![]() The Wolf Man was a super cool disc jockey spinning 60s pop songs and dancing to them in front of screen with a psychedelic light show. The makeup for the show was very good and The Librarian’s was the best. ![]() The Librarian was a grizzled old fellow who would attempt to frighten viewers with stories that weren’t scary. Pet Vet would bring in more or less domesticated animals to tempt Igor with, but Igor would never get permission from the three-toed sloth in the dungeon to keep them. However, in the video I linked to above, we see the sad state of zoo life in the early 1970s. He would encourage kids to visit their local zoos. She was hip and groovy and thought she was a delicious dish herself.īwana Clyde Batty was a British adventurer, sounding very much like Michael Caine, who would show films or slide shows of wild animals as he gave basic information about them. Grizelda was a witch who would cook up some zany recipes that always flopped. He was also an inventor of worthless or dangerous items. ![]() However, the Count would also interact with a couple of the puppets on the show to read stories or “viewer” mail. I’ll give a brief description of each.Ĭount Frightenstein’s segments were mostly with Igor and centered around dealing with the lifeless Brucie. ![]() Pet Vet, The Librarian, The Wolf Man, The Oracle, and The Maharishi. Van played eight characters: Count Frightenstein, Grizelda the Ghastly Gourmet, Bwana Clyde Batty, Dr. And, as in the daily attempts to revive Brucie, these other segments are also mostly improvised. The rest of the program is filled with various segments featuring a cast of bizarre characters, most of whom are played by Van. Of course, they never get Brucie to come alive. Doing so would pave the way for the Count to return home. He and his servant Igor (Fishka Rais) are tasked with bringing Brucie (a Frankenstein monster prop on the set) to life. The barely scripted show, most everything was improvised, has a main story dealing with Count Frightenstein who has been banished from his beloved Transylvania to Frankenstone, where he lives in Castle Frightenstein. Still, Frightenstein is amusing and fascinating to watch. It is pretty bold to put that in the title of the program, but I suppose it was necessary for a kids’ show, so that parents wouldn’t think their little ones would be scared. I wouldn’t say the show was exactly hilarious. Click here for an episode which includes a short feature about the series. In all, 130 episodes were produced for this daily kids’ show. It was produced for Canadian TV in 1971 and it starred Billy Van. It’s called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. I thought to myself, “Could it be?” I found some episodes on YouTube and, I’ll be damned! There really was just such a show! Someone posted the image above on Facebook and asked if anyone else had watched it. Well, thanks to the wonderfulness of the internets and social media, my memory was confirmed. In fact, as the years piled up, whenever a memory of that show would pop into my head, I would question whether such a thing actually existed. So, it faded into the vagaries of my memory. But I never saw more than a handful of episodes. The most vivid part of this memory was of the wolf man character dancing to 60s pop songs. I remember Vincent Price being involved somehow. There was a vampire, a witch, and a wolf man. I could even get in a little television viewing before heading to the bus stop.Īnd the memory is of a kids’ TV show with monsters. I would get up earlier than I needed to for school, so I could leisurely eat breakfast and prepare for my day. I was in junior high at the time and I was an early riser. I had this vague memory going back to 1979 or 1980 or so.
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