When Hollins Professor of English R. H. W. Dillard was just a grad student at the University of Virginia, he never imagined an expensive bottle of whiskey and a $50 payment to write a screenplay with acclaimed writer George Garrett would result in one of the most (in)famous sci-fi/horror films in American cinema: the 1965 cult classic 弗兰肯斯坦遇见太空怪物 (FMtSM). 但事实就是如此。 排序的。

“给n all the things going on both in class and out of class in the world, I don’t think much about FMtSM these days,” said Dillard about the sole film he co-wrote nearly six decades ago. “But I do think of it in class on certain occasions, such as my Kubrick class this last semester, since FMtSM‘s director, Robert Gaffney, was a close associate of Stanley K. and worked on several of the pictures we studied. Then, I put on my FMtSM t-shirt and puff with pride.”

如果这部电影的名字听起来很荒谬，那是因为它确实荒谬。 The flick’s about a modern-day 《弗兰肯斯坦》’s monster (named appropriately enough Col. 弗兰克 Saunders) created by the U.S. military in order to combat an impending alien invasion aimed at kidnapping earth women to repropagate their race. The film premiered in the summer of ’65 at the Trieste Science Fiction Film Festival in Italy and for a while was even paired as a double feature with Golden Globe-winning film 在黛西·克洛弗的内心， which starred Natalie Wood and Robert Redford.

The sci-fi picture about women-absconding extraterrestrials didn’t win any awards, but over the years, much to Dillard’s surprise, FMtSM became a cult classic, appraised by audiences and critics as either brilliantly funny or so outrageously bad as to be impossible to not (secretly) savor the train-wreck appeal of the film’s ludicrous plot, 60s-saturated soundtrack, and over-reliance on stock footage (that doesn’t always match). The film became so popular/notorious that Robin Williams even once used a scene from FMtSM on a cable TV show, and some clips were also included in a comedic documentary about B movies called 它来自好莱坞 (even though FMtSM was neither produced by Hollywood nor shot there.)

不管影迷们的评价是哪一端，这部电影现在被认为是第一部聚集了大批狂热追随者的电影之一，正是因为它的“campiness”或“camp”，这是一种低成本的美学或风格，看起来很糟糕，但实际上却让人真正享受。 Think of Mel Brooks’ comedic masterpiece 年轻的弗兰肯斯坦, a tongue-in-cheek homage to the age of black-and-white horror films, except FMtSM was ahead of its time, beating out 年轻的弗兰肯斯坦 by nearly a decade. And much like 年轻的弗兰肯斯坦, FMtSM has maintained its camp-classic status for more than half a century now.

然而，最令人难以置信的是，这部小小的b级片背后的编剧团队才华横溢（也许资历过高）。 In addition to Dillard—who’s left his indelible mark in American literature, especially as a poet and editor of the 霍林斯评论家,the writing credits also include the aforementioned Poet Laureate of Virginia and Guggenheim Fellow George Garrett, and professor and publisher John Rodenbeck, who as the director of the American University in Cairo Press published an English translation of Naguib Mahfouz’s surrealist novel 小偷和狗， which paved the way for Mahfouz’s Nobel Prize in Literature. (There’s even a rumor that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor contributed some lines to FMtSM, but Dillard said that, although Taylor was a close friend of the group, he didn’t have a hand “or even a finger” in crafting the script.)

But how exactly did these three very different literary titans come together on such a 《弗兰肯斯坦》’s creation as FMtSM? 当时，迪拉德和罗登贝克都是弗吉尼亚大学的研究生和兼职初级教师，而加勒特已经是一位知名的诗人和小说家，是该校英语系的教授。 The three became fast friends, so close in fact that, according to Dillard, one night he and Rodenbeck “smuggled” their desks from the junior instructor room into the office of George and W. R. “Bill” Robinson, who would become a noted film scholar. 他们共享的空间里有一块略具讽刺意味的牌子，上面写着：“艺术大师公司”。加勒特之前有过一些编剧经验，有一天他接到普林斯顿的老朋友理查德·希利亚德（Richard Hilliard）的电话，让他为一部只有片名的电影写故事。希利亚德当时正在培养自己的独立电影抱负。 That title: 弗兰肯斯坦遇见太空怪物。 Daunted by creating an entire script from such a ridiculous premise, Garrett reached out to Dillard and Rodenbeck for help. So the Master Artists Corp sat around Garrett’s kitchen table one night with a bottle of whiskey and began throwing out ideas for what would become the first draft for FMtSM.

不管怎样，这部电影最初的目的是模仿迪拉德成长过程中喜欢的科幻/恐怖电影。 在艺术大师协会的三位作家中，他是最精通恐怖电影的，即使在今天，这种类型的电影仍然让他着迷和困扰。 “I am, of course, still trying to figure out the appeal of the horror film to my psyche, 《弗兰肯斯坦》 especially,” said Dillard. “也许在我开朗的外表下隐藏着某种阴暗的东西。” 这位霍林斯学院的教授认为，恐怖片是一种深刻的电影，它探索了科技的危险、人类内心的黑暗，以及我们对自己的怪物的同情。 That first draft of FMtSM would’ve explored these themes, particularly through the manmade “monster” Col. 弗兰克, with some comedic routines such as 弗兰克’s legs, which were transplanted from a deceased tap dancer, breaking out into dance whenever the melody of “Sweet Georgia Brown” was played. Sound familiar to Mel Brooks’ monster from 年轻的弗兰肯斯坦 singing, or really groaning, “Puttin’ on the Ritz”? Except FMtSM would’ve done it first!

然而，这部电影（不一定）是这样拍出来的。 The producers of FMtSM, while amused by the original concept, wanted a serious horror film they could easily sell to the summer drive-in movie theater crowd. “I learned (and try to pass on to my students who don’t want to hear it) that the first version of a screenplay is far from the final version,” said Dillard, who’s also taught film and screenwriting courses at Hollins for years. 最终的电影可能与剧本开始的地方几乎没有相似之处。 That’s an important lesson and one that’s often overlooked in screenwriting classes.”

To that point, Dillard and the Corp did numerous rewrites on FMtSM, each straighter than the last, to appease an increasingly nervous pair of business-minded producers. 虽然三位编剧没有参与电影的实际制作，但最终的结果确实保留了很多最初剧本的核心思想，甚至还有一些明显喜剧的初稿中的场景，比如玛库赞公主和纳迪尔博士（电影的两个主要对手）的华丽俗气和夸张的表演，以及鲍尔斯将军令人印象深刻的无能，他在外星人入侵时对着漫画咯咯笑。

It’s been more than half a century now since Dillard worked on FMtSM (and saw it at a Vinton drive-in where the reels were played out of order), but the campy classic that’s entertained multiple generations still occupies a special place in his heart. “那些日子和艺术大师协会的其他成员共用一间办公室，是一种快乐和快乐，尽管只有我一个人悲伤地告诉你，”迪拉德说。 “We had such a great time day-by-day, and FMtSM was a lasting (or so it seems) tribute to the good time we had.”