Where’s Mummy?

Who’s your daddy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ok, I’ve been having fun this month with all-things Hallowe’en (man, next month I’m really gonna have to get back to my mss work…), but all this talk about the undead got my juices dessicating! So…I’m going to put myself to a test.

Next week I’m going to post a prose poem about my favorite monster. Now, I’m not saying this is going to be another Ozymandias, or anything, but I’m going to give it my best shot and come up with something I’ve wanted to pen for a little bit. I’ve actually already started it and hope to post soon.

Now, as a kid I had several monster interests. Though I was interested in the Bram Stoker version of Dracula in vampyres, werewolves were a pretty strong interest. One of my favorites stories was The Werewolf of Ponkert, by H. Warner Munn, which was actually two stories. It’s interesting looking at some prices of this book today—geesh!

I also got into some of the Dr. Phibes, work (books and movies: “Love means never having to say you’re ugly”; I know, très unPC, but check out the man’s visage), like Dr. Phibes Rises Again! I was a huge Vincent Price fan. And who could forget “Vulnavia,” played by Virginia North? I mean, whata cool name! The Dr. Anton Phibes movies were so campy, over the top, and full of dark humor, I loved them!

(in case the above doesn’t work, try this link: http://youtu.be/yBo0H3oYSoo)

What’s not to like, right?

Vulnaaaviaaaa….

I was also, as you may have guessed, into your basic “undeads,” rising from the deads, clawing out from grounds, ghosts, that kind of thing. I was, basically, a fan of all kinds of Hammer Films movies about anything supernatural, and it looks like they’re still around, which is interesting, since I haven’t heard anything more out of them, since I left home for adulthood.

But, when it really came down to it, I became quite interested in one monster in particular, and it was my last teenage dress-up for Hallowe’en. Even as a teen, I had an eye for authenticity, and I pulled out the needed sheet and begged and pleaded to my mom to do the unthinkable: rip a perfectly good bedsheet into shreds. Well, to this day, I’m always amazed that she let me do that, but, hey, that’s what mom’s do, right?

So, on my last teenage Hallowe’en, I wrapped up and went out horrorizing the neighborhood, and painted “Denn die Todten reiten schnell”  (“For the dead travel fast,” from Dracula) on rocks all along the railroad tracks from which I lived across (yeah, literally), in green flourescent paint.

Mummy Me, c. late 1970s

So, if you haven’t figured out my favorite monster, stay tuned! I hope to have something. ummm, unwrapped, next week….