SRBissette.com

Full disclosure: I buy books from Headpress once a year. I am a rabid devotee of most everything Headpress publishes, and have been for ages. In fact, I offered them one of the books I wrote last year (Teen Angels: The Art, Commerce and Karma of Killing Sidekicks –they declined; too esoteric for even their tastes). Furthermore, I have also been a fan and collector of Scott Stine‘s books and self-published Stigmata Press zines, and we’ve corresponded in the past. Though I buy most everything Headpress publishes with my own hard-earned cash, I was mailed review copies of two of the titles I’ll be writing about over the next few days. This does not, however, buy positive reviews — I genuinely love most Headpress publications, and I would have bought them anyway with my next order. Still, you gots to know — I did receive review copies. — SRB]

[The sweet Headpress cover art to Scott Stine‘s Trashfiend, comprised of a key cover image from Marvel’s black-and-white horror comic newsstand magazine The Haunt of Horror #3, Sept. 1974 — the zombie and woman painted by Jad — and inset panels using the cover image from Sphere Books‘ UK paperback novelization of the 1976 Jeff Lieberman AIP opus Squirm. “Soon you be wormface too!”]

As Video Watchdog reaches its 150th issue this month (see previous post, below), I give thanks for those dedicated zines that still exist (Robin Bougie‘s Cinema Sewer is terrific, and Shock Cinema remains among my all-time favorites, still published by Steven Puchalski) while reminded of the many beloved genre zines that haven’t enjoyed the success or tenacity of VW. My mailbox and morning reads are all the poorer sans the fix I used to savor from pioneer zines like Psychotronic Video, Ecco, ETC (Euro-Trash Cinema), Deep Red, Gore Gazette and the like — titles too numerous to list here.

I’ve kept my own extensive library of genre and filmzines, from two-sided photocopy newsletters (a popular format in the 1980s) to hand-stapled saddle-stitched digest to slicks sporting color covers and top-notch printing, dating from the mid-’60s to the present. Though they’re an unwieldy mongrel breed, each in their own ideosyncratic format, I’ve kept them protected and accessible and even bound a few of them for easy access. I treasure my bound collection of Bill Landis‘ original Sleazoid Express newsletters, complete from its first issue, in which I also preserved everything Bill sent me over the years (letters, photocopies of unpublished interviews, etc. — I had in fact sent Bill copies of some of this material that he’d lost, which he was compiling into a new collection of his previously uncollected self-published work — a project terminated by Bill’s tragic and unexpected early death last year).

Thankfully, adventurous publishers like Headpress in the UK share this obsession and have taken it upon themselves to work with some of the writers and self-publishers of some choice genre zines to preserve (and revise) their best work, previously published and unpublished, in handsome book format.

As a former subscriber to Steven Puchalski‘s Slimetime (and current subscriber-for-life to Steven’s meaty Shock Cinema), I beat feet to immediately purchase Headpress’s definitive Slimetime volume back in 2002 (revised and expanded from Steve’s 1998 collected edition). Slimetime: A Guide to Sleazy, Mindless Movies is highly recommended, and its the precursor to one of the latest Headpress books (hot off the press, in fact!), Trashfiend.

Like Puchalski, Scott knows and loves his ‘stuff’ — but unlike Steven, I do mean ‘stuff.’ 

Trashfiend dedicates its pages to movies, yes, but also to monster magazines, horror fiction digest magazines of the late ’50s and early ’60s, toys, puzzles, records, comics, bric-a-brac and doodads.

Some of the most entertaining writing in Trashfiend involves Scott’s ongoing mission to explore, understand and document the weirder detours and eddies of horror pop culture — the more obscure, neglected and unloved by the masses, the better!

This is also the material that makes Trashfiend an essential volume for baby boomer horror fanatics and those of later generations eager to grok what the 1960s and ’70s monster/horror boom years were all about.

There’s a multitude of books collecting genre film reviews, and in this department Trashfiend delivers, too — though, truth to tell, it’s the weakest part of this collection. So, bad news first, just to get it all out of the way.

