The Monkees in Monstrous Peril #2: "The Monstrous Monkee Mash" (1968)

The Monkees "The Monstrous Monkee Mash" (January 22, 1968)
Dir.: James Frawley

Mike: "I gotta hand you one thing, Pete."
Peter: "What's that?"
Mike: "You've got a great respect for fear."
Peter: "You're right. It scares me to death."
Mike: "What?"
Peter: "Fear does."
Mike: [turns and sighs deeply]

The Monkees faced off against monsters a few times during their two-season run on the air, but never so many different creatures at one time than in The Monstrous Monkee Mash, the 50th episode of the series. I suppose you could say this was their version of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, with a plot involving a Dracula-type of vampire not only trying to turn brainless Peter into the new Frankenstein's Monster (much like Lou's lack of wits made him a perfect candidate for Bela Lugosi and Lenore Aubert's evil machinations in the older film), but also Davy into a new Dracula and Micky into a Wolf Man. But will Mike (the smart one) settle for just being a smelly mummy?

The Monstrous Monkee Mash was directed by TV veteran James Frawley, who not only helmed 32 of the 58 episodes of The Monkees series overall, but also won a Primetime Emmy for directing the very first episode of the show (Royal Flush). Coming so late in the series run, the episode seems less concerned with selling the Monkees' music (there is only one song featured in the usual music video breaks), which in this case is just fine as it allows for more extremely ridiculous hijinks involving the quartet of monsters driving our heroes crazy.

Like many Monkees stories, The Monstrous Monkee Mash wastes no time in diving right into the action. We see an exterior shot of a castle on a cliff overlooking a stormy sea at night, and then inside we meet a very flustered Davy Jones, who has gotten more out of his date that evening than even he expected. He walks into the room alongside a voluptuous, black-clad woman named Lorelei (Arlene Martel, who played Spock's would-be bride T'Pring in Amok Time), and Davy says, "Gee, Lorelei, when you said you lived by the water, I didn't think you meant a swamp!" He laughs nervously, and when he tries to hang his umbrella on a suit of armor nearby and it takes a swing at him with an axe, he gets even more nervous. Next to the armor is what looks like a painting, but is quite clearly just an open frame hanging in mid-air, and standing inside it of it is a man with a bluish face wearing a Count Dracula-style cape (Ron Masak). When Davy asks about the painting, Lorelei tells him it is her uncle, and he asks, "Oh, really? How long was he dead when he posed for that painting." The man in the painting turns to Davy and gives him a raspberry salute with his tongue.

He clicks a switch on a novelty lamp that has a bat sitting on its top, and we hear the bat say, "I vant to drink your blood!" Lorelei wants to give Davy a present, but he is reluctant. She throws her arms around his neck and puts a necklace over his head and then kisses him. Hypnotized, he can only remark "What a kiss! I've never felt this way before!" She replies haughtily, "You fool! It was not my kiss! It was the magic necklace!" The figure from the painting steps forward, looks their prize over, and says that even though Davy is a little short (they always have to get the short jokes in on Davy, but, yeah, he was pretty small at 5'3"), he will make the perfect specimen to become... DRACULA REBORN! He laughs wickedly as the opening music sequence with the familiar Monkees theme and video style hijinks plays.

At the Monkees' pad (i.e., apartment or home, for you youngsters), Micky awakens with a start as a figure seems to be creeping through the darkness. It is only Peter, and Micky begs him not to scare him like that. Mike wanders in angrily and tells them to quit scaring each other and to turn on the light. Of course, when he does, all three of them scare each other. They start to worry that Davy hasn't come home from his date yet, but Mike says that Davy gave him a telephone number they can call. (The non-committal way that Mike dials the phone is hilarious.) The voice on the other end of the phone is Count Batula (Masak) laughing maniacally and nothing more. Without hesitation, Mike says, "I think Davy's in trouble. We'd better go help him." The other two agree and then go hide their heads under blankets. Mike turns to the camera and says, "And once again, courageous American youth leaps into the fore... or five."

Back at the castle, Batula puts Davy through vampire training, making him drink tomato juice first to get used to the color, and giving him a special cape so he can fly (he crashes into a nearby wall). The Monkees arrive and are not happy in the least about being invited into the spooky castle. Davy has been chained in the dungeon where he finds he is roommates with a Wolf Man. They bond quickly. The Monkees are shown reacting in wild ways to all of the scary stuff in the living room (the suit of armor, the bat lamp), and there is a really neat insert where Micky is asked to do another take on his scream from an offscreen voice which is most likely Frawley the director. This is the sort of thing, alongside the rapid-fire cutting, that kept this series, as silly as it seems in retrospect, extremely refreshing and far removed from the stale confines of much TV of its era.

As I alluded to earlier, Batula soon figures out that Peter does have a brain in his head and will therefore be ideal to serve as his new Frankenstein Monster. When the lamp does its "I vant to drink your blood" line, Peter tells it "That's not a nice thing to say," so the lamp says "I vant to sip your blood" instead, and Peter replies, "Much better." When the boys, as a group, finally figure out that they are at the mercy of vampires, Peter says, "What a time to be caught without a turtleneck."

Davy convinces the Wolf Man he is getting a rotten deal from his hosts, and acts as his agent to get the Wolf Man a "better percentage of the profits, cookouts on the weekends, and... he wants to play his own music." (Surely inside references on a couple of those items.) Lorelei confronts Peter all alone, and he tries to leave. When she asks why, he says, "It's just that I finished reading all these books." "My goodness," she replies with mock surprise, "All 600 wall-yumes?" Lorelei pulls the same kissing/necklace stunt on Peter (with basically the same lines) as she did on Davy, making him her slave. The Wolf Man tries to carry Peter off for his own, but Batula uses his magical power on the Wolf Man: a string of Frankfurters.

Mike and Micky explore the castle and run into a mummy, whom they chide for being smelly and filthy, making the monster stomp off in shame. They realize Peter is gone by stating, "He's gone!" which is a standard catchphrase used in a great many Monkee episodes. They find a secret door and Mike disappears, and Micky finds himself face to face with the Wolf Man. "You'd oughta get a haircut," Micky tells him, "or they won't let you in Disneyland!" Micky runs from the werewolf but is found by Lorelei. For the third time, we get the kissing/necklace bit, and when Micky replies with the same response, Lorelei tells him to shut up in disgust. Mike finds himself on his own and opens a sarcophagus, revealing the mummy once more. He runs away and happens upon Batula and Lorelei making their plans. Mike tries to make notes, but Batula gets confused, so Mike has to ask him for an eraser. Batula gives him one, but they don't even notice him.

In the dungeon, Davy and Micky are chained to the wall, and they both decide to have one of their fantasy sequences to find out what it might be like to be an actual monster. The two of them suddenly show up as Dracula and the Wolf Man. Then Batula steps in and they order him out of their fantasy sequence, but Batula tells them to try to take off their monster makeup. It won't come off, and we see the camera and director's chair as they tell the crew to cut the fantasy. But Batula tells them it is no fantasy but reality, and they are under his power. My favorite line of the episode happens as Batula and his fiends push Peter and the monster into the moratorium to perform the operation. With great joy (and speed of tongue), Batula announces, "Hurry! Here we are in my beautiful moratorium in my beautiful castle in the dungeon with a beautiful fake backdrop... ready to start!" (I love how this episode keeps breaking the fourth wall over and over again. It is something the Monkees did in most episodes to a degree, but this one has some really great turns at it.)

