Hi, Robert Tharp here. While I’m warming up and counting down to my upcoming article on the horror movies of 1957, I thought I’d blow the dust off some of the memories from my youth. Back when the grownups called me “Robbie.” This is something old people like to do; revisit bygone times. It’s so much easier than creating new things to do or think about! 

If you’ve read any of my other articles here on HorrorFam.com, you’ll know a lot of my opinions on horror films are colored by a nostalgia bias. A movie might objectively be awful, but if it triggers a connection to my little kid brain, I’ll warm up to it. Obviously, I watched a lot of crappy movies back then, but I regret nothing! Almost nothing. Manbeast is one I could have skipped…  

I was born in 1955. The same year as Disneyland and the franchised version of McDonalds. I grew up and grew old living in the pueblo called Los Angeles, California. I like it here. I like the other places I’ve visited, but this place feels like home. Obviously. 

I was in the first generation of kids who grew up watching television. My parent’s generation grew up “watching” the radio. To truly see a movie, they’d have to leave the house and go to a theater. This strain may have been what actually caused the second World War, but experts can’t agree. 

Back in the 1960s, Los Angeles television had the three nationwide networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, and the local stations, channels 5, 9, 11 and 13. The movies on the national channels were generally clean cut and good for the whole family. I enjoyed a lot of them. Watching The Wizard of Oz was something my family did every year when it was on CBS, I think? Anyway, I love family-friendly films. However, the movies that put the permanent creases in my brain were on those four local channels.

Those channels were where the monsters lived! 

Channel 5 had Weird, Weird World every Sunday afternoon. That’s where all the Universal Studios monsters lurked. Channel 9 had Strange Tales of Science Fiction on Saturdays. Channel 11 had Chiller, and Channel 13 seemed to show whatever was too pathetic for the other stations to pick up. These were my go-tos growing up. When I wanted to test my courage, chill my blood, and make sure I didn’t go to sleep when the lights went out, the local channels delivered. 

These are some of the movies I watched back then that made an impression that still remains, more than sixty years later. As horror fans, we ALL have films like these! For you, it might be Alien, or Terrifier, or Friday the 13th. Sixty years from now, you’ll think, “Wow, that movie scared a poop out of me!” That’s as it should be. Each generation is entitled to their own personal frights. I’m just thinking about what did it for me back in the day. 

These will be in no particular order, ’cause my memories don’t work like that. First one that comes to mind is… 

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Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) 

This may have been the first of the classic Universal monster movies I saw and, boy howdy, it scared the short pants off me. Now, in my adult phase, I’ll admit to being an easily frightened child. (And I still startle pretty easily!)

The first twenty or thirty minutes of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man has the BEST Wolf Man scenes in the entire series. The grave robbers waking up the “dead” Larry Talbot under a full moon, his transformation while lying in his hospital bed… all great stuff!

There’s also an awesome slug fest between Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s Monster at the movie’s end. The middle minutes of the movie are pretty goofy, but I still love it.

I remember staring at my older brother in our dark bedroom the night I first watched Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, and I was absolutely SURE he was sprouting hair and turning into a werewolf while he slept. He claimed I was imagining it, but I know what I saw! My reaction came thiiiiiis close to having monster movies put on the “forbidden list” by my parents, so I learned to be quiet and keep my fears to myself.

Where to watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man: 

Them! (1954)

My favorite giant bug movie.

Atom bomb-irradiated ants in New Mexico have grown enormous and, by the end of the movie, have nested in the storm drains of Los Angeles. Yikes and wow! My family drove past those drain tunnels all the time, so I was ever alert for giant ant activity.

Them! played on channel 9 constantly, and I watched it as often as I possibly could. It still holds up well today, and I highly recommend it!

Where to watch Them! (1954): 

Attack of the Mushroom People AKA Matango Fungus of Terror (1963)

This was made by many of the people responsible for the Godzilla movies. Attack of the Mushroom People has a weird, dreamlike vibe to it that I found unsettling as a child.

