The MASK Of The MONSTER... (Updated)

There used to be - and maybe still is for all I know - a regularly issued practical jokes & tricks catalogue by a company named Ellisdons, from which (if memory serves) I got my first over-head Frankenstein mask sometime around the mid-'70s.  I think I later bought another one which had 'real hair' (it was certainly real something, but definitely not hair), and though it was based on Jack Pierce's original make-up design, its likeness wasn't that of Boris Karloff or Glenn Strange, but a slight amalgam of both of them.

One night myself, a friend, and the mask, visited another friend, who took a couple of photos of us clowning around that were developed as slides.  He later gave me copies, which I cut up and installed in one of those toy TV-type viewers that, when you clicked a switch, revolved the pics past the viewfinder.  I made a little sign saying 'The Curse Of Frankenstein' and attached it to the viewer, and when I showed it to yet another pal (Moonmando), he remarked "More like the curse of Adam Cowie" (name changed to protect the guilty), the friend that I, as the Monster, was 'attacking' in the pics.

Ah, such fun - the joys of youth!  (I was yet a teenager.)  Anyway, today, all the way from America (actually saved a tenner by not buying it in Britain), the official Universal Studios full over-head mask of Boris Karloff as the Monster arrived at Castel Crivens.  When I tried it on, the smell of latex whisked me 45-odd years into the past, because it smelt exactly the same as the masks obtained from Ellisdons.  True, the Universal version is much better made, more fully detailed, and of far superior quality, but the smell was the same.

Anyway, it's such a brilliant mask I thought I'd let you see it, so that's it above among some other goodies in one of my rooms, and below are a few close-ups of Frankie's fearsome fizzog to astound and amaze you.  Brilliant, innit?!  Who else remembers Ellisdons, and did any of you ever have a Frankenstein Monster mask when you were a youth?  Or any other kind, come to that. 

The mask is draped over a globe lamp, which I switched on
for this photo.  If you look closely, you can see a hint of the
lit-up eyes.  Click to enlarge, then click again for full size

Photo used in eBay listing