Monster Kid Reference Books!

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Noubera

(00:25):
me. You get down, uh, you're recording already? Yes I am, yes I am. Cool.
We definitely gotta open with that. All right. Hello and welcome once again, or for the first
time, to Blackmagic Treehouse, the podcast. And this is the podcast where everything you want to

(00:50):
know about it, you can find via the card catalog at your local public library, the reference section
in particular. I feel like that one was kind of on the nose, but I'm sticking with it because I
can't think of anything else. I liked it, it made me dewy in my decimal. Well that's definitely
going to earn us an explicit rating for this episode, I'm afraid. So we uh, we overshare here

(01:17):
in the Treehouse. Uh, the things that we really like to share, uh, first of all is our names.
That's something we usually like to start with. My name is Jose, and I'm one of the co-hosts,
and I'm joined by our other co-host over here. I'm Eric, and I'm immediately gonna derail you,
Jose, even though I'm sure you had a whole plan worked out for how to get us into this episode.

(01:39):
Nope, nope, go ahead. Well, um, a funny thing happened on our way to the podcast. Um,
it's not really funny, Paul Rubens died. Uh, and I think that we killed him because in our episode
about Freaky Stories, which was recorded, what, in like May or something? Um, yeah, May. Yeah,

(02:02):
you segued into talking about Fox Family by being um, ambushed by Pee-wee's Playhouse, you know,
the wee hours of night creeping into dawn. And uh, I edited and posted that episode like at the end
of July, and then like within two days, Mr. Rubens passed away. So I just thought, I know we got rid

(02:27):
of the idea of top of the show topics, because it did always spin out into this like 20 minute
conversation that had no bearing on the rest of the episode. But I thought because of, you know,
our personal connection to Paul Rubens and Pee-wee Herman and the podcast's possible responsibility
in his uh, mortal shuffling off this coil, and also the fact that Paul Rubens was, you know,

(02:49):
semi-connected to the horror scene through like, uh, Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie and,
what was the other example? Oh, obviously he was a voice in Nightmare Before Christmas.
Yeah, a number of Tim Burnham projects. We could do, and I'm gonna set a timer here,
because I don't want this to take, you know, the 20 minutes it used to. But um,

(03:12):
I just thought we could say a couple words about, you know, how we feel about Mr. Paul Rubens and
his legacy that he left behind. Indeed. Um, well, what I can say for that is uh, I know we touched
on it already when we talked about Pee-wee's Playhouse during the Freaky Stories episode,

(03:32):
because that was my first exposure to the Fox Family channel, but of course also to Pee-wee
Herman. And it wasn't necessarily a lasting impact on my own childhood, so much as um,
you know, just, just something that kind of came out of nowhere, like a,

(03:53):
like a rocketing comment from outer space. And it, you know, left an impression on me,
but it wasn't necessarily that I became a fan overnight or sought him out intentionally afterward.
But um, I wasn't prepared for this, Eric. Sorry, I can go ahead and say the thing that I was gonna

(04:16):
say, which is... No, that's okay. Yeah, you go ahead. Um, I, let me just, let me just jump in.
Let me just jump in and uh, you know, to kind of tie up my end of it. Um, and you know, we can,
you can of course edit this to make it so much more seamless than it is right now.
Thanks for making more work for me. No, no, of course. Uh, well, just to say that I really

(04:39):
appreciate you giving a nod to uh, Mr. Rubens, especially since, yeah, I don't, I don't know what,
what hand we might've played in, in this crazy thing we call life and death. But uh, yeah,
the timing was kind of strange and he will be missed is what I can say for my part.

(05:00):
So wait, don't I get a last request? Why not?
Yeah, he was only 70, which is my parents have just both turned 60. And that's sort of weird to
me because like, you know how you move the goalposts as you get older for what is like old,

(05:22):
you know, like when I was 10, I thought 50 was old. And now that I'm 30, I'm like,
old doesn't start till you're like 75 at least. Um, so it is sort of weird as my parents are
entering into their sixties whenever somebody dies. Like for some reason, the primary one in my brain
is Stan Winston. Uh, he was like 66 when he died. I remember that being the first one where I was

(05:43):
really like, Oh, people can die in their sixties. That's like, that's the plausible start of the
time that people might die. And my parents are entering into that now. So I'm like, that's weird.
Um, but, uh, the thing that's really interesting to me about Pee-wee Herman as a character is that,

(06:04):
like, I think I grew up with him because of Pee-wee's big adventure. Like I think I backed
into being a Pee-wee fan through being a Tim Burton fan. And you take Pee-wee for granted when
you're a kid because it's just like, Oh, it's a silly guy. And that's kind of all unique. But as
you get older and you learn more about the mechanics of like how a comedic character is crafted,

(06:28):
you can usually trace it back to like the idea, like a lot of sketch comedy characters are like,
this is a person we all know this, you know, like Kristen Wiig's target lady or whatever.
Or it's like, what if this type of person who wouldn't normally be in X type of situation was
in X? Like I was thinking recently, like every character that Mike Myers had on SNL in the 90s

(06:51):
was like, what if such and such a person had a talk show? But there's really nothing high concept
about Pee-wee Herman. He's not grounded in our reality in like any way. He's like, I guess you
would call him a man child, but it's not like Martin Short is like Clifford or something. I

(07:12):
wonder like, how do you even conceive of a character like that or understand that it's
going to play to an audience or be funny, as opposed to just being baffling when you come out
as a clearly grown man with kind of a weird voice and like a red bow tie and a lot of prop humor?
What ties all those characteristics together? So the fact that they made this unified character

(07:34):
that lasted for 30 years, I mean, I think that's a lot of fun. I mean, I think that's a lot of fun.
This man was trying to pull, being, the same actor, like axis role,
like sort of playing big guy for 30 years is like a testament to his very off kilter sensibility

(07:58):
that he was able to like wiggle into the mainstream somehow.
earlier. I, I, and since his passing, you know, I've been reading these, uh, you know, articles,
obituaries, whatever you'd like to call them. And they recount the fact, and then also archival
videos of Paul Rubin's, they recount how Pee-wee Herman was essentially created, like the seed,

(08:24):
so to speak, was kind of what you were saying, you know, an SNL type concept. Like, what if there
was a stand-up comedian who was terrible at memorizing his jokes and could never get the
punchline to land, and apparently that was born of Rubin's own, you know, uh, fumblings with,

(08:46):
with that particular format. Uh, it was just kind of amplified in the character of Pee-wee Herman.
And that just seems strange to me based on what he ended up becoming, because you say man-child,
the thing that he strikes me as in the persona of Pee-wee Herman is what if one of the

(09:11):
marionette characters from a show like Howdy Doody was transformed into a person, you know, like a, uh, like a kind of Pinocchio type situation.
And it does seem so strange based on that, that such a character. So, Pee-wee, Mary Karen,

(09:39):
Okay. Thank you. That's what I was going to say. Very strange.
Yeah, seven minutes. I think we can get onto the rest of the episode. Rest in peace, Paul Rubins.
Thank you for, apparently everybody shares stories of him being a super kind person and all that. So,

(09:59):
obviously we lost a, a wonderful human being as a, and in addition to a good creative comedic force.
Anyway, what are we talking about in our podcast today, Jose, besides Paul Rubins?
Well, uh, we primarily here up in the Black Magic Treehouse tend to focus on what we call creepy kid culture,

(10:21):
which I guess you could lump somebody like Pee-wee Herman into if you were so inclined,
but for our part, it encompasses things more along the lines of horror media made for kids.
And Eric and I being the age that we are, this tends to be media that was produced and released

(10:43):
about the time of the eighties and nineties, the early aughts thereabouts, but we do go older.
And in episodes to come, we do go even more contemporary with our selections, but we're kind of
honing our vision on all of that weird shuddery stuff that we read and watched and listened to

(11:08):
as monster loving kids. And, you know, what, what, what is this? I'm terrible when it comes to like
this, all these labels are, are, are we gen X, are we gen Y, Z? What, what are we, what are we supposed to be?
I am a millennial. I think you are too, actually. I am, uh, I am closer to geriatric millennial.

(11:29):
I was born in 87.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So you're like, you're like my wife. You're an old millennial. I'm a,
I'm like a middle-aged millennial.
So, yeah, it's all that kind of stuff. So speaking of things that, uh, we watched and read and
consumed voraciously as kids, I know, uh, yeah, thank you. Eric and I are not so terribly old,

(11:55):
even though he is an older millennial, but we're not so young that we had the
the instantaneous, the instant gratification of the internet always at our beck and call
throughout our childhood. Certainly not to the extent that, uh, websites like YouTube, especially

(12:20):
lend modern viewers that you're able to basically just summon up any kind of, uh,
film. Oh boy. Here we go. Anyway. All right. Time's up. Let's end it at that. Yeah. Oh my God.
Oh my God. Here we go. I like the power of just being able to cut you off as because of some
arbitrary rule. I make myself about a timer. Well, you have that license now because you are the

(12:44):
full-time editor of the show. So yeah, you're like a Jafar at the end of Aladdin.
We're coded in. Yeah. And in genie form anyway, but we're not so young that we do not,
we're not so young that we have forgotten that there was a time when you wanted to find out

(13:10):
something particularly about movies. And I think that's the point. I think that's the point.
When you wanted to find out something particularly about movies, your options were very limited. And
in fact, the most likely place you were going to find information about movies, movies you had either

(13:31):
seen and got lost to the sands of time or ones that you always pine for. The one place that you had
at your fingertips was the public library and its vast storage of printed words.
So naturally our subject for today is reference books.

(13:56):
Wow. I thought there would be more than I thought I'd be able to see the next thing, but here we are.
Here we are. Anyway, reference books. What do we mean when we say reference books? We mean,
now, if you're of a certain age, this may seem like a strange concept to you,
but there are still, of course, reference books for film, television, and basically everything else.

