thenightling

[thenightling]

Clearing up some misconceptions about the Frankenstein Experiment: Monsters unchained ride

The other day I was told a headcanon that the Frankenstein monster in Epic Universe's Dark Universe ride, Frankenstein Experiment: Monsters unchained, is actually "the 10th attempt" and "The one playing the piano is a previous version."

If you are a Gothic horror lover you already know why this "headcanon" hurts my brain.

Okay, first... There are fourteen animatronics in the ride, not fourteen Frankenstein monsters.

Second, despite the ride's name, there's only one Frankenstein-created monster walking around.

Yes, he is not the first Frankenstein monster. The first one is in the cue of the ride, apparently dead (but not necessarily unrevivable). This is the "second version" made by Victoria Frankenstein. The original was by Henry Frankenstein. (Victor's name was changed to Henry in the 1931 movie).

The premise of the ride is that Victoria has captured all the classic monsters and is trying to enslave them to her will. Only one of them was actually made by her. They aren't all her creations.

The ride is set in Frankenstein manor in the village of Darkmoor in an unspecified central to Eastern European Country. Think of it as a Gothic fairy tale setting. It's present day but there are aesthetics of the Victorian era and even some medieval, a bit like a Castlevania game or Hammer Horror movie or more recently Asylum's Monster Mash movie from last year.

The "Experiment" in the ride's title isn't the creation of monsters despite that being what we associate with "Frankenstein Experiment." It's Victoria's attempt to capture and control the monsters, making herself Queen of the Monsters.

In reality Dracula is the deFacto King of the Monsters. Though he was never actually the first vampire in Universal's lore (or the novel), he did self-title himself King of the vampires by the time you got to the Frank Langella Dracula movie of 1979. And by other depictions he became king of the monsters. Now before you say "I thought King Kong was king of the Monsters." or "I thought Godzilla was king of the Monsters." That's Kaiju (Really big monsters). Dracula is king of the humanoid monsters. This is why Victoria is obsessed with enslaving him because once she has him, the other monsters are completely ensnared and she can claim her crown as Queen of the Monsters (despite being human).

The characters that appear in the Frankenstein Experiment: Monsters unchained ride are as follows:

Igor / Ygor (Henchman to Victoria Frankenstein)

Frankenstein Monster version 2

Victoria Frankenstein (descendant of Henry Frankenstein) Quasimodo AKA The Hunchback of NotreDame. (Classified as monster even though he was just physically deformed in his story. There is still the question of how is he alive in present day when his story is set in the fifteenth century. Is he a ghost?)

Erik AKA Phantom of the Opera. (Classified as monster despite just being physically disfigured Frenchman. There's no explanation as to how he's alive in present day. Possibly an immortal sorcerer. He practiced magick in the original silent film and was a gifted hypnotist. Also that wasn't a piano, it was an organ.

Dracula - Vlad Dracula, historic figure turned vampire. Victoria Frankenstein is obsessed with breaking his will and he ends up escaping and leading a monster rebellion, proclaiming that she's the real monster.

Dracula's brides - Women he turned into his vampire minion over the centuries. (Note: When Dracula das musical is performed in Germany they add grooms to the brides. I kind of wish they did that here. Most depictions of Dracula are bisexual now, playing on some hints from the novel).

Gillman AKA The Creature from the Black Lagoon - Ancient, re-generative aquatic merman creature from South America.

The Wolfman - An immortal werewolf, Lawrence (Larry) Talbot. (He was confirmed as being immortal in the original black and white movies. The only thing that can really kill him is silver and even that is negotiable). Larry attended school in America (to account for his American accent) but his father was a country Lord, probably in England.

The Mummy - It's unclear which version of The Mummy this is but it is likely a Royal woman from Egypt (North Africa). Around the time you see The Mummy on the ride, Dracula gives his speech about who the real monsters are. Weirdly, many people have mistaken the speech as coming from The Mummy. No, it's Dracula talking in the scene. These are captured monsters. None of them were "Made" by Victoria Frankenstein except the Frankenstein monster version 2. Version 1 is dormant in the cue and if you know the movies, you know the original brain isn't even in the body anyway. The brain that was in that monster by the end of the franchise was Ygor (played by Bela Lugosi).