Tourists on a small yacht are shipwrecked on an island where the only food seems to be hallucinogenic mushrooms. Trouble is, eating the mushrooms is addictive and will turn YOU into a giant mushroom!

Watching the hungry castaways trying to cope with mushroom monsters at night and despair all day made the silliness seem serious to me. Who will survive? The answer to that question, when the movie ended, gave me shivers.

The version I watched in the 1960s was dubbed in English. Attack of the Mushroom People AKA Matango: Fungus of Terror is available now in the original Japanese, and it’s even better. Don’t be afraid of subtitles; they’re worth the effort and reading never hurt anyone (you’re doing it right now!).

My wife Cathy liked the movie so much she sculpted a mask of the scary mushroom man that creeps around at night.

If you’re in the mood for something a little different, take a taste of Matango!

Where to watch Attack of the Mushroom People / Matango:

The Blob (1958) 

The Blob is so much fun! Steve McQueen and his teenage buddies try to alert their town to the menace of the flesh-eating space Blob, and the adults just won’t listen! (Much like my folks when I let them know my brother was a werewolf).

Lots of great scenes in this movie, but my favorite is when the old man discovers the meteor that contains the Blob. He pokes the small meteor with a stick and it cracks open, revealing a clear jelly liquid within. When he prods the liquid it grabs onto the stick, and then slides quickly down the stick and covers the old guy’s hand. And he can’t get it off.

The acting by the old man (you might recognize him from his small role in Them!) and the Blob special effects are top notch. You really believe this Blob is about to be a very serious problem.

Back in the 1980s, I worked on the Blob remake, painting lots of Blobs. I like the newer movie just fine; it’s got some cool bits in it. But the 1958 original Blob will always be my first choice. Watch ’em both, contrast and compare!

Where to watch The Blob (1958):

Where to watch The Blob (1988): 

4D Man (1959)

4D Man was made by the same people that made The Blob. It’s lesser known, but still worth watching.

A scientist invents a brain-boosting device that allows him to pass through solid matter, like walking through a wall. Before long, he doesn’t need the device anymore. He’s able to generate the power just by focusing his will.

The scientist, who starts out being the guy you’re rooting for, becomes a menace as the movie progresses. When he uses the power, it drains his lifeforce and rapidly ages him. He finds out accidently that by sticking his hands into another person, he absorbs that person’s energy and gets restored to normal. Unfortunately, the unwitting lifeforce donor instantly shrivels into old age and dies. (There will have to be a LOT of disclaimers attached to 4D Man’s scientific breakthrough if it ever gets sold to the public).

4D Man and The Blob may have been the first color horror movies I watched when my family got our first color television, around 1965. I’d seen The Blob before in black and white, but it was like a whole new movie, seeing it in color! To appreciate the transition from black and white TVs to color, you probably had to be there; but, trust me, it was MAJOR. Oz and Kansas suddenly looked different from each other. Who knew?

Anyway, if you haven’t seen 4D Man, check it out. Young me was inspired to focus my willpower and attempt to jam my hand through a solid wall. The walls in my folks’ house were stronger than my willpower, but maybe you’ll have better luck. Try it, and let me know! [Editors Note: Dad was making a joke. Please don’t actually attempt to force your hand through a wall].

Where to watch 4D Man:

The House on Haunted Hill (1958) 

Maybe my favorite Vincent Price movie. Wealthy eccentric Vinnie invites a group of strangers to spend the night locked in a haunted house. If they survive until morning, he’ll pay them each $10,000. Easy-peasy, right?

By sunrise, there’s been so much over the top craziness happening, any survivors would have been underpaid.

When I watch House on Haunted Hill now, it plays like a comedy. When I was a little kid, I bought into it hook, line, and sinker. It was suspenseful, scary, and exciting. One great bit after another, and logic be damned! I wish I could have seen this movie in the theater, where it looked like Vincent Price puppeteered a real skeleton over the heads of the audience. That would have been fun.

House on Haunted Hill kind of kicked off Vincent Price’s dominance of the 1960s as the King of Horror Movies. For the next decade, Price was the main man when it came to thrills and chills. I’ve always enjoyed him. He seems classy no matter what he’s doing, and happy in his wicked work. He turns up several times here on my memory list.

