Faces of Boris Karloff
Captain Company Fun Reading
Captain Company not only offered wonderful toys for little ghouls and boys, but it also provided exciting reading for lovers of the fantastic. My introduction to Mandrake the Magician and Buck Rogers came from reading these wonderfully oversized books. Here's where the power of print trumps digital every time. You can still find these books on Amazon.
Spooks Run Wild (1941) Mexican Lobby Card
The Bowery Boys, (East Side Kids), meet Bela Lugosi in this spirited and low budget Monogram romp through spook show style shenanigans. Angelo Rossitto (Freaks) helps bolster the sinister tone as the mysterious Nardo's (Bela Lugosi) assistant.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Pressbook
Real life serial killer Ed Gein’s penchant for fashioning masks out of human skin provided the inspiration for Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which remains one of the most disturbing horror movies made. No matter how you slice it.
See more movie pressbooks From Zombos’ Closet.
LOTT D Roundtable:
Cute Monsters and Identification With the Terror
Groovy Age of Horror recently posed the question what do cute versions of monsters tell us about horror? While it was directed primarily toward the LOTT D, the question is an important one for anyone interested in horror and how this genre’s commercial, sociological, and philosophical impact on popular culture can be analyzed.
It is not so much a difficult question to answer, rather, it requires more than one simple answer. Given any of the multifaceted influences–with each directing a specific outcome–you care to look at, the possible depth of the answer will vary.
The more obvious influence of marketing adult-themed iconic imagery in such a way as to increase marketability to a broader audience is one possible and fairly easy answer. Examples of this include Frankenberry and Count Chocula cereals. The serious images of the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula are rendered harmless and lovable to sell cereal to children (and adults like me who revel in the colorful pastiche of horror and nostalgia–and the sugar rush).
But is there a deeper meaning possible here? Why use monsters at all when Rainbow Brite, charming leprechauns, and Trix-loving rabbits will suffice?
Marketing horror to teens and adults is also a rich vein of potential sales to tap into as well. From the more socially conscious vampires and werewolves of Twilight, to Teddy Scares, Living Dead Dolls, Skelanimals, and Voodooz Dolls, these products offer ‘safe’ horror monsters to identify with, play with, and collect (control).
Perhaps, like how an inoculation works against a virus, if you weaken the monster to the point it becomes empathizable or a safer and more manageable terror surrogate, you create a palliative horror-play used as a defense against real or imagined terrors.
This horror-play can be viewed as a reaction formation that dramatizes and forestalls the terrors by day and the horrors by night every child and every adult faces in ever increasing severity given our more stressful times.
At least this is one possible answer. What do you think?
Son of Dracula (1943) Pressbook
Another sumptuous pressbook (campaign manual) from Universal Studios, Son of Dracula (1943). While I will agree that Lon Chaney’s physique is the least beneficial asset to his portrayal of Count Alucard, the movie’s atmosphere and effectively applied special effects create a uniquely intimate Gothic-noir.
Comic reader version: Download Son of Dracula Pressbook
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Bela Lugosi Meets Mother Jones
Professor Kinema just alerted me to another face of Bela Lugosi, this time on the cover of Mother Jones magazine.
Politics aside, I'll simply note the only Dracula who could embody the essence of "the superrrich sucking America dry" is the one and only Bela Lugosi. Someone at Mother Jones is definitely a monsterkid.
Aristocratic and upper crust evil never looked so rich in tie and tails.
The Invisible Man Returns (1940) Pressbook
Universal Studios certainly knew how to do pressbooks (campaign manuals) for their horror movies. They were large, filled with many pages of publicity information, and presented with style. The showmanship pages have some clever ideas to promote the movie. I’ve left out a few of the poster and ad mat pages. (This color copy of the original pressbook is courtesy of Professor Kinema.)
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Captain Company Monster Mail Order
Decisions, decisions: skull mugs or the Horrible Melting Man mask? It's hard to decide. But that Werewolf Siren Ring is more practical, especially on full-moon lit nights. The Super Frankenstein Mask covers the entire head, though. Neato!
Mexican Lobby Card: Fiend Without a Face
Based on Amelia Long's The Thought Monster, 1958's British production, Fiend Without a Face, sported some gruesome gore for its time, creepy stop-motion brain-monsters climbing and flying all over the place.
Jules Verne Graveside
By Professor Kinema
Whenever we travel to Europe, averaging at least twice a year, we often plan a day trip of some sort. A good friend of ours lives in a suburb of Paris. Philippe (with a lovely wife and three charming children) greatly enjoys providing the transport for our occasional day trips.
One day trip was to Bayeaux, to view the famous tapestry, and then on to Amiens. In Amiens we had a most pleasant visit at Jules Verne’s house/museum, then out to find his gravesite. A few minute’s ride and we were at Cimetière de la Madeleine.
One of the fun elements of searching for celeb gravesites is in the ‘quest.’ For some reason, I wasn’t prepared with the specific site coordinates so we started to explore the avenues. I did know that his grave site was close to a major cemetery roadway and not hidden somewhere among other graves. After walking for as long as we thought we should we came upon two ladies. We struck up a conversation with them and mentioned that we were looking for the gravesite of author Jules Verne. They simply said, “follow us.” Within a few minute, we were there.
The exquisite sculpture atop the gravesite was created by Albert Roze. It depicts a figure, Verne himself, bursting upward out of his tomb and reaching for the heavens. The tombstone simply reads, ‘Jules Verne, ne a Nantes le 8 Fevrier 1828 – Decede a Amiens le 24 Mars 1905.’
Two photos of it are a part of my Professor Kinema page. Just being here within a few feet of this magnificent site was an exhilarating experience. We couldn’t help but follow the line of the outstretched hand and look towards the heavens ourselves.
From the 1860s until his death he considered the genre of his works to be Voyages Extroadinaires. With the premier issue of Amazing Stories in April of 1926, editor Hugo Gernsback gave spiritual birth to the phrase ‘Scientifiction’ (a combination of ‘Scientific Fiction,’ as earlier published stories were called). Later this phrase morphed into ‘Science Fiction’ (and eventually ‘Sci-Fi,’ ‘SF,’ ‘Ess-Eff,’ et al).
A drawing of Verne’s gravesite graced the top of the main page of Amazing Stories for many early issues. Many Verne works were reprinted in Gernsback’s pioneering bedsheet format (later switched to pulp format) magazine.
–JK/PK