Wednesday, October 28, 2015

THE HILARIOUS HOUSE OF FRIGHTENSTEIN - Billy Van (1971)


"The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein" was a crazed 70's TV show out of Canada that starred comedian Billy Van, and ran for 131 episodes (All in 1971?)!
Fightenstein! Cool name!!

Pre "Thriller," The honorable Vincent Price got the job as narrator some how, and it went something like 

Fishka (Cannibal Girls) Rais was Igor, Billy's vampire Count character's sidekick!

As a comedian, Billy Van was a regular on a couple of TV shows like "The Sonny And Cher Show," "The Bobby Vinton Show," and "The Ken Berry 'Wow' Show!"

Like Lon Chaney Sr., Billy Van was a man of a thousand faces!
Sadly, he passed away in 2003 at the age of 69!

I was in Alaska protecting the public from moose and squirrel during the time that Frightenstein aired on TV, and I'm pretty sure that even though it was Canadian, it never aired in the great northwest where I was! I'm not quite sure if I missed anything or not, but if you or I ever want to find out more, "The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein" airs both on YouTube and Amazon Prime, so it's covered!
EECH!! Indeed!!

7 comments:

gog magog said...

some idiot erased every single episode on tape at the studio it was produced in. fortunately there is a fan network and a few dozen episodes survive thanks to vhs and betamax!

my friend's dad knew mr. van and they all went for summer vacations together where billy would regail my young friend with his many voice characterizations. wish i had that on tape!

Grant said...

I found a DVD of them some time ago. One easy thing to notice is that, in spite of being such a light horror show on probably a very low budget, it had some pretty elaborate make-up, especially the "Librarian" character in that middle photo above.

EEGAH!! said...

Good stuff G-Men! Jeez, I thought I had read that Frightenstein streamed on Amazon Prime, but I just took a look, and it doesn't! In fact, it's just the opposite, a three DVD set that includes 9 episodes is a mere $229.00! Ouch!

Unknown said...

New masters do exist, but are caught up in legal limbo with the company that did the DVD releases.

The series was syndicated around the world in the 1970s and 80s. The U. S. episodes were re-cut into half-hours, and a laugh track was added. The series has aired on a couple of Canadian cable channels in the past 10 years, but, due to licensing issues with the music (The Wolfman played full songs from 1968-1971 records), the episodes had to be completely re-edited. I'm one of a group of loyal fans who are cataloguing the segments in our own copies of the originals, to help with restoring the re-cut episodes to their original form.

Mitch Markowitz (Associate Producer and "Superhippy" & "Mosquito") is doing a documentary about the show's making and legacy. Working title: "And Vincent Price Said Yes". I've been interviewed for it.

Here are photos of Mitch and a couple of superfans (with a flag they made for him), at a "Frightenstein" screening in Toronto. http://photos.barryroden.com/p441615588

EEGAH!! said...

Not much that we like better than more information! Thanx Unknown!!

Anonymous said...

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein is coming on vinyl this fall! Follow us at Groove Vinyl and on instagram at @frightensteinvinyl

Anonymous said...

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein is coming out on colored vinyl this fall!

Get more info at FrightensteinVinyl.com and on Instagram @frightensteinvinyl

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