Mike has been hiding in the sarcophagus with the mummy, and has convinced the creature to hand over its wrapping so that Mike can disguise himself. When he comes out of the sarcophagus, we see the mummy inside wearing long red underwear. Batula is ready to start the operation, but he mistakes a bone chisel for a scalpel. When he asks what a bone chisel is used for, Mike says, "It's used to split!" and then he takes off with whom he believes to be Peter on the gurney. Mike frees Davy and Micky, still in their monster makeup, from the dungeon, but Batula uses his mind control to have them attack Mike. Mike tries to wake up Peter on the gurney, but it turns out to be the actual Frankenstein Monster, and Peter turns out to be back with Batula, who turns on the energizer switch to activate the monster.

With just a couple of minutes left in the episode, we finally get a musical sequence, built around the song Goin' Down. The fast-paced tune, punctuated with horns and featuring scat-style singing from Micky, accompanies a series of gags involving the two wolfmen competing over a fire hydrant, Mike giving Batula an exploding cigar, Davy's height (or lack of it) coming in handy when being attacked by a taller, stiff-armed Frankenstein Monster, Mike messing around with the monster's electrodes, Batula and Davy doing a riff on the vaudeville mirror routine (directly referencing the Groucho version from Duck Soup), and a dance-off between Lorelei, the suit of armor, and the Frankenstein Monster.

The Monkees, of course, escape during all of this madness. At the end, they are seen standing in the living room of the castle, and to show once more the connection of this episode to Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein, there is a closing confrontation with the Invisible Man as there is in the film. Or is there? A book floats in midair in front of them, but Mike pulls out a pair of scissors and cuts a wire to show that it is nothing more than special effects. "Tinsel and fabric!" says Micky in a mock W.C. Fields voice and we get the closing credits with the Monkees theme again.

It's as giddy a frolic as the first episode in the series, and you get the idea these guys could have continued on for more seasons if the whole Monkees franchise wasn't coming apart at the seams behind the curtain. The boys were already fighting for more control of their image and music, and the series would not go past the second season. Later in the year, a surreal (in the truest sense of the word) feature film called Head would be released, directed by show creator Bob Rafelson and co-written by Jack Nicholson (!) in which the Monkees would distort and mock their squeaky clean TV personas. The film would be a flop at the box office (but naturally became a cult classic) and their heyday at the top of the music charts was all but over. Peter would leave the group by the time their seventh album, Instant Replay, was released early in 1969, and two albums later, their ninth album, Changes, only featured Davy and Micky, with Mike Nesmith moving on to a successful solo career.

I am a huge fan of the Monkees music, but because of my early exposure to the TV series, I think of them equally as a comedy team as I do as a musical group. Their wacky skits and antics were entirely formative to my way of seeing the world, and perhaps, in a detrimental fashion, affected how I dealt with the "normals" I have encountered throughout my life. I have never been able to take even the most gut-wrenching situation entirely seriously, and as much as I like to point to the Marx Brothers as the progenitors of this attitude in my being, I have to give equal credit – as others in my life would be sure to render equal blame – to the "don't give two shits" positioning of the Monkees on their TV show.

Of course, we are now in 2016, with a new Monkees album, Good Times! (featuring all three living members), has made it to the Top 20 on the Billboard album chart (Rolling Stone even gave it 3½ stars). They are also on tour, though Nesmith only makes sporadic appearances (as he has for years). But the Monkees, far beyond what anyone thought they would, are still with us. The show is still in syndication here and there, especially with the big revival in cable channels that specialize in "rerun" television. They are even still on DVD and available online. But while they got big boosts from series revivals on MTV in the '80s and '90s, I think The Monkees TV series has somewhat fallen between the cracks since then. And to really proclaim love for the Monkees, you have to love The Monkees TV series. It's part of the whole package. Check it out if you have never seen it. It's a delight.

