Jack H. Harris Presents Equinox!

See if this plot sounds familiar.

Four teenagers head into the country for some fun and relaxation and end up at a cabin in the woods which comes under attack by the dark forces of Hell. The youngsters fall victim one by one to the various attacks which include intruding monsters and demons who invade the spirits of the kids themselves. The violence seems to be centered around a mysterious book filled with ancient lore. Eventually all the kids succumb save one who is left to tell the tale, though his ultimate fate has little doubt.

Generally speaking, that sounds a lot like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies. But it's not a description of those, rather it's a brief overview of the movie Equinox. This movie began as an amateur effort put together by Dennis Murren and other talented special effects "Monster Kids" and some aspiring young actors (including a future Rose Parade queen and Frank Bonner star of WKRP In Cincinnati). 

The movie tells the story of penetrating a barrier to Hell. They even got Frtiz Leiber, the famous science fiction and fantasy author and creator of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, to do some acting work in this one. Forry Ackerman shows up in a voice cameo.

The movie was completed on weekends with minimal equipment and rough stop-motion effects and then sold to a local producer named Jack Harris who got the cast together again and shot new material to make the film a bit longer for release. This resulted in two versions of the movie, the later one with more overt sexual content. The movie got released into the theaters and has since become a cult favorite.

Some years ago Criterion Collections put together a somewhat pricey but a very entertaining package with both versions of the movie and lots of background information including interviews with the many of the cast members and the creators. It's a very nice collection and it might will be well worth the investment, especially for anyone interested in horror movies, stop-motion animation, or cult movies. This one has something for everyone who is not afraid to watch less than slick Hollywood production.

Next time Harris returns to his roots with Beware! The Blob.    

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I Was A Teenage Movie Maker!

I Was a Teenage Movie Maker - Don Glut's Amateur Films is an exceedingly strange movie package. (It was my Halloween treat for myself.) Don Glut is well known to my generation of comic book fans as a prodigious writer of comics for most of the major publishers such as DC, Marvel and especially Gold Key. But when he was a youngster, he was apparently a relentless moviemaker. The movies he made were the stuff you'd expect from kids at first but later they became much more refined.  

There are hours and and hours of homemade movies about dinosaurs, classic monsters, and later superheroes. Glut's films even got mentions in Famous Monsters of Filmland.  The DVD also has a pretty lengthy documentary hosted by Don Glut himself explaining how his various films came to be over the course of his life. To get a look at the documentary check out this link. 

When Glut finally became an adult and headed off to film school in California, he continued to make weird but fascinating films, often with the help of other film fans such as Bob Burns, notorious for his own roles as Tracy the ape in Ghost Busters. Glut also made movie serials in the tradition of the classic Republic films and even was able to attract pros like Roy Barcroft and Glenn Strange to play roles for him. Some of those films, made on locations such as the famous Bronson Canyon were even show on local television. 

If you're a "Monster Kid" or sympathetic to the cause you might find this interesting. Watching the all the movies can be a chore, but there are many charms to be discovered. 

There is a companion book for this collection, but I was unable to acquire a copy alas. 

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Vampirella - Crimson Chronicles Volume One!

Without question the most successful vampire in comics is Vampirella. Thanks to her astounding costume and the bodacious bod beneath she's hardly been out of print for decades. When Forry Ackerman first dreamt her up she was just another ghost host for her own self-titled horror anthology from Warren Magazines. She was a female equivalent of Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie. But she would not be contained in the corners of pages merely presenting horror yarns in the classic tradition, she demanded stories all her own and eventually she got them. Sone of the stories from the earliest issues were gathered by Harris when they had the property. The Jim Silkie does Vampirella proud. 

We are introduced to Vampirella in the opening story of issue one. She's an alluring vampire from the planet of Draculon where blood flows in rivers. But things have gotten tough and blood is hard to find until a spaceship from Earth descends and Vampirella discovers to heart's content that blood flows inside the bodies of these handsome blokes from another planet. This tongue-in-cheek yarn was written by Forry Ackerman in pretty much the same joking style he used in his many articles for Famous Monsters of Filmland. The Harris collection reprints two more stories from the debut issue, both written by Don Glut. The first titled "Death Boat' was drawn by Billy Graham and shows what happens when vampires turn up in all the strangest places, even when you're lost at sea. "Goddess of the Sea" was drawn by Neal Adams and seems to have been published from his pencils. A man falls in love with a betwitching creature from beneath the waves and sadly must pay the ultimate price. I'd be remiss to not mention Frank Frazetta's outstanding cover. 

