I thought we'd give Creepy and Eerie a break and talk about a lesser known Warren mag, their companion volume to Famous Monsters of Filmland, Monster World.MW was published in 1964 concurrently with FMOF, and it was always intended as a "more of" type of publication--the contents were virtually the same. In fact, when MW was cancelled, Warren decided that it was essentially another ten issues of FMOF, and so that magazine jumped in numbering from #69 to #80 in one month. Huh?
Anyway, behind the uncredited cover painting(I don't know who would've thought to do a werewolf in shades of blue, but it actually came out pretty cool), there are articles like:
"Lurking Ahead" about upcoming horror movies like The Castle of Terror, The Castle of Blood, and Dr.Terror's House of Horrors(funny how you can make three films from the same few words).
There's also "Battle of the Frankensteins" about two goofy versions of the Monster, like when Mr.Magoo Met Frankenstein(!), "It Asked For You", a weird section where monster pics are "matched up" with readers names(no, I didn't understand it either), a piece on Lionel Atwill called "The Maddest Doctor", and the six-page comics adaptation of The Mummy by Russ Jones and Wally Wood(reprinted many times, I think it made its debut here).
There's also an article on The Black Sleep(since it starred Lugosi, Chaney, Carradine, Rathbone, Tor Johnson and Akim Tamiroff), a sort of "horror gossip" column called "Terror Talk" by Bill Obbagy, and then of course mant, many pages of horror merchandise, including those cool Movie Monster Model Kits, for a $1.00 each!
*sigh*
5 comments:
Is it easier to read than FMOF? I always disliked it's writing style.
i'm no expert on FMOF, but to me it reads exactly the same, which i think was the intention.
Cool cover!
As Rob touches on in his piece, it was a bare-faced attempt to clone FM.
The material was produced in exactly the same style, by most of the same people (so much so that MW was folded into FM - and reprinted there, ad nauseum!)
They have charm in a nostalgic "window into the 60's/early fandom" way; but if you're looking for in-depth scholarship, of don't like FJA's "Horrorwood, Karloffornia/You Axed For It" puns, don't go there!
(Now, Cal Beck's CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN, there's another mnonster entirely...)
Great weekend,
-Craig W.
I got this issue at the I-Con convention on Long Island years ago when Forry Ackerman was a guest of honor. He was such a gentleman, he signed it for me while we had dinner together at the banquet the con hosted. Very good memory.
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