starburns Audio for making this episode possible. I hope you guys come back.

Would you come back every year and talk to us about this stuff? Yes, yes, yes. Come back every week. There's a lot of stuff we didn't cover, I'll tell you. There's a lot of stuff we didn't cover, I'll tell you. There's a lot of stuff we didn't cover. Oh, my God. We didn't talk about my miniature Frankenstein version either, so that's next time. Come back.

I'll bring pictures. The YouTube footage of your lab, you're saying that's old footage? That's not up to date? Well, I don't know what it is. It's you giving a tour of the... You know, and maybe... Actually, Jonathan, who was the actual author of my book, who wrote the words, don't know what what it is it's you give me a tour of the of the uh you know and maybe uh actually jonathan who was the actual author of my book who wrote wrote the words um videoed me and i think he

put something on on youtube but it's been used there was a i got wind of it it was kevin brownlow did huh kevin brownlow in his universal horror documentary. There was some, yes. That was the best version of it, yeah, when everything was working and it was newer. There's stuff out there. My miniature one's on my Instagram account. There's a lot of stuff of that. Okay, so we'll plug the Instagram,

the Twitter, also David's website, Monstershow.net. It's a lot of fun. And get these books. And thank you guys for all the entertainment. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thanks for being people after our own heart. Yeah, thanks for having this podcast.

Oh, well, it's our honor. We'll do this every year, right, Gil? We'll have them back. Yes. Absolutely. We didn't even talk about Dwight Frye, damn it. I know. We hardly talked about Frankenstein.

Okay. We hardly... Yeah. And didn't Dwight Frye, when he died, he was listed as a tool maker? He was a tool maker. That is absolutely true. Yeah. This could be a seven-part episode, but we'll cut it down to a mere two hours.

And how did he get fucked up so quick, Dwight Frye? Where it's like he fell from those two great movies, or three great movies, because he was also in Bride, to doing big parts. Just like a random villager that has one line or something. Yeah, yeah. It, you know, there's, there aren't that many monster scientists. Lockheed David? It sounds like he died of overwork.

No, he died, he actually died of heart disease. He was a Christian scientist. He was a Christian scientist and he refused medical treatment. Oh. He should have been a mad scientist. Gilbert, do you have a... Go ahead. I'm sorry, David.

No, I thought we were done. I got to pee. Okay, David. Saved white fry. Gilbert, you got to sign off. I know the feeling. Even Oscar winners pee. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre.

And we've been talking to two of the kings of Monster Kids Everywhere, Rick Baker and David J. Skull. talking to two of the kings of monster kids everywhere rick baker and david j skull and uh rick baker has to pee thank you gentlemen we'll do it again thank you so much i was working in the lab late one night when my eyes beheld an eerie sight, for my monster from his lab began to rise, and suddenly, to my surprise, he did the match, he did the monster match, the monster match, it was a graveyard smash, he did the match, it caught on in a flash, he did the monster mash From my laboratory in the castle east To the master bedroom where the vampires feast The ghouls all came from their humble abode To get a jolt from my electrodes They did the match. They did the monster match. The monster match. It was a graveyard

smash. They did the match. It caught on in a flash. They did the match. They did the monster match. The zombies were having fun. The party had just begun. The guests included Wolfman, Just be gone. The guests included Wolfman, Dracula, and his son. The scene was rocking all were digging the sounds.

Igor on chains backed by his baying hounds. The coffin bangers were about to arrive with their vocal group, the Crypt Kicker Five. They played the match. They played the monster mash.

The monster mash. It was a graveyard smash. They played the mash. It caught on in a flash. They played the mash. They played the monster mash. Out from his coffin, Rex's voice did ring. Seemed he was troubled by just one thing.

Opened the lid and shook his fist and said Whatever happened to my Transylvanian twist? It's now the mash It's now the monster mash The monster mash And it's a graveyard smash It's now the mash It's caught on in a flash

It's now the mash It's now the monster mash Now everything's cool Drax are part of the band And my monster mash Is the hit of the land For you the living This mash was meant to

When you get to my door Tell them Boris sent you Then you can mash Then you can monster mash The monster mash And do my graveyard smash Then you can mash You'll catch on in graveyard smash Then you can mash You'll catch on in a flash

Then you can mash Then you can Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Mash

Monster Mash Monster Mash Monster Magic Balls Monster Magic Balls Monster Magic Balls Monster Magic Balls