Issue two sees the debut of "Vampi's Feary Tales" a one-page featurette written and drawn by diverse hands. This first one showcases the Bride of Frankenstein. "Evily" is by Bill Parent and artist Jerry Grandenetti. Rating the cover, we find out that the witch Evily is somehow related to Vampirella though that makes little sense. She's hung up on her looks like many an evil witch. "Down to Earth" by Ackerman and artist Mike Royer shows how Vampirella, already on Earth, tries to cope by entering a monster "beauty" pagent. Both Ackerman and publisher Bill Warren make appearances. 

Underneath an eye-catching cover by Vaughn Bode, the third issues of Vampirella offers up for entries in this collection. We get a "Feary Tales" about space queens. "Wicked is Who Wicked Does" was written by Bill Parent and drawn magnificently by Tom Sutton. It's about a sorceress and tries vainly to tie into the Vampi storyline. "Blast Off to a Nightmare" by Al Hewetson and artist Jack Sparling follows two astronauts to a planet filled with lovely women and other deadly creatures as well. There's an attempt by Sparling to evoke the cover but it's a clumsy effort. "Didn't I See You on Television?" was both written and drawn by Billy Graham and deals with a witch with an uncanny connection to the camera. 

Jeff Jones provides the cover for issue four. "Feary Tales" this time deals with witches being burned at the stake and is the work of Tom Sutton. Bill Parente wrote "Forgotten Kingdom" about an astronaut on a planet in desperate need of fertile men, but of course there's a twist. The art is attributed to "David Sinclair" but is almost certainly done by Ernie Colon. 

Issue five sports a Frazetta cover no less. The "Feary Tales" by Tom Sutton deals with ancient female cults at Stonehenge. Don Glut wrote and John Fantuccio drew "Craft of a Cat's Eye" about an unscrupulous gent who marries a woman for her wealth. Things go badly. 

The cover for the sixth issue is by Ken Kelly . "Feary Tales" deals with centaurs and is done by Dan Adkins. The story "Curse of Circe" was written by Gardner Fox and drawn magnificently by Jerry Grandenetti. It concerns a modern man who finds Circe's island and tries to flee.

The seventh issue of Vampirella offers up something a bit more ambitious beneath another Frazetta cover. Vampi tells three stories about three witches. Nick Cuti and artist Tom Sutton share the story of the "White Witch" who turns out to be less human than most folks find optimal. Cuti again writes "The Mind Witch" with art by Ernie Colon and deals with a woman who turns out to have celestial origins "The Black Witch" was drawn wonderfully by Billy Graham with Cuti in for a third outing. She's a witch who likes to change people into bugs, but finds that to be a mistake ultimately. This one has a frame drawn by Sutton and point the way for more coherence in the package. 

Vampirella makes the cover (by Ken Kelly again) of her magazine for a second in issue eight. After a "Feary Tales" item about classic horror romances, we get the first actual Vampirella story which has some sense of continuity. Archie Goodwin steps in to give us a more serious Vampi who runs afoul of the Chaos Cult for the first time. She also loses her wings while recovering from a plane crash. She is given her blood substitute, so she won't have to prey on people. It's fa great twenty-one page kick off for the Vampirella we've all come to know and adore. Tom Sutton, Vampirella's first artist is back in this and the next issue as well. 

The second installment of Goodwin's story picks up with Dr. Van Helsing and his son Adam getting on the trail of Vampirella when they believe she killed Van Helsing's brother. Vampi runs into more Crimson Cult members and even gets hold of the cult's bible "The Crimson Chronicles" (which also gave this reprint series from Harris its title). There's a "Feary Tales" item by Jeff Jones and Nick Cuti about the original vampire "Lilith". The cover is a combination of Wally Wood and Boris Vallejo. 

The tenth issue of Vampirella doesn't give us a new chapter in her ongoing adventures. Rather we have a tale titled "The Soft Sweet Lips of Hell" by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams about a woman takes youth where she finds it, mostly from young men. "Feary Tales" this time is by Billy Graham deals with Medusa. The cover artist is Bill Hughes. 

There has been tremendous growth in the magazine in its year and half of publication. Vampirella has gone from a joke to a fully realized character who can carry her own adventures. The strip continues to develop and will take a major step forward next time when Jose Gonzalez joins the team. 

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Monster Mash - 1957-1972!

Let me state for the record that I am not a "Monster Kid", that generation of youngsters (almost all boys it seems) who were just the right age (ten or eleven or thereabouts) to suck in the delectable badness of monsters when the craze broke in 1957. I was too busy being born that year to concern myself with such things as Frankenstein and Dracula and other beasties of the night. But when I did finally sprout up in the middle 60's there was still enough of of the old monster glamour to attract my attention and then in the early 70's there was final burst of monstery awfulness to glom onto before it sputtered out for a time. Mark Voger in his Twomorrows tome Monster Mash-The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972 touches on many if not most of the aspects of society which were touched or transformed or even given birth by the shocking interest in monsters. 

