The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone

After the Flintstone's long prime-time run and subsequent descent into Saturday mornings, The Flintstones was resurrected as a series of hour-long specials and other TV movies around the late 1970s that would continue sporadically for years. Some of them, like "Pebbles and Bam Bam Get Married," were pretty bad. Others, like "A Flintstones Christmas Carol," were very good (the Christmas Carol variation was really excellent, even keeping i mind that it's hard to do Christmas Carol badly - the script was a very clever take on it that managed to be a story on its own AND a very faithful adaption - a neat trick, but I digress).

Quality-wise, the 1980 hour-long halloween special "The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone" falls right about the middle. It's not bad, but there's nothing terribly remarkable about it. The animation is better than what the show had in the 1960s, but, other than that, it's just a long Flintstones episode with monsters in it.

Here, The Flintstones and Rubbles go on "Make a Deal or Don't," an imaginatively-retitled stone-age version of "Let's Make a Deal," where they win a trip to Rockula's castle in Rocksylvania, a dreary country even by stone-age standards, where they'll attend a Monster Bash - a sort of stone-age disco - which Fred and Barney attend dressed as Dracula and Frankenstein (I'll just use the modern names, okay?) There, they stumble on Frankenstone, a monster created by Count Rockula, and bring it to life. I don't THINK I saw this as a kid, but perhaps I did. It would explain why I used to think that Dracula created Frankenstein's monster.

Frankenstone's Monster awakens Count Rockula, who has been asleep for five centuries. Since it's a costume party, no one knows that they're real monsters until Rockula turns into a bat. Panic ensues. Soon, all of the guests are gone, except for The Flintstones and Rubbles. Wilma is wearing a Bride of Rockula costume, and is quickly mistaken for the real thing.

After that, it's nonstop hijinks as Rockula tries to make Wilma a widow by having Fred killed.

As a halloween special, it's just okay. However, it's not BAD, either. It's certainly a damn sight better than The Flintstone Kids Meet Frankenpebble, made less than a decade later, and I especially enjoyed the ending. A must-have for Flintstones fans, and not a bad thing for Halloween fans to have, either, but hardly an essential special to own. Whether you ought to have this depends a lot on two things:

1. Whether you watched it enough as a kid to get nostalgic.
2: Whether you realy like the Flintstones to start with.

I don't THINK I ever saw this as a kid, and I'm kinda lukewarm on The Flintstones. I don't dislike 'em, but never went out of my way to watch them. By the time I was a kid, they were just vitamin spokesmen to me, y'know?

It comes and goes from youtube. Here's part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:


Part 5: