The Monkees in Monstrous Peril #3: "I Was a Teenage Monster!"

Last year, we visited the Monkees as they ran amok in a haunted house (Monkee See, Monkee Die) and had to fight off an entire castle of Universal Monster knockoffs (The Monstrous Monkee Mash). But the Monkees had several other flirtations with the supernatural and the macabre in the short run of their popular series, and so let's pick up the ball yet again for this year's Countdown to Halloween for more silly hijinks with one of my favorite groups.

One thing that I really admire about the plots of Monkee episodes (if plots they be indeed) is that they waste little time in jumping straight into the goofiness. After all, the boys have to cram a zillion one-liners, a song or two, flirting with whatever girls are at hand, and lots of scenes of them running about like crazy into a mere 25 minutes. It helps a great deal if they walk into a scenario and all of the major players are ready to get going straight away.

So it goes with I Was a Teenage Monster, the 18th episode of the first season of The Monkees TV show, which aired originally on January 16, 1967. True to form for a horror-centric Monkees story, the episode starts with the requisite castle shot and the brief eerie wail of a theremin, before we cut to the wise-cracking Monkees approaching the front door. Micky Dolenz comments that the place "looks like it was condemned before it was built" and Mike Nesmith backs that up by saying it looks "like a high-rise garbage dump." Mike knocks on the door and the group is met by a man wearing a white lab coat who is quite clearly expecting the band to arrive. He even says so. The actor playing the doctor is John Hoyt, a character actor long familiar to fans of TV from the 1950s through the 1980s, but who started out on Broadway in the early 1930s and began a film career in the late '40s.

The Monkees try to introduce themselves, but the doctor, last name Mendoza, doesn't even shake their hands. The band is confused, because they thought there was a party going on at the castle for which they were to provide the entertainment, but the doctor has seemingly tricked them into coming. He has other plans, you see... he wants the Monkees to... TEACH!

Mendoza convinces them to help by saying they are to teach a youngster, for whom "we have such HIGH hopes!" Before the first minute has even passed, the mood is interrupted by the doctor's assistant, who leads the doctor downstairs into the castle's laboratory. Referring to the doctor as "master," the toady named Groot (that's right... Groot) informs the doctor that "everything is in readiness," to which Mendoza replies, "Good! Good! We shall create the greatest rock 'n' roll singer in za world!" (Mendoza has a slight accent.) The doctor pulls aside a sheet that is draped over a huge slab, and on that slab is revealed a huge monstrous creation, much akin to Frankenstein's monster.

The monster is played by the late Richard Kiel, the acromegaly-plagued 7'2" actor who was exceedingly memorable in a wide variety of roles throughout his career. For me, this has been somewhat of The Year of Kiel at the movie theatres, as I not only got to see him in his arguably finest moment as Jaws, the steel-toothed villain who battles James Bond in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, on the big screen again this past summer, but I also saw him play the titular caveman Eegah when that film was shown during the recent live tour for the new Mystery Science Theater 3000 series. And here I get to see Kiel once again (albeit only on my computer), essaying a comedic take on his usual role as a heavy, with a much more mod-looking, shaggy haircut than a monster usually gets in these sorts of affairs. (Most definitely a sign of the times in which the episode was filmed.)

Oh, but first, we have to play the Monkees' opening theme song...

After the theme song and a quick plug for Kellogg's cereals, we dive right back into the story. Mike questions the doctor about teaching rock 'n' roll, and Mendoza reacts, "That's right! Rock 'n' roll really appeals to the little monsters!" Asked if the youngster is the doctor's son, he says "Yes, you could say he is my own... flesh and blood" and then laughs uproariously at his own comment. The doctor decides that the boys need to meet "his son" and toddles off to prepare the meeting. Mike, ever cautious, stops Davy and says, "You know there are overtones to this that I don't like!" but Davy says, "Don't ya get it? Flesh and blood... it's a joke!" Both laugh in the manner that the doctor did before, but then both turn to the camera and grimace, knowing full well that the band is once again in deep trouble.

In the basement lab, the band asks to see the little monster, and the doctor obliges, once more pulling the sheet off the slab. The boys are horrified – Micky cries out, "The little monster... is... a little monster!" – and try to come up with reasons why they should leave right away. Peter, meanwhile, goes up to the creature to study him more closely. Mike tells the doc, "You can't really expect us to teach a monster to sing?" but Mendoza reasons that "He's not a monster... he's a machine." Mike's quick retort is "Well, we can't tutor a computer!" But Peter cuts in, "I find it hard to believe that he's dangerous" and the monster opens his eyes and groans deeply. Peter tickles the creature and says "He wouldn't hurt a fly!" and the monster puts on a smile and groans again.

The other three try to leave but the doctor stands in their way, claiming that "Science must be served!" Mike says that he "can't risk the lives of me and my men... for such a foolhardy experiment... and for such a pittance of a sum of a hundred dollars!" The doctor doubles their money and the next shot shows the four Monkees wearing lab coats – Davy and Micky even have crazy wigs on their heads – and each one holds a beaker containing some chemical or another. They say in tandem, "SCIENCE MUST BE SERVED!"

The doctor claims that his "android" already knows how to sing, and when he claps his hands, the monster goes, "Goo-ra! Goo-ra! Goo-ra!" The doctor explains it as "an old Transylvania folk song." Asked to translate, Mike offers up, "Jimmy crack corn and I don't care!" The doctor unbuckles the monster, which makes the Monkees nervous, and Micky expresses worries that "his pants will fall down," not wishing to make the doctor think he is actually scared. The doctor leaves his creation with the boys alone, and the monster reaches out his enormous hand in friendship. Micky, Mike and Davy all shake the hand in unison nervously, but when Davy sneezes, the monster says perfectly politely, "Gesundheit!" The boys are shocked to hear this and it calms them down temporarily, but then the monster follows it up with a huge roar which makes them freak out anew.

Peter, however, really likes the monster, and as many things with Peter go, his reaction reverts to that of a child. "You said that if I made dinner every night and made my bed, that I could have a pet!" and the boys agree that such was the deal. Mike says, "Alright, but the first night you don't feed it, back he goes!" Micky has other things on his mind, wondering aloud about how amazing it is to think that this monster was created in the very lab in which they stand, but absentmindedly almost knocks an entire beaker full of some concoction onto the floor. Luckily, Mike catches it in time, and says, "You almost dropped his mother!" to which the monster looks sadly.

Later, in the music room, the boys try to work with the monster to turn him into a rock 'n' roll star. They decide to name him, to which Mike offers up "Frankie Frankenstein." "I can see it now in lights... all... around... the mausoleum." Davy rejects the name for a singer, because he "doesn't even sound Italian." Micky taps the monster with his drumsticks, and the monster spits out a very clear, non-monster-like "Don't do that!" He decides to change the monster's look, starting with "a Beatle haircut," and the monster's hair switches to a mop-top, "then dark glasses," and he is suddenly wearing dark, rectangular-lensed wireframes, "some groovy clothes," his outfit changes, "and a guitar." The monster strums the instrument awkwardly, and Micky asks Mike how he looks. "He looks like a long-haired, near-sighted monster with a guitar."

The Monkees decide to teach the monster how to move onstage, but when he swings to the left, he sends Peter and his bass flying away, and when he switches to the right, Davy goes sprawling with his tambourine. Micky has the monster try the drums, telling the creature that the trick is to "very gentle... veeeeerrrrry gentle." On the count of three, the monster jabs the drumsticks straight through the skins on the tom-toms while kicking a hole through the bass drum. "Some style!" says Micky, "Where d'ya keep your brains?" The monster smiles widely and holds up his hands, snapping the sticks into pieces as he does.

