Philip J. Riley

From the vaults of the Ackerman Archives. Contains: production background; a press book; biography notes on cast and crew; complete shooting script; rare photos; and behind the scene photos.

The Original Shooting Script

MagicImage Filmbooks Presents Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man

Thunder was the last silent film for Lon Chaney. His health was not good during the shoot and for the first time in his career he held up production while he recuperated. He plays Grumpy Anderson, a near retirement, old workhorse of a train engineer. It is said that a piece of artificial snow, used in the production, lodged in his throat causing an infection that led to his untimely death at age 47 on August 26, 1930. Only a few fragments exist. The novel was published in 1930 in France and has been translated by Eric McNaughton. “The 1929 audiences were up on their feet and cheering Chaney at the exciting climax of Thunder.” Chauncey Haines - Silent Film Organist

Thunder - Starring Lon Chaney

Late 1929. The Stock market crash. At MGM Studios Irving Thalberg was involved in a power struggle. Lon Chaney's contract was coming up for renewal. Tod Browning, MGM's famed director of the macbre genre for the studio, had left and signed a contract back at his home studio, Universal. Carl Laemmle Jr was made production head of Universal for his father and he wanted to do a film version of Dracula. Carl Sr. agreed, as long as they had Lon Chaney as the star. Early in August of 1930, Carl Junior, still attempting to sign Chaney for the role, ordered a treatment to be authored by Louis Bromfield. By Mid August he was teamed with screenwriter Dudley Murphy and they began work on the script. Then in the middle of the negotiations, Lon Chaney unexpected by everyone in the film industry, died on August 26th. This volume of the Atlernate History of Classic Monster Films we present the full first Bromfield treatment, the incomplete first draft screenplay by Bromfield and Murphy. In addition, when Dracula was finally produced, more in the fashion of the popular 1927 play than the Bram Stoker novel, as was intended by Laemmle for Chaney - A silent version of the Lugosi Dracula was prepared for theaters who had not yet converted to sound. We have also included a complete Title list from this version. Also included in this volume is a translated version of F.W. Murnau's shooting script for the first screen version of Dracula - filmed in Germany in 1922 and called NOSFERATU, a symphony of horror. Murnau's hand annotations are included in bold print throughout the script.

An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters

Dracula Starring Lon Chaney

David Conover

This latest addition to Philip J Riley's Alternate History of Classic Filmonsters series is a collaborative effort with fellow film historian David Conover that delves into one of the most famous unproduced motion pictures of all time, Merian C. Cooper's legendary WAR EAGLES! Planned as a full Technicolor production at MGM in the late 1930s, WAR EAGLES would have eclipsed Cooper and long-time SFX partner Willis O'Brien's KING KONG as the greatest fantasy epic of the period had it not fallen victim to pre-war studio politics and the rise of Hitler's Third Reich on the eve of World War II. Long considered a lost film effort, Conover's research has actually uncovered a richly detailed pre-production history, complete with never-before -published artwork, storyboards, test footage frames and more, direct from studio archives and the estates of technicians and artists who actually worked on the film. Also included is the full, never-published final draft of WAR EAGLES by Cyril Hume (screenwriter of MGM's Tarzan series and the sci-fi masterpiece FORBIDDEN PLANET) along with Merian C. Cooper's original treatment and production designer Howard Campbell's notes and budgets for the ill-fated production. For decades, stop-motion fans and film researchers considered an early, coverless draft attributed to Willis O'Brien-- but actually written by Harold Lamb and James Ashmore Creelman-- to be the only existing script for WAR EAGLES, but Conover's discovery of the original typescripts at the USC film library in 2003 turned up 7 more drafts and multiple revisions that eventually led to the final Hume draft. Pre-production artist Duncan Gleason began detailed storyboarding and illustration based on this draft and it is very likely that it would have become the actual shooting script. Detailed models and sets were built and Technicolor test footage featuring stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and his crew (including Kong/Mighty Joe Young creators Marcel Delgado and George Lofgren) was shot, and the exciting tale of a lost race of Viking warriors astride giant prehistoric eagles doing battle with Nazis over the skies of modern day Manhattan almost reached the screen until the reality of impending war halted production in 1940... David Conover is a film writer and historian who began his quest to uncover the history of WAR EAGLES as a 13-year-old reader of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. He was a columnist and reviewer for the Louisville Eccentric Observer for 9 years and his work was syndicated widely during that period as well. He is also the Vice President and Programming Director for WonderFest, an international modeling, toy, film and FX expo that takes place annually in Louisville, Ky, where he lives with his wife, daughter, and a tiny piece of the stegosaurus model from the original KING KONG. If you ask him, he'll show it to you, along with the final page of Cyril Hume's WAR EAGLES script. He's not crazy, just enthusiastic..

War Eagles - The Unmaking of an Epic - An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters

(the Original 1941 Shooting Script)

MagicImage Filmbooks Presents The Wolf Man

A complete history of the 1945 horror film, with forward by producer Paul Malvern and introduction by film star John Carradine. It contains complete original shooting script, details of the making, rare photographs, complete pressbook, and interview with film star Jane Adams.

House of Dracula

MagicImage Filmbooks Presents House of Dracula

Dean Owen

Everyone in the village of Badstein knows how to eliminate the vampire preying on its young daughters: Find the coffin he sleeps in during the day and drive a wooden stake through his heart. But how can you find you quarry if you don't know who he is and your suspects are many. There's a dark-complexioned Latour, given to wandering at night and sleeping during the day. . . and handsome Baron Meinster, supposedly traveling in the Orient but rumored to be hiding in his ancient chateau. . . and the stranger, Professor Van Helsing . . . it could be anyone. Meanwhile, the victims multiply - all female, all young, and all marked with the telltale sign of the vampire. This is the first volume of "The NightMare Series" from noted film historian and author, Philip J Riley. The purpose of the series is to preserve the 50s and 60s Horror Film, movie tie-in novels that are printed on old crumbling pulp paper; to bring them in this new format for a new century. These are the original novels by various authors, not the scripts as in the editor's "Filmonster Series" and the MagicImage Filmbook series.

The Brides of Dracula

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (MGM,1927) starring Lon Chaney, is considered a Lost Film. It is still on the top of the AFI and other world wide film organizations "Most Wanted" lists as it was when the first edition of this book was published in 1985. This edition is 254 pages and the original printing was 178 pages. Chaney added 3 new faces to his "Thousand Faces" - Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard, Professor Burke of India, and America's first film vampire, The Man in the Beaver Hat. In fact it was directed by Tod Browning, who directed "Dracula" 4 years later, which was also to star Chaney as the Count, but his premature death in 1930 prevented it. This new edition also contains a foreword by Forrest J Ackerman and an introduction by the film's Art Director A.Arnold (Buddy) Gillespie; short interviews with David S. Horsley, ASC and by Carroll Borland, who played Luna, the vampire girl in the 1935 remake entitled. "Mark of the Vampire. Also the script is presented in it's original form. Many new photographs of vintage posters from around the world and a reformatted reconstruction of the film by the use of photographs, art work and Silent Film Titles. Included is the complete 1928 Photoplay novel by Marie Coolidge-Rask, long out of print and usually around $500 when you can find a copy. Reproduced on the back cover is the fantastic portrait of Chaney as the vampire by Special Effects and Academy Award winning makeup artist - Rick Baker, Monster Maker.

London After Midnight - a Reconstruction

It’s a Universal Picture! From the Vaults of the Ackerman Archives. Contains Production Background! Press Book! Biography Notes on the Cast & Crew! Complete Shooting Script! Rare Photographs! Behind the Scene Photos! The first in the Universal Filmscripts Series from MagicImage.

Frankenstein (Universal Filmscripts Series: Classic Horror Films - Volume 1)

From the Vaults of the Ackerman Archives comes the science fiction classic, This Island Earth! Contains Production Background! Press Book! Biography notes on the Cast and Crew! Complete Shooting Script! Rare Photographs! Behind the Scene Photos!

This Island Earth (Universal Filmscripts Series Classic Science Fiction)

Following Phantom of the Opera (1943), in the middle of the Silver age of Universal Studio's monster movies, a new sequel to Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman was considered for a Technicolor production: Wolfman vs Dracula! Lon Chaney Jr., who was the only actor to portray Universal's four classic monster roles; Dracula, frankenstein's monster, the mummy and the wolfman. At first Chaney was to play both roles, as his father Lon Chaney Sr. had done in several of his famous silent films. But Larry Talbot in his human phase would look exactly like Count Dracula so the role of Dracula was given to it's originator Bela Lugosi. A script was prepared by Bernard Shubert, who had written the screenplay for Tod Browning's London After Midnight(MGM 1927) remake Mark of the Vampire (MGM 1935). Shubert kept the settings very tight in its scenes, to keep the cost down to balance out for the extra expense of technicolor. But by 1944 Bela Lugosi was in his 60s and would have had to play part of his role as a giant bat much like in the Copolla Bram Stoker's Dracula in the 90s - and that would have been too much for him. And they couldn't have the Wolfman fighting an animated bat much like John Carradine's depiction of the Count or even Lugosi's portrayal in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. So they decided to make one of their Arabian Nights film on the Technicolor contract and all that remained of Wolfman vs Dracula are some color 8x10s of Chaney in both parts. This volume has a short biography of screenwriter/TV producer Bernard Shubert and comments from Shubert and special effects cinematographer David Stanley Horsley.

Philip J. Riley

About

Books

Join the club