Patrick: What Hooked Me on Horror Movies
Back in the days before cable t.v., the local alternative to the main networks was UHF. In the Central/Southern NJ and Philly area there was UHF channel 48 that showed Abbott & Costello, Laurel & Hardy and Blondie movies on Sunday, and on Saturday mornings was Creature Double Feature.
My first hook into the classic Universal Monsters was Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein. It’s true; my first Frankenstein monster movie starred Glenn Strange as the creature, not Boris Karloff. But this movie hooked me enough to seek out the other Universal monster movies. But it was Creature Double Feature that turned me into a horror movie geek. The show had a ghoulish host and corny humor, like Elvira but w/o the boobs.
Saturday mornings found me in my mom’s room, intently watching her black & white television and seeing my first Hammer Horror movie (The Vampire Lovers);
my first Godzilla movie (it had Ghidorah in it);
my first “blaxploitation” movie (Blacula)
and movies that ran the gamut from bad (Dracula vs. Frankenstein – look it up, it’s awful. It was released in 1971) to classic Roger Corman movies and everything in between. The final nail in the coffin, so to speak, was a haunted house attraction at the Jersey Shore: Brigantine Castle. I never got to go because my parents wouldn’t take me, but their commercials ran all the time on channel 48. The commercials scared the bejesus out of me! Their old commercials can be found on YouTube and there are some websites dedicated Brigantine memories. That’s how I became hooked on all things horror. Seven years old (give or take a year), laying on my mother’s bed on Saturday mornings, closely watching her 13” black and white television..it was all introduced to me in a quiet town nestled in the hills of New Jersey.
