The House of Horror Ruled!

The cover artist of (Hammer's) House of Horror #19 is Ramon Sola, and what a stunning piece of work he's produced; it's like a marriage of Boris (Vallejo) and Frazetta (Frank).

The original title of the mag was The House of Hammer. Its primary focus was Hammer Films. Each issue featured a comic adaptation of a Hammer film and a slew of fascinating articles.

When I picked up each issue at the newsagent, I'd flip straight to Tony Crawley's 'Media Macabre' section. Crawley could always be relied on for interesting items on upcoming fright fare from Europe, Britain, and the US.

I was also an avid Famous Monsters collector, but I never read FM for the articles; I liked the stills and 'Captain Company' ads. House of Hammer/House of Horror/Halls of Horror, like Cinefantastique, took the genre pretty seriously, and, also like Cinefantastique, gave equal time to obscure Euro treasures.

In this issue, the comic adaptation is John Gilling's The Reptile, released in '66 by Warner-Pathe in Britain and 20th Century-Fox in the U.S.

These three scans are a sampling of the love and detail afforded these adaptations.

Pre-VHS, this was the only way to "own" Hammer's little classic.

Artist was Brian Lewis, who'd painted a selection of covers for the mag.

This issue featured Part 2 of a Hammer history, focusing on the exciting years '57 and '58, which saw production of the great The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas (with script by Nigel Kneale)...


and Val Guest's truly special The Camp on Blood Island, a WWII drama/actioner that became a huge box office hit -- probably because it depicted the Japanese military as such cold, vicious cunts.
.Love this rare poster art; the British DVD, unfortunately, did not use it, choosing instead to use a cheesy still.

Pre-home video, collecting truncated versions of your favorite films on Super-8 was a passion of many.

I remember visiting a friend of my father's one morning after church many years ago. I discovered a stash of Super-8's in his basement and was encouraged (by him) to check them out. For a period of two hours, I marveled at the sci-fi and horror titles he owned, finding dozens of new ones every time I cleared the ones I'd already seen.

At bottom left (above) is a very rare still from Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre; the article suggests that a 35mm print could be had for around $175.

Most Super-8 versions of genre pics retailed for around $50.

This friend of my father's probably didn't count on me finding his collection of Color Climax Super-8's.

Featuring gloriously lurid covers with titles such as Teenage Sex, Hot For Cock, Fuck My Arse (English spelling), Danish Hard Core and Blue Climax, my Sunday morning, pre-church head was spinning. I'd never seen any hardcore in my life, so this was a mighty awakening, and not an awakening I regretted.

Only years later would I learn that Color Climax Corporation (CCC) was a pioneer in the world of hardcore material, not afraid or ashamed to describe itself as "The Biggest, The Best, and the Most Pornographic!"

It was a company that portrayed sex as fun.

Rear cover of House of Horror # 19 is this magical The Reptile poster. Looks very Jess Franco to me.

In '77, the same publishers launched Starburst, a mag more focused on science fiction in cinema and television. After the demise of Halls of Horror (which was its final title), Starburst did incorporate horror items also; the mag still survives.

It's sad to reflect on the possibility that paper magazines like House of Horror, Famous Monsters, and Fangoria may be tomorrow's dinosaurs.

Pornography is always an accurate indicator of where media is going; pornography usually gets there first. With a few exceptions, all the successful European hardcore magazines such as Color Climax and Private now exist only in on-line form. I fear the non-pornographic may soon follow.

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).