“Doctor, I feel run down.”

    The doctor looked at his patent and could easily understand why. The blood dripping on the door, the tire markers his face, were symptoms that told the doctor that the man had just been hit by a two ton truck.

    "Pull yourself together, go out and see a good horror movie,” the doctor prescribed. “It will make a new man of you.”

  Fantastic? Improbable? Who can say. The day may not be so far distant when vitamins will be replaced by vita-monsters, anti-histamines by haunty-histamine, and the common aspirin tablet by chill-pill called GASPirin.

    Un-tranquilizers! Chilltowns instead of Miltown.

    That emotional health and mental stability may be improved by subjecting oneself to safe shocks is the conclusion shared by a number of psychiatrists and anthropologists. Makers of monster movies need make no apology for the quivers they send coursing up and down spines. There may be more therapy in a theraminfilled frisght-film than meets the eye - or the ear.

    Long before horror movies the monsters were among us. In ancient Greek dramas it would be difficult not to note at once that ghosts and ghastly events were part and reel of many a play.

    The great philosopher Aristotle defined the basic function of drama as “filling an audience with terror so as to cleanse its emotions."

    Shakespeare frequently applied Aristotle's purging formula: one has but to think of his apparitions, witches, enraged elements of nature, etc. as examples.

    Who can say but what the Bard of Avalon might not have been writing Frankenstein movie, were he alive today (Shades of Shakespeare!)

    In Bali an annual 3-day festival traditionally includes is its main attraction a play incorporating the most terrifying monsters and demons contained in the Balinese mythology. So great does the excitement become that many of the participants in the festival pass out or enter a trance-like state. When they come to, they report that they feel at ease and fully refreshed. Significant fact: on the island of Bali there are no nervous breakdowns or ulcers.

    Interest in horror flourished in the Romantic era. "Faust" was the most popular shock show in the early 1800’s, with the devil up to his deviltry.

    And so we move through Edgar Allan Poe and other masters of the macabre story to living story-tellers who now employ the wide-screen of the movie theater to tell their tales of terror.

    "Audiences see themselves reflected in film monsters," reveals Dr. Ernest Dichter, writing in a  recent issue of a TV trade magazine. Dr. Dichter, who is president of the Institute for Motivational Research on to ask "When one consider the number of monsters stalking our TV screens today, and the numbers of children and adults who watch with fascination their activities, one is compelled to wonder, what is the appeal of these horrors?”

    The Ph.D. answers his own question by explaining the attraction of the repulsive as interest in forces out of control. “The origins of power and the evils that result from its misuse,” he continues,” are recurrent themes in horror movies, which concern themselves

A rare photo of Boris Karloff with the skeleton in his closet. This is unusual because Karloff usually haunts his own closet.

with the problems of the power of knowledge, creation, resurrection, power for its own sake - the uses and abuses of power."

    Dr. Grace Schlue recently stated to a large television audience, "Everyone harbors a host of terrifying images in his subconscious mind, images that take part in his mental drama of anxiety. The easiest and most appealing method of getting rid of your personal phantoms is to witness a spine-tingling drama.”

    In other words the public re-enactment of private nightmares exercises a kind of video-therapy on audience!

    "How like myself that monster really is." is what the average individual is thinking, reveals Dr. Dichter. Adding: “There, but for the gate of God, go I.”

    Horror films frequently leave one with the feeling of relief that things could be worse than they are in actual life. A tough teacher, a bullying boss, an impossible spouse may become bearable by comparison with the monster in the movie.

    They used to say, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

    A monster a day could turn your hair gray, but one a week might put rosebuds in your cheek.

had a million

the man of a thousand laces

   LON CHANEY, in the words of Jimmy

Durante, had "a million of 'em!" Endless

different characterizations. From 1913 to

1930 he appeared in the fantastic total of

approximately 150 films! In these his appear-

ance varied so widely that no one ever knew

what he was going to look like next, and the

popular saying of the time became, "Look

out! Don't step on it — it may be Lon

Chaney !"
   WHILE PARIS SLEEPS presented him

as a mad scientist.

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT cast him

in the role of a human vampire with a fuzzy

shock of white hair, a pair of bulging eyes,

and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. Black

cape and top hat completed the effect.

