Up for August is this rare title I’ve had for some time now. If I’m not mistaken this publication ran for only four issues and that’s unfortunate based on the amount of information to be found in this 1966 August edition with Boris Karloff’s Mummy featured on the cover.
It’s the only edition of the four I’ve come across.
Plenty of articles and features lay within based on the index found on page three.
Time to focus on some highlights I spotted within beginning with a Basil Rathbone quote under the Dee Shadow Knowz gossipy section.
Also included in the tell-all section are the cancellations of The Addams Family and The Munsters TV shows and goes so far as to say that Yvonne De Carlo and Fred Gwynne “dislike each other.” I wasn’t aware of that if it’s true. Also goes on to say that Fred is looking at becoming a comedy team and making films with Tim Conway! Never happened. Vincent Price is mentioned for an altercation at a London Art Gallery while returning from Rome having just made the film Dr. Goldfoot and the Love Bomb. Hopefully some of his fans were there to see him at the gallery and as for that film? It must have gone under a title change following this article as it was finally released as Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs. As much as I love Vincent they should have shelved this one as it might be the worst film of his career.
Skipping ahead to the section known as 77 Sunset Shriek brings some of my favorite pages when looking back at these old mags. It’s meant to update the reader on upcoming features and TV shows that are soon to be released. Some of which never come to fruition.
NBC is set to release a new show titled Star Trek. “a series set in a future year when spacemen travel from one universe to another searching for new worlds of adventure.” Also coming to the small screen are Time Tunnel and The Invaders. Movie titles and names tossed about include Lon Chaney Jr. returning in Curse of the Screaming Werewolf fated to better known as Face of the Screaming Werewolf, Wendell Corey in Prehistoric Planet Women and Jeffrey Hunter in Witch Without a Broom.
Among the titles I’m not familiar with though they might have been released under a different title are The Ghost of Elisha Doom, The Diabolical Dr. Voodoo and The Horrors of Dr. Freak from director Bert I. Gordon.There’s also mention of a Peter Cushing title, The Night the Creatures Came from producer Richard Gordon which I suspect is a childhood favorite of mine, Island of Terror.
Moving on we are treated to articles on The House of Usher and The Wasp Woman before settling in on a short Q&A with cult director Edgar G. Ulmer. According to the intro Ulmer was in the final pre-production stage of his latest film, Body On the Beach. I’ve no idea how this film’s pre-production stage ended but from what I can tell the film was either never started or competed. The magazine restricts itself to a few questions on the Karloff/Lugosi classic The Black Cat (1934) and the underrated John Carradine feature, Bluebeard (1944).
Cliffhangers from the days of the serial are up next followed by a feature on 1959’s The Giant Behemoth. Cats are featured briefly in a history of movies that star our furry friends like Cat People, The Cat and the Canary etc.
Boris made the cover as Im Ho Tep so the main feature in the magazine is a condensed history of movies that deal with Egypt’s risen Mummy. Everything from Karloff to Chaney to Hammer’s revival with Christopher Lee which is featured prominently via the original film poster.
One of the more interesting things to be found in this edition is “Monster Man for all Occasions”. It’s a spotlight on stuntman/actor Eddie Parker who doubled Karloff in Son of Frankenstein and Lugosi in Frankenstein Mets the Wolfman among so many other titles including Chaney as Kharis in the Mummy cycle from Universal. He doubled everyone from John Wayne in The Spoilers to Arthur Franz’s Monster On the Campus released to theaters in 1958.
Even a comedy pic turns up and if you know the 1931 Frankenstein film well then you might find this amusing.
Other articles follow but moving along here are some of those ads from the back pages I love to feature and the many toys and nostalgic memorabilia I wish I had today.
A professional bald cap? For $1.50 why not.
Damn I wish I had these Don Post rubber masks.
No my Mom didn’t collect spoons from every province, state and small town we visited growing up but I sure wish she had ordered me this set of Monster I Scream Spoons for my daily dose of ice cream. It’s items like these that I wonder if anyone ordered and if there are still some waiting to be rediscovered in a drawer or foot locker of someone’s childhood memories.
I don’t go LP shopping anymore unless something literally jumps into my line of view but maybe I should….
That’s all this month but I’ll be back with something else for September.
Mike's Take On the Movies 
I’ve never heard of this particular title, which apparently came and went in the night with just a handful of issues. I was a devoted Famous Monsters fan back in the day, and I don’t remember that mag delving so much into news and gossip as this one did. The news of upcoming movies that never were is intriguing. The features also look interesting, but those vintage ads are the most entertaining from a 2023 perspective. I-Scream spoons? Who knew?
Plenty of content here and yeah I need those spoons!
Very cool rarity mag Mike, thanks for sharing. A shame this only ran for four issues, I imagine it was difficult to compete with a stellar magazine like Famous Monsters of Film Land back in the day, but at least there were publishers and creators trying.
There was such a rush of Famous Monster competitors back then like Castle Of Frankenstein etc… Fun for us fans of nostalgia.
Some mazing stuff. Christopher Lee on record. Italian sex symbol Laura Antonelli in Dr Goldfoot. They don’t do magazines like this any more beyond an ace product like Cinema Retro. I wish someone would.
Yeah Cinema Retro is about the only magazine I bother with nowadays as far as movies go. A great publication and highly recommended.
I still write a column for it every issue and occasionally contribute a longer article – The Dirty Dozen etc.
Pretty cool…I love the Professional Bald Cap ad…’just cover the ears for grotesque effects’. And are you now on a quest to find the other three issues?
I’m getting to the point where I won’t need a bald cap! LOL. Not a quest but I’ve got my eyes peeled.
I used to eagerly await for the latest Starlog and Fangoria magazines. The good old days! 🙂
yes indeed, the good old days. I actually have a cool LTD edition run hardcover book on Fangoria and all the covers with a signed intro by Bruce Campbell around here. Maybe I should feature it at some point.