[thenightling]

Apparently "Not Homophobes" are sharing a meme now of a silhouette of a man apparently holding a woman's hand (They look like old bathroom logos) and the text reads "Thank a straight person for your existence today! Straight Pride!"

A few things to unpack here.

Some rando on the street isn't getting a thank you from me just because he f--ked a woman or a woman f--ked a man.

1. Bi / Pan people are a thing. There are also gay people who chose to have a temporary straight relationship just to have children or had children before they realized they were gay.

2. There are options like invitro, surrogates. An adopted child should not feel obligated to thank the abusive parents who signed over their rights or abandoned them. (I know there are orphans who lost their parents to tragedy but not all of them did).

3. This invalidates infertile straight people. So you should only have straight pride if you're actively pro-creating?

Final thought on this, why is the Trump administration obsessed with procreation? Yes, birth rates are going down... FINALLY! This is a good thing. It's not an extinction level concern. The world was OVER populating for over a century. We're still over-populated.

Trump and Musk's obsession with "Saving the human race through reproduction" is suspicious, at best, considering they also don't want anchor babies and Trump just deported small children with citizenship. And I'll say the quiet part out loud. It's because their mothers weren't white.

I saw Walt Disney's old "banned" Donald Duck cartoon that taught about the Nazi regime. It's quite obvious what Trump is really concerned with is the population of "pure" white Americans.

[thenightling]

Apparently "Not Homophobes" are sharing a meme now of a silhouette of a man apparently holding a woman's hand (They look like old bathroom logos) and the text reads "Thank a straight person for your existence today! Straight Pride!"

A few things to unpack here.

Some rando on the street isn't getting a thank you from me just because he f--ked a woman or a woman f--ked a man.

1. Bi / Pan people are a thing. There are also gay people who chose to have a temporary straight relationship just to have children or had children before they realized they were gay.

2. There are options like invitro, surrogates. An adopted child should not feel obligated to thank the abusive parents who signed over their rights or abandoned them. (I know there are orphans who lost their parents to tragedy but not all of them did).

3. This invalidates infertile straight people. So you should only have straight pride if you're actively pro-creating?

Final thought on this, why is the Trump administration obsessed with procreation? Yes, birth rates are going down... FINALLY! This is a good thing. It's not an extinction level concern. The world was OVER populating for over a century. We're still over-populated.

Trump and Musk's obsession with "Saving the human race through reproduction" is suspicious, at best, considering they also don't want anchor babies and Trump just deported small children with citizenship. And I'll say the quiet part out loud. It's because their mothers weren't white.

I saw Walt Disney's old "banned" Donald Duck cartoon that taught about the Nazi regime. It's quite obvious what Trump is really concerned with is the population of "pure" white Americans.

[thenightling]

Something I love about Darkmoor village (the setting of Epic Universe theme park's Dark Unviverse) is the Burton's Batman effect (best way to describe it) of the setting. By Burton's Batman I mean it's supposed to be present day but there's also an apparent timelessness and an aesthetic from another time period. You'll notice the Tim Burton Batman movies, Batman the animated series, and even the show Gotham are set in present day with 90s and 2000s technology such as CDs and video games, but the clothes, ambiance, and even automobiles are of the 1920s-40s and everything has a sort of noir quality to it. If not for the modern technology you really can't tell what time period it's set in. With Darkmoor Village it's like a Hammer Horror film or more recently Asylum's Monster Mash, where you can't quite tell what time period it is. Officially it's supposed to be present day and the original Universal Monster movies happened about a century ago. But the architecture (which is partly medieval, partly Victorian), clothes (also partly medieval and partly Victorian), and even the technology (which looks very steampunk) suggests a fairy tale-like agelessness

This surreal timelessness is charming and appealing to me. It makes you feel like someone could easily come sashaying down the street in a nineteenth century opera cape, while someone else could be wearing a 1920s smoking jacket (and bandages) and it won't feel out of place (except maybe for the bandages). I like that surreal, Gothic, timelessness. The 1960s TV series Dark Shadows pulled it off pretty well too, at least from episode 210 until it ended.

[thenightling]

I saw the teaser for AMC's new Talamasca show and I noticed something. No version of the Talamasca in media has the exact slogan or motto from the books.

In the movie Queen of the Damned they had "We observe and record but never interfere." which is actually the motto of The Watchers from Highlander: The Series, who were loosely based on The Talamasca. So they ironically used the slogan for the Talamasca knock-off.