THE MIRACLE MAN made Chaney fa-

mous over night in his contorted role as Frog,

the fake cripple, whose paralyzed limbs were

"miraculously" cured in the climax of the

picture.
   THE PENALTY presented Chaney With-

out any legs at all, this effect being painfully

created by his padding his knees with leather

and walking on them For this purpose he

had a harness specially constructed to con-

strict his legs, which were bent up behind

him.
   THE ROAD TO MANDALAY cast Chaney

as s semi-blind man. He achieved this effect

by covering one eyeball with a coating of

white collodion to give the impression of a

cataract.
   TREASURE ISLAND saw him blind

again, this time as the pirate in Robert Louis

Stevenson's classic.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was,

of course, Chaney's crowning achievement.

Many people walk the world today who were

frightened out of a year's growth by the

paralyzing sight of the Phantom's face. As

the author, Gaston Leroux, described the

character, the Phantom was a masterful but

mad musician "whose face was so hideous

that he was forced to haunt the innermost

depths of the Paris Opera." To achieve this

pinnacle of horror, Chaney spared himself

no torture. Witches on the rack in Inquisition

times may have confessed to consorting With

the claim with the application of less pain

than Chaney deliberately subjected himself

to for his art.

chaney

"I've got my eye on you," says

THE MONSTER MAKER. Things

seem to be looking up for him.

   Karloff's most recent role in a horror film

was VOODOO ISLAND. Production of his

STRANGLEHOLD has just been completed,

and it is expected that he will star in a series

of telefilmed adventures of Frankenstein.
   Almost parallelling the career of Karloff,

until his death in 1956, was Bela Lugosi.

In fact Lugosi often co-starred with Karloff.

Lugosi was the more legitimate actor of the

two, having played in silent films, Shake-

spearean plays, and hundreds of perform-

ances on the stage of DRACULA before

singing to international fame like a bat out

of —— well; the movie version of DRACULA

turned Lugosi into a much sought after hor-

ror star over night.

"Go ape, go!" From the mo-

tion picture THE APE, starring

Boris Karloff.

Tooth or consequences! "l'll

bite!" says this South of the

Border vampire in the Mexi-

can production of EL VAMPIRO

From EL HOMBRE Y LA IESTIA (The

Man and The Beast), apparently a

kind of poor man's Jekyll & Hyde.

The original egg-head? Pop-eye the

slayer man? Candidate far a taupee

od? It's Peter Lorre in his first Ameri-

can role as the mad doctor in MAD

LOVE.

A friend of DRACULA as portrayed by

Actor Dwight Frye. The laugh's on him

because his Master isn‘t going to bat

for him.

    Life begins at 140!

    This year the Frankenstein monster celebrates his 140th birthday. What is the secret of his success? How has he managed to survive all these years? Twice the life time of a long-lived man - particularly considering all the abuse that horrifies humanity has heaped upon him.

    Pity the plight of this poor monster, brought to life without his foreknowledge or consent, only to be hounded to death again and again by angry individuals and mobs resenting him as “a crime against Nature.”

    The Frankenstein monster has been alternately burned to death, frozen, boiled alive and - minor inconveniences along the way

Frankenstein makes like Quasimodo in this scene from a Pete Smith novelty short called THIRD DIMENSIONAL MURDER, wherein Ed Payson played the monster.

– clubbed, drugged, electrocuted. Once he was presumably blown to bits and pieces altogether but, no Humpty Dumpty he, it was not impossible for him to be put back together again.

    In his ability to live on and resist injury, even indestructible Superman is almost forced to bow before the superior staying power of Frankenstein, who might well be entitled to be called Supermonster.

    Note: For the remainder of this article, the monster himself will be referred to as Frankenstein. This is a deliberate choice not done through error, ignorance or misunderstanding. The author is well aware that Frankenstein was the name of the creator of the creature, but the world is less interested in Baron Victor Frankenstein than the history and subsequent adventures of his brain-child. It has been the writer's observation that, over the past quarter century, the name Frankenstein has become identified in the mind of the average person with the monster rather than his maker, and it is this reference that will be observed in the following pages.

    So: FRANKENSTEIN. Where did he come from in the first place? Certainly, his famed portrayer, Boris Karloff, hasn't been around 140 years, nor are motion pictures anywhere near that old. No, Frankenstein

didn't begin in the movies, he was born a long time before that.