A little bit later, the monster is shown strumming the guitar and yelling out, "Goo-ra! Goo-ra!" again. The boys, still trying to escape the castle, decide that he doesn't sound half bad and tell the doctor they will be back in the morning to work on his voice. The doctor says the mountain road is too treacherous at night, and calls Groot to prepare their rooms for the night. As the boys split the room, the doctor has the monster play "Goo-ra!" again and seems pretty pleased with the result. Once the boys are gone, the doctor talks to Groot about the rest of his plan... to switch the voices of the Monkees into the monster. Groot asks how this is to be done, and Mendoza says, "It's very simple. We merely unite the frontal lobe with coaxial conduits and force the cerebellum to proliferate to the reflexes. Do you understand?" to which Groot replies, "All except the last part, master!" 'What last part?" "The part after 'It's very simple...'"

In their room, the Monkees continue to try and look for a way out of their predicament. Micky opens up the closet door and finds a gorgeous, blonde woman standing there. They ask who she is and she tells them she is "the doctor's beautiful daughter." When she is asked what she has to do with "all of this," she replies, "Nothing. I'm the sequel." They close the closet door and Mike expresses worry that "200 dollars isn't going to do us any good if we're dead." Micky says, "Yeah, we should have asked for 250."

They decided to try to calm themselves down with a little television viewing. The program on the tube is a mad scientist movie where the doctor is discussing an operation with his doctor. Davy tries to stretch out on a couch, but he falls through the back cushion and disappears through a trap door. Mike calls out to him and realizes that his friend has gone missing. He sits down on a chair against the wall, but the wall spins around and Mike disappears, replaced by a second empty chair. Micky then seeks out Mike but is pulled feet first through the curtains. Finally, Peter has a bag thrown over his head by Groot the henchman.

In the laboratory, the four Monkees find themselves strapped onto a large, rectangular slab with helmets on their heads attached via electrodes. The doctor tries to assure them that this sort of experiment need not be fatal, but then shocks himself when he is handed two wires. Soon, the experiment begins, but while the machinery starts pulsing, Davy expresses concern over getting a headache. "Oh, don't worry," says the doctor, "there won't be any headache. But you won't be able to make a fist for three weeks!" and then he laughs crazily again. Davy continues to panic, and the doctor tells him to relax. He turns to the camera in the manner of a medicinal advertisement and states, "My electricity gets into the bloodstream seconds faster than aspirin." The doctor shouts out ever more ridiculous orders to Groot: "Turn the coaxial knob to full!" "Set the input output to whatever!" "Move the quasar to mellow!"

With such orders, even the bound Monkees are starting to doubt the science behind the experiment, but then the doctor throws the last switch. There is a series of four explosions, one behind each Monkee on the large slab. He orders the boys to sing, and Micky starts out meekly and unsure of himself with "Here we come... walkin' down the street...," Mike joins in on "We get the funniest looks from... everyone we meet..." and then Peter comes in on "Hey, hey, we're the Monkees." Davy joins the rest on the rest of the chorus, and the monster listens with great interest, taking in every note. Finally, the monster's voice seems to start up like an old cranked Victrola, and the sound coming out of his mouth is that of the four blended voices (along with the music) of the Monkees themselves. In the middle of the room, Doctor Mendoza and Groot dance together in victory while the Monkees, still strapped to the slab, look on with shocked faces.

Mike warns the doctor that he will be sorry when the police hear about it, but the doctor has a plan for this as well. He hypnotizes the boys by holding a device to their heads, one at a time, and telling them "You will remember nothing" to which they each reply "I will remember nothing." However, he goes one body too far and does the same thing to Groot, whom he then slaps and says, "Not you!" He then discusses with Groot their final experiment for the next day: whether the monster can fool an entire audience.

The next day, as said, the Monkees are preparing their instruments onstage for the experiment. Mendoza asks the boys how they are feeling, and they all seem to be feeling fine but very confused when the doctor refers to an experiment. They attempt to start playing Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day, but the instruments are all out of tune and none of their voices can get anywhere near harmony. The doctor demands his money back, saying that the band told him that they were trained musicians. Mike coughs up the dough and hands it over and the band, still under hypnosis, try to depart. But the doctor stops them, wishing them to see his new discovery, The Swinging Android. The monster steps onto stage in his "cool" regalia and starts to strum his guitar. He plays the same song perfectly and exactly like the Monkees.

