Hilarious
House of Frightenstein
Episode guide and
collection list
For those that don't
know.
Hilarious House of Frightensteing (HHOF) was a Canadian childrens
show from the early 1970's.
It starred Billy Van, Vincent Price, and Fishka Rais.
Billy played a number of roles including the Count, the Wolfman,
the Librarian, Doctor Pet Vet, Grizelda, and several more.
(I am working on some screen captures to get some good images)
I watched the show during hte 70's on a
local station, WUAB 43 from Cleveland. As well as one of the
Canadian stations that we got on our meager cable system.
(channels 2-13)
Once I got online in 2000, I started trying to find out more
information about the show.
Turns out there were a whole lot of people who still liked it,
and were actively tracking down episodes for their personal
collections. Surprisingly, this series really holds up well. It
is still enjoyable to watch for both young and old. When I first
got a few episodes I had fun watching them with my young
daughter, who also enjoyed them.
Since then I have been trying to accumulate as many episodes as
possible for my collection
Which hasn't been all that easy, as there were no official
release for the series, and it was no longer on the air.
Thankfully, in recent years the show
has again re-appeared.
Though sadly, without the original music, either in the
introduction, or in the segments where the Wolfman plays a tune
and dances with the psychodelic background.
Though there has been some work towards clearing some of the
rights to some of the songs. There was a Canadian only DVD
release with restored music in the Wolfman segments, though the
intro was still a replacement with dubbed voicovers as well.
Here is the Canadian 3 disc set.
Not to be confused with the USA version set from a year earlier
with the same name.
Which appears to have at least 2 variations
on the packaging.
There is quite a difference between the Canadian and
US versions of the show.
The original Canadian versions were an hour long, while the US
versions are only half-hour long episodes with a laugh track
added. These are quite chopped up, and each ep only shows a few
of the main characters, where most of the Canadian ones have a
full segment for each character in every episode.
I am still trying to get more episodes for my collection.
Being something of a completist, I want all different version.
USA, Canadian, the new re-broadcast versions, etc.
Plus I am always looking to upgrade episodes I already have.
Many of which came from VCDs, so they were MPEG1 sourced and very
low quality.
Idealy, I would love to get everything on DVD from good
transferrs of SP1 VHS sources.
To see a complete episode guide, and
list of what I have in my collection, see
this page.