Zombos’ Closet…a vast trove of endearingly cheap thrills, including movie and book reviews, and scans of his collections of cinema pressbooks, goofy paper-cutout Halloween decorations, and his amazing collection of Mexican lobby cards from B-grade films. If you have time to descend into a serious rabbit-hole of marvelous trash-culture nostalgia, visit that site just as soon as you possibly can.” (DangerousMinds.net)
By Uncle Bob’s AI and JM Cozzoli
Cults, hereditary orders, and esoteric sects run through Lovecraft’s oeuvre. These organizations (groups) are the human side, mostly, of the Mythos: ordinary people, questionable people, and those that are not quite people, who have gladly or dangerously made contact with the Great Old Ones and the Outer Gods, while awaiting, summoning, or trying to hobnob with them. This incomplete but important primer lists the principal groups in Lovecraft’s own writing, then broadens to later authors who borrowed, extended, and tricked them out into the growing Cthulhu Mythos. References are cited at the end.
In Lovecraft’s Own Writing
The Cult of Cthulhu The Call of Cthulhu (1928)
A diffuse, worldwide secret cult that worships the Great Old Ones and awaits the day “when the stars are right” and Cthulhu rises from sunken R’lyeh. Lovecraft shows it through degenerate swamp worshippers in the Louisiana bayous and the Esquimaux diabolists of Greenland, with others alluded to in New Zealand and beyond, united by the chant “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” The captured cultist Old Castro supplies its doctrine. The story was first published in Weird Tales in February 1928, and this cult is the template for nearly every Mythos cult that follows.
The Esoteric Order of Dagon The Shadow over Innsmouth (1936)
A hereditary religious order founded by Captain Obed Marsh in the decayed Massachusetts port of Innsmouth, where it displaced the town’s Christian churches after Marsh returned from the South Seas around 1838. Members worship Dagon, Mother Hydra, and (to a lesser degree) Cthulhu, and interbreed with the amphibious Deep Ones in exchange for gold and bountiful fishing. Written in 1931 and first published in 1936, it is Lovecraft’s most realized cult, most alluded to by later writers.
The Church of Starry Wisdom The Haunter of the Dark (1936)
A Providence sect founded around 1844 by Professor Enoch Bowen, an archaeologist and occultist, which used the Shining Trapezohedron to summon and commune with an avatar of Nyarlathotep, the “Haunter” of the title. Public outcry and a string of disappearances eventually shut it down. Lovecraft wrote the story for his correspondent Robert Bloch as part of a friendly exchange of tales, and the church has had a long afterlife in other hands.
The Witch-Cult of Keziah Mason The Dreams in the Witch House (1933)
The lineage of Keziah Mason, a Salem witch who vanished from captivity in 1692 and used non-Euclidean geometry to slip between dimensions. She is served by the rat-like familiar Brown Jenkin and ultimately by the Black Man — Nyarlathotep in human guise — having signed the Book of Azathoth. First published in the July 1933 Weird Tales, the story fuses period witch-cult lore with Mythos cosmology.
The Red Hook Cult The Horror at Red Hook (1927)
A syncretic immigrant cult in Brooklyn led by the wealthy scholar Robert Suydam, worshipping Lilith and pre-human powers through Kabbalistic and Near-Eastern ritual. More occult-criminal than cosmic, it is an early sketch of the esoteric group idea Lovecraft would later perfect.
The Kingsport Yule Cult The Festival (1925)
A hereditary New England family cult that performs an ancient subterranean Yuletide rite beneath the old town of Kingsport. Less a formal organization than an inherited tradition of worship passed down through bloodlines. Leave it to Lovecraft to dampen the Christmas spirit.
Human Servitors of the Mi-Go The Whisperer in Darkness (1931)
Not a named body, but a network of human agents who do the bidding of the Mi-Go (the Fungi from Yuggoth) in the Vermont hills, helping conceal the aliens’ presence and their practice of removing human brains into cylinders for transport between worlds.