Afterward, the Monkees are confused as to why the monster played and sounded exactly like them. Suddenly, Micky remembers something about a laboratory, and then all of them start to be flooded with memories of what happened to them. They check the closet where the doctor's beautiful daughter was kept, and Micky tells her, "Your father stole our voices and gave them to that monster. Now what do you think about that?" The girl is shown reading a script with the Monkees logo emblazoned across the front of it, and says, "Just wait until the sequel. A vampire turns Davy into a werewolf." Micky closes the door on the creepy girl, whining "I don't wanna hear it!"

In the lab, the quartet find the monster strapped back into his normal place, and Micky attempts to reverse the experiment. With the boys moving at high-speed, they try every knob on the machinery, and then strap themselves back onto their slab and helmets. However, when it comes time for Micky to throw the final switch, he can't quite reach it from his position. The machine starts to wind down and they have to start all over again. Meanwhile, the doctor and his toady stroll the halls in triumph, and the doctor can't resist stopping at a magical mirror on the wall. Asking "who is the evilest one of all?," the doctor is disappointed to find out another doctor in Dusseldorf, Germany is the truly evilest one. The mirror, who is voiced by James Frawley, who directed the vast majority of other Monkees episodes (Sidney Miller did the honors here), says, "You are only second best. You vill have to try harder. And don't yell at me; I only vork here."

Back on the slab, Micky figures he has the wiring straightened out now, but Mike says he isn't worried because he "is very fatalistic. I figure either an electrode has my name on it or it hasn't." Micky has by now employed the crook end of a cane to help him reach all of the knobs and switches, but is very nervous about hitting them. He rattles the cane wildly as he hits everything in sight, and the machinery starts to smoke and overreact. The monster starts to speaker like a hippy, saying "Groovy, man. That's not my bag. Don't get uptight." Davy notices the change, and the monster says, "Let's split... go to my pad. That's where it's at. Groovy? You dig?" Mike rolls his eyes and says, "Oh, great. Now we've got a super hippy on our hands."

Micky figures that they have corrected themselves, but we see Mike have a strange reaction and he starts saying, in Kiel's deep voice, "Kill! Kill!" Micky adjusts the dials and pops the switch again. The monster comes loose and immediately says, in a lisping voice, "I would do this room in French provincial!" He follows that up with "The color scheme should be lavender and puce... or this." The monster picks up a vat containing something or other, but Micky takes it from him, saying he has one more adjustment to make. He sets the formula down, but it falls and crashes to the floor, alerting Doctor Mendoza upstairs. He runs down and has Micky taken captive by Groot. Micky yells "Curse you, Red Baron!" in a nod to the popular Snoopy oath of the day. The doctor orders the monster to kill the rest of the Monkees, but Peter stops him briefly by calling him "Andy" (short for "Android").

He tells the monster that the doctor is out to exploit him, "You're only a pawn in his hands, a tool for his avaricious ambitions!" When Mike asks where Peter got words like that, Davy says "It's in the script. On page 28." Peter continues, claiming the doctor wants 60% of his income. The monster says "60 per cent?" and turns on the doctor, who says he only wants 25% and orders him to "Kill that Peter!" But Peter turns the monster around again by simply saying, "He's a bad man!" The monster keeps turning back and forth from Mendoza to Peter over and over again, and the strains of the song Auntie Grizelda being to play. With the music on, the monster starts to dance instead.

