The Mad magazine for the horror set--i.e. a trail-blazing, Offensive To Everyone Except The Target Audience pop cultural landmark--Famous Monsters of Filmland was of course one of the most influential publications to one, if not several, generations. It probably single-handedly helped nurture and mobilize all the horror fans out there who had no idea there were others like them. It was Jim Warren's first big success, and it helped pave the way for all his future publications.FMOF was definitely past its heyday by the time I came along, so I never paid much attention to it. Like I said about Mad in the last post, since horror magazines (and movies, and comics, and TV shows) were hardly rare as I grew up, I never got the sense of how huge it was when it started.
I bought this issue on ebay mostly because I was doing work on a Mummy movie poster and I wanted some reference, and this cover certainly seemed to be a good one for that! Not only does it have stuff on the classic film (plus that cool comic-book-style adaptation by Wally Wood), but it has articles on Basil Rathbone, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Frankenstein 1970, The Maltese Bippy(!), tons of great Captain Company stuff (man, I wish I had that 6ft-tall Frankenstein pin-up by Jack Davis...*sigh*), plus an ad for some new magazine called Vampirella.
The sheer unbounded enthusiasm Forry Ackerman had for this stuff practically drips off the pages, making this issue of FMOF so fun to read. Maybe I oughta pick up some more...
1 comment:
I was bummed out when I got this off the stands, because I wanted to get to part three of the "filmbook" (i.e. written adaptation illustrated with photos) of the 1931 Frankenstein movie in honor of the recently departed Boris Karloff. Part one was in #56 (Karloff tribute issue) and part two was in #57. I think they wrapped it up in #59 or #60. My mom was cool enough to take me to see a theatrical re-release of the original Frankenstein and Dracula movies in 1968. I was 8 years old at the time. Frankenstein hooked me, and Dracula put me to sleep (literally). Karloff was quite a hero to me in those days.
Post a Comment