Cavalcade of Awesome

Here we are on Day 4 of Dracula TV week. Today we are looking at one of my favorite Halloween cartoon specials.  Today we are looking at the special, The Flintstones Meet Rockula & Frankenstone.

The special was produced in 1979 but aired for the first time in Oct 1980. It featured the voices of Henry Corden as Fred, Mel Blanc as Barney, Ted Cassidy (Lurch from Adams Family) as Frankenstone and John Stephenson as Count Rockula.

The special starts with the Flintstones and Rubbles visiting the game show Make a Deal or Don’t. They win a trip to Rocksylvania to stay the weekend in Castle Rockula.

The ancient Castle Rockula has been turned in to a fancy hotel. The Flintstones and Rubbles attend a Halloween party dressed as Rockula and Frankenstone. They accidentally discover a trap door into a secret laboratory underneath the castle. While in this laboratory, a random bolt of lightning awakens the real Frankenstone monster. The real monster goes into another secret passage and awakens the real Count Rockula who has been asleep for the last 500 years.

Count Rockula immediately orders everyone out of the castle. While herding everyone out the doors, he meets Wilma, mistakes her for his bride, then, when he realizes his error, he decides to take her as his bride anyway even if it means killing Fred.

So Rockula and Frankenstone chase Fred, Wilma, Betty and Barney throughout the entire castle Scooby-style.  The Flintstones and Rubbles steal a car and attempt to escape the castle. They are able to escape when Barney does his rooster impression to trick Rockula into thinking the sun is about to rise.  The Flintstones and Rubbles quickly board a train and head home.

Back at home, Count Rockula flies into the Flintstone kitchen and begs Wilma to go away with him.  Wilma starts spouting off all the things he needs to do if she goes with him like pick up Pebbles from school, do the grocery shopping and fix the front fence.  Rockula is scared off and flies back out the window.

There is lots of fun in this special.  I recommend seeing it if you haven’t yet.  Rockula and Frankenstone would show up in later episodes of The Flintstones, but never together.  And the later incarnations aren’t considered to be the same characters as the ones in this special.  In fact, both Rockula and Frankenstone would show up as Flintstone neighbors in several episodes of The New Fred and Barney Show.  Rockula and his wife moved in next to the Flintstones in the episode Blood Brothers.  The Frankenstone character would move in next to the Flintstones during the episode The Flintstones’ New Neighbors.  He would be named Frank Frankenstone and his family would resemble both The Adams Family and The Munsters.

It seems the producers loved to give the Flintstones monsters as neighbors.  In the 60s, the Flintstones would get another monster family as their neighbors.  The Gruesomes.  The Gruesomes would be re-used and modernized a bit in the 1970s for the Laff-A-Lympics.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

This entry was posted on October 20, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under cartoons, Dracula, Frankenstein, Halloween, holiday, monsters, TV shows, vampires with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2011, cartoons, Frankenstein, Halloween, holiday, monsters, TV shows, vampires. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.