Wow we were all fooled into thinking “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was so damn original when it came out-but that’s because most people I know never even knew that Rankin / Bass’ “Mad Monster Party” even existed!! I know that I didn’t but it’s a documented fact that Tim Burton did and it was a big influence on his stop motion stuff. I am probably the biggest Rankin / Bass Christmas Special fan of all time – but today I just discovered the Rankin / Bass stop motion animated world is larger than I imagined! That’s quite a good thing!

This movie has got classic monsters like The Werewolf, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Hunchback, Invisible Man, Jekyll & Hyde, Mummy, It ( a King Kong knock off), Dracula, Boris Karloff as Frankenstein and his Bride played by Phyllis Diller. It’s also penned by MAD magazine writer Harvey Kurtzman!

So this is on my list of must see dvds. I know that it was released in 2009 on dvd so I assume it’s going to be easy to find and probably right on youtube. It came out in 1967 yet it took me until 2012 to discover-I love it!! It makes me wonder how many other great stop motion movies are out there that I have no clue about?! It will be a fun search….