Part 8: The Calm Before the Storm

The weeks before the opening of Dino De Laurentiis' KING KONG were full of characteristic ballyhoo and I tried to get my hands on anything that was Kong related.  Of course, FAMOUS MONSTERS had published some questionable pre-production art that showed a more humanoid Kong, but readers were assured that this concept had been dropped and Kong would be a gorilla, HOWEVER, there would be no dinosaurs!  Time Magazine even ran Kong as their cover story.  There was no doubt that the studios wanted this to be an event, and despite my mounting disappointment (no Stop Motion, no dinosaurs), I admit that I allowed myself to be swept up in it.

Naive me...back then I had no idea that studios PAID for this kind of publicity.

On the local independent television station in New Orleans, Channel 26, local media personality, Sterling Smith got in on the act announcing a Kong contest.  Now, I have NO idea where all of this came from, but in the studio, Smith had a small statue of Kong and to win it (WIN IT?!) all you had to do, was answer this question: "How many feet of hydraulic hose were in the full-sized Kong robot?"  Okay, so this might not be "kosher" but my father had given me an advance copy of the paperback book "The Making of Dino De Laurentiis's King Kong" so I jumped out of my chair and I tore through the pages looking for the answer.

When I got it (I can't remember what the answer is now, and I'm too lazy to get the book off of the shelf to find out), I wrote it on a card, stuffed it in an envelope and drew Kong fighting dinosaurs all over the envelope.  I pleaded with my father to drive me to the post office that evening because it would get to the studio that much faster.  I'm not even sure why he agreed.

Dad was off of WDSU-TV by now and was writing newspaper reviews for two of the smaller papers in New Orleans.  He had little interest in this Kong remake, and he didn't care for Sterling Smith. Sterling Smith hosted a movie show not unlike Turner Classic Movies now.  You might say that Smith was the local version of Robert Osborne.  However, my father would sit in front of the television watching Sterling Smith and he'd get nuts every time Smith would make a point, and then follow it up with a "pointing gesture" at the camera a half a beat later. "Come on!" he'd yell at the television, "Get your gestures timed with what you're saying!" I'm sure he was envious and was just dealing with it as best as he could.  All that aside, Dad drove me to the post office.

It didn't take long.  A few days later, a package appeared in the mail with my name on it.  It was flat.  That meant only one thing: It wasn't the sculpture.  I opened it up to find a King Kong poster and a key chain with a few hairs suspended over a card that read: "Actual hair from King Kong." It was the second place prize.  Years later, I met another Make Up Effects artist from New Orleans named Earl Ellis.  Earl had won the sculpture and the reason he was first was because his parents drove him to the television station so he could deliver the answer in person.  As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."

My father took me to an advance press screening of the film and I have to admit that I was underwhelmed.  The story, the acting, the effects were okay, but certainly not the event we  were led to believe.  I was curious about the full-sized robot and how it would function, but it is common knowledge that it was only used in one quick shot and even at a distance, it looked and moved like crap.

Everybody-a gonna cry when-a my Kong-a dies!

The only redeeming facet of the film was Rick Baker's Kong suit that anyone with half a brain could tell was the "real" Kong utilized throughout the film.  I'm not sure now if it was in FAMOUS MONSTERS, CINEFANTASTIQUE, or STARLOG (yes, the new Sci-Fi magazine on the stands) that showed Rick with drawings of the different Kong expression heads he had constructed for the film.  It was unbelievable and intelligent.  I recall him saying that was his solution because of the range of emotion that Kong was going to have to demonstrate throughout the film and there were limitations to the mechanics and materials used to construct the masks.  There was even a photo of Rick wearing a gorilla contact lens to change the appearance of his cornea.

But what really blew me away, was when I found an issue of AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER magazine showing Rick wearing what was referred to as a "condom suit."  Apparently, Rick had built a muscle under-suit with water-filled sacs to add realistic movement beneath the fur.

I should have asked Rick about this.  I wonder if it was mis-information?

In any case, the bar for gorilla suits in motion pictures had certainly been raised and even though Rick had mother-f*ckered his way through an interview and stated how much he was disappointed by the final look of Kong, I couldn't see it.  I thought it was genius.

The problem isn't the suit...it is obviously the sound stage ceiling

 With the Kong experience now fading, I began obsessing about another Science Fiction film that would soon be released.  My father had just returned from Dallas, Texas where he had been interviewing the stars and filmmakers of this upcoming film, and he handed me the paperback novel it was based on: LOGAN'S RUN.  I had no idea what it was about, but sat right down and began reading it from cover to cover.  In the center of the book were color pictures from the film and the aesthetic was very cool.   Needless to say, by the time the movie came out, we all wanted to be Sandmen.

Run, runner!

On the horror front, another film that was based on Catholic lore had surfaced.  Loosely based on the predictions of the Book of Revelations in the Bible, movie audiences were introduced to the Anti-Christ in THE OMEN.

THE OMEN, whether consciously or not, followed in the vein of THE EXORCIST that had proceeded it.  With Gregory Peck and Lee Remick leading the cast, the film was perceived as a "big picture" as opposed to something like THE DEVIL'S RAIN, which, admittedly had a better poster:

I, of course, knew about THE DEVIL'S RAIN because of FAMOUS MONSTERS and it was in that article that I had first heard the name Tom Burman and The Burman Studios.  Tom had done all of the make up effects for the film including the climatic "melting" scene at the end.  But I digress.

