Clearly, The Roku Channel learned its lesson after putting Gravesend in my featured row a few months ago. This time, it served up something called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, described simply as “scary and silly goings-on at a mad scientist vampire’s castle.”
Interesting, no?
The Canadian series aired on CHCH-TV, and the first episode dates back to Saturday, September 11, 1971. So, was this essentially Saturday morning cartoon fun for Canadian kids, only without the cartoon?
There was only one way to find out.
And within seconds, Vincent Price’s floating head appeared on my television.
I’m dying with delight.
That voice. That face. That completely unexpected Vincent Price of it all. I went into Frightenstein knowing almost nothing about it, so finding the master of the macabre staring back at me was enough to get this trial off to a very good start.
Price opens the show in rhyme, setting the mood for what turns out to be one of the strangest combinations of children’s television, horror, comedy, science, music and complete f*cking nonsense I’ve encountered in a while.
And I mean that as a compliment.
Welcome to Frightenstein
At the center of the madness are Count Frightenstein and Igor, surrounded by familiar horror imagery that would have been right at home in a kid-friendly Universal Monsters funhouse. Frankenstein is there, although he’s still lying on the slab waiting for someone to get the poor bastard working.
I kept wondering whether they were ever going to wake him up.
But The Hilarious House of Frightenstein isn’t really telling a story. It bounces through short recurring segments, comedy sketches, educational bits, songs, Vincent Price interludes and strange little transitions that sometimes last only a few seconds.
It took me a while to understand what the hell I was watching. Once I did, I started having a blast.
The Professor, for example, teaches the viewing audience about “extremely strange things.” His subject this time is thermally excited pipes, which initially sounds like complete gibberish. Then he starts putting cardboard pipes of different sizes over a heat source and they produce different sounds.
Holy shit. The cardboard pipes sing.
So underneath all the silliness, there’s an actual little science experiment happening.
The Professor also uses an old-fashioned chalkboard, which immediately took me back to the days when teachers punished kids by making them write the same sentence hundreds of times.
Remember that bullshit?
Did writing “I will not…” 500 times teach me anything? Fuck no. If I’d been smart, I would have prepared stacks of pages containing I WILL NOT ______ and filled in the offense as needed.
Missed opportunity.
Then Frightenstein moves on because this show never stays anywhere for very long.
A gorilla holding a net gets hit in the head with a tennis ball. Why? Because it’s time for something else.
Sure. Why the fuck not?
Who the Hell Is John Wayne?
One of my favorite discoveries was the Igor Sullivan Show, which Count Frightenstein watches on a literal cardboard television.
Igor starts doing celebrity impressions. John Wayne. Jimmy Stewart. Kirk Douglas. Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Does he sound like John Wayne? Absolutely not.
Jimmy Stewart? Nope.
For Kirk Douglas, he puts a finger against his chin to create Douglas’s famous dimple, which is so stupid that it becomes funny again. Zsa Zsa isn’t half bad.
But it made me think about something we’ve lost as television has become increasingly fragmented and personalized.
How many kids watching this in 1971 knew who all these people were?
Maybe they didn’t. Maybe some kid asked Mom who John Wayne was and accidentally opened a cultural rabbit hole.
That’s how a lot of us discovered older entertainment. In Chicago, Frazier Thomas and Family Classics exposed kids to movies they probably never would have chosen themselves. Reruns did the same thing. You watched what was on, and somewhere along the way you absorbed people, movies, characters and references from decades before you were born.
Frightenstein throws that stuff at kids without worrying whether every reference lands.
And why shouldn’t it? Kids are curious little fuckers.
Julia Child, Wolfman Jack and BOMBTASTIC
Next thing I know, some Superman-looking dude flies across the screen during the show’s “most frightening segment.”
He’s there for maybe ten seconds.
What does he say? “Bombtastic.” That’s it.
Thank you, Frightenstein. That’s my word now.
Then Vincent Price pops back in, because he serves as a kind of wonderfully macabre glue holding all this insanity together.
