The zippers on the backs of the Power Rangers’ costumes aren’t too far removed from the glue keeping the fur on Lon Chaney Jr.’s face. But that only made it easier for the show to copy Universal’s movies, which famously trafficked in on-camera tricks and kitschy aesthetics. As Variety explained upon the release of Frankenstein: “Laboratory sequence detailing the creation of the monster patched up of human odds-and-ends is a smashing bit of theatrical effect, taking place in this eerie setting during a violent mountain storm in the presence of the scientist’s sweetheart and others, all frozen with mortal fright.”Īs a low-budget, non-union production with elements lifted directly from a Japanese kids’ series, Power Rangers is hardly representative of cutting-edge effects. Before CGI, Strickfaden found unique ways to light sequences like Frankenstein’s awakening. Special effects, a cornerstone of superhero movies, built on the innovative work of people like Kenneth Strickfaden, whose career started with the 1931 classic Frankenstein. It also illuminates just how much Power Rangers - and superhero media as a whole - owes to monster horror. It’s an effective exercise in a show departing from its established style to pay homage to a cinematic institution. The episode is a lean 21 minutes, but “It Came From Angel Grove” isn’t just Power Rangers doubling down on its cheesiness. “It Came From Angel Grove” is a 1996 episode of Power Rangers Zeo in which the infamously cheesy kids’ show pays homage to Universal’s classic monster movies. Tommy the Red Ranger (Jason David Frank) is a vampire with an awful Eastern European accent, while Rocky the Blue Ranger (Steve Cardenas) is a gentleman with an awful English accent whose nickname, Harry, means he’s a werewolf. The teens’ after-school hangout becomes a smoky tavern, while fellow Power Rangers have become the monsters Adam must rob. The details would require a treatise on Power Rangers lore, but the episode sends Adam on a fetch quest for items like “the cape of a vampire” and “the hair of a werewolf” to reverse the Machine Empire’s rule.Īdam’s quest takes him to disparate settings that channel the world of Power Rangers Zeo through old black and white gothic horror. The premise teased by the movie’s narrator is outlandish: “What happens when a vampire, a werewolf, a mummy, and a witch team up to stop a mad doctor and his evil bride?”Īn exhausted Adam falls asleep and is woken by former enemies, the alien witch Rita Repulsa (Barbara Goodson) and crimson-skinned Lord Zedd (Robert Axelrod), who tell him their rivals, the Machine Empire, have taken over Earth.
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While taking a break, Adam flips on the TV and catches a fictional old monster flick, The Bride of Hackensack. It centers on mild-mannered Adam Park (Johnny Yong Bosch), the Green Ranger, who burns the midnight oil studying for a test.
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“It Came From Angel Grove” is effectively a Halloween episode of the sequel series to the more iconic Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Nothing about Werewolf by Night looks “real,” even by Marvel standards. With black-and-white cinematography, meretricious production design, overdramatic lighting, and an intentionally grainy picture, Werewolf by Night will depart from the slicker aesthetics of the MCU to evoke the look and feel of monster movies made almost a century ago.
That bond was tightened at D23 when Marvel Studios premiered the trailer for Werewolf by Night, a “Disney+ Special Presentation” (essentially a made-for-TV movie) featuring some of Marvel’s spookiest characters.
Their stories revolve around beings who, through wild and often tragic circumstances, are changed in ways that make them question their humanity. Superheroes and monsters are kindred spirits. Universal’s iconic monster franchise drew the blueprints for today’s Marvel crossovers, and some of the superhero flicks that augured the genre’s 21st-century boom were the horror-tinged Spawn (1997) and Blade(1998). Superheroes owe a debt to monster movies.