RTJ

*****

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

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 2

Of the Christopher Lee films I have seen to this point, the one area in which I hardly need delve are his most famous and popular roles. It has been decades since I first saw his Hammer Draculas and his turn as Frankenstein’s Monster, his villainous appearances in Bond and Three Musketeers films, and his Fu Manchu series countless times, and every role is etched in my memory. His later appearances in major modern epic series (LOTR, Star Wars) are also to be counted in this group, even if I hold little fondness for the last three Star Wars entries. I have also seen many of his supporting roles in films such as Serial (1980, of which I am still fond), a variety of turns alongside his old chum Peter Cushing in non-Hammer horror flicks, and his odd cameo in The Magic Christian (as a vampire waiter on an ocean liner). 

The point is that I am already well-versed in his major roles. In reviewing his oeuvre over the past couple of weeks and recalling his movies that I have actually seen to this point, there have been few thus far (except for some of the horror ones and The Magic Christian, which is certainly memorable but actually not very good) that I would describe as resting near even the lower rungs of the higher echelon of filmmaking.

But, as I make my way through his unseen flicks, I am discovering that there are plenty of near misses. As I recounted the other day, Hannie Caulder turned out to be a pretty good revenge western, if not great. Then I ran into three films which are ever so close to being good solid films, but just narrowly miss the mark for me. I am fairly certain that if I saw any of these three as a teenager or young adult, they would probably rank higher up in my memory, but I only just saw them in the past week. All three warrant follow-up viewings, and I will leave it to those moments to determine whether they move up or down in my rankings. So while I currently have assigned all three my middle of the road “5” rating, they were all worthy of my time and eventual, almost assured revisitation.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967) [aka The Snake Pit and the Pendulum; Torture Chamber; Castle of the Walking Dead; Blood of the Virgins; The Blood Demon; and many, many more…]

Dir: Harald Reinl

TC4P Rating: 5

One of the first hurdles for any horror film is evoking and maintaining a haunting atmosphere. This film has atmosphere in spades, as long as the soundtrack doesn’t emit a single musical note. The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism is set in the same type of fairytale, Germanic burg as many of the more famous Hammer selections like Frankenstein Created Woman, and like those films, the fairytale backdrop is betrayed by a lurid series of events that lead to even more chaos. 

Christopher Lee plays Count Regula (which is what I would think Dracula would be if he devoured more fiber), and he is drawn and quartered in the beginning of the film for draining the blood from twelve virgins to give him immortality. (He fails because he had not gotten to the 13th victim.) He naturally swears vengeance before his body parts are ripped asunder, and sure enough, decades later, the script gives him the chance. Based partly on Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum (at least, the sections involving both a pit and a pendulum), Torture Chamber has a wonderfully creepy middle section where the protagonists (including post-Weissmuller Tarzan, Lex Barker) travel through a dark forest with bodies and limbs hanging from the trees all around them. All of the later scenes of Lee torturing his foes are also memorably committed to film, and I certainly enjoyed how much fun the film seemed to be having with its absolute depravity. 

In fact, my one and only real gripe with the film is the soundtrack, which for much of the running time seems too comic and buoyant for the storyline. However, it does have moments where it matches appropriately, so my initial statement regarding the emittance of a single note was merely to provoke. In fact, I quite enjoy the score all the way through, even the absurd parts. I just feel that at certain moments in the film, the score doesn't seem to belong. Overall, though, this is a fine, new addition to my regular Halloween viewing list, goofy and inconsistent music regardless. 

The Bloody Judge (1970) [aka Night of the Blood Monster; Trial of the Witches; and many more...]

Dir: Jesús Franco

TC4P Rating: 5

I not only think that the British tradition of having wigs lodged atop the heads of their judges and lawyers is quaint and rather silly in these modern times (I will put on the brakes before calling it stupid, but.. yeah...), the thought of them actually makes me a bit physically ill. Much in the way that I used to be so repelled by early ‘70s fashion in films (even though I grew up in that time) that I couldn’t watch certain films without a feeling of nauseousness, the courtroom attire of England does the same thing to me when I see it in a movie or on TV. I even want to wretch at the very thought of it, and I really don’t know why. Which is precisely the reason I have always put off viewing The Bloody Judge for eons. Almost always available for me to view, I have never been able to get past the image of Christopher Lee topped off with one of those ridiculous wigs on his noggin, no matter how enjoyably maniacal he was likely to behave in the film.