    Who was his author, then? A man like Poe? A scientist fictionizing an experiment too bold for him to actually perform? An aged author? Let the author's own words speak, and perhaps some clue will be contained in them as to the age and identity or said author:

    Quote: I have tried, in Frankenstein, to preserve the truth of the basic principles of human nature, while I have not hesitated to experiment with them. The event on which my story hinges was suggested in casual conversation. It was begun partly as a source of amusement and partly as a way of exercising the imagination. The opinions which naturally spring from the character and situation of the hero are by no means to be considered as my own.

    The story itself was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid. I spent the summer of 1816 in and about Geneva, Switzerland. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings my companions and I crowded around a blazing wood

fire and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts which happened to be handy. These tales excited in us a playful desire to imitate. Two other friends and myself agreed each to write a story founded on some supernatural occurrence. However, the weather suddenly became calm once again and my friends left me for a journey among the Alps. In the magnificent mountains all memory of their ghostly visions vanished. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.

    "I have a general answer," the author wrote, "to the question so frequently asked me, 'How did I, a young girl, come to think of and elaborate such a hideous idea?”

    What's this? Did you read right? A young girl wrote FRANKENSTEIN? That's absolutely right. It's incredible but true and one for Ripley that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was only 17 years old when she created this world-famous horror classic!

    In other words, in a case of truth being stranger than even strangest fiction, the author of FRANKENSTEIN was not only a girl, but a teenager!!!

    And a banned teenager, at that! Not then and there, as far as is known, but it was reported as late as 1955 that the Union of South Africa had made FRANKENSTEIN a forbidden book. Anyone owning & copy could be fined and sentenced to jail for 5 years! Considering that in the U. S. A. you can pick up a second-hand copy of a pocketbook edition of it in most any magazine shop for ten cents, it is amazing how a switch in geography can multiply its value 28,000 times! $2,800 is only about $45 rent a month for a furnished cell, and presumably there are three free meals a day; so if you want to relax with an unusually interesting and famous book, get yourself a copy of FRANKENSTEIN and head for South Africa. Better check first, though, on whether the movies are banned too!

    The first FRANKENSTEIN film was released in America in 1932. Our country was in a Depression and people were pinched for pennies, particularly there was not much "mad" money for motion picture entertainment. Still, FRANKENSTEIN played to S. R. O. (Standing Room Only) crowds and broke house records at the "bucks" office. Instead of on the celluloid itself, sound was recorded at that time on kingsize phonograph records that, curiously, played from the inside out. The sweetest sound of all, however, was the clinking of dollars in the cashiers' tills throughout the land, almost

drowning out the shrieking of terrified patrons—those whose vocal chords weren't paralyzed with fright.

    Needless to say, FRANKENSTEIN skyrocketed an obscure ex-truck driver named William Henry Pratt to fame over night, or over nightmare might be the more nearly accurate description. Bill Pratt was better known then, as now, by his film name: Boris Karloff.

    They say that George Jessel turned down the role of THE JAZZ SINGER and Al Jolson took it, thus "Jolie" became the star of the historic "Talkie" picture that ended the era of silent movies. Just so Bela Lugosi is reported to have passed up the original opportunity to portray Frankenstein, although in one of the later sequels he did act the part of the monster.

The book FRANKENSTEIN can be borrowed from most any library, and is interesting to read to compare with the first movie version. There are considerable differences. Many sequels, many monsters and many millions of feet of film later, the true story of Frankenstein is yet to be told.

    FRANKENSTEIN was launched on his tremonstrous career with ambulances standing by in the front of theaters in the event anyone inside fainted, and nurses in attendance in the lobbies to administer smelling salts to the faint-hearted.

    Victor Frankenstein, convalescing from his fight with the monster and fall from the top of his castle onto one of the vanes of a windmill. at last recovery. He is visited be a sinister Dr. Pretorious, the experimenter from whom he first learned the basic elements of the artificial creation of life Pretorious wants Dr. Frankenstein to aid him in further investigations of his own into the mysteries of life.

