Mad Monster Party [1969] with Boris Karloff

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061931/

Mad Monster Party? (1969)

Cast
Phyllis Diller, the Monster's Wife
Ethel Ennis, sings the opening song/score
Gale Garnett, Francesca
Boris Karloff, Baron Boris von Frankenstein
Allen Swift (name in the credits is misspelled as Alan Swift), the rest of the voices

Crew
Jules Bass, Director
Arthur Rankin, Jr., Producer
Forrest J. Ackerman, Screenwriter
Harvey Kurtzman, Screenwriter
Maury Laws, Composer (Music Score)
Joseph E. Levine, Executive Producer
"Killer Joe" Piro, Choreographer


Mad Monster Party? is an animated movie that was released in 1969 by Embassy Pictures for Rankin/Bass Productions, Inc.


The film was created using Rankin/Bass' "Animagic" stop motion animation process. The process involved photographing figurines in still shots and re-positioning them after each shot, the same approach used in Art Clokey's Davey and Goliath and to create the giant ape in the original King Kong. Kong, in fact, makes a featured appearance in this film (sporting some rather colorful finger and toenails), although due to rights issues he is known only as "It".

Classic monster movies were enjoying a resurgence in popularity in the late 1960's, and humorous monsters like The Addams Family and The Munsters were enormously popular. This campy film is a spoof of horror themes, complete with musical numbers and inside jokes.

Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman penned the script, and Mad artist Jack Davis designed many of the characters. Davis was a natural for the job, being famous both for his humor work and his monster stories in the pages of EC Comics. It has long been rumored that Forrest J. Ackerman had a hand in the script, but while the script is rife with Famous Monsters of Filmland-like puns, Ackerman's involvement has never been confirmed. Although mostly intended as a kid's picture, the film does feature some of Kurtzman's typically dark humor and a few mildly risque jokes (in one scene, Francesca falls over, and when Felix struggles to lift her, she says, "I wanted you to know I'm no easy pick-up.") In another scene, a character briefly has his head replaced with a cooked pig's... and a "kid's picture" ending with a mushroom cloud would have been a bold move at the time!

The cute/ghastly look of the creatures in this film was very influential on The Nightmare Before Christmas and other Tim Burton monster designs; in particular, the little monsters seen in the Stay One Step Ahead number strongly resemble Burton creations.

In addition to the famous monsters seen in the film, Mad Monster Party also features several celebrity likenesses. Boris Karloff and Phyllis Diller's characters are both designed to look like the actors portraying them, while the hunchbacked lackey named Yetch is a physical and vocal caricature of Peter Lorre. Felix, on the other hand, strongly resembles Jimmy Stewart vocally but not physically.