Like so many things in our culture the sudden and abiding interest in ghouls and goblins was television's fault. It began with "Shock!", a package of fifty-two horror and mystery films from Hollywood's golden era making its way to the small screen. These tepid films, mild by almost any era's standard, were still seen as just possibly too much for the tender psyches of America's youth and to avoid widespread condemnation but yet still reap some profits the folks who put this together didn't offer it to national TV but rather to regional stations in syndication. Those individual stations hired ghost hosts of sundry kind and put the shows on at the least objectionable hours they could find in the television landscape. Still the youth found these movies and gobbled them up with glee. Suddenly Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolfman and the Mummy among many others were shambling around in America's living rooms and it was good...for business. 

The cavalcade of monster items was...well monstrous in size. There were masks, board games, card games, comic books, television shows, toys, candies, cards, paperbacks, and even specialty magazines dedicated utterly to the fad. First and foremost among these magazines was Famous Monsters of Filmland from Warren Publications. In fact Famous Monsters of Filmland is the outcropping on which Jim Warren built his little black and white empire that eventually gave us Uncle Creepy, Cousin Eerie, and most importantly Vampirella. Forry Ackerman was Jim Warren's partner of sorts in the venture and in fact it was the "Ackermonster's" vast collection of horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies which was the essence of the magazine. The "Monster Kids" had a leader and in the letters pages of FM, a place where they could congregate and compare notes. Other mags like Castle of Frankenstein and Monster World are given some space as well. 

One of the amazing things about Famous Monsters though was that as influential as the articles and stills might have been, the Captain Company might have been even more so to the collective memories of the "Monster Kids". Captain Company was the mail-order side of the Warren operation and showcased many monster and fantasy products that kids might order and certainly would want to order. Like the wishbook from Sears every Christmas season, this was a poor kid's window into what was possible. 

I wanted so many things from the Captain  Company but perhaps nothing so much as the life-size posters of Frankenstein by Jack Davis. There's one for Vampirella too by Sanjulian but who'd dare bring that into a home overseen by a God-fearing Mamma! Not me. 

A lot of space is spent discussing and showcasing the wonderful Aurora model kids which allowed "Monster Kids" to actually collect and build their own versions of these awesome monsters. 

That extended to such strange quasi-monster things such as Rat Fink created by car designer and artist Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. Rat Fink's imitators are given some space as well. Goofy and gruesome about covers it. 

Marvel monster comics get a few pages with my personal favorite Atlas-era monster "Fin Fang Foom" getting a page all to his titanic self. But aside from the monsters there's no coverage of Marvel's other supernatural and monster endeavors nor is there any talk of DC's revival of mystery and ghost tales at their shop. Perhaps this has to do with the somewhat arbitrary cut-off point of 1972 but still there was much done by the "Big Two" before then. 

Getting a lot of love though and properly so are the Warren magazines which followed on after the success of Famous Monsters. Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella all get some discussion and some tasty artwork from Jack Davis and other talents of the time. 

A great many pages are devoted to the TV monsters such as The Munsters and The Addams Family. Voger suggests the appearance of these two shows almost simultaneously on home screens marks the apogee of the monster craze in America and it's hard to dispute this point, though monster stuff stayed around for a long time in some form or other. The John Astin interview was a highlight and there's much more on the actors in both series. 

And clearly the author was a monster fan of Dark Shadows, the ABC television soap opera which weirdly normalized the vampire and made it suitable faire for the living rooms of America. The succees of Barnabas Collins and other stars of the show are discussed at length and several interviews or portions of same are highlighted. Voger and his late wife have talked to a lot of folks over the years and that material bears fruit in this tasty tome. 

Jonathan Frid's vampiric mug is a great way to wrap up this month-long Halloween celebration. Mark Voger has fashioned a fun look at the monster craze, a fad that lingers still in the general background of modern American society. While monsters have become less faddish, they have become oddly normalized in a way that 1960's America would've found stunning. Voger's fannish book does a decent if incomplete job of showing how that happened. 

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The Alien Factor!

The Alien Factor is a movie which makes me feel both old and young at the same time. Old in the sense that this little homemade science fiction flicker was made during 1976 and 1978 in some of the coldest times of the last half century. That's a long time ago now and I was a mere youth, freshly married and happy as a clam in my ignorance of the often callous world. But when I reflect on this movie and how it was made in Baltimore by folks not that much different from me back at the time who just wanted to make their own little science fiction movie, I am filled with the eternal springtime of youth and the scales of the years fall away. 