Roughly the first third of Trashfiend compiles a potpourri of Scott’s revised film, video and DVD reviews, which are for the most part engaging, entertaining and informative. Differences of personal opinion aside, these are lively and conversational in nature, and a few of them perfectly capture the zeitgeist of some of the films Scott champions. I’m absolutely attuned to his assessment of favorites like Squirm (1977), Kinji Fukasaku‘s The Green Slime (1968), The 2-Headed Transplant (1971), It! (1967), The Night Caller/Blood Beast from Outer Space (1966), and so on, including AIP’s nasty sleeper Blood and Lace (1971), which I caught at the drive-in a couple of times and still enjoy for its unsavory atmosphere and akimbo narrative.

In other arenas, I wish Scott had been more mindful or attentive to the original theatrical history of some titles: Scott’s review of L’Etrusco Uccide Ancora (1972) barely cites its US release as The Dead Are Alive, the title under which this grotty Italian giallo dominated drive-ins for what seemed two or three years (like other National General Pictures releases, it always seemed to pop up on double bills and dusk-to-dawn shows in New England). That said, Scott is gleefully attentive to the ballyhoo that accompanied some of these original releases, spicing his reviews with some marvelous bon mots, like Europix‘s “Beastly Gag Card” for their US release of Il Mostro di Venezia as The Embalmer (1966), and the 45 Cub Records release of “The Ghoul in School” tune from the US version of Lycanthropus as Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory (1961). Oh, man, how can I find a copy of that 45 record??? In all cases, Headpress’ typically top-notch printing ensures such illustration artifacts are perfectly showcased.

Alas, the reviews are also peppered with factual errors and misnomers typical of Scott’s and my generation’s ‘accumulated knowledge’ codified by decades of assumptions, conjecture and invented lore. This prompted more than a few winces from this old-timer who has tried to keep abreast of new facts that emerge now and again, though one must be ever-vigilant and attentive to catch them in the nooks and crannies of zine culture, in print and online, and the plethora of new books, DVD definitive editions, etc.

I can’t fault Scott for trotting these out into print, as most of these have been repeated ad infinitum literally for generations, but it does make the review section a bit of a minefield for the uninitiated (who will accept such statements as fact) and the diehards like yours truly who wish Scott and Headpress had run the book past some knowledgable fact-checkers and/or proofreaders. 

Here, for instance, is the completely erroneous chestnut (dating at least back to Castle of Frankenstein‘s 1962 capsule review of the film) linking director/cinematographer Mario Bava with Atom-Age Vampire (Seddok, L’Erede di Satana/Seddok, The Heir of Satan, 1960; reviewed in Trashfiend on pp. 51-53). This long-lasting falsehood was due to the film’s onscreen producer credit of Mario FAVA, and the then-standard supplanting of Italian names with fake English names in Italian film credits (Italian audiences reportedly avoided domestic product, and the international market favored anglicized credits, too, in most venues). For almost half-a-century now, horror fans have leapt to the assumption the credit was a misspelling. Not so! As Tim Lucas clarified once and for all time in his definitive Mario Bava biography Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark (2007), Bava had nothing to do with the film whatsoever — there really was a Mario Fava!

Here, too, is chapter-and-verse recitation of the almost completely invented ‘history’ of the mysterious Regal Video release The Revenge of Dr. X, reviewed by Scott as The Double Garden (see pp. 15-18) — a conflation of over two decades of informed guess-work, assumptions and connecting-the-dots-in-blind-alleys I discussed at length here on Myrant this past spring. 

The new information revealing the truth and names of the real filmmakers behind this curious film wasn’t revealed online until this winter, so again, I can’t fault Scott for further codifying that which I myself had a hand in putting into motion and print (in my review of the film for Deep Red back in the late 1980s), but there ya go.

This is a double-edged sword — as a compilation of Scott’s zine writings, these errors are part and parcel of the subculture and zine scene Trashfiend was (and is) part of. Thus, the uncorrected reviews archive the ‘found knowledge’ of Scott’s generation, which has some value; however, they also perpetuate those errors anew, passing misinformation on to the next generation of readers, ravenous for scraps of information impossible to find in mainstream books, articles or venues. Too bad.

On the other hand, other factual errors, gaps in knowledge and oversights are Scott’s alone. No less than three or four times, Scott links the daikaiju-eiga icon Gamera with the wrong studio — hey, Scott, Daiei Studios made the Gamera films (starting with the 1965 Daikaijû Gamera), not Toei Company.

