Return To Piedras Blancas

As I kid, I carried Ed Naha's HORRORS: FROM SCREEN TO SCREAM around with me like it was 'The Bible'. In a sense, it was. Although I also had Denis Giford's HORROR MOVIES and Alan Frank's books in non-stop rotation, Naha's irreverent spirit and occasional focus on obscurities always rubbed me the very right way.  Childhood often didn't.

This image, from THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS ('59), always fascinated me: A Monster and his Severed Head. Horrible and sad at the same time. A little like Pedras Blancas itself.

This week, while shooting the Californian coastline for a UK doco, we drove through Piedras Blancas. Of course, it held no significance for anybody else, but I was determined to find a reason to rest there.

Fortunately, the weary producers agreed to stop for a bite, giving  me a half hour to snap off a few photos of the old lighthouse smothered in fog. It was a case of Going-Going-Gone because, within five minutes, the structure was obscured in ocean soup.

I thought long and hard of The Monster as the fog enveloped the lighthouse, and felt sad about his demise more than fifty years ago. It was a solemn experience.

The prevailing mood only intensified when I wandered down the road and discovered this long-abandoned motel. Broken on a craggy clifftop overlooking a scrappy beach...

... it felt like an echo of The Monster's final, gutteral moan.

The old motel smelt of decades-old urine and rot. The wind howled through its boards, and little light penetrated its musky dark. Nature was busy tearing it down. It was a deliciously creepy place. A cemetery of abandoned hopes.

After I'd explored the motel,  I noticed a chunk of gnarled wood sitting like an ocean sentinel out back.
As you can see, from the rear it looked to me like a defeated old man surrendering himself to the wind and sea.

Or perhaps he was waiting for The Monster of Piedras Blancas to return?

I hope so.

And I hope it does.

Pedras Blancas is too sad without him.

To Hell It Can Go!

Forrest J. Ackerman, "an inspiration to us all", is acknowledged in the first pages of this book.

It's not surprising.

Ed Naha's Horrors From Screen To Scream reads like a cross between Famous Monsters and Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide; it's short, sometimes witty, but not terribly prophetic.

When, at thirteen years of age, I caught the train on the first day of my September school holidays into the city, my destination was the usual -- Space Age Bookshop.

With close to $20 in my pocket, earned in a month long flurry of beer bottle collecting and trading, I was giddy with pulp purchase excitement.

The beautiful cover art (uncredited, altho it feels like Gogos) grabbed my attention, and the short, pithy reviews sealed the deal.

This one always makes me smile:

You just know Mr. Naha enjoyed coming up with the first line of that.

And this:

Short, but not too sweet enough for me.

As I read through the book at Melbourne's Flinders St. train station and missed half a dozen trains, I found myself wanting more than the author was serving up, and I did feel that the review of The Slime People was somewhat disrespectful.

The film was a pre-teen favorite of mine with its fog-shrouded Los Angeles setting and hulking monsters.

The "laughable terror" Naha had experienced was not shared by me.

At ten, it had scared the crap out of me sideways.


It Happened Here was a film I didn't see until two decades after reading this review.

Naha wasn't off base about its "uncomfortable realism".

Now it reads like heresy, but the author's review of Toho's Matango (aka Attack of the Mushroom People) made me laugh at the time. "Let us spray"?

But with the advent of the Japanese release of the film on DVD, I found myself introduced to a masterwork of fantasy that has become one of my favorite films of all time. "Let us spray"? now sounds like a joke made to crib a laugh while insulting a loyal subject.

I am convinced that Gilligan's Island ('64) took its inspiration (and character mix) from Matango ('63).

I've been wrong before and will be wrong several times again, but I'm not letting this one go.

A dedicated Matango rant is coming very soon.

Tender moment from The Evil of Frankenstein ('64)

In the pre-video age, books like Horrors From Screen To Scream (with their terrific black and white still selections) were essential fuel for our fantasy-starved hearts.

The cinema was more mysterious then because its treasures were less accessible.

Much of the magic was still in the mind.

The rules of scarcity prevailed.

The Baron, looking amazing, from Bava's Baron Blood ('72)

In the author's lengthy introduction, he explains: "What you have here is a book of monsters. It's not a work to be studied or dissected. (Its) one fan's way of saying thanks to the legions of monsters and equally admirable monster makers..."

Your sentiments are shared, Ed.