With an "A" cast, expert direction by Richard Donner, and a spellbinding score by Jerry Goldsmith, THE OMEN was a huge success and spawned sequels and a recent, disastrous remake.  But back then, we sat transfixed in the theater and watched as Damien, the Anti-Christ, began his evil empire on Earth, one grisly death at a time.

Stuart Freeborn's decapitation of David Warner. A new height of screen shock!

So, this was the lay of the land before everything changed.  KING KONG, LOGAN'S RUN, and THE OMEN were the genre tent pole movies of 1976. 

A weekly edition of the VARIETY trade paper came to the house, and I was aware enough to rifle through it and check out what movies were coming out and I had seen rumblings of a new film entitled: THE STAR WARS.

The Summer of '76, dressed as a chubby Sandman, my friends and I returned to the VulCon that year and I picked up a paperback book (that I still own) entitled STAR WARS, FROM THE ADVENTURES OF LUKE SKYWALKER.  When I returned home, I read the book with just the art on the cover, my recollections of what I had seen in VARIETY, and a few photos inside of the book to help me visualize what I was reading.

X-Wing Fighters? Light Sabers? Wookies? I'm not sure what it all was, but I loved it.

Part 7: The Transitional Seventies - The Exorcist, King Kong, and the F-bomb

By the time 1974 rolled around, I was part of a small group of friends that shared a love of Science Fiction.  True, the Horror and Fantasy genres would enter into our discussions but at its center it was solidly Science Fiction.  We all attended a modest Catholic School in Gretna, Louisiana and were frequently struck by frustrated, angry nuns when we stepped out of line.  It was safe to say that fear of swift, painful, and humiliating punishment was what drove the student's behavior at that school.  However, it didn't seem to stop some of the older 8th graders who had been "kept back" a few years from retreating as far back on the school property as possible and smoking dope during recess.  And there was that time that my brother's 8th grade classed had been busted for drinking during a school field trip to see THE SOUND OF MUSIC.  Hey, when you're 13, I'm sure that movie is better when you are inebriated.  It started a scandal of Nazi-Germany proportions.

So it is safe to say that when THE EXORCIST opened in New Orleans, it was initially "banned" by the Catholic Church in our local Catholic paper, The Clarion Herald.  Keep in mind that the Clarion Herald also had banned JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR years before and would REALLY ban George Kuchar's THUNDERCRACK, a bizarre pornographic "art" film that no one would have paid attention to had the Catholics not made such a big deal about it.

My guess is that THE EXORCIST then revealed that the Catholic Church still recognized and practiced the archaic rite of demonic exorcism in the 20th century and they were unsure of the public's reaction to this knowledge. Over 30 years later, with THE EXORCIST being one of the best-loved, ground-breaking, and enduring films, the Catholic Church now proudly boasts their devotion to the rite of exorcism, certainly enough for the Vatican to appoint two new exorcists to battle Satan and his minions here on Earth.

In Terrytown, Louisiana the opening of THE EXORCIST meant this: 1.) NO WAY were my parents going to let me, at 12 years-old to see that movie and 2.) the more we heard about what was in the movie the more intrigued my friends and I were with that film.  The radio would play "Tubular Bells" and our eyes would grow wide with curiosity and a little fear.  What if the priests were right?  What if I got possessed by Satan walking home from school?  That is how intense the affect of that movie was.  The previous year, we had all heard about Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and were not allowed to see it, but, like the body in the woods, there was a gross-out intrigue to that film, rather than a deep rooted dread that came when we heard about spinning heads and projectile vomiting.

When the knock-off films like RUBY and BEYOND THE DOOR started advertising on television, the trailers scared the living shit out of me.  I bought a Horror Sound Effects record, Sounds of Terror that had an exorcist track on it that made me shiver to my bones.

Unlike the Disney Halloween album, this one was a bit more intense.

Years later, after I knew about Dick Smith and his incredible work, I went to see THE EXORCIST at a Drive-In Theater in Algiers, Louisiana with a group of my drunk, High School Senior friends...it scared me sober.  Seriously.

Another movie trailer that got under my skin was for Larry Cohen's film IT'S ALIVE.



Whenever that trailer come on, I would sit transfixed.  However, when I finally saw IT'S ALIVE in college, I was disappointed.  My imagination had surpassed what was presented in that low budget film, but I still think that the effort was admirable and I still love the teaser trailer.

It would be irresponsible not to mention JAWS and the huge impact it had on the world.  The first time I had heard about JAWS, I was in my dentist's office and I was reading excerpts from the novel by Peter Benchley.  When I read the novel, prior to seeing the movie, I was less impressed unfortunately, but it was through the eyes of a 13 year-old.  So why don't I consider JAWS to be a monster?  Well, while JAWS is a terrifying, thrilling movie and is extremely well-made, I see it more as an adventure film.  I would put it with INDIANA JONES or JAMES BOND pictures before I would put it in a category with FRANKENSTEIN or THE EXORCIST.  There is a realness to JAWS that we are reminded about on the news all of the time when we read about surfers being attacked by sharks.  So what about PSYCHO?  Or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS?