(14:20):
But reference books usually came in the form of, oh boy, oh boy, I'm talking about what a reference
book is. Yeah, reference books are Wikipedia, but in printed form. And usually if you were looking
at these as a kid, they'd be definitely on the shorter side, typically no more than I would say

(14:45):
not even 50 pages sometimes. But they gave you enough, enough of a taste of what you were looking
for. And some of the most valuable resources in these reference books were the photographs
that would be included. Because again, before the time of YouTube and any kind of instantaneous

(15:08):
video sharing that you could obtain online, that was the most that you were going to see
of what the movie actually looked like. So we just wanted to take some time to...
We just wanted to take some time to parse through some of our most memorable, our most loved reference

(15:34):
books of our childhood. And who knows, perhaps some of these also provided you with the information
that you were seeking as a horror loving kid. So Eric, let me start by asking... Sure. Would...
How much of a place would you say that reference books of any kind, but in particular relating to

(16:03):
the horror genre as a whole or horror films specifically, would you say that you were a
pretty voracious reader of them or was it just kind of like a fleeting thing here and there?
I don't know if I would say voracious, but I'll tell you a story that I've told you before
on mic because it is recorded in our sinister spotlight, catalog, back catalog.

(16:25):
Whoa, deep cut.
The way that I found out about Universal Monsters is because of Full House,
to go back to being a geriatric millennial. There's an episode of Full House where Danny is away
and Joey and Uncle Jesse let Stephanie stay up and watch the Wolfman on TV and they show a two

(16:49):
second clip probably from the movie of Lon Chaney walking up to the camera in wolf makeup, obviously,
and growling. It's from the very end where he's chasing the love interest through this wall.
And the point of the episode is that Stephanie gets scared and then they give her the simple

(17:10):
homily of like, just make it funny in your mind and then you won't be afraid anymore.
But that didn't work for me. I was just terrified. But I think every horror fan probably has that
experience of like, you see something that you can't quite handle, but instead of swearing off horror

(17:31):
movies forever, you become like weirdly fascinated by it. Does that resonate with you? Yeah. So that
was my moment of that. And I thought that was all the answer I needed. Sorry. I think it's the lag.
You know, my was something else. In any case, yeah, go ahead and continue.

(17:53):
Yeah. So anyway, that was my entry point. And so I was too scared to actually watch the movies,
which did exist on VHS at the time, if I had wanted to seek them out. But I'm not trying to
paint a portrait of like, I was growing up in the 60s, where it's like, only if they show it again
in the matinee screening, can you see any movie ever. Right. But I was too afraid. And that was

(18:18):
back when AMC actually showed movies. So they were on rotation pretty frequently on TV. So I could
have watched them if I wanted to, but I was too scared. But I was also fascinated. So that's kind
of where reference books came in for me is like in that age, like probably like six to like 10 or
11, when I was like fascinated by horror movies and wanted to know. And that was also the era of

(18:42):
like, when Scream and all the 90s Neo slashers came out, my sister who's a year older than me,
would watch them. And then I would like beg her for like, give me every single plot detail of that
movie. So I knew who the killers spoilers were in Scream like, you know, years before I ever sat
down and watched the movie. And yeah, so these books were just a way for me to be able to like,

(19:07):
engage with and get like a glimpse of the universal movies and other horror movies too.
But the ones that I remember primarily are these ones that I think we have a shared memory of,
which is these Crestwood books with orange covers, which have like photos and like summaries of
the franchises and then like updates like Universal's take on Frankenstein. Here's a

(19:32):
summary of the novel. Here's pictures from the Peter Cushing adaptation. Here's a TV vert,
you know, they like summarize, tell you what the differences are, and then they're like,
summarize, tell you what the differences are between the stories and most importantly,
give you the black and white photographs to kind of, you know, state your imagination while you're

(19:53):
waiting to grow up enough to be able to actually watch the film. Yeah, I would say my experience
was a little bit the opposite of yours, where to kind of give you a sense of how I came to the
Universal Monsters. It was also via the television, also via a totally separate entity slash show,

(20:20):
you know, not the thing itself. And it's so funny, I don't remember that anecdote about
Full House that you shared in our previous podcast from years ago, but I enjoyed hearing it.
So thank you for reviving that. But there used to be an animated, shall we say sketch show

(20:42):
called Hysteria. Does that ring a bell? Was that unlike a double bill with Eek the Cat?
It might have been. Or like the same people or whatever.
I don't know Eek the Cat, but it was like one of the WB shows. It was spelled like it was supposed

(21:06):
to be a play on the word history. The whole idea was, oh, we're going to recount, you know,
these historical moments, but everything is silly. And I remember that like a big baby in a stinky
diaper figured some, I don't know if it was a recurring character or their mascot. But you know,
that kind of gives you a clue as to, you know, the sophistication of the humor. But you know,

(21:30):
what would you expect? I want to say it was like part of the whole, it was like an Animaniac
spinoff. Like it was that same Tiny Toons type style. But anyway.
Oh yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Yeah. I just looked it up. The creator is Tom Ruger, who was, I don't know if he created

(21:51):
Animaniacs, but he was a writer. And I think he was a voice actor also who did Freakazoid, which is
my hot take is Freakazoid is like the lesser known show that followed up Tiny Toons and Animaniacs
with all that same animation team. And it is superior. What?
I know. That sounds like it may need

(22:13):
further discussion and dissection in a future episode. Freakazoid sounds like it's freaky.
I've never seen it. So perhaps we'll save that for another day. But in any case,
it's actually not horror related at all. It's like a superhero parody show. It is good that,
well, he does have kind of Bride of Frankenstein here. If anybody remembers Freakazoid. Yeah,

(22:36):
it was like a superhero parody. It was just very, it kind of felt like, sorry to go off on a tangent
already. Too late. It was kind of like, you know how like when Tim Burton makes a lot of money with
the first Batman and they're like, OK, just do whatever you want. And you get a movie like
Batman Returns. Yeah. You know, where it's just like, oh, we didn't mean do whatever you want.

(22:59):
That's kind of how Freakazoid felt was like the people had built up goodwill with the WB
through like the success of Tiny Toons and Animaniacs. So WB was just like, well, again,
Warner Brothers also did Batman Returns was just like, just go create whatever show you want.
And then they created Freakazoid and the network was like, one season is enough for this, right?

(23:24):
We didn't need any more. All right. Well, now I got to backpedal all the way back to
Hysteria. So let me jump in my DeLorean and let's go back to Hysteria. So one of the segments of
Hysteria was like a dating game style sketch. And one of the eligible bachelors for some reason was

(23:45):
the Phantom of the Opera. And so I'm sitting once again, fatefully on my grandparents couch,
same scenario, different house than when the exact same thing happened to me with Pee Wee's Playhouse
and the Fox Family Channel. But I see this segment. There's the Phantom half mask, you know,

(24:07):
floating down the subterranean lake in his little boat. And just that sparked something in me. I'm
like, huh, that guy looks kind of cool. So I went up to my grandma and I'm like, hey, who's this
Phantom of the Opera? What can you tell me about him? And she recounted like the whole plot to the

(24:28):
Claude Rains version from 1943 that involved, you know, the splashing of acid, you know, kind of
like a two-face origin story for that version. Yeah, technicolor one. Yeah. Unlike all the other
Universal Monster movies at the time. Indeed. So that was, and that ended up being my entry point
to the Universal Monsters, which is probably the strangest movie. Maybe not the strangest, but not

(24:52):
the one that most people would suspect to lead into, you know, a greater fascination with the
rest of the Universal stable. But yeah, we rented it from Blockbuster and that was it. You know,
we were off to the races after that. So anyway, I had the fascination and I had the experience

(25:14):
watching the movies, you know, shortly after that it was Frankenstein. It was Dracula, which I fell
asleep to. And like one of my friends that I watched it with had to recount what happened at
the end of the movie. And, you know, he explained to me, oh yeah, they stake Dracula through the
heart and, you know, kill him. And in my mind, I'm like, oh man, I missed the best, like most

(25:35):
bloodiest action packed part of the movie. And then of course, when you watch, you know, the 1931
version of Dracula, it's like, oh, what I actually missed was nothing except Bela Lugosi's anguished
screams from off camera. But, you know, as a kid, you don't know that. And then, you know,

(26:08):
I started consuming the rest and, you know, it went so far with my love for these movies that
I would like write down the, you know, the storylines. I would basically, I was making my own
Crestwood House books, you know, on my line, no paper. And I also roped my siblings into

(26:29):
doing a series of home movies with me all in one night. Oh, actually two nights, for a course of
two nights where we just recreated as many of the Universal Monster movies as we could.
And what was hilarious about that point in my life, this was like second grade. What was hilarious
about that was that at that time that we did that, the Phantom of the Opera was the only one of the

(26:56):
movies that I had actually seen. So for like Creature from the Black Lagoon and Bride of
Frankenstein, I made up what happened in those movies. And, you know, in the sense that falling
asleep at the end of Dracula and thinking, oh boy, I missed this action packed thing. I basically

(27:17):
filled in my version of these movies with events like that. If I recall, the Creature from the Black
Lagoon was killed when the hero in my version ripped off one of the fins that he had on his head.
Spoiler alert, the Creature from the Black Lagoon doesn't have a fin on his head, but mine did.

(27:38):
And then the hero stabbed him in the heart with that fin. And Bride of Frankenstein, something
similar happened where, you know, Frankenstein's bride had the power to like shoot electric bolts
from her hands. And, you know, first she kills the doctor and then she kills the monster. And that's
just like this big bloodbath at the end. Where are these tapes now? Do they still exist?

