Svengoolie’s March Schedule Will Scare Off the Winter Doldrums
March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb … but if lions, lambs and the whole wild kingdom isn’t your thing, don’t worry: Svengoolie has plenty of vampires, evil puppets, space monsters, re-animated heads and alligators dressed up like dinosaurs in his March schedule for MeTV‘s Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie. This month’s creature-heavy calendar will take you through the last of these chilly winter nights into April, when the sun shines, the flowers bloom, and your taxes are due (now THAT is scary).
Read on to find out what he’ll be scaring up on the show this month, every Saturday night at 8pm ET!
March 1: Dan Curtis‘s Dracula (1974)
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Dan Curtis, the mind behind Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker and Trilogy of Terror, also whipped up this 1974 adaptation of Dracula, starring Jack Palance as the Count and Nigel Davenport as Van Helsing, with a script by horror and sci-fi legend (and frequent Curtis collaborator) Richard Matheson.
Though it’s now known as Dan Curtis’s Dracula, when it first aired on TV, it was known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Francis Ford Coppola bought the copyright to the title in anticipation of his 1992 film, leading to a name change for this version. And speaking of its first airing, it was originally supposed to run in October 1973, as part of the Halloween season; however, it was preempted by a speech from Richard Nixon about the resignation of Spiro T. Agnew. It finally aired in February 1974.
March 8: The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958)
Everett Collection
Be careful when you’re trying to get ahead in life by searching for treasure … because you might accidentally find the 400-year-old disembodied head of an evil sorcerer who takes over the mind of everyone in your home instead! At least, that’s the warning given by this 1958 Universal film about a group of folks who have the bad luck to dig up the evil, living head of ancient wizard Gideon Drew, who goes on to mentally possess various members of the group, with murderous results.
Some viewers have pointed out that the plot of this film seems to have inspired the “Judah Zachery” plot line on Dark Shadows. The film also inspired the gang at Mystery Science Theater 3000, who watched the film in 1997.
March 15: Double feature! The Lost World (1960) & Puppet Master (1989)
First up, we have the 1960 adaptation of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle novel about a group of explorers who discover a hidden land filled with living dinosaurs. Though it stars Claude Rains, future Bond Girl Jill St. John and The Day the Earth Stood Still‘s Michael Rennie, the film may be most famous because — unlike the 1925 version, which used cutting-edge stop-motion effects — this version used living reptiles to play its dinos. Monitor lizards and small alligators were recruited to play a stegosauruses and triceratops because original plans to hire Oscar winner Willis O’Brien, who created the stop-motion effects for the original film, ended up not fitting into the budget.
Then! Puppet Master tells the tale of a group of murderous living puppets, given life in 1939 by their creator, André Toulon, the last true alchemist (played by Academy Award nominee William Hickey). Fifty years later, a group of psychics are summoned to the hotel where the now-deceased Toulon has hidden his creations. They attempt to find out the secrets of the man who invited them there — while also under attack by the living (and very violent!) puppets.
Though Puppet Master arrived just one year after the similarly themed hit Child’s Play, don’t call it a knockoff … or at least, don’t call it a knockoff of Child’s Play. It was actually inspired by an earlier film that writer/producer Charles Band worked on, 1986’s Dolls.
Puppet Master was originally supposed to have a theatrical release, but the production team ultimately decided to release it straight-to-video instead, believing they’d find a bigger audience there. The gambit worked — today, there have been 15 Puppet Master films. Not too bad, especially when you consider that the puppets only had a few minutes worth of screen time in the original film!
March 22: Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
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The final major Universal monster movie, Creature takes the classic beauty and the beast tale and drags it down to the Amazon, where a group of scientists — including the beautiful Kay (Julia Adams) — are stalked (and sometimes killed) by the titular Gill-man.
Like most of its fellow Universal monster pics, Creature had sequels, although they’re far from well known: 1955’s Revenge of the Creature and 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us. Unlike its fellow Universal monster pics, however, there has never been a reboot made, though it’s not for lack of trying — such heavy-hitters as John Landis, John Carpenter, Peter Jackson and Ivan Reitman were all interested at one point or another, but the films never came together. There’s one unofficial sequel, however: Guillermo del Toro was attached to direct a remake in the early 2000s, but Universal didn’t like his concept; he ended up using the discarded idea for his Best Picture-winning 2017 film The Shape of Water.
March 29: Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965)
As known as Invasion of Astro-Monster, the sixth Godzilla film sees aliens beg humanity to borrow Godzilla and Rodan for a space battle against Ghidorah — only to reveal that it was a double-cross to gain control of Earth.
The film might be most infamous for the debut of Godzilla’s shie victory dance — a silly moment that was quite different from anything found in the early Godzilla films, and was part of the film series’ pivot to more kid-friendly content.
Director Ishiro Honda, who also directed the original 1954 Godzilla film, was supposedly displeased with the dance moves — according to his son, Ryu Honda, “When they made Godzilla do that shie thing, I knew how pissed my father was. He didn’t say a word, but he was beyond angry. My father found it humiliating. I am sure he was telling himself, ‘We did not create Godzilla for that. It is not right.'”
Remind