Again, those films have to do with human intent whether misguided or not.  And JAWS is still a bit too classy than the films that followed it like GRIZZLY that were just exploitation films (fun, though they were) featuring killer animals on the loose. 

Scary and fun, sure...Classy? No.

I received my third and final issue of CLOSEUP magazine and the cover was a dream come true:

I had waited for this all of my life, or so I thought.

Although it was dense with information about the original Kong and its production, it was light on photos and pre-production paintings.  That would come later with the books THE MAKING OF KING KONG and THE GIRL IN THE HAIR PAW.  What was in the magazine were articles about the two remakes of Kong that were in the works: THE LEGEND OF KING KONG, and Dino De Laurentiis' KING KONG.  The former was to be a period film remake with Stop Motion effects by Jim Danforth (who had thrilled me with his dinosaurs in WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, three years earlier), the latter was incorporate a huge Kong robot and a guy in a gorilla suit.  That guy was, Rick Baker.

I had heard the name, Rick Baker, in FAMOUS MONSTERS and in THE MONSTER TIMES.  I knew about the film SCHLOCK he had done with John Landis and had seen photos (and the trailer).  There was no doubt that this young, ambitious Make Up Effects artist had the right stuff to make a very cool gorilla suit for Kong.  What I was unprepared for was the venom.

When I read the interview with Rick, he didn't have a lot of nice things to say about the producer and he dropped a lot of "F-bombs".  Holy cow!  It was the first time, ever, that I was reading an interview with someone who actually was telling it like it was.  My father had interviewed actors and filmmakers for a decade or more and never had Julie Andrews said anything like, "That Robert Wise was talented, but boy, what a mother-f*cker!" 

At that moment, I felt I was reading the truth about Motion Picture production.  The actual truth.  And I had to know more about this guy, Rick Baker.

Part 6 - The Transitional 70's (Pre-1975)

In the past, there has been a fallacy that the decade between 1970 -1980 was dull, and uninspired when compared to the decades that proceeded it.  This piece of misinformation was spread by hippies that were unhappy that the days of LSD, free-love, and progressive thinking had come to a close.  The hippie aesthetic had been assimilated by "the man" and was now being used to sell everything from tennis shoes to nutritional supplements.

But those of us who were old enough to remember Woodstock, P.O.W. Bracelets, and the Moon landing, but young enough to groan when Watergate proceedings preempted our favorite television shows know that this was, indeed, one of the most important decades in the history of fandom.  Unlike the cliche about the month of March, The '70's eased in with BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES and roared out with STAR WARS and the world would never be the same again.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Amongst my fondest memories of the mid-70's was the introduction of three products that appeared around Halloween time in the local drug store called K&B (yes, it is ironic that years later, I would work for KNB so profoundly).  These new miracle products were: Creepy Skin, Vampire Blood, and Scar Stuff.  It is nearly impossible to convey how insane I was about these Special Effects Make Up items.  The Vampire Blood, which came in a tube (and still does to this day, I believe) is self-explanatory, the Scar Stuff was excellent for making slashes in the back of your hand or on your cheek, and the Creepy Skin made incredible and disgusting purpley-red welts that look like you either had a disease or a healing burn.

I still had no knowledge of Liquid Latex, much less Foam Latex but as evidenced from that horrible PLANET OF THE APES make up I attempted, I was determined to be able to change my face into a visage of horror!  I have no idea how many little tubs of Creepy Skin I purchased, but I recall leaving no tub behind at K&B.  I have to also point out that I recall that after church one Sunday, my mother had taken us to K&B and there, on a bottom shelf in the toy aisle was another treasure: Aurora's Glow-In-The-Dark Gozilla Model Kit.

James Bama's Art could have sold a model kit of a Fire Hydrant!

It is interesting that artist, James Bama, who had painted all of the box art for the Aurora Monster Model Kits would be responsible for two other iconic pieces of art that affected my brother and I.  We wouldn't know for years that the same man who painted those lurid images of our favorite monsters also painted the publicity art for STAR TREK:

I think we saw this first in a TV Guide

James Bama also painted the covers to the Bantam Books '70's release of the DOC SAVAGE novels which my brother and I read (he, more than I):

Bama's Cover Art for "Death in Silver"

By this time, my brother and I were attending the yearly Star Trek/Science Fiction Convention called VulCon.  Even though I had the pleasure to meet guests like George Pal, I think what we looked forward to was the "Dealer Room" where collectors comics, magazines, and collectibles, that were extremely rare in New Orleans ,would suddenly be in great supply.  One of my annual purchases would be back issues of THE MONSTER TIMES, a newsprint periodical devoted to all things horror:

If this was still in print, it would be my primary source for the news.

It was at Vulcon, that I purchased a back issue of a fanzine copied onto light green, heavy weight paper - Cinefantastique. I also purchased my one and only copy of CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN magazine which wasn't released in New Orleans.  I was beginning to gather information from new sources, although none of it very practical step-by-step stuff.

