But in cinema, the monster movie has mutated into an uncontainable genre behemoth all its own. From B-movie creature features to chilling portraits of serial killers, the terrors of the big screen ...

Pickett’s acting career resulted in parts in a few B-rated movies, but he made a fortune from royalties of “Monster Mash,” which has been featured in more than 40 TV shows and films.

“Monster Mash” has musical ties to James Brown ... “Like me, Lenny was a major horror movie fan from childhood. He loved Bela Lugosi as Dracula. He knew I had the Boris Karloff voice ...

His father managed a movie theater, and Pickett grew up watching ... beat Pickett and Capizzi to a full-length album called Monster Mash by two or three weeks, putting it out on on Cameo Parkway ...