Geek Punditry #149: Three Wishes Presents-The Mummy

November 7, 2025November 7, 2025 blakemp News Brendan Fraser, Dark Universe, John Hannah, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Mummy, Rachel Weisz, Radio Silence, Stephen Sommers, Tyler Gillett, Universal Monsters, Universal Pictures, Van Helsing

Considering how many times it’s been shattered and reassembled by bombshell pop culture announcements, it’s kind of surprising that there’s any internet left to break. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what happened this week when news was announced that Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz would be returning for a new movie in The Mummy franchise. The two co-starred in the beloved Mummy remake in 1999, then again in 2001’s The Mummy Returns. Weiz declined to return for the third installment in 2008 and was recast, but the new movie will reportedly discard that installment and only treat the first two as canon.

The movie is gonna star these two and, I think, some kind of monster or something.

This is, not to oversell it, an announcement of the kind of cultural relevance that is usually only reserved for things like the election of a new Pope or the return of the McRib. Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy was not only a fantastic movie, but it cemented Brenden Fraser as a real movie star back when such a thing still meant anything. The way he’s had a career resurgence over the last couple of years has made people absolutely salivate at the prospect of him coming back and playing Rick O’Connell again, and the news that he’s not only doing it but bringing Rachel Weisz with him…well, as The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor proved, even the McRib just isn’t the same without the special sauce. I should know better than to write these columns before lunch.

Anyway, I am obviously pleased at this news. It even made me think of a blog post I made a few years ago, when the possibility of this franchise coming back seemed like a pipe dream, about how I would have handled the return of The Mummy. But although it’s (relatively) certain that Universal Studios isn’t going to use my ideas, I’m going to float three wishes for the new movie, three things that I – and probably most other fans – hope that they DO bring to the table when the new Mummy movie hits theaters.

#1: Keep the Family Together

If the movie starts by breaking this up, we riot.

Fraser and Weisz’s characters met and got together in the first Mummy film. By the sequel, they were married with a child. (By the third, that child was grown up, and that’s reportedly one of the reasons Weisz declined to return – she didn’t want to be seen as old enough to have an adult son, especially just nine years after the first movie came out.) The relationship between those two characters, even more than fighting ancient Egyptian forces of evil, is why people fell in love with this franchise. There’s more chemistry between those two than a high school science lab.

But think about how many movies end with a couple getting together only to see that they’ve broken up when the sequel rolls around. Is that EVER satisfying to the audience? (Lookin’ at YOU, The Force Awakens.) I get why it happens – some filmmakers feel like there’s not enough drama to be wrung out of portraying a happy couple in a story. I would like to submit, however, that this notion is a pile of rabbit doots. Just because you have a couple that’s happy with each other doesn’t mean there isn’t room for conflict. Couples disagree. Parents disagree. Maybe they disagree over whether their kid should be allowed to play football. Maybe one of them has a drinking problem that the other one wants to help them through. Maybe your wife keeps forgetting to put the blueberries back in the fridge after she makes our son’s breakfast and I find them sitting on the stovetop almost every single day when I get home from work. You know. Hypotheticals like that.

These are all just examples, of course. There are thousands of ways to tell an entertaining story with a happy, loving couple and still have a satisfying narrative, as proven consistently by the very existence of Gomez and Morticia Addams. I can’t think of anything that would turn the fans off faster than starting the new movie only to learn that Rick and Evie haven’t spoken in ten years.

And it’s just not a reunion without the disreputable uncle.

In the same vein, we want to see the WHOLE family together. John Hannah played Jonathan Carnahan, brother to Rachel Weisz’s Evelyn character, in the prior three movies (even the one without Rachel Weisz). While Fraser and Weisz get most of the love when people talk about this franchise – and deservedly so, they’re both excellent – I feel like Hannah deserves more credit than he gets. Fraser and Weisz are both talented actors, capable of action and comedy at the drop of a hat. But Hanna’s Jonathan is a nice sort of foil for the two of them – cowardly where the other two are fearless, and capable of being more self-centered and deceptive than the O’Connells, whose love for each other is evident in every frame. But somehow, he’s still charming and entertaining. The third film proved that this franchise without Rachel Weisz just isn’t the same. I think you COULD make another Mummy movie without John Hannah, but assuming he’s willing to come back, why would you want to?

#2: Keep it Family-Friendly

When the Universal Monsters went through their first cycle in the 30s and 40s, they were intended to be scary. Over time, though, they became so popular in our culture that it’s almost impossible to find them legitimately frightening anymore. Writer/director Stephen Sommers understood that, and when he was tasked with remaking the classic, he didn’t even try to bring the chills. Instead, the Fraser/Weisz Mummy movies are action-oriented monster movies that anybody can enjoy. When Universal tried to use a new Mummy with Tom Cruise to kick off their “Dark Universe” line in 2017, they leaned more in the other direction – less comedy and a darker tone. I’m not saying that’s the ONLY reason the Tom Cruise movie failed, but it’s undeniably ONE of the reasons.

We can probably come up with a few others.

The new movie is being developed by the directing team of Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, the duo collectively known as Radio Silence, and I think that’s a very good thing. I’ve seen four of their movies so far – the thriller Ready or Not, the two most recent Scream films, and the bloodthirsty ballerina flick Abigail – and I’ve enjoyed all of them. Each of those films straddles the line between horror and comedy, and they do it really well. Ready or Not is, as I said, more of a thriller, but there’s plenty of humor in it. The same goes for Abigail, which is unabashedly a monster movie, but also has strong, compelling characters and some really amusing segments. And of course, anybody who’s ever read my blog in October has heard me talk about my love for the Scream franchise, a franchise built ENTIRELY on using meta humor to deconstruct horror movies, and I feel like Radio Silence did that franchise right.

But The Mummy is different. When the new movie comes out, my son will probably be around ten years old (which sounds like a typographical error, but there you are), and I would LOVE to take him to see it. He hasn’t watched the previous films, but I feel like if I can ever get him to stop watching YouTube videos of somebody shredding things for ten minutes, he would enjoy them. As much as I liked the previous Radio Silence movies, though, none of them are the kind of thing I would watch with Eddie.

“Whaddaya mean it’s not a kids’ movie? She’s a KID, ain’t she?”

That said, just because their previous films have all carried an R rating doesn’t mean that we should expect that here. First of all, I doubt that Universal would want to resurrect this franchise if they didn’t intend to try to please as many fans as possible. Second, it’s stupid to assume that just because you’ve only seen a storyteller do one kind of story that means it’s the only kind they’re capable of. Wes Craven directed four Scream movies and created Freddy Krueger, but he also directed Meryl Streep to an Oscar nomination for the biopic Music of the Heart. Actors like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey started their career known only as comedians, but both received acclaim for dramatic works like Dead Poet’s Society or Man on the Moon (respectively). John Cena, that wrestler you can’t see, has proven himself to be both a great comedic actor AND capable of a deeply emotional performance in Peacemaker. And although enough people have learned this fact that it isn’t quite as shocking as it once was, I always enjoy the look on the faces of the uninformed when I tell them that the uplifting prison drama The Shawshank Redemption is based on a story by Stephen King. Yeah, the clown in the sewer guy.

I think Radio Silence is well aware of their audience, and I think they’re smart enough filmmakers to understand that they are the stewards of this franchise, not its masters. Of my three wishes, this is the one I feel most confident will come true.

#3: A Portal to a New Universe

Well not THAT one. Okay, MAYBE that one.

The Brendan Fraserssance that has swept up Hollywood over the last few years is certainly a factor in this movie getting made at all, but I think another important element to consider is that Universal, for years, has desperately wanted to turn their classic monsters into a legitimate franchise again. After all, they may have been the first studio ever to even TRY the shared universe concept in movies back in the 1940s when Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolfman started showing up in each others’ films. The fact that everybody and their mother is doing a cinematic universe and they haven’t been able to get theirs off the ground must be incredibly frustrating.

And in fact, even the Tom Cruise movie wasn’t their first attempt. Four years before Marvel proved that it could work with the first Iron Man, Universal gave us Van Helsing – written and directed by Stephen Sommers, he who made the first two Fraser/Weisz Mummy films. Sommers reportedly intended Van Helsing to be set in the same universe as those movies, and it brought in the elements of the other Universal Monsters, but a planned sequel was never made. The film was only moderately popular at the box office and was lambasted by critics, but in the two decades since it was released people have started to appreciate some of the fun charm of the film.

A shared “Monsterverse” (I’m sorry, Universal, but the name “Dark Universe” is stupid, no matter how successful that corner of your Epic Universe theme park may be) is a natural extension of this franchise. Sure, there’s gotta be a Mummy in there, because that’s what Rick and Evie are known for fighting. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room to plant the seeds for a vampire, a werewolf, a gillman, or any of the other classic monsters that made Universal Studios what it is.

I’ve been saying for years now how much I love the Universal Monsters, and that I thought the best way to bring them back on a major scale was to tie them in to the ONE property that has been loved by everybody in the past few decades – the Brendan Fraser Mummy franchise.

Now there’s a chance to do that.

I guess I’m really just wishing that they don’t blow it this time.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Bringing back Oded Fehr would be pretty sweet too.

Geek Punditry #147: It’s Not Halloween (But Who Cares?)

October 24, 2025 blakemp Geek Punditry Abbott and Costello, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Addams Family, Halloween, It, Jim Henson, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Labyrinth, Movies, Pennywise, Shaun of the Dead, Stephen King, The Stuff, Universal Monsters

The whole “What Qualifies as a Christmas Movie” debate has been at a fever pitch for several years now. Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3 – each of these has defenders ranging from people who genuinely appreciate their holiday content for what it is to edgelords who think they’re somehow better than other people by picking Riggs and Murtaugh over Rudolph and Frosty. Strangely, though, Halloween has never really fallen victim to this sort of heated, brutal, occasionally family-schisming battle royale. People are eager to accept certain movies as part of their standard Halloween fare even if nothing in the film has any direct ties to the holiday. And I think we should embrace that philosophy.

Some of my favorite movies fall into this category. As anyone who has seen the posters in my living room knows, one of my favorite movies of all time is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I love the Universal Monsters, I love Bud and Lou, and this film fused those two brands at their respective heights into a hilarious film that nevertheless holds up the Universal Monsters as icons that they are. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula! Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman! Glenn Strange’s Frankenstein Monster! (Okay, it stinks that they couldn’t get Boris Karloff to come back to the play the monster one last time, but of all the actors who wore the makeup for Universal, Strange was #2 after Karloff.) And I watch this movie at LEAST once every October as part of my Halloween wind-up. There’s a masquerade party in the third act, but it’s not specifically noted as being a Halloween party, and the film doesn’t seem to have any indication of what time of year it takes place. But the gestalt of having the finest incarnations of the Universal Monsters is enough to place it on my list.

That’s one of the great things about Halloween – the inclusivity of the concept. You can get away with almost anything as a Halloween costume, even if what you’re dressing as has no Halloween link. You can be a superhero or a princess, you can make a costume based on a pun, you can be a character from your favorite TV show or you can dress up as your friend who you know is going to be at the same party and watch them stew about it as you imitate their mannerisms flawlessly. All of it counts. And because of that, it’s much easier for a character or a movie to be elevated to iconic Halloween status even if there’s nothing strictly Halloweenish about them.

My other top two movie franchises that fall into this category are, of course, Ghostbusters and Scream. None of the Ghostbusters films take place at Halloween, and Scream didn’t touch upon the holiday until the sixth installment, but both of them are eagerly accepted as standard Halloween costumes now, much like any other Universal Monster, 80s slasher, or Beetlejuice. And, in fact, I try to work them into my Halloween viewing rotation almost every year. (If I don’t get around to Ghostbusters I’ll save it for December – Ghostbusters II is a New Year’s movie, after all.)

Halloween movies are like pumpkin spice. Pumpkin spice doesn’t actually taste like pumpkin, it tastes like cinnamon and the other assorted ingredients you add to a squash to make it taste like a pie instead of…well…a squash. Similarly, there are a lot of great movies that may not have any Halloween ingredients to them, but nevertheless, deliver hard on the Halloween flavor.

The Stuff (1985)

I remember seeing the poster for this in the video store every time my parents took us there to pick out a few movies when I was a kid. I knew my mom would never let me rent stuff like this, but it never stopped me from looking at the poster and wondering what it was all about. Once I was old enough to seek out the movies I wanted myself, I found that this Larry Cohen film was ridiculous and delightful at the same time. “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarity) is hired by a dairy company to investigate a new product called “The Stuff,” a creamy substance that is obliterating sales of ice cream and other traditional desserts. Nobody knows what’s in it or what it’s made of, and when Mo learns the truth, the answers are horrifying. The Stuff has the feel of a 50s sci-fi alien invasion movie, it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers mixed with The Blob mixed with a Baskin-Robbins commercial. The tone is perfectly appropriate to blend in with your Halloween viewing – silly and over-the-top with an antagonist that is absurd on the face of it. As far as Halloween costume potential goes, there’s not really an iconic character for you to dress up as, but if you were to whip up a costume that looks like a “Stuff” carton, you’ll immediately figure out who the cool kids at your Halloween party are. If nothing else, this movie is the quintessential argument for food nutrition labels.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)

True story: Last year on November 1st, after Spirit Halloween put everything at 50 percent off, my wife picked up the 12-foot inflatable Jumbo the Clown from this, one of her favorite cheesy movies. Jumbo sat in his box in the closet until this September, when I told her it was time to test out our Halloween decorations to make sure they still worked and she remembered buying this thing. It wasn’t until he was plugged in for the first time that we realized just how tall 12 feet actually is.

Totally worth it, though, because this movie is a delight. In Killer Klowns, alien clowns come to Earth and begin abducting people in cotton candy traps and taking them to their ship, which happens to resemble a circus tent. The story is ostensibly about a bunch of young people who band together to fight them off, but nobody is watching the movie for the humans. The clowns are the stars, lovingly created by the Chiodo Brothers in a fashion that evokes the finest puppet work of the Jim Henson company. The Chiodos actually repainted and reused some of the clowns a few years later for the trolls in a legit Halloween classic, Ernest Scared Stupid.

It may not be a Halloween movie per se, but there are few things in the world that feel more Halloweenish than a good ol’ creepy clown, and the ones from this movie are some of the best. The iconic looks make for great costumes, and the movie itself is a ton of fun.

It (All versions)

Similar to the Killer Klowns, Stephen King’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown is one of those characters that feels as perfectly suited to Halloween as Ebenezer Scrooge does to Christmas. The Creepy Clown Coefficient is in full effect here, whether you’re looking at Tim Curry from the 1990 TV miniseries or Bill Skarsgard from the 2017 and 2019 films and the new Welcome to Derry streaming series. Pennywise isn’t silly like the Killer Klowns, of course. He’s a much darker threat and can be legitimately frightening, whereas it’s hard to imagine anyone being anything but charmed by the Chiodos’ creations. The movies lean on the darker side of Halloween, but that’s okay. The darker side is more pronounced here than in any other holiday, and that’s kind of what we love about it.

The Addams Family (All Versions)

If Taylor Swift had referenced Gomez and Morticia in her songs instead of Romeo and Juliet, maybe she would have made something of herself.

I wonder what Charles Addams would think if he could see the cultural phenomenon his little one-panel gag comics have become. The original Addams family came from a series of comic strips that mixed comedy with macabre elements of a monster movie, and although some of the characters became regulars, they didn’t have names or distinct personalities until they were adapted into a TV series in 1964. While it was a popular enough show, and fondly remembered, Addams died before the property really exploded with the 1991 film starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. Since then we’ve had multiple cartoons, three live action films, two animated movies, a Broadway musical, and a new streaming series focusing on the Addams’ daughter Wednesday. But although Wednesday may be the breakout star, virtually every member of the family has become iconic. Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Cousin It, even Pugsley all have a distinct, unique look to them, and you can throw on any of the movies or any of the assorted TV shows and get a beautiful blend of creepy and comedy that is a perfect fit for the season.

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Because this is what it feels like going to WORK, amirite?

Edgar Wright’s comedic send-up of zombie movies has the perfect sense of scary and silly that you’re looking for. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a retail jockey struggling with a girlfriend who wants more out of life than he seems willing to give, a mother whose husband he constantly clashes with, and a best friend who is enabling his arrested development more than anything else. He’s ALREADY living like a zombie even before the dead start to rise. Like a lot of the all-time great horror/comedies, Shaun works because the zombies themselves are played absolutely straight – nothing silly or goofy about them. The human characters, however, are funny and highly relatable. One could make an argument for virtually any zombie movie as being part of your Halloween rotation, but I’ve always felt that the more comedic ones fit in more with the fun of the holiday. And although there are plenty of zombie comedies out there, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that this is probably the best. It’s definitely the most iconic. Zombie costumes are easy, but cosplaying as the HERO of a zombie movie is often tough – they are, by the standards of the genre, usually kind of dull, generic, everyman types. But you can cosplay Shaun easily – a white shirt, crimson tie, a nametag, and a cricket bat are all you need. And make sure to get a little red on you.

Labyrinth (1986)

Jim Henson’s fantasy film from 1986 may have flopped at the box office, but today the fans are devoted, dedicated, and legion. A young Jennifer Connelly plays Sarah, a teenage girl whose frustration at babysitting her infant brother inadvertently leads to his abduction by Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). But Jareth offers her a chance to get him back – make her way to the Goblin City at the center of his remarkable Labyrinth before time runs out and she can take him home. The film is lavish and gorgeous. The characters, too, are memorable and loveable, with some of the finest work Jim Henson’s creature shop ever did. Even the bad guys have distinct personalities and witticisms that make them a joy to watch. And as the movie, technically, is all about monsters, it gives off those Halloween vibes any time of year.

There you have it, friends, a few non-Halloween flicks that you can throw into your rotation and feel perfectly seasonal. What are some of your favorites?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He didn’t mention the Munsters because lord knows he doesn’t feel like stirring up THAT can of worms yet again. The scars still haven’t healed from the last time.

Geek Punditry #145: What Makes an Icon?

October 10, 2025 blakemp Geek Punditry A Nightmare on Elm Street, Army of Darkness, Art the Clown, Child's Play, Chucky, Costumes, dracula, Evil Dead, frankenstein, Freddy Kruger, Friday the 13th, Ghostbusters, Ghostface, Halloween, invisible man, It, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, Michael Myers, Mummy, Pennywise, Scream, Stephen King, Terrifier, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Universal Monsters, Wolfman

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, famously said he believes one of the keys to an iconic cartoon character design is whether the character is recognizable just from their silhouette. Think about it – if you show pretty much anybody anywhere in the world the mouse-ear shape, they’ll instantly recognize Mickey Mouse. The same can be said for characters like SpongeBob Squarepants, Phineas and Ferb, Bugs Bunny, and a lot of the other cartoon all-stars. And Groening himself is legendary for utilizing this tactic with the signature nine spikes on Bart Simpson’s head or the trademark antenna on the top of Futurama’s robot character Bender Bending Rodriguez. But as insightful as this piece of wisdom is, I don’t think it applies only to cartoons. In truth, any truly great design should have elements that make it instantly recognizable. And with Halloween only three weeks away, this week I’m going to help you all make your costuming decisions by applying this reasoning to horror movie icons.

Of course, the silhouette isn’t the only thing that makes for a horror icon. There are several factors to take into consideration. The overall design, in addition to just the silhouette, needs to be memorable. The characters themselves should be interesting and unique. A character should be popular enough that people will recognize them and you won’t have to spend the entire Halloween party explaining what your costume is. And when you’re talking about Halloween costumes, above all else, they should be fun to play. So let’s go over some of the all-time great horror movie icons and see just how they stack up to this metric before you suit up for your Halloween party.

We’re gonna start old-school with the Universal Monsters. The great thing about these characters is that they are all INSTANTLY recognizable, even to children who were born 90 years after the movies were released and have never seen any of them. Characters like Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Invisible Man are all based on classic literature and are not Universal originals, but when you ask somebody to picture them, they invariably envision the versions popularized by Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Claude Rains, respectively. In fact, those designs are all copyrighted (at least for the next few years). If you were to make a movie about Frankenstein, you couldn’t give your monster the flattop or neck-bolts, because those are all owned by Universal Studios even though the monster himself isn’t. So these classic horrors all meet the standard of memorability and recognizability. The only caveat comes with the Mummy and the Wolfman. Although those are, of course, classic monsters, the designs here (while still amazing for the time) aren’t as immediately attributable to the Universal designs specifically. It’s very easy to mistake Im-Ho-Tep or Larry Talbot for a generic mummy or werewolf. And of course, there’s nothing wrong with being a generic werewolf. But if you want to be the Lon Chaney Jr. Wolfman specifically, you may need something like a silver wolf-headed cane as an accessory to drive the point home.

I don’t think even a mother could love that face.

The 70s and 80s gave us our next great wave of horror movie icons, and many of them have persevered. Leatherface, the killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was probably the first great iconic character of the era. He’s got an easily-identifiable apron, a mask made of human skin, and – of course – a chainsaw to whip around his intended victims. He arguably started the trend of slasher movie icons that would explode in popularity in later years. He wouldn’t necessarily be my first choice to cosplay as, however. To be blunt, his appearance is a lot scarier than some of his successors. That’s not always a deal-breaker, of course, but you have to consider your audience. I’m a dad, and if I’m going to any sort of Halloween event there’s a 99 percent chance that there will be children in attendance. Leatherface is immediately frightening in a way that even the likes of Freddy and Jason are not. Of course, if you’re going to an adults-only event or to something like a horror convention, that’s less of a concern, but you should always keep in mind who’s going to see your costume. There’s also his signature weapon to consider. Having a prop to use as part of your costume is a plus, but you have to remember that you’re going to be keeping track of the thing all night long. Do you really want to spend the entire party looking for places to put your chainsaw?

Michael Myers from Halloween is a really simple costume – all you need is a jumpsuit and a mask. A bladed weapon is recommended, but optional. And that’s all it will take to be a character that 99 percent of people will recognize whether they’ve ever seen one of his movies or not. The question now becomes: how dedicated are you to staying in character? Michael is a silent killer. He stalks and he tracks you like an unstoppable monolith, and he never says a word. The closest thing you get to an emotion from him is when he tilts his head quizzically to look at the victim he’s just pinned to the wall. If you’re the type of costumer who enjoys not only dressing up, but also embodying the character that you’re playing (minus the actual murder part, of course), you have to be prepared to spend the evening being very restrained, slow, and deliberate with your movements. It’s not a dealbreaker, but you should definitely check if four out of five dentists recommend Michael Myers or somebody else.

“Yeah, I slept on Mario Lemieux’s couch for like six months after I got drafted…”

Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th has a similar concern. Again, the costume is pretty simple – virtually any ragged, ratty slacks and shirt will be suitable as his clothing, and an easy-to-aquire mask and machete will complete the ensemble. And as far as iconic characters go, I would say that Jason is perhaps even more recognizable to the general public than Michael Myers is. Michael has a William Shatner mask that’s spray-painted white, but almost ANY hockey mask will evoke feelings of Jason. Like Michael, Jason doesn’t talk. Unlike Michael, though, he’s much faster and more brutal, expressing his emotion through his actions rather than words. It can be a fun part to play depending on how willing you are to commit.

The absolute worst dream analyst in the phone book.

The great slasher triumvirate is completed with Freddy Krueger of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Iconic, indeed. Everybody knows Freddy on sight, with his classic red-and-green sweater, fedora, and bladed glove. The tricky thing with Freddy is his face. The character is a burn victim, and although he’s so ubiquitous in pop culture that I don’t really have the same concerns about him being too scary for kids that I have with Leatherface, the burns present a different problem. You see, Freddy – unlike Jason or Michael – is a talker. His quick, dark sense of humor is integral to the character, and if you’re gonna dress up like Freddy you’re going to want to throw out bon mots all night long, with an emphasis on extra “bitch”es should you encounter anybody at the party dressed like Rick and Morty. If you wear a Freddy mask, though, that talkiness becomes more difficult and cumbersome. Wearing a rubber mask makes it more difficult for people to understand what you’re saying, and actually speaking under the mask increases the temperature beneath the rubber roughly ten degrees per “bitch.” If you live in a climate like I do in Louisiana, that ten degrees may be the difference between life or death. The alternative to a mask is makeup, which can be time-consuming, difficult to apply, and easy to mess up. Please understand, I’m not saying any of this to discourage someone from playing Freddy – I just want to point out some of the possible concerns that come with such a costume.

“Chuck, look, I’ve thought it over and… well… I’ve decided that, no, I do NOT want to play.”

The last great slasher icon of the 80s is probably Chucky from the Child’s Play franchise. When my son was five years old, we took him to Spirit Halloween and we toured all the costumes before finally asking him which one he wanted. He jumped in delight and exclaimed “CHUCKY JUMPSUIT!” I actually took out my phone and recorded him saying it because I knew nobody would ever believe he picked it on his own.

My wife Erin and I are both horror movie fans, but we’re not idiots – our five-year-old son had never seen any of the Child’s Play movies, and the 8-year-old he is now STILL hasn’t seen any of them. But that doesn’t matter – Chucky is one of those ubiquitous characters that even kids recognize. His bright blue overalls and multicolor sweater, a shock of red hair, and freckles across his nose all give us a nice, friendly image that kids enjoy. That is, of course, the point of the character – he’s a child’s doll that is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, so of COURSE his image is something that would be appealing to children. However, this also leads to a problem: it’s hard to wear this costume as an adult without coming across as creepy, and not in the right way. Five-year-old Eddie was the most adorable little serial killer ever, but if a 35-year-old puts on the jumpsuit, he needs to be DARN sure he’s got a receptive audience before he shows up, or he’s going to be getting strange looks all night.

Not every horror icon is a villain, of course. Ash Williams, Bruce Campbell’s hero from the Evil Dead franchise, is another solid costume choice. Most of the costume is relatively simple too – slacks, a blue shirt, a bandolier, and some blood splattered across your face. The most iconic part of Ash’s appearance, though, is the most difficult: in Evil Dead 2, Ash’s hand becomes possessed by a Deadite and he is forced to amputate it, then top off the stump with a chainsaw. Now you’ve got all the same problems as cosplaying Leatherface with the added difficulty of finding a way to keep a chainsaw attached to your hand all night. Alternatively, you could go with Ash from the third film, Army of Darkness, in which he replaces the chainsaw with a mechanical hand. It’s certainly easier than the chainsaw, but it’s FAR less iconic and less likely to be recognized. And honestly, even WITH the chainsaw, Ash doesn’t have the cultural penetration of a Freddy or a Jason. If you’re wearing the costume to a horror convention, people will know you immediately, but for the office Halloween party, be prepared to explain your costume over and over again.

Greenscreen backdrop of an 80s New York skyline sold separately.

Of course, as far as 80s monster movie heroes go, there’s nothing more iconic than the Ghostbusters. This has become a classic choice for a Halloween costume because it ticks all the boxes: it’s simple, it’s recognizable, and it’s fun. You need two things: a jumpsuit with a Ghostbusters patch and a name tag, and a proton pack. The jumpsuit is readily available in any costume shop and easy to make if you’re so inclined. The proton pack is more difficult, but there are inflatable ones that are lightweight and are usually included with commercial costumes, or more expensive and detailed ones that you can buy or assemble yourself. It’s also a highly adaptable costume. There are the classic khaki jumpsuits from the first movie, the gray variants from Ghostbusters II, the 2016 jumpsuits, multicolored costumes from The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, the red parkas from the Frozen Empire movie, versions from other cartoons, video games, toys…the list goes on. And fans often come up with their own original variants and designs. In fact, similar to the 501st Stormtrooper Legion (a Star Wars fan collective that has expanded far beyond just cosplay to things like public appearances and charity work), there are Ghostbusters chapters all over the world of fans who enjoy this sort of thing. I don’t have the time, talent, or money to be a really good cosplayer, but I’ve always said that if I DID have the opportunity to join such a group, it would be the Louisiana Ghostbusters.

“Stabbity-Stab-Stab-Stab!” -Ghostface in *Scream 7*, probably.

Moving on from the 80s, let’s look at the most iconic horror character of the 90s: Ghostface. The killer from the Scream movies is unique in that the costume is the only constant – a different set of villains wears it in every movie. In fact, over the six Scream movies to date, over a dozen different characters have donned the mask to engage in murderous shenanigans. But this lack of uniformity hasn’t been an obstacle for Ghostface becoming an icon – in fact, it’s probably the STRENGTH behind it. More so than any other character, anybody can wear the Ghostface mask.

It’s also unique in that the costume itself didn’t actually originate with the movies. It was part of a line of Halloween masks produced by a company called Fun World. Director Wes Craven liked the mask, put the character in black robes, and entered into a licensing deal with Fun World that has had them rolling in cash for nearly 30 years now. Not everybody may know the name “Ghostface,” of course, but we all recognize “the guy from Scream.” A few weeks ago my sister told me that my 11-year-old nephew – who is even less likely to have seen the movies than my 5-year-old was, because my sister is NOT a horror fan – has declared his intention to be Ghostface for Halloween this year. I’m very proud as an uncle and I can’t wait to see him when my sister and I take our kids trick-or-treating together. I just wish the boys had collaborated on being movie killers in the same year, because that would have been cute. (Eddie isn’t going as a murderer this year – he wants to be Superman. This is the proudest moment of my entire life.)

Since the turn of the century there have been several efforts at creating new horror icons. And while characters like Victor Crowley of the Hatchet franchise, Trick ‘r Treat’s Sam, and Leslie Vernon of the woefully underrated Behind the Mask are great and have many of the trademarks that make for a classic icon, the only recent monsters that have reached the degree of cultural penetration that the classics enjoy are a pair of clowns.

In 2017 we got a theatrical version of Stephen King’s It. The first dramatization of It, a TV miniseries from 1990, featured Tim Curry as Pennywise the Clown, and he was magnificent. Curry in general is magnificent, of course, and his makeup as Pennywise is suitably creepy when Tim Curry is wearing it. But Bill Skarsgard from the 2017 version – let’s be honest here – has broken into the mainstream in a way that Tim Curry’s never quite did. The design of the makeup is creepier, and Skarsgard’s performance is unsettling in a more insidious way. A lot of people would recognize you if you dressed as Tim Curry’s Pennywise, but EVERYBODY recognizes the Skarsgard version. Either version is relatively easy to cosplay – you need the costume and the wig, which are readily available. Skarsgard’s makeup is more complicated, though, and if you don’t want to subject yourself to the same masking problems you’d have with Freddy, make sure that you – or someone you trust – is capable of making that transformation.

