A colorful pressbook for an awful science fiction movie. Good for a few laughs. Very few. But this pressbook is quite impressive; I think they spent more money on this than the movie.
Comic reader version: Download Phantom From Space Pressbook
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In the Green Spider cabaret, somebody gets shot during a trumpet solo. Cue the crime drama mystery. This Mexican lobby card is just as mysterious.
A gorgeous and dynamic Mexican lobby card for Big House, U.S.A draws attention to the crime drama. Five criminals go after the loot. Who will survive? Lon Chaney Jr gets minuscule billing. (Note: I'm thinking this is a repop, not the original card, but still a beauty.)
Dick Powell made an excellent Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet. He plays another tough guy here, successfully going against type (you know, the musical comedy leading man role that Hollywood wanted to peg him to). This Mexican lobby card shows the dames, the look, and the gun, essential elements for any noir crime drama.
Here's one for Doris Day's 97th birthday. I don't think she showed as much cleavage in the movie as shown here, but yee-haw! Keep 'em cracking, DD!
It's not often you see pinball used as the construct for a world view, but Ralph Bakshi liked to push the animation envelope in the 1970s. Possibly his biggest success was Heavy Traffic (which followed Fritz the Cat), but my favorite was his Lord of the Rings adaptation.
Comic reader version: Download Heavy Traffic Pressbook
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Zombos Says: Very Good
Just finished Bill Schelly's James Warren: Empire of Monsters. Let me put it this way. There are books I tend to dawdle over and books I have trouble putting down, once I start reading them, because something about them, maybe it's the style or the content or it's just the nature of the beast, so to speak, keeps my eyes glued to their pages. Schelly's book reached out and glued my eyes to its pages.
At 300-plus of those pages (though I wish there were more pictures), it flew by in a good way, a wonderful way. Schelly is not the kind of author who's better to read a Kindle edition of his book because you spend a lot of time looking up ten dollar words when a buck's worth would have sufficed--which I find very annoying (but enlightening, of course)--and his sentence structures aren't the academic jargonese, dog-eat-tail variety that takes turns scratching your head for you as you try to understand what the author is saying. Empire of Monsters leaves those complications for its subject matter: James Warren and the creative people he alternated between loving and hating and loving again, and the influential magazines they created.
James Warren is a very complicated guy, and the numerous quotes from those who worked with him (sometimes against him) to produce the monsterkid's wet dreams of Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, Blazing Combat, Captain Company merchandise, and the icing on the cake, Famous Monsters of Filmland, are captured here in a way that presents a fascinating, perplexing, and, when all summed up, more than a snapshot's worth of the publishing versus creation versus mixed-bag personalities that came and went to nurture and sustain a growing fandom. And all this while still trying to make a buck and act like Hugh Hefner, a man whose larger than life appetites Warren wanted desperately to emulate. Hell, wouldn't we all!
This is where James Warren appears his most scrutiny-resistant. Aviation buff (complete with a yellow--his favorite color--Sopwith Camel replica in his front yard), purveyor of the excessive and quirky life (complete with Long Island party-hardy getaway and unabashed skinning dipping among his peers), and a personality that shifted between yelling not telling or nice guy to work with or not so nice guy to work with. Schelly keeps the level of narrative balanced and pretty neutral, presenting Warren's lovers and haters in equal measure through their quotes and interactions with him as he struggled to keep his publishing mini-empire running during both the gravy times and the threadbare ones, fighting for rack space against the likes of Marvel and Skywald. What you won't find here is a lot of attention paid to Forrest J Ackerman and the Warren relationship. Some juicy tidbits you will find, but this is a book about Warren and his needs and dreams.
Depending on where you are coming from, whether you're a monsterkid who grew up with Warren's magazines on the racks or someone who's curiosity was piqued after reading a Creepy or Eerie archive edition, this book is for you. It's funny, but after watching Netflix's Love, Death & Robots, I couldn't help but think of these magazines. That illustrated short story format with a kicker ending was the hallmark of Warren Publishing's storytellers and illustrators. And don't get me started on Captain Company. That's one for us monsterkids to memory-drool over. You wouldn't think selling merchandise would be such a big deal, but as Schelly illuminates, it was a key player for Warren. Captain Company's merchandise profits kept underperforming magazines on the racks and paid for a lot of that wild life-style.
There's triumph and tragedy here, a lot of history and personalities too, that all came together to create the monsters we still embrace today. Victor Frankenstein had an easier time of it but Warren Publishing did it best.
The Time Machine kicks off issue 34 of The Monster Times, with It Came From Out of the Underground (comix, that is), and Star Trek Lives! By 1979, Star Trek fandom would get their fix with Star Trek the Motion Picture (well, okay, sort of), and more ST to follow on the big screen. William Shatner also gives TMT a lengthy interview, too. Doug Murray pours over the slimy monsters to be found in comics, and a pondering over Zardoz ponders some more. Ladies of Fright explores female terrors in film beginning with Freaks, but of course needs to be added to by now, and a preview of Madhouse with Vincent Price is tossed in for good measure. Of special nostalgic and historical interest, you'll find on page 27, a half-page rundown on all the cool happenings planned for the 1974 New York Comic Art Convention, where fans mingled with the greats. Sadly, I didn't take pictures when I attended--I know, how stupid of me! But I was there, although my memories are more foggy than clear about the whole thing, but I swear, I wasn't doing drugs. I wasn't!
Comic reader version: Download Monster Times Issue 34
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In issue 26 of The Monster Times, Destroy All Monsters brings out the big guns, Metropolis, Illinois, gets super coverage, Richard Bojarski tells us all about Rondo Hatton in Horrorwood, and Star Trek lives! -- as a Saturday morning cartoon (which was pretty good, actually). Also not to be glossed over is the Ghoulie Glossies, wherein Gary Gerani reveals the dark side of movie stills traded on the hot convention circuit. Pressbooks are briefly mentioned in the article as "these are sent directly to the theater managers who in turn usually send them directly into the garbage can..." Bite your tongue! On the plus side, there's coverage (albeit too brief) of the 1973 New York Comic Art Convention, Ah, those were the days! Conventions were so much cooler back then. I wonder whatever happened to Heidi Saha?
Comic reader version: Download Monster Times Issue 26
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An all-Frankenstein (really they meant The Monster, for you purists) issue of The Monster Times, for number 21, makes for stellar reading. A Glenn Strange interview, Frankenstein in the Comics, Frankenstein's Castle, The Decline of Frankenstein (bite your electrode!), Frankenstein's Bloody Terror, and the usual TMT stuff to keep you busy. Whew!
Comic reader version: Download Monster Times Issue 21
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Issue 41 of The Monster Times has some monstrous coverage to sink your teeth into. There's the wonderful low-budget It! The Terror From Beyond Space, Werewolf comic books are howled at, Six Versions of Frankenstein (up till then, of course) are counted, a mostly I'm-disappointed review of Young Frankenstein (now generally considered a comedy-horror classic), and How to Make a Mummy for Fun and Profit (which, disappointingly, is actually about the actual mummification process). The best part is Looking Back With Zach: An Interview With John Zacherly. One annoyance though: during the interview they showed Zackerly a photo of him with a very young Richard Thomas, taken out on Long Island, New York. "They" didn't bother to actually include the photo, although Zacherly explains it. I'd love to have seen THE PHOTO. Space:1999 and How to Make a Monster Movie round out the issue.
Comic reader version: Download Monster Times Issue 41
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The old dark house trope as done by Alfred Hitchcock--and quite a movie it is. This Mexican lobby card does the movie justice. Well, except for the typo.