William Castle is the man responsible for House on Haunted Hill, and a lot of other fun scary films from the fifties and sixties. He also made Zotz! A movie that isn’t a horror movie and didn’t scare me, but I dearly loved as a child. I always carry a Zotz coin with me for good luck. (Track down this movie to understand what the heck I’m talking about!)

Where to watch House on Haunted Hill (1958):

Where to watch Zotz! (1962):

She Demons (1958) 

The three heroes are shipwrecked on an island, where there’s a Nazi mad scientist turning the beautiful island women into pizza faces with fangs. He’s supposed to be trying to restore his wife’s damaged face, but it’s not going well.

She Demons is not a good movie in the traditional sense. It’s too slow, and too stupid. When I was a kid, I didn’t like how the bad guy was making those women ugly and keeping them in cages. I still don’t approve of that sort of behavior. What this movie has going for it is the best unmasking scene ever in a horror movie! Truly startling. I was so tickled when I watched She Demons with Lauren, and saw her levitate out of her chair at that scene.

Sharing the events with your children that traumatized you as a child is an important part of good parenting, right? Anyway, check out She Demons. Stay awake until the ending, and see what made us both jump! [Editor’s Note: I 100% confirm Dad’s story. She Demons lulls you into a false sense of security just barely keeping you awake and then, literally, rips the bandage off!!].

Where to watch She Demons: 

The Crawling Eye AKA The Trollenberg Terror (1958) 

I really like this one. Whenever I see a cloud or heavy fog hanging low on a hill, I think of The Crawling Eye. (Doesn’t everyone?)

High in the Swiss Alps, a mysterious cloud hangs unmoving near the top of a mountain. People who climb up to investigate get killed or turned into brainwashed zombies. There are evil space aliens hidden in the cloud, and as they adjust to Earth’s atmosphere, they start heading down the mountain toward where the people live.

The Crawling Eye played on channel 11’s Chiller frequently, and I always watched. I love the alien monsters when they’re finally revealed. I don’t know how the special effects creatures were created. They’re cyclops blobby things with lots of tentacles and slime. Very weird and gross. Some of the miniature model work at the movie’s climax is a little weak, but overall, high marks.

One of the stars of the movie is Janet Munro. She was also the romantic lead in Darby O’Gill and the Little People, a Disney movie I loved which also had scenes that scared the heck out of me. Like the howling Banshee, yikes!

So, add The Crawling Eye to your movie bucket list. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys roasted this one, too, if you’d like to watch it with robots and wisecracks. I enjoy it both ways, with or without!

Where to watch The Crawling Eye:

Where to watch MST3K The Crawling Eye (season 1; episode 1):

“Coming Soon!” 1960’s Horror Movie Trailers

As my mind wanders, as it often does, I’m remembering how my family would go to the San Val Drive-In to see some wholesome family movie like The Music Man. My Dad would park the car, and pull the movie speaker box through the side window and crank up the volume knob. After the ads for snacks at the Drive-In’s snack bar, the previews came next — my cue for terrorized trauma in the back seat of the car!

We may have come to see happy singing and dancing, but the booming voice of the Preview Announcer told me “You’ll crap blood and die screaming, when you see Vincent Price in The Haunted Palace!” or “You’ll go blind and insane from one peek at Vincent Price in Diary of a Madman!” Those aren’t exact quotes, but close enough.

This, along with the scariest scenes from the movies, and I was a wreck. Scary stuff on the tiny television was tough, but on a BIG movie screen it was overwhelming. Nowadays, the theaters run trailers that correspond with the type of movie being shown. That wasn’t the case when I was little. I loved going to the movies, but I dreaded the previews.

I’m better now. The San Val Drive-In is a parking lot, and I’ve grown quite fond of Vincent Price. All is well.  

It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) 

Astronauts trapped inside their space ship with a monstrous alien killing them off, one by one. Sound familiar? Watch this one and see the real beginning of the Alien movie franchise.

