logophobia

Mike DeCapite

Did you get Famous Monsters of Filmland when you were a kid? I loved that magazine. My grandmother took me on Saturdays to a dark-shadowed drugstore at Fairfield and West Eleventh so I could pick out a few comic books or a magazine. Mr. Lach, the owner, wouldn’t let me look at Creepy, Eerie, or Vampirella because the covers were similar and he couldn’t tell, from behind the soda counter, which was the sexy one. If I got too close to them he issued a grunt of warning, which carried also a note of apology for having to stock this kind of thing. But I only cared about Famous Monsters of Filmland. I didn’t understand why they released it monthly. Why couldn’t they release it weekly? Or—what the hell?—all at once. Just let ’em go! We need to know this stuff! We need pictures, we need information about the various Frankensteins, mummies and sons of mummies, Mr. Hydes, and the whole Hungarian diaspora of vampires. How can we live without freshly uncovered stills from the lost London After Midnight—Lon Chaney with his beaver hat, talc-white face, and jack-o’-lantern grin? Okay, we can live, but is it really living without hard facts about the Mummy’s curse and what exactly befell those foolhardy archaeologists—to a man—sometimes long after each had returned to his life and family at home? Oh sure, it looks like he slipped in the bathtub. What powers did the silent Golem possess? What are the different biographies of Nosferatu and Dracula? Which one would win a fight? Who would win between the Wolfman and the Werewolf of London? (I finally settled this question last night, reviewing a VHS tape of The Werewolf of London as part of my extensive research for the present article. The Werewolf of London looked way cooler, with his widow’s peak, but before leaving the house he threw on a scarf and hat, which seems a delicate touch, and every person he attacked was nearly able to overpower him. One of his victims knocked him over with a stick!) Would we ever know more about the Frankenstein monster’s time in the Arctic? Does the Invisible Man deserve to be included in this pantheon? Is he just a man like the rest of us with an unhappy burden to bear, or does he mean us harm? Was the Hunchback of Notre Dame simply misunderstood? Of the three primary Phantom of the Operas—Lon Chaney, Claude Rains, Herbert Lom—which told the real story, got closest to the secret sorrow at the heart of the matter? What exactly was going on in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari? Was he more to be feared than the abominable Dr. Phibes? And the Mole Men—what were they doing down there? Were they well supplied in their underground city? Self-sufficient? Did they just want to be left alone?

This was long before home video, so the movies were unavailable except by the narrow trickle allowed us by weekend monster-movie hosts. Because he’d seen a few of them on their first release, I regarded my father as a crucial link, a documentary witness, and I peppered him with questions and plagued him with a continuing stream of trivia (“Bela Lugosi spoke so little English when he played Dracula, he had to learn his lines phonetically!”). I sent away for the Famous Monsters Speak LP—one side Frankenstein, one side Dracula—recorded by the incomparable Gabe Dell, a former Dead End Kid turned impressionist. Great cover: against a livid red background, Karloff’s Frankenstein monster stood with his arms hanging at his sides, looking exhausted, beside Lugosi’s Dracula, who was holding a candle, with his other hand upheld in the familiar arthritic, mesmerizing gesture. I even obtained, through a family friend who was acquainted with Dell, a signed headshot of the man (“Mike, I vant to suck your blood . . .”).

The ads were as good as the articles. You could buy Super 8 films, Creature from the Black Lagoon feet, Mole Man hands—supposedly the real thing. Meaning, I guess, just like the real Mole Men. And those Aurora models? Forget about it. I had the Dracula and the Mummy in my room. But I was haunted by the Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare. A skeleton—chained to a dungeon wall. They forgot about him down there—it disturbs me to this day. A skeleton about whom nothing seemed to be known. There were no articles, no tributes or stills, no synopses—there was no data, just the ad.

My whole life I searched for that movie. It was only as an adult I found out it was never a movie, only a model. Cruel hoax!

One of the first searches I made with the advent of the Internet was for that cackling prisoner. I found someone selling the model at a comic-book store in Pittsburgh. A hundred and eighty dollars. There was no picture.

I called the store. The guy working there was eating a sandwich. He didn’t know what I was talking about. I described the item. He put the sandwich down and went away to look for it, I heard him rummaging around. Finally he came back. I heard him blow the dust off the box.

He said, “Yeah, we got it. It’s still in the box, it’s never been assembled.”

“What else can you tell me about it?”

He said, “It’s a skeleton chained to a wall by his neck. Stone wall. And it looks like there’s a couple of other skulls by his feet.”

I thought it over.

I said, “Is it scary?”

He said, “Well. . . . Yeah, it’s kinda scary.”

In the end I didn’t get it, I balked at the price. The model was worth more to me as a dream.

But probing research for the present article reveals these models are on sale again. I wasn’t the only one—there must’ve been a demand. They’re back in production—rolling off the line—waiting to be reassembled—they’re rising again—twenty bucks each—including the Forgotten Prisoner . . .

I quote from the product description:

“He’s the last remaining prisoner from years gone by. . . . His crimes have long been forgotten. His sentence fulfilled. However, this unfortunate prisoner was lost in the system, and now his bones are the only remains that hang from the dreaded shackles of his prison cell. Until now . . . Requires plastic cement.” (Copyright eHobbies.com.)

The person who wrote that feels just like I do—you can hear it—it’s been at the back of his mind for thirty years . . .

You can’t keep a dream down.

Happy Halloween.3

1. Sparkle Street Social and Athletic Club, Howl Arts, May 2016 [↩]
2. 61 x 61cm, oil and collage on photograph on panel, Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London [↩]
3. Pictures of Aurora models and more [↩]