Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Franky Jr.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Franky Jr.

Steal the premise of a translated Japanese anime show (Gigantor) that premiered a mere nine months earlier, give your main character the voice of the Addams Family's Lurch (Ted Cassidy), name him after a famous Universal Monster, and you've got me as a fan for life. I'm pretty easy that way. Hanna Barbera's Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles ran from 1966-67, and featured segments about a boy (Buzz Conroy), his Dad, and their giant robot, Frankenstein Jr. Check out the nifty model sheets at Animation Meat... Hanna-Barbera at their finest.

Though 'Franky Jr.' (as Buzz likes to call him) isn't made of dead flesh, and, in fact, likes to rescue people and save lives, the tone of the show was still creepy enough to qualify as a Monsterama subject, mostly due to the bizarre Rogues' Gallery of sinster spooks.

You can see what I mean here... lots of screencaps from a couple of episodes called 'The Living Images' and 'The Shocking Electrical Monster'. (My favourite weirdos to go up against Franky Jr. were 'The Spooktaculars', but I couldn't find any images to post just yet). Writer Eddie Brandt (The Spike Jones Show, Beany and Cecil) kept the scripts pretty basic, but they're still quite fun to watch. More to come on Frankenstein Jr. later...

"Horror and humor have been on intimate terms at least since the time of Elisabethan and Jacobean drama. Shakespeare's darkest tragedies were leavened with a gallows wit..."

-David J. Skal The Monster Show

"Even as we deny that our flesh must decay, however, we surround ourselves with fictional images of the very fate we strive to hear nothing about. They are everywhere: in books, films, and TV, in advertising, in toys and games for all ages, in children's breakfast food. No American child (even one lucky enough to escape Count Chocula) can grow up without learning what a vampire is..."

-Walter Kendrick The Thrill Of Fear

"... through expressions such as the comical Hyakkiyagyõ emaki, an inversion occurs, and that which should not be gazed upon is rendered visible-- and gazed upon with pleasure. The unseen (unseeable) is transformed into spectacle; the mysterious spirits of untamed nature are transmuted into familiar everyday objects; terror turns into humor; pandemonium becomes parade."

- Michael Dylan Foster Pandemonium and Parade

"The horror movie asks you if you want to take a good close look at the dead cat (or the shape under the sheet, to use a metaphor from the introduction to my short story collection)... but not as an adult would look at it. Never mind the philosophical implications of death or the religious possibilities inherent in the idea of survival; the horror film suggests we just have a good close look at the physical artifact of death. Let us be children masquerading as pathologists."

-Stephen King Danse Macabre

"No one will ever love a story the way a kid loves a story, whether told in a novel or as a ghost tale furtively whispered around a campfire. That's because no adult has an imagination quite like that of a child, where monsters might be real and lurking just under the bed."

-Monica S. Kuebler Rue Morgue