(28:02):
They still exist. They need to be digitized. Yeah, that would be fun. Yeah, that's good. That's
got to go up on our YouTube channel. Yeah, that would be a fun extra feature for the podcast,
I'm sure. Man, I'm jealous that you have siblings that would do that with you because,
like I said, my sister was in horror movies, but I think there were a lot of projects that I tried
to initiate in that vein that just never nobody ever would commit to it. Well, as you mentioned

(28:29):
in a previous episode, you and well, you said it was your sister and a friend that made those
boss. Are you afraid that dark recreations in the basement? No, my sister was not involved with that.
Oh, OK. Well, that's still really cool, though. She's a quitter. She is. She's not going to have
her on the show. That's for sure. Yeah, really. So, yeah, the the obsession with these movies was

(28:54):
well ingrained in me by the time I came across the Crestwood House books and reference books in
general. So for me, instead of kind of filling an empty well, kind of like they were for you,
they were holding me over until I could either see these other movies or frankly, I was, you know,

(29:18):
I was a dyed in the wool monster kid by the time I found them. So it was just like this joyous
moment. In fact, I remember it distinctly for a literal and figurative hot minute. I lived in
Arizona for, yeah, like not even a month, but it was like the first month, month and a half of my

(29:40):
third grade year. And what I can tell you about the school is that we would line up on the
basketball courts outside in the morning. My classroom was in a portable. And the other most
important thing I can tell you about that school was that it had, to my recollection, the most

(30:03):
beautiful media center that I've ever encountered in the sense that, you know, how you have those
stereotypical libraries that you see in movies and TV shows that have the sliding ladders
and the shelves that go up to the ceilings. Now, was that really the case for the media center in

(30:26):
Arizona? Who can say, but my God, I can tell you that I've dreamed about this place and all the
years since. And in my mind's eye, that's what this place looked like. I know at the very beginning,
that it had two levels. Like there was a ramp that you took to the lower part of the media center,
and then it had like, I don't know what you'd call it.

(30:49):
Jose is gesticulating wildly. It's narrating for the audience.
Yes, please make sure we translate that. Thank you. But it had an upper part, you know, with
a, it was a gated upper part, you know, just so like kids wouldn't fall and kill themselves, I guess.

(31:17):
But that is where I found the Crestwood House monster books. Like I can, it's all so clear in
my mind, you know, except the words, clearly, that are associated with some of these things.
But it was on the lower level. And you know, this place was just packed with books. And,
you know, as a kid, that was probably like kind of a cool thing, especially if you were somebody

(31:41):
who was already into books. But being a media specialist now, and in my current profession,
you know, I think back to that, and I just shake my head like, oh man, that place should have been
like weeded vigorously. It should not have looked like that. But that does explain
why I happened to cross the Crestwood House monster books, because these things were originally

(32:05):
published in the late 70s and early 80s. And mind you, it's not uncommon to find things like that,
of that vintage and even older in modern media centers. If you ever happen to be looking for a
good time and want to follow any of like the media specialist Facebook groups that are out there,

(32:28):
you can see their adventures in weeding posts. And some of these folks have like books from the 60s
and even older on their shelves. It's kind of incredible what time capsules media centers,
in particular, you know, sometimes not even so much public libraries, media centers, I think,
have them beat by a country mile with just the antiques that they have on their shelves, frankly.

(32:51):
I'm definitely picturing a bunch of kids in the sweltering heat, like just sweat pouring down
their faces, doing like a musical number as they're sliding along on the ladders of the bookstores,
you know, like Matilda style, but like terrible and oppressive. Yeah. Yeah, it was glorious,

(33:14):
though, I gotta admit. I dream about that place. But for anybody who's listening who doesn't know
what the Crestwood books are, because I don't think I would have known them by the title,
the Crestwood books. If you remember books from the library, you know, you might remember these if
you were a monster kid, books from the libraries that had very distinctive, I remember orange covers,

(33:37):
but James Rolfe, aka the Angry Video Game Nerd, aka, you know, Cinemassacre, did a video about these,
like, probably like 10 or 15 years ago. And there's also ones that have purple covers,
which I have no memory of. But if you want to refresh your on what these books are and
the general aesthetic of what they look like, you can look up that video on YouTube.

(33:59):
And you can also, Eric and I were just discussing this, because as it turns out,
this is probably going to become a massively useful resource slash reference, just to tie it back. For
us, in the form of open library, actually has many, if not all of the original Crestwood House

(34:24):
monster books digitally preserved. And I'm clicking slash thumbing my way through one of them now. And
boy, let me tell you, this brings back some memories for sure. Just the faded yellow paper,
the specific photographs, like I'm looking through the one for the Wolfman right now,

(34:50):
which starts with a summarization of the Wolfman 1941 with Lon Chaney. But then as the book goes on,
it also recounts 1935's Werewolf of London with Henry Hull and company. And that was probably

(35:13):
one of the features of these books that just made my soul sing so much was that
they recount the plots to these movies in narrative form. So it's almost as if you're reading
the movie over the course of a dozen or so pages. So like looking at this one page for Werewolf of

(35:36):
London, let's see what we got here. It says, however, the werewolf was only stunned by Paul's
blow. It leaped up, snarling. Lisa, kill Lisa. I guess that's, was that what the werewolf was saying?
Was that what it was thinking? The book doesn't say either way, but it says Glendon's wife had

(35:58):
come into the garden. Now she fled back into the house, followed by the werewolf. Footsteps came
pounding up the walk in answer to Lisa's screams. It was the police from Scotland Yard. Just as the
werewolf's claws reached out for Lisa, there was a shot. The man wolf staggered and slowly fell to
the floor at the foot of the stairs. Lisa stared at the beast, terrified. Even as she watched,

(36:21):
another look came over her face. The werewolf was changing into her husband.
So if you were a kid, you know, when these books were initially published, of course, late 70s,
early 80s, but even if you were a kid like me coming across these in the late 90s, this was such
a boon to you because yes, like you know, Eric said, maybe these movies were being played on AMC

(36:47):
that October, or maybe they were available at your local Blockbuster or Hollywood video. That's where
I got most of mine. And this was just a great slight tangent. This was just such a great time to
be a fan of these movies, because it's when those gloriously painted covers for the VHS

(37:09):
releases of the Universal Monsters were in circulation. So those really just speaking
of leaping werewolves, those just leaped at you from the video store shelves. Yeah, so
it was a wonderful, wonderful time to be a fan of the Universal Monsters. This was also around the

(37:30):
time, I think, where they made the US postage stamps with the Monsters likenesses. You remember that?
I had, yeah, I had a series of posters that were like those images. Yes, that's right. Blown up to
like, you know, 11 by, well, probably wasn't even 11. It was probably like 8 by 10 or whatever.
Yeah, my mom definitely kept me fed on Universal Monsters stuff. Like, speaking of Hollywood video,

(38:00):
they would always have like the cardboard cutouts of like, Bella Lugosi as Dracula, and then they
would like Photoshop a copy of the VHS into his hand. And he would be looking at it like,
how uncanny and strange. My mom was the sort of person who would go into Hollywood video and be
like, so what do you do with these cardboard cutouts when October is over? And they would be like,

(38:21):
we just throw them away. She was like, oh, well, can I have them? So we had a couple of them like
hanging on the landing, or not the landing, but the staircase to the basement. We had them like,
tacked up onto the walls with, you know, like, Beatles paraphernalia and stuff about Texas,
which is not where we live, where my mom is from. It was just a collage of all of our, oh, and I

(38:44):
think we had a Bugs Bunny too, that was like, you know, life size in that same cardboard cutout
manner. That's incredible. And I imagine that those wonderful cutouts have since met their maker in
in the dumpster of time, no doubt. I assume so. Yeah, my parents moved out of my childhood home,

(39:05):
like, I don't know, like eight years ago, and there's a ton of stuff that I, I'm like, oh, man,
I'm so sad that I lost, because I was also living in, you know, frequently moving between apartments
at that time. So I think they gave me the opportunity to collect a lot of stuff. And I was
just like, I don't have any room for this. The thing that makes me saddest is I used to have a

(39:27):
giant VHS collection of stuff I recorded off the TV. And that's all just in a landfill somewhere.
I'm like, oh, man, if I could have access to all of those 90s commercials, I'd never have
depression again. I know. Well, that's thank God for YouTube. I mean, even though we're talking

(39:47):
of a time when that didn't exist, but oh yeah, I'm, I definitely it's, and it's, I don't know,
it says, I guess it's just a, you know, a nostalgic bomb for your nerves, but I definitely
queue up a 90s era commercial compilation on YouTube every now and then.