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Tarzan and the Mermaids was Johnny Weissmuller’s last Tarzan movie after 17 years of jumping from one vine to another. He would switch over to Jungle Jim with his next movie, where he could finally wear clothes and shoes and stay on the ground. He does manage to wear sandals in this one, though. The mermaids are actually pearl divers and Boy (Johnny Sheffield, who retired at the age of 24)), although briefly mentioned, is off doing his own swinging in the 12 Bomba movies, starting with Bomba, the Jungle Boy in 1949. George Zucco plays his sinister evil character (a natural for him) and Tarzan has to go up against a fake god. While purportedly the jungle, the movie was actually filmed in Acapulco. Weissmuller liked the scenery so much he eventually settled down there. In this last outing, at the age of 43, he fights villains, swims underwater, and locks arms with a giant octopus. Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon) added to the milieu with his scoring, while scripter Carroll Young provides a different take from the usual Tarzan storyline. Tragically, Angel Garcia, who doubled for Weissmuller, was killed in the spectacular high dive when the tide swept him back into the jagged rocks.
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The Phantom Planet (1961) is a one-shoestring budgeted, space-rangers kind of science fiction from Four Crown Productions (apparently their only one), shot largely on soundstages with a mix of miniatures, rear projection, and recycled stock footage, then released by American International Pictures as the bottom half of a double bill with Assignment: Outer Space using the second shoestring. It’s noteworthy for the first appearance of Richard Jaws Kiel (Eegah, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker). Of course Mystery Science Theater 3000 had a go at it, and it inspired the name of the rock band Phantom Planet, best known for their 2002 hit track California, the theme song for the Fox TV series The O.C. In 2010, La Quinta Inns & Suites, the hotel chain, leveraged clips from it for its humorous ad campaign.
Assignment: Outer Space (1960), originally titled Space-Men, was an Italian space opera picked up by AIP, redubbed to English, and suitably packaged with The Phantom Planet as a quick-money item for exhibitors (especially drive-ins). Commentary from fans and critics point out that, despite its era and limited budget, the film gives its female officer characters a surprising amount of competence, with multiple scenes of women handling station duties and technical tasks, which leads some viewers to note that the film even manages a primitive form of the Bechdel Test. (The Hannibal 8). Note: For an example of a complete failure for the Bechdel Test as comparison, I refer you to The Green Slime. It’s instructive and still very funny, the best way to learn, I say.
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The Phantom Planet and
Assignment: Outer Space
PressbookRead More »
One of Columbia’s pre-code mysteries, Adolphe Menjou stars as Thatcher Colt, a New York Police Commissioner. The film is based on Anthony Abbot’s novel About the Murder of the Night Club Lady, which introduced Commissioner Thatcher Colt before Columbia brought him to the screen. This movie was followed by The Circus Queen Murder (1933) and later The Panther’s Claw (1942), continuing the Thatcher Colt screen presence (Menjou in the first two, different casting in the third).
Mayo Methot, the “Night Club Lady,” later became Humphrey Bogart’s third wife, and their marriage was notorious for heavy drinking and explosive fights, earning the couple the tabloid nickname “the Battling Bogarts.”
A Letterboxd reviewer highlights that “The Night Club Lady” features “the most extensive and exploratory use of the zoom lens” they’ve seen in a film of its period, saying it feels “like something from three or four decades later.” (Letterboxd)
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By AI MozeArt
Here are some moody tunes for your Halloween night party.
Moonlit March
Ruh-Roh
Haunted Night Dance
Halloween Ride Lullaby
A Ghost Looking for Its Sheet
Frosted Shadows
Bats in the Belfry
By Uncle Bob’s AI (from original sources cited below) and Iloz Zoc
H. P. Lovecraft’s stories are populated by dread and the beings that foster it. Entities that are so ancient and alien that mere awareness of their existence imperils human sanity. Central to his supernatural cosmology is the principle of insignificance: humanity is not the focus of any malevolent design but rather an inconsequential smear of organic matter in a universe that neither knows nor cares. The gods and entities Lovecraft created express this idea with theological consistency. Yet, the mystery remains of why some humans would become acolytes and enablers of these unfathomable monstrosities, yearning for and actively preparing for their disruption of everyday reality.
Three main categories emerge from his fiction and letters. The Outer Gods (also called the Other Gods or the Ultimate Gods) are the supreme powers of the cosmos: transcendent, often mindless or incomprehensible forces that dwell beyond the known universe. Chief among them is Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God whose unconscious existence is the very engine of reality. The Great Old Ones are a tier below: ancient, immensely powerful beings who once ruled the Earth and now lie dormant, imprisoned, or in exile, awaiting the right alignment of the stars to reclaim dominion. Cthulhu is the most famous representative of this group. The Gods of Earth, sometimes called the Dream Gods or the Dreamland Gods, are a comparatively humble category: the native deities of Earth who dwell in the Dreamlands and receive the prayers of mortal dreamers. They are capricious and vain, powerful within their domain but negligible by the standards of the Outer Gods.