I confess to being a latecomer to the pleasures of this flick. I've seen it a few times over the years but its glory never revealed itself until recently when I was in just the perfect mood for a hokey movie about a ship full of aliens crashing on Earth and three of those critters becoming a nuisance as they hunt and kill various members of the small town in Maryland in which the crash occurred. There are three species of aliens who pose the threat. 

Perhaps the most memorable is the "Zagatile", a giant furry critter with ferocious fangs who likes to hang out in dark places like basements and jump on people without warning. A pair of short stilts makes this monster suit at once fascinating and also makes you wonder when the guy inside the suit will fall on his face. 

The "Infrabyce" is a cockroach-man like affair who also strikes from ambush. One of the more furious battles involves this alien in the woods where it slaughters several, the director of the movie included. 

Perhaps the most mysterious is the "Leemoid", a creature of energy who is ultimately realized on film by stop-motion work. There are two versions of the Leemoid and after seeing both, I prefer the one that didn't make the final cut of the movie though both have their adavantages. 

The final alien of substance (there's another who dies pretty quickly) is called "The Inner Man" and that's because he's different from the other creatures, as he's intelligent and he's here to round them up. He adopts a human guise which works well for most of the movie. 

This humble yet ambitious project is the brainchild of director Don Dohler, a fascinating figure who started out in the fanzines of the 60's and with his creation of ProJunior made a mark in the Underground Comix world. According to the legend a life-threatening robbery caused Dohler to get off his duff and make the movie he'd always wanted to do and The Alien Factor was the result. Dohler went on to make several more movies including another one I've seen called  Galaxy Invader. Alas that film seems just as bereft of funds as The Alien Factor but some of the energy of fun is missing from the final product. 

One cast member in particular stands out. He plays the mayor of the town on which the aliens descend and he's played by Dick Dyszel, a local TV star who played the shock theater character "Count Gore De Vol". (Love that hokey name.) The movie came to the attention of Forry Ackerman who touted it in Famous Monsters of Filmland, resulting in one of the more interesting covers of the final days of that significant publication. (See the Count with Forry above.)

In the final analysis for all its many flaws, what makes The Alien Factor a downright movie to watch is the omnipresent sense that these are people making a movie under somewhat difficult circumstances and using every ounce of wit and energy they have to make it work. And that energy shows through and lets the viewer join the fun. 

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Orgy Of The Bored!

I finally at long last raked up a copy of the notorious Ed Wood scripted movie Orgy of the Dead, a 60's color sexploitation flick that is stunningly unsexy. I'd read this movie was bad, but that's standard for a movie with Wood's name attached. This one wasn't actually directed by Wood, but he did write it and apparently was on set during the filming according to the guy who did direct it (as much as a movie like this can be directed).

The plot is pretty much pointless -- a writer and his girl drive around graveyards looking for inspiration and get caught up literally in a midnight burlesque show judged by the "Emperor" played by the turgid Criswell and some buxom babe doing a Vampira shtick dubbed the "Black Ghoul". (Apparently Vampira wouldn't do this one). The couple are forced to watch a seemingly endless parade of exotic dancers, each supposedly some lost soul. And that's it. The movie just dawdles along with one mostly-naked chick after another "dancing" before the cameras.

Oh and I almost forgot the werewolf and the mummy who watch on with an unsettling eagerness. This was never supposed to be a good movie, that's clear. It was an excuse to showcase as many tits as possible on screen for as much time as possible. But while the tits are in abundance, the titillation is all but lacking, and for a movie which has only sex to sell that's not good. I cannot say that I'm glad that I saw Orgy of the Dead, but I am glad I don't have an eagerness to watch it again.

But sadly I have to admit I'd love to see a sampling of the novelized version. It must be the pure Wood, though the cover is not terrible.  I just noticed Forry Ackerman's name too -- Holy Moly!

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The King Of Monsters Is Here!

Today is the last day of school for this year. I close out all accounts and then begin enjoying two full months of relative lassitude which I plan to fill with science fiction, comic books, and adventure and monster movies. I kick off the holiday right after work today by going to see the debut of the latest Godzilla epic. Godzilla, King of Monsters is the direct sequel to 2014's Godzilla and adds to the plate Kaiju favorites Mothra, Rodan, and King Ghidorah. I'm agog to get to see this movie from the safety of my plush seat swilling coke and munching popcorn thrilling to get a good look at the havoc they monsters wreak on the world of man. 

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