Svengoolie’s MeTV November Schedule Has Arrived & It’s Full of Classic Terrors
Halloween is sadly over … but Svengoolie, like his spooky tricks and treats, is year-round. So as the rest of the world goes in to turkey-and-hibernation mode, you can tune in every Saturday night in November to Svengoolie’s MeTV series Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie and catch some chilling classics.
Read on to find out what will be haunting your TV screen this month!
Nov. 2: The Mummy (1932)
Everett Collection
The third original Universal Monster film, Boris Karloff‘s The Mummy follows an ancient Egyptian prince who is accidentally brought back to life and searches the modern world for the reincarnation of his lost love.
Producers were inspired to find an Egypt-tinged horror story after the 1922 opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb and the subsequent worldwide mania for all things ancient Egypt — as well as interest in the so-called “pharaoh’s curse” that allegedly led to the death of several members of the Tutankhamen expedition.
Unable to find a novel to adapt, writers came up with their own premise, though it bears similarities to a 1911 silent film about a reanimated mummy, as well as a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story. After trying out both The King of the Dead and Im-Ho-Tep as working titles, the studio eventually released it as the much more streamlined The Mummy. Boris Karloff, hot off the triumph of Frankenstein, was billed simply as “Karloff the Uncanny” in the promotional materials.
Nov. 9: The Abomindable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Courtesy Everett Collection
Dr. Phibes, played with abominable charm by Vincent Price, is an organist who believes that his beloved wife died as a result of medical incompetence. After rising from a car wreck believed to have killed him, the badly disfigured Phibes decides to take revenge on those he blames for his wife’s death — with murders based on the Biblical Ten Plagues of Egypt.
The film doesn’t follow Biblical plagues that closely — hey, Hollywood is all about creativity, right? Bats and rats were used in place of difficult-to-photograph gnats and flies. The film’s original tagline was “Love means never having to say you’re ugly,” a reference to the then-recent film Love Story.
Nov. 16: Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)
Photo by: Everett Collection (5038793)
Though 1971’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes seems to end with a situation that would make it … shall we say, very difficult for the good doctor to come back, come back he did, in this 1972 sequel. Dr. Phibes travels to Egypt to take part in a ritual that will give him and his beloved dead wife eternal life.
In this film, Phibes isn’t the only villain — he finds himself up against the equally dastardly Darius Bieberbeck, an aspiring immortal played by Robert Quarry. Quarry was supposedly the studio’s planned replacement for Price; a publicist leaked this out to Price at a cocktail party during filming, causing tension on set.
The end of Price’s contract with the company spelled the end of the series, though the planned third film sound quite intriguing — ideas floated included Dr. Phibes in the Holy Land.
Nov. 23: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
Everett Collection
By 1948, Universal Monsters had long gone out of fashion, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello were on the verge of breaking up, beset by health problems and infighting. Costello called the original script “crap.” But this film — which also features original Universal Monster stars Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr — ended up being one of Universal’s biggest hits of the year, setting the stage for a series of films where Abbott and Costello crossed paths with other fantastical creatures from film land.
Boris Karloff was hired to stand in front of a New York City movie theater to promote the film during its initial release. Supposedly he said, he’d do it, “as long as I don’t have to see the movie.”
Nov. 30: The Crawling Eye (1958)
Everett Collection
In this sci-fi romp, a radioactive cloud brings murderous chaos to a small Swiss village … which is very similar to the murderous chaos that recently occurred in the Andes, when a similar radioactive cloud showed up. A fearless United Nations representative joins forces with a journalist and a psychic to stop the madness (and the constant decapitations). But will they succeed? Or will they become the next victims of the tentacled, one-eyed beasts who seek to destroy them?!?
This U.K. film bears the dubious honor of being one of the first films to be parodied by comedy show Mystery Science Theater 3000.
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Each film airs at 8pm ET on MeTV. Which movie are you looking forward to the most?
Remind 
The Mummy
October 2019
Cinematic history of the bandaged monster, from the 1932 Universal classic starring Boris Karloff featuring an incredible cover by artist Ed Repka!
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