    Victor Frankenstein, still awed by his own success in instilling life in a dead form, accompanies Pretorious, who reveals to him a sight of super-science: his astounding work of test-tube life. Experiment of tiny living human beings created from culture! Fantastic figurines, imprisoned alive in small glass bottles! All heed to bis promise to Elizabeth, his wife, is swept away as Dr. Frankenstein is again transformed into a zealot, fanatic to further a new project: the creating of a mate for the monster!

    The bloodless-faced Frankenstein is more monstrous than ever now, the hair scorched on his misshapen skull through which strips of sewn silver show, one arm seared by the angry flames. Bloodhounds track down the pathetic creature, and he is bound to a pole, carted to the village and securely imprisoned in jail. Securely? So the townspeople mistakenly believe. With his inhuman strength, seven foot five Frankenstein breaks his bonds and escapes, killing several people in the process.

    The monster makes for the mountains and stumbles upon a hermit's hut. The hermit is blind and plays a violin. Strains of music attract Frankenstein to the old man's hearth. Since the blind man cannot see the aspects of his visitor which invariably horrify humanity, he accepts the monster as a man who cannot speak, Frankenstein at last has a friend and is overcome by signs of kindness. He learns to understand and speak a few words, and there is every evidence that he might lead a halfway normal life if undiscovered and left alone.

    Unfortunately, several months later Frankenstein is seen by hunters in the wood and shot at Again he is forced to flight. He

Bela Lugosi disguises all but his distinctive nose in playing the part of the world's favorite monster In FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN.

takes refuge in a cemetery. He feels he belongs with the dead, there is nothing but hatred and hopelessness for him among the living.

    The same night Frankenstein hides in the graveyard, Dr. Pretorious and two assistants steal into the burial ground vault to secure a female skeleton on which to fashion the body of a mate for the missing monster. There Pretorious meets Victor Frankenstein's creation, who carries on a halting conversation with the doctor. The monster is delighted to learn that a companion is to be made for him.

    But Victor Frankenstein begins to regret his association with Pretorious and now attempts to back out of the second experiment. To force him to cooperate, the monster kidnaps Dr. Frankenstein's wife.

    The picture is at its peak.

    In a reduplication of the original sensational laboratory sequence, the body of the synthetic woman is raised to the top of the tower at the height of a raging storm, while the great life-making ray machinery crackles electrically, creating a cannon-loud, awe-inspiring spectacle.

The gauze-wrapped form is lowered, alive!

"Na," says Dracula to Glenn Strange as the monster in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, "you stay here and mind the dungeon while I run down to the corner drugstore for a sleeping pill. Lately I've been having daymares."

   It is a little known and surprising fact that there actually was a Frankenstein Castle, constructed (fittingly enough) in the 13th century. Its ruins, about 1200 feet of them, stand today. It was built about 1250 A.D. by & young Frankenstein on the side of a long and narrow range of hills which are but a few hours' drive from Frankfurt-on-the-Main in Germany.

    Castle Frankenstein when new must have been strong enough to withstand — almost - the attack of even a mythical monster. It was fortified by a whole system of moats, drawbridges, outer walls and bulwarks.

    But wait — did we speak of a mythical monster? The tomb of a Knight George actually exists near the Castle, and legend has him killed by "a terrible man-eating monster in the neighborhood of the Katzenborn (Cat's Well), which frightened the whole valley of Niederbeerbach below. It was believed that the beast would only retire for good if the most beautiful woman to be found in the territory were sacrificed. This was Annmary, the forester's daughter. Knight George sought out and slew the monster in a furious struggle. but he too died, of a poisoned wound that he received in the hollow of his knee."

    Five hundred years after its construction the Castle lay in a state of decay. It is about to be reconstructed. this time in a film called FRANKENSTEIN'S CASTLE. There are rumors that the actual castle conceals & treasure; certainly the Frankenstein legend itself is a literary treasure which never fails to produce silvery riches for the Hollywood film-makers who explore its theme further.

    Boris Karloff was still portraying the Monster in SON OF FRANKENSTEIN. In this episode, Victor's son Wolf is horrified to learn from $ crazed shepherd named Ygor that the monster has risen from the grave. In the ugly demented Ygor the monster has found a friend.

