THE MASK OF THE MONSTER...

There used to be a regularly issued joke catalogue from a company called Ellisdons, from which (if memory serves) I got my first overhead Frankenstein mask sometime around the mid-'70s.  I think I later bought another one which had 'real' hair (it was real, but it wasn't hair), and though it was based on Jack Pierce's original make-up design, its likeness wasn't Boris Karloff or Glenn Strange, but a slight amalgam of both of them.

One night myself and a friend, along with the mask, visited another friend, who took photos which were developed as slides.  He later gave me a set, and I cut them up and installed them in one of those toy TV-type viewers that, when you clicked a switch, revolved the pics past the viewfinder.  I made a little sign saying 'The Curse Of Frankenstein' and attached it to the viewer, and when I showed it to yet another pal (Moonmando), he remarked "More like the curse of Adam Cowie", the friend (name changed to protect the guilty) I, as the Monster, was 'attacking' in the pics.

Ah, such fun - the joys of youth!  (I was yet a teenager.)  Anyway, today, all the way from America (actually saved a tenner by not buying it in Britain), the official Universal Studios mask of Boris Karloff as the Monster arrived at Castel Crivens.  When I tried it on, the smell of latex whisked me 45-odd years into the past, because it smelt exactly the same as the masks obtained from Ellisdons.  True, the Universal version is much better made, more fully detailed, and far superior quality, but the smell was the same.

Anyway, it's such a brilliant mask I thought I'd let you see it, so that's it above among some other goodies in one of my rooms, and below is a close-up of Frankie's fearsome fizzog to astound and amaze you.  Brilliant, innit?!  Who else remembers Ellisdons, and did any of you ever have a Frankenstein Monster mask when you were a youth? 

Posted in: Cartoons