Price introduces Griselda the Ghastly Gourmet, who’s essentially witch Julia Child, right down to the vocal inflections. She’s preparing God knows what while doing a parody that probably flew directly over the heads of plenty of children and landed squarely with their parents.
That’s another thing I like about Frightenstein. It doesn’t assume children’s television has to contain nothing but children’s jokes.
There’s stuff for adults. There’s stuff for kids. And sometimes there’s stuff that seems designed for whoever happened to be awake when they made it.
Then we get the Wolfman, complete with his own radio show and Wolfman Jack mannerisms.
I’m dying.
There’s a mummy hanging around in the background because apparently we haven’t thrown enough monsters into this thing yet.
There are real sets, costumes, props, smoke and sound effects everywhere. Sure, some of it looks cheap. The television is cardboard. One crystal ball appears to be an upside-down fish bowl. At one point the “butter” used in an experiment is very obviously a hard yellow sponge.
But that’s part of the charm. Cheap isn’t the same thing as lazy. Somebody actually built all this ridiculous shit.
Wait, Are We Learning Something?
That’s the other surprise.
Frightenstein is sneaking little bits of education into this insanity constantly.
Dr. Pet Vet introduces a real side-neck turtle named Harry and talks about what it eats and where it comes from. I’d never heard of a side-neck turtle before, either, so congratulations, 1971 Canadian children’s television: you taught me something in 2026.
The Oracle turns up wearing an outrageous outfit, trying to hypnotize the audience with his “boo bell.” There’s astrology, the Cancer zodiac sign, a horoscope, a crystal ball and Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
Vincent Price pulls Edgar Allan Poe into the proceedings. There are questions about mandrake root. Count Frightenstein collects stamps. The Professor is doing science.
And suddenly I’m realizing this completely ludicrous program is exposing kids to science, animals, classic movies, literature, music, art, horror characters and whatever the fuck else somebody thought of that week.
It’s educational television disguised as somebody’s acid trip.
Even Price’s rhyming introductions expose kids to rhythm and cadence without stopping everything to announce, CHILDREN, YOU ARE NOW LEARNING.
That’s probably why it works.
And Now for Something Completely Different…
Parts of Frightenstein kept reminding me of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Not because they’re the same kind of comedy, but because of the show’s willingness to abruptly abandon one thing and go somewhere completely different.
The Oracle is talking about mandrake root.
Cut to Vincent Price saying something.
Cut to Bombtastic Man.
Back to Count Frightenstein and Igor.
There’s the strange flying guy, some Krishna-looking guy holding God knows what kind of stringed instrument, weird animated transitions and a costumed miniature figure dropping into the frame.
WTF? Okay!
The rapid-fire structure also helps a 47-minute children’s show immensely. Most segments disappear before they wear out their welcome. When Count Frightenstein and Igor linger too long on a particular sketch, you feel the slowdown, but generally something new is right around the corner.
And everybody looks like they’re having fun, especially Vincent Price.
He opens the show. He closes the show. He appears throughout in rhyme. And somehow the man who gave us House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler fits perfectly into this goofy Canadian children’s madhouse.
Time Express? That was a mistake. We’ll get to that one soon.
The Verdict
Am I going to watch all 50 episodes of The Hilarious House of Frightenstein? Absolutely fucking not.
Would I put it on again? Yeah, I might.
It’s the kind of thing I could easily have running in the background, look up every so often and discover that a vampire is building a player organ, a turtle is teaching me about South America or Vincent Price has returned to recite another rhyme.
And if FAST television had existed when my kid was little and I’d stumbled onto Frightenstein? This absolutely would have gone into the rotation alongside the OG Batman.
Barney and The Wiggles are fine. Now come over here, kid. We’re watching Vincent Price’s floating head.
🔥 Final Verdict: WATCHABLE
Yes, it’s a kids’ show. So what?
Television doesn’t always have to be drama, murder, mystery or serious horror. Sometimes shows made for kids are more imaginative — and frankly more fun— than plenty of television made for adults.
I mean, seriously. Eerie, Indiana, anyone?
