Hail, Horrors Hail

15 July 1966 · New Zealand Listener

Bram Stoker Estate account · Original source: English

Estate summary

This Listener feature introduces a television programme in which Wayne and Shuster revisit the classic screen monsters. It contrasts the menace associated with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff with later comic and domestic versions, including the Munsters, and asks whether commercial sequels have weakened the horror tradition. Bram’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are placed behind a history extending from German silent cinema to Hollywood and Hammer. The discussion is valuable as evidence of how horror’s earlier films were being remembered in 1966. Some dates and folklore claims in the original are inaccurate or require qualification; they are not adopted here as film history.

Complete Listener OCR read. The provider explicitly restricts reuse of the 1966 material; no full text or magazine illustrations republished. Contemporary retrospective, not a primary source for the films’ release dates.

Original source

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Bela Lugosi in Dracula costume, Universal publicity photograph,1931. — Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Universal publicity portrait, 1931. A performer discussed in the 1966 television feature; not an image from that broadcast.Universal Studios; unidentified photographer, via Wikimedia Commons.