I’ll admit, Alien is the better movie. But the monster in It! The Terror from Beyond Space is pretty cool. It’s another classic 1950’s creature designed by Paul Blaisdell. One of the things I liked best was I had a toy figure of It! The Terror, that was just the right scale to menace my green army men.

The movie was suspenseful, fairly scary, and had a good monster. I was a happy kid! I still have my Palmer Plastics “It” figure, by the way…

Where to watch It! The Terror from Beyond Space: 

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die was the talk of the elementary school playground the Monday after it played on weekend TV. The most gruesome movie we’d ever seen! Also, one of the sleaziest and other not-so-flattering adjectives.

The young doctor and his fiancée are speeding to his home when their car crashes. He’s okay, but she’s been decapitated. He runs home to his basement lab with her severed head, and puts it in a pan and hooks up tubes and devices to her head. She’s still alive, from the neck up, at least.

The doctor turns out to be a nut job, whose been conducting Frankenstein-like experiments in his home laboratory. He’s got a monster in the closet made from spare parts he brought home from the hospital. He has an assistant named Kurt who has a deformed arm the doctor keeps promising to fix.

But Kurt will have to wait, because the Doc has to prowl all the local bars and strip clubs in town. He’s on the hunt for a suitable body to graft fiancée Jan’s head onto! We in the audience get to join him as he ogles every woman he sees, ignoring their head completely. Some guys are like that, you know? Kinda sad. 

Anyway, back at the lab, Jan in the pan is angry and has developed a psychic connection with the monster in the closet. I mean, sure; why not? She argues with Kurt, and commands the monster to reach through the small door centered in the big closet door and grab Kurt. The monster gets Kurt by his one good arm, and pulls it off! This was the scene that made all our young child jaws hit the floor when we saw it. Kurt treats us to one of the bloodiest and most protracted death scenes ever. He walks up the basement stairs, smearing his bloody shoulder stump all over the wall, he walks back down again, bleeds and suffers awhile longer, and finally dies. Whew!

Blood-soaked mayhem in horror movies is the norm these days, and has been since the 1970s. But when I was a kid, you just didn’t see stuff like that. There was plenty of violence every night on the TV shows, but nobody bled. If you were killed off on TV, you’d get shot wearing a clean white shirt and you’d grimace and fall down, and your shirt remained spotless. Kurt’s gory demise was something radical for us, and we were shocked. Different times, that’s for sure.

So, while Kurt is having his moment in the spotlight, Doctor Sleaze has found the perfect body for Jan. She’s a bikini model for horny photographers. She’s got a nasty scar on her face, but the doctor convinces her he can repair the scar surgically, so she goes with him back to his house. He drugs her drink and carries her downstairs, planning to remove her head. He’s upset to find that Kurt won’t be much help during the procedure.

Jan in the pan has had enough. She doesn’t want a new body and only wants to die. She orders the closet monster to bust out and put a stop to these shenanigans. The monster breaks down the door, and takes an enormous bloody bite out of the doctor’s neck (and spits it on the floor), and catches the lab on fire. The monster picks up the unconscious bikini babe and escapes, leaving Jan’s head behind laughing in the flames and saying “He should have let me die!”

I have to say the closet monster is quite a sight. The actor was over seven feet tall, and the makeup gave him a high pointed head and a face like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Pretty impressive. You may wonder if he’s put off by the scar on bikini girl’s face, or if she’s able to see past his rough exterior and get to know the man within. I’m still waiting for the sequel that will answer these questions!

Apparently, the TV stations got a lot of blowback when they aired The Brain That Wouldn’t Die uncut, and later started showing a version that had all the gory bits removed. I’ve never seen the edited version, but it must be awful. The whole movie’s awful, so it would be even more awful. I think the streaming channels are showing the original version these days, so if you’re going to watch it, see it complete. There’s a color remake that came out a few years ago, that is even worse than the original. It’s trying hard to be “cheesy fun,” but it’s just lame. Don’t bother with it.

