Monster of the Day #3189

Updated on March 24, 2021 By Ken Begg 10 Comments

So…first of all, obviously, NOT Frankenstein. Also it’s interesting how the green skin thing really caught on. All the toy manufacturers (not that “all” were that many back then) went with the green skin thing. I wonder if that’s how Universal was licensing the image back then.

You can tell Universal didn’t own the rights to Karloff’s image. That’s more Glenn Strange then him or Bela or Chaney Jr. Still, he’s recognizably the Universal Monster, and that was the important thing. I was never a model builder so I gave them the most basic paint jobs imaginable. Did I paint my green? I think I used the glow in the dark head and hands, so probably not.

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  • I know the common position on the matter is “Poor monster.” However, I’ve read the book, where the monster is, in fact, a monster. Murders a bratty little kid, frames an innocent girl, strangles a woman on her wedding night, and causes an old man to have heart failure. An all and all rotter.

    That said, I’m looking at that model, thinking at first it’s a funny thing, the monster walking over his own grave (we can be persnickety about the point later). Then I’m taking into account the size difference. I’m mean, he’s clearly too big, right?

    So it can’t really be his grave. And as it says Frankenstein on it, and there is only one canonical Frankenstein that can fit in it, it has to be William Frankenstein. The kid the monster murders because he has the wrong last name.

    Thus, in the little story this model gives to us, we have the monster visiting his little kid victim’s grave to walk all over it with his big, smelly boots.

    He really is a monster, innit he?

  • Rock Baker

    Pop painted my kit for me, and we used a flesh-tone. My kit came with some glow-in-the-dark paint, this being a Monogram or Revell reissue circa 1990, which Pop mixed with the regular paint before applying it. It still glows in the dark, and still sits atop my refrigerator to this day.

  • Ken_Begg

    Ha, that’s great!

  • Eric Hinkle

    Yeah. I do wish more people read the original novel. The Monster is a lot less sympathetic there than he ever was in the movies.

  • Gamera977

    Rock, I’d love to see a photo of that if you could post it to the forum.

  • Gamera977

    I always thought he was greenish because he was made out of cadavers. I’m assuming Frankenstein used the freshest ingredients but they had to have been some gangrene setting in.

    And the Monster is shown here with the arms out sleepwalking pose. Didn’t he only do that in the third film after he went blind?

  • That became the monster strut after Ghost of Frankenstein. He was intended to be blind in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but that tidbit was edited out of the movie. Thus walking around with the arms outstretch became the standard.

  • Ken_Begg

    I think it was largely because that’s how impressionists (a much bigger entertainment thing back in the ’60s and ’70s) always portrayed him. It sort of became the cultural norm. I think the actual make-up for the Monster was a cadaver-like gray.

  • Rock Baker

    The makeup itself actually was green, so it would photograph properly. There’s color behind-the-scenes footage from THE SON OF FRANKENSTEIN which confirms this. Granted, the makeup was green, but I’m sure the monster itself wasn’t supposed to be green. I’m sure he’s fleshtone in the old movie posters.

  • Marsden

    Herman Munster was supposed to be green but they put lavender makeup on Fred Gwynne so he’d show up on film correctly.