(40:31):
Mantos, the fresh maker.
Nothing like capitalism to set my nerves at ease.
Totally. What was I going to say? Oh, but anyway, speaking of the reference books, I think a big
part of the appeal of them was you're talking about having to fill in plot details with your

(40:56):
imagination. So like, yeah, when these books were giving you like a five paragraph summary of an
entire movie and then like a couple of tantalizing photographs that was, it was like creating this
whole like almost like a dream in your brain of like, you don't necessarily need all the
connective tissue, which I think if I had watched Universal Monster Movies when I was six, I probably

(41:21):
would have spent like an hour of them being like, when do we get to the monster? This is boring.
But when you just get like the highlight reel of like this five paragraph summary that just gives
you all the action beats and then like a black and white, super high contrast photo, like
production still from Jack Pierce's makeup chair or whatever, like it makes this movie in your head

(41:44):
that like, and I love the Universal Monster Movies now. So I'm not like saying that they're boring or
whatever as an adult. But it just like it makes this movie in your head that like the real thing
like almost can't really compare to. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, what can compare to
tearing off the creature from the black machine and stabbing him with it? Nothing. Well, you know

(42:09):
what, let's segue from that to say that I love the cute little final page of these Crestwood House
books. Yeah, exactly. It's basically that it like apart from apart from the orange covers, this
this little it's not an epilogue, but this little adorable this this advertisement for other books

(42:32):
in the series is like that was the thing that most immediately brought me back to like picking
these up off the shelf and like flipping through these yellowing pages. The final page is basically
like the Crestwood House Monster catalog. So you got the Crestwood House logo at the bottom of the
page at the top. And you know, the best famous Monsters of Filmland-esque font is the word

(42:55):
monsters, all drippy and gooey. And then you have your litany of titles from the series there to
the right. But then hanging from the left of the page is our friend King Kong. And he's got a
speech bubble that says I suggest you read about my friends. And I just think that's the cutest

(43:16):
thing ever. And it looks like I now I don't know if I would assume this was a genuine pose from like
a production still. But here on the Crestwood House catalog page, he has a definite thumbs up,
a definite opposable thumb up. Just kind of cheering us on to check out his friends and all

(43:41):
these other awesome books from Crestwood House. So yeah, it's just adorable taken all together.
Yeah. And I have I'm paging through the Frankenstein one on Open Library. And the other
books listed in the series are Dracula, Godzilla, King Kong, Frankenstein, Mad Scientists, The Wolf

(44:03):
Man. Do you remember? Because like I said, there's purple books that James Rolfe talks about,
I don't remember, that I think were more like they cover one specific movie, whereas these were more
overviews of like an entire franchise or monster. Do you remember any besides? Yeah. Well, the one

(44:26):
that I'm looking at for The Wolf Man goes on to list. And I think you're right about, you know,
the specificity of later entries in the series, because after The Wolf Man here, also it lists,
well, okay, so it lists a couple that I think weren't included in what you said just now. So

(44:49):
I have the Blob, King Kong, and then it goes down after the ones you mentioned, The Deadly Mantis,
The Invisible Man, It Came From Outer Space, The Phantom of the Opera. That was, I think, probably
the first one that I took out of that media center, fittingly enough, since I had seen that one.

(45:11):
Frankenstein meets Wolf, Frankenstein meets Wolfman, not The Wolf Man, The Murders in the Room Org,
real deep cut there, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nice. So yeah, a nice array of the Universal

(45:32):
catalog, ranging from their earliest chillers from the 30s to their atomic age horrors from the
50s. This is a bit of a segue, but hey, you're listening to Black Magic Treehouse, the podcast
of segues. I wanted to take this opportunity to get your thoughts on, I would call it the divide

(45:58):
between 30s, 40s horror films, as they were popularly known at the time, and the so-called
atomic age 50s era, quote unquote, horror films or sci-fi horror films. Were you decidedly of one
camp or the other? Did you love both? Or what are your thoughts just kind of concerning the two in

(46:25):
general? The two being 30s and 40s versus 50s? Yeah, essentially. Okay. Yeah, I vastly prefer
30s and 40s. I mean, my favorite Universal monster movie is Bride of Frankenstein. Not an original
choice, but it is my favorite. Sorry. But I love, I think from that era, 30s and 40s, especially the

(46:50):
30s, because it was so primitive and not as primitive as people who don't watch movies from
the 30s think it was, but definitely Dracula. When you said you fell asleep during Dracula,
I was like, yeah, no surprise. Dracula is, I'm sorry, Todd Brown. I love Todd Browning's other
movies. I love his silent movies. I love Devil Doll with, what's his name? Lionel Barrymore. He

(47:16):
has so many fun, crazy, wild movies, but Dracula is so stodgy. It is, oh man, it is just not a good
one. But after that, and I think it was a victim of technology and budget because it was very stage
bound based on the play of the era that was popular. And I think by the time that was a success,

(47:39):
that sort of opened the door for Universal and Carl Lendley to justify bigger budgets for these
movies and a little bit more expansive worlds. So I think from, yeah, Frankenstein through
the mid to late 40s, I mean, probably Abbot and Casello meet Frankenstein was sort of the death
now of that type of Gothic horror before they tried to make things more contemporary and more

(48:05):
topical with a creature from the Black Lagoon. I just love the cinematography. I love the old
kind of soft focus lenses that they were using and the film grain and the way that they lit it

(48:26):
to be super shadowy and expressionistic and high contrast. They do feel like, I already used the
term dreamlike, I think they were just the most dreamlike films because of the hiss and the crackle
and the static of the sound and I guess we would call it nowadays, low-fi cinematography.

(48:50):
That was almost, if you know about the overview of photography, there was a movement called
pictorialism. Basically at the dawn of photography, which was emulating the soft lighting style of
paintings. What's that guy's name that we've talked about before? William Mortenson?

(49:15):
Yeah, look up William Mortenson, everybody, who just has these crazy soft focus, basically
photography that's emulating pulp magazine covers from the era. I just love that style
because I think horror movies, for me at least, are at their best when they're somewhat dreamlike,

(49:37):
which is maybe why the 70s and 80s are my least favorite era of horror because I feel like that
was the most social commentary realism era. I think the 30s to me just encapsulates that
kind of grand guignol, almost surrealist level of dreamlike imagery that doesn't need to be justified

(50:02):
by, I don't know, like Nightmare on Elm Street, actual literal incorporating of dreams into it.
Do you know what I mean? No, definitely. I would agree with everything that you said. I guess it
just comes down to what, I guess you could say, are you type A or type B personality when it comes

(50:26):
to these things? Because I guess there is a personality type or an inclination that leads one
to prefer slash just enjoy overall the atomic age horrors. But honestly, for me, I want to know who
those people are because I don't know that people who consider themselves horror fans would necessarily

(50:55):
like those movies, but I don't know people who would consider themselves sci-fi fans who would
also enjoy those movies. You know what I mean? Because they're on the lower end and just,
yeah, in comparison to the things that you were saying, they're so antiseptic and there's no room

(51:20):
for dreaming or fantasy in those movies. It is the thing that it says it is. It's an array. It's,
you know, a tarantula that's been exposed to radiation and is, you know, stomping across the
across the desert. And, you know, there's a certain appeal to those images, you know, like them,

(51:42):
for example, is a pretty effective movie and, you know, has moments of suspense and, you know,
genuine craft. But overall, those movies, you know, they don't register with me as being
as being horror movies, frankly. They're just, you know, they're they are part of the milieu of

(52:05):
just being monster movies. I could see, you know, fans of, you know, kids who grew up
liking Godzilla enjoying those movies, but those kids wouldn't necessarily be horror fans.
You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. And I think that my enjoyment of that era, the Atomic Age era,

(52:27):
is kind of directly proportional to the quality of the movie. Or maybe I should say inversely
proportional, because I think the better the movies are, the more I'm like, OK, fine,
we're making a statement here, whatever. But I kind of like the I like the, you know, kind of
cheesecakey, like 50s version of titillation where like the female scientist who doesn't do anything

(52:56):
sciency throughout the entire movie is like changing into her nightgown. And then you see the eye of the
giant creature looking in and out throughout the window. Like, I think those are fun. And and speak
of images, one thing that I do remember about shoot, which one was it? The one where they're
in the Antarctic and they and they wake in the giant lizard thingy. Do you remember which one that is?

(53:20):
I think it's a deadly mantis. No, you're wrong. But it's the same filmmaker who did
it. It came from beneath the sea, I think, because I keep thinking of the giant Gila monster.
And then I'm like, no, that's the one they showed in Mystery Science Theater. But it was a giant
lizard that like attacked the city at the end. Oh, sorry. Beast from 20,000 Phantoms. That's the one.

(53:41):
Fathoms Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Yes, thank you. That is the one. Definitely the saving grace of
an atomic age horror movie is the question, what is the monster made with? And if the answer is,
oh, it's a stop motion creature, then yeah, I'm all in because any chance, especially the beast

(54:03):
from 20,000 Fathoms, that is such a beautifully articulated creature, you know, as practically
all of Ray Harryhausen's creations were. And yeah, just this. I mean, I know I just said that, well,
you know, I don't think real horror fans like these movies as much as maybe they purport to.

(54:25):
Jose's gatekeeping all of us. I don't know if I sound sounded like I was made of stone,
but I am not made of stone when it comes to seeing the beast from 20,000 Fathoms lay waste
to a cityscape. Are you kidding me? Yeah. And I think that there is a certain.
I don't know if it's lack of awareness. It feels like a lack of awareness or like people stumbling

(54:50):
backwards into like almost surrealist art through these like kind of drive in movies, but that I
brought up that one in particular because it has this very strange climax where the guys like
they're going to shoot, you know, some kind of irradiated something into the monster to like

(55:11):
overload its whatever and kill it. Protons. Yeah. Something like that. Just to step up from like,
you know, robots in Victorian novels that are like, oh, there's like Quicksilver and magnets.
Oh, OK, sure. But they like put on these like hazmat suits or like radiation suits and get on

(55:38):
a roller coaster to get up high enough. And it's such like that image of like these guys in radiation
suit on a roller coaster is like such an evocative, surreal image of like atomic age paranoia.
So I think that's kind of the thing that I like from atomic age movies that they don't all
necessarily, you know, the Bert I. Gordon movies or whatever don't necessarily get anything that

(56:04):
like even accidentally creative. True enough. True enough. So despite what I said earlier,
asking what Eric's preferences are, far be it for me to turn my nose up at at any one school
of the genre and say that, well, I mean, we did kind of say that one is superior to the other,

(56:26):
but superior only in our own personal preferences for the reasons that we stated.
So something I can also let you know that Media Center from Arizona was a wonderful gift,
not just for bestowing the Crestwood House monster books on me and sating my appetite

(56:49):
in between, you know, the moments I was able to actually watch the movies real quick, something
I seem to remember doing, which, you know, I guess as a current media specialist, I'm like,
oh, the horror. But I feel like I definitely used a pencil at least to check off the titles from the

(57:11):
back of the book that either I had gotten from the Media Center already and read or, you know,
that I circle. I feel like I have a memory of like sitting out in the desert like backyard of
my mother's friend's house that we were staying at in a lawn chair and circling some titles or

(57:32):
crossing out certain ones, checking them off. So, yeah, that was the thing I did to property
that was not mine. Anyway, there was another book, a single volume from that Media Center
that I came across, and I'm holding a copy in my hands. This is not the one from Arizona. This one

(57:57):
is from the Vineyard Haven Public Library in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, and it's got a
discard stamp on it. So we know that it was weeded from the collection and it's got in pencil up
here in the corner, 25 cents. So it looks like they resold it at one of their library book sales.

