From Zombos Closet

JM Cozzoli

A horror and movie fan with a blog. Scary.

Double Bill Pressbook:
The Monster That Challenged the World
and The Vampire

The design of the caterpillar-like creature in The Monster That Challenged the World is on my shortlist of favorite monsters of the 1950s. Although the script resorts to the usual 1950s woman in peril and is totally helpless until the man arrives but he gets into trouble so she screams a lot until more help arrives scenario, it's still a worthy B Movie staple. This pressbook shows the fantastic poster art and fun ballyhoo used for promoting this double bill of "blood-curdling monsters of the age!"

Pressbook monster challenged world

Halloween 2015 Sighted:
Spirit Halloween Store
and the Zombie Subway

Spirit Halloween is doing a scary subway display this year, and I finally got to see it in all its gory. This store is at the Source Mall on Long Island. The mall, facing stiff competition from others close by, and hit by its anchor stores leaving, is pretty spooky all by itself. The top floor is mostly shuttered shop fronts, and the food court is now more a snack instead of a meal kind of place. But the Spirit Halloween store has the advantage of using a large, previously vacated space, so the merchandising is spectacular (if you’re a Halloween fanatic, that is). Now if only I had room for all this stuff…

Spirit halloween 2015 zombie subway 2

Halloween 2015 Sighted: Walgreens

Some inviting items this year on the shelves at Walgreens. Among the dancing skeletons and animated Medusas, there's an adorable pumpkin pop-up Grim Reaper and a nifty candy dish with a drop-down spider. Giant skull and clown heads will round out any scary decor, and the Day of the Dead and Nightmare Before Christmas decorations get their own endcaps. 

walgreens halloween pumpkin grim reaper animated

Terror Tales Vol. 5 Issue 5
October 1973

In issue 5, volume 5, of Terror Tales, a hungry slime goes for dinner, even the dead are exploited, and a beast does some island hopping. Don't miss the "deadly oriental fighting art of instantaneous death that requires no strength or close body contact" advertisement. Ask yourself if you have a head of horror. And last but not least,  when Mongol Mummies say don't touch, DON'T TOUCH!

Terror tales v5-5

Tales of Voodoo Vol. 4 Issue 3
May 1971

In this creepy and terrifying issue 3, volume 4, of Tales of Voodoo, there's a head filled with vengeance, a little boy with a vampire daddy (some similarity here to the vampire story in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors), and the Cult of Kali has everyone choked up with horror. There's also a ghost in the wet swamp and smartly dressed dummies come to life. To kill! And soon you'll learn that no one laughs at Chun, the snake charmer, when he says "You stabbed a dummy, Joe! A dummy–like yourself!"

Tales of voodoo v4-3

Halloween 2015 Sighted!
Home Depot Stores

If you want to piss your pants with excitement, I suggest you go into Home Depot. I went there this morning to buy a few sprinkler heads (yeah, an exciting life is mine, right?). And lo and behold, I had to swallow my heart back into my chest after seeing their Halloween display. And there's no better indication our economy is back on track–in spite of all the dyspepsia from the China Syndrome–than a well stocked Halloween display. And Home Depot keeps outdoing itself each year. 

Exciting additions this year are a Dragon Phone (last year they had a Skull Phone), a nice line of lawn blow-ups (great for photo ops for the kids), and an even nicer line of simple animatronics to dress up your Halloween bash.

home depot halloween 2015 animatronics

Book Review: At Death’s Door
A Picture Book for Grown-Ups

At death's Door book
Zombos Says: Very Good

A sour and sweet treat to salivate over, Ben Joel Price's At Death's Door, A Picture Book for Grown-Ups, is wicked fun. Twelve little mischievous knockers, out for a Halloween stroll, knocking on every door, they're in for a roll.

And a nasty roll it is, too, trying to get past those ominous looking doors with their multiple dire warnings and booby traps, and into the treats, when so many nasty tricks abound to block the way. Fans of Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl and Charles Addams's cartoons will find At Death's Door irresistible.

Poor little oculus, Orville Snide, cries his eye out while Heskith Dregs throws eggs only to find the yolk's on him. Unfortunately.There is one trick or treater who makes out like a bandit, though, filling his swag bag to the brim, but you'll need to get to the end of it all to find out who done it.

Darkly adorable illustrations make this rhyme and mayhem story suitable for grown-up kids and kid-like grown-ups, all done with stark black, shady gray, and pumpkin orange. At 7 by 5 inches, this tidy little tome makes a perfect gift for your home Halloween decor. Better yet, some lucky fiend you know would clamor for this sinister puckish prose, when secreted in a long red stocking hung by the chimney with care or under a mound of candy at the bottom of a bottomless Halloween treat bag.

At deaths door page

 

A digital copy was provided for this review.