Cryptology #2

FROM THE DEPTHS OF RETRO CREEP CULTURE COMES…

CRYPTOLOGY

No.2 FEBUSCARY 2025

SHADOW COMIC HORROR COVERS!

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don heck interview!

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HAMMER’S QUATERMASS FILMS! THE MAN WHO LAUGHS!

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Satiate Your Sinister Side!

“Heh-heh-heh! Next issue I, the Cryptologist, am

All characters and properties TM & © their respective owners.

back with editor PETER NORMANTON and my horrible little troop of ne’er do wells, to inflict the dread of MARS ATTACKS upon you—the banned cards, model kits, and despicable comics, along with a few words from the film’s deranged storyboard artist PETE VON SHOLLY! The chilling poster art of REYNOLD BROWN gets brought up from my vault by STEVE KRONENBERG, along with a host of terrifying puppets from film, and more pre-Code comic books Dr. Wertham would prefer you forget! Plus, TIM LEESE spends more HAMMER TIME on that studio’s films, we run from another KILLER “B” MOVIE (1959’s THE MANSTER), and JUSTIN MARRIOT flips through obscure ’70s fear-filled paperbacks, and we dredge up still more HORROR COMICS EXCESS. It’s more retro-horror to satiate your sinister side!”

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CRYPTOLOGY #1

CRYPTOLOGY #4

CRYPTOLOGY #5

Our debut issue exhumes the worst Horror Comics excesses of the 1950s, Killer “B” movies to die for, and the creepiest, kookiest toys that crossed your boney little fingers as a child! Plus: the House of Usher, and a skirmish between the Addams Family and The Munsters! Then gaze at Warren magazine frontispieces by cover artist BERNIE WRIGHTSON, and spend some Hammer Time with that studio’s most frightening films—but if Atlas precode covers or terrifying science-fiction are more than you can take, stay away!

Our fourth putrid tome treats you to ALEX ROSS’ gory lowdown on his Universal Monsters paintings! Hammer Time brings you face-to-face with the “Brides of Dracula”, and the Cryptologist resurrects 3-D horror movies and comics of the 1950s! Learn the origins of slasher films, and chill to the pre-Code artwork of Atlas’ BILL EVERETT and ACG’s 3-D maestro HARRY LAZARUS. Plus, another Killer “B” movie and more awaits retro horror fans, by NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

We dig up a few skeletons in the closet of our SKULL & BONES ISSUE! Ghost Rider from comics to movies, skeleton covers from Atlas Digests and pre-Code horror comics, HY FLEISHMAN’s 1950s skeleton covers and stories, Disney’s ’70s Pirates of the Caribbean models and Last Gasp’s Skull Comics, the films of William Castle, and Killer B films: House on Haunted Hill, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, plus our Hammertime section!

It’s bone-chilling retro horror from NORMANTON, the KRONENBERGS, LEESE, VOGER, and VON SHOLLY!

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Volume 1, Number 2 February 2025 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Peter Normanton PUBLISHER/ PROOFREADER John Morrow DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore EDITORIAL ILLUSTRATION Pete von Sholly

SPILLING MY GUTS: Editorial by The Cryptologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 30 YEARS PAST: ROGER HILL IN CONVERSATION WITH DON HECK . . . . . . . . . . 4 Don Heck discusses his early days in pre-Code horror COMIC MEDIA (1952–1954) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 A brief history of Comic Media and the wide variety of titles they published FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS: The Midnight Monster and The Ape. . . . . . . . . . . 26 Regular Cryptology department featuring selected obscure horror movies HANDS OFF!: Severed Hands in Horror Cinema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 From cinema’s silent era to the 1980s, those hands that returned to torment

COVER ARTIST Don Heck (Art originally appeared on the cover of Weird Terror #9, January 1954)

THOSE HYPNOTIC EYES: Christopher Lee in Cross-Roads. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 An early supernatural appearance from the man who would become Dracula

SPECIAL THANKS Barry Forshaw • Don Heck Heritage Auctions • Roger Hill Steve Kronenberg • Tim Leese Frank Motler • Will Murray Michael Price • Pete Von Sholly

THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 The Quatermass phenomenon from its creation at the BBC to its Hammer release

COPYRIGHTS: Shadow TM & © Conde Nast • Batman, Joker, House of Mystery TM & © DC Comics • The Unseen TM & © Standard Comics • Confessions of Love, Danger, Dear Lonely Heart, Dynamite, Honeymoon Romance, Horrific, Magazine Digest, Noodnik, Perry Como Album, Terrific, War Fury, Weird Terror © Comic Media • Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion © U.S. Pictorial • The Beast with Five Fingers TM & © Warner Bros. • The Midnight Warning © Mayfair Pictures • Not of this Earth, The Ape © Monogram Pictures • La Main du Diable, Mad Love, The Hands of Orlac (1924), The Terror in Teakwood TM & © the respective owner • The Hands of Orlac (1960) © Pendennis Films Ltd. • The Crawling Hand © Donald J. Hansen Enterprises • And Now the Screaming Starts! © The Rank Organisation • Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors © Paramount Pictures • Demonoid © American Panorama • Cross-Roads © Bartlett Films • The Man Who Laughs © Universal Pictures • The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari © Goldwyn Pictures • The Quatermass Experiment/Xperiment, Quatermass II, Quatermass and the Pit TM & © BBC Enterprises Ltd. • The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Creeping Unknown, Enemy from Space, Five Million Years to Earth TM & © Hammer Film Productions • House of Hammer TM & © Quality Comics • Weird Mysteries TM & © Stanley P. Morse • Beware TM & © Trojan Magazines • Mysterious Adventures TM & © Story Comics • Suspense, Journey into Mystery TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. • The Beyond TM & © Ace Magazines • Black Cat Mystery TM & © Harvey Comics • Chilling Tales TM & © Youthful

CONRAD VEIDT: The Man Who Laughs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 How a silent masterpiece influenced the image of DC’s Joker

KILLER B’s: Not of this Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Regular Cryptology department featuring selected horror and sci-fi B-movies

SHADOW COMICS: The Horror Covers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Cryptology shows what evil lurks in Lamont Cranston’s comics of the past HAMMER TIME: The Hound of the Baskervilles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Regular Cryptology department featuring selected Hammer Studios films HORROR COMICS EXCESS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 A catalogue of atrocities from the crime and horror comics of the 1950s CRYPTOLOGY™ issue 2, February 2025 (ISSN 2997-416X) is published quarterly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Raleigh, NC. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Cryptology, c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.

Peter Normanton, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: CRYPTOLOGY, c/o Peter Normanton, Editor-in-Chief, 619 Whitworth Road, Lower Healey, Rochdale, Lancashire, OL12 0TB, England.

Email Peter Normanton: peter.normanton@btinternet.com. Four-issue subscriptions: $53 Economy US, $82 International, $19 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. All editorial matter © 2025 TwoMorrows Publishing and Peter Normanton. Printed in China.

FIRST PRINTING.

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SPILLING MY GUTS The Cryptologist

W

elcome back, my friends, to the second installment of my fiendish new rag, Cryptology.

Before we begin, do you recognize that fine looking fellow I hold in my hands below? Here, take a closer look—go on, I dare you. Yes, it’s me, all those years ago, hard at work in May 1953 in the pages of Standard’s The Unseen #10. You’d love to get your mitts on this one, wouldn’t you? Heh-heh-heh, no chance! It’s mine, all mine. That day I was giving a helping hand to the boatman taking the dead to the other side, but this lost soul wasn’t quite ready. He had to fulfill his destiny in the story of “The Vengeance of Mark Danton.” Looking around, it might be too much for some of you milksops—so stay away, you’ve been warned.

Let’s get back to the here and now. I’ve been doing a good bit of digging around since we last met, finding a few more juicy tidbits for your noxious entertainment. We begin with Roger Hill’s conversation with Don Heck, a man after my own heart (that’s if I had one; they’ve always been so very overrated). You’ll learn much from this fascinating insight into one of horror comics’ greats.

If you have a leaning for dismemberment—and let’s face it, who doesn’t?—this issue’s “Hands Off ” should put a smile on your face. There’s a whole raft of films in there that will most certainly meet with your approval. Speaking of smiles, did you hear the one about “The Man Who Laughed?” No, neither did I—another pumped up pastime.

By the way, that was no makeup job, trust me! Heh-hehheh!

I’ve let Quatermass out for this issue, not that he deserves it—he’s caused a few of my acquaintances a little too much trouble over the years. This one goes back to his time with the BBC, ancient history for some. Do you know people used to stay in glued to their television sets watching this stuff? They’d have had more fun glued to Don’t STEAL our the cemetery gates—no, Digital Editions! they really would!

C’mon kiddies, Because you DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom enjoyed them so much & Pop publisher like us needs last time ’round, I’ve every sale just to survive! DON’T disinterred a few more DOWNLOAD of those B-movies from OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! Buy affordable, legal downloads only at yesteryear, along with www.twomorrows.com more Hammertime. So or through our Digital Storefront at www.comicshistory.org if you have the nerve— & DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS step inside, step inside!

OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing ghastly publications like this one!

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Sanguineous Salutations,

The Cryptologist

Readers’ letters go here next time, so spill your guts to editor Peter Normanton at: peter.normanton@btinternet.com ! Till then,

dig up his books!

IT ROSE FROM THE TOMB An all-new book written by Cryptology editor PETER NORMANTON

Rising from the depths of history comes an ALL-NEW examination of the 20th Century’s best horror comics, written by PETER NORMANTON (editor of FROM THE TOMB, the UK’s preeminent magazine on the genre). From the pulps and seminal horror comics of the 1940s, through ones they tried to ban in the 1950s, this tome explores how the genre survived the introduction of the Comics Code, before making its terrifying return during the 1960s and 1970s. Come face-to-face with the early days of ACG’s alarming line, every horror comic from June 1953, hypodermic horrors, DC’s Gothic romance comics, Marvel’s GiantSize terrors, Skywald and Warren’s chillers, and Atlas Seaboard’s shocking magazines! The 192-page fullcolor opus exhumes BERNIE WRIGHTSON’s darkest constructs, plus artwork by FRANK FRAZETTA, NEAL ADAMS, MIKE KALUTA, STEVE DITKO, MATT FOX, WARREN KREMER, LEE ELIAS, BILL EVERETT, RUSS HEATH, THE GURCH, and many more. Don’t turn your back on this once-in-a-lifetime spine-chiller—it’s so good, it’s frightening!

(Digital Edition) $15.99 • Print edition is currently sold out!

IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB

Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets again, FROM THE TOMB (the UK’s preeminent magazine on the history of horror comics) digs up more tomes of terror from the century past. IT CREPT FROM THE TOMB (the second “Best of” collection) uncovers atomic comics lost to the Cold War, rarely seen (and censored) British horror comics, the early art of RICHARD CORBEN, GOOD GIRLS of a bygone age, TOM SUTTON, DON HECK, LOU MORALES, AL EADEH, BRUCE JONES’ Alien Worlds, HP LOVECRAFT in HEAVY METAL, and a myriad of terrors from beyond the stars and the shadows of our own world! It features comics they tried to ban, from ATLAS, CHARLTON, COMIC MEDIA, DC, EC, HARVEY, HOUSE OF HAMMER, KITCHEN SINK, LAST GASP, PACIFIC, SKYWALD, WARREN, and more from the darkest of the horror genre’s finest creators! Edited by PETER NORMANTON. HURRY! ALMOST SOLD OUT! (192-page SOFTCOVER) $29.95 (Digital Edition) $10.99 ISBN: 978-1-60549-081-6

THE BEST OF

FROM THE TOMB

Since 2000, FROM THE TOMB has terrified readers worldwide with stellar writing and intensely frightening illustrations from the best talent in the industry. Produced in the UK, issues have been scarce and highly collectible in the US, and here’s your chance to see what you’ve been missing! This “BEST OF” COLLECTION compiles the finest features of FROM THE TOMB’s ten years of terror, along with new material originally scheduled to see publication in the NEVER-PUBLISHED #29. It celebrates the 20th Century’s finest horror comics—and those they tried to ban—with a selection of revised and updated articles on BASIL WOLVERTON, JOHNNY CRAIG, RICHARD CORBEN, LOU CAMERON, RUDY PALAIS, MATT FOX, ALVIN HOLLINGSWORTH, plus publishers including ACG, ATLAS, EC, FICTION HOUSE, HARVEY COMICS, SKYWALD, WARREN, HOUSE OF HAMMER, A-BOMB COMICS, CANNIBALS, and others! Edited by PETER NORMANTON. (192-page Digital Edition) $10.99 • Print edition is currently sold out!

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30 YEARS PAST ROGER HILL in CONVERSATION with

Above, Don’s cover for Horrific #3 (Jan. 1953) would have shocked, but how many readers would have realized he had cleverly manipulated the figure in his cover from the first issue of War Fury (Sept. 1952) shown below? Alongside, the drama from Danger #1 (Jan. 1953).

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t was in the early Iron Man stories of Tales of Suspense where I first laid eyes on the art of Don Heck. I wasn’t impressed. With talents like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko working on Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man, I didn’t have the attention span to appreciate the art and style of Don Heck. Once I discovered Tales of Suspense, with Iron Man, I never missed an issue. I enjoyed the character and the stories Don drew in those early issues.

His style was a little too scratchy for my tastes back then but he was consistent, depending on who inked his work. Eventually Don wound up drawing almost every Marvel character at one time or another during the 1960s. At one point I started collecting the pre-hero Marvels, mostly for the Ditko and Kirby stories, and along the way discovered a lot of great Don Heck fantasy stories too. The years went by, and I really didn’t focus much on superhero comics or the work of Don Heck, preferring to concentrate on 1940s and 1950s horror comics. That’s when I discovered his early work for Comic Media.

These books were like a slap in the face for me.

A youthful Don heck, then in his 20s, enjoying a productive period in the employ of Comic Media.

Not only was Don’s pre-Comics Code work well constructed and drawn, it was unique when compared to most other horror comics of that period. For Comic Media, Don created the idea of putting large monster portraits on the front covers. He put them right in your face, with eyes shooting straight out into yours.

His imagination ran wild with a gamut of characters, including a zombie, witch-doctor, devil, shrunken head, ghoul, hunchback, gorilla, and a guy with a bullet-hole through his forehead. By the way, this particular cover— Horrific #3, January 1953—was spawned from Don’s previous Comic Media cover on War Fury #1, dated September 1952. The scene shows an American Soldier with a bullet-hole through his forehead, lying dead at the feet of a North Korean soldier who has just been shot in the back by an American G.I. The war comic collectors go crazy over this one and have made it one of their top wants during recent years. Don redrew a full cover-sized image of the soldier’s head only, with the bullet hole, for the cover of Horrific #3. This book is even more popular than the War Fury cover with horror comic collectors. In other instances, Don went beyond large horror portraits

by drawing great scenes of horror on the covers. Who else would have put you, the reader, inside of an oven, looking out at a man shoveling coal in on you? Or even more horrific, a close-up of the condemned man staring you in the face as the blade of a Guillotine plunges downward.

These kinds of situations really grabbed the attention of potential comic book buyers of the early 1950s, and now over sixty years later, all of these iconic Comic Media covers for Horrific and Weird Terror have been pushed to the top of horror comic collectors’ want lists everywhere.

By the summer of 1953, Don was working up preliminary drawings for horror hosts who would introduce the stories to readers. Don and Comic Media were aware of the success that EC horror comics were having with their “Ghoulunatic” horror hosts and producing some of the best horror comics in the business.

It took me over twenty years to put together a complete collection of Don’s Comic Media horror comics. This was in the years long before the internet came along. I was so taken with his covers that eventually I decided I had to interview Don about this early part of his career. Don only gave three or four interviews during his lifetime and I’ve read them all. In every case, it seems, the interviewer almost ignored his early work, and jumped right into his Marvel Iron Man and other superhero books he had worked on. I’ve seen it happen many times when the interviewer doesn’t really have a good knowledge about an artist’s past work or they’re too focused on their own

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

With these grisly comics now at their peak, the fiery cover to Horrific #11 (May 1954) would have excited these readers even more.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

Above left, a page from “Hitler’s Head,” the opening story from Weird Terror’s premiere, an unnerving entree for this series, revealing Don to be a real talent as these horror comics boomed on the newsstand. His cover for this issue, to the right, dated September 1952, was a similarly disturbing affair, a fitting prequel for what was to follow. Below, Don’s contribution to his High School Yearbook in 1947.

interests. So in 2003 I went looking through my local library at the out of state phone books and found a listing on Don living in New Jersey.

I wasn’t sure how much he would remember about those days, or if he would even want to talk about them.

Some artists don’t like looking back at their past work. As it turned out, Don had fond nostalgic memories about those days and the people he worked with. So for two Saturdays in a row, I called Don in the early afternoon and taped the following interview with him. At this time of his career, work had slowed down a bit for him. Marvel and DC were not using him as much and so his income had fallen off somewhat from what it used to be. He told me he was doing cover recreations now and enjoyed having a little bit coming in from that. Most of the recreations centered around Iron Man, of course.

During the interview, I asked him what had happened to all that original art he did for Comic Media and he answered that he really didn’t know. Don did manage to

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get back a few things, like a Danger cover or two, a Death Valley western cover and, oh yes... one horror cover. As you will read in this interview, it was the cover to Weird Terror #11, May 1954, which Don was very fond of and kept tacked up on the wall in front of his art table. I did eventually make Don a good cash offer on the cover, but he turned me down. I couldn’t blame him as it was his only horror cover, and he had a strong sentimental attachment to it, as you will read in this interview. I did ask Don to do me a cover recreation of one of my favorite Comic Media horror covers, which he agreed to do. More on that later.

Don eventually told me he had kept record books on all his jobs since Day One when he started out as a staff artist at Harvey Publications on January 1, 1952. Out of all the artists I’ve talked to or interviewed over the years, Don is the only one I know who kept records from the very beginning of his career, and had not thrown them out yet.

RH: Well, I think most would agree that Caniff ’s style of work certainly had an influence on your work, perhaps more than anybody else.

DH: Oh yeah, definitely. In fact, the first time I went up to DC Comics, everybody said, “Your stuff looks too much like Caniff.” [laughter] I said, “Well, what the hell is wrong with that?” you know. [laughter] So I didn’t get any work there and I went up to Marvel and did a job up there, and as soon as it came out, I got a card in the mail The abominations on the cover of Weird Terror #3 (January 1953) would have terrified those of a nervous disposition, as would his assured line in the tale “The Evil Ones!” published just one issue before, where Don introduced a soon to be familiar format for his splash pages.

THE INTERVIEW

Roger Hill: I’ll begin with the basic stuff Don, like where and when were you born?

Don Heck: January 2, 1929, in Flushing New York.

RH: At what age did you begin to realize a need to draw?

DH: My aunt said to me once that I was scribbling since the age of five. At that time I was doing Donald Duck [laughter]... well, we used to go to my grandmother’s place and they took the Journal American which had all these great big funnies, and I would just peruse over those quite a bit. I always bought and read comic books too. I had a bunch of those at one time. Today they would probably be worth a fortune if I had saved them. [laughter] But, who the hell knew? When I was a kid I was always down at the local candy store. The store owner would always say, “Are you gonna buy or just look through those things?” [laughter] He was your typical type of fellow there, you know, and I’d say, “Hey, come on—I’m buying here all the time.” [laughter] He says, “Yeah, well, you know, you’re doing a lot of looking there!” [laughter]

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

RH: What were some of your favorites back when you were a kid?

DH: I can’t even remember. Just whichever ones had good artists working in them.

There was Reed Crandall and there were several other good ones who you don’t even hear much about today. But you could spot good artwork, just like everything else. I mean, I was used to looking at Milt Caniff ’s stuff and I didn’t even know about Noel Sickles at the time. I had heard his name but I didn’t even know what he did.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

From Don’s own files, we present a series of preliminary sketches for a wide range of macabre horror hosts. If Don had had his way, Comic Media would have needed to introduce several more titles to find a home for each of these creepy narrators.

from DC asking me to please bring samples. So I brought up the exact same samples that I had taken before and they were fine. [laughter] I was always a big fan of Milton Caniff and Alex Raymond and Foster and all the good ones at that time. And in those days they had a lot of great illustrators in the magazines too. Unfortunately, today, there’s not much market for it anymore.

RH: Did you have some formal art training before you started working in the comics?

DH: Yeah, I went to school, you know, but I went for layout and design... but I always wanted to draw comics. I wanted to do a strip.

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RH: Which schools did you attend?

DH: I went to a vocational school called Woodrow Wilson, right here in Queens. Then I went to... what is now like a community college. It’s now called State Tech.

So we were the first ones in. The state was trying these two year colleges and we were the first ones through. It was a new process they were testing out in those days. But there were a lot of people who graduated from there who went on to become art directors, etc., who became very good in their field. I went to the School of Visual Arts for about two months also. It just didn’t seem to fit with what I wanted to do. The class was good, but I was just antsy at the time I guess, and jumped off of it.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK At the top left of the page comes the terror of Horrific #4 (March 1953), followed by Horrific #5 (May 1953). Below, Horrific #7 (Sept. 1953) and Horrific #9 (Jan. 1954) are on show. These terrifying visages became Don’s signature for his horror covers with Comic Media.

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

RH: So you did your first comic book work for Comic Media, right?

DH: Well, not the first comic work. I worked at Harvey before that, but Comic Media was my first freelance work. Allen Hardy who started up Comic Media, had not started the company yet, and he had worked at Harvey first. He worked there with, I think, distribution, which is what he was involved with originally when he worked for Curtis Publishing. Then later he went out on his own and opened Comic Media. That was around April of 1952.

Unfortunately, he’s been dead for many years now.

RH: And there was a fellow by the name of Jerry Feldman who was the editor at Comic Media?

DH: I think Jerry became a partner in the outfit later on.

Allen owned it in the beginning and Jerry was an editor who worked in the office, then later on they became partners, I believe.

RH: Is Jerry still around these days?

DH: I don’t know. The last time I heard about Jerry was twenty some odd years ago and he was down in Florida. I believe he was living in Naples. That was about 1969 or so.

He and his wife were involved with a store. His wife had passed away and that’s when I heard from him. I think they had a store that dealt in exotic foods or something like that. They used to have a place here in Cold Spring

Harbor before they moved to Florida.

RH: You said you also worked for Harvey Publications?

DH: Yes, I worked inside, doing paste-up and white paint.

But I didn’t do any actual drawing in that job. Comic Media was my first... other than one or two other little jobs. But the major thing I started with was Comic Media in 1952. I was only finishing off stuff at Harvey, doing ads and things like that. I call it paste-up and white paint work. Today they probably have a big long name for it, you know. Like nowadays a janitor is no longer a janitor.

Now he’s called an engineer type of name. But I worked with Jerry Feldman at Harvey Publications first, that’s where I met him first. We both worked there in the art department, in the same room. He was there before I got there. Jerry was maybe several years older than I was. He would be in his seventies nowadays.

RH: Well, since you guys worked at Harvey for awhile, you must have known Lee Elias.

DH: Oh yeah. In fact, the first job I ever did was for Lee Elias. I did the breakdowns on a job for him. I believe it was a seven-pager for Black Cat. It was no good, so I didn’t get a second one. [laughter] Well, he was expecting somebody who was as good as he was, and that was not the case.

Horrific became Terrific with issue #14 (Dec. 1954) following concerns about the unsavory nature of these comics, but don’t worry—this issue’s shocker, “The Human Cross,” was as gruesome as ever.

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RH: Well, you were just starting out, right?

DH: Yeah, but that’s normally what they liked to do was to find somebody that could do that sort of thing good.

Which he did have. He had a couple of people, like for instance, Frank Giacioa.

RH: Oh, was Giacoia working at Harvey too?

DH: No, he didn’t work there, but he did some of that sort of work for Lee. This was around 1952.

RH: Lee was doing the Black Cat feature for Harvey and he seemed to get a lot of the cover assignments when Harvey started putting out their line of horror comics.

DH: Right. He was one of their top-paid artists at the time.

RH: I suppose you actually did some of the final paste-up and white-out work on those covers, eh?

DH: Yes. Well, whatever needed to be done. You know, if something came into the art department, you finished it off with either lettering or a logo, or whatever was needed.

RH: Do you remember an artist who worked there by the name of Warren Kremer?

DH: Oh yeah. He did Little Max, Joe Palooka and I think lots of war stuff. I think his sister came in and worked there for awhile. I think she did paste-up and white paint for awhile.

RH: How about Bob Powell?

DH: Bob Powell, yeah, he used to work for Harvey. I used to see all his stuff. His stuff would come in... you could always tell it was a Bob Powell job immediately because he used to put blue wash tones on his pages.

RH: I have seen some pages like that and have a few in my collection.

DH: He did it, of course, to show the colorist how to shade certain areas properly. It looked great. It made a page look more impressive.

RH: What was it that made you decide to leave Harvey?

DH: Well, Jerry Feldman was leaving and I figured I was going to get stuck with taking care of... Jerry had been doing... well, the garbage stuff. [laughter] And I figured, “Oh boy, that’s what I’m going to get,” so I said, “I better get the hell out of here.” I did up a five-page sample and one of the editors up there was nice enough to write me a story. I showed it to Alfred Harvey and he said, “Would you be interested in selling it?” And I said, “Yeah, sure.”

Then he said he didn’t want to buy it. What happened was, he just wanted to find out if it was for sale, and then he went and reamed out the editor who had written the story for me. Because, you know, this editor was working for Harvey. So after that I said I’d break the pencil before I ever worked for them again. And I haven’t since.

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

Don’s ghoulish creation for the cover of Weird Terror #5 (May 1953) would have had the kids flocking in droves, as would his tale “Full Moon” from the pages of this same issue.

Things were getting hot on the cover to Weird Terror #7 (Sept. 1953). Below, Don debuts as a horror artist in “The Phantom Freaks” for Quality’s Web of Evil #1 (Nov. 1952).

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

RH: What kind of story was it?

DH: It was a war story. It wasn’t very good, you know. I was just starting out. The funny thing is that I brought those samples up to Quality and the editor there gave me a sixpage story. In fact, the first day I went out, I called on three different companies.

RH: You say you went up to Quality Comics?

That’s Busy Arnold.

DH: Yes, I went up to Quality and I went up to Hillman. I think the third place I was supposed to go to was Fawcett. So I went to Hillman and got a job there, then went to Quality and got a job. In fact, the guy at Quality said, “Where have you worked before?” I told him it was my first job. Well, he had already given me a good offer to do a job for them and [laughter] he almost dropped when I told him it was my first job.

That was the first and last job I got from him.

About a year later, after I had been working for Comic Media, I did get a call from them.

I was surprised. I never made it to the third company, which was Fawcett.

RH: Why was that?

DH: [laughter] I was afraid they would want to give me a job too, and I’d have all these jobs due the following week.

RH: What kind of job did Quality give you to do?

DH: It was a six-page... something about people who had... you know, there was a guy who had a horse’s head and another one who had a lion’s head, or something like that. It was sort of like a freaks-in-the-circus type of thing.

RH: So it must have been for their horror comic title Web of Evil.

[Interviewer’s Note: This Quality story was Don’s first published comic book work. I was able to identify the story by digging through my Quality collection, going by the description Don had given me. Sure enough, the story was titled “The Phantom Freaks” and appeared in Web Of Evil #1, dated November 1952. I made xeroxes and sent them off to Don who later on, during our phone conversation, confirmed this was the story. He said he only penciled it, and didn’t know who had provided the finished inks.]

DH: Yeah. It was for their horror stuff. I can’t even remember the story I did for Hillman, which was a sixpager too. But, all of a sudden, I had twelve pages due the following week. [laughter]

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Horrific waited all of eight issues, before introducing its distinguished horror host “The Teller” in Nov. 1953. When you see Don’s preparatory outline for this cultivated character, you begin to appreciate his rare ability as a penciler.

RH: Who actually came up with the horror titles of Weird Terror and Horrific for Comic Media? Any idea?

DH: That would probably be Allen Hardy.

That’s my guess on it. You know, we’re talking forty years ago.

RH: Being the longtime horror comic book collector that I am, it always struck me that Comic Media horror comics were unique in that their covers were always so different from most of the other publishers. Whose idea was it to go with all those great close-up portrait head shots of creatures and monsters?

DH: I did it, that’s all. There was no... nobody was making editorial decisions about it. You just made a sketch, brought it in, and he said, “Fine, go ahead.” That’s all.

RH: So you could pretty much do whatever you wanted to on those covers?

DH: Yes. RH: Well, you certainly had a great imagination for doing them like that and I think they must have been very effective at the time and probably stood out on the newsstands among the competition.

DH: Well, yeah, I would think so when I look back at them now. I never thought about it at the time, other than just trying to make as good a cover as I could. But when you think about it... the big head shot, and then something afterwards where you could go in and look at the little stuff that’s happening all around it, it looked fine.

I did the logos too. The first batch of logos, you know, for Weird Terror and all the others. I did those.

RH: I’ve often wondered about those.

DH: Well, Allen Hardy said to me, “I need a cover... how about doing a logo for it, too?”

RH: Who was the main lettering guy for the Comic Media books?

DH: Jerry Feldman. He did a lot of it. Well, you know, this was a small place. At small places, you do

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

RH: Yeah, and for a guy just starting out, you must have been a little nervous about that.

DH: Yeah, it was kind of scary. All I know is I worked very late each evening to meet the deadline. It was shortly after that when Allen Hardy called me up and I started to work for him.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

everything, you know, you take out the garbage, you sweep the floor and wash the windows and basically do whatever needs to be done. [laughter] RH: What about the “bullet in the head” cover you did? It first appeared on War Fury #1 (September 1952) and then later you re-drew it large and re-used it as a portrait cover on Horrific #3 (January 1953).

DH: Oh yeah, I remember that one. Well, I had read a book, I think it was called Battle Cry which told stories about the courage of the Marines in the Pacific during World War II. The author was Leon Uris and he told the stories about different soldiers he had met there. One of them was about this guy, and you’re reading along, and then suddenly, a bullet hits him right in the head. And there’s no more to tell. You know? It kind of shook me up reading that. So I guess I was thinking about that story when I did that first cover.

[Interviewer’s Note: Leon Uris (1924-2003) joined the Marines when he was 17 and in high school, right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He served at Guadalcanal and Tarawa and after leaving the service wrote for Esquire magazine. He wrote his first novel, Battle Cry, in 1953 and in 1955 it was made into a successful movie. His best known work was Exodus, published in 1958, and adapted to the screen in 1960.]

RH: What was your approach to doing horror in the comics?

DH: To me, horror was nothing more than distorting figures. That’s all it was. In other words, people would ask, “How do you do these characters?” I’d say, “You distort the figures, just the way you would if you did a caricature of something.” You make this bigger, or that longer, or what have you.

You make the nose longer, widen the mouth a little, you know.

That’s all the horror stuff was to me. I never thought of it as gore. The gory stuff I was never interested in.

RH: Is there any favorite horror covers you did for them?

The imposing cover to Horrific #6 (July 1953), inspired by National Geographic, remained a particular favorite of Don’s from this innovative period.

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DH: One of the ones I really enjoyed doing was the African one. [Horrific #6, July 1953] It was a very colorful job, showing the close-up head shot of a chief. I used part of a National Geographic article for that one. It was fun to do.

RH: Do you remember who was actually writing the horror stories for Comic Media?

DH: That I have no idea. I just got a script and went from there. Jerry Feldman would hand them out to us artists. I was living in Queens at the time.

RH: The offices were located at 10 East 39th Street, right?

DH: Yes, originally, then they moved to 500 5th Avenue.

RH: Did you or any of the other artists work right there in the offices?

DH: No. Both places... actually the offices at 39th Street were very small and the other, later on, was not too large

go back over it with a brush. I like the crispness of the pen and I have more control over it.

RH: And whatever happened to your original art after it was printed and used?

DH: I never saw it again. Especially after the company went under. I didn’t hear from Allen after that and a few months later I started working for Marvel. Then Allen passed away in the 1960s. He was in his fifties, I believe. He was married at one point, but didn’t have any kids. He was a nice guy. He was... almost worldlylike. But as far as the artwork goes, I never saw any of it again. Although I do have a couple of the old covers.

RH: Really? These were published covers?

DH: Yeah. I’ve got one of the horror covers. It doesn’t have the logo on it anymore.

As the furor surrounding these dreadful comics reached fever pitch, Don designed this brutal cover for Weird Terror #11 (May 1954), for the aptly entitled “Mark of the Brute.”

either. Occasionally you could go in there and crunch in somewhere and finish up some little thing or something, but for the most part it was not set up with an art room or any place where you could work. You did your work at home. In fact, Jerry would sometimes pass by my home in Queens, coming from Nassau, and would pick up my work on his way in.

RH: What kind of artist’s tools were you using back in those days?

DH: I always used both a brush and a pen. Normally I use a #2 brush, occasionally a #3. Well, when I’d go in working on like faces and hands, I’d usually use a pen. A lot of time what I’ll do is, I’d do the whole outline with pen, and then

RH: Which one is it?

DH: It’s the one where you see this character... in fact, I saw it used in a book about horror comics that had come out a couple of years ago. They used it for the front piece of Chapter Four. They don’t have my name on it or anything. [Don proceeded to describe the vampire cover used on Weird Terror #11, dated May 1954.]

RH: Was that used in the book on horror comics that Mike Benton came out with several years ago?

DH: Yeah. That might have been it.

[Interviewer’s Note: Following up later, I checked Mike Benton’s The Illustrated History Horror Comics, Taylor Publishing, 1991, and yes, that is the book and chapter Don was referring to.]

RH: Would you by any chance be interested in selling that cover?

DH: Well... that stuff, no. The later stuff I sell. But not that cover. [laughter] RH: What if the price were right?

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RH: At Comic Media, did you have much say in the coloring process of your covers?

DH: No, I didn’t deal with that. Wait a minute—on covers, yeah. I do recall that I may have done some of those.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

DH: That’s one of the few things I have from that whole era and I just kept it, you know. In fact, John Buscema had come over here one time and he saw it tacked up on the wall. He was surprised, I guess. I told him that was one of the first things I did back in the 1950s. He said “no sh*t.”

He really thought it was something special. Well, it was just one of those things that worked, you know.

RH: How large were the originals you did for Comic Media?

DH: Twice up. Roughly around 12 x 18 inches.

RH: Let me bounce some other names off you while we’re talking about Comic Media.

DH: Okay, sure.

RH: How about Pete Morisi?

DH: Yeah, I knew Pete from Comic Media. He was the fellow who told me about Marvel looking for artists, after Comic Media went under. He called me and said he had been up to Marvel talking to Stan Lee, and had showed Stan one of the Comic Media comics that he had done, and Stan saw my story in there too, and was telling Pete something about, “This is the way you should be doing it.” [laughter] Pete finally told him, “Look, if you want Don Heck to come up here, why didn’t you just tell me that?

I’ll go call him.” So that’s the way I wound up working

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for Marvel, or Atlas. They were also called Magazine Management in those days. If I remember correctly, Pete Morisi eventually became a cop, and retired after awhile.

We were good friends while working at Comic Media, and we sent Christmas cards to one another for years after.

RH: So from Comic Media, you went directly to Atlas?

DH: Well, no, I actually went and worked at Toby Press for a couple of months.

RH: That’s interesting. Did you do any horror work for Toby?

DH: No, I did some western stuff for them. I also did some foreign legion stuff for them where they had the kid... I can’t think of the title now.

RH: Was it Captain Gallant?

DH: That’s the one. I did a couple issues of that, which was based on the TV series with Buster Crabbe.

[Interviewer’s Note: In August and September of 1954, Don turned out one cover and three Captain Gallant stories, pencils, inks and lettering, for Toby Press. All of these appeared in Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, a promotional, giveaway comic book, published under the indicia name of U.S. Pictorial.

In November, Don turned out two western stories for Toby’s Billy the Kid Adventure Magazine #28, May 1955.]

His graphic strangulation cover for Weird Terror #4 (March 1953) would have raised an eyebrow or two, as would the flagrant callousness inflicted in this issue’s terror “Short Cut.”

RH: Right. So after that, you went over to Atlas?

DH: I started at Atlas on September 1st, 1954.

RH: My God... how do you remember that?

DH: I just happened to remember that. I’m pretty good with dates, although I have kept a record book of all my art assignments since I started in the business, and I refer to that now and then.

RH: Here’s another name for you: Rudy Palais. He did some pretty amazing work for Comic Media.

DH: Yeah. I met him at one point too. You see, with a place like that, you meet a lot of those guys up there in the office. But I didn’t know him that well. Mike Esposito and Ross Andru were also up there. They were doing a thing called Get Lost at the time. And they also did some western work for the Death Valley comic. I don’t know if they did any work on the horror books or not. I mainly remember those guys for doing a lot “Werewolf Beware” Don’s only Atlas pre-Code horror, from Mystery Tales #25 (January 1955).TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

of war stuff. Not necessarily for Comic Media either. It might have been for Standard.

RH: Yes, that’s right. Those guys did a lot of work for Standard’s war comics. Any other artists you remember seeing up at Comic Media?

DH: I saw Tex Blaisdell up there once or twice, but I don’t know if he did any work there. He was a good friend of Jerry’s.

RH: During that period, when you were working for Comic Media, doing horror stories, did Allen Hardy keep a close eye on the competition? Other publishers were doing horror and I’m wondering if Hardy or Jerry Feldman used to talk to you artists about the competition?

DH: No. There was no... you just went in and picked up the story. In other words, we artists would pick-up other books and see what was being done occasionally, of course. You know, artists are always wanting to learn. You can’t stick an artist in a closet and not expect him to learn anything.

The obscure giveaway Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, published by US Pictorial in 1955. © the respective owner

RH: Do you remember the EC comics that were coming out in those days?

DH: Oh yeah. Sure. When I first left Harvey to go freelancing, that’s when I first spotted EC stuff. While I was working at Harvey, I wasn’t out looking or buying so much, because I had all of this stuff at Harvey’s to look at. During my lunch hour I could look at all the different

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

[Interviewer’s Note: Don’s first job for Atlas was a five-page horror story titled “Werewolf Beware,” published in Mystery Tales #25, January 1955. Two months later, the Comics Code Association Seal of Approval started appearing on the front covers of Atlas comic books. Don’s story made it in just in time to get published without necessary revisions.]

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

The covers to Horrific #10 (March 1954) on the left and Horrific #13 (July 1954) marked an unusual departure from the distinctive dark backgrounds that had become synonymous with Don’s covers for Comic Media’s line of horror titles.

work that came in. So when I started to go out on my own, I spotted EC and the first one I spotted was Alex Toth. I still remember the story: it was called “F-86 Sabre Jet.” [Frontline Combat #12, May–June 1953] RH: Oh yes. A great story for sure.

DH: And Toth was another one who had a great influence on me after that.

RH: What about other EC artists like Wally Wood or Jack Davis?

DH: Oh yeah. Great stuff. EC seemed to pick up all the good artists. I mean, they also had Joe Kubert and there was a guy who had worked at Harvey before going to EC: Jack Kamen! He did just a few jobs at Harvey, I believe.

I remember him because he used to use the old Scripto pencil, you know, the old lead pencil. And I thought that was a great idea and I wound up using that afterwards, too.

RH: Since you’re pretty good on remembering dates, what year would you say it was when you saw Jack Kamen working there?

DH: 1951.

RH: Would that have been horror work?

DH: Either that or the romance stuff. I couldn’t say for sure. But I’m almost positive that I saw him in there a

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couple of times. The various artists used to come into the art department all the time.

[Interviewer’s Note: Further research has shown that Jack was penciling romance stories for Harvey from 1951 to 1952, but others were inking the work.]

RH: Do you remember when the horror comics began getting a bad name in the press?

DH: Oh yes. You had the Kefauver Committee going on.

RH: Now did that have an immediate effect on Allen Hardy or you artists working there?

DH: No, not really. We were aware of it. I remember seeing Bill Gaines testifying before the sub-committee.

I watched it on TV. It’s true that the stuff needed to be toned down because it was starting to get a little out of hand. In fact, later on, somebody wanted me to do some weird stuff for them. He sent me a script and it had something where somebody’s body parts were bouncing around in a washing machine. [laughter] I sent the story back. The guy called me and said, “Well, you used to do some weird stuff like that.” I said, “No, even the covers I did, you know, I did some of them where you’d see blood, or you might see...” but you never saw me do excessive stuff. You never saw something I did that had entrails all over the place and stuff like that. You might have seen

of those covers don’t look too bad at all, you know. But then, remember, I was always looking at good artist’s work back then. Guys like Milt Caniff and Raymond and stuff like that.

RH: Do you remember when Comic Media went out of business and what was it that caused their downfall?

Was it just a lack of sales or what?

DH: No. I think it was... Hardy’s company was actually part of another company located upstairs, I believe. I can’t think of the name of it. They were tied together somehow.

And all of a sudden, one day, I got the word that it was kaput.

Everything was dead. They may have had some cashflow problems and wound up on the short end.

RH: Well Don, it’s been a pleasure talking to you and I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you so much for providing us comic collectors with so much great art over the years, and in my case, especially the horror stuff you did for Comic Media.

DH: It’s been fun Roger. Thanks.

AFTERWORD

After the interview I questioned Don a little more about his work record book he had kept all those years.

I was curious about the RH: Since most companies page rates he was paid by are always working ahead Comic Media. He told me he of their publishing schedule, could look up every horror you must have had some jobs cover, or story, going back turned in that didn’t get used. to Comic Media and before, DH: Oh yeah. There were or any Marvel suspense or several books that were done. superhero job he ever drew.

Some of them I didn’t even That included any DC job. get paid for. I’m pretty sure It was all noted in there with dates and rates paid. that they got published later He explained it was the only on, but somebody else had way he could keep a good bought them. I think it was record of his earnings to help an outfit up in Connecticut figure his taxes every year. At that bought the art and then Comic Media, starting out, published it possibly under a he was paid the page rate of different title. $32.50, and $45 to $55 for covers. He also got $20 for RH: That was probably each logo, and Don designed Charlton Publishing up in Above appears an invaluable historical record of Don’s time in comics, all of their logos. Later on, Derby Connecticut. detailing his assignments and the payments he received from the for reasons that are still DH: It probably was publishers for which he worked. unclear, his cover and page Charlton. I didn’t do rates were lowered. anything about it even Later, I asked him if anyone had ever approached him though I never got paid, because, hey, you know, you’re to do a cover recreation of one of his early horror covers. fighting city hall. By the time you get through, the lawyer He said no one had ever asked. Mostly they just wanted gets rich and you get nothing. Why bother.

Iron Man or Avengers covers. He told me he charged $600 for a black-&-white cover, twice up, with handRH: Who actually broke the news to you that the company lettered logo. He said the rules are half payment down, was going under? and the balance upon completion. After looking over all DH: Allen called and told me. We were good friends. the covers again in my collection, I settled on one of my If you could get in touch with Jerry Feldman, he would favorites, Horrific #8, with that snarling werewolf. When know what happened in regards to the company going out I asked how long it might take to do the cover, he told me of business. He was involved with that end of it. three to four months. I sent off half the money and after a couple of months had passed by, I called him up to see RH: Looking back now on that early work you did over how it was going. He told me he had it all penciled out forty years ago, what’s your opinion of it? and was getting ready to ink it soon. He had gotten busy DH: Some of it holds up. [laughter] It’s surprising. Some

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

the ax with the blood on it, but you didn’t actually see anything getting hacked up. Because I don’t like that kind of horror. You know, the stuff like Friday The 13th and that sort of thing. I think that’s garbage.

30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

with other jobs and had to set it aside for awhile. That didn’t bother me at all as I’m a patient person anyway.

Another month went by and at the end of March 1995, a new issue of The Comics Buyer’s Guide arrived in the mail, and there on page six was the headline that shook me up a bit: DON HECK DEAD AT AGE 66. I couldn’t believe it. I read the details which said that Don had died on February 23, 1995 of lung cancer. I was saddened and in shock to say the least. I tried to remember if Don had talked much about his family when we were on the phone. He hadn’t really. I knew his wife had died a few years earlier and that he had no kids. I called his phone number and there was no answer. It just rang endlessly. I called for the next three weeks and didn’t get an answer.

Finally, one Saturday afternoon, nearly a month after the Buyer’s Guide obituary came out, a man answered.

It turned out to be Don’s nephew. After offering my condolences about Don’s passing, I asked him how it could happen so quickly? Don always sounded so healthy and upbeat when I talked to him. He told me the cancer had come on pretty quick and was hopeless from the start.

He went into the hospital and never came home. He passed away two weeks later. The nephew and his wife had been coming over to Don’s place on the weekends to clear out everything. There were no other relatives.

I explained the situation on the Horrific werewolf cover recreation and asked if he had seen it. He said, “No, I don’t think so, what does it look like?” I described it to him in detail and after a few minutes, he said, “Hey, I think it’s right here. It’s lying here on Don’s art table.” I asked if it was finished, and he said it looked all inked and everything. So he told me if I

would send him a xerox of my downpayment check for $300, along with the balance of another $300, he’d ship the cover to me. So in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, “Okay, what about the Weird Terror vampire cover from the early 1950s?” I had to find out. So I told him Don had a Weird Terror horror cover tacked up on the wall in front of his art table when I talked to him last. I described the cover to him in detail and mentioned I had offered Don a hefty price for it. He took a look and told me there was nothing on the walls now because everything had been put into portfolios. He definitely didn’t remember seeing any Weird Terror cover showing a vampire.

When I got off the phone with him, I was a little depressed. I thought maybe Don had sold it. Perhaps after his cancer diagnosis he decided to raise some money quickly and sold it off with some other stuff. So I sent off the final payment for the Horrific #8 recreation, and a copy of my canceled check for the down payment. A week or so later, the Horrific #8 cover showed up. It looked incredible.

Don hadn’t lost his touch at all. I was more than happy and felt lucky to have it. The following Saturday I called up Don’s nephew to tell him I got the cover and to ask him again about the Weird Terror #11 cover. He said he had not run across it and asked again what it looked like.

A rare opportunity to see Don’s original cover art lined up next to the published version. You can actually feel the rage surging from the beast in this scene created for Horrific #8 (Nov. 1953).

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30 YEARS PAST: DON HECK

I described it again and he little record journal books, replied, “No, it doesn’t ring detailing his work in the a bell at all.” comics, and wanted to know He finally told me to if I was still interested. I hold on a minute while was of course and wound he went and grabbed a up buying those record portfolio. Maybe it was in books along with some Iron there. He unzipped it and Man art and Comic Media started rattling off various cover proofs that he had titles and descriptions for held back. I also bought me. At one point he came Don’s Senior High School to something and said, Yearbook from 1947 which “Oh, here’s a big picture of has a full page decorative the Hulk,” and then kept illustration showing a on going. My brain started variety of newspaper comic racing, trying to remember strip characters, including when Don ever drew the a full-figure drawing of Hulk. He worked on just Superman. This just might about everything else at be Don’s first drawing of a Marvel, didn’t he? I couldn’t superhero. remember a Hulk cover or I eventually made a story by Don. I said, “Wait trip to the East Coast to a minute, go back to the buy Don’s art table that he Hulk page.” I asked him to had used from the early describe this one in more 1950s on, along with all detail for me. He said, of his files. I decided right “Well, it shows the Hulk away to donate that table standing there, you know, to the Comics Archives his shirt is all torn and Department at Columbia everything, and there’s a University. Unfortunately, guy lying on the ground.” after much consideration, Again, in Don’s original piece for the cover to Weird Terror #11 (May I said, “Wait, does the they decided they didn’t 1954), his brushstrokes display an almost uncontrollable energy, with one thought in mind, lure the casual bystander.

Hulk have fangs?” And he have room for it. I even goes, “Hey, wait a minute, offered to throw in some yes, he does have fangs.” Holy mackerel... “I think that’s original Don Heck superhero art. Nope. No go. A missed it,” I yelled into the phone! “That’s not the Hulk! That’s the opportunity for them as far as I’m concerned. So I sold vampire! You’ve found it.” He says, “This is it? Really?” I it to a huge Don Heck fan and collector in Pennsylvania told him absolutely and that I love that cover. He said, “It’s who knew I had it and showed a strong interest in owning yours.” I couldn’t get the check out to him quick enough. it. The table is pictured on the first page of the book Don He told me a local comic art dealer was Heck A Work of Art, written by John Coates, scheduled to come by in the next day or so and published in 2014, and still available from another dealer was calling him about the art.