(58:20):
But it is called Movie Monsters and Their Masters, The Birth of the Horror Film by, pause for effect,
Robert Quackenbush. Quackenbush. I always love that last name. There's a book called A Separate
Piece that I read in high school. And we had a unit where we had to choose a book and then like

(58:45):
give a review in front of the class. And I remember the only other girl in class who read that book
hated it. And one of her criticisms was that one of the characters names is Quackenbush. And I was
like, no, that's what makes it great. What are you talking about? It's a great name. It definitely
registers with me as like I can see Groucho Marx being named Quackenbush in one of the Marx Brothers

(59:10):
movies. Oh yeah, definitely. I feel like he might have been, but I can't verify right now. But Robert
Quackenbush was a pretty prolific author. I say was because I don't think the man is still with us.
Apologies if that's not the case. He wrote tons and tons of books, nonfiction as well as fiction.

(59:34):
Some of his series are still in print because I've come across new editions of them at the,
well I came across them at the public library where I previously worked. But he did the Miss Mallard
Mallard series of mysteries for children, which is about, yes, a duck who solves crimes. You can't do

(59:56):
that when your last name is Quackenbush. Now I doubt that it was even his real name. I know.
So Robert Quackenbush had an interesting style about him. I think it actually says somewhere
here in this book, you know how it does sometimes for, they do this even in modern books where it

(01:00:21):
actually tells you, oh the illustrations in this book were created with dot dot dot, this form of
this medium here. Like looking at them I feel like they're pencil and maybe charcoal,
it almost looks like. But I actually took, what's the word, I scanned some of the images in this

(01:00:47):
book years ago when Black Magic Treehouse was actually going to be a blog instead of a podcast.
So I'll definitely, we'll definitely post these images to our Instagram or anywhere else we can
so that they are not all for naught. Follow us on Insta. Yeah, follow us on Insta. Black Magic Treehouse

(01:01:08):
pod. So the way the book is set up is that one, like on each spread, as they call it in the biz,
the right hand is Robert Quackenbush's illustration and on the left hand is the,
essentially the summary slash history for that given movie or character. But the really cute

(01:01:29):
thing, I could have sworn I made a scan of this because it's so unique, but apparently I didn't
and that makes me sad. On the left hand side with the plot summary and history of the film,
the bottom left corner is a quick caricature of the actor portraying that monster. So for instance

(01:01:55):
I'm going to send you the image from the right hand side for one of the spreads, which is
John Barrymore's rendition of Edward Hyde from one of the popular stills of that film.
Very 70s album cover. Isn't it? Yeah, that's a great description. But yeah, on the, so that's

(01:02:23):
the right hand side of the spread. On the left hand side is the text and then in the bottom,
I'll hold it up so you can see it, in the bottom corner is a little caricature with
an authentic, I don't know, signature of the actor. An autograph you might call it. Yeah,

(01:02:46):
an autograph as they call it in the biz. So yeah, it's kind of charming. Charming indeed.
And some of them are interesting because it's not always necessarily the actor who portrayed
the monster. Like here for instance, talking about Nosferatu, Count Orlok.
Oh, there he is on the ship. Reel. It's F.W. Murnau. Oh, huh. Wonder why. Yeah, go figure.

(01:03:16):
Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of arbitrary. Oh, what else? Who else makes an appearance in this
book? Somewhat interestingly is Metropolis. Dr. Rotwing and, yep. And Fritz Lang. And there's
the monocle wearing Fritz Lang. And some of the likenesses, the likenesses of the monsters,

(01:03:40):
you know, the characters from the films are pretty spot on. Like I love this one of
Chaney from Phantom of the Opera. That's a good one. I mean, pretty damn good. And I love, I love
the green coloring. I think it's, so I know our friends who are listening to this right now can't

(01:04:00):
see, but these illustrations of Robert Quackenbushes, they have a green tint to them in almost the kind
of same style that you would see like a tinted segment from a silent film. And it's just like
this kind of pea soup, pukey, green cast that all of these monsters have. Same for the actual

(01:04:23):
production stills that they have in the book sprinkled here and there. And I think it's such
a perfect choice for the subject. I think that color serves horror well personally.
And Pukey is right.
Yeah. Oh, and this is cute. So the spread for the mummy in the corner, it has a little Jack

(01:04:47):
Pierce making up a little Boris Karloff. Oh, that is cute.
That is so adorable. But yeah, some of the likenesses of the
of the film crew, film actors are pretty good. Like I'd say that's a pretty good Frederick March
for his spread on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And the caption next to the picture for Frederick

(01:05:11):
March's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it says, to see how Frederick Mark looks as both Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde, cover up either side of the portrait with your hand. Eric?
Yes, Ozzie. Do you know how long I sat there doing that with this book and being just fascinated as

(01:05:31):
a third grader with like, oh, now he's Dr. Jekyll. Now he's Mr. Hyde. Now he's both. Now he's Mr.
Hyde again. How long?
Talking too long. Talking about lo-fi thrills. But like I said, some of the likenesses are pretty
good. Like that Frederick March was was pretty was pretty spot on. Some of the exclusions feel

(01:05:56):
kind of hurtful. Like here's a here's a spread for Bela Lugosi's Dracula. There he is carrying
Helen Chandler down the broad staircase of Carfax Abbey. I don't know if you could see it, but as
far as likenesses go, that's a shitty Bela Lugosi. It's got like a crew cut. It looks like. Yeah,

(01:06:19):
which is probably almost kind of like Pee Wee Herman hair to bring a full circle. But to add
insult to injury, I don't know, maybe it was better off being that way. Since the likeness of Bela
Lugosi is so terrible in the in the right hand spread there, he does not warrant

(01:06:40):
he does not warrant. A spot. Yeah, like especially in it. I mean,
that's hurtful, especially considering that's Bela Lugosi. Like, come on, that guy didn't
get enough of a shaft in life that you can't even afford him a spot on the page of your
juvenile reference book.

(01:07:00):
When you told me the topic of this episode yesterday, I thought of three things. Obviously,
the Crestwood books were the first thing I thought of. Then there was one that I used to like check
out a lot at my local library when I was like nine or 10. I don't even remember what it was

(01:07:21):
called. It was like, like the Encyclopedia of Monsters or some generic title like that.
And it was just like an A to Z listing of like different movie monsters. I think that one was
probably the newest of a lot of the things that I read because it had references to like Rambo.
It had like these kind of ink illustrations. There was one section that was like purported

(01:07:47):
to be an interview, maybe inspired by Interview with the Vampire. But it was like, this is an
interview with the real life vampire. And it was like just a female vampire and like full of lots
of puns and stuff. Nice. And it had references to like painters who were like some medieval painter
who painted like horrifying scenes of monsters and stuff like that. That one was very intriguing.

(01:08:12):
Anyway, that's not even what I was going to talk about. What I was going to talk about was
this series right here. Do you remember? Shock shots?
Shock shots. Yeah. So I think that these I've talked before to you, maybe on the podcast,
maybe not about Thrills and Chills magazine, which we're going to do an episode about someday.

(01:08:33):
And I think these shock shots were like came as part of the same like Goosebumps fan club or
whatever it was in the early 90s. And they're these little like, basically like receipt sized
books from Scholastic. Shock shots, everyone covers a different monster. The one that I have

(01:08:57):
is about vampires. I remember there's one about ghosts. There was one about zombies.
And yeah, they're just a recap of like the actual mythology of the monster. And then they have,
like anything else, they have like pictures from what is this black and white picture from
might be from Dark Shadows. I don't know. But it's captioned the most popular way to kill a vampire

(01:09:20):
drive a wooden stake through its heart. And they're cool because it does look familiar.
Yeah, the zombies one I remember was green. The ghost one was gray. I think there was one about
Frankenstein. And they're interesting in that like the Crestwood books, they talk about

(01:09:43):
the old movies, but they also talk about newer movies like this one as references to Lost Boys.
And they have lots of interesting tidbits about the actual
mythology that I, a lot of them are like details that stuck in my head that I never came across in
any other like book about vampire mythology. Like this one goes into detail about like, when you're

(01:10:06):
staking a vampire, you know, there were certain kinds of wood that were supposed to be more
effective than others, like I think the wood from the ash tree or whatever. And you're supposed to
drive in the blow of the stake with a grave digger shovel. And you're only supposed to drive it in
once if you hit it more than one time, it won't be effective. And if there's creatures crawling away

(01:10:31):
from the coffin, like bugs or whatever, you know, throw them into the fire. So it's like,
they're small books. They're like, this one that I have is 44 pages that are like I said, about the
size of, I don't know what size is, it's like half as tall as my head, I guess.

(01:10:52):
They're about the size of the photograph you keep of your kids in your wallet, or you know,
your furry kids.
Right. And like I just happened to flip to the page that has the, to the death, there came a time
when people realized that trying to avoid vampires was like fighting a losing battle. So they decided

(01:11:13):
to try killing the vampires. They use more than one method, but certainly the most popular, most
effective method is the old stake in the heart. Here's how it works. One, track down the vampire's
coffin in the daytime when the vampire is asleep and powerless, drive a stake through the vampire's
heart. A word of caution here, you can't use any old piece of wood for the stake. Many say ashwood
is best. Others recommend Aspen or Hawthorne or Oak, and you must use a gravedigger shovel to drive

(01:11:39):
in the stake with one blow. Any more will just make the vampire stronger. Two, hold onto the shovel
because the job isn't over yet. You have to also use it to cut off the vampire's head. Stuffing the
mouth with garlic first is part of the gruesome ritual. Three, the job's still not over. Now
you've got to burn everything in there. You have to use the shovel to cut off the vampire's head.