The most recent character to break into the echelon of horror icons, though, is probably Art the Clown of the Terrifier franchise. Art was originally played by Mike Giannelli in a series of short films and anthology segments, but Giannelli retired from acting and the role was taken over by David Howard Thornton for the first full-length Terrifier film in 2016. A malevolent clown with a stark black-and-white costume and makeup that is immediately recognizable, Art has risen to iconic status faster than anybody since Ghostface. As far as horror icons go, Art is perhaps the darkest, most brutal, most sadistic character ever to crack into the public consciousness. He’s more violent, more aggressive, and while the voiceless beast DOES still have a sense of humor, it’s so dark that it makes the likes of Freddy Krueger look like an episode of Bluey by comparison.

Naturally, he’s become a huge favorite among horror fans.

In terms of costuming, again, Art is relatively easy. Costumes and masks are available, and since Art doesn’t talk you don’t have to worry about being muffled. On the other hand, makeup is more expressive and less restrictive than a mask, so if you’ve got the skill (or someone with the skill to help you) I would always prefer the makeup approach. Something else to consider is that Art – while huge among horror fans – is not necessarily someone that the average person on the street will recognize, at least not YET. On the other hand, even if your audience doesn’t know ART the Clown, the general appearance of the character is more than sufficient to give the idea that this is NOT a funny clown, and the mystique is preserved.

There are plenty of other characters that we didn’t quite touch on, of course, and you should always go with whatever is comfortable and fun for you. Hopefully I’ve given you a few tools you can use to evaluate your own costume choices when you’re making the decision. You’ve got three weeks left, folks – get started.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Since Eddie is Superman this year, he’ll be wearing his own Kryptonian pajamas come Halloween night. Scary can wait.

Geek Punditry #94: Four Color Terror

October 18, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry Al Ewing, comic books, creature from the black lagoon, Creepshow, DC Comics, dracula, frankenstein, Horror, Hulk, Hyde Street, Ice Cream Man, Immortal Hulk, James Tynion IV, Nice House on the Lake, Principals of Necromancy, Skybound, Universal Monsters

It’s October of course – glorious October, that precious time of year in which all the creepies crawl and the goblins gob and the gremlins grem. And at this time of year, many of us reach out and look for scary stories to cast to our televisions, books to fill our Kindles, and anything seasonal that might give us a little bit of a chill. A few days ago, for example, I saw someone on Facebook ask for recommendations for modern horror comics. While horror has long been a mainstay of the comic book medium – in fact, it was the biggest seller back in the 1950s, before the Comics Code strangled the life out of it – it’s not what most people think of when they think of comics these days. And that’s a shame, because like any other form of storytelling, there are plenty of scares to be had if only you know where to look.

Scary comics, of course, are different from scary movies or TV shows. Although they’re both visual mediums, comics don’t have some of the tools that filmmakers use to terrify people. There’s no creepy music, no way to rely on a jump scare, and even simple surprises can be difficult to pull off, as a shocking image can be spoiled if not carefully placed on the page to avoid allowing a major reveal before the creators are ready for it. (Robert Kirkman, who created The Walking Dead, is quite vocal about how aware he is of this sort of thing – he always tried to reserve majorly shocking moments for the first panel of a left-hand page to avoid a page-turn spoiler.) In terms of horror, comics have more in common with novels than film – they have to be reliant on mood and tone to pull off their scares. Sure, there ARE shock comics out there – even going back to the days of Tales From the Crypt and its blood-drenched contemporaries, there were plenty of comics that relied on gore. But these kinds of shock scenes are like slasher movies – good for a scare in the moment and plenty of fun, but they don’t necessarily create LASTING terror the way that a good book can.

So here are a few comics from recent years that I think are particularly successful at delivering the scares, stories that are well worth tracking down and reading as part of your Halloween wind-up.

On that initial Facebook post that prompted this column, one of the respondents stuck his metaphorical nose in the air and replied, “WELL, you won’t find any good horror from MARVEL or DC, but…”

What a prick.

It’s true that Marvel and DC are known as superhero publishers, and that’s what most of their audience comes to the table for, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of delivering in other genres, even within the confines of their existing superhero universes. The best horror comic Marvel has published in a long time is actually Immortal Hulk. This series, which ran for 50 issues from 2018 through 2021, was written by Al Ewing with art mostly by penciller Joe Bennett, and followed the “death” of the Hulk in Marvel’s Civil War II event. Comic book characters die and come back to life all the time, of course. It’s reached the point where it’s not just a cliche, it’s almost a JOKE to say you’re going to kill off a major character. But Ewing takes the old comic book concept of the “revolving door in Heaven” and turns it on its head, becoming a literal green “door” in Hell.

“I bet this stuff never happens to Jean Grey.”

In this series, Ewing explores WHY characters like the Hulk seem to die and come back over and over again, drawing in most of the gamma-powered characters (hero and villain alike) in the Marvel Universe and telling a deeply unsettling story about Bruce Banner, the multiple personalities that co-exist inside his head, and a battle against his true greatest enemy. Despite being a part of the Marvel Universe and occasionally guest-starring characters like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, this is a legitimately creepy story and probably one of my favorite runs of Hulk of all time, second only to Peter David’s legendary first run back in the 80s and 90s. If you don’t think there’s room in a shared universe for something truly scary and disturbing, I challenge you to check out this series right away.

On the DC side, there isn’t an awful lot of horror to be found in the modern DC Universe itself. Even those characters that use the trappings of horror, such as Dr. Fate or the Creature Commandos (coming soon to MAX!) aren’t usually used in legitimately frightening stories. But DC’s library doesn’t stop at the outskirts of Metropolis. From DC’s Black Label line, writer James Tynion IV and artist Alvaro Martinez brought us The Nice House on the Lake in 2021, a 12-issue sci-fi saga about a group of ten people who are invited by a mutual friend for a little getaway in the titular nice house on the lake. Some of them know each other, some are nearly strangers, and the only thing they all have in common is their buddy Walter. But on their first night in the house, something utterly heart-stopping happens that I’m not about to reveal because it would ruin the beginning of one of the best and most original horror comics in years. This 12-issue series was absolutely phenomenal, full of well-drawn characters and a concept that is creepy and compelling all at the same time. The creative team has reunited for a sequel, The Nice House By the Sea, the third issue of which was recently released. Grab the collected edition of the first series and come aboard.

Speaking of Robert Kirkman, as I did that back in paragraph two, his Skybound Entertainment (published via Image Comics) has been giving us more horror lately as well. The house that The Walking Dead built has been branching out into licensed comics, including two pretty significant horror properties. First is Creepshow: what started as a George Romero/Stephen King movie that paid tribute to the likes of the old EC Comics has expanded into a franchise with the current anthology TV series on Shudder. Skybound has taken to publishing Creepshow comics now, with three miniseries and a few one-shots, including a Christmas special last year and another one-off adapting a story by King’s son, the prolific horror author Joe Hill. Most regular issues of the comic include two stories by assorted writers and artists, each of which includes the requisite amount of gore and most of which display the kind of twisted sense of justice that befits a tribute to the likes of Tales From the Crypt. As with any anthology, the quality of the individual stories can vary – in other words, some are better than others. But if you’re looking for the sort of tongue-in-cheek horror that we got from the Cryptkeeper back in the day, there’s no better place to look right now.

“If you think this is safe, you’re GRAVE-ly mistaken! Hahahahahaaaaa, I’m no John Kassir.”

Kirkman has also acquired – to my shock and delight – the license to the classic Universal Monsters. While Dracula and Frankenstein may be public domain, this license includes the versions specific to the films of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, as well as the original Universal creations. Even better, each of the series they’ve produced so far has been drastically different from all of the others, making for a very diverse and enjoyable reading experience. The line began last year with Universal Monsters: Dracula, a four-issue series by James Tynion IV (the Nice House on the Lake guy) and artist Martin Simmonds. Tynion and Simmonds retell the story of the movie through the perspective of a mental patient, with a heavy emphasis on the character of Renfield. Simmonds’ artwork is bizarre and scattershot, befitting the point of view of someone who is mentally unstable, and the whole thing is wonderfully creepy.

“Look into my eyes…do you have any Kit-kats?”

The second miniseries, written by Dan Watters and Ram V with art by Matthew Roberts, is Universal Monsters: The Creature From the Black Lagoon Lives! This one is a straight-up sequel to the original film trilogy, set in the modern day as a woman decides to delve into the mystery of the swamp monster from decades ago. And like most great horror, it’s more about the humans that are wreaking havoc than the monster itself. It’s a fantastic, worthy sequel that could easily be made into a movie if Universal Pictures had any idea what it was doing with these classic creations.

“Guillermo Del Toro was gonna do WHAT with me?”

Most recently, they’ve kicked off a series based on my favorite member of the Universal Pantheon with Michael Walsh’s Universal Monsters: Frankenstein. We all know that Henry Frankenstein (changed from the novel’s “Victor” for reasons I’ve never understood) stole the corpses of the dead to make his creature, but how often have we really thought about the people that the Karloff monster once was? This miniseries is told from the point of view of a young boy who, still in grief over his father’s death, discovers that his late father’s body is now part of Frankenstein’s monster. It’s a brilliantly original concept. As big a Frankenstein fan as I am, it’s not easy to find an angle on the story that I haven’t seen before, and Walsh nails it.

“The knee bone’s connected to the — HIP bone!
The hip bone’s connected to my — DAD’S bone…”

Sticking with Image Comics, let’s talk about their acclaimed ongoing series Ice Cream Man, written by W. Maxwell Prince with art by Martin Morazzo. The horror series tells a different story in each issue, with the only connective tissue at first seeming to be Rick, the titular Ice Cream Man, who rolls through each issue at some point. The series hits on all kinds of disturbing themes, dealing heavily with existential dread and frequently drifting into Kafkaesque body horror and other such things. It’s a bleak, nihilistic comic, which isn’t usually my thing, but Prince very slowly and subtly reveals that these seemingly one-off stories are, in fact, connected, and there’s a vast backstory of deep cosmic horror that Rick has spawned from. The stories delve into terrors that deal with the very nature of existence, taking very human fears and externalizing them the way that few other stories – comic books or otherwise – can do effectively. It’s remarkably disquieting horror.

If you hear the bells on THIS guy’s truck, RUN.

Rounding out our time with Image Comics, there’s a new series from Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis worth mentioning. Only one issue of Hyde Street has been published so far, but it’s already got its hooks into me. On Hyde Street, we see characters like “Mr. X-Ray” and a twisted Boy Scout going by the name of “Pranky” as they lead the unsuspecting residents and visitors of Hyde Street down dark paths of destruction. They’re in some sort of competition, reaping souls for a hidden gamemaster for purposes that have not yet been revealed. As I said, there’s only been one issue so far, but it hints at a vast and complex mythology, and there are few writers out there who do that better than Geoff Johns. I’m very excited to see where this series is going.

“You know, Clark never uses his X-Ray vision this way.”

Finally, I’m going to leave you with a lesser-known miniseries from Magma Comix that just recently wrapped, The Principles of Necromancy. Written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing with art by Eamon Winkle, this tale of horror is set in a world where magic has been ostensibly driven out by the “City King,” leaving in its wake a realm of reason and science. Not everybody subscribes to these beliefs, however. The miniseries features the ghastly Dr. Jakob Eyes, the man inventing the art of necromancy in an effort to conquer death itself. If body horror is your thing, this is a book to check out, as we watch Eyes’ gruesome experiments and deliciously twisted practices over the course of four issues which ends on a note that leaves things wide open for further exploration of this dark world. Kelly and Lanzing have become favorite writers of mine in the last few years, doing great work at Marvel, DC, and IDW (particularly with their run on Star Trek), and it was on their names that I decided to pick up this series. I’m very glad that I did.

This image just demonstrates how little I actually know about interior decorating.

So my point, friends, is that horror is out there. If you’re still looking for creepy comics to fill your bookshelf before Halloween ends, here are some fine suggestions for you, and I’m sure the folks down at your local comic shop can give you even more. Dive in and get ready for a chill on every page.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He misses the days of Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street comics, though. Those need to come back.

Geek Punditry #90: The Mount Rushmore of Monsters

September 20, 2024September 20, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry A Nightmare on Elm Street, Adam Green, Bela Lugosi, Bill Skarsgård, Boris Karloff, Brad Dourif, Bride of Frankenstein, Child's Play, Chucky, creature from the black lagoon, Damien Leone, David Howard, dracula, Elsa Lanchester, frankenstein, Freddy Krueger, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Hatchet, Horror Movies, It, Jason Voorhees, Kane Hodder, Michael Dougherty, Michael Myers, Movies, Pennywise, Robert Englund, Slashers, Stephen King, Terrifier, Trick 'r Treat, Universal Monsters, Victor Crowley

Yesterday, September 19, when I got home from work, my wife was ready and waiting for something we’ve been looking forward to for months: putting up the Halloween decorations. Oh I know, some people may scoff. Some may say it’s too early. Some may say that preparing for Halloween before October is a terrible breach of seasonal etiquette. To these people I say, bite my gourd. Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, and I’ve been waiting for this day since I went back to work from summer vacation on August 1. It is well past time, as far as I am concerned.

Our decorations aren’t terribly complex, because we can’t afford anything terribly complex. Nor are they terribly scary, because we have a seven-year-old and we don’t want to give him nightmares. But Eddie does love monsters and creepy crawlies, so we’re not above hanging a few ghosts from the trees, wrapping the posts in front of our door with LED lights, and setting up inflatables of the likes of Slimer and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. We’d have more if we could, but we’re happy with what we got.

As we were decorating, though, I started to think about just which horror icons I would adorn our home with if money was no object. If I could grab the icons of terror from any time period, who would they be? In short, what creatures belong on the Mount Rushmore of Monsters?

It was honestly too hard to narrow down all the different monsters from throughout history to a simple quartet, so I decided instead to do three different mountains dedicated to three different eras: the Universal Monsters, 80s Slashers, and 21st Century Terrors. Obviously there are plenty of other ways I could subdivide things, but restricting myself to these three keeps me from going overboard (and gives me an excuse to return to this topic later, should I so choose).

I’m making my decisions based on how iconic I think the monsters are – how far have they come in terms of penetrating popular culture? For example, no matter how good a movie I think Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is (and it IS a GREAT movie, and you should all watch it) the fact that he’s kind of faded away since then is going to keep Leslie off the list.

But enough of that. Who HAS made the cut?

Universal Monsters

Universal Studios didn’t invent the horror movie, and in fact, most of their iconic creatures came not from them, but from the annals of public domain. That said, when people think of these classic monsters, the average member of the public is picturing the versions that came from the Universal monster flicks. The Universal Monsters are still known worldwide, a valuable brand that even kids will recognize without ever having seen a single one of their films. Their versions of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Invisible Man, and many more are absolute legends. How in the world do you narrow it down to just four?

Well, you do it by deciding which ones are the MOST iconic, which ones are known by EVERYBODY – even people who hate monster movies or don’t like Halloween. And for that reason, I think the first two spots have to go to the Frankenstein Monster and his lovely Bride, as portrayed by Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, respectively. Karloff wasn’t the only actor to play the creature for Universal (Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange each had turns as well), but he was the first and there can be no denying that he was the most memorable. It’s his picture that you see on the merch, his face that the Halloween masks are based on, and his rendition that has informed pretty much everything from his three successors to Frankenberry cereal. As for the Bride, despite the fact that she only appeared in the one film – and only in the final scene of the movie at that – she has become as iconic as the Monster himself. The tall hair with the white streak, the bandage-wrapped body draped in gossamer, and Lanchester’s wide eyes and legendary scream have earned a permanent place in pop culture.

“Still a better love story than–” Ah, you know the joke.

Spot #3 on the mountain couldn’t possibly be given to anybody but Bela Lugosi as Dracula. People don’t often realize that Lugosi only played the count twice, in the original 1931 Dracula, then not again until 1948 in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. But like Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, his is the most recognizable version of Bram Stoker’s bloodsucker. Everything we accept about Dracula’s hairstyle, his clothes, and his accent (a remnant of Lugosi’s own Hungarian background) come from this version of the creature. Even today, when you watch a Hotel Transylvania movie, it’s Lugosi that Adam Sandler is doing a parody of. Like Karloff, his depiction of the monster is so famous that anybody who tried to do a novel-accurate version of Dracula would probably be met with confused looks as people asked why the hell he has a mustache.

“Sometimes I do, in fact, say ‘Blah, blah, blah’.”

And then there’s the final spot and…guys, this is hard for me. REALLY hard. Not because there isn’t an obvious choice, but because it means I’m going to have to sideline one of my favorites. I love Lon Chaney Jr. as the Wolfman. I think he’s got some of the best, most nuanced performances in the entire Universal monster canon, and if this mountain was just my favorites, he’d be right up there. But in terms of how ICONIC he is…well…there are a lot of werewolves in movieland, and he doesn’t quite have the complete dominance over his version of the monster that Karloff and Lugosi do. But you know which monster IS instantly recognizable as the one and only Universal creation? The Creature From the Black Lagoon.

He’s not my favorite of the monsters (in fact, a few years ago I actually ranked him as my LEAST favorite of the iconic Universal Monsters), but EVERYBODY knows the Creature. And since this is the only iconic Universal Monster that is a wholly original creation, not based on an existing book or folklore, there’s not even any real competition for him to have to crush. He’s the one and only. (Although the most famous knock-off happened to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Go figure, Universal exec who turned down Guillermo Del Toro.)

And he never needs a moisturizer either. Guy is legit.

80s Slashers

It has been said by many a horror fan that the slashers of the 80s are the spiritual successors to the Universal Monsters. Granted, they’re far gorier and less kid-friendly than the classics; I’ll sit down and watch a Universal classic with my son, but we’re not going to be sharing a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon any time soon. But at the same time, many of these creatures have achieved the same level of cultural awareness as the creatures of the golden age of cinema. In other words, although not everybody may have watched all of – or ANY of – the Friday the 13th movies, I don’t think there is anyone in the western world who can see somebody wear a hockey mask and pick up a knife without thinking, “JASON!”

Which is why, by the way, he gets the first spot on the 80s Mount Rushmore. Jason Voorhees is synonymous with slasher movies. Even though he wasn’t the bad guy in the first movie and he didn’t get his iconic hockey mask until the third, the version of Jason we’ve had since then has made his mark on our culture. It’s a go-to Halloween costume for bigger dudes (guilty) because it’s so simple – the mask, a weapon, some old clothes and everybody knows who you are. He’s a lumbering monument to the iconic nature of the 80s slasher. Also, the question of which version of Jason is most iconic is largely moot, since no matter who plays him, the mask makes him look pretty much the same. Besides, the best one was Kane Hodder and you know it.

The downfall of the summer camp industry began here.

Next to him will be his one-time sparring partner, Freddy Krueger, and this time the creature IS permanently associated with one actor, Robert Englund. (Jackie Earle Haley played him in the Nightmare on Elm Street remake, and although I don’t think anyone really blames that movie’s failure on his performance, it’s still a version we’d rather forget.) In an era where most of the slasher icons were silent killers – hulking brutes who were just as capable of breaking your bones as slitting your throat – Englund’s Freddy is svelte, agile, and with a wonderfully wicked sense of humor that has made him as beloved in the real world as he is terrifying to the teens of Elm Street. Even before the two characters faced off in the movie Freddy Vs. Jason, people would often say their names in a single breath as the two most well-known movie monsters of the era.

The only guy on this list to have recorded a song with Will Smith.

The third slot belongs to another quiet killer, Michael Myers from the Halloween franchise. (I know, the first movie came out in 1978, but he’s part of that 80s echelon of horror regardless.) Like Jason, many actors have played the role, but unlike Jason I don’t know that there’s necessarily a consensus as to who did it the best. That said, the creepy killer in a William Shatner mask painted white is indelibly linked to the holiday of Halloween. If you weren’t afraid he might stick a knife in their stomach, you might be sending your kids to sit on his lap for a picture like we do Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Jason and many other killers over the decades have taken their cues from John Carpenter’s creation, and few have done it better.