TwoMorrows Publishing.

And sure enough, most of that art was sold in a By the way, according to Don’s record book, bulk deal within the next week or so. he originally got paid $35 for the Weird Terror As it turned out, the Weird Terror #11 cover #11 cover back in 1953. I had to pay a lot more logo was missing. It had fallen off many years for it, and my only regret is that Don wasn’t ago or maybe Don took it off and tossed it. around to sell it to me himself. He was one Either way, that, along with the fact that the heck of a nice guy and a gentleman and artist vampire with a torn shirt looked a lot like the who loved the comics and loved to talk about Incredible Hulk, was the main reason that comics. I was very fortunate to get in touch Don’s nephew didn’t recognize the piece. The with him when I did. ■ cover art arrived a week or so later and I tore into the Legendary comic book historian Roger Hill (1958–2023) package and just sat there staring at the piece for about a was one of the founders of the EC fanzine Squa Tront with half an hour. What a great horror cover! I couldn’t believe his long time friend Jerry Weist. A contributor to Comic my luck. Within another week I had totally restored the Book Marketplace and Alter Ego, Roger also edited the EC Weird Terror cover back to its original state with the logo Fan Addict. He went on to write Reed Crandall: Illustrator put back on. of the Comics, Mac Raboy: Master of the Comics, and Several years went by and eventually I lost track of The Chillingly Weird Art of Matt Fox, all published by Don’s nephew. Then in 2008, one day, I received an email TwoMorrows Publishing. from him. He remembered my interest in Don’s two

COMIC MEDIA

(1952–1954)

by Frank Motler

A

lthough short-lived, the comic books from Comic Media published by Allen Hardy Associates featured terrific art, often graced by the covers of Don Heck.

Their two horror titles, Horrific and Weird Terror, are particularly noted.

Initially, Horrific and All True Romance filled in with stories intended for the earlier Artful Publications, Inc. (1950– 1952), before switching to a dedicated group of artists including Bill Discount, Marty Elkin, Pete Morisi, Rudy Palais, and Alberta Tewks.

Artful Publications, Inc. was quite different stylistically, featuring the homogeneous S.M. “Jerry” Iger Studios art on each story, with two notable exceptions. More about these shortly.

Iger Studios had strong ties to publisher Robert W. Farrell (1908-1986), who made able use of their studio art in his comics throughout, from 1947 through 1958. The 1953 Author and Journalist (one of several dedicated trade publications) listed H. Chipkin as Artful’s editor on All True Romance, Dear Lonely Hearts, Horrific and Noodnik. In truth, H.

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Chipkin was one of the pen names used

by Iger’s premier editor and writer Ruth Roche (1917-1983). Otherwise, Artful were a little circumspect in their supply of managerial information and their address, 342 Madison Avenue offers no further clues. As both Farrell and Hardy would feature their names, we have to

Allen B. Hardy in 1959

consider the possibility Artful was a publishing venture by Iger Studios itself.

Wallace Wood’s nine-page romance oriented, “I Crashed into Heartbreak” appeared in Artful’s All True Romance #6, July 1952; while his “I Was a Shrew,” another a nine-pager, appeared in its companion, Dear Lonely Heart #7, August 1952. The latter also appeared in the Star Publications title Popular Teenager #14, November 1952, despite being truncated by a half-page. Both bear similarities to the stories from the EC era and may well be Wood/Harry Harrison or Wood/Joe Orlando collaborations, making them worth seeking out. Prior to their comic books releases, Artful released two 68-page comics digests, Confessions of Love and Honeymoon Romance, 1950; each managing just two issues. Several publishers dabbled with the digest format, but for most, the hefty (for the time) 25¢ price tag means they were then uncommon and rarely ever seen today. Interestingly, the art for All True Romance #1 and Dear Lonely Heart #1 (both dated March 1951) look to have been prepared for the digest format,

using a two- to four-panel layout on each page, before publication as regulation comic books. The second issues of both titles weren’t released for a further seven months, dated October 1951.

Allen Burdette Hardy was born Oct. 10, 1911, listing his hometown as Beatrice, Nebraska. During the early part of his career, he gained experience with Curtis Circulation, Hearst group distribution, Publishers Distributing Corp, Ziff-Davis, and Harvey Publications. Using Allen Hardy Associates or Harwell Publications, Inc. imprints and a “Comic Media” cover symbol, Hardy continued Artful’s All True Romance and Horrific, published the slightly re-titled Dear Lonely Hearts, plus War Fury, Weird Terror, Danger, and Dynamite. “The Cave of the Bats” text story in Weird Terror #1 (September 1952) was signed “BURR DETT” and is most likely the publisher’s handiwork. After the cancellation of War Fury (#4, March 1953) as with several other Korean War comics, the humorous Noodnik was launched; initially as a 3-D title, with 3-D Funny Movies (all reprint contents from Dearfield’s Red Rabbit #15, 1950). Both 3-Ds were priced at 25¢, which included a pair of 3-D

glasses. A companion, The Little Amigo: The Original Hot Tamale was advertised in Horrific #12 (July 1954) but never appeared. Death Valley #1 (October 1953) was a Ross Andru/ Mike Esposito western tryout, before continuing under Don Heck and company.

With the impending arrival of the Comics Code Authority (the CCA formed on October 1, 1954), Hardy’s titles switched to a new Mystery Publishing Company, Inc. imprint.

Horrific was renamed Terrific before making the transfer with All True Romance to Farrell. Dear Lonely Hearts also continued at Farrell as Lonely Heart, then Dear Heart.

Meanwhile, Danger, Death Valley and Dynamite would resume under the Derby-based Charlton group.

Noodnik was also taken on there,

as a back-up strip. Comic Media’s art would appear sporadically in the Charlton and Farrell lines until 1958. Unfortunately, Weird Terror had nowhere to go; it would cease publication with the September 1954 (#13) issue.

The 2nd to 4th issues of Noodnik were published by “Biltmore Men’s Group, Inc.” at Hardy’s 500 Fifth Avenue, New York address. We can only wonder if this was a sly reference to the “Biltmore Men’s Bar” at the nearby Madison Avenue, Biltmore Hotel. Strangely, given some of the excess in his titles, Hardy would continue his involvement with comics as one of the Directors of the newly formed Comics Magazine Association of America (CCA) censorship body.

Both Farrell and Hardy were

cryptology NO. 2

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COMIC MEDIA

On the right, Wally Wood’s saucy splash for Dear Lonely Hearts #7 (Aug. 1952), one of a variety of publications from Comic Media.

COMIC MEDIA

Husband,” “Confessions of a New Hitler,” and “Peeping Tom’s Technique.” Most of its competitors offered somewhat more risqué fare to that just described. The Farrell/Hardy interiors continued with reprinted articles, plus spot illustrations by Palais, but without photographs. Under Hardy, a small prancing horse symbol was added to the covers.

Maybe to avoid conflict with the famous Ferrari sports car symbol, this was changed to a lion rampant symbol with the February 1954 (v28 #2) issue. This symbol matched those seen on later editions of Hardy’s comics. Hardy’s Magazine Digest was also briefly lived. Following the (v28 #10) October 1954 dated Above, Don Heck’s cover for Dynamite #1 (May issue, the title moved to the 1953). At right, the rare 3-D issue of Noodnik from unrelated Magtab group, and 1953. Below, the Perry Como Album, 1957. renamed Picture Digest, with its next issue (v28 #11) dated involved with Magazine Digest, February 1955. It survived until originally a Canadian digest-sized December 1957 (v31 #3). publication from 1930. It was in Hardy’s final known publishing the style of Readers Digest, which venture began with Skyline Features reprinted condensed articles from Syndicate, Inc., 50 East 42nd Street, other publications. Post-war, New York, and Anthony Conti as coMagazine Digest was distributed in publisher.

It released Lawrence Welk the USA by American News Co./ Album in 1956, with a second issue ANC. Then in 1950 it was purchased in 1957. Perry Como Album followed by rival publisher Archer St. John, to that same year. Both were popular be released on a dedicated Magazine musical entertainers of the time.

Digest Corporation imprint. Under Skyline also released Oo-La-La: A St. John, the title was brightened Collection of the Naughtiest Cartoon with celebrity color photo covers.

Post Cards Ever Imported from Gay Despite this, it was acquired by Paree! running to 96 pages in 1957 Farrell with the January 1953 issue, now distributed by Kable News and with a Plaza Digest, Inc. imprint.

Farrell’s version interspersed female pin-ups with attractive humorous painted covers created by its editor and artist, Rudy Palais.

After 11 months, the title moved to Allen B. Hardy, with Palais continuing as Art Director.

The December 1953 (v27 #5) cover sought to tempt readers with model Sylvia Lewis dressed in a figure-hugging black corset.

Amid the increasing competition of the crowded digest sector, the cover flash for this issue lured with “The Sex Life Of A Cheating

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along with two issues of: TV Western Roundup, in 1957 and March 1958 (v1 #1 and v1 #2) respectively.

Under a new Monarch Magazine Company imprint (165 East 35th Street, New York, now without Conti), Hardy would release eight issues of the re-titled TV and Movie Western magazine (v1 #3, December 1958-on), with Comic Media’s editor, Jerry Feldmann, continuing as art director. Both TV and Movie Western and its predecessor featured color covers, with black-&-white interior photos and articles relating to the array of western series now appearing on US network TV. Its cover features included: “Cheyenne” (starring Clint Walker), “Gunsmoke” (James Arness), “Lawman” (John Russell and Peter Brown), “The Lone Ranger” (Clayton Moore), “Maverick” (James Garner and Jack Kelly), “Rawhide” (Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood), and “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” (Hugh O’Brien). These hugely popular TV westerns were also adapted into comic books by Dell Publications, which also featured color photo covers. TV and Movie Western was to fold in March 1960 (v2 #4) at the same time as it was reported publisher Allen Hardy had died. ■ Frank Motler is one of the UK’s leading comic book historians, regularly contributing to the UK horror comics fanzine From the Tomb and appearing in Alter Ego.

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FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS

by Michael Price

Some Origins of Pandemic Cinema

S

carcely any menace appears more horrific than the arrayed herewith—a Black Plague trigger in Spencer Gordon unbroken thread of disease that winds through history.

Bennet’s The Midnight Warning (also shown as Eyes of Mystery; The popular culture—history-in-caricature—has exploited 1932); and a polio-borne motivation in William Nigh’s The Ape such fears all along. The idiom of fictional horror accounts (1940). for a particular fascination with the incumbent realities of contagion: Traditional mythologies and commercial literature The Midnight Warning alike treat Mittel European vampirism, for example, as a plague, The foundation in urban legend—folklore, that is, or organic or epidemic, that transforms every new victim into a carrier. mythology—dates from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893.

The Afro-Caribbean lore of zombie-ism, variously Alexander Woolcott had written the source-tale, “The Most ascribed to supernatural or hypnotic influences, found itself Maddening Story in the World,” for The New Yorker magazine. revolutionized into a state of pandemic in 1968: One audacious Mayfair Pictures assigned its takeoff, The Midnight Warning, motion picture, George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, to scenarist Norman Battle. The same situation would inspire hinted at ascribing a mass resurrection to cosmic radiation. a 1947 novel by Anthony Thorne, which became a significant Such an influence has prevailed in a since-overpopulated genre British film, So Long at the Fair (1950). The basic plot also of reanimated-croaker movies. Its 21st-century culmination is fueled a Rocky Lane-series Western at Republic Pictures, a sweeping declaration from Robert Kirkman, source-author Marshal of Amarillo (1948). A similar premise figured in Alfred of a graphic-novel epic, The Walking Dead, and its dramatized Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), and in an installment of elaborations: “We are the Walking Dead”—in essence, vessels of the teleseries Alfred Hitchcock Presents. life awaiting rebirth as undead eating machines.

The Midnight Warning is a rough-edged beauty, despite an One breed of plague literature stands apart in its historical and medical bearings. Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Masque of the Red Death” in 1842. Poe’s Red Death, an imaginative stretch, may owe its inspiration to tuberculosis, to yellow fever, or to the 14th century’s onslaught of the Black Plague, as in “bubonic.”

In any event, Poe anticipated the 20th century’s real-world surges of Ebola-borne fever. A Hollywood plague-thriller of 1995, Wolfgang Petersen’s naive but urgent Outbreak, stands as greatly in Mr. Poe’s debt as does Roger Corman’s 1964 filming of The Masque of the Red Death. Whether bacterium or virus, the effect is one of a population caught unprepared, not unlike the ill-managed persistence of COVID-19 in times more recent.

Likewise deserving of regard as a backhanded inspiration to the horror-movie genre is the similarly decimating 20th-century plague of A lobby-card come-on for 1932’s The Midnight Warning, capturing Claudia Dell’s tense moment in a morgue. polio. Two striking examples are

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FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS unevenness of soundtrack engineering and camerawork, from its fascinating and morbid puzzle to a wealth of macabre incidental touches.

Dr. Stephen Walcott (Hooper Atchley) finds the remains of a human ear in his hotel-room fireplace at the Clarendon Arms. While discussing the discovery with investigator William Cornish (William “Stage” Boyd), Walcott is grazed by a bullet. Cornish captures Enid Van Buren (Claudia Dell) and her fiancé, Erich (John Harron), who admit they have been threatening the Clarendon in an attempt to force the owners’ hand regarding a mystery: At the hotel, where she and her brother had checked in a few hours beforehand, no one professes to remember the pair; the register shows Enid had arrived alone.

Hoteliers Gordon (Huntly Gordon), Rankin (Lloyd Whitlock), Klein (Lloyd Ingraham), and Welsh (Lon Poff) imprison Enid in a mortuary. A disembodied voice taunts her. Cornish summons the police. Cornered, the hotel bosses acknowledge a conspiracy: They had destroyed the body of the brother, who had died of bubonic plague, and then sought to drive Enid insane. Having shamed the plotters, Cornish declares it better that the matter remain a secret, lest a panic result.

Director Spencer Gordon Bennet had arrived in 1912 as a stuntman and occasional actor in the Edison company’s adventure pictures. An apprenticeship to director George B. Seitz led Bennet to a directing career, early in the 1920s.

A specialist in serials until 1956—when he made the last American serial, Perils of the Wilderness—Bennett also handled feature-length thrillers. He told me during the 1970s that he recalled The Midnight Warning more fondly than his other non-serial efforts.

One of the finer qualities of The Midnight Warning is William “Stage” Boyd’s grim efficiency. The nickname distinguishes him from another William Boyd. The Boyd of The Midnight Warning (and of Paramount’s horrific Murder by the Clock) had a stronger presence on Broadway. Upon the death of “Stage” Boyd in 1935, the other Boyd landed at Paramount Pictures as the star player of the Hopalong Cassidy Western series.

Enid Van Buren (Claudia Dell) given the third degree after threatening the owners of the Clarendon Arms, a hotel she wished she had never heard of.

“Stage” Boyd dominates The Midnight Warning. He takes forensic detection to an extreme by reading the lips of suspects from afar. (Such a tactic also figures in 1933’s The Circus Queen Murder.) Boyd taunts the culprits by explaining to them the flaw in their scheme: The ear cartilage, the film’s triggering clue, is the hardest part of the body to destroy, by fire or any other means. And he exhibits the practical, resentful sense to comprehend that the conspiracy must go unexposed. Boyd wields the cudgel of intimidation with daunting authority.

More conventional scares figure in a morgue sequence where Claudia Dell finds herself surrounded by stiffs.

Groping for anchorage after a stumble, she seizes a cold foot—a nice chill, that!

Hooper Atchley plays against his usual crooked type as a Dr. Watson to Boyd. The pillar-of-society conspirators are sanctimonious to a loathsome extent.

Huntly Gordon’s defiant riposte to Boyd, daring him to take their plot to the authorities, crystallizes the attitude of impunity.

Miss Dell is rightly vulnerable as the tormented ingenue, but her inexperience shows in the mortuary scene: Spencer Bennet told me that Miss Dell “didn’t

know how to take a stage fall. So when she had to faint in the morgue, she hit her head on the concrete floor and was knocked unconscious.” The scene remains in the finished film; a retake would have been an extravagance for cash-deficient Mayfair Pictures. Miss Dell grabs her head when she strikes the floor, then goes limp.

Bennet’s ability to work rapidly and shave costs by editing in the camera kept him in demand among the smaller studios. This rare talent, however, often cheated Bennet of opportunities to display creative flourishes.

The Ape

The centuried endemic paralysis of poliomyelitis—a halt-and-go plague, recurring in fits and starts and leading to a widespread and sustained outbreak of the 20th century—affords the nagging motivation behind The Ape. Boris Karloff, in a choice example of the Mad Doctor stereotype that he would court during the 1940s, proves less deranged than outright murderous. As such, he displays the good gumption to confine the killing urge to antisocial rotters, who might as well be contributing spinal fluids to his maverick campaign to conquer polio.

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FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS

The odds looked to be stacked against him, but the elderly Dr. Bernard Adrian, played by Boris Karloff, still took on the escaped ape in his laboratory, played by the man in the monkey suit, Ray Corrigan.

In the final resolve, all absurdities aside, The Ape prefigures the Salk Vaccine by a decade. It bears specifying that Dr. Jonas Salk would predicate his widespread method of prevention upon a modified virus—not upon a nervoussystem distillation.

Scenarists Kurt Siodmak and Richard Carroll, of course, should have known better than to suggest that an elderly small-town physician, Dr. Bernard Adrian (Karloff), could slaughter an escaped gorilla, unaided; that he might fashion the carcass into a disguise for homicidal purposes; or that his apesuited self could mangle his victims with such combined ferocity and precision.

But then, why allow plausibility to

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temper a furious story?

The larger point, after all, is a focused prediction of a remedy against polio— although a cure, as such, was impossible in realistic terms. The truer objective was prevention. The fictional quest and its result are as striking as the prophecies of cryogenics and artificial-organ technology in which Karloff participated during the same period as the star of a series of “Mad Doctor” pictures at Columbia.

During 1936–1939, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre—the original triumvirate of talking-picture horror stars—found their careers compromised by a British and European embargo on films of the very sort that had defined

the actors’ popular appeal. Karloff retrenched by joining Monogram to go slumming as the star of a Mr. Wong series of mysteries, based on Hugh Wiley’s tales of an Oxford-educated detective named James Lee Wong.

The Mr. Wong pictures were designed to ride the coattails of Fox’s Charlie Chan series. Lorre and Lugosi took similar holding patterns, with varied results.

Karloff held forth in five Wongs.

By 1940, horror was back in style. The genre’s wellhead, Universal Pictures, had welcomed a reinstatement as early as 1939. At Monogram, Karloff fulfilled his six-film contract by starring in The Ape. Keye Luke, who had graced Fox’s Charlie Chan pictures as No. 1 Son to Warner Oland’s Chan, replaced Karloff in the final Wong entry, Phantom of Chinatown.

William Nigh, who had directed the Karloff Wongs, took charge of The Ape. Although The Ape is a lesser entry for Karloff, it is a cut above most of his others at Monogram. (Mr. Wong, Detective, that series’ opener, is a jewel.)

But of course, Monogram seldom made remarkably fine pictures; it was a true Poverty Row company, having neither the money nor the talent pool of the majors. Monogram compensated with moody, often experimental pieces of a formula-bending variety.

Karloff serves The Ape as the kindly Dr. Bernard Adrian, who in his obsession with finding a cure for infantile paralysis, or polio, has resettled in a small town, far from the medical establishment that has rejected his theories. The townsfolk shun Adrian. An uncommonly friendly neighbor, Frances Clifford (Maris Wrixon), is confined to a wheelchair and makes a trusting if hesitant subject for Adrian’s sudden breakthrough.

A circus gorilla (Ray Corrigan, ape-suit specialist) escapes after fatally mauling a sadistic trainer (I. Stanford Jolley). Adrian, summoned accordingly, extracts a vial of spinal fluid. He prepares a serum and administers it to Frances, with promising results. When the gorilla breaks into Adrian’s laboratory, following the scent of the hated trainer, the doctor kills the beast. And yet an ape remains on the prowl, attacking the most generally despised citizens. Frances’ treatments continue. Finally, an intended

FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS

The hype exaggerates the greatness of William Nigh’s The Ape (1940)—which was hardly a “Broadway stage success”, although the purported author, Adam Hull Shirk, had used apes in his menacing scenarios.

This spread is a restoration from a deteriorated copy of a Monogram tradebook for film exhibitors.

victim stabs the ape, which staggers toward Adrian’s house. The sheriff arrives and opens fire on the ape—then finds the dying creature to be Adrian. The doctor lives only long enough to see Frances rise and walk toward him.

Exteriors for The Ape were filmed at the old Western town set at Newhall.

The gloomy interiors were shot at Monogram’s studio in East Hollywood.

A surprisingly big name is that of screenwriter Kurt Siodmak, the Germanborn author whose novel Donovan’s Brain has yielded a variety of movie adaptations and knockoffs, and whose stories and screenplays for Universal include the first two Wolf Man films. The basis of The Ape is an unspecified play

by Adam Hull Shirk—likely the same work that Monogram had adapted as The House of Mystery in 1934. The Ape resembles The House of Mystery only in its menacing use of a gorilla. Shirk

also had written continuity for that notoriously bogus gorilla-hunt crock-ofa-documentary, Ingagi (1930).

The Ape boasts one of Karloff ’s more driven portrayals, a gentlemanly monster who confines his killing rage to rascals, rotters, and nincompoops whose passing can only serve to improve the human species. The first victim is a malicious carnival hand, played by that grandmanner bad-guy actor Stan Jolley. Later on, Karloff ’s counterfeit ape does away with a wife-beating loan shark, done to a repulsive turn by Philo McCullough.

Karloff ’s patient, Maris Wrixon, tells him, “You’re so intense, you frighten me sometimes,” but it is a crippling flaw that the story neglects to explain why the townspeople should harbor such a fearful hatred of Karloff ’s Dr. Adrian. He seems a sad, kindly sort who rides about on a bicycle, heals an injured dog, and treats the skinned knee of a local brat who has

vandalized Adrian’s house. (That boy, incidentally, is Buddy Swan, who also portrays Charles Foster Kane as a child in Citizen Kane.)

The title creature is played by Ray “Crash” Corrigan, who at the time was also a Western star within the independent sector. His other contracts allowed Corrigan to carry on with his lucrative gorilla-suit sideline as long as it did not conflict with his heroic portrayals and he did not receive cast billing.

Corrigan’s several ape outfits are far from realistic, but they radiate the necessary quality of menace, with all deference to the Simian Anti-Defamation League.

Maris Wrixon contributes a tender-hearted portrayal as Karloff ’s apprehensive patient. The slender blonde had registered impressively at Warner Bros., but she seems not to have objected to her sojourn at low-rent Monogram Pictures. She spoke with us in 1984 about The Ape: “I liked it. It wasn’t so much a horror picture, as it was a tragic drama about a man obsessed with the desire to benefit mankind. Boris Karloff was wonderful to work with.”

Philo McCullough has a rousing prelude to his demise, in a cruel scene with his abused wife, touchingly played

by Mary Field. Gertrude W. Hoffman, in her youth a pioneer in modern dance, is most effective as Karloff ’s housekeeper, whose silent comings and goings are punctuated strikingly by one whispered line. Gene O’Donnell is a stock smalltown juvenile lead, serving chiefly to illustrate the locals’ intolerance. The atmospheric cinematography is by Harry Neumann, who usually shot Westerns.

Edward Kay’s elaborate musical score ranges from blaring martial cues, to sentimental melodies, to the requisite ominous passages. ■ Michael H. Price is lead author of the Forgotten Horrors series of motion-picture encyclopedias—the longest-running genre study in commercial publishing, with 10 volumes and spin-offs since 1980.

A comic-strip spoof of Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak, from the newspaper feature Moviola, by Michael H. Price and Todd Camp. © Cremo Studios & Capital Cities Communications; 1995.

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HANDS OFF! Severed Hands in Horror Cinema

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cryptology NO. 2

by Steve Kronenberg

The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Severed hands were first reanimated in Maurice Renard’s 1920 novel The Hands of Orlac. Screenwriter Louis Nerz adapted it for director Robert Wiene, who’d previously helmed the Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Conrad Veidt plays renowned concert pianist Paul Orlac, whose hands are crushed in a horrific railway accident. Desperate to revive her husband’s musical career, Orlac’s wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) enlists the aid of noted surgeon Dr. Serral (Hans Homma), who transplants the hands of executed knife thrower Vasseur onto Orlac’s limbs. The distraught pianist becomes convinced that the grafted hands have a homicidal life of their own—especially when Orlac’s cruel father is found stabbed to death with Vasseur’s knife. Orlac’s paranoia is compounded when he encounters a blackmailer (Fritz Kortner), who claims to be Vasseur, fitted with grotesque mechanical hands.

Amidst traumatizing psychological pain, Orlac must sift through the fog of delusion and discover whose hands he really possesses.

As Paul Orlac, Veidt delivers what may be his greatest performance. He masterfully conveys Orlac’s physical and psychic torment, driven to madness by the belief that his hands are now disobedient deadly weapons. “I feel it comes from you!,” he tells an imaginary Vasseur.

“Along the arms until it reaches the soul! Cold, terrible,

relentless, damned cursed hands!” Veidt turns the hands into vile, willful characters, holding them high, outstretched, squeezing them, thrusting them, nervously moving them along his face and body. Veidt’s Orlac is a man possessed, and his portrayal presages the “body horrors” created decades later by such directors as David Cronenberg and John Carpenter. Veidt’s kinetic, unhinged portrait is tempered by an unmistakable sadness, an aching fragility manifested in his sad eyes and horrified visage. “I discover how the character I play grows in me,” Veidt once said. “This state can only be described as one of being possessed.” Author Wheeler Winston Dixon labels Veidt’s performance “a tour de force of silent film acting... modern, immediate and utterly convincing.” Film scholar Lotte Eisner praised it as “... a kind of expressionist ballet, bending and twisting extravagantly.” Watch this film and try taking your eyes off him.

The Hands of Orlac may be Veidt’s show, but the film’s twisted atmospherics belong to director Robert Wiene, cinematographers Hans Androschin and Gunther Krampf, and art directors Stefan Wessely, Hans Rovc, and Karl Exner. Echoes of Caligari resonate in the film’s cavernous, dark, and gloomy interiors, its moody lighting, its surreal and skewed exteriors, its hallucinatory imagery. Orlac’s visual highlight is the train wreck itself, photographed as a monstrous mass of twisted metal layered in smoke and debris, swallowing up the entire screen. The film is a superb amalgam of acting, photography, sets, and direction.

Mad Love (1935)

Wiene’s film has been remade at least three times, with varying success. By far the best redux is this Golden Age gem, directed by legendary cinematographer Karl Freund. The John L. Balderston script flips Renard’s original storyline, making Orlac’s surgeon the film’s centerpiece. In his American film debut, Peter Lorre is unforgettable as the renowned Dr. Gogol, obsessed with Yvonne (Frances Drake), the wife of concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive). When he’s not lasciviously eyeing Yvonne’s torturous performances in the Grand Guignol Theatre des Horreurs, Gogol avidly attends guillotine executions. Both pastimes consume him, but it’s Yvonne that he covets. When he learns of her marriage to Orlac, he plots to steal her for himself. He starts by purchasing her wax effigy perched outside the theater in which she performs. When a disastrous train wreck crushes Orlac’s hands, Gogol tries to win her The desperation evident in Conrad Veidt’s pose for The Hands of Orlac (1924) was reproduced to

extraordinary effect for the posters promoting Robert Weine’s Expressionist masterpiece.

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F

orget about idle hands. Severed hands are truly the devil’s playthings. Horror cinema is rich with tales of mayhem caused by malevolent manos. Whether grafted onto the limbs of an accident victim or slithering through a gloomy mansion, they’re willful and uncontrollable: throwing knives, strangling their prey, leaving remnants of murder and madness in their wake. Follow along for a history of how horrible hands have left their malignant mark on-screen.

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love by replacing them with those of guillotined knife thrower Rollo (Edward Brophy). Though Gogol falsely tells Orlac that his hands are his own, the musician knows better: he becomes adept at throwing knives with deadly accuracy and is eventually accused of murdering his father, a crime actually committed by Gogol to frame and eliminate Orlac. In a scene lifted from the 1924 original, Gogol compounds Orlac’s torment by disguising himself as Rollo, fitted with a bizarre leather neck brace and metallic arms, convincing the agonized pianist that he possesses the homicidal hands that murdered his father.

The film soon becomes less about Orlac’s severed hands and more about Gogol’s severed psyche.

Every Lorre performance is noteworthy, but his portrayal of Gogol may be the crown jewel in his legacy. He explores a huge emotional arc, his sad eyes and contorted facial expressions veering between the pain of unrequited love and his sadistic hatred of Orlac. “You are cruel,” he tells a repulsed Yvonne. “But only to be kind.”

Throughout the movie he seems burdened and awkward, striding through the gloomy sets, shoulders sagging, his pop-eyed orbs wide with suspicion and confusion. “I, a poor peasant, have conquered science,” he mourns. “Why can’t I conquer love?” His scene as the hideously disguised Rollo is an unnerving refinement of Fritz Kortner’s confrontation with Veidt in the 1924 Such was the intensity in his portrayal of the obsessive Dr. Gogol in Karl Freund’s Mad Love, Charlie Chaplin deemed Peter Lorre “the greatest living actor.” film. Lorre drops his voice to a gravelly whisper.

“I am Rollo, the knife thrower!,” he murmurs, of anger,” he once said. sending Orlac over the edge and concluding the sequence Mad Love belongs to Lorre, but Colin Clive is fine and with an unearthly cackle. It’s one of the most chilling scenes understated as Orlac, though poles apart from Conrad in horror’s Golden Age. Yet, what’s remarkable about Lorre’s Veidt’s mesmeric danse macabre. Clive’s alcoholism and its performance is his composure. There are no excessive resultant physical dissipation augment his psychological histrionics, no rants, even in the throes of insanity. “I dissolution and sense of melancholia. He imbues his believe the low-spoken villain... is a much more terrifying portrayal with sympathy and sorrow, staring at his useless fellow than the human being who commits a murder in a fit hands, unable to resume his beloved musical career. The

Amidst the shadows of Mad Love, Colin Clive resurrected Conrad Veidt’s mournful role as Stephen Orlac.

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role took its toll on Clive: “The experience of viewing one’s own hand in this condition was itself quite a shock,” he recalled. “All day and almost every day, I would give almost anything to wash away the whole ghoulish mess and forget the rest of the picture.”

Frances Drake provides strong, grounded work as Yvonne Orlac, graced with poise, elegance, and a streak of independence. She slaps Gogol when he gets too amorous, boldly calls him out as a liar and hypocrite, yet admirably conceals her shock when Gogol passionately

La Main du Diable a.k.a. The Devil’s Hand a.k.a. Carnival of Sinners (1943)

stalked by an odd little man (Pierre Palau) who tells him “the devil is not always at the door of a poor man.”

This devil in disguise dogs Brissot, offering to take back the talismanic hand and save his soul—for a very steep price. In the film’s memorable climax, Brissot is forced to confront his cursed predecessors, each one garbed in a macabre mask, and each with a story of how the severed hand bequeathed fame, fortune, and the fires of Hell.

Maurice Tourneur (father of famed genre filmmaker Jacques Tourneur) is credited with the film’s direction,

The fingers of Faust. In this understated, underrated jewel, a severed hand carries a satanic curse. Mediocre painter Roland Brissot (Pierre Fresnay) arrives at an inn carrying a wooden box, his left hand encased in a black glove. Curious about Brissot’s appearance and package, his fellow guests listen to his tale told in flashbacks. Brissot longed for artistic recognition and the riches that come with it. He meets a chef who pledges to grant his wish if he’ll simply pay one sou (penny) for a mysterious box containing an animated severed hand. When the skeptical Brissot accepts the offer, the chef ’s left hand detaches and latches onto the artist’s wrist. Brissot begins to enjoy the wealth and fame he was promised, but he’s made a Faustian bargain. The hand in the box is a cursed talisman, and he must sell it for less than he paid or face eternal damnation. He’s soon Roland Brissot, played by Pierre Fresnay, contemplates his vision of hell in La Main du Diable.

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kisses her during a backstage party. Throughout the film, Drake subtly traverses a fine line between discomfort and disgust, delivering a master class in naturalism (though she loved working with Lorre).

Karl Freund directs Mad Love with the sure hand of a visionary. In his Lorre biography The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), Stephen D. Youngkin praises Freund’s penchant for creating mood, “... steeping Mad Love in German tradition, rich in dark, brooding territory... a miscellany of sinister shadows, oblique angles, staircases and reflections.” Much of the movie’s dank atmosphere is due to Gregg Toland’s expressive photography and Cedric Gibbons’ haunted, angular sets. Toland’s camera dives deeply into the darkness with unnerving close-ups, zoom shots, a patina of greys, blacks, and contrasted lighting, anticipating his landmark work in Citizen Kane (1941).

In addition to crafting the film’s trenchant and incisive screenplay, horror veteran John L. Balderston worked closely with Lorre to perfect his dialogue and employ the muted style he displayed in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). But Balderston’s lasting contribution was to take Renard’s source novel and convert it into a study of divided souls: Orlac, the brilliant pianist saddled with the hands of a murderer, and Gogol, the life-saving surgeon driven to homicidal madness for the love of a woman. And each man sees the hands as lethal weapons: For Orlac, they’re willful and murderous; for Gogol, they’re an integral part of his plot to drive Orlac mad. As Gregory William Mank contends in his book Hollywood Cauldron (McFarland, 1994), Mad Love isn’t melodrama, it’s metaphysical.

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but when illness disabled him, the picture was completed

by Jean Devaivre, whose own hand was used as the cursed appendage. Scenarist Jean-Paul Le Chanois imaginatively reshapes the Faust legend with an interesting twist. Filmed during the Nazi occupation of France, the story was intended as a symbolic call to arms, the misshapen hand a metaphor for the Fascist forces that the French Resistance sought to defeat.

As Brissot, Pierre Fresnay is the picture of panic and desperation, a man literally running from hellhounds.

Pierre Palau is disarmingly sinister as the stealer of souls; he may be meek in manner, but he’s still Satan. Armand Thirard’s surreal cinematography suffuses the production with oversized shadows and dimly-lit sets, augmenting the film’s thematic connection to the ill winds of fate.

La Main du Diable was released by Continental Films, a studio dedicated to supporting the French Resistance.

Rarely have supernatural and political themes been so deftly and vividly blended. It’s a tough film to locate, but MovieDetective.Net offers a pristine transfer on DVD-R.

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

The film most associated with severed hand syndrome, simply because it’s the first to feature an animated appendage that creeps, crawls, and (possibly) kills. It also features Peter Lorre in a role far removed from the sublime psychosis of his Dr. Gogol. He’s Hilary Cummins, the sweaty, nerve-jangled secretary to disabled concert pianist Francis Ingram (Victor Francen). Like Gogol,

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Peter Lorre returned to the severed hand phenomenon in 1946 with The Beast With Five Fingers, now as the deranged Hilary Cummins.

Hilary is obsessed—not with a woman, but with his beloved library of occult books, which he fears will be snatched from him by either Ingram or the pianist’s greedy relatives (Charles Dingle and John Alvin), who descend on Ingram’s estate after he mysteriously dies from a fall down a staircase. It isn’t long before Hilary is haunted by Ingram’s severed left hand. He sees it playing Ingram’s piano; he watches it scrabbling across the floors and shelves of Ingram’s Gothic mansion; he fights it off as it tightens around his throat (ironic that Lorre went from playing a surgeon who attaches hands to a librarian plagued by a detached hand). Caught up in the chaos are Police Inspector Ovideo Castanio (J. Carrol Naish), Ingram’s nurse Julie (Andrea King), and her paramour (Robert Alda).

Despite an occasional serving of ham, Lorre plies his eccentricities and steals the picture. He’s consumed with paranoia, frantically telling Andrea King’s Julie that his occult studies will end if she quits her job as Ingram’s nurse. His voice gradually rises in panic as he laments: “Those books on these shelves... the key to the future...

I must be left alone until I discover it!” His madness comes full circle when he encounters Ingram’s detached hand reaching for him, his desperation palpable as he tries to destroy it, nailing it to a desk, tossing it into a box, burning it in a fireplace. As the determined digits relentlessly pursue him, Lorre segues from wide-eyed terror to near-comatose sleepwalking. It’s the movie’s best and most nuanced performance.

The supporting cast is left in Lorre’s dust. Francen delivers his lines with enough wood to fill Ingram’s fireplace. King and Alda make an attractive but bland couple. The usually reliable Naish is burdened with a faux-Italian accent and an attitude too breezy to be taken

The Hands of Orlac (1960) Hands of a Stranger (1962)

Both of these tepid Orlac remakes are a far cry from either Wiene’s 1924 original or Freund’s Mad Love. Mel Ferrer has the title role in the 1960 redo, but his Orlac is a dull, unlikable clod, utterly lacking in the verve and vitality endowed by Conrad Veidt and Colin Clive.

Watch the film for Christopher Lee’s energetic and enjoyable work as Nero, a third-rate stage magician who blackmails Orlac while wearing a body suit similar to the ones donned by Fritz Kortner and Peter Lorre. It’s a sly, winking performance, and one that Lee truly enjoyed.

“I had a marvelous part as a nightclub magician who blackmails a strangler,” he recalled. Lovely Dany Carrel plays Lee’s sexy stage assistant, and their chemistry is seductive and salacious. And watch for a blink-and-you’llmiss-him appearance from David Peel (Baron Meinster in Hammer’s Brides of Dracula [1960]) as an unfortunate aircraft pilot whose plane takes an unexpected dive.

Hands of a Stranger is an unofficial Orlac adaptation.

The characters’ names are changed, but director-writer Newton Arnold pilfers Renard’s source novel. Classical pianist Vernon Paris (James Stapleton) receives the hands of a murdered gangster in a transplant operation.

Edmond T. Gréville’s take on The Hands of Orlac in 1960 may have been lackluster, but Christopher Lee (above) certainly enjoyed himself.

His inability to resume his musical career drives him to madness—and to several loud and annoying arguments with his overwrought sister, played by Joan Harvey.

B-movie fave Irish McCalla and a young Sally Kellerman have brief roles, but no cast member is even remotely interesting, and Arnold’s banal script and amateurish dialogue make Ed Wood look like Orson Welles (“Don’t let fear drive you into a pit of depression”; “Music and people go together like kids and dogs”). Stick with Veidt and Lorre.

The Crawling Hand (1963)

Relax with this one after an especially tough day—it’s that hilarious. Directed by Herbert L. Strock, who helmed I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Blood of Dracula (both 1957), and How to Make a Monster (1958), it’s a ton of fun on a two-buck budget. An astronaut dies en route to Earth, but his dismembered hand, controlled by an alien

Unfortunately, the low budget cult chiller The Crawling Hand left viewers laughing, yet despite its failings, it continues to entertain.

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seriously. Lorre’s real co-star is the titular crawling hand, which belonged to pianist Victor Aller. Special effects artists Hans F. Koenekamp and William C. McGann achieved the disembodied imagery by shooting Aller’s hand against a black velvet background. “It was a neat trick,” Aller recalled. He initially thought his hand would only be seen playing the piano: “I never dreamt I would have to be photographed all the way through the picture... and drag myself all over the place.” His mischievous mitt scampers through the film’s sets, hides in bookcases, lifts its fingers, crawls from a fireplace burned and charred before leaping onto Lorre’s neck (according to an article in the Chicago Quarterly Review written by Aller’s daughter Judith, Lorre complained that Aller was squeezing him a tad too tightly). The grotesquerie is abetted by Max Steiner’s doleful, doom-laden musical score, Wesley Anderson’s gloomy cinematography, and the Gothic ambience created by art directors Stanley Fleischer, Bertram Tuttle, and Walter F. Tilford.

The film is flawed by Curt Siodmak’s muddled and disjointed screenplay, which shifts between Lorre’s lunacy and the King-Alda romantic subplot. The script’s ambiguity is also puzzling: is the dismembered hand real or a figment of Hilary’s imagination? Most egregious of all is the film’s finale, in which Naish pierces the fourth wall and engages in some foolish banter with the audience.

Robert Florey’s indifferent direction is also culpable. He hated Siodmak’s script and agreed to direct the film only after being threatened by Warner Bros. with a two-year suspension. It’s unclear what Siodmak and Florey wanted the movie to be: a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, or a horror film. Despite its defects, The Beast with Five Fingers is an important and influential entry in the severed hand sub-genre, as well as being a tour de force for Peter Lorre. When he’s at his best, there’s no one better.

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life force, survives and possesses teen-aged Paul Lawrence (flash-in-the-pan pop singer Rod Lauren), turning the kid into a pasty-faced killer. The movie’s best scene is a cult film fan’s dream: While Paul murders the manager of a local diner, the lights from a Wurlitzer jukebox dance across his face as the Rivingtons’ bizarre rock classic “The Bird’s the Word” blasts from the speakers. Add to that a supporting cast of B-movie mainstays (including Allison Hayes, Richard Arlen, and Alan Hale Jr.) and a surprisingly effective disembodied hand belonging to co-producer Joseph Robertson. The Crawling Hand got the MST3K treatment, but who needs those wise guys to savor this snifter of schlock?

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

The first of Amicus’ “portmanteau” horror films, an idea inspired by 1945’s Dead of Night, which screenwriterco-producer Milton Subotsky considers “the greatest horror film ever.” Peter Cushing is Dr. Schreck, an occultist who boards a train car, pulls out a tarot deck, and offers to predict the fortunes of five fellow passengers.

A separate story unfolds with each prediction, but snooty and skeptical art critic Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee) isn’t buying any of it. He finally relents, and his story is entitled “Dismembered Hand,” which Subotsky readily attributed to The Beast with Five Fingers. It opens as Marsh attends an exhibit of paintings by artist Eric Landor (Michael Gough). Before a packed gallery, Marsh savages Landor’s work as incompetent and amateurish. Landor retaliates by showing Marsh a painting by an unknown artist, which Marsh effusively praises. When the critic asks to meet the artist, Landor trots out a chimpanzee.

A humiliated Marsh departs in a huff, but Landor dogs his every move, dropping reminders of the embarrassing

Christopher Lee regrets his actions when he is assailed by the severed hand of the artist Eric Landor in this memorable Amicus portmanteau.

gaffe. Fed up, the exasperated critic runs down Landor with his car, severing the artist’s right hand. Unable to paint, Landor commits suicide, but his amputated hand creeps and crawls its way into Marsh’s life.

By 1965, Lee could play pompous and priggish with his eyes closed, but there’s something else going on here.

When the vengeful hand attacks him, he’s consumed with fear, shaking with terror, cowering in corners as the fanatical phalanges scamper to his shoulders, his foot, and the windshield of his car, before “handing” him a well-deserved fate. Lee genuinely emotes here, treading from uptight to upended, from haughty to horrified. If you’re a Lee fan, the next time someone tells you that Lee was capable only of standing erect and looking sinister, sit them down and treat them to this performance.

The usually chilly Michael Gough also steps out of character, evoking our sympathy as the doomed artist victimized by Marsh’s withering criticism and murderous revenge. Look closely at Gough’s sad, near-tearful eyes as he stares longingly at the artwork he can no longer accomplish without his right hand.

Cinematographer Alan Hume deserves a “big hand” for effectively photographing Landor’s fantastical fist lurking in backgrounds, creeping into corners, through door sills, burned and blistered as it slithers through Marsh’s study, inching its way to his throat, a chilling echo of Peter Lorre’s torment in The Beast with Five Fingers. The hand itself was an effective mechanical prop, which Subotsky recycled for Amicus’ And Now the Screaming Starts!

And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973) The disfigured Eric Landor, played by eminent British actor Michael Gough, seeks to end his life in Amicus’ Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors.

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One of the few times Amicus departed from its anthology approach and took a stab at a Gothic ghost story. It’s 1795, and newlywed Catherine Fengriffen (Stephanie Beacham) has moved into the family manse

The Hand (1981)

After their triumph with 1980’s Dressed to Kill, Oliver Stone and Michael Caine reunited for this uneven little thriller. Caine is graphic artist Jon Lonsdale, whose profession ends when his right hand is severed in a freak auto accident. The amputated appendage begins to haunt

Oliver Stone to the left and Michael Caine contemplate the threat of The Hand, in an off-screen moment. TM & © Warner Bros.

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him, and as his rage mounts over his stalled career, the hand becomes more menacing, threatening his wife (Andrea Marcovicci) and daughter (Mara Hobel).

Like some puckish gremlin, the thing can appear without warning, then disappear in a puff of smoke. Anyone who angers Lonsdale gets not just the middle finger, but the whole hand—invariably in a chokehold. The film descends into familiarity: is the hand real or imagined, a symbol of Lonsdale’s broken marriage, A vengeful curse resurrects a bloodied hand, with Catherine Fengriffen (Stephanie Beachum) its intended or the manifestation of his victim, and that’s just for starters, in the Roy Ward Baker directed And Now the Screaming Starts! anger?

Caine did the film to owned by her husband Charles (Ian Ogilvy). She’s soon finance a new garage for his home, but he still manages to plagued by frightening apparitions, eerie hallucinations, deliver the goods, traversing an edgy emotional spectrum and a severed hand that aims for her neck and seems that shifts between sadness, confusion, rage, and raw to appear and disappear at will. It’s all part of a curse terror. The Stan Winston-Carlo Rambaldi effects are inflicted by a woodsman once employed by Charles’ equally impressive. Their deformed animatronic hand grandfather Henry Fengriffen (Herbert Lom), a cruel pulsates and breathes, a unique and grisly touch. Stone degenerate who raped the woodsman’s wife, then and lensman King Baggot toss in a surfeit of scares: the severed the man’s right hand when he tried to retaliate. hand crawls through the woods covered with insects; Fengriffen’s unfortunate victim aimed his hoodoo at the Baggot’s subjective camera follows the thing through the first virgin bride to marry into the Fengriffen family— film’s interiors and exteriors, groping its way through so Catherine has acquired both a new husband and a Lonsdale’s bedroom in search of his signet ring—an haunted hand. Peter Cushing plays Dr. Pope, a benevolent unsettling scene lifted from The Beast with Five Fingers. In psychiatrist called in to cure Catherine’s hysterics. the movie’s most emotionally fraught segment, Lonsdale According to director Roy Ward Baker, Roger watches in horror as the monstrous mano draws the Marshall’s choppy screenplay required Beacham to carry comic strip he once created before his accident. the film, and she does so admirably, delivering a strong, The Hand is almost fatally undone by Stone’s murky believable portrayal (Beacham called Marshall’s scenario screenplay, burdened with soapy scenes between Caine a “travesty”). Lom is equally impressive as the louche and and Marcovicci, and a finale that viewers will find either lascivious Fengriffen, whose sadism is blithely belied by humorous or... gripping. Vicious reviews and poor box cool indifference. Cushing’s distinctive persona is always office returns sent Stone into a five-year sabbatical from welcome, his Dr. Pope a comforting complement to the filmmaking. See this one for Caine’s nuanced work, crazy-quilt storyline. outdone only by the spooky scramblings of his own Unfortunately, genre stalwarts Guy Rolfe and severed hand.

Patrick Magee are wasted in brief, thankless roles. The mechanical hand, re-used after its Dr. Terror rampage, is convincingly photographed by cinematographer Denys Coop, who captures the dismembered member near windows, outside doors, pushing victims down stairways. Coop offers up a jump scare when he employs low-key lighting to depict the cursed hand clamped over Beacham’s mouth. While far from Amicus’ best, And Now the Screaming Starts! is worth a look for its stellar cast and moody photography. Its weak link is Marshall’s disjointed screenplay.

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roasted, reanimated corpse rising from its grave; the bloody amputation of the hand from the unfortunate cop’s arm; a possessed Whitman blow-torching the persistent paw off his wrist. More importantly, Demonoid gives us a body-hopping hand that creates a “daisy chain” of infected psychotics—a first in the severed hand subgenre, recalling everything from vampire and werewolf mythology to films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Mainstream critics lambasted the film, but cult cinema fans continue to embrace it. “It doesn’t waste a minute. It doesn’t waste a scene,” gushed Tarantino. “It’s sick as f*ck, it’s nasty, it’s dirty, and I mean that as a positive.” Within its brisk running time, Demonoid moves as fast as its “hands-on” leading character.

Evil Dead II (1987)

Demonoid (1981)

Echoing the surreal sensibility of classic Mexican horror, this tasty tidbit from South of the Border gives the severed hand sub-genre a novel twist of the wrist. Jennifer and Mark Baines (Samantha Eggar, Roy Jenson) plunder a Mexican silver mine and discover a decayed hand with demonic powers and the ability to possess its victims’ left hands. It isn’t long before the fiendish fist begins bodyjumping, creating an army of homicidal zombies.

The film is dominated by an eager Eggar, who treats us to an enthusiastic and kinetic performance as a woman plagued by an unstoppable curse (in one scene, she literally wrestles with the mummified mano). She’s ably supported by Stuart Whitman as a priest who seeks to end the curse and destroy the hand once and for all. His cool and rational demeanor counters Eggar’s mounting panic and paranoia.

The movie’s other star is special effects tech Chubby Cordero, who animates the animatronic hand that attaches itself to each victim. The thing creeps, crawls, jumps, leaps, and scratches its way to Eggar’s legs, claws a woman to death, and latches onto a policeman who tells a doctor “Cut off my hand or I’ll kill you!” This isn’t just another detached hand—it’s a separate character with a mind and persona all its own. “This is the best crawling hand I’ve ever seen,” raved Quentin Tarantino.

Director and co-writer Alfredo Zacarias crafts some memorable set pieces: Roy Jenson’s Mark Baines setting himself on fire after the hand rearranges his sanity; his

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Leave it to Sam Raimi’s wickedly warped imagination to create a severed hand with a sense of humor. In the superb sequel to Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981), Bruce Campbell’s Ash gets his right hand bitten by the decapitated head of his Deadite girlfriend. The hand soon becomes a gnarled claw with a ghoulish life of its own.

It flips, flops and flies, smashing dishes over Ash’s head, pulling his prostrate body toward a nearby meat cleaver while noisily gibbering like an amped-up Shemp Howard.

Ash amputates the malicious mitt with a chainsaw, but the thing lives on, scampering like a spider on speed, giving a blood-soaked Ash the middle finger when it’s caught in a mouse trap. He finally dispatches it with a shotgun blast.

“Got ya, ya little sucker!,” he triumphantly declares.

Raimi wanted Evil Dead II to be “wackier and weirder” than the original, and those fiendish phalanges helped accomplish his goal. The sequence was Raimi’s brainchild, inspired by a Super 8 short filmed by co-producer Scott Spiegel about a woman battling an animated Hamburger Helper glove. From there, Raimi simply let his creativity run wild. In one scene, Ash traps the hand under a pile of books; the volume on top happens to be Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. “We mixed and matched to keep the audience guessing,” Raimi told Fangoria. “We combined

Evil Dead II’s Ash (Bruce Campbell) tries to contain the twisted claw that was once his hand. TM & © Renaissance Pictures.

radio-controlled puppets, black-bagged wrists and even some bluescreen wrist appliances. Part of it was animated to get some wild movements.” He intentionally undercranked the camera to give audiences a detailed view of Ash’s “hand-made” beat-down.

Credit SFX maestros Greg Nicotero, Mark Shostrom, Howard Berger, and Rick Catizone with the hands used in the segment, one radio-controlled and one stop-motion piece with an inflatable bladder. That’s Nicotero’s own hand peeking through the floorboards as it scrambles across the set and is buried under the books.

The innovative effects are matched by Bruce Campbell’s extraordinary aptitude for physical comedy. The polluted paw puts him through a bruising barrage of pratfalls and spine-splitting somersaults. And Campbell always tinges Ash’s heroics with a touch of pathos. “Give me back my hand!” he whimpers. “I don’t know where Sam’s ideas come from,” marveled FX sculptor Mike Treic. “They’re part Hanna-Barbera cartoon, part Three Stooges.” Why not just call it inspired insanity?

“The Terror in Teakwood” (1961)

Severed hands aren’t confined to the big screen. Sourced from a short story by Harold Lawlor that appeared in the March 1947 issue of Weird Tales (and undoubtedly influenced by The Beast with Five Fingers), this outstanding entry in Boris Karloff ’s Thriller TV series (1960–1962) originally aired on May 16, 1961. Brilliant concert pianist Vladimir Vicek (Guy Rolfe) is ecstatic over the death of his hated rival Carnowitz—so much so that he spends his honeymoon attending the late virtuoso’s funeral with his new bride Leonie (Hazel Court). Vicek bribes the cemetery’s caretaker Gafke (Reggie Nalder) to gain access to Carnowitz’s crypt and amputate the corpse’s outsized hands. Vicek doesn’t know that the hands have a vengeful life of their own. He survives several blood-stained rounds with the deadly appendages before finding a way to control them, slipping them onto his own hands to play Carnowitz’s difficult sonata and securing his place in musical history. Vicek stores the hands in a casket-shaped teak wood box, which he constantly guards. His triumph may be short-lived when Leonie coaxes a former paramour (Charles Aidman) to act as Vicek’s tour manager, and Gafke comes calling to blackmail the newly-crowned genius. It’s up to those stolen severed hands to sneak out and do the heavy lifting in the episode’s manic finale.

Soon to play the titular lead in William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus (1961), Guy Rolfe casts an impressively sinister

shadow as the obsessed and ruthless Vicek. With his nose in the air and his heart in a deep freeze, he strides through the show with an air of arrogance and menace. Hazel Court, lovely and poised, is a charming counterpoint to Rolfe’s regal, imperious style. Acid-tongued Linda Watkins adds some pepper as a writer whose hatred for Vicek turns into hero worship after the pianist delivers a triumphant performance clad in Carnowitz’s hands.

Charles Aidman’s grounded, iron-jawed work as Vicek’s romantic rival is an appropriate contrast to Teakwood’s unhinged storyline.

The real steal is committed by Reggie Nalder, whose grubby Gafke is the star of the show. Nalder’s unkempt exterior and gaunt, skeletal face (the result of ultraviolet acne treatment at age 14) cloak a sly and serpentine psyche, and he mines the corruption for all it’s worth.

His twisted synergy with Rolfe is alone worth the price of admission. Screenwriter Alan Caillou and director Paul Henreid wisely let Nalder loose with some memorable dialogue and acting (his pensive soliloquy on Carnowitz’s funeral drew an ovation from cast and crew). His scenes with Aidman are especially vivid, as he outlines his plan to extort a fortune from Vicek. “If I tell what I know,” he wheezes, “they will put him in prison!” Nalder is best known for playing the vampire Barlow in the 1979 TV adaptation of Salem’s Lot. Why he wasn’t given more dialogue and more screen time during his career is anyone’s guess.

Cinematographer John F. Warren (a frequent contributor to Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock’s anthology series) teamed with set decorators John McCarthy and Julia Heron to create the show’s moody atmosphere, highlighted by the eerie, fog-choked graveyard scenes.

The bizarre ambience is immeasurably complemented

by Jerry Goldsmith’s chilling musical score and the superb composition and playing of studio pianist Caesar Giovannini (Goldsmith even provides Nalder’s Gafke with an ominous leitmotif). Sure, the story is derivative of The Beast with Five Fingers, but so what? The Terror in Teakwood stands alone as a twisted and stylish entry in the severed hands sub-genre. And after all, two hands really are better than one. ■ STEVE KRONENBERG is a Managing Editor of Noir City Magazine and the co-author of The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy, Universal Terrors 1951-1955.

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HANDS OFF! SEVERED HANDS IN HORROR CINEMA

With the claw now in control and a chainsaw at hand, outright carnage ensues. TM & © Renaissance Pictures.

THOSE HYPNOTIC EYES

Christopher Lee in Cross-Roads

by Peter Normanton

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or a good five years, readers of EC’s horror comics had savored every juicy morsel of the dead shambling forth from the grave with one objective in mind: exacting unholy revenge. Such scenarios were prevalent in almost every horror comic of the early 1950s, but no one could have anticipated such a turn of events in the secluded villages of the Hertfordshire countryside—well, certainly not in 1955.

Now, before the horror fiends among you get too excited, I have to warn you this wasn’t quite along the lines of those pages Graham Ingels produced for Haunt of Fear, Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror, nor the scenes George A. Romero later committed to celluloid. Their putrescence was set aside when John Fitchen was tasked with directing Cross-Roads, an overlooked short, running all of 19 minutes, produced by the obscure British company Bartlett Films. In place of the decrepitude of the walking dead came an uncanny supernatural thriller Fitchen based on a short story penned by Richard Lawrence Griffiths, a writer whose legacy seems to have drifted into obscurity.

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An Eerie Screen Appearance

As with its writer, Cross-Roads may also have drifted even further into the mists of time if it hadn’t starred the then unknown Christopher Lee, in this, the second of his eerie screen appearances. His first had come a year before in John Lamont’s adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s spine tingling “Markheim,” another short entitled The Mirror and Markheim.

The presence in this feature of German born actor Ferdy Mayne would later arouse the interest of those with a hankering for the vampire brethren, when he played the part of Count von Krolock in Roman Polanski’s comedy horror The Fearless Vampire Killers, released in 1967. As with many of his fellow countrymen, Ferdy’s Jewish lineage had forced him to leave his homeland as a teenager to escape the terrors of Nazi tyranny.

Prior to Conrad Veight’s departure, Ferdy had taken up residence in England. He was so incensed by the Nazi regime, he worked as an informant for British intelligence during the early years of the war, unwittingly placing his family at risk,

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lives. Those in the cinema now fell into darkness as the screen turned pitch black, leaving them in no doubt as to the siblings’ fate.

Hope sprang anew when the scene changed to the dawn of a new day, the camera panning on a well groomed Christopher Lee setting off to hitchhike his way to London. Fortune was on his side, being picked up in no time by a rather becoming young motorist played

by Mercy Haystead. As they chitchatted away, she became increasingly perturbed by his familiarity. All was not as it seemed, for her passenger was privy to information no one beyond her circle of friends could ever know. It was a perturbing moment, Lee’s mood swings working to disconcerting effect, placing both Mercy and the audience on the edge To the right, a rather dapper looking Christopher Lee takes in the morning air, before being of their seats. However, for all this she picked up by a motorist, played by Mercy Haystead, in her splendid automobile. remained true to her word, conveying him to his destination. before they too made it across the English Channel.

Once in the city, Lee made his way up to the office When it first appeared, Cross-Roads would have been of one Bernard J. Maskell, played by Ferdy Mayne. a support feature, probably dismissed as soon as the ice Ferdy was certainly on form here, as the cowardly lowcream girl had done her rounds, leaving the audience to down theatrical agent with a lustful eye for the ladies. settle down for the evening’s main event. For those who Lee’s ever changing temperament persisted as the pair were prepared to give John Fitchen’s short a go, there exchanged words, their discourse becoming increasingly wasn’t a second to waste, as they were whisked away acrimonious.

From here-on, nothing was about to deter along a darkened country lane in the back seat of a rather Lee’s character—not the bullets from Maskell’s gun nor plush looking vintage car, directly behind a couple whose the threat of the police.

His role in Horror of Dracula was identities for the moment weren’t about to be disclosed. yet three years away, but the look on Maskell’s face was if he had already been cornered by the deathly Count.

Desperation Their faces may have been hidden from view, but it Those Fateful Crossroads was plain from the outset they were brother and sister, During these scenes, John Fitchen proved himself a their situation one of utter desperation. In her anguish, director who could have achieved so much, lingering on the young lady had overdosed after discovering she was that hypnotic glare, one destined to make Christopher pregnant. As they raced to the hospital seeking help, the Lee an icon of horror cinema. If you thought it was over, brother’s love for his sister was abundantly clear; but they guess again—the audience was thrust into a car chase, never made it. As they sped towards the crossroads the the police in hot pursuit, after Lee had... er, shall we say, car hurtled out of control; the crossroads claiming their “borrowed” Mercy’s car, before making a return to those fateful crossroads.

Despite being a low budget short, John Fitchen and his team should be congratulated, because this was a worthy supernatural thriller, one that swept the audience back to an England long since laid to rest. Of course, Cross-Roads wouldn’t have worked quite as well without the presence of Christopher Lee, who overshadowed the proceedings, his sinister bearing making for an unnervingly creepy viewing. And while we are handing out plaudits, a similar pat on the back should also go to the people behind the Talking Pictures TV channel, who brought this obscurity to a new generation of late night film watchers. Sadly, only one of the pubs observed in this short has managed to survive, The Fishery Inn at Elstree. The Kings Head and The Fishmonger’s Arms in Bushey are long gone, a sad Lecherous theatrical agent Bernard J. Maskell (Ferdy Mayne) sign of the times. ■ upsets his secretary, minutes before encountering those eyes.

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Conrad Veidt The Man Who Laughs

by Peter Normanton

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assablanca’s cold-blooded Major Heinrich Strasser endures as one of Hollywood’s most notorious villains. His go-to reaction, I can assure you, would never have been a laugh; it would have been a contemptuous sneer, and that would have been on a good day. As ever, Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was stellar in the role in Michael Curtiz’s film, but he can’t have been entirely comfortable with playing the synonymic Nazi, even though he did admit to quite enjoying making this film. Sadly, his time in Hollywood was all too brief, but in that short period, these stereotypical roles would, for many, become his lasting signature.

Only recently arrived in Los Angeles, he was cast as the merciless General Kurt von Kolb in Escape, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, before going on to play a Nazi saboteur in Vincent Sherman’s All Through the Night, prior to stepping into the shoes of a Nazi diplomat in Jules Dassin’s Nazi Agent, in anticipation of his memorable portrayal in Casablanca—although he did have a dual role in Dassin’s thriller playing the honorable twin brother. However, in Germany, he was condemned as a traitor.

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CONRAD VEIDT

The Man Who Laughs may not be a horror movie, but the death of Gwynplaine’s father (Conrad Veidt) was the essence of nightmare.

Unwanted Questions

Having declared himself Jewish in a racial questionnaire, he further enraged the Nazi authorities in 1934 when he agreed to appear in the film Jew Süss, a British adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s 1925 novel Jud Süß, chronicling the life and trials of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, an 18th century German Jewish banker.

Conrad was detained by the Nazis, who insisted he reject the role forthwith. He wasn’t about to let this happen, outright refusing to comply with their demands. Only when the British government and the Gaumont British Picture Corporation intervened did they capitulate, realizing this situation could become extremely embarrassing. For the Nazis to have escalated this standoff before an international audience would have invited a torrent of unwanted questions. They had only recently ascended to power; consequently, few beyond Germany’s borders were aware of their despicable lack of humanity.

When he finally made it to Britain, Conrad was at last reunited with his third wife, Lilli. Her decision to leave Germany had been so much more simple; to have stayed would have meant a life of persecution owing to her Jewish parentage. While their love was truly profound, this never got in the way of his on-screen performances as the Nazi oppressor. Yet, as callous as he appeared in these films, he remained a vociferous adversary of the evil being perpetrated in Nazi Germany—so much so, five years after leaving his homeland, he became a British citizen.

A version of Jew Süss also saw release in Nazi Germany

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in 1940. Veit Harlan was credited as the director of this shameful piece of antisemitic propaganda, although he would later claim the Reich Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, was pulling the strings in the shaping of this abhorrence. Those who had been involved with the film were summarily questioned after the war. When Harlan stood trial for crimes against humanity, he laid the blame firmly with Goebbels, which resulted in his surprise acquittal. He would go on to make nine more films. The rest of the cast, however, didn’t fare quite so well, having fallen from grace, their careers ruined.

Expressionist Horrors

For those who had gone through the trauma of these years, it was almost inconceivable to think 20 years before Germany’s filmmakers were praised across the world. The inspiration roused by these silent treasures from this nascent period in film would reach further than anyone could have ever dreamed. Among them were several celebrated features starring Conrad Veidt.

His acting career had been in the theater, until making his on-screen debut in Robert Reinert’s Der Weg des Todes (The Path of Death), released in 1917, where he attracted rather favorable attention. He returned just months later to make a fleeting appearance in his first horror picture “Furcht” (Fear), directed by one of the rising stars of the period, Robert Wiene. Wiene would endear himself to generations of filmgoers just three years later when he directed a feature considered to be the first, and maybe finest piece of German

Expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Weaving through the surreal props and strange camera angles, shimmied Conrad’s nimble figure, beguiling the audience with his disturbing portrayal of the sleep walking Cesare, an unfortunate cruelly manipulated by the deranged Dr. Caligari. Wiene’s film would set the standard for the horror films that followed. Principally, its mastery of the interrelationship between light and shadow went on to influence the horror films created at Universal as an antecedent to the evolution of film noir.

Later that same year, the dark side once again came to the fore in the F.W. Murnau directed Der Januskopf (The Head of Janus), a re-staging of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” with Conrad now assuming the role as the misguided experimenter Dr. Warren. Prior to this he had also made appearances in three other unnerving features, Unheimliche Geschichten (Eerie Tales), Satanas and Der Graf von Cagliostro, each released in 1919. That same year he also produced, directed and starred in the horror Wahnsinn. Alas, it is now impossible to elaborate on this film, as it is thought to be lost.

Fortunately, not every film from this period suffered in this way. After entertaining a variety of roles, Conrad returned to horror, to feature in two films released in 1924 that have not only survived through the years, but whose legacy can only be described as monumental. The first of these films has been mentioned elsewhere in this issue in Steve Kronenberg’s eye-opening reminiscence “Hands Off ”: Robert Wiene’s Orlacs Hände (The Hand

of Orlac). Once again, Wiene stood tall as a director of incomparable perception, who with his able team, conceived an appreciably aphotic visualization, with Conrad eliciting a performance that surpassed his eccentric portrayal in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Waxworks Extravagance

Towards the end of the year, Paul Leni’s extravagant anthology Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks) also premiered. Leni’s film shifted between stark terror and hilarity as the narrator recounted the stories of three effigies posed in this darkened wax museum. Conrad was cast as Ivan the Terrible in the second of these tales.

This section of the film, along with the six minutes of Jack the Ripper, were the most frightening and would go on to inspire further waxwork related films. Among the more noteworthy of those that followed was the Amicus portmanteau Torture Garden, scripted by Robert Bloch, first screened in 1967.

Certainly Waxworks, along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Hand of Orlac, bolstered Conrad’s standing in the hallowed realm of German Expressionism and cinema macabre, but he would only appear in one more film tainted by its affiliation with horror, Henrik Galen’s The Student of Prague filmed in 1926. Galen’s film was inspired in part by the legend of Faust and the duality in Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson.” Conrad played the character of Balduin with considerable insight, elevating his stature still further across the globe.

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Conrad’s portrayal of the sleepwalking Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari complimented the paranoia in these Expressionist sets.

CONRAD VEIDT

Makeup maestro Jack Pierce was the man responsible for Gwynplaine’s rictus smile, a device Conrad had to suffer for the duration of this film.

Disfigured

The verve evident in Conrad’s performances over these years would lead him into taking on several highly acclaimed roles in dramas and melodramas alike, with offers of work coming from England and as far away as the United States. Among his most distinguished roles was his portrayal of Gwynplaine in Paul Leni’s adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs, set in England during the reign of Queen Anne. Those conversant with Hugo’s works draw comparisons with The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, published over 35 years earlier in 1831. This tale of a hopelessly disfigured man falling for the love of an innocent, certainly has a familiar ring, and would be adapted to cinema on five separate occasions prior to the release of this outstanding version filmed in 1927, a year ahead of its eventual release.

Leni’s film The Man Who Laughs may have been shot at Universal Studios, but it bore all of the hallmarks of the German Expressionist movement. As observed in his previous horror Waxworks, he maneuvered to distort both the sets and those appearing in front of the camera’s lens, while making transcendent use of light contrasted against the impenetrable reaches of the ever encroaching shadows. Even in a melodrama of this kind, this discommoding exposition could lead the audience into thinking they had been enticed into yet another of those creepy movies. There were shots where the ceilings seemed so low, the doorways and corridors defying

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convention, as Leni sought to unravel the darkness in his nostalgic fantasy.

At the outset, Lon Chaney had been considered for the role of Gwynplaine, having starred in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923, but he was still contracted to MGM. This gave Conrad the chance to bring Hugo’s character to life, a man once of noble stock, terribly disfigured by outlaws as a child. The cut of the knife had slit him from cheek to cheek, blighting him with a most hideous grin— one, try as he might, he can never hide. The romance unfurls when this sad carnival performer falls for Dea, played by Mary Philbin, a beautiful girl whose life he once saved. The poor girl has been blind since birth, a debility that spares her from the sight of his grotesque visage.

The Rictus Smile

Such a frightful grimace would have shocked the audiences of the day, but Gwynplaine wasn’t the embittered miscreant of the revenge obsessed horror story; he was a man of honor. While Conrad shone, the real star of the proceedings was makeup artist Jack Pierce, who created a makeup appliance, devised to stretch the star’s mouth, which then allowed him to insert those nightmare teeth. This monstrous sight may have left much of the audience aghast, but it was no match for the extreme discomfort Conrad experienced. Furthermore, Pierce’s contraption made it very difficult for Conrad to emote the feelings essential to this character, hence his eyes became the conduit for his emotions. Both Leni and Gilbert Warrenton, the cinematographer, responded to Conrad’s

endeavor, laying as much focus on those eyes as possible, while ensuring the camera’s eye didn’t linger so as to not lose the film’s impetus. Between them, they succeeded.

Without Jack Pierce’s design, you have to wonder if his film would have long since drifted from mind. Of course, he would go on to even greater heights when he created Boris Karloff ’s makeup for James Whale’s Frankenstein in 1931. The rictus smile would live on, providing the inspiration for Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson’s design for the manic visage of The Joker when he made such a shocking impression in the first issue of Batman, dated Spring 1940. It was Bill Finger who saw the possibility in this image of Conrad becoming The Joker, so he sent the

Before agreeing to edit this magazine, Peter Normanton produced the longrunning UK horror comics fanzine From the Tomb, and has compiled three collections of it for TwoMorrows.

He may have been The Man Who Laughs, but behind this frightful smile, Gwynplaine was a man of true honor.

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CONRAD VEIDT

Conrad’s character Gwynplaine preferred to hide his hideous smile as much as he could; not so The Joker on his debut in Batman #1, coverdated Spring 1940. TM & © DC Comics.

photographs on to Bob Kane. There was no joy evident in this smile—or should I say grimace—for this murderous villain was oblivious to the meaning of the word “goodness,” unlike his admirable precursor Gwynplaine.

As with Conrad’s portrayal of Major Heinrich Strasser, so too would The Joker endure, surviving to star in a bizarre tribute to Paul Leni’s film, Batman: The Man Who Laughs, a graphic novel published in 2005, which recounts the first meeting between these decades-old adversaries. A similarly deranged smirk would keep the audience glued to the screen in William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus in 1961, played by Guy Rolfe, who also found his makeup to be very uncomfortable.

With its million dollar budget, much was expected of The Man Who Laughs, a film that would see its art director Charles D. Hall go on to work on the Universal Frankenstein and Dracula phenomena. Edward Cahn, who was involved with the editorial process, would go on to feed our Killer B section with a plethora of well remembered films, among them The Creature with the Atom Brain (1955), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), and The Faceless Man (1959). The Man Who Laughs would live on, a film revered by disciples of German Expressionism, the Universal horrors and film noir. In time, comic book fans would come to learn of its significance, thus ensuring the work of Paul Leni, Conrad Veight and those involved in this masterpiece will have a special place in cinematic history. ■

the DARK WORLDS of

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NIGEL KNEALE

ho is the most imitated of all British science imagination—and it inaugurated Kneale’s career as Britain’s fiction writers? Obviously, the immortal leading writer of science fiction-based material. (Ironically, H. G. Wells has to be the premier recipient Kneale himself reportedly—and repeatedly—claimed that of that title, with the key SF themes he he was not enamored of the SF genre.) But who was this originated—or at least created the most groundbreaking, and sometimes curmudgeonly, writer? influential examples of—including alien invasion, time Actually, there was no Nigel Kneale. Thomas Kneale travel, invisibility, and tampering with animal evolution. was a Manx writer (born in 1922) who quickly became Few aficionados would argue with the notion of Wells’ entranced by his own ancestry, which (he claimed) went primacy in the field, but there is another, later, writer back thousands of years, the Isle of Man apparently being from the UK who has been massively significant—and the result of a massive chunk of earth flung by the Irish who continues to inspire (and continues to be ripped-off) giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill (or McCool)—and a fictional to this day: Nigel Kneale. legacy of the past was to be a recurrent theme in his work.