As the creatures spins and twirls, the Monkees free themselves from the slab and start to run all over castle while the song continues to play. The monster chases them at one point, but so too do a pack of villagers with torches, who appear from out of nowhere. Micky stops to drink a potion and starts to act like he is being transformed. He turns his back on his friends and the audience, but then turns around and he is fine, if not a little disappointed. Mike flips a switch on the lab equipment, and we see a quick clip from the old crappy Danish monster flick, Reptilicus, where the giant reptile breathes a quick snort of fire. Davy leaps into the monster's waiting arms and at first it looks like a cute move. But then Davy punches him with a boxing glove that suddenly appears on his fist. (At least he barely taps the monster, who lets Davy go without a fight.)

Mike plays the surface of the lab equipment like the Phantom of the Opera would play a pipe organ, but is chased away by Mendoza. Micky plays a rack of equipment and beakers like a xylophone and convinces the monster to take over, which he does happily. The Monkees form a football huddle but stop the monster from joining in, so he and the doctor and toady wait patiently. Davy opens the closet door and finds the doctor's daughter. She grabs him and kiss him. Davy then reaches for a sign that says, "A sequel? You better believe it!" At another point, the monster is seated in a chair while the boys give him a manicure and brush his hair. Reptilicus is shown attacking the Netherlands again for no real good reason but for kicks. The monster sits around a campfire roasting marshmallows with the villagers. Finally, the Monkees capture the doctor and strap him to his own slab as Reptilicus seems to either lie down for a nap or die. The song ends.

In the epilogue, Mike is shown talking to the police on the phone. "That's right, Officer. It's the big scary-looking house at the very top of the hill." He has to stop to ask the doctor for directions, but the doctor has been completely tied up by the other Monkees. He tells them the name of the street is Rosebud Lane, and Mike says, "Rosebud? I thought that was the name of a sled." Micky insists he got the wiring correct and that they shouldn't have lost any musical abilities. "We didn't have any to spare," replies Peter. To put them to a test, Mike and Peter pick up guitars while Davy picks up maracas, but on the count of three, the maracas and guitars shatter into pieces while the amps behind them short out and catch on fire. Cue closing credit sequence.

This is a really fun episode of the Monkees, chiefly for the game performance of Richard Kiel. Yes, he finds himself typecast in the role of yet another monster, but he gets loads of little opportunities during the episode to step outside of the character and act against type. He also gets to dance with great abandon, try on cool clothes, and switch personas more than once. It is actually a pretty full role for the length of a sitcom, and I think that Kiel seems to be having great fun being so silly throughout the show. Hoyt, too, seems to be having a ball playing a part that is really far beneath his talent, but then again, so were many of the parts he ended up playing in his long television career.

As promised by the doctor's beautiful doctor, there was a sequel to this, only the details got shifted slightly. The episode was the already discussed The Monstrous Monkee Mash, which aired almost exactly a year after this episode. While there is a vampire villain who turns a Monkee into a werewolf, Micky is the victim, while poor Davy is selected to become a new vampire instead. It hardly matters; like most of the details within a Monkees episode, they are only there for fleeting reference, nothing sticks forever, and the only important thing was record sales. And being truly, truly silly, something which this episode does in spades. As one expects from the Monkees...

RTJ

*****

And in case you haven't seen it...

Other titles in this series:

#1 "Monkee See, Monkee Die"
#2 "The Monstrous Monkee Mash"

Guillermo Del Toro: At Home with Monsters at LACMA 2016, Pt. 2

[Note: To read Part 1 of this post, please click here.]

As I mentioned last time, the primary focus of the Guillermo del Toro exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (aka LACMA) that we attended yesterday (Oct. 26, 2016) was naturally on the films and artwork of Mr. Del Toro himself. With the massive collection of props, costumes, storyboards, sketches, and fully realized figures representing his monsters and characters on display, how could it not be so?

But the secondary – though equally as important – focus was on his influences, a great many of which (if not the vast majority) also happen to be my influences as well, but Del Toro filters them through his quite remarkable talent and attention to detail that a high percentage of the time produces hauntingly memorable cinematic art for the world. Me, I just take those same influences and go, "Wow, that monster was pretty cool."

