the other other obsession

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In addition to the Big Little Book obsession, I’m also hooked on lobby cards, so a brief tour of the Paintshop walls (pardon the comics and dog ass): Mexican cards for THE RETURN OF THE FLY and DIARY OF A MADMAN (what LC collection is complete without Vincent Price?) and an Italian poster for one of the best, BLACULA.

Joining requisite DICK TRACY lobby cards (from my favorite of the films. 1945’s DICK TRACY, starring my favorite on-screen Tracy, Morgan Conway) and the second Republic serial, DICK TRACY RETURNS is a lobby card from a 1943 Mexico City screening of my favorite movie serial / chapterplay, MYSTERIOUS DR. SATAN

The two comics PICTURES are the two linchpins of my 30+-year comics nuttery – GREEN HORNET No.3 being the first comic I ever bought and O’Neil / Kaluta THE SHADOW No.1 being the first issue of one of my favorite runs of all time.

PHANTOM ‘43 is from a 1955 re-release “IN FLAMING TECHNICOLOR!” (quite possibly the best description ever) and I’ve never actually seen THE SON OF DR. JEKYLL, but I imagine he’s up to no good. Also: ALF. Because ALF.

on Carradine’s Dracula

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(Recording this now because I've had the thought in my head for at least a year and a half and probably longer than that and kept telling myself that I'd write something more in depth about it or use it as a follow-up interview question but that probably won't happen so):

John Carradine is my favorite of the Universal Draculas (and the closest to Bram Stoker's original) and I wish he'd had a chance to play the role in better films than HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN / HOUSE OF DRACULA – not that those entries aren't lots of fun, the MCU before Marvel as we know it ever existed – but I'm talking about a DRACULA '31 (though my opinion of that film – with the exception of Dwight Frye's Renfield – and of Lugosi's Dracula degrades with each rewatch; I FAR prefer the Spanish version) or level of import.

John Carradine entrances Martha O'Driscoll in HOUSE OF DRACULA

There's a coldness to Carradine's portrayal matched only by Christopher Lee's first appearances in HORROR OF DRACULA (before he unleashed the feral sex-bomb Hammer Dracula that we all know and love): can't help but wonder what Carradine would have done with the role had he played Alucard / Dracula in Robert Siodmak's SON OF DRACULA instead of the woefully miscast (and clearly aware of it) Lon Jr. – can't think of a film Carradine's incarnation would have been more suited for than the Southern Gothic / noir curiosity that is SON OF – or in the announced-but-never-made follow-up to HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, WOLF MAN VS. DRACULA that was, purportedly, to feature Lon Jr. in both roles before it became a Lugosi return before morphing entirely into its final form as HOUSE OF DRACULA.

Anyhow, thought duly recorded; if nothing else, I got to write the phrase “feral sex-bomb” so I’ve got that going for me.