The fourth spot is a little tougher this time. There’s an argument to be made for Leatherface, gruesome titan of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, but A) only ONE of his films actually came out in the 80s, and B) I don’t think he’s nearly as recognizable to the general public as Freddy, Jason, or Michael. But you know who is? CHUCKY.

“Chucky, I appreciate your offer, but I’ve considered the situation and…well…I have decided that I do not, in fact, ‘wanna play’.”

Charles Lee Ray, the bloodthirsty serial killer played by Brad Dourif who has possessed the body of a child’s “Good Guy” doll and, in the process, made us all afraid of our kid’s toys, has earned his spot on my Mount Rushmore. Okay, only one of Chucky’s movies (the original Child’s Play) came out in the 80s, but he’s a MUCH more recognizable figure than Leatherface. In addition to his film series, he’s the star of a TV series that is currently on the air and – let’s face it: the merch. Chucky’s as much a brand as he is a character at this point. Everybody knows who he is and what he looks like, and the name “Chucky” is now permanently associated with a red-haired pint-sized whelp who brings chaos and despair in his wake, although part of that may be attributable to the cartoon Rugrats.

21st Century Terrors

This last mountain of mine is going to be the most challenging, mostly because the pop culture penetration part is a little harder to say for sure with modern monsters. Lots of things are popular when they’re NEW, but will they still be instantly recognized 40 to 90 years later like the monsters I’ve talked about already? Only time will tell. That said, these are the four that I would currently put on the mountain, based on how popular they are NOW and how popular I think they are likely to remain. I’ll go in chronological order of their first films for this batch.

First up is Victor Crowley, the hatchet-wielding killer of Adam Green’s…well…Hatchet series. Victor is a good ol’ Louisiana swamp boy, accidentally killed by his own father as the result of a cruel Halloween prank gone tragically wrong and transformed into a murderous, vengeful spirit that allows no one to leave his home in Honey Island Swamp alive should they be so foolish as to venture there after dark.

“No, Victor, you’re still a…a handsome young man…”

I admit to a little bias on this first choice – I’m a big fan of Adam Green and his work in general, so I’m always ready to promote it a little bit. Regardless, I think Victor (who has ONLY been played by Kane Hodder) is highly deserving of this spot. The first Hatchet movie, in 2006, came at a time when virtually all horror was a remake or reboot, either of an older franchise or of a Japanese horror film. Green had the guts to come out with an 80s-style slasher in a time when they weren’t in vogue and created a popular, beloved franchise. It’s been a few years since his last outing (in 2017’s Victor Crowley) but he’s still filling toy stores and turning out new comic books from American Mythology, keeping him alive until Green and Hodder are ready to polish up their hatchets and bring him back to the screen.

Next, from 2009, I’m picking Sam from writer/director Michael Dougherty’s anthology film Trick ‘r Treat. This is one of my favorite Halloween movies, an annual must-watch featuring four delightfully scary stories that all center around the same small town on the same Halloween night, with the diminutive orange-and-burlap clad creature called Sam serving as the common element to all four of them. The movie has a highly devoted fan base, and every few years we get our hearts broken all over again as news of a sequel is announced and then, sadly, nothing happens. Despite that, though, Sam has only become more and more popular as an icon, with costumes, decorations, and toys filling the shelves of a Spirit Halloween near you even as we speak – and really, is there a better measure of an iconic monster than that?

The psycho that gets the third spot comes from 2016’s Terrifier by writer/director Damien Leone: Art the Clown. (And let me just say for the benefit of those readers who happen to be my wife that I intended to include Art BEFORE you looked over my shoulder and saw the title of this column and said, “You better include Art the Clown.” You’re welcome.) Art actually appeared in a couple of short films and the 2013 anthology All Hallow’s Eve, played then by Mike Gianelli. But it wasn’t until the 2016 Terrifier, when David Howard took over the role, that the character really started to get stratospheric popularity.

If you weren’t scared of clowns already, this guy will change that.

What is it, exactly, that makes Art so creepy? I suppose part of it is just our cultural fear of clowns, which has only gotten worse in the last decade. Part of it is the unnerving design of the character and his ghastly makeup. But a lot of the credit has to go to Howard’s performance. His Art is lithe, quiet, menacing, and probably the single most brutal horror to yet appear on my list. Seriously, if one of my Mount Rushmore Monsters was coming after me, there’s nobody I’ve mentioned that I would be more disturbed by than Art the Clown. Art, like Sam, has begun to ascend that Mount Rushmore of Merchandise as well, with costumes, decorations, and tchotchkes appearing everywhere this Halloween season in anticipation of the upcoming Terrifier 3 which, amusingly enough, is going to be a Christmas film. My wife got a stuffy of him when we made our first Spirit trip this year. It’s adorable.

The last monster on my last mountain? It’s going to be a controversial choice, I know, but I challenge anyone to make an argument that Bill Skarsgård’s rendition of Pennywise the Dancing Clown doesn’t belong there. Like Art, the villain of Stephen King’s It has that creepy vibe to him, but unlike Art, he’s a chatterbox. He’s as likely to talk the terror into you as he is to jump out from a closet. Whereas Art is an anomaly, a creature of unknown origins who is all the more horrible for it, we know what the deal is with Pennywise. He’s a nightmare out of time, a beast from another universe that preys on our fears and surfaces every 27 years to do so. And Skarsgård is flawless in the role – sly, charming, compelling, and an absolute terror every second he’s on the screen.

This is the guy who WOULD say “yes,” when Chucky asks if he wants to play.

I know some of my Stephen King purist friends will turn on me for this one. And look, I love Tim Curry as much as anybody. But he’s be honest here, Skarsgård’s version of the character has completely eclipsed Tim Curry in terms of cultural awareness. Children of the 80s and 90s remember Curry as Pennywise, but if you ask anyone who didn’t see that miniseries in their formative years, the vision of the character they come away with is Bill Skarsgård.

And damned if I don’t think he earned it.

There you have it, friends, three Mountains of Malevolence. But lists like this one are intended to INSPIRE discussion, not settle a debate. So tell me, who would YOU put on each of those mountains? And what other mountains would you build? Let me hear all about your Quartets of Corruption!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. Other mountains he considered were Hammer Horror, Final Girls, Horror Heroes…ah well. Next time.

Geek Punditry #53: How Not to Use the Public Domain

January 5, 2024January 5, 2024 blakemp Geek Punditry A Christmas Carol, Charles DIckens, Disney, dracula, frankenstein, Mickey Mouse, public domain, Romeo and Juliet, Steamboat Willie, Universal Monsters, West Side Story, William Shakespeare, Winnie the Pooh

January brings a lot of things with it: New Year’s Resolutions, a deluge of commercials from companies offering to do your taxes, another chance for the Cowboys to choke in the playoffs, and – most importantly – new items moving into the public domain. A quick explanation for those of you who don’t know: when a creative work (like a book, painting, movie, song, etc.) moves into the “public domain,” that means that the copyright has expired and anyone is free to use that work in certain ways – remake it, create derivative works, write their own sequels, and so forth. It’s the reason that anybody can make their own version of a Shakespeare play or a Dickens novel, or why it’s okay to sing certain songs on TV without worrying about paying for the rights. The full explanation is as complicated as anything else related to the law, but currently, copyrights in the United States last for 95 years, with the work in question rolling into public domain on the first of January the next year. Over the last few years, this has taken on an almost party-like atmosphere, with people champing at the bit as they wait to see what new toys they’ll have to play with. In recent years we saw The Great Gatsby enter public domain, bringing forth a wealth of unauthorized sequels, “reimaginings,” and crappy party supplies bought by people who didn’t read or understand the book. Two years ago, the earliest Winnie-the-Pooh books joined the club, bringing with them the inevitable horror movie Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. And a few days ago, on January 1, 2024, we got the big enchilada. “Steamboat Willie” and “Plane Crazy” entered the public domain, the first two shorts starring a little guy the world would come to know as Mickey Mouse.

I can finally post this picture without making a Disney lawyer’s Litigation Sense start to tingle.

I need you all to understand something. I am a firm adherent to protecting copyright. The person who creates a work of art is entitled to exploit that art to the fullest. Sometimes, of course, they “exploit” that right by selling the copyright to someone else or, in the case of a lot of things, they created it as a work-for-hire and a company owned the copyright from the beginning. (There are a lot of people who have been screwed by work-for-hire agreements, historically, but the principle is valid.) But I also believe that this protection should expire and that works should eventually become free to use by all, and that’s for the good of art itself. Allowing future generations to create their own twists and spins on a classic piece of art or storytelling helps to keep those works fresh and alive. But it’s also important that those works be respected in the process. So while I’m not terribly surprised that mere hours after “Steamboat Willie” became free to use we were deluged with announcements of Mickey Mouse as the star of horror movies and violent video games, I am substantially disappointed that people can’t find a better way to use this newfound freedom.

Walt Disney is rolling over in his cryogenic suspension unit right now.

There have been great works created based on things that are in the public domain. Universal Studios built their brand on it in the 1930s with their versions of Dracula and Frankenstein, neither of which were particularly faithful to the respective novels (Dracula was actually based on the stage play), but they still defined the characters for subsequent generations. Without those two films, who’s to say anybody would remember Bram Stoker or Mary Shelley today? There are a thousand and twelve versions of A Christmas Carol, and although plenty of them are trash, there are also some excellent ones. A Muppet Christmas Carol is a fantastic rendition of the story, quite faithful to the book, with one of Michael Caine’s most legendary performances. Scrooged is a great update of the story to the 1980s, with Bill Murray giving us a different but perfectly valid take on the character, making it into something new while still, clearly, owing its own existence to the Charles Dickens novel. And what about West Side Story, the 1950’s musical about street gangs that lifts cleanly from Romeo and Juliet? In fact, I would argue that West Side Story actually IMPROVES upon Romeo and Juliet. In West Side Story, the two young lovers are destined for a tragic ending because of the arbitrary labels of race and class that divide them, making a statement about those things that was not only poignant to the era and place where the musical is set, but is equally applicable to all times and all places. In the original Romeo and Juliet, though, the two young lovers are destined for a tragic ending because everybody in that play is dumber than a sack of hammers.