As before, much of the artwork and collection is to be found (normally, when they aren't on display in an exhibition at a museum) at Del Toro's Bleak House. If anyone ever needed an absolutely on the nose answer as to what I would do if I had the money to do whatever I wanted, taking a look at this exhibition is pretty much what you would get. Well, apart from the fact that I would also have a life-size Robby the Robot, a Batmobile, and the Robot from Lost in Space. But you get the gist. Del Toro's commissioned pieces include diorama featuring Harry Earles, Johnny Eck, and Schlitzie the pinhead from Tod Browning's horror classic Freaks, a scene showing Ray Harryhausen sitting comfortably in a chair (while wearing slippers) as he handles some of the models he created for his still astounding stop-motion animation features, Jack Pierce applying makeup to a seated Boris Karloff as they work on creating Frankenstein's Monster, and a fairly elaborate scenario featuring the Monster meeting his Bride while a catty Dr. Pretorius stands aloofly to the side. There was even an oversized lifelike bust of master makeup guru Dick Smith.

Dick Smith, makeup artist extraordinaire.

Frankenstein plays a major part in the exhibition. The head of Karloff's monster looms large over the entrance to the room containing many issues of comics and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, and there are numerous spots where paintings of the monster, original Berni Wrightson drawings from his acclaimed illustrated edition (which I still need to replace; note to myself), various editions of the book, and even a life mask of Boris Karloff from 1960 were on display.

Among the life-size figures were writers who count amongst Del Toro's favorites and influences, including (in totally expected fashion) Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. There were also cases displaying the writings and books of Lord Dunsany, Charles Dickens, Andrew Lang, and many others. The case featuring Dickens also contained an assortment of spirit photographs from the mid-19th century, which proved to be one of the more unnerving displays for me, not so much for the supposed spirits contained in the photos but because they were deathbed images of real people.

Of course, Famous Monsters of Filmland and the other Warren Publications played a role in the exhibit. I was a little upset by the width of the box frame surrounding the issues because, in combination with the lighting from above, it served to create shadows on the top row of the comics and magazines making snapping a picture rather annoying. Scattered throughout the collection, I also found some pretty cool artwork from the Warren mags done by Richard Corben.

Of the vast amount of artwork on display in the exhibit, I was more than a little skittish about shooting photographs of it. I know they were fully allowing photos, but for whatever reason – and believe me, I was also a tad bit shy about taking the other photos – I was weirding out a little about taking pictures of paintings. Eventually, I overcame my shyness, but I really wish that I could go back and see all of them again. There was a fantastic Dave Cooper painting over which my brother Mark and I – seeing it at separate moments during the morning – each went equally gaga. I took a quick snap so I could reference it later and look up information on it, but the result was not clear or good enough to post here. I really wish to go back to check it out again.

Other shelves and cases revealed a vast number of interesting images and models. One case which held special interest for me contained several cast statues by Ray Harryhausen from his original designs, such as Talos from Jason and the Argonauts and the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth. Most striking to me was a tableau showing Harryhausen at work filming a scene on his table in his garage. The same case also held the mask from Brian De Palma's The Phantom of the Paradise, and a truly strange marionette of Peter Cushing which went largely unexplained, but was fascinating nonetheless. Another case held various memorabilia from assorted vampire movies, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Del Toro's own Blade II, and Nosferatu.

Will I get back to the exhibit again before it closes on November 27? Time and money are against me, but I sure hope to find an opening. There was so much there, I really regretted it after I stepped out to get a snack with the rest of the family, because once I left, I could not get back into it. I could have easily done another hour in there, if not more. Short of getting a chance to work with Del Toro in his real Bleak House, it's the closest that I will get. Should the opportunity arise, I will go again.

RTJ

Mr. Mixtape-ptlk, Track #4: "The Monsters Hop" by Bert Convy (1958)

Bert Convy was more than just a square guy in the 1970s who hosted one of my then favorite game shows (Tattletales) and several others throughout the decade and into the '80s. Sure, Tattletales is where I learned his name and where I chiefly saw him as a kid, but I didn't know how important that stupid game show and its host would be to me.

