The Sunday Memory Drawer - Chills Up And Down My Spine

Regular readers will remember that I wrote this in previous Octobers.

I hate Halloween. 

Always have.

Always will.

I hated the notion of picking out a costume when I was a kid.   I hated dressed up for adult costume parties.  Thank goodness nobody throws those damn things anymore.   Or maybe they do and I'm just not invited.

I don't care. 

And I hate it even more now that I spent Halloween of 2015 on an emergency room gurney with a fractured kneecap.  Fun times. 

I guess I am just one rotting pumpkin. 

If you want to know all my horror stories about trick or treating and the like, do a search of some past Sunday Memory Drawers.  It's all there in blood curdling detail.

But, there is one part of the annual festivities that I enjoy.   It's the scary movies that turn up on TV.   That takes me back to Saturday nights long ago.

For Chiller Theater and you see the opening above.  Every Saturday night on WPIX, they would run one of them.   For a while, they were hosted by this guy. 

Zacherley (recently deceased himself) was this NY radio deejay who got an extra gig on the weekends, doing intros for some cheesy horror movie that might have played in the local drive-in circa 1955.  He'd welcome us all every Saturday night.

"Hello, boys and ghouls."

He was creepy as all hell but this pre-teen loved it all.  The problem in my house is that both TV sets, both my parents and my grandparents, were tuned to Lawrence Welk and his bubbles.  I'd have to wait patiently so I could flip some set over to Chiller Theater.  If I did that downstairs, my grandmother was no fan.

"Oh, this is too spooky for me.  I go to bed."

Even better.   That left me alone in my glory with the likes of Mothra, Gorgo, or the wife and/or daughter of some monster.  

For some mystical reason, one of my favorite Chiller Theater movies was this mess called "Frankenstein's Daughter" that was made for about six dollars in 1958.   You'll notice the name of John Ashley, who was the actor who played the hero in this piece.   Well, years later, when my writing partner and I had become friends with the late actress Deborah Walley, she happened to drop his name into the conversation since Ashley had been once married to her.   I immediately blurted out.

Frankenstein's Daughter!

It was a gut, knee-jerk reaction that got me one, make that two, quizzical looks at the luncheon table.  The actor had gone on to perform in and produce dozens of other movies.   But it was this thing that had stayed with me for life.

I could be a strange kid and apparently a strange adult as well.

The best part of Halloween for me was that, at some point during late October, WOR Channel 9 in New York would get around to showing this.  My very favorite Abbott and Costello comedy of all time.

It was another one of those movies that popped up on WOR's Million Dollar Movie all the time and I would be glued to the freakin' TV for the whole week. Bud and Lou in a haunted house. Enough said. But, almost miraculously, the film gets stolen by their co-star Joan Davis, who had such wonderful chemistry with Lou that it's a shame they didn't team up permanently. The dance number they do in the kitchen as they slosh through some rain puddles is absolutely brilliant.  To quote Lou in this movie...

"If you see a pair of pants flying through the air, don't grab 'em.  I'll be in 'em."

I outgrew most of this horror picture stuff as I got older.   But, later on, one movie took hold of everybody's attention and didn't let go.

We had heard all the stories.    Heads turning.   Vomit spewing out all over the place.   And movie patrons getting sick in their seats and literally running up the aisles to safety.

You just needed to be part of that.   The movie was barely open a week when a contingent of my friends ran downtown to the one theater where it was playing.

The line was two blocks long.

We stood in it for an hour.

In a driving snowstorm.

Wind chill temperatures of 10 degrees.

At one point, my friend and I looked at each other.   Our eyes asked the same question.  What the fuck were we doing here?  We left for the warmth of any place else.

I ultimately didn't see "The Exorcist" until it came to Mount Vernon, New York six months later.   In the middle of the summer.   And an air-conditioned theater.  It was still as effective and I was nice and comfortable in my seat.

I can tick off some other horror movies that have captured my fancy.

"The Birds."

"Psycho."

"The Omen."

At some point every few years, I do revisit all of the above via my DVR.

And, yes, I do own a copy of "Frankenstein's Daughter."

Dinner last night:  Dodger Dog at the World Series.