Now the new Talamasca show has "We Watch and We are always there." This is closer to the motto from the books but the book version is "We Watch and we are always here."

I wonder why they made such a subtle change.

While I'm thinking about it, I noticed the new Dark Universe in Epic Universe changed The Wolfman poem for their Curse of the Werewolf rollercoaster ride.

The original poem was

"Even a man who is pure of heart And says his prayers by night May become a wolf When the wolfsbane blooms And the autumn moon is bright."

Later the sequels and TV series Dark Shadows changed the poem to

"Even a man who is pure of heart And says his prayers by night May become a wolf When the wolfsbane blooms And the moon is bright.

(Other variations are "When the autumn moon is full and bright." and "And the fullmoon is bright")

The new version in the park leaves out "and says his prayers by night" which kind of hurts the rhyme. I wonder why that was cut. It's an odd bit of unnecessary secularizing. You're not confirming any faith is absolutely true.

[thenightling]

Did you see/what did you think of Sinners?

I have not seen it yet but I'm hearing lots of good things about it.

[thenightling]

A dangerous and irresponsible meme!

This is dangerously false. A childhood of mine has bipolar and became convinced she didn't need her medication. Before long her mania shifted into paranoia and she became convinced her ex-husband was sexually abusing her son. Then she became convinced CPS, Social services, the school districts, the family court judge (and everyone who worked in the building) and her ex-husband were all in on a child sex ring. Then she forgot she made very vocal and open accusations about this and called everyone who brought it up liars. When no evidence could be found confirming her beliefs that her son was sexually abused she had him undergo a colonoscopy. When that found nothing her accusations went from anal to oral. THEN she decided a ghost was talking to her via pendulum that at first she thought was her dead father and then a demon and then another ghost, and the ghost convinced her that Tim Curry was going to come and rescue her and her son and drive them off to his mansion in California. She became convinced of this twice. And each time she was devastated when it didn't happen. She tried to show me how she talked to this spirit and it became obvious she was the one moving the pendulum (Ideomotor effect) and when it started to say "Tim Curry will-" I tried to make it one less unreasonable. "Tim Curry will Walk again?" and she started laughing and said "That's mean!" why is it mean to hope he can recover from his stroke? But I ccould tell the reality was she wanted to convince me that Tim Curry really was coming for her. Then she started posting videos on social media claiming her son was non-verbal until he wanted to tell her that his father was abusing him. Her son IS autistic but he was never non-verbal. The scary thing is her mother liked these posts and encouraged this behavior out of hatred for her daughter's ex so she encouraged this. Now she's lost custody of her son, he's only ten with a restraining order against her. And she is being charged with child abuse. It's okay to believe in being spiritual. It's okay to believe in spirits and the use of the pendulum and you should always take it seriously if you think there's sexual abuse. But there are very serious forms of bipolar. And people have died from losing their battles with depression. Pretending it's a "Spiritual awakening" is very irresponsible and dangerous!

[thenightling]

There is text post / meme with many formats going around, talking about how Autism is not a preventable disease, where the beginning is the "Fact" that Autism is not a disease because diseases are contagious or "Diseases are something you get, not are born with."

But it's not entirely accurate. I have Crohn's disease. It's NOT a preventable disease. It's NOT contagious. It's genetic. When your first fact is at least partly wrong, it undermines the point. I agree with the message but *gestures wildly at Crohn's disease, Celiac Disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's Disease...*

I AGREE that you can't cure or prevent Autism. But you shouldn't start your argument with the claim that actual diseases are all contagious.

[thenightling]

I was thinking about Disney's plan to finally cut back on live action remakes but you know they love the easy source material in doing remakes. So here's my suggestion for Disney. Instead of milking live-action remakes of 2D animation how about new 2D (not computer) adaptations of your live action movies. Think how much fun a hand-drawn, musical, version of Hocus Pocus could be. It would justify the stylized depictions in the merchandise (Which everyone knows is so they don't have to pay the actresses to use their likenesses...) Or a hand-drawn Halloweentown (it's a cult classic now). Perhaps a hand-drawn musical retelling of Pirates of the Caribbean. You can even get Johnny Depp to voice Jack Sparrow. A hand drawn Maleficent. You get the idea.

[thenightling]

Does anyone know of a place online where I can listen to the entire Dark Universe (Epic Universe theme park) soundtrack by Danny Elfman? Preferably online if possible.

