The Monogram Monograph: Preface

From 1941 to 1944, Bela Lugosi appeared in nine horror/mystery films produced by Sam Katzman for Monogram Pictures. They included Invisible Ghost, Spooks Run Wild, Black Dragons, Bowery at Midnight, The Corpse Vanishes, Ghosts on the Loose, The Ape Man, Return of the Ape Man, and Voodoo Man, and each was a reflection of Lugosi's private failings and triumphs as an actor whose career had shriveled away many years prior, never to properly return. They also each contain some amusing and fascinatingly complex plots, topped with ludicrous twist endings that would make Harry Stephen Keeler blush—it's for these two reasons that they are memorable in any way. During the winter of 2016, when I had completed my reviews for Spookyween and Bookvember, I had a chance to binge Lugosi and Katzman's “Monogram Nine” and got hooked at once--they lit a fire inside me. Rather than review each of the films individually, I decided to experiment with the inspiration they gave me. This story, The Monogram Monograph, is the result of that experiment. So settle in for a chapter a week for the next couple of months! The story is set in the same continuum as my previous stories Dieselworld and Words from the Inner Circle, but you won't need to know those stories to get this, even if it widens the view.

The story will be hosted on the A-List for free. However, should you enjoy the story enough to want to leave me a tip, you can...

Without further ado, then, I will turn to the testament of Dr. Kruthers...