Oddly enough, another giant Nipponese turtle monster is simply forgotten in the context of another article (which is otherwise informative and a pleasurable read): the Arthur Rankin Jr./Jules Bass-produced 1978 American/Japanese TV movie The Bermuda Depths (Bamyuda No Nazo) isn’t mentioned in Scott’s otherwise-comprehensive “The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters of Rankin & Bass.” Well, at least it’s a monster turtle forgotten by everyone, though Scott usually (and justifiably) prides himself on embracing such neglected fare. FYI, Rankin & Bass in fact produced a number of American/Japanese genre live-action sf/fantasy/horror TV movies, most of which were directed or co-directed by Shusei Kotani, beginning with the 1977 The Last Dinosaur (Kyokutei Tankensen Pora-Bora, starring a very grizzled Richard Boone) and continuing with The Bermuda Depths (with Burl Ives and Leigh McCloskey), The Ivory Ape (1980, with Jack Palance), The Bushido Blade (1981, with Richard Boone and Toshirô Mifune) and The Sins of Dorian Gray (1983, with Anthony Perkins and a female Dorian Gray played by Belinda Bauer). This lineage led to Rankin/Bass’s involvement (as producers/directors) with a half-hour special The Coneheads (1983), co-scripted by now-Minnesota Senator Al Franken — but enough on this, this isn’t Trashfiend material (yet!). It’s just too bad, given how otherwise complete and comprehensive Scott’s well-illustrated article and review of the Rankin/Bass Mad Monster Party? and Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters (1972) remains, that he missed even mentioning these related TV movies.

But I am here to praise Trashfiend — having cited its very minor and fleeting oversights and precious few errata, let me stress it’s virtues.

Make no mistake, if you love horror movies and comics, you need this book.

Scott’s excellent overviews of ’70s blaxploitation genre fare (“Darker Side of Soul Cinema: Creature Features of Black Cinema” and the accompanying review section “It’s Only a Black Horror Movie”) are ideal compliments to Steven Puchalski‘s blaxploitation genre history in Slimetime, with juicier ad slicks and illos elevating Scott’s analysis further (including the cover and a panel from Marvel‘s four-color Blacula parody Blechhula! in Spoof #4, 1973).

Better yet are the articles accompanied by interviews: “The Ghouls Go West: The Horror Westerns of William Beaudine“ and reviews of the infamous 1965 double-bill of Billy the Kid vs. Dracula and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter are capped with Scott’s interview with the latter film’s ‘monster,’ Cal Bolder (“The Boy Toy of Frankenstein’s Daughter”); Scott’s overview of Crown-International‘s 1977 pickup The Crater Lake Monster is anchored by his informative interview piece with that dino film’s writer and star, “Dredging Crater Lake with Richard Cardella.”

Best of all, to my mind, is Scott’s bolstering his affectionate review of the 1975 curio Nightmare in Blood with a chat with filmmaker and venerable TV horror host John Stanley himself — it’s worth the price of admission, folks. The John Stanley section also neatly sets up Scott’s final chapters, which detail (and I do mean detail) his personal obsession with another TV horror host, KIRO-TV‘s Nightmare Theatre and its host The Count (Joe Towey). This is zine writing and ground-zero genre research at its most intensive, yielding the semi-autobiographical “Sleepless in Seattle: Up All Night With Nightmare Theatre” and two interviews with folks who were part of the Nightmare Theatre legacy Scott is struggling to research, archive and preserve, “Keeping an Eye on the Count: Chuck Lindenberg“ and “Sweeping Up After the Count: Dave Drui, Floor Director.” This is what zines like Trashfiend are really all about, and it’s the perfect finale to the book.

What makes Trashfiend an essential buy, though, is Scott’s in-depth coverage of horror comics, horror fiction zines and monster magazines.

