I could never make up my mind as to which I liked best, Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers. But I always wanted to be Ming the Merciless. He's so cool with those tall collars and goatee, and all those death-dealing gadgets he fiddled with. How can you not want to be Ming the Merciless?
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!"
Continue reading "Tales of Voodoo Vol. 4 Issue 3
May 1971" »
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.
Continue reading "Halloween 2015 Sighted!
Home Depot Stores" »
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.
A digital copy was provided for this review.
Gruesome metamorphoses abound in issue 11, 1966, of Weird magazine. And scrumptious illustration too (for the morbidly-minded, of course). Voracious spiders get their fill, vampires put the bite on, the rat king gets a nibble, and a coffin shares its thoughts. Boy, they really should ban this stuff. It will warp young minds for sure.
Zombos Says: Very Good
A fine addition to your coffee table or coffin lid, The Art of Horror: An Illustrated History, edited by Stephen Jones, is a horror connoisseur's choice of movie posters, comic books, paperback and dust jacket art, pulp magazine covers, and ancient and contemporary art that gleefully dwells on the morbid predilections of the frightening genre so many fans clamor for yet know little about.
Similar in jugular vein to Robert Weinberg's Horror of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History, Jones goes one better by upping the wealth of illustrations throughout and skillfully choosing the artists and writers for each chapter, bringing both older and newer visual imaginations together to exalt its subject matter.
The chapter topics include vampires (David J. Skal), the ambulatory dead (Jamie Russell) , man-made monsters (Gregory William Mank), werewolves (Kim Newman), the ghostly (Richard Dalby), maniacal killers (Barry Forshaw), Halloween bedevilment (Lisa Morton), ye olde alien gods (S. T. Joshi), big beasties (Bob Eggleton), and malevolent alien invaders (Robert Weinberg).
Each chapter provides a concise overview to its topic and ends with a reflection on a key aspect within that topic, and is profusely illustrated with captioned literary and cinematic examples, both foreign and domestic, of the terrors by day and night in all their lavish colors and dread. Full page art, double-page art, and smaller illustrations filling pages, do their best to overwhelm your visual cortex. The mix between movies, books, comics, and contemporary artists is so good, it may leave you wishing the book had been twice or three times its size. Unfortunately, the format chosen is a pedestrian 10 by 11 inches, unlike the more exhilarating 10.5 by 14 inches of Weinberg's Horror in the 20th Century or Art of Imagination's 700 plus page count.
But there's so much horror, isn't there? While a few more volumes on The Art of Horror would be wonderful to see in the future, this one is quite an informative and visually exciting read all by itself and shouldn't be missed.
A digital copy of this book was provided for this review.
Michaels is my first invigorating breath of Halloween because I know they have their displays up in August (bless you!). They always have a wickedly good assortment of home decor items and small collectibles. And how can you pass up their Lemax Spooky Town display? This time I spotted the cute little zombies in the first photo, just as I was leaving. Of course I took a few of them home with me. They even squeak!
Continue reading "Halloween 2015 Sighted:
Michaels Stores" »
Wonder what the barber's got cooking?
UPI Telephoto, October 26th, 1960, Pacific Palisades, California: "A steaming calderon painted on a barber shop window, part of a community Halloween window painting contest for children, has David Goldman seemingly simmering while "chef" with shears, Vince Mangio, prepares bill of fare. Artist was Cathy Toland. Cooking time was one haircut."
So, maybe it's me, but...what does a gorilla have to do with Teenage Zombies?
Continue reading "Double Bill Pressbook:
The Incredible Petrified World
and Teenage Zombies" »
Here are more Halloween teeth from eBay for you to chomp on, to wet your appetite for tricks and treats to come. (for more bite see Monster Teeth)
With Halloween around the corner, here are some cool teeth I saw on eBay you can sink your gums into. The piece de resistance is the Whistling Dracula Teeth. Why bother hypnotizing your prey when you just whistle for them to come to you? (for more bite, see Halloween Teeth 2)