In 1953, a television serial was shown which—without exaggeration—rocked the nation. The Quatermass Horror at Alexandra Palace Experiment was shown in six half-hour episodes from July As a young man, Kneale was attracted to a journalistic to August, and had much of the British population career (following his father’s example), although glued to their TV sets for this mesmerizing, and he had always been a sickly child, something frequently horrifying, creation from Kneale’s that left him with a legacy of cardiac prodigal imagination. Professor Bernard trouble. His love of fiction focused more Quatermass, in charge of the British on literary writers such as Chekhov Experimental Rocket Group, has sent and de Maupassant; he had a disdain the first manned mission into space, for crime novelists such as Agatha but with grim results. Only one of the Christie. His own short stories had crew returns, and—viewers were to little hint of the science fictional or learn—he has been altered in macabre, supernatural elements that were to otherworldly fashion. Needless to say, become his stock in trade, and his there were the complaints from the move to postwar London took him shockable about the gruesome nature into a more sophisticated world than of the proceedings, and the show was the superstitious Manx milieu of his perceived as proof of the moral laxity into youth. (He also realized that he had to lose his regional accent to be more accepted which Britain had fallen. However, in the capital.) The first published more balanced views realized that not Born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, collection under his newly adopted only was Kneale’s creation a pulseThomas Nigel Kneale was a versatile writer, who bequeathed science fiction name was Tomato Cain and Other racing suspenseful account, it was also a fabulous legacy.

Stories (1949), several of which touched written with notable intelligence and

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THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

W

by Barry Forshaw

THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

André Morell, as Bernard Quatermass, on the scene at Hobbs Lane in Quatermass and the Pit. TM & © BBC Enterprises Ltd.

Kneale’s tenacious scientist hero had also acquired the first name “Bernard,” inspired by the famous director of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, Bernard Lovell. But who was to play the key role of Quatermass? The actor initially chosen by Cartier was one of Britain’s finest character actors, André Morell—now best remembered for his impeccable performances in a series of Hammer films (including perhaps the first occasion on which Sherlock Holmes’ associate Dr Watson was played as an intelligent, non-comic figure, in Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959). Morell, however, turned the part down, and it went to the actor Reginald Tate, who performed it largely to Kneale’s satisfaction. The writer and producer were both well aware that secrecy would be a key tool in their armory before the appearance of the serial, thereby ensuring surprise value for the audience—and this secrecy even extended to the actors, some of whom had only the vaguest notion of what they were appearing in.

When the first episode, “Contact Has Been Established,” was broadcast on Saturday, July 18, 1953, the critical reaction was lukewarm, but audiences found themselves more and more gripped by the tense narrative and Victor Carroon’s transformation into a blob-like monster; the initial audience of three million had grown to five million by the completion of the series. In the twenty-first century, it’s hard to see just how groundbreaking the series was and what kind of a phenomenon this level of audience involvement had been, partly informed by the shrieks of horror from more conservative parts of the media.

on fantastical themes. A blind alley for the writer was an abortive career as an actor, which, however, brought him into the BBC and radio drama, and it was perhaps unsurprising that he would begin to write his own things for the corporation. Working for the BBC Script Unit at London’s hilltop Alexandra Palace, he became a friend of a talented Viennese-born producer who had adopted the name of Rudolph Cartier, and the two began to work together on the live TV dramas of the day (which were, of course, replete with awkward technical mishaps— with no chance of retakes). When a yawning gap in the schedules necessitated a speedily written drama, Kneale More from Kneale came up with what was originally called Bring Something Nigel Kneale’s science fictional character Quatermass Back...!, concerned with a British rocket launch that goes was to encounter menaces that appeared to have a disastrously wrong. What had happened to the crew, apart supernatural agency behind them, but customarily turned from the one man who returns? The notion was that an out to be alien in origin, and Kneale’s television plays alien creature adrift in space had somehow entered the spacecraft and had created a bizarre physical synthesis of the three men. The victim was rocket scientist Victor Carroon, and his final fate was to be transformed into a gigantic monstrosity.

The project was greenlit, although (as Kneale said) the original title could refer to instructions from a shopping trip, so the serial was renamed The Quatermass Experiment.

Kneale was particularly pleased when his colleague Cartier was given the job of producing the serial, which was to have a budget of £3,000. In fact, it crept up to £4,000 by the time of the live broadcast from Alexandra Broadcast in December 1954, Nigel Kneale’s interpretation of George Orwell’s 1984, with Peter Cushing Palace—by which time as Winston Smith and Yvonne Mitchell as Julia, shocked the nation. TM & © BBC Enterprises Ltd.

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Big Brother Is Watching You

Next up for Kneale was a television adaptation of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with Peter Cushing

in the role of Winston Smith; once again, a sort of hysteria gripped the nation with politicians criticizing the horrific elements of the Orwell adaptation. An equally impressive—but now lost—version of the abominable snowman, 1955’s The Creature, followed, in which a British expedition was on the trail of the Yeti. But a second outing for Bernard Quatermass was inevitable, and it followed in Quatermass II (1955)—with a very specific agenda. A new ITV network was to begin broadcasting, and Kneale’s protagonist was seen as being invaluable in the drive to deal with this new TV threat. And Quatermass II was to have practically the same seismic impact on television viewers as its predecessor, with its disturbing new wrinkles: a cutting critique of government control and brainwashing, with bizarre elements such as roads that have no ending, official warnings of zones that are off limits to the public, and a sinister plant run by zombie-like apparatchiks with something very nasty percolating in its vaults. As so often with Kneale, the episode titles were intriguing: “The Destroyers,” “The Frenzy,” “The Coming,” “The Food,” and so forth.

Hammer Comes a’Calling

As inevitable as a TV sequel was, it was equally inevitable that the cinema would take up the cudgels with this clearly lucrative franchise. But there was a corollary effect with the first film adaptation of Nigel Kneale.

Enterprising Hammer Films, the studio that had opted

Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) may have made it back to Earth, but there would be no escape for him in Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment, released in the United States as The Creeping Unknown. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

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such as The Stone Tape (1972), similarly involved a forced marriage between science and the uncanny. In the latter, occult happenings are investigated by a scientific team with all the apparatus of modern technology—a notion much imitated since. And speaking of imitation—or, perhaps, inspiration—the indebtedness of the Doctor Who series (both before and after its revivification) to the concepts originally created by Nigel Kneale is profound, but while older admirers may recognize familiar elements, they will of course be fresh to a new generation of viewers.

Part of what made the television Quatermass so effective, despite the restricted budget, was the use of a recognizable London—including the climax with the hideous creature at bay before its destruction in Westminster Abbey—not to mention the thengroundbreaking use of Gustav Holst’s “Mars” from his orchestral suite The Planets, which became a piece of classical music as closely associated with filmed science fiction as Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra after its use by Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The fact that the alien monstrosity glimpsed at the end of the serial was essentially a crude hand puppet didn’t matter—on the small black-and-white TV screens of the day, an effective chill was sent down the spines of viewers.

THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

It looks like the hapless Victor will require a new jacket as his interminable situation deteriorates. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

to bring Kneale’s rocket scientist to the big screen, was to find itself taking a profitable new direction away from its crime movies: the realm of horror.

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) was the film that inaugurated the studio’s long and advantageous association with the fantasy/horror field, even before Hammer reinvigorated the Dracula and Frankenstein myths (the film was retitled The Creeping Unknown in the USA, where the name of Quatermass had no recognition value). Perhaps drawing on the long journalistic fascination with crime that clearly engaged his own interest, director Val Guest demonstrated a

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marked sympathy with and enthusiasm for the crime genre, although his best work in the 1960s may be found in The Day the Earth Caught Fire, which is one of the great British doomsday movies. And his earlier work in adapting the first Quatermass serial was a model of professionalism.

Before the groundbreaking The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957, Hammer’s move into the horror genre was occasioned by the success of its adaptation of Kneale’s BBC serial, forging something that, although being firmly in the science fiction genre, achieved many of its most memorable effects with the use of horror tropes—such as

the ghastly, sucked-dry husk of a corpse. And it was the latter genre that was to prove the studio’s most enduring legacy in filmic terms.

Inevitably, of course, the second television series was also adapted for the cinema, building on the success of its predecessor. And Quatermass 2 (1957; US title Enemy from Space) was another impressive adaptation, albeit inevitably losing some of Kneale’s well-turned subplots in its compression. But the use of the Shell Haven Refinery in Essex as the site of a covert alien invasion was a

masterstroke, adding a level of paranoia that suggested both a totalitarian Britain and the Soviet Union: what’s more, returning director Val Guest allowed echoes of the Second World War (still relatively fresh) to be used in creating the atmosphere of impending dread. Once again, Hammer Films had a considerable hit on its hands.

In the world of television, it was time once again for Kneale to collaborate with his trusted colleague Rudolph Cartier, and the duo created a memorable third outing for Quatermass at the BBC. Kneale had negotiated a deal in which he had full rights for his creation; it had strongly rankled with him that the first film had been basically the BBC’s property to sell to Hammer Films.

Noticing the considerable rebuilding taking place in London after the German bombing raids of the war, Kneale wondered what might be the repercussions if something truly bizarre were to be discovered in the digs, and his notion of apparently long-dead Martians found underground was to be another one of his most imitated inventions. Apart from the ingenuity in his storytelling, the project was to be enhanced by what he considered to be a more impressive actor in the role of Quatermass than John Robertson had been in the previous outing.

Much to Kneale’s pleasure, the scientist was finally to be played by the actor who was one of the original choices,

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THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

The paranoia of the day was reflected in Quatermass II, released in the United States as Enemy from Space, as invaders from beyond our world colluded with homegrown oppressors.

TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

Quatermass (Andrew Keir) and Doctor Roney (James Donald) come face-to-face with ancient aliens. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

the superb André Morell. As with the first serial, secrecy was maintained during the filming, which much aided the impact—as did the increased budget for special effects, enabling far more sophisticated work in that area than the penny-pinching effects of the first serial.

Alien Menace Number 3

Inevitably, of course, this third serial would ultimately make its way to the screen, as had its two predecessors under the Hammer banner, and this first Quatermass film to be made in color is considered by many to be the finest of the three. The director Roy Ward Baker had enjoyed a successful career in television, but he was keen to return to the cinema, and accepted Anthony Nelson Keys’ invitation to direct the company’s third adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s astonishingly successful TV serials. In fact, Baker’s contribution, Quatermass and the Pit (1967), as well as being the best of Hammer’s three adaptations, is the most conspicuous example of the dramatist Nigel Kneale’s intelligent utilization of Gothic themes (a recurrent motif in his work, though usually channeled through science fiction narratives—even his famous supernatural drama mentioned above, The Stone Tapes, was granted persuasive pseudo-scientific trappings). Despite the fact that Roy Ward Baker’s skills as a director were continuing to be honed even through genre material, the critical consensus was that his career had taken an unfortunate commercial turn, with his more personal work behind him. This was not, in fact, the case, as Quatermass and the Pit comprehensively proves. The Gothic notion takes a literally subterranean form in the film, when, during an excavation for the London underground, workmen come across skeletons

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when a wall is broken through in the Hobbs End station (the reference being a satanic one—and the sinister appearance of the Martians later in the piece is devil-like and is shown to have created the universal blueprint from

THE DARK WORLDS OF NIGEL KNEALE

Andrew Kier uncovers the past in Quatermass and the Pit, or in the US, Five Million Years to Earth [below]. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

which humanity created its images of demons).

But was Nigel Kneale right to subsequently provide a last hurrah for his durable hero?

The Last Hurrah

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The end was in sight. The Quatermass Conclusion (or just Quatermass), made for Thames Television in 1979, at least had a very solid British character actor in John Mills Back cover or inside cover: $900 ($800 for two or more) Full-page interior: $700 ($600 for two or more) in the title role, but the final serial—now made under the Half-page interior: $400 ($350 for two or more) auspices of ITV rather than the BBC—was controversially Quarter-page interior: $200 ($175 for two or more) received. ITV’s cinema division, Euston Films, provided AD SIZES: the use of more filmic special effects, and Piers Haggard COVERS & FULL-PAGE: 8.375” wide x 10.875” tall trim size, add (also responsible for the excellent film The Blood on 1/8” bleed. (7.625” x 10.125” live area.)

HALF-PAGE: 7.625” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds).

Satan’s Claw) seemed to be a solid choice as director. And QUARTER-PAGE: 3.6875” x 4.875” live area (no bleeds). there were plenty of ideas—such as a fanatical youth cult Call or e-mail for frequency discounts! and a spearing of achingly banal television programs Run ads across our full magazine line (asinine shows such as the soft porn “Tittuppy Bumpity”), for even greater savings! through which Kneale seemed to anticipate such later We accept check, Send ad copy and payment (US funds) to: shows as Big Brother. While an alien invasion was still, as money order, and all ever, the central premise, the freshness and inventiveness major credit cards; TwoMorrows Publishing include card number 10407 Bedfordtown Drive of the earlier shows was largely absent, and many felt that and expiration date.

Raleigh, NC 27614 this was a melancholy farewell to Bernard Quatermass.

919-449-0344 Today, it is impossible to ignore the fact that Nigel E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com Kneale made the greatest contribution to British science These rates are for digital ads supplied (PDF, JPEG, TIF, EPS, or InDesign files accepted). fiction of any creator since H. G. Wells—and No agency discounts apply. while Kneale may not have particularly liked the SF genre, he still fully deserves his legendary status in the field. ■ Writer, journalist and broadcaster, Barry Forshaw is the author of British Gothic Cinema (available from Amazon.com) and the editor of Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk); he lives in London.

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QUATERMASS

W

by Peter Normanton

hen Dez Skinn’s plans to present Hammer’s trove of horror films as a series of comic strips for his new magazine House of Hammer were formally accepted, it was no surprise to see Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein leading the way in the first three issues. From the outset it was obvious this new magazine was about to give these cinematic masterpieces a new lease on life, its vivacity very quickly setting it head and shoulders above the competition.

Adaptations of The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, Moon Zero 2, Dracula: Prince of Darkness, and Twins of Evil soon followed, their pages resplendent with the artistry of Brian Lewis, Paul Neary, John Bolton, and Blas Gallego. Then in House of Hammer #8 (March-April 1977) came the first part of Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Xperiment. Unlike previous showings, this episode was allotted just five pages, scripted by Ben Aldrich and Les Lilley, a writer who had made his mark in newspaper strips, later scripting for television—the most celebrated of his accomplishments surely being the BBC’s children’s art program Vision On. Artist Brian Lewis had dazzled between 1955 and 1962 with his covers for the British pulps New Worlds Science Fiction, Science Fantasy and Science Fiction Adventures, before moving into comics—now he was embellishing this interpretation of Hammer’s film with a line that surpassed anything he had done before. It had been no more than 12 months, but Brian had already made an indelible mark on this groundbreaking magazine.

A Terrifying Metamorphosis It didn’t matter in the slightest if you hadn’t sat through The Quatermass Xperiment, for in these five pages the narrative that flowed between the panels, coupled with Brian Lewis’ sumptuous artwork, held the reader firmly transfixed.

The film may have dated back

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to 1955, but the page layouts appeared so very modern, a reflection of the mood of the day. So far, all but one of these retellings had been wrapped up in a single issue, but there was good reason this latest addition to the Hammer folio had been treated in this way. Earlier in this issue, six pages of John Bolton’s brushstrokes had been laid before our eyes in the Father Shandor tale “Spawn From Hell’s Pit.” When The Quatermass Xperiment was originally commissioned, it was quite obvious it was intended to appear as a self-contained story, but with the arrival of John Bolton’s rendition of Father Shandor, Dez and his team faced a serious dilemma. Their solution would have delighted the youthful connoisseur of comic book art, because with John and Brian’s artistry on show, this magazine really couldn’t get much better.

There would be time enough to savor the artistry in these tales, as it would be a whole month before House of Hammer #9 (June 1977) delivered the much anticipated conclusion. After a single-page résumé, the team of Aldrich, Lilley and Lewis continued in the same vein, chronicling the entire events from the film in all of 15 pages, running across the two issues. It was a tremendous feat by one and all. As the terror mounted at the end of the second installment, Brian’s delineation of the metamorphosed Carroon shocked just as Phil Leakey’s makeup had done over two decades ago. Brian wasn’t about to leave it there, holding back until the climactic finale, where he emulated the psychedelic monstrosity he had created for the cover of this issue in the panels of the story itself. It was utterly preposterous, but Brian gave the reader something he would never forget: a mutation birthed in a domain of darkest nightmare.

Enter David Lloyd Brian Lewis’ cover for House of Hammer #9 introduced part two of “The Quatermass Xperiment.” TM & © Quality Comics.

The Spring and early Summer of 1977 had been a heady period for the readers of House of Hammer,

However, for the moment, David Lloyd was called upon to produce his first major piece as a comic book artist. When Brian Lewis had first conceived his rendition of The Quatermass Xperiment, David was employed as a commercial artist. In the not-too-distant future, this change in career would bring glad tidings to comic book fans across the entire globe. While his pages for Enemy From Space—or as we know it on these shores, Quatermass II—may have lacked the polish of that which would soon follow, it still captured so much of the noir evident in the original presentation from 1957. Tracing through these pages, they might be considered a time capsule from this bygone era, very much at odds with Brian Lewis’ designs conceived for this modern audience.

Nonetheless, it is a hidden gem, an essential stepping stone in David’s rise to becoming a comic book artist of immeasurable repute.

Sadly, this tribute to Hammer’s legacy was to go on hiatus until the latter months of 1982. On its return there would only be one more adaptation from the company’s catalog, a worthy return to Brides of Dracula by Steve Moore and John Stokes. When Halls of Horror bowed out shortly after with issue #30, Quatermass fans were denied the chance to see the swan song of this trilogy, with a presentation of Quatermass and the Pit. There was, of course, disappointment when Halls of Horror was canceled, but we should be grateful for the graphic adaptations of the films mentioned above; I know they formed an important part of my teenage years. ■

To the left, “The Quatermass Xperiment” splash pages from House of Hammer #8 (March–April 1977) and #9 (June 1977) rendered by Brian Lewis. Above, David Lloyd’s first steps into comic art in issue #23 (Aug. 1978). TM & © Quality Comics.

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HOUSE OF HAMMER: QUATERMASS

but with so many other Hammer films to go at, it was another 12 months before Quatermass made a return, in the recently re-titled Halls of Horror, issue #23 (August 1978). As this magazine spread its wings, venturing across the Atlantic into America, a change of title was called for, if only to allay the concerns of the distributors who feared House of Hammer could be confused for a do-ityourself journal. You may be scratching your head as to the absurdity of this situation, but it didn’t bode well for the magazine’s future.

KILLER B’s

by Steve Kronenberg

NI ot of this Earth t was 1956, and future King “B” Roger Corman had an inspiration. After directing a handful of genre films, he finally understood how to market his product. America was top-loaded with drive-in theaters, meccas for teenagers looking to kiss, cuddle, and carouse in the privacy of their cars while watching monsters and madmen menace the world on giant movie screens. Corman enlisted his friend and frequent collaborator Charles B. Griffith to craft a script suitable for the teen drive-in trade. Griffith and co-writer Mark Hanna came up with a tale about an intergalactic vampire entitled Not of this Earth (1957). Paired with another Corman creature feature, Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Corman, Griffith, and Hanna were prepared to give the kids what they craved.

Of the two films, Not of this Earth is arguably the better and more innovative production. Paul Birch plays the mysterious

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“Paul Johnson,” an extra-terrestrial vampire from the planet Davanna, ravaged by a nuclear war that has caused the blood of its inhabitants to evaporate into dust. Johnson is sent to Earth to teleport the blood and bodies of Earthlings to Davanna, thereby saving his home planet and initiating a global invasion.

His sunglasses conceal a pair of deadly, dead-white eyes, which he uses to burn through his victims’ brains before draining their blood. He’s also able to read minds and hypnotize his targets into doing his bidding. His personal pet is a flying, batlike “umbrella monster” that envelops and crushes the skull of anyone Johnson commands it to attack. Johnson, whose own blood is slowly dissolving, begins his mission by visiting Dr. Rochelle (William Roerick) and mesmerizing him into administering a transfusion. Johnson also commands Rochelle to allow his affable nurse Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland) to provide him with full-time, live-in care. In addition to giving Johnson daily blood transfusions, Nadine tolerates Jeremy, her new boss’ leering manservant (Jonathan Haze).

She soon becomes suspicious of Johnson’s weirdly robotic demeanor.

When she objects to her bedroom door being locked, Johnson replies: “In the place where I come from, no one would dare sleep in unsecured quarters.” When Nadine asks him where he comes from, he merely bids her goodnight. In short order, she discovers who and what Johnson really is, leading to a frantic, fiery climax and an unpredictably twisted finale.

The heavily-built, sonorouslyvoiced, sallow-faced Birch excels as the exsanguinating ET. His performance is icy and sinister, yet tinged with a touch of sympathy.

Determined to save his home planet from extinction, he encounters a Davanna escapee (Anna Lee Carroll)

KILLER B’s who comes to Earth in need of human blood. Desperate to save her, Johnson accidentally kills her with a rabiesinfested transfusion. In these scenes, Birch briefly replaces his usual scowl with an expression of pity and pain—a grim reminder of his own dissolution.

Throughout most of the film, he wears his solemnity on his sleeve, intent on tyrannizing and terrifying anyone who interferes with his mission. When he catches Jeremy spying on him, he quietly puts the nosy nerd in his place: “If I see you do it again, I will eliminate you.” In the history of fifties horror, no threat ever resonated so deeply.

Beverly Garland is a perfect foil for Birch’s diabolics. She always excelled at playing tough, strong-willed women, a refreshing counterpoint to the distressed damsels who dominate early fright films.

As Nadine Storey, Garland is solid and stalwart, easily shifting from affable to adamant, whether fighting off Johnson’s efforts to teleport her to Davanna or backhanding Jeremy for being too amorous. Her relaxed and confident style made her a natural for the big screen.

Taut, Tight and Tense

Birch and Garland receive solid support from Jonathan Haze, who plays Jeremy as spineless and subservient to Johnson, at least until he learns who he’s really working for. Haze soon became part of Corman’s repertory, gaining cult fame for his lead performance in the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

He also became the stage manager for both his cousin, renowned jazz drummer Buddy Rich, and legendary chanteuse Josephine Baker. Dick Miller, another Corman regular, has an unforgettable scene as a persistent, jive-talking vacuum cleaner salesman who ends up burned and bled by Johnson. Miller drew on his own experience as a door-to-door peddler and was permitted by Corman to ad-lib his entire confrontation with Birch.

The Charles B. Griffith/Mark Hanna screenplay is taut, tight, and tense, casually building suspense as Nadine begins to discover Johnson’s identity and intent. Despite the film’s 67-minute running time, Griffith and Hanna build in some significant character

The alien (Paul Birch) walks among us, as Nadine Storey (Beverley Garland) learns to her misfortune, in Roger Corman’s neglected Not of this Earth from 1957.

development: Johnson’s sympathetic side, Nadine’s mix of verve and vulnerability, Jeremy’s transition from Johnson’s subordinate to sworn enemy. More importantly, the script breaks ground by introducing cinema’s first interplanetary vampire, paving the way for such films as Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965), Curtis Harrington’s Queen of Blood (1966), and especially Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce (1985). The Griffith/ Hanna screenplay was also the first to depict teleportation, predating both The Fly (1958) and the 1966 television debut of Star Trek.

Griffith himself cut an interesting figure in 1950s Hollywood. In an issue of Video Watchdog, historian Tim Lucas described him as “an unpolished gem of a screenwriter, a beatnik/stoner/outsider who smuggled those crazed and (then) highly individual sensibilities into the mainstream via Corman’s commercial cinema.” Corman called Griffith “the funniest, fastest, and most inventive writer I ever worked with.”