Vulcon offered another opportunity: The Costume Contest.  With my limited knowledge, I made a crude Papier Mache mask of the lizard-like Gorn, from the STAR TREK episode "Arena." It was dreadful, but garnered a "special junior interest award" as I was the youngest participant.

These came in the mail when you received your all-access pass.

The winner of the contest was a local prosthetic make up artist named Russ Elliott who had put together a sophisticated facial prosthetic complete with expert hair pieces.  As far as I knew, he was the closest thing to a real Hollywood-level make up artist that I would ever meet and I tried to introduce myself to him.  He was aloof and dismissive.  I was crushed.  I just wanted to ask some questions and get some information but he would have none of it.  Wow.  The more I thought about it, the angrier I got and deep inside I made a promise to myself: One day, I would surpass the great Russ Elliott.

Part 5 - Halloween, Mardi Gras, and Neighborhood Horrors

If you want a history of Halloween, I'm sure there are many, many sites on the Internet and documentaries on educational channels that can tell you of its origin and customs.  However, growing up in suburban New Orleans during Halloween in the late '60's and early '70's afforded several unique experiences that helped hone my interests and to be truthful, are probably one of the significant contributors to why I have become a monster maker.

I wish I could recall the actual name of the suburb when we moved from the East Bank of New Orleans (which is the side of the Mississippi River where New Orleans proper is) to the West Bank.  I was very young, probably three or four years old and my recollections are now faded and yellowed like old photographs.  The street, Morningside Drive (which you can Google if you are that interested) was a fairly straight street that crossed a main thoroughfare called Carol Sue and bisected Marlin Court into East and West Marlin Courts respectively.

Houses were still under construction on Morningside when we moved in and by the time I was 8 or 9 years old, there were still large sections of woods that surrounded West and East Marlin Court streets.  What this meant were two things: a.) There were always big piles of sandy dirt to play in at construction sites and b.) When it was time for adventure, the woods were right down the street.

You can imagine, however, what this would be like on a cold, dark Halloween night.  We would move from house to house trick-or-treating, then there would be a long stretch of road that just pushed through the dark woods on either side. In the distance we could see a scattering of little houses with their porch lights and jack-o-lanterns luring us like moths to the flame, tempting us to brave the dark woods for the promise of Halloween candy.

It was 1972, a group of us were walking down one of these dark streets chattering to distract ourselves from the creepiness of the surrounding woods.  I'm not sure about my friends, but I had seen the television movie THE NIGHT STALKER with Darren McGavin earlier that year.  It concerned a low-rent newspaper reporter (McGavin) chasing a vampire around contemporary Las Vegas and it was VERY frightening. It was so effective that is spawned a sequel and a subsequent television series.  One of the reasons it was so effective was the portrayal of the vampire by actor Barry Atwater.

Barry Atwater as the Vampire from THE NIGHT STALKER (1972)

So there we were, a small group of ten year-olds walking down a dark street in the woods on Halloween Night, when from out of the darkness we heard the rumble of a car behind us. We looked  and saw a shiny, red, 1972 Ford Mustang roaring up the street and instinctively moved to the curb to give the vehicle a wide berth.  It passed us with no incident then stopped, it's brake lights glowing red like a pair of demonic eyes in the dark.  Suddenly, the reverse lights came on and the car STARTED TO BACK UP towards us!

We were so frightened that we didn't know what to think, until the car pulled up right next to us.  Sitting behind the wheel was a guy who looked JUST LIKE BARRY ATWATER FROM THE NIGHT STALKER!!!!!  No one made a sound. Then, as the driver smiled, we saw them....TWO FANGS.  Not the plastic kind we were all familiar with, but what looked like real teeth.  Before anyone of us could make a sound, the car tore off into the night leaving us in a cloud of burned tire rubber.  That is an absolutely true story, but not the best or scariest Halloween experiences that I've ever had.

The best Halloween experience from my childhood started in early October.  I can't remember the year, but I do remember the wooden sign with the gold letters that read SATAN'S PALACE that appeared on a neighbor's house down the street. Satan's Palace? Satan's Palace? SATAN'S PALACE!  It was confounding and it wasn't unusual for a crowd of kids to gather around the driveway gazing at that sign.  In addition, the family living there had been doing a garage conversion on their one-story house and where the garage door had been, there was now a window frame filled with a big, black temporary wall.

Satan's Palace as it appears today - you'd never know...But you can see the garage conversion, still there.

During the evening, this family, whom I had never met, would put Disney's Thrilling Chilling Sounds of the Haunted House on a record player and to make things tantalizing, a red pitchfork would appear around the temporary wall every now and then.  Halloween could not come fast enough!

Halloween night my little group ran from door-to-door trick-or-treating rapidly making our way to Satan's Palace.  When we got there we joined a queue of kids lined up entering a wood fence into the back yard. In the back, was a haunted Halloween carnival!  There was a fanged wild man swinging from a rope wearing an animal skin; real snakes were draped over the tree branches; a mad doctor performed an experiment on a corpse while lit control panels blinked behind him.  A werewolf growled and swiped his claws at us and at the end of the tour, a witch stirred a huge cauldron of hot chocolate that she dispensed and handed to each of us.  None of us had ever experienced a yard haunt of this complexity and ambition.  That was the best, but it wasn't the scariest.