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Zombos Says: Stylish, good, gory, and definitely may feel like a corporate retreat you may have attended.
Right off the bat I need to warn you. There’s a too-long scene where a spoon meets eyeballs that may dampen your use of spoons in the future. Maybe go for a spork instead if that happens. I say the scene is too long because I really wished it was shorter as I watched the pop and flow intermittently between my open and closed eyelids. No other reason; the whole visual was awesome from a gorehound POV. But I’m not a gorehound. It was also surprising. I certainly wouldn’t have the brand loyalty or corporate spirit to do that. No way. And all during that excruciating scene I kept thinking why are they sharing that damn spoon, aren’t they worried about germs?
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Corporate Retreat (2026)
Wellness Takes a Bad TurnRead More »
By Paul McVay, It Came From Hollywood
A glorious press book for a garbage flick. At least, that is my assumption, as I’ve never seen the picture and I’m not a huge fan of Shock-Doc’s (says the guy who created the cover art for Faces of Death director John Alan Schwartz’s 2014 memoir titled My Faces of Death.) Now that my full disclosure is finished, let’s move on.
Taboos of the World is a 1963 Italian-made documentary that AIP picked up sometime in 1964. On page two of this pressbook (upper left corner), you will see a copyright notice that reads 1964. The film wouldn’t be released until the Fall of 1965. Another one of those AIP headscratchers that we will probably never figure out.
For a Shock-Doc, it is apparently tame. According to Robert L. Ottoson’s 1984 tome American International Pictures: A Filmography, Taboos of the World contains “a mass for lepers; a funeral in the Ganges; atom bomb victims; addicts selling their children to support their habit; Scandinavian blood drinkers; tattooed women; and a Japanese sect who cut off their little fingers as part of an initiation ceremony.” My feeling about Ottoson’s description is that it probably came about as a result of watching the movie on VHS in preparation for his book, rather than him sitting in a theater surrounded by guys in trench coats at 11 pm on a Wednesday night in 1965. More on that VHS release in a bit. …
This just flew in via batmail…I wish I could attend. Last time I attended a Buffy convention it was in New Jersey, fronted by Fangoria. I’m really bummed by the sad passing of Anthony Head. If they ever do a rehash of Buffy in a new series, just won’t be the same without him.
TORRANCE, CA – This June, the global Buffy the Vampire Slayer fandom is bypassing traditional convention centers for a highly anticipated, on-location return. From June 13-14, 2026, Torrance High School—the historic real-world filming location of Sunnydale High—will be taken over by fans and series legends for the three-day immersive fandom convention, HellmouthCon 2026. Hosted by Fandom Charities Inc., a 100% volunteer-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the event challenges the increasingly expensive comic-con industry model. While offering an exclusive, limited VIP tier, HellmouthCon ensures every attendee with a general wristband has access to robust celebrity panel programming and an elite cast roster, featuring Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia), Emma Caulfield (Anya), Amber Benson (Tara), Amy Acker (Fred/Illyria), J. August Richards (Gunn), Doug Jones (The Gentlemen), and more.
HellmouthCon replaces exhausting, high-volume autograph lines with a curated, immersive festival atmosphere. The historic campus will come alive with deep-dive panels, hands-on workshops, and academic lectures running throughout the grounds. Between sessions, attendees can grab a bite from local food trucks, interact with roaming cosplay guests in character, enjoy live musical performances, or compete in a highly anticipated cosplay contest. Fans can also shop the Sunnydale Mall for unique, fandom-inspired artisan goods, join limited-capacity themed breakfasts with the cast, or take guided historical walking tours of the iconic filming locations.
Beyond the immersive entertainment, the convention serves as a massive philanthropic engine. Inspired by the series’ core message of protecting the vulnerable and fighting for the greater good, event proceeds directly fund LGBTQ+ youth support networks (Rainbow Spaces), pancreatic cancer research (PanCAN, in memory of late Buffyverse actor Camden Toy), and youth education (Ron Glass Memorial Scholarship).
MEDIA ADVISORY/URGENT: HellmouthCon 2026 coincides with the FIFA World Cup at nearby SoFi Stadium. Torrance hotels are booking at unprecedented rates due to the massive influx of international fans. To protect attendees from price surges, Fandom Charities has secured exclusive, discounted room blocks. Fans and media are urged to secure tickets and lodging immediately.