The Dark Universe album in vinyl is exclusive to the theme park, which hasn't officially opened yet, and doesn't open until late May, but due to park being open in preview-mode the record is already sold out of its first printing.

I can't find Mp3s or CD format releases, even for pre-order.

[thenightling]

Svengoolie is on right now!

[thenightling]

Something about the 2025 Snow White remake that really bugs me.

Instead of Snow White keeping house for the dwarves while they work, she assigns chores to each of them.

Let's unpack this "Girl powerism." for what it really is.

You have this woman, this random woman (who turns out to be royalty) show up in your house. She wants to stay but she's not paying rent.

You and your six roommates are working twelve hours a day in a jewel mine and when you want to get home and rest the person - with no job- who is not paying rent- starts barking orders of what you need to do in the house that you paid for, and are financially maintaining with you and your six friends.

The dwarves own the house, obviously buy the food and pay for the upkeep of the house, furnishings, etc. They work hard all day. Snow white shows up and starts assigning chores to them in their house and crashes there rent free?!

Did I miss something?!??

Who does that? Imagine waking up one day in a house you co-purchased with six friends, and there's this rando in one of your beds and now she's assigning chores and making herself at home. What?

Also why did they do away with the glass coffin? What was problematic about that?

I thought it was to show how much they loved her, that they put so much art and craftsmanship into her burial box. It's not just a "We want to look at the pretty corpse." They could have kept that in with an added explanation that Snow White was claustrophobic and they felt she wouldn't have felt closed in if it was glass. It would have been a touching gesture of love.

[thenightling]

I just saw the most disturbing commercial and it was so surreal I almost thought it was a parody. I tried to find it on Youtube but I can only find older versions of it. It started with a voice over saying "President Trump has done exactly what he promised! He's making America great again!" It's followed by an advertisement for a free Kid's guide to Trump. It's not just a booklet, there's a whole free package of "educational content" for Trump kids. I kid you not. This was real. I felt like I was watching the modern version of an ad for you-know-who Youth.

[thenightling]

With what Trump is doing to the education system, if I was a parent I'd be home schooling by now!

[thenightling]

I wish someone would come up with a Wiccan private school the way there are Catholic private schools. At least you'd know no one is hitting your kid when the main rule is "Harm none."

[thenightling]

Trump passing an executive order allowing Corporal Punishment in classrooms has been suspiciously tied to his anti DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) stance, and Robert Kennedy's autism "concerns." Do you know what this suggests to me? It suggests that they think hitting kids will suddenly cure things like ADHD, Autism, Nervous conditions (ironically!) and stimming. Remember the "Good old days" when if a child fidgeted with their pen the teach could whack them with a paddle or ruler because they "weren't paying attention" (because even now there are people who don't comprehend that some people actually focus on subjects better if they're allowed to fidget / play with their hands. You don't take away the urge for the release of stimming / fidgeting. You just make the child scared to get caught doing it. You're not "curing" anything.

[thenightling]

Trump has just legalized "Corporal punishment" in classrooms. If you don't know what that means, it means teachers are now allowed to "Spank" students with a paddle, ruler, or even their hand.

I'm forty-three-years-old and I have friends from the South who told me horror stories of them being subjected to this "discipline" as little kids. It was a culture shock for me to discover how many people used "discipline" as code for "hitting" or genuinely thought the word meant the same thing.

Here in the North Eastern US, Public schools have not allowed that at all within my life time and it was even pretty rare when my grandfather was a child in the 20s and 30s, and he went to a Catholic school in the Bronx.

This is going to cause serious problems, not only in schools but with organizations like CPS (Child Protective services) because this executive order now legalizes something that very much was classified as child abuse in most (if not all) of the US.

This will undermine a lot of child abuse investigations and, in fact, now makes it far easier for physical abusers to get away with it.

First his anti-DEI stance strips disabled children of access to equipment to help them, undermining the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Then he wants anything "anti-American" and only "Pro-patriotism" taught in the classroom. (Pretty much meaning teach propaganda and none of the bad things America has ever done).

And now he wants to bring back something that was illegal in most US schools for over a century - Something that will make child physical abuse suspiciously easy?!?

Why? Why would he want this? Just so some old "sons of the Earth" who beat their kids will praise him some more?