The scariest happened a year or two later.  With no warning or preview, our band of trick-or-treaters rounded the corner to see a huge group of kids gathered at the door of a house.  We pushed our way past the kids until we could see what they all were looking at:  The front door was open, the screen door was closed.  All of the furniture and furnishings were taken out of the front room.  Now, all that remained was a lawn chair beneath one bare light bulb.  Sitting in the chair was a tall man, wearing a cheap rubber Halloween mask and at his feet a big, BIG bowl of candy.  Talk about a freak out. By the way, this was YEARS before Michael Myers and John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN.  No one would go in, but no one was leaving either.  Finally, one kid opened the door and took a furtive step in, without hesitation, the guy in the mask stood and all the kids in the neighborhood ran off into the night screaming and then ultimately laughing.

It is amazing that these folks felt so strongly about providing thrills for us kids on Halloween night and with no D.I.Y. shows, or web sites, or anything but their imaginations and ingenuity to assist them.  They were real Halloween heroes.  I had no idea that across the country, performer, collector, and all around genre aficionado, Bob Burns, and his wife Cathy were enlisting the help of up and coming special effects legends like Rick Baker, Phil Tippet, Dennis Muren and others to assist him in putting on elaborate shows for the neighborhood kids. Of course, what they were doing was so much more elaborate than the bed sheet mazes in garages and the greasepaint vampires in our neighborhood, but that wasn't the point.  The point was to scare and entertain kids with no expectation of compensation or fame.  A truly selfless (and sometimes expensive) act.

Living in New Orleans afforded folks something that was rarely enjoyed in the other 49 states: The chance to dress up in costumes again in the Spring and we did, during Carnival.  On Mardi Gras day, my family would put together some half-assed theme costumes like hillbillies or we'd just don some Carnival masks, or whatever.  One year, however, I decided to go all out and attempt my first PLANET OF THE APES make up.  No foam latex, no latex at all.  I tried putting papier mache over a crude clay sculpt producing upper and lower muzzle pieces.  Grabbing one of my mother's old wigs (more on that later) I tried to paint my face and then glue the pieces on my face with spirit gum.  Disaster.  No matter how much spirit gum I applied, the pieces would fall off of my face.  Finally, I had to attach elastic and make it into a mask as best as I could.  I was determined.  I grabbed an old green sweatshirt drew what I thought was a cool P.O.T.A. design and then made the second biggest mistake of that year...oh, and this hurts to admit....I had to figure out what I was going to wear on my legs.

Folks, when you are 10 years-old and have to spend the day away from home at a parade, never wear tights.True, the effect was fine for an hour, a few minutes, okay, it was horrible from the beginning but I had made a commitment to myself and I was going to stick to it and I did...It was the longest Mardi Gras of my life.

As horrible as I look, what's up with the rest of my family?

Over the decades, Mardi Gras has changed; it is less of the city-wide celebration by families and tourists and more about drunk college students and corporate sponsorship.  Hey, everyone's gotta make money and I get it, but Mardi Gras was different when I was growing up.

Not to say that it was any less dangerous.  At the Krewe of Choctaw parade in Algiers, Louisiana, I saw a young man with a knife, cut deep into my friend's thigh to get his foot off an aluminum doubloon.  I'll never forget the police, the ambulance, the screaming, and the blood.  My friend needed something like 72 stitches in his leg and finished that semester of school from his bed.  I was roughly nine years-old when I saw that.

A few years later, another kid from around the corner came screaming at the top of his lungs riding his bike.  Instinctively we jumped on our bikes and followed him to the woods.  Wrapped in a soggy cardboard box was the corpse of a young woman from the East Bank who had been raped and murdered.  I didn't have the fortitude to look at her face, I just saw her arm and the color and the pallor of her arm would forever be burned into my memory.

Part 4 - The End of the '60's, the Beginning of the '70's and Sharing a Room with My Brother

As the decade began to end, my brother, Scott, and I began to notice a shift: our favorite television shows were disappearing from the airways.  STAR TREK, VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (which he had given up on a season ago), LOST IN SPACE, BATMAN, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. were no longer around to transport us from Terrytown, Louisiana to destinations of the imagination.

True, TWILIGHT ZONE was still being rerun, and there were a couple of new shows such as LAND OF THE GIANTS and THE PRISONER to ease the pain.  The former became a bit trying for us, even as kids, but the latter affected us and the giant, white "Rover" that would mug actor Patrick McGoohan weekly was the stuff of nightmares!

And speaking of British-imported-genre, a few of producer, Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation programs (or programmes as they say across the pond) did come to our little Hamlet: SUPERCAR, FIREBALL XL-5, and STINGRAY.  His most celebrated THUNDERBIRDS, however, did not make it, and I didn't hear or see much about this show until college, but that would be years away.

On the big screen, we awed to BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES and the appearance of the mutants in the "forbidden zone". In addition, although we were well aware of his incredible screen presence already, Vincent Price became a huge favorite to us as THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES!

The house I grew up in was a two-story brick construction with faux shelters on the windows, a living room, den, kitchen, 2 1/4 bathrooms and four bedrooms upstairs.  The master bedroom was for my parents, one bedroom went to my sister, and one bedroom was referred to as "The Study".

The Study was where my parents kept their books, my father banged out his reviews and articles on his old manual Underwood typewriter, and most importantly, where my mother slept on a little bed.  When questioned, she explained that Dad snored and kept her awake and because we could all hear it echoing through the second floor at night, nobody questioned it.

The last bedroom was a sanctuary occupied by my brother and I.  We each had a twin bed pushed against opposing walls.  In the middle, a small stereo sat, a prisoner to my brother's tastes.  Not that I cared, because I was never into popular music and since he primarily played The Beatles, I didn't complain.  More often than not, he would put on big earphones and lie in bed and read a book while on my side of the room, I would be creating tons of garbage and disarray with my creative exploits.

In a corner were two identical desks (that for some reason, Dad had put a brick patterned contact paper on the tops!).  Mine was in the corner; my brother's desk was next to it under the window.  Mine became a catch all since sitting in the upright wicker-seated, high-backed chair was uncomfortable.  My brother's was also a catch all, but he attempted to at least stack his crap in orderly piles.  Above the desks, my father had mounted a series of shelves on the wall with brackets.

Aurora model kits of Frankenstein, Dracula, The Creature from the Black Lagoon as well as The Hulk (complete with that weird, flat impact plate on the base!?) all collected dust.  Above that were vehicles: The Moonbus and the Aries 1B from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, The Flying Sub and the Seaview from VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, the Flying Saucer from THE INVADERS, and the Spindrift from LAND OF THE GIANTS would teeter on their flimsy stands.  Occasionally, one would take a dive and shatter on the ground in a cascade of styrene and tears only to be replaced at a birthday or Christmas.

On the wall above my brother's bed, were Beatles Posters and later, a very Hippie-inspired JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR poster (where the hell had THAT come from?).  Between them, carefully removed from their parent magazines, MAD MAGAZINE mini-posters accented my brother's territory with humorous sarcasm.

My walls, however, were guarded my MONSTERS!  Giant black and white posters of KING KONG and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS majestically protected my corner -

This, exactly, is what was above my headboard in my room.

Beneath the posters, my bed became a landscape for my beloved plastic dinosaurs!  I would push the upper blankets and spread back and would poke caves and pull summits out of the fabric.  This would be the land masses where the dinosaurs roamed.  The remaining fitted sheet was the ocean where my few (but important) Plesiosaurs swam and my herds of Brontosauruses waded in the shallows.  I would spend hours transporting myself into this pre-historic fantasy world while muffled tinny music wafted from across the room.

When the sun set, dinner time drama (or trauma) was over, and we were done "ratting the neighborhood" as my parents called it, we would park in front of the television, especially in December of 1970 when a new show began airing: ROD SERLINGS: NIGHT GALLERY.

I find myself pausing here.  All I can say is that few television shows had given me nightmares prior to this show.  Perhaps it was the fact that it was in color, or it was the quality of the creepy stories, or it was the incredible paintings that introduced the stories.  Whatever it was, my father would curse when I woke up in the middle of the night blubbering hysterics that there was a killer doll in the house or an earwig burrowing into my brain.  However, it never prevented us from tuning in the following week for another dose of the macabre.

It must have been around December of 1971 when Santa Claus brought me my first "big boy" bicycle.  It had a purple frame, a matching glittered purple banana seat and what was referred to in those days as a "sissy bar" in the back.  Yes, I'm aware of how that sounds, but in 1971, believe me, that was a cool ride.  Suddenly, I had "freedom" and could ride around the neighborhood with ease.  The summer of '72, I recall that I would ride about a mile to and from my house to the corner store to buy FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND magazine using my preciously saved allowance.

More than once, I'd come home to my irritated father would would ask why I had wasted my money on garbage, taking the magazine out of my hand. Ten minutes later, I would see him lying on the sofa in the living room (taboo territory for kids) reading my magazine and an hour later he would hand it back to me saying something like, "Hey, so they're making a sequel to Dr. Phibes.  We'll have to go see that when it opens."

Part 3 - Going to the Movies and life with Dad

There were certain advantages to being the son of a local entertainment critic and there were corresponding drawbacks.  Among the drawbacks was that nothing was normal in the house.  Of course, growing up in an environment, one just accepts the conditions as being "normal" but through the lucid lens of hindsight, oddities begin to flourish in that "normal" household.

To illustrate: My father, since at that time he was on television, would spend a good part of Saturday, lying in the backyard in a chaise lounge chair in his swimsuit, tanning.  His excuse: He didn't like wearing the thick foundation make up that television required in those days.  That could have been true.  In any case, when he was tanning (with his little transistor radio next to his head) the kids were not allowed to bother him. Tanning time was sacred.  On the off chance that one of us would get hurt playing in the neighborhood, we knew to avoid the browning giant otherwise we'd feel the wrath.  We never went camping, or fishing, or to a sporting event.  He generally disliked the popular New Orleans offerings: The Saints and Dixieland Jazz Music and he insured that his children (well, two out of the three) would not sound like New Orleaneans, much less "West Bankers!"

