Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet

 

In response to my post from a couple of weeks ago reviewing a Frankenstein-inspired story by Clark Ashton Smith, someone recommended a couple of other stories inspired by Frankenstein. 

One of them was published in 2016--normally far too recent to be considered for mention on my blog. But this delightful story is both a tribute to the Creature Feature TV hosts of from my childhood; an effective horror story in its own right; a reminder that horror, fantasy and SF tales can teach us things about real life; and a reminder of just how COOL it was to watch an old monster movie on TV for the first time when you were a kid. "Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet," by Orrin Grey, does all that. It's a modern story, but its a callback to an aspect of popular culture I celebrate on this blog.

The point-of-view character is an unnamed kid sitting down on a Saturday afternoon to watch whatever movie will be featured on his local Creature Feature. That he's unnamed is important. He's all of use--every nerdy kid who ever watched the local host introduce Frankenstein, King Kong or Godzilla as we watched it for the first time.

His local host is Baron Von Werewolf, who explains that today's movie was thought to be lost for years. It was made by a nearly forgotten stop motion animator in Mexico and disappeared soon after it was shown in just a few theaters. But Baron Von Werewolf has gotten hold of a copy. In fact, he's made a deal to be able to show it this afternoon.

What follows is a description of the movie Frankenstein Against the Phantom Planet. It's a movie that doesn't exist outside the pages of this short story, but--by golly--I wish it did. An indestructable and gigantic Frankenstein's monster is shot into space as the only way to protect Earth. He crashes on the Phantom Planet. He's lured into a pit by the alien overlords of that planet. He fights creepy subterranean monsters. He frees mushroom people who are enslaved by the overlords. He leads them in a rebellion, fighting a giant robot along the way. It's magnificent. I WANT THIS MOVIE TO EXIST!

The kid's TV watching ends when Baron Von Werewolf has to pay the price of obtaining this movie a little sooner than he thought. "Not in front of the kids!"

My plot summary doesn't really do justice to just how effective a tribute this story is to monster movies and monster movie hosts. If you have an Internet Archive account, you can read it for yourself HERE.