Where to watch The Brain That Wouldn’t Die:

Where to watch MST3K The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (season 5; episode 13): 

The Tingler (1959) 

Another great team up of William Castle and Vincent Price!

Vincent discovers that the tingle you feel go up your spine when you’re frightened is caused by a live organism in your body. The organism grows bigger the more frightened you become, and it is attached to your back bone. The only way to immobilize and shrink your Tingler is to scream. If you don’t scream, the Tingler’s grip will break your back and kill you. Science!

Vinnie has a friend who is married to a mute woman. She’s extremely nervous and fearful as her normal state of being. One night, things start getting weird for her. Scary weird! So much so that by the end of this part of the movie, she’s been frightened to death! And since she can’t speak or scream, her backbone Tingler never shrank down.

The whole scene with the frightened woman was what grabbed me as a kid. I could totally relate to her rapidly rising terror. There was a special visual bonus to this scene that I didn’t see as a kid, watching the movie on a black and white TV. If you watch The Tingler now, you’ll see what I mean.

Vinnie gets to prove his theory when he removes the spine sized Tingler from the dead woman. It looks kind of like a big centipede. He stashes it in an easily-escapable pet carrier, and it escapes into a movie theater. The Tingler crawls through the dark theater, menacing people’s ankles until Vinnie tells everyone to “Scream! Scream for your lives!” All the screaming immobilizes the Tingler and Price is able to retrieve it. Whew, close one!

When The Tingler was first shown in theaters, William Castle rigged some of the theater seats with vibrator boxes that could be triggered remotely. When the Tingler creature on screen is loose in the theater, some of the real viewing audience would get jolted in their seats. Man, I wish I could have seen the movie back then. That would have been fun. William Castle really knew how to sell a show.

This is another movie Cathy Tharp enjoyed and she was inspired to sculpt a life-sized Tingler replica. We keep it on a shelf in our work room. It doesn’t scare me. I know if it moves, I can just scream at it and make it stop.

Where to watch The Tingler: 

The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

This movie used to show up on Chiller fairly often, but then it disappeared for years. I remembered it as really scary and gruesome, with lots of monster scenes. When I finally watched it again, I was surprised. You don’t see the whole monster until the climax of the movie! But it’s worth the wait. The Monster of Piedras Blancas looks awesome. He’s sort of like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but a lot meaner and uglier. Classic 1950’s monster!

This is the movie monster that inspired wife Cathy to try her hand at mask sculpting. Her version of the Monster of P.B. was her very first mask. And she nailed it! So proud of her.

The Monster of Piedras Blancas is low-budget fun. A little slow, a lot stupid, but it holds a special place in my heart, if not my head.

Where to watch The Monster of Piedras Blancas: 

The Twilight Zone (1959 – 1964)

The Twilight Zone was all new first-run episodes on network TV when I was a little kid. The episodes seem like old friends now but, back then, this show scared me something awful!

I could go down a list, but the episode titled “Little Girl Lost” really got to me. A little girl disappears from her bedroom, and it’s because she fell through a dimensional hole in the wall next to her bed. She’s trapped in a weird alien landscape, and the return hole is rapidly closing up. And after the show, it’s like “Okay, Robbie, time for bed. Try not to fall through the wall during the night.” My folks didn’t actually say that, but that’s how I felt. Everybody has a favorite episode of The Twilight Zone. Watch them all and pick your own!

Where to watch The Twilight Zone original series: 

The Outer Limits (1963 – 1965)

The Outer Limits, like The Twilight Zone, had some episodes that spooked me badly. My all-time favorite was, and still is, “The Zanti Misfits” (season 1; episode 14).

A small space ship lands in the desert (Vasquez Rocks, just outside Los Angeles!) and the aliens warn our government not to mess with them. Things go wrong, and the spaceship aliens go on the attack. And they are freaky looking, human-faced bugs!

The Zantis totally unnerved the young me. Now, I’m happy to have a dozen little STEXE refrigerator magnet Zanti Misfits in the kitchen, but I’m a bigger boy now. They don’t scare me nearly as much.

