Discover Memphis: Landmarks that show the soul of the city
Explore the top five landmarks in Memphis, from the iconic Graceland and vibrant Beale Street to the historic Sun Studio.
- The Beale Street Monster Club celebrates classic Hollywood horror movies and monsters.
- The club holds free monthly screenings and discussions at the historic A. Schwab store on Beale Street.
- Co-founder Michael J. Cox aims to preserve the history and passion for vintage horror for future generations.
For the past several months, Beale Street — Memphis’ legendary entertainment district, where blues divas and guitar heroes reign, where Elvis acquired his coolest hepcat clothes, where W.C. Handy, B.B. King and Rufus Thomas made musical history — has played host to an unexpected category of celebrity.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon. King Kong. The Phantom of the Opera.
In a word: Monsters.
In an odd alignment of cultural phenomena, the Home of the Blues is also the home of the Beale Street Monster Club, an organization that celebrates the horror movies and horror stars of classic-era Hollywood, when Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster and Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula were more popular than Art, the “Terrifier” clown, or Chucky, the murderous doll.
“As a child, I was the biggest scaredy-cat,” remembered club co-founder Michael J. Cox, 27, from behind a homemade mask modeled after the one worn by Lon Chaney in the silent 1925 version of “The Phantom of the Opera.”
“My parents were very protective of me and made sure I never saw anything scary,” he said. “And now, that scared little boy owns almost 4,000 films, most of them horror, and has turned the upstairs of his house into a room filled with horror memorabilia.”
The Phantom visits Beale Street Monster Club
On a recent Saturday afternoon, some of that memorabilia was on display on the top floor of A. Schwab — the venerable “dry-goods” store at 163 Beale that is a top tourist draw — in preparation for a 100th anniversary screening of the Chaney “Phantom,” with its famous unmasking scene. (“Feast your eyes — glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!” exclaims the Phantom, via an onscreen card, after his hideous skull-like face is revealed.)
Black-and-white photographs of Lon Chaney, eyes blazing, were spread across several tables. Toys and action figures inspired by the movie were displayed alongside 1960s back issues of Famous Monster of Filmland magazine, turned to pages highlighting the Phantom.
Cox’s homemade replica of the mask worn by Claude Rains in the 1943 version of “Phantom of the Opera” was perched near a violin case (the Phantom is sometimes depicted playing a violin in addition to his signature pipe organ). Cox himself was in formal costume as the Phantom, in “the suit I just got married in,” augmented by a black cape and broad-brimmed hat, plus the mask (the top half, snug on his scalp, was made from a baseball cap, with the bill cut off).
Cox gestured operatically — what else? — as he introduced the movie, which was projected from a Blu-ray onto a pull-down home-movie-style screen. About a dozen Monster Club veterans and newcomers watched, on free-standing chairs or in wooden church-style pews. The creaky floorboards — Schwab has been at its current location since 1911 — complemented the spooky screen images of subterranean torture and shadowy murder. The crystal chandeliers on the ceiling also were appropriate, even if they — unlike the chandelier Chaney drops on the opera audience in “Phantom” — were too small to crush anyone to death.
Friends Ana Pitt and Stacy Dougherty, who live in West Memphis, were making their first Beale Street Monster Club visit, lured by their love of classic horror movies. “They don’t make movies like they used to,” said Pitt, 48. “These movies have depth and character.”
Robert Flynn of Bartlett agreed. Flynn, 71, attended the screening as the Phantom, in mask, velvet coat and top hat, a wolf’s-head sword cane in his hand. “This past Halloween I dressed up as Svengoolie,” he said, referencing the Chicago “horror host” whose monster-movie series airs weekly on the MeTV network. In the past, he said, he’s dressed as Sivad, the Memphis “monster of ceremonies” who hosted the WHBQ-TV horror-movie program “Fantastic Features” from 1962 to 1972.
Keeping the passion for vintage horror films alive
Although Cox was born decades after the demise of “Fantastic Features,” the Monster Club he co-founded with “hoodoo” scholar Tony Kail is something of an homage to the monster-crazed 1960s, when Sivad, Famous Monsters magazine, TV’s “The Munsters,” Aurora monster model kits, the hit song “The Monster Mash” and other generally kid-friendly evocations of Frankenstein and friends were ubiquitous.
“I thought it would be fun to recreate the experience of a horror club from long ago,” Cox said. “Our membership cards are modeled on the membership cards of the ’50s and ’60s. Our flyers are designed after the old movie house spook-show flyers.”
“It’s great to know there are other folks in town who are monster fans,” said Hernando-based artist Lin Workman, a 59-year-old Monster Club regular, as the faces of Lon Chaney Jr. as the Mummy and Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein peered from his black “Universal Monsters” T-shirt. Club co-founder Kail was similarly attired, in a green button-down shirt emblazoned with portraits of the Golem, Jack Nicholson in “The Shining” and Hammer horror star Peter Cushing.
