The Hilarious House of Frightenstein
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The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was a Canadian children's television series which was produced by Hamilton, Ontario's independent station CHCH in 1971. It was syndicated to television stations across Canada and the United States, and occasionally still appears today in some TV markets.
A quirky sketch comedy series, the show's cast included Billy Van, Fishka Rais, Guy Big, Mitch Markowitz, Vincent Price and Julius Sumner Miller. Van, in fact, played the vast majority of the characters.
130 episodes of the series were made, in one single nine-month span of time starting in 1971.
Theme song
Both the opening and closing credits were accompanied by a musical composition played entirely on a Moog synthesizer and written by Harry Breuer, Gary Carol and Pat Prilly. Its title is March of the Martians.
Characters
The chief character, Count Frightenstein (Van), was the thirteenth son of the original Transylvanian Count and was exiled to Castle Frightenstein for failing to revive Brucie, a Frankenstein-like monster. Assisted by Igor (Rais), an overweight incompetent, and a three-foot-tall (~91 cm) mini-Count (Big), each episode followed the Count’s efforts to revive Brucie and featured comedy skits. Each episode opened and closed with an appearance by the venerable horror star Vincent Price as he recited intentionally silly poetry with toy skulls and shrunken heads in the background.
Other characters on the show included:
- The Wolfman - A werewolf DJ at radio station WDOG who spun rock and roll records while doing a Wolfman Jack impression. Then-current hit singles by the Rolling Stones or Sly and the Family Stone were dubbed ‘golden oldies’ to avoid dating the program.
- The Grammar Slammer - Negating everything Sesame Street stood for, the Grammar Slammer was a disembodied voice who challenged Igor to correct grammatical errors, accompanied by an eight-foot (~244 cm) purple monster named Bammer who threatened to pound Igor to a pulp if he failed.
- The Professor - US physicist Professor Julius Sumner Miller, a veteran of the Mickey Mouse Club (Professor Wonderful) provided legitimate science lessons while striving gamely to play along with the Frightenstein scenario. "We do physics here…in this place…this very, very, strange place."
- Bwana Clyde Batty - An African explorer who teaches about wild animals on Zany Zoo.
- Grizelda, the Ghastly Gourmet - A witch who provides a parody of television cooking shows, she cooks suitably ghastly recipes in her cauldron. In every one of her segments, she bangs her head on the pot above her cauldron, and always declares the recipe a failure.
- The Librarian - An elderly curmudgeon who unsuccessfully tries to scare the viewers by reading nursery rhymes, such as "Humpty Dumpty" and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", which he mistakenly thinks are horror stories. He also sometimes reads fables with unpleasant endings.
- The Oracle - A mystic who reads out horoscopes, invariably knocking over his crystal ball in the process.
- Dr. Pet Vet - A veterinarian who teaches about animals. He always offers the day's animal to Igor as a pet, but the Sloth in the basement invariably refuses to allow Igor to keep the animal.
- The Midget Count - Played by Big, this is a three-foot tall clone of The Count (and possibly the inspiration for Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies, given that Mike Myers grew up in Southern Ontario.)
Puppets (played by Joe Torbay) included
- Harvey Wallbanger - The postmaster of Castle Frightenstein's "dead letter office", this puppet appears in sketches with The Count or Grizelda, in which they answer letters.
- Gronk - A purple sea serpent who interacts with the Count or the Wolfman.
Other minor or interstitial characters:
- Super Hippy - Played by Markowitz, this hippie in a superhero costume appears leading in and out of commercials, sitting or flying in varying locations as he delivers some variation on "Don't change the channel, we'll be right back after these commercials."
- The Singing Soldier - A soldier (played by Van) who starts to sing a song and gets a cream pie thrown in his face.
- The Mosquito - Played by Markowitz, the mosquito always tells a bad joke about insects before biting a human foot.
Links
www.imdb.com/frightenstein (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066670/)