Event Details:
● Dates: June 13-14, 2026
● Location: Torrance High School, 2200 W. Carson St, Torrance, CA
● Tickets & Information: www.fandomcharities.org/
From Granny Creech
Greetings, my children.
Well, things are blooming right along here in Squirrel Hollow and everybody is out pruning plants and pulling weeds at every opportunity. It’s quite a job, but nice to see colorful things growing in the gardens.
I was actually out in my flower and plant garden the other day putting down some fresh mulch when Uncle Thaddeus stopped by for a visit. I hadn’t seen him in a month of Sundays and it was good to get caught up on all his activities. He had spent the last few months traveling around to various oddity shops and antique emporiums in and around Squirrel Hollow and he said he had an important find for me. He pulled it out of his old leather satchel and handed it to me. I was overjoyed! It was a radio spot record to one of my favorite movies: Black Sunday, the 1960 Italian film about vampires and creepy stuff.
I was thrilled…for two reasons. I’ve been after that record forever and just never could find it. Secondly, all my sources have all but dried up and old radio spots are getting harder and harder to find. So this find of Uncle Thaddeus’s was a godsend. I thanked him profusely. He just grinned and said he will keep looking for more.
Ah…Black Sunday. I remember when it first came out in May, 1961. I had heard the radio spots on the radio when I was a wee tyke and was enthralled. I didn’t have a tape recorder back then, so I was unable to record them off the air, but the spots stayed with me in my mind. Back then I didn’t know radio spots were on records and sent to theaters to advertise on local radio stations. It wasn’t until much later that I found out all about them and the search was on. My website here on old Zombos’ Closet is the result of a life-long love affair with these spots and a years-long collecting effort. And now, I finally had Black Sunday.
I wasn’t able to see the movie when it first came out because it opened mid-week at the local drive-in and I couldn’t stay up that late due to it being on school nights. Besides, my parents didn’t think it would be appropriate for me since it was advertised as being too scary. It wasn’t until much later that I finally caught it on TV. I thought it was OK, just a little slow going with no gore or monsters. And it was in black and white. Hmmm.
Well anyway, as I grew up, I developed a certain fascination for it as I read more about it. It wasn’t until the internet came into being that I found out it had been edited from a longer Italian version called Mask of the Demon, the international title. It was considered a classic of the Italian horror genre, due to it being Mario Bava’s directorial debut. I knew that name – he had been an assistant director, cinematographer, and special effects director on some earlier productions, such as Hercules (1958) and Hercules Unchained (1959). He had rescued two non-completed films, The Giant of Marathon (1959) and Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959), one of my favorites. Black Sunday was his first solo effort.
I ordered the original version on Blu-ray and was hooked. The haunting radio spots from times past came back, and I developed a greater appreciation for the movie. It is dark, bleak, haunting, and visually appealing. Along with an Italian cast, the movie stars Barbara Steele in a dual role, and John Richardson, of One Million Years B.C. (1966) fame. Steele would go on to become the queen of 60s horror films. I was also able to purchase the American International version that I had grown up with.
With the advent of home video I have been able to contrast the two versions. The differences are striking. Even though the movie was filmed with most of the cast speaking English, the international version was dubbed in English featuring new voices. When AIP bought the movie, they re-dubbed it again into English with still different voices and revised dialog. I personally find this version more appealing – the voices more closely match the lip movement and fit the actors better. AIP also gave it a new, more vibrant music track by Les Baxter. Certain “gross” parts were shortened and some scenes deleted. Surprisingly, the scenes with a full length, topless portrait of Barbara Steele’s character Princess Asa remained. You couldn’t show a nail being pushed through a corpse’s eye or a fake head being burned in a fireplace, but some nudity artwork –however anatomically incorrect– could remain. With all that said, if you never saw the original, uncut version, the AIP version stands on its own very well.
As far as visual effects, Mario Bava used his talents to include several glass matte paintings and an interesting split screen effect showing Barbara Steele as Princess Asa and Princess Katia together in a couple of scenes near the end. He also used the tried and true aging effect for both characters using red makeup on Ms. Steele and photographing her first in red light and then changing to green light to bring out the makeup.
And so, here are the spots that fired my imagination back in 1961. Paul Frees was tapped by the AIP Publicity Department to do the voicing honors.
Now sit back, and experience the dread of…”Black Sunday”…