(Note to any ninth grade students who are scheduled to study Romeo and Juliet in this upcoming spring semester: I am TOTALLY kidding about this. Romeo and Juliet is the bomb. The bomb dot com. Listen to your teacher and stay in school.)

“The bad news is you’re still gonna die. The good news is that, thanks to public domain, you don’t have to die like a moron this time.”

Anyway, the point I’m getting at is that the folks behind Mickey’s Mouse Trap and other, similar works are taking the easy way out. They also display a pretty specious understanding of how copyright actually works, because what’s in public domain are specifically the versions of Mickey and Minnie that originally appeared in “Steamboat Willy” and “Plane Crazy,” nothing else. They also don’t seem entirely aware that copyright and trademark aren’t quite the same thing, and the trademark behind Mickey is still nice, strong, and supported by enough lawyers employed by the Walt Disney Entertainment Global Megaplex and Shadow Government to invade Portugal. They may be able to get away with showing a guy in a black-and-white Mickey Mouse costume holding a knife, but calling the movie Mickey’s Mouse Trap? I am sitting nearby with a bucket of popcorn waiting for the lawsuits to start.

But even if that weren’t the case, that doesn’t change the fact that a Mickey Mouse slasher movie is the cheap and easy way out. The freedom we get when something joins public domain is important, but far too many people waste that freedom with lazy works churned out for shock value without any real reason to create something other than to say, “Heh heh, that’s messed up.” And while I know some would disagree with me here, that’s not a good enough reason. Blood and Honey thought it would be funny to take a beloved icon of childhood and make it a bloodthirsty killer. I didn’t see the movie because, frankly, the idea itself is distasteful to me (and you’re talking to someone who’s excited about the Toxic Avenger remake, for heaven’s sake). But at least they did it first. The filmmakers behind Mickey’s Mouse Trap don’t even have THAT in their favor. They’re pulling the same joke somebody else did. It’s lazy, and it’s boring. Telling a bad joke once is unfunny. Stealing a bad joke from somebody else is the sign of a hack.

I usually have a pretty firm rule not to try to analyze a movie I haven’t seen, so I’m going to base my critique purely on the trailer, which not only looks lazy and boring, but straight-up steals one of the most famous jokes from the first Scream movie. In and of itself, the fact that they chose to showcase this joke in the trailer quashes any hopes I may have had for this movie’s transcendence, I’m sure the filmmakers, if confronted with this, would claim it’s an “homage,” but if this were an essay turned in by one of my 12th-grade students, this is where I would stop reading and simply give them an “F” for plagiarism. (Unless, of course, they gave proper citations to Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven.)

Do you have the right, legally speaking, to make a movie whose only real purpose seems to be to show cartoon characters committing brutal acts of violence? Sure. But as George Lucas tried to demonstrate to us when he had Greedo shoot first, just because you have the right to do something doesn’t always make it a good idea. The best argument for letting works into the public domain is so that new, innovative works can be built upon those things that have helped build our culture. Things like Mickey’s Mouse Trap fails on both of these counts.

“Wait, people thought we were serious about this?”

The 1920s and 30s were a pretty rich time, culturally speaking, and there are a lot of characters and works that will soon be free to use. Next year the first Marx Bros movie, The Cocoanuts, will be in the public domain, along with Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms. In 2027, the aforementioned Universal Frankenstein and Dracula movies will no longer be copyrighted. And looking ahead a decade, the first appearances of Superman will be public domain in 2034, followed the next year by Batman and, the year after, Wonder Woman. And I’m sure there’s some hack filmmaker already planning to do his Superman slasher that year (hint: there already is one, it’s called Brightburn, and it was pretty good), followed by the other two, and then bringing them together as an evil Justice Society once All-Star Comics #3 joins the PDA (Public Domain Association).

“Been there, done that, murdered innocents with my heat vision.”

I’m putting you on notice now, guys: if you’re planning to exploit these works when the time comes, that’s fine. That’s your prerogative. But if your idea of doing so is nothing more than “Ha ha, what if Superman murdered people?” keep it to yourself. We all deserve better.

Geek Punditry #34: Is it Spooky Season Yet?

August 25, 2023August 25, 2023 blakemp Geek Punditry Ghostbusters, Halloween, Spirit Halloween, Universal Monsters

Scientists have determined scientifically, using specific scientific methods and scientific instruments, that August is longer than all other months combined. School is back in session, it’s 127 degrees outside, and frankly, nobody is having a good time. So once this teacher’s summer break ends and he goes back to work, I am fully prepared to embrace the next thing on the horizon that I have to look forward to: Halloween.

Some people will say that it’s too soon to get excited about Halloween. Some people will say that summer isn’t over yet. Some people will complain about holidays creeping earlier and earlier in the year. To these people, I have one word: “Boo.” I mean, if you’re the sort who actually enjoys summer (like some kind of a weirdo), okay. Enjoy it as long as you can, and I do not begrudge you. But for everyone else, you’re just gatekeeping, and gatekeeping is dumb. There aren’t enough good things in the world for us to put up arbitrary barriers designating when and how something is allowed to be enjoyed, and if you want to put up your Halloween decorations tomorrow, there is no reason not to. (Unless you’ve got a Home Owner’s Association that forbids it, of course, but HOAs are basically just organized gatekeeping, and gatekeeping is dumb.)

Now don’t misunderstand me – I’m not putting on a costume and watching Garfield’s Halloween Adventure yet. SOME things in my household DO wait for October. But this is the time of year where I start allowing bonus creepy content into my viewing habits: 80s slasher films, ghost stories, monster movies…beginning in August, the percentage of my viewing time occupied by these types of things slowly begins to increase until, by October 1st, it’s basically All Creepy All the Time. The wonderful thing about Halloween in this regard is that the gatekeepers tend to step back a little bit. It’s not like Christmas, where people will arm themselves with gingerbread swords and go to battle over what does and does not constitute a Christmas movie (even though the criteria are pretty simple, as I outlined a few years ago). For Spooky Season, there is no requirement that a movie or TV show be set on or around Halloween – it merely has to have a modicum of creepy content and people will accept it as seasonally appropriate.

And that’s a good thing, too, because there actually aren’t a ton of great movies set on Halloween itself. Sure, you’ve got your John Carpenter’s Halloween and your Hocus Pocus and a few others, but for every one of those you’ve got a TERRIBLE movie set at Halloween, such as Halloween Ends and Hocus Pocus 2. If you limit yourself to only viewing movies set in October during your viewing, even if you wait until October 1st to begin, you’ll run out of quality content long before the big day. And thus we, the Halloween Lovers of America (or HLA, for short) have agreed to accept virtually anything with monsters, ghosts, goblins, or gore as acceptable viewing during the Spooky Season.

“You see, there’s good *Halloween* and then there’s bad *Halloween*…”

In fact, many of the most iconic Halloween costumes come from stories that have nothing to do with Halloween itself. Take the Ghostbusters, for example. It seems almost unthinkable to go through the Halloween season without seeing somebody strapping on a Proton Pack or shouting “I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts,” but none of the Ghostbusters movies take place anywhere near Halloween. Ghostbusters II, in fact, reaches its climax on New Year’s Eve! (Yes, before you ask, it does count as a New Year’s Eve movie.) But because the franchise itself is centered around ghosts and the people who – y’know – bust them, they have become integral figures in the Halloween canon.

The same goes for most movie monsters. The Universal Monsters are my favorite. I love the movies, I love the style, I love the decor. But I can’t think of a single Universal Monster film that actually takes place on Halloween. The closest thing I can recall is the masquerade ball in Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, and even THAT isn’t specifically noted as being a Halloween party. (I’m sure somebody will inform me of any exceptions that have escaped my mind.) Despite this, the most common versions of Dracula and the Frankenstein monster you’ll see are the ones based on Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and they’re everywhere. Likewise, the 80s slasher icons are similarly ubiquitous at this time of year, but of them only Michael Myers is Halloween-specific. That doesn’t stop anybody from dressing up like Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, though, nor should it. Last year my wife and I dressed as Freddy and Jason, respectively, to have a little slasher family to go with our son, who chose a Chucky costume. Nobody complained, although I’m not sure my grandmother realized what, exactly, Eddie was supposed to be when she called him adorable.

So when it comes to choosing Halloweenish movies, all of those are perfectly acceptable fare, but why stop there? What about Kaiju? Giant monsters like Godzilla, Gamera, and King Kong are not particularly Halloweenish. Am I allowed to watch those movies during this time frame? I mean…there’s nothing that stops me from watching them any day of the year (makes for a weird Easter, honestly), but when I’m compiling my requisite Letterboxd list of annual seasonal viewing, do I include them? They are monsters, after all. And we’ve all seen a guy show up at a party wearing a gorilla costume. I say that it counts. And for that matter, so does any given episode of a spooky TV show, whether you’re talking about macabre comedies (macabredies? Can I invent that word?) like The Addams Family or The Munsters or whether it’s full-on horror like Tales From the Crypt or Creepshow. It basically all boils back down to the gatekeeping thing. Nobody else is allowed to tell you what can put you in the Halloween mood or when it’s acceptable, or for that matter, no one can say you have to be in the mood if you don’t want to either. Do what makes you happy.

What makes me happy, I should point out, is the Spirit Halloween store. Every year I start itching around mid-June, looking at the abandoned storefronts in my area and wondering which ones Spirit is going to swoop in and absorb into their web this time around. 2023 may be the most abundant year yet for me. For the second year in a row they’ve set up shop in a strip that’s often on my way home from work (it depends on whether or not it’s my turn to pick up my son from school). But there’s a second one that my wife has to drive past on her way to and from work – and as if that weren’t enough, the third Spirit Halloween in our area is set up in the vacant Bed Bath and Beyond immediately next to my wife’s place of employment. It’s almost as if the Spirits of Spirit knew it had been a rough year and wanted to do just a little something to make us happy.

