The Hilarious House of Frightenstein

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein

Title card for the show
Created by Ted Barris, Ross Perigoe
Starring Billy Van
Fishka Rais
Guy Big
Mitch Markowitz
Vincent Price
Julius Sumner Miller
Theme music composer Harry Breuer, Gary Carol and Pat Prilly
Opening theme "March of the Martians"
Country of origin Canada
No. of episodes 130
Production
Producer(s) Rafael "Riff" Markowitz
Camera setup Single camera
Running time ~48 minutes
Release
Original network CHCH-TV
Original release 1971

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was a Canadian children's television series produced by Hamilton, Ontario's independent station CHCH-TV in 1971.[1] It was syndicated to television stations across Canada and the United States and occasionally still appears in some television markets. In Canada, the series has not aired for several years.

A quirky sketch comedy series that included some educational content among the humour, the show's cast included Billy Van, Fishka Rais, Guy Big, Mitch Markowitz, Vincent Price, and Julius Sumner Miller. Van played most of the characters on the show.

All 130 episodes were made in a nine-month span starting in 1971; the scenes with Price and Miller were all filmed within one summer.

Origins

The production started with Riff Markowitz envisioning the concept and then inviting a room full of creative friends to a spaghetti and champagne 'brainstorming' dinner party in his double suite at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto. Markowitz directed the brainstorming session while his assistant Roger John Greco made notes of everything said.

CHCH had broadcast two other Markowitz shows: The Randy Dandy Show for children, starring Rafael Markowitz as Randy Dandy, who sold soda pop and potato chips on the side; and The Ed Allen Show, an exercise program. CHCH approved the production of Frightenstein to take advantage of the station's new ability to reach into the Toronto market for advertising money.

Randy Dandy's soda pop venture was later taken up by the Count when he promoted Dracola from the castle to raise money for his Brucie project.

Sid Biby led the station at this time. The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was one of the most ambitious shows attempted by Canadian producers during this era.

Markowitz later began production of an animated cartoon version of the show with animator Al Guest that never got to air.

Horror icon Vincent Price starred in introductions for the show's various segments. Price was attracted to the project because he wanted to do something for kids. Price filmed all of his segments (around 400) in four days for a fee of $13,000.[2]

Theme song

The opening and closing credits were accompanied by a musical composition played entirely on a Moog synthesizer and written by Harry Breuer, Gary Carol, Jean Jacques Perrey and Pat Prilly. Its title is "March of the Martians". The original recording can be found on an out-of-print Pickwick vinyl album called The Happy Moog.

Characters

The chief character, Count Frightenstein (Van), was the thirteenth son of Count Dracula and was exiled to Castle Frightenstein in Frankenstone, Canada for failing to revive Brucie J. Monster, a Frankenstein-like monster. Assisted by Igor (Rais), an overweight incompetent, and a three-foot-tall mini-Count (Big), each episode followed the Count's efforts to revive Brucie and featured comedy sketches. 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. Price also did introductions for segments within the show.

Fishka Rais, who played the character Igor was an accomplished jazz singer from South Africa. Brucie, though addressed as a character in the series, was a mannequin made up to look like the Universal Monsters version of the Frankenstein monster.

Other characters on the show included the following. All were played by Billy Van unless noted.

The psychedelic background was 'discovered' by the CHCH crew who revealed it to Markowitz, who put it in the show. The effect was video feedback produced by pointing the studio video camera at a studio video monitor. Markowitz added the blue screen and another feedback camera to create the layered effect.
When Julius Sumner Miller arrived from California at Toronto's Malton Airport to begin the drive to CHCH studios in Hamilton, he refused to ride with Markowitz in the Cadillac limo in favour of riding with his science equipment in a station wagon driven by Markowitz's assistant John Greco. The two cars left the airport together but the station wagon was soon separated from the limo and Sumner Miller was now headed for London, Ontario rather than Hamilton. It was early summer and Sumner Miller had a short-sleeve shirt on coming from California. Eventually his driver realized his error and headed south toward Hamilton by farm roads making Sumner Miller nervous. Sumner Miller was more upset when he was driven into a freak snow storm. Eventually they arrived at CHCH safely in Hamilton.

Puppets (played by Joe Torbay) included:

Other minor or interstitial characters:

The Gorilla was sometimes played by Paul Shultz who also worked in the prop department.

DVD releases

On October 18, 2005, Empire pictures released a single DVD featuring a handful of half-hour US-syndicated episodes. The most significant change for these episodes as broadcast (apart from the length) was the addition of a laugh track.

On October 17, 2006, Alliance Atlantis Home Video in Canada released a three-disc box set of 13 full-length episodes, with restored Wolfman segments. The shows are not in chronological order, as only episodes that had thus far obtained music clearances for the Wolfman dance segments were included. The Wolfman theme, Sly & the Family Stone's "I Want To Take You Higher," had not yet been cleared, so the opening was altered with new music by the Tijuana Bibles from Toronto, and Billy Van's voice was redubbed by another Toronto voice actor, as Van himself had died in 2003. For recent airings in Canada on the cable networks Drive-In Classics and Space, the main Frightenstein theme is also a re-recording, because of licensing restrictions by Morning Music, Ltd.

Critical Mass Releasing Inc. of Toronto released the series in 2006 for broadcast on CHUM Television stations.

A second set of nine episodes was released by Critical Mass in late 2008.

Memorable quotes

In other media

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was referenced in the first episode of the Ed the Sock program This Movie Sucks!, which is another program produced and broadcast by CHCH. In the episode the hosts refer to them being in a studio that has produced many classic television shows, and Ed comments that they have the coffee maker from The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, along with the original coffee.

References

  1. "CH TV Hamilton History". Archived from the original on 2006-01-29. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
  2. Perkins, Will (October 24, 2013). "How Horror Legend Vincent Price Helped a Tiny Canadian TV Show Become a Cult Hit". Yahoo! Canada News. Retrieved Oct 24, 2013.

External links

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