Since my childhood, Bert Convy grew into (and continues to be) a big player in my canon, a personal cult figure along the lines of Jack Cassidy and Charles Nelson Reilly, for reasons sometimes tongue in cheek but not always. Any appearance by Convy in even the lowest level production was always a worthwhile stop for me. The Love Boat? Super Password? Charlie's Angels? Fantasy Island? Win, Lose or Draw? I watched them, sometimes because Bert was the host and sometimes because he was in a guest role. He didn't act in movies a whole lot, but he does make brief appearances in The Cannonball Run, Hero at Large, and Semi-Tough. His most notable film appearance for me, however, is a small role in Roger Corman's marvelous A Bucket of Blood (1959), where he acts alongside the great Dick Miller (playing his most famous character, Walter Paisley).

Bert won a Daytime Emmy as Outstanding Host for Tattletales in 1977, which was right around the time my strange obsession with the pearly toothed man wearing a tight, white guy 'fro was solidifying, especially after I watched him on a mid-summer replacement series on CBS called The Late Summer Early Fall Bert Convy Show. (I was a sucker for variety shows in those days.) It was hard for me not to find Bert Convy on the TV in the '70s and '80s, because the guy appeared in everything. Well, close to everything. With acting credits going back to the late '50s, besides the shows previously mentioned, Convy guested on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, McMillan and Wife, The Untouchables, Police Story, Banacek, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hawaii Five-O, Bewitched, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, Perry Mason, Night Gallery, Mission: Impossible, Love American Style, Murder She Wrote, Hotel, and The Partridge Family. The guy would be the definition of the word "ubiquitious," if that job wasn't already taken in the dictionary.

I saw Bert in fresh TV episodes and I saw him pop up in older shows in syndication. He even got a directing credit under his belt, helming what is presumably meant to be a wacky Air Force comedy, starring Chris Lemmon, titled Weekend Warriors in 1986. (I must admit that I have not, as of this writing, seen that movie, but it is on my list.) When Bert wasn't acting or hosting, he would even appear on other game shows like Match Game and What's My Line?, the two game shows that rule my world. So tied was he to the world of game shows, that Convy even played himself as a Mystery Guest in a game show sketch hosted by Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live in 1980.

Convy's last television role was as himself (appropriately) in the wedding episode of It's Garry Shandling's Show! in 1990, where Garry's character (also himself) nearly marries his girlfriend Phoebe (played by Jessica Harper) a couple of times, but circumstances keep interfering. After the hotel where they plan to get hitched burns down mysteriously, the network steps in and offers to build an exact replica of the hotel premises on the set of an all-star variety show (supposedly starring, amongst others – but not really – Scott Baio, Dr. Haing S. Ngor, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans). Tai Babilonia, Randy Gardner, Connie Stevens, and Ned Beatty do show up as themselves, Bert Convy is the host, and the director (on screen) is none other than Charles Nelson Reilly. And in the middle of everything, everyone breaks into a ridiculous musical number. After Garry and Phoebe run out on the second ceremony, their friends gather in Garry's home to console them. One friend says, "I had looked forward to this day for all of my life!" and Garry's buddy Leonard Smith (played by Paul Willson, Paul from Cheers) says, "Me, too! I never met Bert Convy!"

Convy died the next year of a brain tumor, but I have never stopped my strange worship of the man. He became my standard set answer when people asked me a question such as "Who did that?" or "Who said [such and such a quote]?" Some of my friends like to purposefully answer wrongly, "Jesus" in the same way, and I found out quick that the problem with answering "Bert Convy" in that manner is that you usually don't then have to spend five minutes reminded everyone in the room who Jesus was. Such is the way of a Bert Convy fan.

To this day, I delight in running into a Convy appearance. And he seems to be an unending source of odd trivia as well, thanks to his wide array of talents. Even in researching this piece, I read a couple of bits about the man that I did not know, such as that he was drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies as a teenager and played two years of minor league ball. (You can see his stats by clicking here.) He also originated the Broadway roles of Perchik, the revolutionary scholar who marries Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof, and Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret.

