Lean Fiend Carradine

I first discovered gaunt ghoul John Carradine in Famous Monsters. Captain Company had an ad for a Super 8 film called Doom of Dracula (an abridged version of House of Frankenstein). There was an image of the caped, moustachioed Carradine lying dormant in a coffin. I learned fast that Carradine was second to Christopher Lee as the actor who played Dracula the most times., even if one of those potrayals Carradine openly dissed at public appearances. See if you can guess which one:

House of Frankenstein (1944)

House of Dracula (1945)

Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966)

But then I discovered a whole slew of medical maniacs and evildoers that Mr. Carradine brought to the late night TV screen. WTVC-9 in Chattanooga showed Carradine was a whiz at bringing back the dead - including a ghostly Great Dane - in Face of Marble (1946). While other stations were showing the Universals and AIPs, Dr. Shock on WDEF-12 in Chattanooga dug deep inside the povery row vaults to unearth the tale of unhinged puppeteer Bluebeard, with Carradine playing a real lady killer. Horror Classics on WAAY-31 in Huntsville introduced Paula the Ape Woman, as concocted by Carradine in Captive Wild Woman (1943), and the sinister high priest who unleashes Kharis the mummy on a small Massachessetts town in The Mummy's Ghost (1943). It got to the point that I would at least start watching any late movie with John Carradine in the cast - even The Grapes of Wrath and Stagecoach (and I didn't care much for westerns when I was growing up).

Here are some of my John Carradine movie memories - the flicks that introduced me to the suave menace:

The Black Sleep (1956) - My second issue of Famous Monsters came courtesy of my mom and brother in August 1977. They had stopped at the Zippy Mart for gas or a snack on their way back from Georgia. The cover was made up of stills from the latest blockbuster Star Wars - which would become the main focus of the magazine until The Empire Strikes Back opened in 1980. It was a nice summer afternoon, so I sat outside and reveled in the gruesome black and white stills and hit-or-miss puns from Uncle Forry. Among Forry's targets were the manimals in the new Dr. Moreau film, Lugosi and his winged instrument of vengeance - the dreaded Devil Bat, and horror movies with the word "House" in the title. But the one article that stood out was a filmbook on Reginald LeBorg's mad doctor and mutant, all-star extravaganza The Black Sleep. The headline touted Rathbone, Lugosi, Chaney, and Carradine - all together in one picture! I had gotten Alan G. Frank's Horror Movies book at Woolworth's just a couple of months earlier, so I had some familiarity with those names and knew they were masters of their art. Carradine was shown in an FMoF still with a scraggly beard and tattered clothes...along with the big, bulky bald villain Tor Johnson.

Reading Forry's account of this seemingly remarkable movie intrigued me, so I had to keep looking out for it in the TV Guide. Then, about one year later, The Black Sleep showed up in the listings around 10:30 PM on the WTCG-17 all night Friday night horror movie show. 10:30 wasn't late to me at that time - I had stayed up until 2:00 in the morning to watch Soul of a Monster at the tail end of WTCG's horror program. And instead of a man possessed to kill (as in Soul), this time I would get a castle full of monsters roaming about - wreaking havoc on all those who inhabit the dark abode.

But I had to wait to see Carradine....wait and wait...with some fairly interesting subplots of Dr. Cadman (Rathbone) tending to his pale, comatose wife and a kooky gypsy man who supplies cadavers to the doctor. The movie was still able to hold my attention as I waited for the monsters to be unleashed. But my film watching was foiled by an untimely power outage. So I lay in the dark, saddened by not getting to see Carradine and crew on their rampage.

However, once the lights came on, I jumped out of bed and turned on channel 17 again. There were only 10 minutes left, but I got to watch Carradine, Chaney, the bald Frankenstein-like sailor, and the mighty Tor in action. I walked away satisfied. I did get to see the movie as a whole in 1994 when it came on TNT's 100% Weird movie show. That was back when cable seemed like a necessity for us monster movie lovers. But now with Netflix and the decline of basic cable, that's not the case.