Check out The Outer Limits (First season episodes are the best ones) and choose a favorite. There were a lot of good ones!

Where to watch The Outer Limits original series: 

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

This movie from 1968 is the most recent on my rambling rundown. Night of the Living Dead was on the lower half of a double feature at the Cornell Theater in Burbank. Admission price at the Cornell was fifty cents. A steal, even back then.

I was with three other neighborhood friends. The oldest had just got his license, so he drove all of us there. This was in 1969, so I was either 13 or 14. By that time, I was pretty darn sure I’d seen it all when it came to horror movies, and there wasn’t much that could phase me. (This is called “foreshadowing!)

The movie we had gone to see ended, intermission was over, and the movie we’d never heard of began. “Oh, boo! It’s in black and white! Cheap!” We were all wisecracks and giggles as it started. At around the half-hour mark, you could hear a pin drop in the theater. The whole audience sat with slack jaws staring at the screen. By the time it got to the zombies’ gut-munching scene, people were heading up the aisles for the exits. A woman in the row behind us actually threw up. That roused us, and we quickly found new seats to watch the rest of the movie.

When my friends and I left the theater, none of us were eager to go home alone to our dark houses late at night. We went to a 7-Eleven store and hung around in the brightly lit parking lot, keeping an eye out for any approaching undeads.

We had been sucker punched by something we’d NEVER seen before. A horror movie that, at that time, seemed real! I’ll never be able to replicate the feeling of seeing Night of the Living Dead for the first time. When I watch it now, I get a little bored with it. But almost sixty years ago, it was extraordinary. I stopped feeling so cocky and jaded after that. I guess I hadn’t seen it all and, if I’m lucky, I never will! 

Where to watch Night of the Living Dead:

It’s funny to me, how I spent so many years of my adult life making monsters.

Monsters scared me as a child, but I ended up living with them every day. I don’t mean my wife Cathy and daughter Lauren! I’m talking about the latex rubber sorts of monsters! Fate, destiny, God’s odd sense of humor? Whatever. It’s been a lot of fun!

Thanks for reading this far. I’ll wrap up by saying thanks to Lauren Spear for giving me the chance to reminisce and relive parts of my misspent youth. I left quite a few horrors off the list, but maybe I’ll do this again sometime. If you want me to, let me know.

One last mention before I sign off. My all-time childhood and adult favorite GOAT… 

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) 

Best ever! See it now! 

Where to watch Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein:

Thanks, everybody!

*This article was written by Robert Tharp. Learn more about him in his author bio below.*

Editor’s Note: Let us know if you want MORE early horror memories from HorrorFam.com’s team!

Did you enjoy reading my dad’s personal recollection of the films that made the biggest impressions on him early on in his horror-lovin’ journey? Some of the films instantly wowed him, some of them gave him “scars,” but they all “put deep grooves in [his] gray matter” and ultimately built the foundation for the lifelong horror fan he is today!

Dad has plenty of other memories and thoughts to share from “back in the day” in regard to horror, but said he didn’t want to torture you (or himself!) by writing it all in one go. So, if you liked this, be sure to let him know in the comments that you’d like a Part Two. (He kept it preeeeeetty much strictly to films for this one, but I know for a FACT that he has a lot of thoughts on horror model kits/toys, books, comics, etc. that he’d be happy to share if YOU want to hear his musings about them!).

Also, we’d love for this to be the start of a series! Not just with Dad, but with each of the writers on the HorrorFam.com team. We read Dad’s memories from his earliest horror days and we all started reminiscing about our own introductions to horror and the films, shows, toys, and books that made US into the horror fans we are today. So, if you’d love to read our memories too and get some “Gen X” and “Millennial” nostalgic perspectives in addition to more from “everyone’s favorite Boomer” (lol Dad’s funny), then let us know!!  –Lauren*

Images for this post were purchased on CineMaterial (posters), MovieStillsDB (stills), are screenshots from DVDs we own (additional stills), or were provided by Robert and/or Cathy Tharp (toys, masks, FX portfolio pics, childhood photos, etc.).