Not of this Earth owes much of its success to Corman’s technical crew. The film’s unnerving milieu is immediately established with title designer Paul Julian’s abstract graphics, which accompany the opening credits.

The movie was the last to be shot by cinematographer John Mescall, whose unerring eye graced two of Universal’s greatest releases: The Black Cat (1934) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Mescall shot the exteriors for Not of this Earth on the streets of Los Angeles, but with the camera adjusted several points darker than usual, giving the picture a moody, chiaroscuro quality akin to film noir. He comes in tight and close for the film’s interiors, lensed within the confines of Johnson’s home and lending the movie a claustrophobic intensity (the L.A. house was actually located at 1725 Camino Palermo, later demolished and replaced with an apartment building). Whenever Johnson removes his Ray-Bans to scorch a victim, Mescall treats us to jolting close-ups of the vampire’s dead-white eye pupils.

The Umbrella Monster

Master monster maker Paul Blaisdell devised both Johnson’s crudely illuminated teleportation device and the sublimely creepy “umbrella monster” that graphically dispatches Dr. Rochelle.

Blaisdell was arguably Hollywood’s most reliable costume and prop designer, famed for constructing and occupying imaginative monster suits on

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KILLER B’s impecunious budgets and impossibly short shooting schedules. He built the “umbrella monster” over a frame of wire coat hangers padded and sculpted in foam rubber and coated with latex.

Piano wire and a fishing pole were used to keep the creature airborne until it descends onto William Roerick’s Dr. Rochelle, who pulls the thing tightly over his neck to simulate a slow and bloody strangulation (instead of the “umbrella monster,” Griffith wanted Blaisdell to create a monstrous dog with the jaws of a huge crocodile, an idea Corman wisely rejected).

Ronald Stein’s modulated musical score immeasurably enhances the film’s suspenseful storyline. Stein employs subtle, subdued tones for the movie’s quieter moments, building to thunderous notes during more frenzied scenes.

The climactic chase between Nadine, Johnson, and the police is edited with lightning precision and speed by Charles Gross Jr., who expertly crosscuts between pursued and pursuers just before the film winds down to its disarming and surprising conclusion.

Corman shot Not of this Earth in ten

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As bizarre as it may have appeared, Paul Blaisdell’s ingenious “umbrella monster” wasn’t to be trifled with.

days on a budget of $70,000. He and Griffith each took credit for the picture’s unusual plotline, but it was Corman alone who was forced to deal with an angry and unruly Paul Birch. The actor walked off the set before filming even concluded after a physical altercation with Corman. “I am an actor,” Birch bellowed, “and I don’t need this stuff! To hell with it all! Goodbye!” According to Beverly Garland, Birch objected to the

film’s tight shooting schedule, threadbare budget, and, most insistently, the painful contact lenses he was forced to wear, even while not on camera (Christopher Lee registered the same complaint when he began working on Hammer’s Dracula series). Dick Miller later alleged that Corman fired Birch for being drunk and disorderly on set. Corman has discretely stated that Birch left the film due to an undisclosed “illness.” After Birch’s departure, actor Lyle Latell doubled for him, turning his back to the camera to remain undetected.

Released by Allied Artists, the Attack of the Crab Monsters/Not of this Earth double bill earned a 400% profit and a loyal cult following.

Time Out has praised Not of this Earth as “a minor sci-fi gem.”

In The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film (Ballantine: 1983), Michael Weldon called it “Corman’s most enjoyable science fiction film.” Ed Wood may have flown flying saucers over Hollywood, but it was Roger Corman who gave us cinema’s first atomic age vampire. ■

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T

by Peter Normanton

he Shadow began his crime fighting career as the narrator of the CBS radio show Detective Story Hour in July 1930, a guise conceived to revive the flagging sales of Street & Smith’s long established pulp Detective Story Magazine. As so often happens in life, events took an unexpected turn. Having latched onto this mysterious character, reams of listeners began to seek out copies of what they assumed to be the Shadow’s own magazine, rather than the intended Detective Story Magazine, a pulp introduced in October 1915, which ran through until the summer of 1949 after racking up a staggering 1,057 issues. Street & Smith’s response was swift, offering a contract to writer Walter B. Gibson to scribe a series of stories chronicling the adventures of this enigmatic raconteur—the first of which appeared in the inaugural issue of The Shadow Magazine on April 1, 1931.

Curiously, The Shadow’s own radio show did not air until September 1937.

Cunning Lure

With The Shadow’s radio plays now being broadcast across the country, Street & Smith looked to broaden their franchise still further. Having observed the popularity of the new fad for four color comics, they launched Shadow Comics on the January 12, 1940. The first half a dozen issues used reprints of Jerome Rozen’s covers from the original Shadow Magazine, thus keeping the set-up costs to an absolute minimum. The gruesome display terrorizing the cover to the fourth issue of this new series, dated June 1940, had first shocked the readers of The Shadow Magazine, on June 1, 1936. While it may not have startled in the way Johnny Craig’s infamous cover for Crime Suspenstories #22 (AprilMay 1954) had done, it was still a grisly tableau, calculatingly luring anyone who fell under its gaze. In the hope of satiating the bloodthirsty appetite of those drawn to this issue, a decapitated head was put on show within—just for good measure.

However, let’s not get too carried away, because on this occasion, the severed head was revealed to be a wax effigy. Alas for the gore-mongers, disappointment would invariably ensue, as such revelations were commonplace throughout the entire run Across the page, Jerome Rozen’s gruesome cover for Shadow Comics #4, dated June 1940, was originally seen on The Shadow Magazine, June 1, 1936. To the left, Shadow Comics V2 #8. TM & © Conde Nast.

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the Horror Covers

SHADOW COMICS: THE HORROR COVERS

Fiendish Villainy

Upon turning the page, Jack Binder duly followed with his “Horror House” splash. At first sight, this image said it all—well, not quite, for this was never really a horror story.

There were, however, a few titillating panels revealing Margo Lane in the shower, scenes that no doubt had this teenage audience quietly tittering to themselves. But enough of that, for by now those readers with a lusting for the macabre would have realized neither Shadow Comics, or its pulp companion The Shadow Magazine, were ever going to step too far into this unholy domain—this was a world of action-packed adventure, where the threat emanated from an array of diabolically fiendish villains.

Vernon coalesced this expectation for action with the ghoulish in his iconic Silver Skull cover for Shadow Comics Vol. 2 #10, dated January 1943; surely one of the most eye-catching images of the period. Of course, the presence of those gun-toting blackguards affirmed the true nature of this title, but once this issue had been put down, it was On the left, Vernon Greene’s fearsome skull cover for Shadow Comics V2 #10, dated January 1943. Below, a month later, Al Bare’s Devil Kyoti terrified on the cover to Shadow Comics V2 #11. TM & © Conde Nast.

of this series. The team of artists who were invited to apply their brushstrokes to these covers seemed to delight in deceiving with an inference of the macabre, leaving Walter Gibson’s sleuth to get on with solving the crimes at hand.

By the time Shadow Comics Vol. 1 #8, dated January 1941, made it to the newsstand, newspaper strip artist Vernon Greene had assumed the position as cover artist, now well and truly established as The Shadow’s lead illustrator. With each passing issue his mastery of these mystery tales became more emphatic, his covers daring to tease every once in a while with the taint of something odious. He held off until November 1942, with the appearance of Shadow Comics Vol. 2 #8, before shocking with the first of these unsettling portrayals. On show that issue was a monstrous plant, plainly looking to consume everything in its path, almost a decade before John Wyndham’s apocalyptic shocker “Day of the Triffids.”

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SHADOW COMICS: THE HORROR COVERS

Above left, Devil Kyoti returns on Jack Binder’s cover for Shadow Comics V3 #1, April 1943. Sitting next to it, Vernon Greene’s diabolical presentation of Monstrodamus and his ravenous menagerie on the cover to Shadow Comics V3 #7, October 1943. On the right, Charles Coll took over with one of his murderous skeletons for Shadow Comics V3 #10, January 1944. TM & © Conde Nast.

the skull that lingered on in the mind. Deep down inside, those with a hankering for horror knew there would be nothing overly nasty in store, but with covers like this, the editors at Street & Smith knew they could ramp up the readers’ excitement, promptly ushering them into these nail-biting mysteries. True to form, Jack Binder followed with a skull splash page, again suggesting something unsavory awaiting in the wings. That was momentarily before the Shadow slipped in from the gloom; then those in attendance were treated to the kind of charged thriller they had come to count on.

When Vernon enlisted in the armed forces, Al Bare, a member of Jack Binder’s studio, was chosen as the new cover artist. As with his predecessor, he demonstrated a penchant for the outlandish, painting a couple of vibrant Devil Kyoti covers for Shadow Comics Vol. 2 #11 and #12, with Jack Binder embellishing the cover to Vol. 3 #1. These striking images were the prelude to a series of stories which were to act as a rallying call in the face of the Axis, as war raged across across the Pacific.

Crash, Bang, Wallop!

Every once in a while, Vernon Greene managed to squeeze in a few covers for Shadow Comics, even though he was fully occupied in the service of the Air Corps’ medical division. His sinister cover for Shadow Comics Vol. 3 #7, dated October 1943, depicting the deranged Monstrodamus, captured the essence of the tale within,

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The horror continued with the nerve-jangling skeleton cover to Shadow Comics V3 #11, February 1944, rendered by Vernon Greene, shown to the above left. While next to it, the image of the vampire bat, possibly rendered by Charles Coll, broods on the cover to Shadow Comics V4 #1, April 1944. Below, Charles went for an unusually bloodthirsty scenario for his cover to Shadow Comics V4 #2, cover-dated May 1944.TM & © Conde Nast.

an encounter imbued with an unusual element of fantasy, prior to the obligatory crash, bang, wallop at the finale. A few months later, Vernon returned with a murderous skeleton for Shadow Comics Vol. 3 #11, dated February 1944. His cover design, redolent of its counterparts on The Shadow Magazine, threatened terror most foul. The opening splash continued in the same mold. Indeed, the villain of the piece, an evildoer by the name of Thade, proved himself to be the very epitome of terror. After succeeding in his escape, Thade made his return just a month later, as announced by another of Vernon’s covers, this one overrun by a horde of skeletal figures.

On the introductory splash page, Charles Coll rendered yet another skull-styled scenario to

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compliment this imagery.

It was Charles who was then asked to apply his hand to the next few of The Shadow’s horror inspired covers. He began with the cover to Shadow Comics Vol. 3 #10, January 1944, where he unsettled with his dramatic presentation of the Red Mask. Al Bare’s pencils seized upon this spectacle in the second of this issue’s Shadow stories, in what was a nail-biting encounter, but it was hardly bloodcurdling.

Conjecture persists as to whether the vampire bat cover adorning Shadow Comics Vol. 4 #1, April 1944, can be attributed to Charles’ artistry, but it does have a remarkable resemblance to his impeccable sense of design.

However, his brushstrokes were definitely at work on the splash page, depicting vampire bats adrift in the sky ahead of Thade’s

Above, “The Crypt of the Seven Skulls” sounded like true horror when it appeared in Shadow Comics V4 #7, Oct. 1944, illustrated by Al Bare. To the right, Shadow Comics V4 #12, March 1945. TM & © Conde Nast.

return in “The Ghost Machine.”

A severed head cover continued Charles Coll’s run on this series for Shadow Comics Vol. 4 #2, cover-dated May 1944. This gruesome affair would have raised an eyebrow or two, not to mention selling a few more copies of an issue menaced by Hirohito’s warmongering minions in “The Brain of Nippon.” Once within, Charles actually placed a decapitated head on show, but by comparison to the blood splattered display adorning his cover, the graphic nature of his portrayal was significantly toned down.

The Master of Death

A family curse came down to haunt Shadow Comics Vol. 4 #7, October 1944, the unforeseen revelation behind Al Bare’s spine-tingling cover for this issue’s “Crypt of the Seven Skulls.” With just the slightest glimpse of this frightful episode, the

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reader would have become immediately aware of Al’s flair for this despicable genre. His accomplishments for Street and Smith could have made him a likely contender for the horror craze of a few years hence; however, shortly after this spell in his career, he chose to go into syndicated newspaper strips. For the moment, however, the ever delectable Margo appeared to have been transformed into a skeleton. Of course there was a plausible explanation for this unfortunate occurrence; this was, after all, The Shadow’s comic, not the Crypt of Terror.

Be that as it may, the ever popular skull motif was again in evidence for the memorable introduction to Vol. 4 #12, cover-dated March 1945, although the name of the artist has long since been lost. The ensuing tale “Castle of Death” then lavished the reader with another of Charles Coll’s skull splash pages, the prelude to a rather blackhearted crime caper, where the Master of Death cruelly gambled away the lives of those who crossed his path.

During the early months of 1947, the brushstrokes of Bob Powell began to grace these pages. His lavish

SHADOW COMICS: THE HORROR COVERS

delineation would mean The Shadow would never again to be a horror comic, but over its nine-year tenure on be quite the same. Bob’s “Back From the Grave” cover the newsstand, an abundance of its covers did take an from Vol. 7 #12, dated March 1948, would have found a inordinate amount of pleasure in terrifying its readers. fitting home on the cover of any horror comic published They threatened in a similar way to the posters that during the early 1950s. announced the cinematic thrillers of the day, His artwork for the knowing very well the content could never dare Bob Powell’s unforgettable cover for Shadow Comics V7 #12, March 1948, threatened an accompanying story go the whole hog. Sadly, by the Summer of 1949, abhorrence returning from the grave. TM & continued in the same it was all over for this title, just as the horror © Conde Nast. mode, assisting in comic was beginning to make its presence felt. ■ this presentation of a thriller very much in keeping with the tenor of the crime dramas then filling film theaters across the country. A month later he returned with “The Curse of the Cat” introducing a femme fatale with echoes of Jacques Tourneur’s 1942 horror “Cat People.”

There was a moody air to these pages, reminiscent of the increasingly popular film noir of the period, thus adding to the magnitude of the series. Over the course of the next few issues, several stories muted to have been adapted from The Shadow’s radio plays first broadcast circa 1945 were showcased in these pages, while Bob’s covers continued to explore the darker aspects of this well-established character. In many ways Bob was sewing the seeds for the malfeasance of the next decade, which in turn would keep him in favorable employ for many years to come.

Shadow Comics was never intended

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HAMMER TIME

by Tim Leese

the HOUND of the BASKERVILLES

T

he Hound Of The Baskervilles remains one of Hammer’s most enduring films, its script based on the famous novel penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, on its release in the UK in March 1959, as with its subsequent US premier in July 1959, there were serious misgivings as to how the public was going to react to a Hammer Film Production sans their regular monsters.

Conan Doyle’s novel, featuring the author’s famous consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusted companion Dr. John Watson, had been serialized in The Strand

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magazine in 1901. By then, The Strand was an established monthly magazine, with a US edition set to follow in 1891, both published by George Newnes, the contents predominantly made up of short stories and general interest articles. This already popular periodical saw its sales soar in Britain when the Sherlock Holmes stories began to appear in 1891, the circulation swiftly reaching a staggering 500,000 copies per month.

Conan Doyle had “killed off ” his famous fictional detective some years before in the 1893 saga The Final Problem, burdened by the expectation that came with writing nothing but Holmes

HAMMER TIME

Nothing escapes the watchful eye of Sherlock Holmes, on this occasion played by Hammer favorite Peter Cushing. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

and Watson, and his name having become synonymous with his celebrated creation. When he sat down to write The Hound Of The Baskervilles, it was the first time he had revisited these characters since that fateful tale. Such was the success of The Strand’s serialization of his story—followed by it being collected as a book in 1902—Conan Doyle brought his sleuth back for The Empty House, published in 1903, much to the joy of Holmes fans and the owners of The Strand magazine alike.

Apart from two obscure Indian and German releases, Hammer’s 1959 version of The Hound Of The Baskervilles was the first time a major film company had set to bringing this story to cinemagoers since 20th Century Fox’s 1939 outing, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson. Many now

regard this as the most outstanding film version of the story, with Rathbone cited as the definitive screen representation of the detective. Unfortunately, Bruce’s Watson is not so revered; his bumbling buffoonish manner strays some way from the ex-army doctor’s character of the Conan Doyle stories.

When Hammer commenced work on this film, production duties were handled by one of their great stalwarts and co-founder, Anthony Hinds, with the screenplay assigned to former Hammer cameraman-turned-writer Peter Bryan. Bryan went on to write the screenplays for the classic Hammer movies Brides Of Dracula (1960) and The Plague Of Zombies (1966). The film was stylishly directed by the prolific Terence Fisher, whose savoir-faire would come to epitomize the company’s productions

throughout the 1950s and on into the 1960s. The music for this film was scored by another Hammer regular, James Bernard, who composed the music for many of Hammer’s films—his finale being 1974’s Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell.

The impressive production design was provided by Liverpool-born artist Bernard Robinson, whose lavish sets for Hammer would be adapted for several films, thereby adhering to the constraints demanded by Hammer’s strict approach to budgetary control. The interior of Castle Dracula in the 1958 film Dracula (released as The Horror Of Dracula in the US to avoid confusion with the 1931 Universal film) was reused to provide the interior of Baskerville Hall. Similarly, the crypt in the Dracula film was remodeled for the laboratory in The Revenge Of Frankenstein (1958), while the same Cornish village set appeared in both The Plague Of The Zombies and The Reptile (1966).

The casting began in early 1958 prior to the filming taking place in September and October of that year. The main cast comprised: • Peter Cushing – Sherlock Holmes • André Morell – Doctor Watson • Christopher Lee – Sir Henry Baskerville • Marla Landi – Cecile Stapleton • David Oxley – Sir Hugo Baskerville • Fancis De Wolff – Doctor Richard Mortimer • Ewen Solon – Stapleton • John Le Mesurier – Barrymore • Helen Goss – Mrs Barrymore • Miles Malleson – Bishop Frankland • Sam Kydd – Perkins • Michael Hawkins – Lord Caphill • Michael Mulcaster – Selden In keeping with Doyle’s original tale, much of the story is set on Dartmoor, a vast moorland now designated as a National Park in the county of Devon, down in southwest England. Now, just before we begin, a word of warning, for there is folklore aplenty regarding phantom black hounds on Dartmoor.

One such legend refers to an evil local squire by the name of Richard Cabell, whose tomb was surrounded by a pack of fire-breathing hounds on the night of his internment. The mausoleum encasing his burial site can still be visited by those with the steel for such lore—in the

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This was a rare moment for Christopher Lee in his time with Hammer, cast as Sir Henry Baskerville, a man blighted by a family curse. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

Devon village of Buckfastleigh.

After a ten-minute prologue set in the 18th century recounting the legend of the Hound Of The Baskervilles, the story begins in the city of London in the confines of Holmes’ consulting rooms at 221B Baker Street, when Doctor Mortimer calls upon Holmes and Watson to discuss the recent death of Sir Charles Baskerville. Although Sir Charles’ official cause of death was recorded as heart failure, Mortimer is convinced he died of fright and this was somehow connected to the mythos of the phantom hound. Concerned about the safety of Sir Charles’ heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, who has just arrived in England, Mortimer asks Holmes to investigate further.

Holmes initially dismisses these events as a fairy tale, but agrees to send Watson off to Dartmoor to observe and relay reports back to London.

Watson’s trek to Dartmoor precipitates an adaptation of one of the greatest detective stories ever written.

While not a horror story as such, the remote moorland location with its rocky outcrops, the sinister Baskerville Hall— and the myth of the phantom hound— provide the narrative for Hammer to

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shrewdly elicit the supernatural elements of this story, ergo creating a gothic horror film of noteworthy repute.

The cast is well chosen with Peter Cushing excelling in his role as Sherlock Holmes. Cushing went on to play Holmes again in the 1968 BBC series Sherlock Holmes and later on in the British made-for-television movie The Masks Of Death screened in 1984. There really was no one more suited to the role, as he himself was a Holmes enthusiast, owning an extensive collection of the original Strand magazines. It was the Sidney Paget illustrations, first seen in these magazines, that provided the inspiration for his appearance in Hammer’s presentation. In addition to this, he was also on hand to advise on the preparation of the script along with production. Was there anything this esteemed actor couldn’t throw himself into when on a film set?

André Morell proves to be another eminent member of the cast, turning in a strong performance as Doctor Watson, which is very much in-keeping with the character depicted in Conan Doyle’s original stories. He also deserves due credit for carrying the film for a

considerable period when Holmes is absent from the proceedings, supposedly investigating another case elsewhere. On this occasion, Christopher Lee found himself playing the victim, cast as the troubled Sir Henry Baskerville. As would be expected, he threw himself into the role with the gusto Hammer fans had come to relish.

The lion’s share of the filming took place at Bray Studios, Water Oakley, Windsor, Berkshire, England SL4 5UJ. The visual splendor inspired by these studios has certainly stood the test of time, owing much to the cinematography of Jack Asher and the benefits of glorious Technicolor. On its release, Hammer’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles was distinguished as the first Holmes film to be shot in color. The wonders of modern day technology!

In addition to the work at Bray Studios, several outdoor scenes were shot at Frensham Ponds, Bacon Lane, Churt, Surrey, England GU10 2QB. Fensham Ponds is a rather popular nature reserve, currently owned by The National Trust.

Over the years this location has attracted several other film crews, appearing in The Mummy (1999) and Snow White And The Huntsman (2012) among others.

Other scenes were filmed at Chobham Common, Staple Hill, Woking, Surrey, England GU24 8TU. Hammer also used Chobham Common as a location for their 1957 adaptation of the BBC TV series Quatermass 2, released as Enemy From Space in the US, as discussed by Barry Forshaw elsewhere in this issue.

Hammer returned to the common for a final time in 1967 for the opening guillotine scene in Frankenstein Created Woman, the fourth in Hammer’s Frankenstein series.

Conan Doyle’s setting of Dartmoor National Park is around 200 miles away from where The Hound of the Baskervilles was shot; it was not used in any of the scenes featuring the members of the cast. However, there are a number of panoramic shots of the landscape seen in the film, including Fox Tor Mires, the inspiration for the sinister Grimpen Mire—a treacherous area of moorland bog where the hound was kenneled.

The hound is played in the film by a Great Dane proudly named “Colonel.”

HAMMER TIME In Conan Doyle’s original story the hound is covered in phosphorous paint, heightening its terrifying appearance.

Hammer wisely chose to use a mask in their presentation. This is one of a number of deviations from the original story, no doubt added to boost the story’s appeal for the expectant Hammer audience.

Other disparities included Sir Henry’s encounter with a poisonous spider, a ruined abbey, Holmes trapped in a tin mine, and to cap it all, ritual sacrifice.

On its release in 1959, the film performed surprisingly poorly at the box office despite receiving glowing reviews from the critics. Cushing in particular was praised for his portrayal of Holmes. It has been suggested this underwhelming reception owed much to the absence of the much anticipated Hammer monster.

Also, the aforementioned detours from Conan Doyle’s story would not have chimed well with Holmes’ devotees, who would have simply wanted a detective story in-keeping with Conan Doyle’s work. The Hound Of The Baskervilles was intended to be the first in a series of Holmes Hammer films; alas, as a consequence of disappointing box office receipts, the series was shelved. In hindsight this is great shame, as the film is now widely regarded as one of the era’s classic horrors.

The most recent home entertainment release of the film is Arrow’s 2015 high-

definition Blu-ray (1080p). A good transfer with excellent quality video and audio makes the film enjoyable viewing on the small screen, with a host of bonus extra content including: • Audio Commentary with Hammer experts Marcus Hearn and Jonathan Rigby.

• An interview with assistant director Hugh Harlow.

• Release The Hound. A thirty-minute documentary examining the Hammer film, including interviews with Mark Gatiss, Kim Newman, and hound mask creator Margaret Robinson.

• André Morell: Best of British. A featurette looking at the late great actor André Morell, focusing on his work with Hammer.

• The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes. A 1986 documentary looking at the many incarnations of Holmes, narrated and presented by Christopher Lee. • Actor’s Notebook: Christopher Lee. An archive interview in the which the actor recalls making The Hound of the Baskervilles.