(01:12:01):
Four, now you've got to burn everything in the coffin. Be careful now because if anything, a
worm, a beetle, a snake or whatever crawls out of the fire. It's got to be thrown back in. Just might
be the vampire trying to crawl away in disguise. And then it tells you about the cultures, the
vampire mythology and other cultures, the Chinese vampire that had green hair and the one that

(01:12:27):
sucked blood out of people's feet or whatever. Anyway, they were really comprehensive for being
so small and they had lots of those little tidbits and the story of Elizabeth Bathory is in here.

(01:12:47):
They had photos. Jacqueline, the movies gives you an overview. Fangtastic Funnies,
sink your teeth into these vampire jokes. Why did Dracula flunk out of art school?
He could only draw blood. Knock, knock. Who's there? Fangs.

(01:13:11):
Fangs who? Fangs, you very much for giving blood to a vampire. Hold on. That one's not so good.
Yeah, I know. You can see that one coming. Here's a better one though. Knock, knock. Who's there?
Bats. Bats who? Bats wrong with you. Never open the door to a vampire.

(01:13:37):
I give it one out of three. No, you're wrong. I like the,
it almost breaks the joke, but I like the bats wrong with you because how could you guess
what the punchline is going to be when they're making that much of a stretch?
Seriously. Anyway, that's all I'd say about shock shots. So you may proceed.

(01:13:58):
Wow. Those are really neat. Very cool. Thank you for sharing that with us. Like I said,
they seem vaguely familiar. Yeah. Well, speaking of episodes that we can do without a lot of
preparation, it might be fun to do an episode where we just talk about vampire mythology because
because over the course of centuries, there's just so much crazy, like little details and things and

(01:14:24):
like, you know, certain ones survive into like Buffy and Twilight, or they get like revamped
into like, oh, the reason they have to stay out of the sun is because they sparkle or whatever.
But I'm really, I love old vampire mythology, like before vampires were romantic when they

(01:14:44):
were just like a pestilence. Something really fascinating to me about that kind of mythology,
like before it was sexy, you know? Yeah, that reminds me of the seed of how the film An American
Werewolf in London came about. I still recall like hearing John Landis talk about it on some kind of

(01:15:08):
ANC special, but he said they were like filming an episode of Hogan's Heroes in Yugoslavia,
and he actually witnessed some of the locals burying a corpse headfirst into the ground.
And when they inquired why they were doing that, it was that, oh, well, so I can't get up and start

(01:15:29):
walking around and plaguing us all with its vampirism. And somehow from that, An American
Werewolf in London, don't ask me how. I don't see the A to B there, but no. Yeah, yeah, that is cool.
But speaking of monsters, my last book that I was going to bring to our attention today is,

(01:15:54):
and you can cut the part out where I revealed it earlier, so it seems more like a surprise now,
is a tome, a veritable tome, called The Encyclopedia of Monsters by Jeff Rovin,
who according to the back, a veteran comic book editor, Jeff Rovin has also served as a

(01:16:16):
consultant to such television series as The Greatest American Hero and Web Woman. What is Web Woman?
Among his 30 published books, I have no idea. Potentially interesting. Yeah, that kind of reads
to me as he was brought on to fill in the gaps in comic book knowledge that staff writers on

(01:16:41):
the earliest superhero shows had, because comic books were not the den of mainstream culture.
So it's like, let's get a hold of somebody who works in comics. Come talk to us and
tell us if we got this Web Woman thing figured out. But it says, among his 30 published books

(01:17:04):
are the critically acclaimed Encyclopedia of Superheroes and the Encyclopedia of Supervillains,
as well as the superhero movie and TV quiz book, and winning at Trivial Pursuit.
So big trivia facts and stats guy. This book has a beautiful painted cover by,

(01:17:31):
trying to see if it gives a full name. Yes. Has a beautiful painted cover by Vincent
de Fate de Fati. I'm not sure who that is, but it's a it's a gorgeous rendition of like
the Rogues Gallery of Monsters in a fog shrouded cemetery. There's a lovely skull in the corner.

(01:17:57):
All the monuments in the cemetery are tottering this way and that. And we have what looks to be
a wolf man in a sweater, a mummy, a really ripped creature from the Black Lagoon slash alien could
be either or both. A Dracula looking fellow, a Frankenstein creature, and a Robbie the Robot

(01:18:24):
looking automaton. Robbie the Robot. In the background. Is that right? Robbie the Robot.
What's his name from Forbidden Planet? Yeah. Let me see the cover again, though.
It doesn't look like him exactly, but that's who he makes me think of.
Oh, yep. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. He's a lot boxier, but it's got the it's got the 1950s

(01:18:50):
robotic computer box aesthetic. Yeah. So the Encyclopedia of Monsters is huge.
So for instance, it pulls its entries from a vast amount of shall we say?

(01:19:15):
So what it says is to indicate a source to indicate source, a parenthetical letter or letters
follows the name of every monster that basically tells you where they originated. So we have
advertising, comic books, computer and video games, just to give you an idea of when this book came

(01:19:38):
out. Folklore, literature, motion pictures, mythology, poetry, religion, the stage. I'd love
to know which monsters came from the stage. Oh, that's probably like the one entry for Audrey,
Audrey Jr. from Little Shop. Toys, trading cards, bubble gum cards. I feel like they could have

(01:20:04):
just gone with trading cards and people would have figured that out. And television. So these
are the sources where Jeff Robin is pulling all of the entries for the various monsters in this
huge book. So he lets you know all the various mediums through which they have proliferated
over the years, or even if it was just a one and done monster. Those are probably the most,

(01:20:28):
well maybe not the most fascinating ones, but those are perhaps the most telling ones.
This book has a copyright of 1989, so we're looking at 10 years or just about 10 years beyond
movie monsters and their masters. But it's kind of funny for some of the single source, single entry

(01:20:55):
ones. It's kind of telling as to what Jeff Robin had readily available around him at that time.
And by that I mean there is a healthy amount of monsters that made appearances in, for instance,

(01:21:16):
pulp magazines. Mostly weird tales. Here and there you'll see one from like Fantastic
or something like that. But I find it kind of funny like what made it in here and what didn't.
Because surely the, let's say, dozen or so entries that are in here for, or two dozen entries that

(01:21:38):
are in here for monsters that originally appeared in stories that were published in weird tales,
are certainly not the only monsters that appeared in stories published in weird tales. But that's,
you know, I guess those are just the issues that, you know, the New York Public Library had on hand

(01:22:01):
or Jeff Robin had in his own collection. I'm flipping to one in particular that stuck out
of my mind when I first read it just because the summary for the story terrified me. And I came
across this book for context in middle school. It was in my middle school media center. I was a

(01:22:25):
library aide for all three years because I was a cool kid in middle school. And interestingly enough,
this book, The Encyclopedia of Monsters, was in the general nonfiction section. You could check
it out just like any other book, you know, in the 000s with all the other ghosts and monsters.
But both The Encyclopedia of Superheroes and The Encyclopedia of Supervillains that Jeff

(01:22:51):
Robin wrote were in the media center's reference section, which means you could not check them out,
which means that for it seems to me every day that I was an aide in the media center,
I had those two books opened up at the front desk, superheroes and supervillains and or

(01:23:13):
supervillains, opened up at the front desk, reading them, poring over them religiously,
and begging, begging the media specialist, Mr. Helinski, and the media aide, whose name I
unfortunately forgot. I'm sorry, ma'am. Begging them, please just let me take these books home.

(01:23:35):
Every single year I was there, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, I begged them,
please, I just want to check out these books so I can enjoy them at home. You know me, you know,
I'm an aide here. I'm going to take care of these books. But they were adamant that reference books
did not get checked out and brought home. And clearly, I have never forgotten that or let it go.

(01:24:00):
Yeah. And as an adult, I was forced to acquire a discarded copy via like Amazon of The Encyclopedia
of Supervillains and, you know, mentally give a middle finger to Mr. Helinski and
the staff at my middle school public library. I got my own copy now, damn it, and I'll read

(01:24:20):
it whenever I want to. So have you read it cover to cover?
I probably read it cover to cover back in middle school. In the years since, I've just kind of,
yeah, hopped around, leaf log style to, you know, entries that I either remembered or wanted to look
up. But anyway, like I said, this is a huge, they're all huge books. So one of the things

(01:24:43):
that I remember is for The Thing, parentheses, in the cellar, because you see there are previous
entries for The Thing from Inner Space. The Thing, just, you know, the one from Who Goes There by
John W. Campbell that was made into the movies. So yeah, Three Things. So this was The Thing in

(01:25:05):
the Cellar, and its first appearance was 1932 in the story called The Thing in the Cellar by David
H. Keller from Weird Tales. So in the way, he gives the species, if it's indicated, which sometimes
is just listed as extraterrestrial. He gives the size, if it's listed or indicated. So for a

(01:25:29):
previous entry, it says nearly seven feet tall. He gives the features and powers, describing the
physical appearance of these monsters and any cool shit that they can do. And then the plot summary,
he calls the biography of the monster. And then there's a comment at the end for any additional

(01:25:52):
notes. So The Thing in the Cellar does not have a species, size, or features and powers. It just has
a biography. So the biography reads, over some hundreds of years, a barricade of giant,
accumulates in a cellar, a cellar separated from the rest of the house by a thick,
open door. The tuckers are the current residents of the old house, and six-year-old Tommy is utterly

(01:26:16):
terrified by the cellar. Even if the door is open just to crack, he will refuse to go in the kitchen.
Concerned with the boy's phobia, his parents take him to see Dr. Hawthorne, to whom Tommy confesses
that he's afraid because he knows there's something down there. That's the story of The Thing in the
Cellar. That's all he'll say. And the doctor tells Tommy's father to cure him of his irrational fear

(01:26:41):
by nailing the cellar door open and locking the boy in the kitchen.
That's 1932 for you. Yep. We got a fucking depression going on. That kid's going to get
over his shit real quick. After the tuckers leave, the doctor consults a colleague who disagrees with

(01:27:03):
the treatment. Having second thoughts himself, Hawthorne goes to the Tucker house to stop them.
However, he's too late. Entering the kitchen, they find Tommy torn to pieces.
Comment. Nothing is ever revealed about The Thing. Keller's short story is a superb

(01:27:24):
evocation of a child's fear of nameless terrors in the dark.
And that's the entry for The Thing in the Cellar from the Encyclopedia of Monsters.
I read that in middle school and was scared shitless.
Yeah, totally. It seems like it could have been an inspiration for
the Boogeyman, Stephen King's short story. I always like a story about, well, okay, I don't always.