    Eight jurors had sentenced Ygor to hanging for grave-robbing, but the execution had been bungled and Ygor set free with his twisted neck — and mind. Ygor now lives with but one passion — revenge — and in the monster Ygor has found his ideal instrument to help him carry out his vengeance.

Fearing that Wolf Frankenstein will kill his father's creation, and thus rob him of his good right arm, Ygor attempts to kill the scientist but is killed himself instead. Blindly striking out to avenge the death of Ygor, the monster kidnaps Wolf's little son and carries him to the tombs to kill him. Father rescues son in time, and the monster meets a spectacular "death" in a bubbling pit of molten lava.

    So much for IT'S.

    And on to THEM! “THEM” was the exciting melodrama of mankind's imminent invasion by ant-kind, but not ordinary size ants: Giants. The mystery and terror begins above a New Mexico desert, as a helicopter pilot sights a little girl on the sand below, clutching a doll and wandering aimlessly. Pilot reports to a ground "patrol, and two state police drive to the vicinity. A patrolman jumps out and runs calling "Little girl! Little girl!” The youngster pays no attention, but trudges on like a zombie. He carries her to the squad car where, over the radio, the helicopter reports a trailer sighted about two miles ahead. Presuming this is where the puzzling child has wandered away from, the patrolmen head there.

    At the trailer, the men are amazed to find a whole side of it apparently blown out. Inside all is shambles, but there is no evidence of an explosion nor has anything valuable (money is strewn about) been stolen. Outside something which might be a queer, large footprint is noted.

    The patrolimen continue to a nearby one-man store to determine if the shopkeeper can shed any light on the mystery. Here they find the terrible damage repeated, the canned goods and dry goods looking as though they had been caught up in a tornado. A sugar barrel is overturned and a shotgun is found, its metal barrel broken as though a matchstick. Investigation reveals that the gun's cartridges had been fired - and the missing

owner was known to be a crack shot. He is finally found in the basement - his back broken, lung punctured and, most inexplicable of all, body pumped full enough of formic acid to kill a bull elephant!

    A plaster cast of the unidentified footprint from beside the trailer is sent to Washington. All concerned are surprised in return to have two entomologists added to their investigating group. When, in a layman psychiatrist's attempt to shock the little girl out of her frozen attitude, the chief entomologist unstoppers a bottle of formic acid beneath her nose, the child reacts violently, regaining her voice only to cower in the corner wide-eyed and screaming “Them! – Them”

    Shortly thereafter, back at the scene of the first tragedy, the identity of "Them" is revealed as the first of the giant ants makes its appearance. Confronted, the outsize insect sets up a horrendous shrilling as it is fired upon and its antennae shot off.

    By air the lair of the ant monsters is located. Armed with flame-throwers, bazookas, hand grenades and poison gas, & party of four, including the girl-assistant, wipe out the nest - all except two great eggs which are split open and ... empty. Two winged giants have escaped and are even now on their "wedding" flight. Their range is such that they could fly to any part of the North American continent to lay their eggs. Their spawn will be numerous and the original pair's egg-laying capacities in force for 17 years.

   He could have fractured the giant concept altogether: the Colossus couldn't possibly support his own weight; he'd have to spend all his time stuffing his stomach with fuel; his ears wouldn't function, he couldn't hear anything because of the thickening of his membranes in the eary canal; etc.

    Fault finder! Fun spoiler! Hey, Mr. Colossal Man, stomp on that Technical Advisor, he's a nogoodnik square from northeast of nowhere. Mash him down into jello pie before he ruins our nightmares. Next thing, he'll say there isn't any Santa Claus!

Sic the Creeping Unknown on him!

    THE CREEPING UNKOWN-what was it? How could it be stopped? Bullets couldn't kill it, fire wouldn't halt it. It came from interplanetary space, threatening to wipe all living things from the face of the earth. Terror, horror and panic followed in the wake of its discovery. It all began when three men rocketed into the unknown, and only one came back.

    The sole survivor is queried by his cohorts who sponsored the space flight, but he can shed no light on the mystery of what became of his companions. Another thing: he has more than subtly altered; his wife especially recognizes a difference in him, an alien streak that strikes at her feminine intuition and rings alarm bells. For somewhere along his journey into the region of the cosmic rays, he has met with a strange experience that not only has caused the bodily vanishment of his companions but has begun to change him physically and mentally. Now, though he still retains the outward form of a human being, he is neither all man, nor yet beast, nor fish nor fowl, but a "thing" the like of which the world has never known before.

