Cute Creeps From Pop Culture: Shrimpenstein

Monday, December 05, 2005

Shrimpenstein

Another stunner of a kids variety show (that I only recently unearthed-- shame on me!) is Los Angeles' own Shrimpenstein!... perhaps the only program weirder and wackier than my beloved Hilarious House Of Frightenstein. Everything I know about the show is covered here at TV Party, which has, as far as I know, the only clips available anywhere (any freaks out there with bootlegs of this monsterpiece?).

Shrimpy was on KHJ channel 9 in LA from 1966 to 1968, hosted by the borderline lunatic Gene Moss (Dr. Von Schtick) and Jim Thurman (other voices), both of whom had just come off of writing and doing voices for the wonderful Roger Ramjet cartoon. Shrimpenstein was a miniature Frankenstein monster (a ventriloquist dummy, operated by Moss, who wasn't a ventriloquist... the voice was provided offscreen by Thurman) who was "created" when jellybeans were thrown into the Monster Machine. No kidding. This kookfest has to be seen to be believed!

The puppet was actually made by special effects maestro Wah Ming Chang, best known for his legendary Star Trek work on such famous monsters as the Tribbles, the Gorn, Balock, and (pictured here) the Salt Vampire. An amazing pedigree for such a irreverent and, well, shrimpy little show.

"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