The Beale Street Monster Club has convened more or less monthly since early 2024, to screen movies (“King Kong,” “Mark of the Vampire,” “Robot Monster”) and talk monsters. Its free public get-togethers are publicized primarily through social media. Most events have been held at A. Schwab, which is owned by Cox’s mother, Terry Saunders, and which is where Cox works; but the Monster Club also has hosted Halloween-season screenings at such sites as the Agricenter’s Haunted Corn Maze and the “Monster Market” at the Medicine Factory art studio.
According to its mission statement, the club is intended “to keep the history and passion for vintage monster, horror, and science fiction films, magazines, collectibles, and more alive for generations to come.” The club name was chosen because “Beale Street is known the world over,” Cox said, as are such names as “Frankenstein” and “Dracula.”
“Michael has a passion for teaching people this history,” said Cox’s wife, Breanna Cox, 27, who married Michael on Oct. 25 in a traditional ceremony, after a monster-themed service was deemed potentially embarrassing.
Breanna said she prefers such modern-era horror movies as “Halloween” and “The Conjuring” to the old black-and-white shockers, but her interests are hardly mainstream. “I am more into taxidermy and old school dental tools,” she said. “I have a deer leg. I’ve done a rabbit’s paw. A frog.” She also collects old sets of artificial teeth, and owns “a jar of dental plates.”
SpongeBob leads to love for horror movies
Perhaps Michael Cox is a particularly enthusiastic evangelist for monsters because he is a convert to the cause. He cites a childhood viewing of “King Kong vs. Godzilla” at his grandmother’s house as a key childhood memory, but he did not become obsessed until he was a young teenager, when he caught monster fever from an unusual source: “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
The specific infection point was “Graveyard Shift,” an episode of the hit Nickelodeon cartoon show that ends with a surprise appearance by the ghoulish star of the “Dracula”-inspired 1922 German film, “Nosferatu.” In eerie but comically altered images lifted from the movie, the vampire is discovered inside the Krusty Krab restaurant. “Nosferatu!” declare SpongeBob and his pals Squidward and Richard the Fish.
“The characters all say his name, but I couldn’t understand the name,” Cox said. But he was mesmerized. Researching online, he uncovered the identity and origin of the vampire. He also discovered that one of his favorite internet personalities, James Rolfe, the creator and star of the web series “Angry Video Game Nerd,” had explored the movie in an episode about a “Nosferatu”-inspired video game. “I was so enamored by that episode,” Cox said, “that I re-watched it probably 10 times in a row until I had the whole thing memorized.”
From this unlikely seed sprang a garden of unearthly delights: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” “The Black Cat,” “The Werewolf of London,” “The Hideous Sun Demon.” Soon, Cox was hooked by “classic” horror, from the silent era to, roughly, 1968, when explicitly violent and adult-oriented horror movies like “Night of the Living Dead” began to supersede the Gothic romanticism and fairy tale-like fantasy vibe of the older films.
A. Schwab creates ‘special’ setting for monster club
At Schwab, which specializes in the sale of magic candles, powders, “mojo bags” and other so-called “hoodoo” remedies and conjurations, Cox befriended Tony Kail, author of the 2017 book “A Secret History of Memphis Hoodoo” and curator of Schwab’s recently opened “Beale Street Hoodoo History and Folklife Museum.” Kail also is a horror buff, and so the Beale Street Monster Club was born.
“It reminds me of good memories of childhood,” said Kail, 54, who fondly cited a childhood viewing of “Creature from the Black Lagoon” with his dad as a key memory. “It’s almost therapeutic in a way because a lot of times the monster is a victim of circumstances. For example, the Frankenstein monster, you kind of understand where he’s coming from. I think we can all relate to either being a victim of circumstances or a victim fighting off evil in our lives.”
The Schwab hoodoo museum occupies the west side of the upper floor where the Monster Club screenings take place. Its artifacts contribute to the uncanny atmosphere of a space that already is alleged by local tradition and by the purveyors of Memphis “ghost tours” to be haunted. Said Kail: “There’s something about sitting in a building that’s over 100 years old with creaking wooden floors. When you’re watching ‘Nosferatu’ in that environment, it’s really special.”
“These films are, in a roundabout way, magic,” Cox said. “They didn’t have the technology we have. They get your imagination going.”
The next Monster Club meeting, Cox said, will be a birthday tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, who was born Jan. 19, 1809. The meeting will be at 1 p.m. Jan. 24 at Schwab. The screening will be a double feature of Poe-inspired Universal productions with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi: “The Black Cat” (1934) and “The Raven” (1935). Each film runs just over an hour. In homage to Poe’s most celebrated poem, Cox has dubbed the event “Once Upon a Midday Dreary.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.commercialappeal.com ’