On the other hand, my father LOVED movies and for the most part, we went to a LOT of movies as kids.  True, we had to suffer through some events like the re-release of GONE WITH THE WIND (which, when you are a kid, is pretty boring stuff except when the guy gets his leg sawed off), but we did see James Bond movies, and The Beatles HARD DAYS NIGHT & HELP, and Disney cartoons and live action movies, and horror and science fiction movies whenever they would open.  See, my Dad, because he was a critic, NEVER PAID FOR MOTION PICTURES!  For him they were free so he had no problem distracting his kids by taking us to the movies.

My father, modeling a male wig for an advertising campaign.

It was not uncommon for Dad to take us to a small multi-plex (back in those days, if you had two screens, you were a multi-plex) he'd drop us off in one theater (usually at the very end of the picture, so my brother and I would see the last 5 minutes of the movie and have to sit through the end titles before seeing the start of the next showing) and then he would go into the theater next door to see something he knew we would fidget through and therefore drive him nuts.  That's how my brother and I saw films like DANGER: DIABOLIK.

For us, the film started with a guy covered in gold, then there were the credits, then we'd sit for 10 minutes goofing around, and then the film would start over and we'd learn the events that would lead up to the guy getting covered in gold.  Sometimes, Dad would pop in about 10 minutes BEFORE the film had progressed to the point at which we had come in and we'd have to beg him to sit down so our curiosities could be satisfied.

One of Dad's regular distractions for birthdays was THE COLISEUM theater on well, Coliseum street on the East Bank just outside of New Orleans proper toward the Garden District.  The Coliseum was an old second-run (more like third or forth run) movie house that primarily showed Horror and Science Fiction Films.  And since Dad didn't have to pay to get in...he would take my brother or myself and as many kids that could fit in our car and drop us off to see films like DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, or THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, or one of our personal favorites THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.

The Coliseum Theater in New Orleans.  Probably isn't even there anymore...

The other advantage to Dad being an entertainment critic was that he got stuff from studios.  Posters, T-shirts, and tons of 8 x 10 b&w stills.  He had a filing cabinet in the garage FULL of photos of actors from movies that he would use if the studio didn't provide him with a picture to accompany his articles.

For those of you in your twenties, the "Old Fogie" has to remind you: There were no home computers, or the Internet.  If you wanted information, the Public Library was your best option and that was limited.  My father kept this cabinet for decades, adding photos from the Press Books he received.

Not only that, but he worked for the NBC affiliate so, one day he brought home three, matted, color, publicity photos of William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy from STAR TREK and gave them to my brother (I believe he still owns them).  I recall seeing these photos which were much larger and clearer than any photos I had ever seen and I noticed two things (yes, even as a kid): There were faint lines running down the midpoint of Mr. Spock's ears, and what was that netting on William Shatner's forehead?  When I asked my father what that was, without hesitation he responded, "William Shatner wears a hairpiece."

What?! I thought.  Captain Kirk is BALD???  It was one of the first lessons that my father would teach me about the illusion of Motion Pictures over the years.  I don't think he was trying to take away from the experience, but I do think that he wanted his kids to know that HE knew (or thought he knew) how motion pictures were made (and boy! Did I find out later how wrong HE was!).

I would be remiss to mention this about my father and it is important to my development as a person and as an artist.  He had a temper.  Not only did he have a temper, he didn't know how to express it any other way than screaming and striking.  It didn't take much to amp up Dad and have him go on a tirade that would end up with one of us kids getting slapped or having our hair yanked.  Sometimes at the dinner table he would scream so loud and talk so fast he would BITE HIS TONGUE and have to leave the table with blood seeping between his lips.  I'm sure he thought he had his reasons, but it didn't make it any easier growing up in that house.

All of this leads up to the one, important thing living with Dad did provide: He had a make up kit.  No fooling.  My father had a theatrical make up kit that contained grease paints, some crepe wool, spirit gum, a little nose putty and, of all things, blue liquid body make up (don't ask, I never did).  I wasn't supposed to get into it, but every now and then, I would open the little bottle of collodion and paint a line across my cheek and watch it form a "healed scar" as it dried.  This was my first foray into Make Up Effects.

If you haven't read my Facebook Note about the Christmas practical joke I played on my father, here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150118766582586

Part 2 - Of Stargates, Apes and Toys - The Brain Damage Continues

I have often wondered what it was about the late 1960's and early 1970's that bred what is now being referred to as "Monster Kids." I know that there have been a great deal of hypothesizing about whether or not it had to do with Universal Studios packaging their horror library and selling it to television stations thereby creating a new fan base. It might definitely have to do with the rise of Warren Publications like FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND, CREEPY and EERIE magazines.  It might be the fact that in nearly every territory in the United States, local media figures began putting on creepy make up and wigs and introducing genre films as Horror Hosts.  I think it had everything to do with all of these elements and more.

This was a particularly unique moment in entertainment history.  Prior to the late '60's fandom was reserved for teeny boppers who fantasized about matinee idols and kids that wanted to be cowboys like Tom Mix or Roy Rogers.  But now, there was a different "star" emerging on screens big and small.  They could be 200 feet tall and radioactive, or sewn together from corpses, or turn into a raging animal at the full moon.  Their frightening appearances and murderous ways were nothing compared to what Americans had heard about during World War II or were seeing on the television of the Viet Nam War.  I've already stated that there was also a lack of the instant media gratification we enjoy now and that made every exposure to genre materials an EVENT!