Invisible Invaders (1959) - Zowie!!! I remember seeing the ad for the Sunday morning Science Fiction Theater program on WAAY-31 in Huntsville. The commercial showed an army of palefaced, lumbering ghouls in business suits slowly lurching down a hill. I couldn't wait for the movie to begin. When the film started, I got even more jazzed up when I saw John Carradine in the cast. This had to have been the summer of '77, when I had starting brushing up on my monster movie knowledge and knew about the icons of horror cinema. Of course, I had to sit through some exposition at the beginning, but I did get to see the infamous exploding Carradine scene during the opening. I sort of knew that was Carradine because he was a scientist tampering with things best left alone. Once the film got going, I was propelled into the strange tale of invisible moon creatures inhabiting the corpses of the recently deceased and going about their takeover of the world. I couldn't get enough of this grade-B cheese-o-rama. My parents were considering getting me counseling at this time.

Carradine Looks Amazingly Good after Suffering a Massive Explosion that Killed Him (Invisible Invaders, 1959)

Return from the Past (1967) - this was an anthology of pulp comic book horror stories done in the style of a Creepy or Eerie tale. I caught this one on WTCG-17 (Atlanta) late one summer night in 1980. I had just seen Dr. Terror's House of Horrors on WTCG and enjoyed it immensely. I looked Return from the Past up in my worn out Leonard Maltin movie guide and saw it earned the dubious BOMB rating. Then I noticed all of this movie's alternate titles, one of which was Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors. Whoa!!! That seemed too bizarre and I began to wonder what I was getting myself into. My brother was up with me to watch it, so I figured we could have some fun with it. I noticed the cast had both Lon Chaney and Mr. Carradine in it (and someone named Rochelle Hudson, whom I didn't know but Mr. Maltin seemed to think I should know). There wasn't anything else on, and I was promised monsters, so I gave in and stayed up late to watch it.

I remember John Carradine introducing each segment while standing in front of a bluescreen while a shot of a castle on a stormy waterfront played on half of the frame. The castle shot looked like it was swiped from a Roger Corman Poe movie. But Carradine cracked me up with his rental tuxedo with crooked tie. The stories didn't amount to much, but there was a bevy of monsters. Cheap monsters, but monsters nonetheless. It got its weakest story out of the way at the very beginning - a story about a haunted clock of all things.

Munster Go Home! (1966) - I grew up watching The Munsters during the late 70s when it would come on after the soap operas and game shows went off in the afternoon. Herman Munster seemed mighty imposing, particularly since I thought the Frankenstein monster was a force I'd hate to reckon with. Looking (or rather gawking) at the back issues pages of Famous Monsters, I saw one cover that highlighted the new Munsters flick Munster Go Home! I then read about Munster in the Frankenstein chapter of Alan G. Frank's Horror Movies book. When it finally came on WTCG on Sunday afternoon, I made plans to drop everything (like I had that much going on in 1978) and settle in for some goodhearted guffaws with Herman, Lily, Grandpa, et al. It was pleasant enough, with the great Terry-Thomas and English locales. But it was the surprise appearance of John Carradine that made the whole film especially memorable. It wasn't a big role, but it made me smile while I was taking it all in on that leather recliner with an unsightly puncture on the cushion.

I could go on and on, but I'll save my ramblings for a future post. The only other Carradine memory that sticks out is the time my brother called to tell me he watched Terror in the Wax Museum on the ABC Friday Night Movie and that he saw John Carradine there too. I didn't get to see it, so I felt bummed out. But at least I can add that one to the list of Carradine films I can seek out and hopefully enjoy when I find them. And, for the record, I did like Billy the Kid vs. Dracula when I saw it on American Movie Classics back in 2001. So there, Leonard Maltin (and your *1/2 score).