Classic Monster Movie Night Place Cards

Twelve tent place cards on two letter sheets. The front of each has a round medallion, a line for the guest’s name and a role. The back has either a line from one of the three public-domain novels behind the films, with its author, or a short part to play for the night. They go with the Universal Monsters Night party blueprint and the Classic Monster Movie Night invitation.

Why the Cards Name Roles, Not Monsters

Universal still owns the films and holds a live trademark on the word “Frankenstein” for posters (USPTO), so nothing on these cards uses a monster’s name or face, and nothing quotes the films. Every guest is somebody standing near a monster instead: the one invited to the castle, the one holding the flask, the one on the expedition. That also means nobody gets stuck being “the Mummy” at dinner.

The Twelve Cards

Page 1, castle and laboratory:

• The Count’s Guest: the greeting at the castle door, “Welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring!” (Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897, Chapter II)
• The Traveller: Jonathan Harker’s supper on the way to the castle, “a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty” (Stoker, Chapter I)
• The Late Supper: his first meal at the castle, with “some cheese and a salad and a bottle of old Tokay” (Stoker, Chapter II)
• The Laboratory Assistant: “I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” (Mary Shelley, 1818 text, Volume I, Chapter IV)
• The Doctor’s Colleague: where the work was done, “In a solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house” (Shelley, 1818 text, Volume I, Chapter III)
• The Windmill Villager: a part to play, “Carry a lantern, keep to the lane, and leave the pitchfork at the door.”

Page 2, tomb, inn, moor and lagoon:

• The Expedition Member: a part to play, “Mind the scroll. Nobody at this table reads it aloud.”
• The Stranger at the Inn: “The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow” (H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man, 1897, Chapter I)
• The Unseen Guest: Mrs. Hall’s first look at him, “he wore big blue spectacles with sidelights, and had a bush side-whisker over his coat-collar that completely hid his cheeks and face” (Wells, Chapter I)
• The Moor Walker: “as I listened I heard as if from down below in the valley the howling of many wolves” (Stoker, Chapter II)
• The Wolfsbane Keeper: a part to play, “Every flower on this table is silk. Keep it that way.” Real wolfsbane is poisonous; the blueprint explains why the flowers are silk.
• The Expedition Scientist: a part to play, “Bring a notebook, stay in the boat, and keep your feet out of the water.”

The quotations are from the Project Gutenberg texts of Dracula, Frankenstein (the 1818 text) and The Invisible Man. Shelley revised the novel in 1831; these lines are checked against the 1818 edition.

Cutting and Folding

Print both pages at actual size. There is no drawn outline: cut between the crop marks at each corner. Each card is 3.75 x 3.25 inches and folds on the dashed midline into a 3.75 x 1.6 inch tent, lined up with the small ticks outside each card’s edges. The quote side is printed upside down on purpose, so it reads the right way up once folded. Write names in white or silver pen on the dark version, or in black on the light one.

Deal the cards face down and let guests find out who they are, or seat each guest by the costume they came in. The Halloween table setting ideas cover the rest of the table.