As soon as I could read, I, like many others, would grab the weekly TV guide (that in those days was 1/3rd the size it is now) and begin to scour the pages looking for the words: Movie, Horror, Fantasy, Science Fiction and I would underline the entry and circle the page number.  More often than not, these films would come on very late at night and when they did, my brother and I would set an alarm clock, hide it under our pillows and when it went off, we'd carefully and quietly sneak downstairs and try to watch the movie with the volume barely audible until we were discovered by an angry parent (especially on school nights!)

Although Dad griped about inadvertently waking him up, I know that he wasn't THAT angry.  After all, for some reason he thought my brother and I were old enough to experience 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in three-screen Cinerama when it opened in 1968 (I was in first grade!).  At the time, I had NO idea what a brilliant story 2001 was.  All I knew was that it was the most visually stunning and frightening thing I had ever experienced. From the visceral hominids that introduced the tale, through the psychedelic Star Gate, to the benign but intense Star Child at the end - the ride was INTENSE. I remember frustratedly attempting to build a "Discovery" space ship from the movie out of legos with VERY limited success, although the monolith was easy to replicate, but black lego bits were pretty rare.  However the fear and excitement of 2001 was to be overshadowed by the sight of a gorilla, riding a horse and carrying a rifle.

It is difficult to imagine what the experience of seeing PLANET OF THE APES at six years-old was like in a dark movie theater.  Jerry Goldsmith's score was jarring and terrifying compared to "The Blue Danube" and "Atmospheres" and when Charlton Heston got shot in the throat and that bright red blood plumed across his neck, WOW!  It seemed so real that for most of the movie, I sat in a ball on my theater seat looking through my fingers.  As repellent as that experience might sound, the thrill of it was something that very few movie goers had experienced.  And just like that, everything was Planet of the Apes!

That summer at Broadwater Beach, a resort hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi, my brother, Scott and I would take turns "shooting" each other in the neck and falling off of the side of the pool as miniature "Taylors." I remember seeing the step by step process of changing actor Roddy McDowell into the chimpanzee Cornelius in TV Guide magazine and it was one of the first times a name REALLY sunk into my head: John Chambers.

Who would think that John Chambers' transformation of Roddy McDowell into Cornelius would have been reinforced by comedienne, Carol Burnett?  Mr. McDowell showed up as a guest on her show completely made up and then showed behind-the-scenes footage of the process!  Those glimpses behind the curtains were so few and far between.  With the exception of FAMOUS MONSTERS, there was not a place to go to for consistent information.  Latex, much less FOAMED latex seemed as rare as uranium and it was a far cry from the vacu-formed plastic Halloween masks of which we children were so fond.

Meanwhile on the sacred Saturday Morning Television schedule, my hero appeared in cartoon form: KING KONG:
KING KONG CARTOON OPENING 1966

Ahhhh, Saturday Mornings.  Again, my brother and I, deftly eluding our annoying little sister, would sneak downstairs and hold a throw pillow over the switch so the CLICK of turning the TV set on wouldn't wake the house.  Saturday mornings were kid time and cartoons were king. And the commercials during the cartoons would advertise incredible toys like Mattel's THING MAKER or later the GREEN GHOST game.  Madison Avenue was still learning about how easily marketing to children was and most of the time it was limited to those precious few hours on three networks on Saturday morning.  That Christmas of 1966, Santa Claus brought me what was then my personal Holy Grail of gifts: A KING KONG playset!

It didn't matter that the playset came with plastic contemporary jungle animals, I had PLENTY of plastic dinosaurs for King Kong to fight.

Thinking back on it now, toys were so much different when I was growing up.  G.I. Joe, was just that, a soldier who came with fatigues, helmet, rifle, gun, etc.  Sure, you could dress him up like a frogman (in an orange wet suit like Sean Connery wore in THUNDERBALL - excellent!) or an astronaut, but he wasn't fighting the fictional C.O.B.R.A. evil doers.  I guess, when we were growing up, he was either shooting "commies" or giant monsters.

At the same time, the N.A.S.A. Space program was underway and we were going to go to the Moon (Kennedy had said so) but we kids were already there, we had our own Moon Base with Major Matt Mason - Mattel Toys' Man in Space.  Toys were such a physical escape as opposed to video games.  Even though Matt Mason and G.I. Joe came with what seemed like a MILLION accessories, it still required that you get out of your house, find a dirt hill, dig fox holes or moon craters and proceed to lose all of the bits that you would then beg your parents to replace.

Again, this was two years before the "Summer of Love" was to forever change the landscape of the American Culture. Many kids were still wearing crew cuts!  On television, we monster kids were watching THE MUNSTERS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY, as well as STAR TREK, BATMAN, THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., LOST IN SPACE,  and VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA. And on local New Orleans television, actor Sid Noel portrayed the ghoulish, mad scientist MORGUS THE MAGNIFICENT and introduced a steady stream of horror films for our fertile, impressionable minds...