Children of certain generations drooled over the pages of advertisements
for monster-related merchandise in the back pages of the magazine Famous
Monsters of Filmland. Since a great percentage of the magazine's profit
came from these ads, one can assume many of said items were actually
purchased, although only a few people might actually admit to having been
a customer. This album was one of several phonograph records available
by mail order from Famous Monsters, the others including the soundtracks
to War of the Worlds and Psycho. Memories dimmed by the haze of monster
magazine collections slowly corroding do insist that this Famous Monsters
Speak was available in the '60s as well, and when the magazine's franchise
was picked up again in the '90s, a compact-disc version of the same
recording was once again for sale. So what is this, anyway? It isn't
a complete rip-off, as official permission must have been granted by
Universal studios to use the copyrighted images of Frankestein and Dracula.
And, as was par for the course anytime after the '40s, the appearance of
just one of these monsters wasn't enough for the salivating monster lover,
and so there are cameos from The Creature From the Black Lagoon, sometimes
known as The Creature or Blacky Lagoon; The Wolfman; and the slow-moving
Mummy. This is not one of the many fine recordings made by actors
associated with vintage horror films, such as Boris Karloff, Vincent Price,
or Basil Rathbone, which were also distributed through Famous Monsters and
certainly represented the most cultured material available from their mail
order department. Gabriel Dell, a character actor mostly known for doing
voices in Huckleberry Hound-era cartoons, takes on the whole fiendish cast
of characters and does an admirable job, aided by a whole series of sound
effects that border on the chintzy, as they should. The recording is
supposed to be the result of a live press conference in which Dr. Victor
Frankenstein -- the real Frankenstein, as every monster lover worth their
fangs knows the dude with the bolts in his neck is really named The Monster -
announces to the entire world that the story of his monster is actually true.
Furthermore, rare recordings actually exist of the monster speaking, which
fans of the Universal films will remember he only really did in the classic
Bride of Frankenstein. In that film, the monster really didn't have much to
say, either, although in his choice of the words "smoke," "friend," "food,"
and "wine" he did manage to nail just about all the important words in
the English language. On this album, the monster is much more chatty,
groaning and pontificating about his ordeals in life as if he was a film
noir character strapped to an operating table. Dell's vampire won't make
anyone forget Bela Lugosi, but for the purposes of this production he does
perfectly alright, even injecting a bit of menace into the grooves. What
does a reviewer compare an album such as this to, anyway? It is
simultaneously horrible but more interesting to listen to than anything
recorded by the Grateful Dead, who are mentioned here because the band's
name definitely reflects the monster's point of view, in the end.
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