JUNGLE JANE AND JUNGLE JOAN + BONUS

 

Images of women in furs, leopard skins and other primitive attire are used to symbolize the wild and untamed side of their nature. Drop them in a jungle setting and they become all the more exotic and alluring. 

The voluptuous Jayne Mansfield didn't need a jungle print bikini to look good, but we'll thank her anyway. Very photogenic, she never shied away from an opportunity to be in front of a camera.

Inspired by the Tarzan movies popular at the time, actress and comedienne Joan Davis tried the "Jane" look for a gag shoot for HOLLYWOOD magazine in November 1939. Miss Davis had a second career in TV with her show, I MARRIED JOAN, in the 1950s.

Another example of the popularity of prehistoric babes and their skimpy outfits was no more apparent than in comic books. From Nyoka to Sheena, one thing is for sure -- jungle girls rule!

JUNGLE GIRLS

No. 1

1989 (no month)

AC Comics

Editor and Publisher: Bill Black

Cover: Bill Black

Pages: 28

Cover price: $1.95

The lead story stars Bill Black's Tara, Jungle She-Cat, who debuted in PARAGON PRESENTS #2 (1971). The rest of the issue is filled with Golden Age reprints from CAVE GIRL and NYOKA comics. On the back cover is a photo of Victoria Vetri (PLAYBOY'S Playmate of the Month for September 1967, as Angela Dorian).

FORGOTTEN DINOSAURS WHO RULED THE EARTH!

Before the days of websites and YouTube, we had newspapers to read about the latest monster movies. There we would find reviews of films and view the advertisements used to entice movie-goers to the various local theatrical venues. I would be the first one in the family to grab the Calendar section out of the massive Sunday Los Angeles Times. This is where a lot of the full-page movie posters were published and the occasional lengthier article on a horror star or monster movies in general.

Over the course of a few years, I amassed a pretty good collection of clippings and have been sharing them here from time to time. Today I post clippings of two of the most famous dinosaur movies after Raquel Welch's ONE MILLION YEARS, B.C. from my 50 year-old monster scrapbook!

THE STRANGE CASE OF VICTORIA VETRI

The first time I saw Victoria Vetri, she was going by the name Angela Dorian and she wasn't wearing a stitch. With long hair, sun-bronzed skin and a 36-21-35 near-perfect body, she stared right into my eyes. Sadly, the vision I describe was not "in the flesh", but glaring back at me from the slick pages of a certain popular men's magazine that specialized in photographic images of earthbound angels such as this. Contrary to the hedonistic editor and publisher's declaration, no girl that ever lived next door to me ever looked like that!

So I was forced to be content to behold that sun-bronzed beauty on the printed page, in the pictorial that showed her after winning the PLAYBOY Playmate-of-the-Year for 1968. A year or so later I began to see a platinum blonde version of Angela Dorian in a couple of monster magazines, depicting her in a fur bikini for her role as Sanna in WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, a Hammer Film! I had the iconic poster of Raquel Welch in her deerskin bikini from ONE MILLION YEARS, B.C., and here was yet another cave girl for a young, red-blooded teenage boy to worship. Vetri had also starred (as herself) in ROSEMARY'S BABY.

Little did I know at the time, but when she wasn't running around half-naked on a movie set, she was apparently running around naked in threesomes with fellow-actress Sharon Tate! Vetri and Tate were best of friends and that included -- according to her ex-husband anyway -- sharing the sheets together. These escapades included a variety of mind-altering substances that were typical of the times and the company. You see, in typical ironic fashion, all this happened at the house on Cielo Drive (another irony -- Cielo means "heaven" in Spanish) that was being rented by Tate and her husband, director Roman Polanski.

In another of life's (and death's) ironies, on one hot summer night in August, 1969, Vetri was invited to dinner by Tate at the Cielo Drive house. Vetri was feeling a bit under the weather, so she declined. The next morning, the news arrived that everyone in the house where Vetri would also have been had she been feeling better, were viciously murdered in what became known as the notorious Tate-La Bianca Murders.

Vetri was devastated. She also grew increasingly concerned that cult-leader Charles Manson -- the perpetrator of the murders -- was after her as well. She couldn't shake the fear and guilt, and began a downward spiral of paranoia.

Val Guest, who directed Vetri in WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, had this to say about her:"a real nothing, and a very strange mixed up lady... it was tough to take her. She was a... nitwit". My guess is she was still in her "fear-phase" during this time.

Flash-forward almost 20 years to 1986 and Vetri is married to a would-be rocker by the name of Bruce Rathgeb. They seemed to get along fine until it is revealed that Vetri's fear and paranoia are very much still evident -- so much so, that she has become delusional. Everything comes to a head in October 2010, when she and Rathgeb get into an argument and she pulls out a gun and, believing that he is Manson, shoots Rathgeb, seriously wounding him. Vetri is convicted of attempted voluntary manslaughter and sent to prison where she remained until her release this April.

Now 74, Miss Vetri is featured in an interview in the latest LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS magazine. Now that Charles Manson is thankfully dead, I'm hoping to find that she's gotten herself out of the mental terror she suffered for so many years and is living a much more comfortable life.

Inside front cover of CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN #16, July 1971.

CoF's "Slaymate of the Month" July 1971.

LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS NO. 41 PREVIEW: WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH!

Front cover by Jeff Preston.

Guys, hang on to your loincloth! Gals, hang on to your fur bikini! Coming next month is the latest issue of Dick Klemenson's top of the monster 'zine heap, LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS #41! This issue contains complete coverage of the "sequel" to Raquel Welch's ONE MILLION YEARS, B.C., WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH, starring Victoria Vetri (aka, Angela Dorian). If this is anything like previous issues, you will be treated to about a book's length treatment of the feature film. Also included are interviews with Ms. Vetri, Robin Hawdon, Assistant Director John Stoneman, and black vampire babe, Pauline Peart. Plus, the lengthy history of CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN magazine continues! If you are a regular reader of LSOH, I have a hunch that you'll be back for this one! If you have never tried an issue, you have no idea what you're missing!

ORDER YOUR COPY HERE.

Back cover by William Stout.

INFORMATION
Hammer Films had a huge hit when One Million Years B.C. was released in 1966. Sir James Carreras says "give me another one like that!" Out came the wonderfully colorful followup with well coifed cave people and Jim Danforth's Academy Award nominated Stop Motion Animation effects!

Featuring:

• When Danforth Ruled the Earth — The Making of Hammer's Second Dinosaur Epic By Mark Wolf. Interview with Victoria Vetri — "Sanna" By Michael Augustine Reed.
• Interview with Robin Hawdon — By Richard Klemensen.
• Interview with 1st Assistant Director John Stoneman — By Richard Klemensen.
• Hammer's Unmade Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls Raiders of the Stone Ring takes to the sky! — By Ross Plesset (research by Chris Endicott).
• Pauline Peart — The Satanic Rites of Dracula Vampire interviewed – By Michael Augustine Reed
• Part 2 of the history of Castle of Frankenstein Magazine.

Covers:
Front Cover by Jeff Preston
Back Cover by William Stout
Inside Front Cover by Neil D Vokes
Inside Back Cover by Paul Watts

Inside front cover by Neil D. Volkes.

Inside back cover by Paul Watts.

Interior art by Jeff Preston.

LSOH #41 flyer.