This third of Trashfiend instantly makes this Headpress volume a must-have reference for devotees of horror comics and monster magazines. It’s only a portion of Trashfiend‘s generous contents, but it’s far, far superior to the grossly overpriced and mistitled McFarland book The Great Monster Magazines: A Critical Study of the Black and White Publications of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s by Robert Michael “Bobb” Cotter (2008). No offense meant to Cotter — I also own and quite enjoy his earlier McFarland effort The Mexican Masked Wrestler and Monster Filmography (2005) — but The Great Monster Magazines was a con job cribbed from a sadly incomplete collection, an anecdotal-at-best wasted opportunity lavishing more pages on Marvel’s Conan black-and-white zines than the sketchy-at-best overview of monster magazines the title promises coverage of. Scott Stine does it better and with far more intelligence, wit, knowledge and style in his Trashfiend chapters dedicated to the magazines, the behind-the-scenes creators, and entire runs of essentially forgotten monster magazines (which I’m happy to say I’ve long had sets of in my own collection).

Scott honors the comics and film work of the late, great Texan cartoonist/filmmaker/radio and TV personality Pat Boyette, including an article and review of Boyette’s only extant feature film (ther rest were destroyed in a garage fire) Dungeons of Harrow (1962) and a “Selected Horror Comic Checklist (1966–79)” of Pat’s work that’s long overdue and quite unexpected in this volume. Having known Pat and loved the man (like my relationship with Tom Sutton, we used to chat on the phone at lengthinto the wee hours of the evening, back when Pat was still with us), I’m thankful for Scott’s spotlight on Pat the man and his body of work. 

Equally unexpected — and welcome — is Scott’s interview with and checklist of writer/artist/editor Bruce Jones, who I’ve long maintained was the premiere horror comics writer of the 1970s for his stellar scripts for Warren (Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella) and particularly his classic collaborations with Berni Wrightson (“Jenifer”) and Richard Corben. The candid interview with Jones is informative, acknowledging and spotlighting Jones’ early comics stories he wrote and drew, and the checklist is pretty definitive.

But that’s just the beginning: Scott offers “Those Marvelous Monsters: Marvel Comics’ Horror Magazines” and the companion “Marvel Monster Magazine Checklist (1964–1979)” and “Marvel Monster Magazine Artist & Writer Index (1964–1979)” — here’s 20 pages of article plus the illustrated checklists that stomps the living twitching shit out of the $40 Cotter/McFarland volume. This is where you want to put your dough, folks, and it’s half the cover price of the McFarland book — and offers a lot more.

But, hell, Scott’s just warming up!

After his Marvel monster zine overview, he digs into Marvel’s shortlived bid for a horror fiction magazine, “Digesting The Haunt of Horror“ (with a complete checklist of the contents of Marvel’s 1973 publication). A proper context is immediately offered via “Cut Down to Size: The Golden Age of Horror Digest Magazines” and the “Horror Fiction Digest Checklist (1960–1979),” covering obscure titles like Shock (1960-61, sporting Jack Davis covers!), Fear!, Magazine of Horror (Gray Morrow covers), and many more. “Monsters on Parade: Shriek! The Monster Horror Magazine” (with accompanying index) excavates one of my personal favorites of the 1960s movie monster mags, the oddball 1965-66 British/American Shriek! from Acme News Company Inc. and Health Knowledge, Inc., a weird fusion of press releases, borderline-adult-films and sleaze and gore that instantly endeared itself to my generation with its first issue’s Black Scorpion cover painting and the byline: “Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead: Which is the Best ‘Horror Hag’?” (cited by Bob Smith in a Myrant comment last year).

Scott also offers a delightful analysis of the fast-but-furious fight for newsstand domination and a monster magazine title between Jim Warren and Dez Skinn (a match made in Heaven!) in his article “Warren’s Hastily Erected House of Horror,” followed by an essay on collecting 8mm and Super 8 monster movies (“Reel Monsters: Collecting 8mm Horror Films”) and a conjecture-heavy but terrific illustrated article entitled “Wally Wood’s Mars Attack!” (with a full checklist of the infamous trading cards themselves).

All this for $20 US — what more do you need to know?

Trashfiend is highly recommended and a cover-to-cover treat, jampacked with even more than I’ve cited here.

Kudos to Scott Stine and to Headpress for making it a reality — and here’s hoping for more volumes, making this a series.

Per usual, Headpress has lavished excellent production and printing on this volume. There’s a few color inserts, too, and much as one might ache for more (particularly in the context of Scott’s article “Blood on the Canvas: The Art of the Belgian Window Card,” which cries out for a fuller color gallery of those promotional artifacts), it’s a heavily-illustrated tome from cover to cover, and the black-and-white repro is for the most part excellent.

You need Trashfiend!