Fodder for a Father’s Day Blog

To all the dads out there, a happy Father’s Day-hopefully, you won’t be the recipient of a tie you don’t need (and won’t need to be tied up- Hulk smash!) Being a father is an awesome responsibility- though I do see quite a few dads who don’t seem to be taking that seriously. We get an almost daily earful of the celebrity fathers, from Jessica Simpson’s dad to Hulk Hogan, who haven’t seemed to play their parental part as well as they should have. So, we salute the fathers who have stepped up, taken care of their offspring the right way, and know what it really means to be a dad.

We’ve encountered some dads in our Universal offerings- just recently, we saw a son of Frankenstein being advised by his father’s “ghost.” Now THAT’S dedication- still coming back to

send junior in the right direction, in spite of the slight handicap of being dead!

We saw both the Son and Daughter of Dracula, and what a dysfunctional family THAT was- Sonny Bat ...I mean Boy…

Honoring his father by continuing the vampiric traditions

that his poppa instilled in him (although doing so under the

Backward “Alucard” alias)-while Sis went in the exact opposite direction, trying to shake the blood-imbibing habits of her father, and honoring him by setting his body on fire to grant him eternal rest…which must not have worked very well, in view of all those sequels-though the flames did change his appearance from that of Bela Lugosi to John Carradine- then back to Bela in time to meet Abbott and Costello.

We never got a son of the Mummy (maybe because his princess love passed away before he could sire any mini-mummies with her.) There were never any Wolf Man cubs either- Larry Talbot was too busy whining and howling to

breed a pack. The Invisible Man? Heck, he might have had kids- how could we tell? We can’t see them (going against the old adage that children should be seen, but not heard-with Invisi-kids, it’d be the exact opposite!)And- while Dr. Frankenstein certainly sired a couple sons, one of whom had a daughter- the Frankenstein Monster and his lovely hand-crafted Bride never got to the point of making little chips off the old blockhead.

As the former Son of Svengoolie, I certainly followed in the footsteps of my TV dad- who showed me the ropes of handling

many aspects of  radio, television, and the varied facets of show business. The rest- I learned from my actual real-life dad, who has always known what it takes to be a father. Thanks, Dad!    #     #     #