If Spirit was open year-round I would be thrilled, honestly. Granted, there are certain things that wouldn’t be year-round sellers (nobody really needs a screaming pumpkin in February), but I also live near the city of New Orleans, and there’s much more of a call for costume pieces and decorations here 365 days a year than there is in, for example, Bloomington, Indiana. I’ve also often petitioned them to pivot when November begins and turn into “The Spirit of Christmas,” which would at least give me an additional two months of seasonal retail therapy, but so far they’re just ignoring my Tweets.

Regardless, going to Spirit is very much a thing in my family. We’ve already visited all three of the stores I mentioned before, with a fourth one not too much further away, and we’ll probably stop in at all of them again before the season is over. We told my son, who is almost six, that we’re not getting his Halloween costume until we’re a little closer to October. Six-year-olds have a tendency to grow like they’ve been injected with Pym Particles and also to change their minds 197 times a day, so it’s a bit early for us to lock him into a specific size or character. But that said, Eddie loves visiting the Spirit store. We were worried when he was younger that it may be too scary or intimidating for him, but he is his mother’s child. He loves to activate the assorted animatronics on display and make them shriek and pop up, and it’s delightful to watch because he always gets scared for approximately a half a second before giggling like mad and rushing to step on the button again…which, frankly, is the perfect reaction. This is exactly what the people who design those things WANT you to do, and unlike an adult or teenager who feels the need to pretend it doesn’t affect them, he’s still young and innocent enough to let his emotions run the way they should.

He likes the decorations and costumes as well – this year he’s asking to try on the masks, which in the past he would never do. He asks specifically to “be” the character on the label, which becomes painfully adorable as he reads the packaging and says things like, “Can I be Spidah-Man? Can I be Fwankenstein? Can I be Da Purge?” He even gave us, completely unprompted, an “It’s-a me, Mawio!” I know that, as his father, I am biased, but that moment deserves to win the Nobel Prize in Cute.

My wife and I are both nerds, and although our spheres of nerdery are not a perfect venn diagram, Halloween is a huge section of overlap. The fact that my son has come to embrace that section as well thrills me to no end. So if you’re here to tell me that August 25th is too early to sit down with him and watch Mad Monster Party and episodes of The Real Ghostbusters or to put on Renfield or Evil Dead Rises after he’s gone to sleep, I’ll tell you that you’re flat-out wrong and that you need some full-size candy bars in your life.

Now I know some readers turned away from this week’s column as soon as they realized I was talking about Halloween so early, so I know they’re not reading this. If you made it this far, I assume you love and are ready for the Spooky Season as much as I am. So to you, my friends, my fellow Cryptkeepers and Svengooligans, I say this: have a great couple of months, binge yourself silly on creepy content, and let your freak flag – quite literally, in many cases – fly high and proud.

I’m calling it. Our time starts NOW.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He really hopes his son sticks with his current plan of being Mario for Halloween and doesn’t switch to Spider-Man, because he likes to dress up with the kid and he’d make a better Luigi than a Mary Jane.

I Rank the Universal Monsters

October 26, 2022October 27, 2022 blakemp News creature from the black lagoon, dracula, frankenstein, invisible man, Mummy, Universal Monsters, wolf-man

Today I watched The Invisible Man’s Revenge from 1944, and with that, I have FINALLY watched EVERY movie featuring one of the classic Universal Monsters. I have no excuse for the fact that it has taken so long. I have deep, deep shame. But hey, I did it! And now that I’ve FINALLY absorbed every film in their assorted franchises, I’m going to rank them from my favorite to least favorite. Absolutely nobody will care about this ranking except me, but I’m going to share it anyway:

1: Frankenstein. Not a surprise, I’m sure. Everyone knows how much I love Boris Karloff as the monster. Many people probably also know that I consider Bride of Frankenstein to be Universal’s finest monster movie. And anybody who has ever talked to me for more than 17 seconds has probably heard me ramble on about the fact that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is one of my five favorite movies of all time. Of course this was going to be on top.

2. The Wolf-Man. Lon Chaney Jr. only got one solo film as the Wolf-Man, but he went on to play the character in several “monster rally” films. He’s the only Universal Monster to have a consistent performer throughout the entire franchise, and he’s a wonderfully tragic figure at that. He’s just such a great character.

3. The Invisible Man. Pound for pound, the Invisible Man films are really entertaining, and the special effects are wonderful for the time period. The franchise is hurt a bit by the fact that there is NO consistency in the performer, that most of the films make no attempt at continuity with one another, and that two of them (The Invisible Woman and The Invisible Agent) make no pretense at being monster movies at all, but rather a romantic comedy and a World War II action movie, respectively. But the ones that are good (that would be the original, The Invisible Man Returns, and The Invisible Man’s Revenge) are REALLY good.

4. Dracula. This series would be higher than the Invisible Man if I was only judging by Bela Lugosi’s performance, but Lugosi only played the count twice: in the original and in the aforementioned Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The other actors who played the Count in the other films (even the beloved Lon Chaney Jr.) were…lacking. However, the franchise does get bonus points for the other 1931 Dracula film – the Spanish language version that was made on the same sets as the Lugosi movie at night after director Tod Browning wrapped for the day. The Spanish crew watched Browning’s dailies and made adjustments, often improvements, when filming their own scenes. The resultant film is not as well-known as the Lugosi movie, but may be even better.

5. The Mummy. I must stress here, I am ONLY speaking about the original series from the 1930s and 40s, not the Brendan Fraser series. That would be higher. But while The Mummy series started well, it got very repetitive very fast. The writers also got lazy after a while, not really trying to keep the films consistent with one another. For example, the Mummy rises from the grave after “decades” in two subsequent films, yet they still all took place in the 1940s. Then there was poor Lon Chaney Jr., who played the Mummy in the final few films and, frankly, was sleepwalking through them.

6. The Creature From the Black Lagoon. I should tell you, in case there is any question, that there is no Universal Monster I actually dislike, but somebody’s gotta come in last. The Creature’s trilogy is a fun burst of energy from Universal in the 50s, one last success at creating an iconic character long after the other franchises had been put to bed, but it was never as compelling to me as the others. The Creature comes across as more mindless, driven by pure instinct. It’s neither a beast driven by anguish or anger, and as such, I never really felt for him. It wasn’t until The Shape of Water (not an official Creature film, but come on, we all know) that this archetype really hit for me.

So that’s what I think about these guys. I love ‘em all, I do, and I’m terribly sad that Universal’s various attempts to bring them back in recent years have all fallen flat. I’m going to say it again: the best thing to do would be to bring back Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz as the O’Connells and use them as the cornerstone of a new Universal Monsterverse. But what do I know? All I did was watch all the dang things.

How I would handle Universal’s “Dark Universe”

February 22, 2022 blakemp Geek Punditry Brendan Fraser, Dark Universe, Mummy, Universal Monsters

Universal doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do with its classic monsters. And while many would argue that we don’t really need a “Dark Universe” connecting them all, the monster rally movies did the shared universe before it was cool, and damn it, I want to see them do it again. So as often seems to happen, I’ve spent too much time thinking about how I would write stories for a property I do not own and could never officially write, and what the hell, I may as well share the ideas with you.

First of all, you don’t start from scratch. You go back to what has already worked. And that means we gotta start with Brendan Fraser. Because everybody loves him and his Mummy movies are the best use of the Universal Monsters since the Creature From the Black Lagoon’s first splash. We canonize his films, as well as the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing, which had the same director and planned for them to be connected in the first place.

So here’s what we do. It’s 1953. Rick O’Connell has long since retired. He and Evie are living a good life somewhere quiet, with a library for her to tend, their family to enjoy, and most importantly… no mummies.

Until the day a tour of artifacts from the Egyptian museum comes to town.

Rick is reluctant, but Evie convinces him it would be fun to go and look at the artifacts for old times’ sake. As they do so, their young granddaughter Elsa happens across some hieroglyphics that have thus far evaded translation. The youngest O’Connell, however, has inherited both her grandmother’s brilliance and her grandfather’s recklessness, and quickly solves the inscription. As she does so, the mummy traveling as part of the exhibit awakens. The O’Connells flee, barely making it out alive and rushing back to Evie’s library to try to figure out exactly what little Elsa said. When they arrive, however, they find a young woman, packed to the gills with weapons and arcane artifacts, has broken into their home and is waiting for them.

Her name, she says, is Van Helsing. She is the latest in a long line of monster-slayers, and they’ve been keeping an eye on the O’Connells ever since that business with Imhotep. This new Mummy, like Imhotep, was a high priest. However, he found something far more powerful than anything Imhotep ever touched upon… the power of belief. The arcane and supernatural forces in the world are fueled by the belief that humans have in them – the more people who believe in them, the more powerful they grow. And the newest Mummy, awakened by Elsa’s careless words, has woken up to a world in which a new form of communication is in ascendance… television.

The Mummy visits a local carnival and manipulates the belief in the freakshow to bring two new acolytes to life: a wolfman and a gillman. Together, they take over a television station, preparing for that night’s big broadcast of the most popular television program of the age, I Love Lucy. The Mummy’s plan is to force someone at the network to break into the show with live footage of the monsters, showing millions of people the truth of their existence at once. The O’Connells and Van Helsing have to chase them down, having an adventure across the city fighting monsters of all types, trying to get to the broadcast headquarters before the truth of the monsters’ existence becomes so widespread that it will be impossible to get it back into the bottle.

But they’re too late.

The broadcast goes out and, as people at home see the terrifying power of the Mummy and his minions, their power begins to grow. All over the world we see glimpses of creatures waking up – an enormous golem-like corpse in Eastern Europe begins moving, a malformed creature in France begins softly singing, the heir to the Griffin family finds traces of his ancestor’s legendary formula. All is lost.

Until Elsa commandeers the camera, reading off the cue cards to begin the planned live commercial for the evening. As she does so, people at home start to laugh at their own fear, realizing that they’ve just been watching a TV show, none of it is real. As they do so, the Mummy’s power fades, collapses, until the O’Connells and Van Helsing manage to slay the monsters in a triumphant finish.

The world is safe again.

Until we see a tall, thin man watching the broadcast from somewhere else. He is as fiendishly handsome as he is evil-looking, and as he watches, he strokes his chin, pondering the possibilities of what he has witnessed. After planning all night, he notices that the sun is about to rise, and so he slips into his coffin, and closes the lid.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. If anyone reading this happens to be an executive for Universal Studios, you should know that he will work cheap.