Hooked on Horror

August 2012

 

Still Hooked On on Horror After All These Years!

Nostalgia Rules...

      

Thirty Five Years Ago: Horror & Sci-fi collecting... circa 1978 (toy robots were a new interest!)



44 Years Ago... Teenage Obsession: Part of my growing collection circa 1969
included Hammer posters, press books, stills, monster mags
and Aurora model kits; Dracula, King Kong and Godzilla!



    Amazingly, these old plastic kits from the 1960s are now collected through eBay!

 One rather special LP vinyl record still remains with me:

Hear the "scream heard around the world!"

And so does my Issue #1 of CREEPY... offers on a postcard please...

Forrest J Ackerman never failed us with these wonderful covers celebrating
FAMOUS MONSTERS
These covers did it for me!

O

Monster Thrills...

 







"As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, someone is about to die..."
It was not only American pulp magazines that found their way to the UK... "Thriller" (1960 - 1962 in the USA) presented by Boris Karloff (aged 71), was one of many American TV series that found an eager UK audience in those far off days of the Sixties. I recall staying up late for this one but it wasn't a patch on our home-grown "Mystery and Imagination".



Around the same time as 'Thriller' and 'The Outer Limits' UK TV

audiences were treated to "Silents Please", featuring some wonderfully

vintage Famous Monsters. Clips from some of the silent era's best films

were showcased in this series, including scenes with Lillian Gish, Rudolph

Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, Lon Chaney Snr, Charlie Chaplin and

Buster Keaton.







O

Supernatural Horror Filming (1969)
created by Tim Stout (1946-2011) it apparently had its launch party
in the basement of the Soho coffee bar, Le Macabre. See earlier blog.

David Pirie (born 1953) hit the subject on the nail... or should I say, staked out

his arguement? in his 1974 book A HERITAGE OF HORROR




"The first and most quoted book on the British horror movie, David Pirie s
acclaimed 'A Heritage of Horror' has long been regarded as a trail-blazing
classic, having the force of a revelation , according to one recent study of
the subject, inspirational in another. It was the first book to detect and
analyse the roots of British horror, identifying it as the only staple cinematic
myth which Britain can properly claim as its own and was consequnetly
 heralded by film-makers like Michael Powell and Martin Scorsese."


O

X - Rated Horrors!

Pre-teen horrors/ BFM: Before Famous Monsters...



Nostalgia Rules: 1st ever "horror" I saw on TV (1964), the remarkable
Charles Laughton in 'The Hunchback of Notra Dame'



Nostalgia Rules: second "horror" seen on TV (1965), the outstanding

"Quatermass II"

The third TV film treat back then, I recall, was the incomparable

"King Kong"

       

 


O

For One Week ONLY!

Nostalgia Rules: my first "horror" feature on a big screen (winter 1966),
Hammer's double-bill
"Dracula - Prince of Darkness" and "Plague of the Zombies"

O

 A taste of the past...

 



And remember those bubble gum cards

and that stale piece of bubble gum?

 

  Ok, I can't resist.... "Fangs For The Memories"...

 O 

NO HOPE for us victims of
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND!
 Fooling around at the Saachi Contemporary Art Gallery,
London,  2012

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