Monster Allergy

The popularity of the Godzilla films in their heyday did not just lead to homegrown competitors and imitators—as we saw with Yongary and Gorgo, film makers worldwide sometimes made their own attempts at similar monster material. I’ve written about that particular “Monster Boom” period pretty extensively, but a very similar pattern emerged following Pokémon, a later monster-based phenomenon that was clearly inspired by nostalgia for the original Monster Boom. That series’ thundercrack emergence in the late nineties led to a plethora of other media based on the idea of monster collecting and battling, especially in Japan, and I’ve written about some of those as well (you can also find a surprisingly deep recollection of even more Pokémon coattail riders in Daniel Dockery’s 2022 book Monster Kids)–but wouldn’t it be interesting to see how the basic ideas of a monster collecting franchise could be filtered through a completely different cultural lens?

This brings us to Monster Allergy, an Italian kids comics-turned-attempted-franchise that doesn’t outright announce its indebtedness to Pokémon and the other kids monster series of its era, but come on—it’s about “monster tamers” capturing monsters in small objects, and that alone makes the connection obvious. It’s certainly no rip-off, as any similarities largely disappear past those barest of surface elements, and instead follow more traditional western low fantasy storytelling. But regardless of the degree of intention, this does represent a very European take on some of Pokémon‘s core ideas, a kid-focused adventure in a monster-filled world, and In this way, it is to Pokémon what a Gorgo or a Reptilicus was to the original Godzilla.

Quiet, Please – “The Thing on the Fourble Board”

About ten years ago, I was seeing radio horror programs, usually from the forties, passed around on my usual online haunts. It’s always interesting to me when something that old unexpectedly finds new life on the Internet. Remember when people were suddenly obsessed with Dracula when it was retold through Tumblr? I’ve observed that kind of thing happening on occasion, and while it’s sometimes difficult to tell if all the people suddenly buzzing about a viral golden oldie aren’t coming from a place of weird kitschy irony, I think it’s safe to say that the starting point is usually someone with a genuine interest in these historical pieces of entertainment, sharing their finds not just out of a semi-detached academic curiosity, but because they like the style of this old thing, even if it’s “dated.”

Radio shows have been one example of the outmodded finding strange new life in current times—you can find quite a few them uploaded to sites like Youtube, as bizarre as that sounds. Radio used to be the broadcast medium of choice once upon a time, the source for mainstream thrills—it was, to say something dumb and obvious, the television of its day. When a person unfamiliar with radio plays encounters these shows, they may recognize all the ways TV takes after this style, while also having a hard time adjusting to all the idiosyncrasies the medium developed. It’s familiar, and yet so different…on the other hand, we’ve also been seeing more than a few podcasts start telling stories in a similar manner. A revival of that style may indeed have led to some seeking out its historical antecedents.

Among those old horror programs uploaded to Youtube (the video part usually just a single image of a haunted-looking radio sitting in a foreboding void), the one I really saw get talked up was the anthology series Quiet, Please, and what was one of its most famous episodes, “The Thing on the Fourble Board.” Being interested in Things, it immediately drew my attention, and what I found was an interesting monster story in a style I had little familiarity with at the time. One would probably not expect to be creeped out by a radio program from 1948, but at least on first listening, the way this particular story utilizes the radio medium is clever, intentionally ridiculous, and, at times, unnerving.

Fiend Without a Face (1958)

Here we are at the 100^th post, surely a milestone worth celebrating—so, how do we do that? Why not a review of the only monster movie I know of that is set around where I live? Surely you are as interested in the subject as I am.

Nowadays (or, at least, the parts of “nowadays” that discounts the past year or so of disruption), my home province of Manitoba is used as the shooting location for a surprising number of films (prominently among them: The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford), including many horror films (they filmed at least one of those direct-to-video Child’s Play sequels here)—and why not? During the fall and winter months, the flat prairie landscape with its sparse wooded patches has a desolate quality that can bring atmosphere to these projects. Of course, none of them ever take place in Manitoba, but have it sub for whatever location they want—and, ironically, the one bit of horror movie history I’ve found that is explicitly set in Manitoba was absolutely not filmed here. That would be fifties B-movie staple Fiend Without a Face, a movie that has had a long life as a piece of out-of-context footage used in montages or clip packages about old Sci-Fi. This is likely because Fiend Without a Face features one of the most grotesque monsters from the fifties monster movie boom, and not because it’s set in Manitoba (which was apparently only because a Canadian location was considered a suitable middle ground between a British or American one.) In any case, this is another example of how these old monster movies could be quite a bit less quaint than their reputations would have you believe.