But about a dozen years ago or so, and most joyously surprising to me, I found out this about the man when I was going through a random collection of older songs that I had obtained: Bert Convy was also a square guy from the 1950s that sang this ode to a crew of scary monsters holding one of those parties that monsters seemed to really enjoy holding back in those days:

THE MONSTERS HOP

(Bert Convy-Robert E. Emenegger) Contender 1314 CT-510, 1958

I heard strange noises comin’ from a house on the hill,
So I crept up to the window and looked over the sill.
My heart almost stopped, I nearly died of fright ---
By the dim candlelight, I saw the strangest sight!

[Chorus]
There was Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman too,
Dancin' with some zombies, what a ghastly crew!
The ol' ugly vampire was doin’ the bop,
And everything was rockin’ at the monsters hop!

The bats were flyin’ and the room was full!
The crazy witch doctor was dancin’ with a ghoul!
The organ was playin’, but no-one was there,
And the headless horseman was combin’ his hair!

[Chorus]
There was Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman too,
Dancin' with some zombies, what a ghastly crew!
The ol' ugly vampire was doin’ the bop,

And everything was rockin’ at the monsters hop!

I can't forget that empty house upon the hill
The night I saw the monsters dancin’… ooooh, what a thrill!
The wind did howl, the night was black;
I nearly lost my mind... I'm never ever going back!

[Chorus]
There was Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman too,
Dancin' with some zombies, what a ghastly crew!
The ol' ugly vampire was doin’ the bop,

And everything was rockin’ at the monsters hop!

The song was co-written by Convy, and he and songwriting partner Robert Emenegger also did the song on the flip-side, The Gorilla, which itself has a neat tie-in to the sci-fi genre, by having the Purple People Eater, who was popular from Sheb Wooley's #1 hit song of the same name from earlier in 1958, make a cameo appearance at the end of the Convy song:

The Gorilla is a much, much weirder song than the relatively more straightforward The Monsters Hop. That is, if you don't think that monsters holding parties in song after song is all that weird. The Monsters Hop predates Bobby "Boris" Pickett's phenomenal Monster Mash by about four years, but don't think that good ol' Bert was at the start of a trend. There were already several songs about monster parties floating around by 1958-1959, including Screamin' Ball (at Dracula Hall) by the Duponts, Mad House Jump by the Daylighters (which also name-checks the Purple People Eater), and At the House of Frankenstein by Big Bee Kornegay, just to name three. Monster Mash was certainly at the zenith of the subgenre (or the nadir, depending on your taste, but Mash is in my Top Song list of all time).

Of the Convy songs, I definitely prefer The Monsters Hop over The Gorilla (a little harried, that one). His character does sound a bit like he has been through the wringer after seeing what he has encountered. Though you might think, "That party sounds like a great time!" and that Convy is a real pussy for being afraid of it, do keep in mind the song is from a different time, almost sixty years ago. The notion is that while the monsters are having a dance party, which might seem cute and even quaint today, monsters are still freakin' monsters! They are supposed to be scary, and this song (and its narrator) doesn't forget that. While Frankie might not do you in right away, Dracula, Wolfman, and those zombies would probably feast on you right away.

Oh, just one more thing, which I never knew until today... Bert Convy had a Top Ten hit earlier in the decade, in 1955, with his vocal group, The Cheers, that was one of the very first songs to mention motorcycle gangs, Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots. One of the earliest hits by the ultra-famous songwriting team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, it was also one of the earliest in the "teen death tragedy" song genre. I knew the song and even own a copy of it on a couple of different collections. I just never realized that one of the voices I was hearing was Bert Convy, but I sure could make him out when I listened to it again.

Man, just like monster dance parties that pop up out of nowhere, Bert Convy, 25 years after his death, just keeps on surprising me.

RTJ