All I know is, the stuff they broadcast in the week leading up to their premiere scared the shit out of me. Lots of odd graphics and narration about an impending invasion. I remember seeing that for the first time and running outside to check the skies, followed by arming myself with any rusty implement I could find in the abandoned shed that looked like it might be able to pierce an alien hide. I wonder how many young children that broadcast inspired to equip themselves with stuff that would void their tetanus shots and stand around in their yards waiting for the saucers to land and discharge their monstrous crew to do battle with an army of hyper-imaginative elementary school children while their parents were at work. Mom and Dad would come home to find their front yards littered with alien carcasses, but would doubtless walk into their respective houses oblivious to the extraterrestrial carnage. Being saddled with the defense of your home planet when you can’t reach the pedals in a real car is quite a challenge, let me tell you.

Alien invaders aside, those were the glory days when I’d hope for my folks to go on a week-long motorcycle trip so I could stay with my grandparents and watch stuff like Killdozer, promising that my parents really wouldn’t mind, while eating a plate of my grandma’s awesome fried potatoes. My one-and-only movie-related memory of my grandpa Clark, who died of cancer several years ago, is of watching White Buffalo. He was interested because of Charles Bronson, I was interested because a) it was a movie about a killer albino buffalo, and b) I was watching a movie with my grandpa, who rarely watched anything but college basketball.

I remember going over to the grandfolks’ place weekend nights to watch stuff like Gargoyles and Critters 3, and having to argue to continue watching Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (which I owned on VHS at that point, but who’s gonna complain about an extra viewing of Godzilla? No friend of mine, that’s who) because it was scaring my little cousin. Yes, my grandparents were part of the beginnings of my b-movie fandom, along with Sandy Bruesewitz. Thanks for “Dr. Who”, Sandy.

One night, I caught part of tonight’s movie. The scene where Larry Talbot is hiding from the villagers in an ice cave, and uncovers Frankenstein’s monster hibernating in the ice, to be exact. I remember it differently, and perhaps a little better-looking seen through the eyes of one whose age hadn’t yet hit double digits, but revisiting this flick a decade and a half later is still an enjoyable trip in the wayback machine.

A couple of grave robbers break into the tomb of Larry Talbot, planning to steal the money he was buried with. When they remove the wolfsbane from his tomb, he turns out to be quite the lively corpse, killing both of them and winding up in a German hospital. Assuming he’s crazy, they put him in a straight jacket, but he chews his way out if it and escapes to look for Maleva, the gypsy woman from the original Wolf Man, who may be able to help him. She leads him to the village of an old friend of hers…Victor Von Frankenstein! We’re on a collision course with wackiness!

Larry wolfs out one night and gets chased by some villagers into an ice cave in the mountains. He evades being lynched, and discovers the frozen body of Frankenstein’s monster. Breaking the monster out of its ice prison, he makes it lead him into the ruins of Castle Frankenstein and show him Frankenstein’s files on the scientific workings of life and death. Believing this will finally rid him of his curse, he approaches Frankenstein’s daughter to buy the ruins from her.

The whole scheme snowballs when Larry’s doctor shows up, at first wanting to help. Of course, like any good scientist, he becomes almost instantly corrupted by the power at his hands when he realizes Frankenstein’s machinery is still active. Pretending to help Larry by using the machinery to drain his life force, he instead brings the monster back to full power and it’s time for the first kaiju smackdown in film history.

As far as kaiju smackdowns go, while this one is a landmark historically, it’s not much to look at. The rest of the film is better than the fight, which is only a minute or two long and mostly consists of the Wolfman climbing something so he can tackle the monster from the top rope, and the monster catches him and tosses him to the ground. Lather, snarl, rinse, repeat. As uninspired as the fight is, though, it did pave the way for Godzilla vs. everyone he ever versused and a whole slew of other rubber monster beatdown extravaganzas.

Poor Bela Lugosi. After turning down the role of the monster in the original Frankenstein, he took on the makeup in this flick because he needed some goulash money. Now, you’d never know it because the scenes explaining it in the flick were cut, but the monster is supposed to be blind because Ygor’s brain was stuck in his cranium at the end of Ghost of Frankenstein (my favorite of the Frankenstein movies because of Bela’s stellar performance as Ygor). Not only did he have to swallow his pride and play a role he originally slammed, but the scenes explaining that the monster is blind were cut out. His lumbering, arms-outstretched performance, intending to convey blindness, therefore just became silly and started the stereotype Frankenstein monster walk.

Curt Siodmak, the original guru of monster mayhem, being Jewish, didn’t feel too keen about setting the flick in Germany considering the anti-Semitic atmosphere brewing there at the time, so he re-set the location of Frankenstein’s castle as Vasaria, which translates into English as something like “water place”. One would have to assume this was an intentional in-joke, considering at the end of the movie the town drunk saves the day by blowing up the dam above Castle Frankenstein and drowning the monster and Talbot.

It’s not nearly as good as either of the series that spawned it, but its place in horror history is undeniable. Have yourself an old-school black-and-white horror marathon this year for Halloween, and add Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man to your roster. I think you’ll be glad you did.