(01:27:51):
I sometimes like a story about a kid being afraid of something and not being believed.
And then it turns out to be real. Yeah, it's like suck it, grownups.
I'd say that's a good application. It bothers me in horror movies when they spend too long
not having the adults believe the kid. But I think that's kind of perfect for a short story format

(01:28:13):
where you can just have a punchline after 15 pages or whatever.
Yeah. And there are a good handful of, well, as I said, entries for monsters that appeared
in short stories from the pulps. I know like, oh yeah, The Lavender Vine of Death

(01:28:36):
by Don Wilcox from Fantastic Adventures. Back when stories could just tell you exactly what they were
about. The Lavender Vine of Death. There it is. It is what it says on the tin. It has an entry for
Leviathan from, you know, biblical lore. Lots of comic books. Everything that I mentioned earlier.

(01:29:02):
Oh yeah, here we have training cards. The Lunar Lepons, weapons from, you know, I don't know,
Mad Balls. Those were apparently a toy. Mad Balls. Mad Balls. Yeah. Anthropomorphic Balls.
Oh. Three and a quarter inches in diameter. The Mad Balls are rubber balls that bounce.

(01:29:27):
So these were toys. Okay. These were, can you imagine if this book had been made like five
years later in the thick of the 90s when like every other toy that came onto the market was some kind
of gross monster. I mean, we were talking about all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rip-offs
that would have filled an encyclopedia unto itself, right? But I really treasured this book.

(01:29:52):
I still do. It has a really diverse, clearly, collection of monsters that, you know, range from,
as we said, like extraterrestrial type stuff. Folklore. Here's an entry on the Manticore,

(01:30:13):
who's my favorite character from Onward, by the way. I didn't see it. But, oh yeah,
that's a fun one. You should check it out. I've heard that. Because that came out the same year
as, what was it, Soul? COVID. Oh, well, yes, that too. Like around there. Yeah. But was it,

(01:30:38):
there was two Pixar movies that came out that year. And one of them, I think it was, was it Soul?
That sounds about right. One of them was the big Prestige one. Sounds about right. And Onward was
the one that I heard was like, nobody cared about it, but actually it was better than Soul.
Yeah. And you know what? It's funny. Like, you know, we were kind of trolling around Disney Plus,
like, oh, what haven't we watched yet? You know, we have like a movie night with my daughter on

(01:31:01):
Fridays. And my wife was like, oh, what about Soul? And we played the trailer for it. And afterwards,
she was still like, yeah, right. And I'm like, I'm not interested in watching that. I mean, it just,
I don't know, it's just like lame. It's like very vanilla. I mean, it's like a cute-ish concept,

(01:31:21):
but it looks superbly vanilla. No, thank you. But anyway, the Encyclopedia of Monsters, it has entry
for like really low key movies, like one of them, it has an entry for The Mad Ghoul, which was like
a second fiddle universal horror film from the forties that again, I just loved reading about

(01:31:46):
because it's like, whoa, Universal made a movie about this. It's like the protagonist who becomes
the Mad Ghoul. He has to eat human hearts in order to, you know, basically sustain his unliving state.
And reading that in a book from 1989, you're like, oh man, that's like the sickest, coolest thing I
ever heard. I can't wait to see that movie. And, you know, I know I mentioned it around the top of

(01:32:11):
the episode, not being disappointed coming around to the movies after the fact. I think I might have
been a little disappointed with The Mad Ghoul. I mean, I'm sure it's, it's fine. You know, it's
evocative enough for a B picture from Universal, but you know, they got The Mad Monster, which was

(01:32:32):
a, you know, like one of the monogram movies. So it's really Martians from War of the Worlds.
Is that a Lanchini one? The Mad?
The Mad Monster? I don't think it was. I think that was a...
Oh, nevermind. It's not in the same million dollar movie.
I was just going to say that was...
Oh, nevermind. It's not in the same million as the Pillow of Death or whatever.

(01:32:55):
Oh, well, yeah. Right. Well, no, there actually, there's an entry for Man-Made Monster.
Oh, that's what I was thinking of.
Which is the one where he's like, yeah, the electrified convict. Yeah, he's in here. He made it.
Very good.
Medusa is in here. Megalon, the fucking giant cockroach from the Godzilla movie. I mean,

(01:33:19):
this is... I'm getting like giddy just thumbing through this thing because it's just such a rich...
It's such a rich work.
Let me ask you this, Jose.
For Monster Mad Kids. Yeah.
Are you... I know we were talking about Atomic Age. Godzilla, obviously, is an outgrowth of
Atomic Age horror, but really his own thing and the whole kaiju genre in general. Is that yours?

(01:33:47):
Because I've never cared about Godzilla and sometimes I feel like I should.
I don't think you should necessarily. I had a period of time where I was a Godzilla fan.
I'd say that was about fourth, fifth grade, thereabouts. I watched quite a few of the
movies. After I had kind of gotten through all the universal horror films I could from my local

(01:34:14):
video store. I actually had a tape and here we are talking about reference books, horror reference
books. We could probably have a whole other episode about... Well, maybe we could. Maybe
we couldn't. I don't know. Maybe I'm alone in this. But documentaries.
No, we could definitely.

(01:34:35):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Some of those definitely filled the gaps for me and just set my brain on fire.
Somehow I acquired a tape of one. I don't even remember what the hell it was called. I just know
that the cover had one... It was two pictures. They were like both digitally colored. One of them

(01:35:01):
was from Godzilla versus Megalon because it had Godzilla shaking hands with Jet Jaguar.
Then the bottom picture was a close up of the giant King Kong face. The big robot looking one
that you see in the 1933 movie. I have no idea what the heck it was called, but it was like a

(01:35:22):
monster documentary, a monster movie documentary. I remember that was my first exposure to...
Like... And it was one of those... It was back in the day when documentary could mean a lot of things
and documentary in this case could mean half the movie was commentary and half the movie was just
trailers from these movies. Oh man. Yeah. Minus any context whatsoever. One of those

(01:35:49):
context list trailers was a trailer for The Green Slime. Are you all familiar with that from 1968?
I have heard the title. That's it. Is it Japanese? Yeah. It was like a Japanese co-production.
It has a theme song that plays during the trailer. The Greens. And it's like a disco.

(01:36:13):
It's like a disco song. The Green Slime.

(01:36:43):
And it was more... It aired more on the side of like aliens slash giant monsters. Godzilla.
I feel like Godzilla was the centerpiece for this weird compilation documentary thing.
And it just kind of discussed tangential stuff around it. King Kong came up. And what was

(01:37:10):
probably the weirdest thing, one of the weirdest things about it is that it ended post credits
with like this was the special feature on the tape. It ended with the famous cartoon short
Godzilla meets Bambi. Directed by John Carpenter.
Yeah. Which obviously... Yeah. It wasn't directed by John Carpenter, but that was...

(01:37:34):
It was on his IMDB page for like a decade or something for some reason.
Really? Yeah.
That's interesting. So yeah, I don't know who was responsible for this, but it's like one minute,
a one minute cartoon that's all credits being played over a very peaceful scene of

(01:37:55):
Bambi. It's just a nondescriptier chewing away at the grass and looking around as the credits for
this short play like animated by, directed by, yada, yada. And as soon as the credits end,
a giant Godzilla foot comes down and squishes Bambi. And that's the end of the short.

(01:38:16):
Yep. And that is what this tape ended with. Holy crap. How did we come to this? What was
your question? Oh yeah. Godzilla. Oh yeah. I think that's where my fascination was born,
because I just had this random tape and I loved King Kong. So it's like, yeah, King Kong. But then
I saw all these Godzilla movie trailers and I'm like, hmm, these seem interesting. I like the fact

(01:38:42):
that there's a different monster in every movie. This would have also been right around the time
that Pokemon was a thing for the world and for me. So it kind of had that gotta catch them all
vibe to it. Like, oh, gotta check out all of Godzilla's monsters. It had a trailer for Destroy

(01:39:04):
All Monsters, which blew my mind as a kid. I'm like, this is the greatest gift that cinema has
ever bestowed upon us. Look at how many monsters are in this one movie and they're all fighting
each other. You got Rodan and Mothra and, you know, all these weird ass ones like Angular

(01:39:25):
and Gamera, Friend to All Children, just like duking it out. But yeah, the thing about Godzilla
movies is that they're all kind of lame. And if... Whoa, strong words. Yeah. Well, if you had vague
intimations, like with the Universal Monster movies, like, oh, these, you know, I feel like if I
watched these when I was six years old, six years old, I would have been like, oh, this is boring.

(01:39:49):
When are the monsters going to show up? You would have definitely felt that with the Godzilla movies.
Yeah. No, I had a friend in elementary school who was super, super into Godzilla. And I think I
watched like probably two or three full movies with him, even though I did feel that very much.

(01:40:10):
I don't hear you talk about how much you love the human characters in this movie. And yet we're
sitting here for like an hour with no monsters, which is the thing that you love about these
movies. Just being off screen. Why? Why do you love that? Wouldn't you love it? I don't know. It
feels like a weird... I don't want to shame anybody who loves Godzilla. I'm just too, I don't know,

(01:40:37):
impatient, I guess, to be able to wait until the end of the movie for like the 10 minute wrestling
sequence of guys in suits. Yeah. And you know, my fascination slash love, I don't know if I'd ever
really boiled over into full on love for those movies was pretty much worn thin because it just,

(01:41:01):
you know, started feeling exactly like what it was, which was, oh, so this is basically just like
Power Rangers, except none of the high speed antics, the high octane antics that you get
compressed into a 20 minute episode. It stretched out over a period of 90 minutes and I don't like

(01:41:24):
it at all. Yeah. As an adult, I've seen a couple more, like Destroy All Monsters was one of them.
And as I, you know, kind of like when you realize that you like,
what are they just like OG Oreos versus double stuff, and it makes you feel like you're an adult.
I kind of felt like an adult watching that because I was so much more into the human storyline.

(01:41:49):
And then when Godzilla showed up, I was like, get back to like the people in like weird yellow 1960s
jumpsuits, like this fighting aliens or whatever they're doing in that movie.
Not for nothing. Like the human drama in the first Godzilla movie is genuinely interesting,
I think. Yeah, the first one is the first movie in general is better than anything.

(01:42:12):
Is better than anything that came after it. Probably I have seen the first one and it is
so moody and it does a lot of like, like giant monsters are not scary because you can always
just see him like he's right there. And I think the first movie does a really good job of like
keeping Godzilla like a sound effect, or like, you know, somebody's like looking out into the rain.

(01:42:34):
And there's like there's a vague shadow of some giant thing coming towards me. Or then you see
the aftermath of the city after he's like stomped all over it. And that's when it's like, oh, this
is actually pretty creepy in a way that none of the other rubber suited monsters are.
Yeah, like one of the moments from the first movie that is like ingrained in my mind was,

(01:43:00):
yeah, like you said, you know, sound effect off camera is that shot of the bow crew.
And all you just see them like in mass, like throwing their arms up and you hear the roar
and you see that brilliant white light. Yeah.
Of you know, Godzilla getting his flame breath on and you know, not for nothing. It obviously evokes,

(01:43:24):
you know, different things that also give it that resonance. Oh, yeah.
You know, as far as yeah, cultural and historical touchstones. And you don't get creepy with giant
monsters all that often. No, you don't. Anyway, I asked, I felt like I could ask you that because

(01:43:48):
if you had said you were into Godzilla, I would have been like, okay, I guess we could do an episode
someday. But that was I feel like that kind of was our Godzilla episode because I really don't
have anything else to say about it. Nope, me neither. So we put a pin in Godzilla.
It's interesting that you probably could not have. Not saying you can't, you could never,

(01:44:10):
but you probably could not have a modern day equivalent of a horror movie reference books,
book for kids. You know what I mean? Because unless you're talking about the universal
monster movies or thereabouts, everything like you can't if you can't have a horror movie reference

(01:44:30):
books for kids and include Chucky or Pennywise and not talk about the fact that they kill people.
No, totally. Specifically. So I find like Hellraiser, you know,
a pinhead for peewees. But I find it so interesting that these books, for as much as they meant to us,

(01:44:55):
they really are a time capsule of and it's funny because when I came across them, the things that
they were covering were well out of date. It just so happened that I was an old soul who was already
into this kind of stuff. So that even though it was the late 90s, you know, two plus decades

(01:45:15):
from when these books originally came out, they were still a match for me. So in a way,
I can't help but wonder, could these books themselves be a match for somebody these days?
Is that still possible? And by extension, could something like them ever exist again? Could there

(01:45:36):
be horror movie reference books for kids that were not forced to just cover universal movies
from the 30s and 40s and atomic age horrors from the 50s? You know?
Yeah, that's a pretty big question. Yeah, to ask at the two hour and 12 marks. So maybe.

(01:45:59):
Yeah, because it gets me thinking about like the metaphor of monsters over the years and
how I, you know, like I said, the 70s is one of my least favorite decades of horror, not because,
you know, like I appreciate the movies of like George Romero. But, you know, I think that's when
maybe there was sort of a cultural shift from using monsters to talk about

(01:46:24):
our own sort of internal demons, maybe like, you know, people talk a lot about the pathos
of universal monsters, about like Frankenstein's monster being like very childlike and the wolfman
not being able to like being this guy who can't, they're all like metaphors for the things about
ourselves that are sort of unprepared to deal with a world that doesn't want to accept, you know,

(01:46:50):
certain parts of humanity. Like if you're too childlike, the world will take advantage of you.
If you're a man, you maybe get a little bit monstrous because you don't know how to handle
certain aspects of your atavistic predatory caveman person or whatever the metaphors are.

(01:47:12):
And then at a certain point, yeah, during the slasher era, it was just like, instead of loving
monsters because you felt sympathy with them, it was like you love monsters because like, yeah,
like Freddy Krueger or Jason or just, I guess, Jason, I don't know. I don't really have a solid
thesis because I guess Jason does have a fan of the opera quality to him in an update in that way.

(01:47:36):
But it's kind of impossible to talk about him without being like, the content of his movies is
that he slays teenagers for 90 minutes as opposed to like, you can't really write an encyclopedia
entry about that in a way that is kid-friendly because it does depend on how he cuts people in
half with his machete as opposed to, yeah, the phantom of the opera proper, you know, like he

(01:47:58):
kills a couple of people through the story, but it is an expression of a deeper part of his character
as opposed to being the foundation of his character. So yeah, I don't know. He's a
great actor. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. And I mean, there are certain modern movies.
I was just thinking while you were talking, which means I wasn't listening to you now,

(01:48:19):
but like what you were saying about Jason, especially. Same here.
I was thinking, you know, are there like modern movie monsters that you could talk about in,
um, you know, a work of juvenile literature without, you know, butting up against this

(01:48:39):
like vicious content. And like my mind immediately went to something like the Babadook, which,
you know, the monster in that movie is kind of like a proper monster. Um, it's identifiable.
It's kind of unique in its own way. And I bet you could touch on the themes

(01:49:00):
that, uh, that movie encompasses without, you know, harming any young sensibilities, so to speak.
So I don't know. I feel like, I don't know, this may be a challenge that I may wish to take on at
some point in the future when I'm not inundated with other projects. It's like, there's gotta be
something there. Like there's gotta be a way that you can communicate like the love of horror. And,

(01:49:26):
you know, and when I say that, I mean like horror media and monsters from that horror media to
modern day kids from modern day media.
Yeah. The Babadook would be an interesting, sorry, I think I feel like we're trying to end this
episode. And then I just keep being like, let me talk for 10 minutes about the thing you just said.
Clearly I'm the one that brought up this, this whole craziest tangent. So if anybody's at fault,

(01:49:52):
it's me, but you know.
Well, I'm taking responsibility for it because I'm codependent. But the Babadook is an interesting
point of comparison because I think there is something to be said about the way that it uses
a monster as a metaphor, kind of more literally in a lot of ways than like you had a monster like,

(01:50:14):
you know, a Phantom of the Opera or the Invisible Man are kind of operating at a metaphorical level
for mental health issues, let's say, but you couldn't really talk about those in the open at
all in the twenties and thirties. So you kind of had to let the metaphor be completely subtext,
whereas the Babadook is like, it kind of talks about depression while it's talking about using

(01:50:41):
the metaphor of this monster to represent depression in kind of a way that's more like
explicit, I guess. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Well, they're more directly tied, especially with, you know, not to spoil the Babadook,
but you know, especially with the way the movie ends, you know, it's like there's a clear line
being made to like, oh, this is a supernatural story about a monster that comes and plagues our

(01:51:06):
lives for 90 plus minutes. And it's pretty much saying with how the movie ends, it's like,
with how the movie ends. Well, this is, you know, I don't want to say necessarily even an
illness, but these are just like the demons from our own lives that we have to live with and learn

(01:51:29):
to control and keep on a short chain and just move on. Even if they're locked in the cellar,
we just kind of have to move on and carry on our lives the best we can. Whereas, you know,
yeah, the movies we're talking about from that these horror reference books refer to, you know,

(01:51:49):
the thing dies at the end, you know, the walls collapse on the phantom, the invisible man gets
shot and reappears in the hospital bed and, you know, cue credits, the end. It's a universal
picture. The little plane farting around the earth. Yeah, that isn't it. I won't go too much

(01:52:13):
into it because I know we are over two hours, but there is probably a whole college thesis in there.
Yeah, for sure. So if you, the listener, are looking for your next college thesis statement,
please feel free to take this and run with it. And, you know, if you're just looking to reach out
to us and let us know what you think in general, you can reach us at our email address, which is

(01:52:38):
blackmagictreehousepod at gmail.com. And that's actually the same little handle you can find us
on Instagram, blackmagictreehousepod. And please do let us know what you thought about this episode.
Is there a bevy of horror reference books that you remember pouring through as a monster-obsessed

(01:52:59):
kid, whether they were in the form of books or weird trailer compilations that you inexplicably
had on VHS for some reason? Let us know and just let us know what you think of the show. If you
could give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or a review would be great. We'd love to hear from you,
hear what you're enjoying about the show, things you'd like to hear us cover in the future. We

(01:53:23):
really want to tailor the show to as broad an audience as possible and to expose ourselves.
And time's up.
Oh yeah, baby.

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