Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles

Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles
1966-67 – 395 Min.
Starring Dick Beals, Paul Frees, Don Messick
Written by Michael Maltese, Eddie Brandt
Directed by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera

A pretty cool cash-in combining  the 60s monster-craze and Beatlemania, Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles shouldn’t work but it does; powered by Hanna-Barbera’s well-oiled assembly line of speedy animators and talented voice artists, the show debuted on September 10, 1966, and sprinted through two seasons on CBS Saturday morning, sandwiched between Underdog and Space Ghost.

To keep that assembly line purring, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera gleefully pillaged pop culture, all in the name of satire—The Flintstones aped The Honeymooners and Top Cat borrowed Phil Silvers’s Bilko persona. But Frankenstein Jr. has more patchwork than his namesake, mixing Mighty Joe Young, the folksy space-age adventures of Tom Swift, and a few dollops of 1963s Gigantor for good measure. It’s a jam-packed recipe but the plot is simple; Buzz Conroy is a boy scientist who’s built the best toy in his neighborhood, a towering mechanical version of Karloff’s creature in superhero drag with a puppy dog personality.

The plots are jokey junior-league takes on pulp science fiction stories with titles like The Shocking Electrical Monster, The Alien Brain from Outer Space, and The Invasion of the Robot Creatures. In that respect, the eight minute episodes gave the tykes at home precisely what they were promised.

The duo’s adventures were bookended each week by H-B’s nod to the more psychedelic aspects of flower-power, The Impossibles, a hyper-active rock band whose musical career is but a cover-up for their real job as undercover super heroes. The trio’s unique powers are so gonzo its easy to believe the writers were dabbling in psychedelics themselves: meet Multi-Man, a convivial mop top able to duplicate himself ad infinitum, Coil-Man, a human Slinky toy, and… Fluid-Man, able to deliquesce on cue. Sadly the writers never take advantage of that soggy crime buster’s icky possibilities.

The episodes concentrated on a weekly villain ala Adam West’s Batman: Fero, the Fiendish Fiddler, The Puzzler, The Dastardly Diamond Dazzler, weird menaces predicting the never-never land monsters of George Dunning’s Yellow Submarine. As with most of H-B’s limited animation, it was the writing and voice artists who stole the show, and Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles boasted a legendary crew; Paul Frees as Fluid-Man, Don Messick as Multi-Man, and Hal Smith as Coil-Man.

Paul Frees (Fluid-Man) reached his zenith with The Bullwinkle Show but that didn’t keep him from popping up in seemingly every other show in need of a thin-skinned Russian spy or hyperactive Viennese duck. Don Messick (Multi-Man) was a Hanna-Barbera perennial, celebrated in most grade school lunchrooms as Ranger Smith, Yogi Bear’s Jellystone nemesis. Hal Smith (Coil Man) and Ted Cassidy (Frankenstein Jr.) were even more memorable in their human incarnations (Smith was Otis the drunk on The Andy Griffith Show while Cassidy made his bones as Lurch, the Addams’s Family long-suffering butler).

The ringer in the group was Dick Beals as Buzz Conroy. At the time Beals was 39 years old with a decades-long career of radio, TV, and cartoon work behind him, including the voice of Art Clokey’s Gumby, a miniature Play-Doh golem, and Davey, in Clokey’s equally peculiar follow-up, Davey and Goliath. But Beals was best known as Speedy Alka-Seltzer; half boy, half anti-acid tablet—he took on the job in 1953 and didn’t step down till 1976… that’s a lot of plopping and fizzing.

The writers were an eclectic bunch, Jack Hanrahan, a writer for Get Smart and Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and Eddie Brandt, Bowery Boys scribe and Hollywood’s unofficial video archivist (Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee was the place for obscure TV and movies with an extraordinary collection of forgotten television). Leader of the pack was Michael Maltese, writer of such Looney Tunes classics like Duck Amuck, The Rabbit of Seville, and One Froggy Evening, a cautionary morality play to equal O’Henrys’ Ransom of Red Chief or W. W. Jacob’s The Monkey’s Paw.

Maltese’s presence assured the shows were witty and face-paced but episodes of Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles remain the cartoon version of cotton candy; once they were over, they spiraled down the memory hole. Nevertheless, that eye candy is on full display in Warner Archive’s new Blu ray release: Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles: The Complete Series. The show looks terrific and the colors pop like a Peter Max poster. The fine quality of the transfers will have to suffice for those hoping for a documentary or two; the lone extra is the five minute Monster Rock: Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles.