Plague of the Zombies

Growing up in Australia meant having access to a lot of great British publications like The House of Hammer. Although I loved Famous Monsters for its clubby vibe, I can't say I enjoyed Uncle Forry's penchant for puns. A pun once or twice is fine, but all the time?

For mine, what Cinefantastique was to the serious American genre fan, The House of Hammer was to the British genre fan. Both magazines treated the films I loved with respect. I know Forry respected the genre personally, but the juvenile nature of the mag inspired me to look for alternatives.

In an earlier blog, I posted pages from the The House of Hammer's comic adaptation of Vampire Circus:

http://phantomofpulp.blogspot.com/search?q=vampire+circus

I thought it was high time I posted snippets from their Plague of the Zombies edition.

Artists Trevor Goring and Brian Bolland contributed frequently to the magazine, and clearly understood Hammer lore.

More dramatic and tighter than the John Gilling film, they were able to focus on the essence of the movie while discarding the slower passages.

It's important to remember that movies didn't exist on videotape until the late 70's. Comic adaptations such as these were one of the few ways a fan could "own" and relive their favorite movie. Some films were releases in truncated form on Super-8, but ownership of projectors was marginal.

I first saw stills from Plague of the Zombies in one of Alan Frank's horror movie books. The title and the stills intrigued me. The film was made in '66, so I wasn't in any state to make my way to a cinema at the age of four. I'm not sure how broad its release in Australia was.

In the early 70's, I discovered John Burke's novelization of Plague and a number of other Hammer films. I read it with great enthusiasm and loved it. My desire to see the actual film skyrocketed.

Happily, encountered the real thing on videocassette was not a letdown. Some critics have dismissed the film as a Night of the Living Dead rip-off. As doctor Zachery Smith would say: "Bah!!!"

For starters, the film was made two years before George Romero's watershed. Secondly, the story plumbs traditional zombie history with a voodoo subplot. Romero's film took off from a vastly different launching pad.

My imdb review ran like this:

With such an evocative title as "Plague of the Zombies", could Hammer possibly have gone wrong? Of course they could have, but they didn't... because this is one of their finest efforts ever, up there with "Horror Of Dracula", "Twins of Evil", "Vampire Circus" and "The Curse of Frankenstein". The film's undead denizens have closer ties to the zombies of voodoo-ridden Haitian folklore than the Romero-inspired eaters of human flesh. In Haiti, the dead are resurrected to labor for the living. This is the premise here, and it's a fascinating one.

Director John Gilling ("The Reptile") takes the subject matter by the horns and delivers a creepy, fascinating, low key tale of terror that eschews traditional Hollywood zombie lore and brings unexpected pathos to the plight of the exploited dead. The scenes of the dead rising are stunningly realized and the dusty locale is a major plus. A classic. Also worth noting is John Burke's excellent novelization of the film (from Pan).

I really love this film, and I treasure my complete collection of House of Hammer magazines (which underwent some curious name changes in their pulp lifetime).

Cemetery Dancing

Cemetery Dance has hit its 61st issue. I'm comforted by that.

Anything that survives that long is an indicator of good health. Health of the genre? Sure. Health of a loyal readership? Certainly.

If you have a passing interest in horror, you're probably not into Cemetery Dance. The mag's not always easy to find, and it doesn't tend to jump on bandwagons that are currently popular. It's for serious horror fans. And writers. And editors.

The latest issue makes a justified fuss about Peter Straub, the author of Ghost Story (made into a rotten film), Shadowland (an rich, extraordinary fantasy), Koko, The Throat, and The Hellfire Club (for starters). He's subversive with a firm handshake, a trusted member of an exclusive club. I haven't warmed to all his books, but I consider Ghost Story a masterpiece. I felt cold and anxious reading it for the first time. Few books do that to me.

Shadowland, on the other hand, is not terribly horrific, but it is terribly good and transporting in a way few novels are (TM Wright's Strange Seed and Jonathan Carroll's The Land of Laughs are some of those few). I'm not afraid to stick my neck out and say that Shadowland is Straub's Something Wicked This Way Comes. The breath of Bradbury is on its neck.

Mark Sieber, who runs horrordrive-in.com, contributes a great piece on the state of horror in this issue. He explores whether writers are benefiting from the genre's current profile as much as fans. It's a provocative question. Horror is everywhere right now. Not just in films and books, either. It's on-line, in comics, in blogs. To an outsider, it might look like everybody in the biz is working hard, partying hard, and keeping the cash machines ringing, but that's not really the case. Global fragmentation of entertainment has broadened influence and diminished the revenue being channeled back to the creators.

The regular Stephen King section (by Bev Vincent) begins with a short piece on Under The Dome, a 1120-page novel that stands to make It look like a chapbook. Of interest is King's comment (paraphrased from USA Today) on new modes of story delivery such as the Kindle: "The delivery mechanism to my mind is secondary for me as a writer".

As a reader, it is secondary to story for me, too, but only just. I'm very attached to pulp. The prospect of reading future Wright, Ketchum, Carroll, King, Little, Keene, Smith and Herbert novels on an electronic tablet is very disheartening.

Will the Kindle (and its electronic brethren) ever replace the paperback? I don't know. Do I want it to? Definitely not. Hopefully, the delivery mechanisms will co-exist.

Movies can be watched in a theatre, at home, on an ipod, on a computer, and on a small screen in a phallus-shaped sex aid currently being developed by a German electronics company (just kidding about that one).

I don't foresee the built-in convenience of a paperback entertainment centre being usurped by a thing requiring batteries.

Leisure editor Dan D'Auria makes his debut as a regular columnist in CD's 61st issue. He turns in a great piece on how books are selected for publication. It is a sobering, slightly brutal reality check. We need more brutality like that.

The issue's striking cover art is by Alan M. Clark

If you are just getting started with horror fiction, what would be better than ordering dozens of back issues of Cemetery Dance.

From the age of six, I have been a sucker for back issue listings. When I used to crack open the latest issue of Famous Monsters, the Captain Company's back issue spread would call my name. As I leafed through the mag towards the spread, my anxiety level would increase, and I'd start dreaming up ways to finance future purchases with combinations of hard work, lottery wins, and future birthday trade-offs.

Cemetery Dance, which also publishes original and re-printed horror fiction, is one of the go-to destinations for those caught forever in the genre's web-like hold.

Magazine Wars

This striking premier issue of Incredible Science Fiction, sporting a very handsome publicity shot of The Creature (From The Black Lagoon) grabbed my attention back in '78.

The magazine industry was jumping on the sci-fi bandwagon in an attempt to cash in on the hysterica surrounding the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

As a long-time collector of monster mags, I appreciated the slightly retro appearance of this new contender in the market and and its uncluttered design. If there was a second issue, I never saw it.

The same Chicago-based company was simultaneously publishing Science Fantasy Film Classics.


Although its mightiest competitor was New York-based Starlog, which was already three years old by the time the fantasy wave hit, another Chicago-based enterprise, Frederick Clark's Cinefantastique, the most excellent of all English-language mags, may have been in this company's sights also.


Despite the straightforward design, topical focus, and pull-out poster, Science Fantasy Film Classics offered nothing content-wise to distinguish it from its competition.

Skewing towards an older demographic than Famous Monsters and a younger demo than Cinefantastique, it was a curious combination of Starlog and their sister publication, the long defunct, hard science fiction-focused Future magazine.


For my money, nothing came close to the almost scholarly perspective on the genre of Cinefantastique (an unofficial grandchild of the French midi/minuit Fantastique).




Science Fantasy Film Classics and Incredible Science Fiction were as serious as a car crash about making money, but their love for the genre seemed opportunistic and pandering.

They faded quickly.

How Forry Ackerman Stole My Name

Identity theft has become the boogey man of the internet age.

Your entire life can be stolen, your bank accounts can be emptied, and your credit can be shot to hell. That's what the radio ads for products like "Life Lock" say, anyway. Even your dog isn't safe from a bestiality chatroom.

It wasn't always like that.

Way back in 1982, before the internet changed the world, a man could sleep soundly at night knowing that his identity was safe. He could close his eyes and rest his head in the knowledge that he'd wake up with his life intact, his bank account unmolested, and his dog answering to its given name. Right?

Wrong!

Very wrong.

Guess what? The late and great Forrest J. Ackerman ("The Ackermonster"), of Karloffornia, USA, who was like a grandfather to me...

Looks like an Aryan get-together at a secret Karloffornia location

(note my lack of identity)

... stole my identity, and never gave it back.

How did he do it?

I'm going to tell you, so you can avoid having your identity stolen by future Ackermonsters.

FM (an abbreviation of Famous Monsters of Filmland) was one of my bibles. It wasn't THE bible to me, but it was one of three or four that competed for my faith. I was the profane type back then (still am), and I tended to bend the commandments to suit my horror-loving needs. "You shall have no other gods before you" was the 1st commandment of the Roman Catholic church. It said nothing about other bibles, so FM got by on a technicality.

Getting your picture into FM's "Fang Mail" section (like the folks below) was a source of reader pride. Appearing under the by-line of WANTED! More Readers Like... made you part of Forry's upholstery, a member of one of the few clubs worth joining in this troubled world.
I submitted my photo in September of '81. I included my name, Detroit address, and phone number.

When the November issue arrived, I searched for my photo.

Did FM want a reader like me?

No, thanks.

When the December issue got stuffed with sacrilegious zeal into the mail slot, I cursed the mailman, then searched again for my photo. Was FM ready for me yet? No way. I could go to hell, it seemed. They wanted my hard-earned dollars, but they didn't want my photo messing with their Lon Chaney masthead.

Damn them!

I felt more deflated than most balloons do after New Year's.

When the January issued arrived, which went on to be known as FM #180, my desire to look for a certain photo was sullied by past disappointments. I opened the mag, thought of flinging it, then turned to the 4th page where Forry's favored readers enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame.

Was I in there? Of course not. Forry had obviously decided that a reader like me sucked.

The WANTED! More Readers Like... section continued near the back of the mag, too. Not that it was worth looking there. Forry had already made his mind up about me. Probably sat down with publisher James Warren and made a point of crushing my photo beneath his Ackershoe while Warren cackled. I knew I should have worn a monster t-shirt in my pic. What had made me think that respectable clothing bought you favors at the Ackermansion.

Putting the past behind me (like fuck!), I flipped to the back of the mag, anyway. Better to face humiliation than hang around waiting it for it to show.

This is the horror that stared back at me:

A man's name is the first port of call when it comes to his identity. Well, dear friends, my name had been stolen, and it had been replaced with that of another.

I was now Patrick Mendoza of Lima, Peru (the home of Paddington Bear!). My real name had been cut, chopped, broken and burnt beyond recognition, by Uncle Forry, and there wasn't a jury in America who would convict him.

In many ways, this was even worse than being snubbed completely. This was like being given a car with no keys, a phone with no number, a girlfriend with no v...... You get the picture.

Forry had insulted me by rejecting my name. Then he'd added injury to his insult by doing it publicly.

Close but no cigar?

No, buddy, this was a case of "Close But Fuck you, Charlie!"

Somewhere out there, probably in Peru, the real Patrick Mendoza is wondering what the hell went down.

His identity remained intact, but his recognition factor must have hit the skids.

I'm happy that I got to appear in an edition of Forry's FM, as opposed to a later incarnation of the mag.

More than twenty years of therapy later, I forgive the guy for his daylight theft of my identity, but I regret the absence of an identity retraction.

As for Mr. Mendoza, he may still be explaining himself to Paddington Bear, his Lady Friend, and the good folk of Peru.