From Zombos' Closet

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.

Goliath and the Vampires (1961) Pressbook

I have a confession to make. I'm addicted to Peplum. That's right. There's nothing more exhilaratingly earthy than a super-strong brawny guy in loincloth kicking ass and tossing around large objects like they were wiffle balls. Whether he's fighting mythological monsters, fighting his way out of Hades with a swooning woman tossed over his shoulder, or rippling his dew-dappled muscles against enemies and assorted monsters, I'm in Heaven.

It's a guilty pleasure.

I grew up watching sword and sandal movies on television every Sunday. Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott were big, handsome, and always in command. Although they gave me one hell of an inferiority complex they still provided a lot of wholesome, he-man action against the supernatural.

Maybe I should confess...I have a weakness for masked wrestlers, too...

 

 

 

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?

What the LOTT D'ers think:

Theofantastique
Cinema Suicide
Classic-horror
Dr. Gangrene
Vault of Horror
Groovy Age of Horror
Strange Kids Club
Drunken Severed Head
Monster Magazine World

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

See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.

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.)

See more movie pressbooks From Zombos' Closet.

 

Faces of Bela Lugosi

More faces of Bela Lugosi from the Professor Kinema Archives...

 

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 (http://www.reocities.com/profkinema). 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

Book Review: Zombie, Ohio

Zombos Says: Good

I looked into the bathroom mirror for a long time, studying the ridges in my brain, and thought: "Is that the top of my brain? That's not the top of my brain...is it? It can't be. There's no way. But wait--is that the top of my brain?

Peter Mellor, a philosophy professor at Kenton College, has a serious problem: he's dead. He just doesn't realize it until he notices a chunk of his head is missing, along with a corresponding piece of skull. It's when he sees his exposed brain that he slowly starts to remember who he is and quickly starts thinking like a zombie. His amnesia after the car accident still clouds his memories. It's a wonder he isn't dead after going through the windshield like he did. Or maybe I should say deader.

Scott Kenemore's Zombie, Ohio is all about Mellor's zombiefication after the accident. Even before then, Ohio, along with the rest of the world, has been overwhelmed by the dead reanimating and chowing down on the living. A unique twist makes the cities safer than the surrounding countryside, leaving survival a tricky game of banding together, staying together, and knowing who to trust for the rustics. Gangs roam around pillaging and killing, and zombies roam around eating to their decaying heart's content.

The question Kenemore poses to Mellor is which side will he choose. Will he decay with his humanity intact, or become dead-set on acting like a zombie because he is one? The difficult Taoist answer to his predicament comes too easily for this philosophy professor. This is where Kenemore falters. For a philosophy professor at an uppity-scale college, Mellor says "Dude" too many times and doesn't let all the ramifications of being undead sink into that exposed brain of his. No axiological or ontological thoughts impede or accelerate his actions. It's all basic zombie chemistry--all about brains--and unknowing. Amnesia provides a convenient excuse to sidestep all of his introspection and focus more on how tasty he finds brains to be. Too convenient.

It doesn't take long for Mellor to crave fresh brains to savor. The urge takes hold after he believes his significant other, Vanessa, is non-zombie dead. After that he revels in his undeadness and starts a battalion of walking dead to feed on every adult he can trick into trusting him. His knack of appearing normal--a talking, thinking zombie--has it's advantages. We follow Mellor's exploits at cheating his way to a meal. Along with his growing band of grateful deadheads, he tricks two sorority girls, some survivalist-minded adults, and the just plain clueless into becoming king-sized HotPockets.

The military doesn't know what to make of this flipping-the-bird-at-them zombie who walks and talks and acts alive. Mellor's reputation grows as he and his fellow zombies terrorize the countryside. From a downed helicopter pilot he learns the military refers to him as the "Kernel." The name comes from the "Cedar Rapids Kernels" sewn into the baseball cap he always wears.

Kenemore pens a broad line between being humorous but sticking to the usual zombie gore tableaus, being mysterious--Mellor finds out he was murdered--and uproarious when Vanessa turns up with a band of ass-kicking survivalists, upsetting his zombie zeitgeist. The pen never leans too much in any one direction, leaving what happens to Mellor competently told but not as uniquely filling, as say, a heaping mouthful of fresh brains is to a zombie. And Kenemore's penchant for resorting to parentheses to convey Mellor's thoughts on his thoughts creates a stuttering effect in Mellor's narrative. Sometimes they can be funny--I chuckled at Mellor's observations at least twice--but other times they're annoying, like lumbering zombies popping up when you really don't want them to.