Well, consider me wrong. I should have watched The Bloody Judge a long time ago. Not that it is any great shakes as a “normal" film, but as a gonzo piece of shock horror, this is a pretty lowdown and dirty but gorgeously shot flick with some nasty torture scenes and bountiful nudity throughout. What you don’t get is the loopiness and lack of narrative drive inherent in many of director Jesús “Jess" Franco’s soft-core “masterpieces” (I am rather fond of some of those loopier films, especially Vampyros Lesbos). 

But what you do get from the other Franco films is the lovely Maria Rohm, who also co-starred with Christopher Lee in other Franco epics, including Count Dracula (1970) and The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), as well as in several films directed by Jeremy Summers. It is no coincidence that the producer of all of these films, including The Bloody Judge, is her husband, the notorious Harry Alan Towers. Rohm certainly adds sensuality to a film that might otherwise just be unrelentingly grim. (This is my subtle way of saying she gets naked a lot and it distracts you happily from the torture bits.) Of course, I am joking… she doesn’t distract from the torture bits at all, since her biggest scene in the film is when she is locked in a cage and forced to lick the blood from a bound torture victim. I cringe in fear for any perv who actually gets his jollies from such a portrayal, but I will admit that the scene does add to the creeping effectiveness and overall griminess of the film.

Lee himself is solid as usual as the lead character, only loosely based on the real 17th century judge, George Jeffreys, who bullied his way through defendants, attorneys, and juries alike, and in this film’s version of the events surrounding the Bloody Assizes, dispatches accused witches to their doom without remorse. Of course, Jeffreys begins to grow worrisome over the chaos ensuing from his brutal courtroom tactics, and he begins to have nightmares of torture. That he will undoubtedly get his comeuppance is part of the fun of watching Lee in such a villainous role. 

It all depends on one's tolerance of tooth-yanking, hand-spiking, racking, digit-chopping, and beheadings, Don’t go looking for historical accuracy and try looking instead for pure psychotronic thrills, and you will definitely get something out of this.

Crypt of the Vampire (1964) [La cripta e l'incubo aka Terror in the Crypt; Crypt of Horror]

Dir: Camillo Mastrocinque

TC4P Rating: 5

If you have seen and loved Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1960) as I have and do, then this Spanish-Italian version of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella, Carmilla will likely pale in comparison to the more famous earlier film. But it is a worthwhile rendering of its own, even if most character names have been changed, some bad dubbing is to be endured, and the director more than once betrays his obvious influencing by Mario Bava (never a bad thing).

Christopher Lee gets a heroic role this time, albeit a tortured one, and as in villainous roles, he has enough talent and range to pull the part off just fine. As Count Karnstein, he has to do battle against the light lesbian leanings of a mysterious vampire who is leaving drained bodies in her wake. It could be his daughter, who may be the reincarnation of an ancestor rumored to have committed such crimes, or it could be her recent companion, who has instilled herself into the daily life of the castle. The black and white cinematography is routinely effective if not spectacular, the sets and darkness of the castle are nicely rendered, and the heavy breathing, haunted ladies look divine onscreen.

This is the one of the three of these films where I am closest to giving it a higher rating, if only because it is the least gratuitous of the trio. This is likely due to it coming from a less permissive time in cinema (and just a handful of years earlier), so it relies more on subtlety and suggestion. However, there is a grandly gruesome sequence involving a dog tugging on the foot of a hanged peddler with his hand severed. Yes, it is derivative of Bava, but when a witch is seen using that hand as a candelabra in the very next scene while she invokes a spell, then you will know the film is a keeper.

[Postscript: I have since watched both Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Crypt of the Vampire again, and while I am keeping Torture Chamber's rating at "5," I have shifted Crypt up to a "6," which is my general rating for "good."]