• The Hounds of the Baskervilles excerpts

read by Christopher Lee. • The original theatrical trailer.

• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Paul Shipper.

A collector’s booklet featuring new notes on the film by Hammer archivist Robert J. E. Simpson, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

Despite its poor box office performance at the time of release, Hammer’s The Hound Of The Baskervilles has since become regarded as one of the best screen adaptations of Conan Doyle’s tale. There may have been slight changes to the original account, but the film romps along at a good pace, capturing the gothic mystery in Doyle’s narration.

As previously mentioned, Hammer’s film is visually vibrant, looking as good today as it ever did, unhampered by the company’s usual budget constrictions and the limited special effects technology of the day.

While there have been more faithful interpretations of the story (for example, the BBC’s 1968 production, which also featured Peter Cushing as Holmes), the Hammer version is perhaps the one that best recreates the essence of the book and those ominous moors. Indeed, the mist and the treacherous peat bogs have never been more atmospheric.

In conclusion, it’s a very highly recommended release, and one that sits well with many Hammer and Sherlock Holmes aficionados. It is regrettable that Hammer didn’t continue the series, but in retrospect we should be grateful for being gifted this classic to enjoy on a cold winter’s night.

And always remember—under no circumstances go out onto the moors at night! ■ Tim Leese is a Sherlock Holmes aficionado and longtime horror movie fan. He only puts down his horror novels to share his fascination for this dark genre with Cryptology readers.

Andre Morrell’s portrayal of Doctor Watson was applauded by countless followers of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth. TM & © Hammer Film Productions.

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HORROR COMICS EXCESS

by Peter Normanton

B

efore we say goodbye, let’s return to the grisly theme Steve Kronenberg served up in his “Hands Off!” piece earlier in this issue. It will come as no surprise to learn those muchmaligned horror comics of the early 1950s had a similar fascination with these lacerated appendages. As horrifying as these films were, the imagery abounding in the comic books of the period was so much more gratuitous. It could be said this was largely down to the demands of their bloodthirsty readers, but then the publishers were hardly restrained in satiating these cravings, owing to an absence of adequate legislation to keep them in check—that is, until the latter months of 1954. Thus, anyone seeking blood-soaked excess rife with Ross Andru and Mike Esposito had their fans drooling when they set their devious hands to embellishing “Hand of Fate” for Stanley P. Morse’s Weird Mysteries #3, cover-dated February 1953.

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dismembered limbs, would have to look no further.

Among the more graphic was Alex Toth’s splash page for Adventures into Darkness #8’s “The Twisted Hands,” from February 1953. These blood-stained hands introduced an appreciably powerful story of a corpse’s return from far out in the ocean—with, as you have probably guessed, vengeance in mind. Unfortunately

HORROR COMICS EXCESS for that band of frenzied gore-mongers, the remainder of this account chose to avoid the extremes associated with these years. At least they could feast their eyes on Alex’s bold line. Not so with Story’s “The Running Ghost,” from Mysterious Adventures #12, cover-dated February 1953, which went out to shock from the outset when an assemblage of dislimbed arms and legs acquired a grotesque semblance of life. The name of the artist responsible for this diabolical

occurrence in this funeral parlor has long since been forgotten, but there was a ghastly intricacy to his depiction of these dissected body parts and their mission to mete out justice on the wretches who had hacked them up for trade.

That same month, the up-and-coming Ross Andru and Mike Esposito inflicted

a severed hand splash on the readers of Weird Mysteries #3. This “Hand of Fate” would have done the trick for its publisher Stanley P. Morse, encouraging anyone perusing this gruesome spectacle Mysterious Adventures #12’s “The Running Ghost” (February 1953), was one of the more extreme tales from the period.

Roy Krenkel’s partnering with Harry Harrison for the cover to the second issue of Trojan’s Beware, numbered #14, set the mood, while Harry went even further in the tale “The Clutching Hand.”

to find out more. This stark introduction to the fast-paced tale of two surgeons vying for the top job in the hospital of their employ pulled no punches, rounding off with a sequence of explicit strangulation panels; definitely not for the faint of heart. Just a month later, Harry Harrison sharpened his pencils to deliver a similarly graphic display in “The Clutching Hand” for the second issue of Trojan’s Beware, numbered

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HORROR COMICS EXCESS George Roussos chilled with “Creep, Hands, Creep,” for Suspense #18 (May 1952). TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

#14. Here, Harry went wholehog, detailing a vengeful choking scene from an alarmingly close vantage point, with the bloodied tendons of the wrist almost spilling from the page. Such were the rewards for any thieving ne’er-do-wells in the horror comics of the early 1950s.

Devil Made

Every once in a while, one of these abominable tales drew upon Robert Wiene’s silent masterpiece

Russ Heath’s cover for Journey into Mystery #1 (June 1952) had them screaming, while the brutality in Cal Massey’s “The Clutching Hands” went even further. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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“The Hands of Orlac.” Among the more notable was Horrific #3’s “Devil Claws,” dated January 1953, rendered in the style synonymous with the Iger Studio. Having lost his hands, this distraught pianist made the acquaintance of a strange man in a darkened street. The more prudent would have steered well clear, especially when this sinister individual offered him a new pair of hands. Only when it was too late, did he become cognizant of the murderous compulsion imbued in these devil-made appendages. EC’s portfolio of terror had little time for the devil or any of his minions; theirs was a preference for the evil that men do, as evidenced in the tale “The Maestro’s Hand” rendered

by Al Feldstein for Crypt of Terror #18, cover-dated June-July 1950. The evil in this instance came in the shape of a spurned doctor, who foolishly sought to regain the love of his girl by amputating the hand of her newfound love, an acclaimed pianist. Now acknowledged as one of the earliest of these vengeful hands, this mitt chose to exact revenge on the embittered doctor in a way few would have ever seen in the contents of a comic book.

Al Feldstein’s tale paved the way

HORROR COMICS EXCESS not have been one of the recently been his friend, before making off more notorious titles of with his manuscript and notes. Was it his the period, but frankly, conscience, or could this miscreant really Louis seemed to relish this see his former friend’s clutching hands? It debauchery. was more likely the latter, for these hands Already you can see were resolved to completing the book they these grafts just didn’t had started as a prelude to their murder work. In Vault of Horror of the killer’s publisher. The madness #18’s “Lend Me a Hand,” didn’t end there—far from it, for those from April-May 1951, hands were present to sign the scoundrel’s Jack Davis was tasked confession, prior to hanging him as word with illustrating the tale arrived of his reprieve. This was pre-Code of a surgeon who, having horror at its most acute, a place where lost his hand in a car there was nowhere to hide. crash, came up with the diabolical scheme Guilty Conscience of affixing the hand of Possibly an element of guilt played his murdered victim a part in the Ruben Moreira illustrated onto his own arm. By “The Hands that Could Haunt” observed now we all know the in DC’s House of Mystery #25, coverroutine: this was going dated April 1954. In this telling, the to have somewhat former manager of a concert violinist drastic consequences. was seemingly haunted by the violinist’s In this telling, it was hands, in a murder-mystery tale inthe hand that died, keeping with much of DC’s attitude then in its lifeless state towards mystery during this period, wary assumed control of of venturing too far into the dark side. the surgeon’s body, “The Hand,” rendered by Paul Reinman hauling it back to its place of internment.

A year later, The cover to Ace’s The Beyond #4 (May 1951) may not have been as gruesome as its rivals, but it was the Atlas made compelling prelude to a suitably unsavory story within. use of this idea in Suspense #18, coverfor the Bob Forgione illustrated “The dated May 1952. “Creep, Hands, Dead Man’s Hand” in the ninth issue of Creep,” rendered by George Charlton’s infamous The Thing, from July Roussos, told of a felon being 1953, where the hand of a cruelhearted dragged back to the grave by the pianist returned from the grave looking to skin of a dead man’s hands. Now, avenge those who had conspired to burn if that doesn’t put a shudder along him alive. The hand now had precious your spine, nothing ever will! little interest in the ivories; murder was It wasn’t just those of a musical much more to its taste. A few years before persuasion who were subjected in Ace’s Beyond #4, dated May 1951, to the homicidal scourge of these this scenario had been cleverly twisted hands; writers also fell victim to in “The Spell of the Hypnotic Chord,” their deathly grip. In the cover penciled by Louis Zansky. Initially, the story to Journey into Mystery #1, focus of this tale was placed squarely “The Clutching Hands”—a tale on a deranged knife thrower, who was dramatically embellished by Cal alleged to have killed his rather attractive Massey from June 1952—the assistant during their act. When his hands violence that erupted in the were grafted onto the arms of another opening splash was as extreme as it pianist, soon after the knife thrower’s was ever likely to get. Cal depicted execution, it became terribly obvious they House of Mystery #25 (April 1954) by Ruben Moreira. a failing writer brutally taking the were still very much under the control TM & © DC Comics life of the man who had up until of their psychotic master. Beyond may

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HORROR COMICS EXCESS

Typically, Rudy Palais went to extremes in Black Cat Mystery #34 (April 1952).

for Adventures into Terror #5, August 1951, however, was an odd account, its premise resting on the central protagonist’s inescapable feeling of guilt over his friend’s death during a climbing expedition. Consumed by regret, he would eventually pay the price, for these hands weren’t about to overlook what was in truth a horrible mistake.

If yours is a preference for the extremes in these comics, let’s take a look at Adventures into the Unknown #19’s “The Hands of Horror,” published in May 1951. In this account, artists were also shown to be at risk from the clutches of these maniacal hands. When the rivalry between two artists escalated into full-blown murder, the dismembered hands of the deceased sought to avenge this atrocity, culminating in a horrific strangulation scene, again seen from exceedingly close quarters. This tale was

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a reminder to all, the American Comics Group wasn’t afraid to sully its hands when it came to selling their comics.

Fawcett had never had a problem in selling their esteemed line of comics.

Theirs was a reputation for genuinely gripping stories; “Hands of Vengeance” from Strange Stories From Another World #2, cover-dated August 1952, was no exception. In this telling, believed to have been illustrated by Ed Waldman, the hands of a beautiful young artist were eager to bestow a less grisly kind of justice for her untimely death, leading the guys from law enforcement to the scene of her murder.

While this tale didn’t embrace the lack of restraint enjoyed by their rivals, it was a nonetheless engaging piece of storytelling.

The Hand of Glory

As you may have noticed, many of these severed hand stories were hellbent on revenge, but every once in a while

they sourced a piece of intrigue dating back to England of the 17th and 18th centuries. The severed body parts of those who had been recently hung were believed to contain magical properties, or as in the case of “The Hand of Glory”, were used by crooks to send their victims to sleep, leaving them free to loot their homes. One such hand turned up in Youthful’s Chilling Tales #13, cover-dated December 1952, in the Matt Fox rendered “The Hand of Glory.” Matt’s primitive style worked to exacerbate the hideous nature of this tale, his linework detailing the process of severing the hand before placing a candle in its grasp, designed to induce sleep on those who fell to its spell. Ah, but what happened when the candle slipped from the grasp of one of these atrophied hands? Well, these vagabonds learned the hard way, coming face-to-face with the frightful hanged man, now returned from the grave.

The Sy Grudko penciled “Crimson Hands Against Him” from Web of Mystery #20, coverdated September 1953, took another turn on this myth, telling of another blighted individual who, having met his fate on the gallows pole, was destined to walk the shadowlands with one purpose in mind: reclaiming his hands. His singlemindedness would persist through the centuries, appearing for the last time when his hands were grafted onto the arms of a magician. The aftermath was of course catastrophic, as this long dead corpse wasn’t going to stop until it was reunited with its hands.

The Dark Arts

I’m sure you will agree there’s nothing wrong with asking for a second opinion when you’ve been told there is no hope of saving your arm, but to turn to the Dark Arts—well, that’s another thing altogether. However, that’s exactly what happened in Beyond #20, from May 1953, in the story “Horde of the Faceless,” where this poor soul having lost his arm contemplated suicide. In a roundabout way he would get his wish, once a strange ritual had been performed

HORROR COMICS EXCESS The severed hand in “The Hand of Glory,” rendered in the unmistakable style of Matt Fox for Youthful’s Chilling Tales #13, would have outraged the less discerning.

the Tibetan border, with the power to grant three wishes. Anyone even slightly familiar with a pre-Code horror comic would know these wishes invariably brought with them nothing but calamity; and this unspeakable yarn was no exception.

When the editorial team at Atlas were scheduling their covers, I wonder if Bill Everett’s idea for Journey into Mystery #4, December 1952, could have found a place on the preceding issue where the appropriately titled “Hands-Off,” penciled

by Bill Benulis, appeared. This story commenced with the warning “evil can only bring evil,” as a begrudged inventor agreed to a pact to turn the hands he had manufactured into an evil force. As we have seen elsewhere, the pact turned sour, the relevance of this title becoming oh so obvious, leaving the inventor dispossessed of his own hands. It was a wry offering, of an ilk Atlas seemed to enjoy, devoid of the blood lust for which the youngsters had such a relish.

However, there was rarely an occasion when these hands didn’t mete out their lust for vengeance, giving these young readers exactly what they were shelling out for. ■

by The Faceless Legion to replace his lost arm. You won’t be surprised to hear this replacement brought about disaster, this time on an epic scale, although it did culminate in the deserved demise of the Legion. The arcane was also suffused into the pages of Eerie #9’s “Hands of Death,” cover-dated October-November 1952, courtesy of the artistry of Norman Nodel and Vince Alascia. When the violinist in this tale lost his hands, a medical solution wasn’t forthcoming, so he too turned to the Dark Arts, this time conjured by an evil practitioner

by the name of Necros. These new hands were dispensed by a gathering of strange manifestations dwelling from the other side—hands with an agenda of their own, for they once belonged to a deranged strangler.

Let’s move on, for magic of another kind was in evidence when yet another pair of age-old hands were unveiled in Black Cat Mystery #34’s “Hand of the Yogi,” from April 1952. In this short piece, the blood, sweat and tears of Rudy Palais’ artistry told the story of a severed hand brought back from a village on

Journey into Mystery #4 (Dec. 1952) by Bill Everett. TM & © Marvel Comics.

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ZOWIE!

THE TV SUPERHERO CRAZE IN ’60s POP CULTURE

by MARK VOGER

HOLY PHENOMENON! In the way-out year of 1966, the action comedy “Batman” starring ADAM WEST premiered and triggered a tsunami of super swag, including toys, games, Halloween costumes, puppets, action figures, and lunch boxes.

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ZOWIE! traces the history of the superhero genre from early films, through the 1960s TV superhero craze, and its pop culture influence ever since. This 192-page hardcover, in pop art colors that conjure the period, spotlights the coolest collectibles and kookiest knockoffs every ’60s kid begged their parents for, and features interviews with the TV stars (WEST, BURT WARD, YVONNE CRAIG, FRANK GORSHIN, BURGESS MEREDITH, CESAR ROMERO, JULIE NEWMAR, VAN WILLIAMS), the artists behind the comics (JERRY ROBINSON, DICK SPRANG, CARMINE INFANTINO, JOE GIELLA), and others. Written and designed by MARK VOGER (MONSTER MASH, HOLLY JOLLY), ZOWIE! is one super read!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #37 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #38 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #39 AMERICAN COMIC BOOK BRICKJOURNAL #89 RICK VEITCH discusses his career from THOMAS YEATES career-spanning interThis issue, we combine LEGO and fine CHRONICLES: 1945-49 view about the Kubert School, Swamp

STEVE ENGLEHART is spotlighted in a career-spanning interview, former DC Comics’ romance editor BARBARA FRIEDLANDER redeems the late DC editor JACK MILLER, DAN DIDIO discusses going from DC exec to co-publisher, we conclude our 100th birthday celebration for ARNOLD DRAKE, take a look at the 1970s underground comix oddity THE FUNNY PAGES, and more, including HEMBECK!

undergrounds and the Kubert School; the ’80s with 1941, Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal; to Swamp Thing, The One, Brat Pack, and Maximortal! Plus TOM VEITCH’s history of ’70s underground horror comix, part one of a look at cartoonist ERROL McCARTHY, the story behind Studio Zero— the ’70s collective of artists STARLIN, BRUNNER, WEISS, and others, and more!

Thing, Eclipse Comics, and adventure strips Zorro, Tarzan, and Prince Valiant! GREG POTTER discusses his ’70s Warren horror comics and ’80s reboot of Wonder Woman with GEORGE PÉREZ, WARREN KREMER is celebrated by MARK ARNOLD, plus part one of a look at the work of STEVE WILLIS, part two of ERROL McCARTHY, and more!

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Covers the aftermath of WWII, when comics shifted from super-heroes to crime, romance, and western comics, BILL GAINES plotted a new course for EC Comics, and SIEGEL & SHUSTER sued for rights to Superman! By RICHARD ARNDT, KURT MITCHELL, and KEITH DALLAS.

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RETROFAN #35

IN THE NEWS! Rare newspaper interviews with Jack, 1973 San Diego panel with Jack and NEAL ADAMS discussing DC’s coloring, strips Kirby ghosted for others, unused strip concepts, collages, a never-reprinted Headline Comics tale, Jimmy Olsen pencil art gallery, 2024 WonderCon Kirby panel (featuring DAVID SCHWARTZ, GLEN GOLD, and RAY WYMAN), and more!

Cover inked by DAVID REDDICK!

SUPPORTING PLAYERS! Almost-major villains like Kanto the Assassin and Diablo, Rodney Rumpkin, Mr. Little, the Falcon, Randu Singh, and others take center stage!

Plus: 1970 interview with Jack by SHEL DORF, MARK EVANIER’s 2024 Kirby Tribute Panel from Comic-Con, neverreprinted Simon & Kirby story, pencil art gallery, and more! Unused Mister Miracle cover inked by MIKE ROYER!

SPACE RACES! Jack’s depictions of cosmic gods and life on other planets, including: how Ego, Tana Nile, and the Recorder took Thor to strange new worlds, OMAC’s space age future, time travelers in Kirby’s work, favorite Kirby sci-fi tropes in his stories, plus: a 1967 LEE/KIRBY interview, MARK EVANIER and other columnists, never-reprinted Simon & Kirby story, robotic pencil art gallery, cover inked by TERRY AUSTIN!

MADNESS! Kirby’s most deranged work: Dingbats, Goody Rickels, Destroyer Duck, the Goozlebobber, Not Brand Echh, and wild animation concepts! Plus, a 1980s Kirby interview by JAMES VAN HISE, a look at Jack’s psychedelic coloring, Kirby’s depictions of Dr. Strange, Forever People art gallery, MARK EVANIER, a crazy 1950s Simon & Kirby story, behind an unused Machine Man cover inked by STEVE LEIALOHA!

Saturday morning super-hero Space Ghost, plus The Beatles, The Jackson 5ive, and other real rockers in animation! Also: The Addams Family’s JOHN ASTIN, Mighty Isis co-stars JOANNA PANG and BRIAN CUTLER, TV’s The Name of the Game, on the set of Evil Dead II, classic coffee ads, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.

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Feel the G-Force of Eighties sci-fi toon BATTLE OF THE PLANETS! Plus: The Girl from U.N.C.L.E.’s STEFANIE POWERS, CHUCK CONNORS, The Oddball World of SCTV, Rankin/Bass’ stop-motion Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, TV’s Greatest Catchphrases, one-season TV shows, and more! With ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, MARK VOGER & MICHAEL EURY.

The Jetsons, Freaky Frankensteins, Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling’s HOLLYWOOD, the Archies and other Saturday morning rockers, Star Wars copycats, Build Your Own Adventure books, crazy kitchen gadgets, toymaker MARVIN GLASS, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Tune in to Saturday morning super-heroes Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, The Mod Squad, Hanna-Barbera cartoonists, Jesus Christ Superstar, Mr. Potato Head, ‘Old Yeller” actress BEVERLY WASHBURN, Flying Nun collectibles, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

Can your mind stand the shocking truth of… ED WOOD CAST CONFESSIONS? Plus: Ideal Toys’ Zeroids, television Tarzan RON ELY, Planters® Peanuts’ Mr. Peanut, CHARLES ADDAMS, TV’s The Fugitive, the forgotten 1981 Spider-Man cartoon, and more! Featuring columns by ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, ED CATTO, and MARK VOGER.

Here comes TV’s Dennis the Menace, with stars JAY NORTH, GLORIA HENRY, and JEANNIE RUSSELL! Plus: Hogan’s Heroes turns 60, TV Western Have Gun–Will Travel, Big Little Books, The Incredible Hulk in animation, MICKY DOLENZ as Circus Boy, and more! Featuring columns by ED CATTO, ANDY MANGELS, WILL MURRAY, SCOTT SAAVEDRA, SCOTT SHAW, and MARK VOGER.

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ALTER EGO #191

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ALTER EGO #193

ALTER EGO #194

ALTER EGO #195

MARK CARLSON-GHOST documents the mid-1950s super-hero revival featuring The Human Torch, Captain America, SubMariner, Fighting American, The Avenger, Phantom Lady, The Flame, Captain Flash, and others—with art by JOHN ROMITA, JOHN BUSCEMA, BILL EVERETT, SIMON & KIRBY, MIKE SEKOWSKY, MORT MESKIN, BOB POWELL, and other greats! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

An abridgment of EDDY ZENO’s “Drawn to Greatness” book, showcasing Superman artists who followed JOE SHUSTER: WAYNE BORING, PAUL CASSIDY, FRED RAY, JACK BURNLEY, WIN MORTIMER, and others. With appreciations by ORDWAY, KUPPERBERG, ISABELLA, JURGENS, WAID, MACCHIO, NEARY, NOWLAN, EURY, THOMAS, and more! Plus FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

ROY THOMAS celebrates 60 years in comics! Career-spanning interview by ALEX GRAND, e-mails to Roy from STAN LEE, the history of Wolverine’s creation, RT’s 1960s fan-letters to JULIUS SCHWARTZ, and his top dozen stories compiled by JOHN CIMINO! With art by BUSCEMA, KANE, ADAMS, WINDSOR-SMITH, COLAN, ORDWAY, BUCKLER, FCA, Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and cover by TONY GRAY!

NEAL ADAMS REVISITED! Interviews by ALEX GRAND and BILL FIELD, as well as EMILIO SOLTERA—and an overview of Neal’s merchandising art for Marvel and DC Comics and in other fields, conducted by JAMES ROSEN! Plus Adams art, as inked

by PALMER, GIORDANO, VERPOORTEN, ROUSSOS, SINNOTT, DEZUNIGA, and others! With FCA, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and more!

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#191 is an FCA (FAWCETT COLLECTORS OF AMERICA) issue! Documenting the influence of MAC RABOY’s Captain Marvel Jr. on the life, career, and look of ELVIS PRESLEY during his stellar career, from the 1950s through the 1970s! Plus: Captain Marvel co-creator BILL PARKER’s complete testimony from the DC vs. Fawcett lawsuit, MICHAEL T. GILBERT in Mr. Monster’s Comic Crypt, and other surprises!

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HEY, MISTER ISSUE! The FF’s Mr. Fantastic, STEVE DITKO’s Mr. A, the 40th anniversary of MICHAEL T. GILBERT’s Mr. Monster, Mr. X, the Teen Titans’ Mr. Jupiter, R. CRUMB’s Mr. Natural, Archie’s Mr. Weatherbee, and a Mr. Freeze villain history! Featuring BYRNE, CARDY, CONWAY, DeCARLO, DINI, ENGLEHART, the HERNANDEZ BROS., MIGNOLA, MOTTER, and more!

Cover by ED McGUINNESS.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS 40th ANNIVERSARY! Pre-Crisis tour of DC’s multiple Earths, analysis of Crisis and its crossovers, Crisis Death List, post-Crisis DC retro projects, guest editorial by MARV WOLFMAN, and more! Featuring BARR, ENGLEHART, GREENBERGER, LEVITZ, MAGGIN, MOENCH, ORDWAY, THOMAS, WAID, and more! With GEORGE PÉREZ’S Crisis on Infinite Earths Index #1 cover.

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KEITH GIFFEN TRIBUTE ISSUE! Starstudded celebration of the prolific writer/ artist of Legion of Super-Heroes, Rocket Raccoon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Justice League, Lobo, Blue Beetle, and others!

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