    Some invisible entity, some life force lurking in space, has penetrated the hermetically sealed metal skin of the rocket and taken sinister possession of the survivor's body. "It" feeds on the human blood stream and bodily tissues as well as plant life, transforming what was once a man into a humanoid, half animal, half vegetable. It increases in size and strength, growing more powerful with each passing hour. Its appetite is insatiable, so that it becomes a mounting threat to all life.

Out of an oceanarium crawls the Creature from the Block Lagoon, roaring defiance at his captors in this scene from REVENGE OF THE CREATURE.

Before the Unknown has been done in, the former man is changed into a crawling horror, a giant blob of oozing gelatine resembling a great jellyfish. Electrocution is the end.

All In The Mind

    One of the weirdest monsters of them all was the thought beast that came out of the brain (plus the paint brushes of a number of Disney artists) of Dr. Morbius. This scientist, as you may recall, dwelt on the distant FORBIDDEN PLANET named Altair 4 far beyond our own solar system's outermost Pluto. There, a million years after all the original inhabitants of the world were dead, à monster sprang to life from the mind of Dr. Morbius. Great machines, still functioning beneath the surface of the planet, reached beneath the surface of the scientist's mind and caused his wildest nightmare to take on a semi-solid form that could thoroughly frighten any movie-goer. The climax of the spectacular multimillion dollar "scientifilm" came when the evil brain-beast was attacked by every advanced weapon at the command of a crew of spacemen. The mighty monster - which looked like a combination of ape, bull and snake - roared and hissed, danced and howled in rage and defiance and pain, until its creator died and the product of his tortured brain dissolved.

THEY'RE COMING FROM INSIDE - OUTER SPACE

    Monsters from All Over are due this year, & VAMPIRE FROM SPACE, a FIEND WITHOUT A FACE, several robots, a GIANT WOMAN, two VOLCANO MONSTERS, a PROJECTED MAN, an "it" that falls from THE FLAME BARRIER, a NOMOGLOD, the SLIME PEOPLE, a new mummy (the old one retired on an old age pension after 3.000 years). a TEENAGE WITCH and GRAVE-ROBBERS FROM OUTER SPACE.

    We can all thank our lucky stars there's also expected to be THE BOY WHO SAVED THE WORLD!

    THE stove was opened and the hostess removed a baked head.

    Nobody batted an eyelash.

    Of course maybe that was because none of them had eyelashes, although at least one of the guests at the party had three eyes.

    This incident, which would unnerve most people but was taken for granted by those present, happened at Hollywood's most unusual Halloween Party. Last October, at the

hide-away home of Mr, and Mrs. Paul Blaisdell, a weird assortment of guests was present and celebrating the occasion.

    THE SHE-CREATURE was escorted by the three-eyed mutant from THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED, THE CAT-GIRL came with THE FANTASTIC PUPPET PEOPLE, and the Venusian from IT CONQUERED THE WORLD would have been there but he couldn't squeeze his great bulk through the front door.

Step 2 through 4 are now reposted to construct monster’s face and lower part of head.

Hands are constructed In much the some manner as the head – story called for eyes to be built on the hands too!

    First a head or body form is molded out of clay.

    Then a plaster mold is made of the clay form.

    From the plaster mold comes a rubber mold.

    Plastic eyes and teeth are added.

    And like & living statue, the "thing” is painted - a brilliant red in the case of the giant cucumber creature from Venus (IT CONQUERED THE EARTH) or sea-green and seaweed brown in the case of THE SHE-CREATURE.

    Blaisdell's priceless secrets of monster-making are carefully guarded in his Topanga canyon retreat. where visitors to his laboratory-like workshop must first cross a high aerial suspension bridge over a raging river. (He loses more visitors that way.)

    Asked what the single most costly substance of his specialty is, in an exclusive interview for FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND Famous Monster-Maker Blaisdell answered without hesitation: "Midnight oil! I burn it by the barrel, keeping creatures rolling off the assembly line 'round the clock.” Looking at his stock of shock masks, fangs, talons, tails, horns, etc., it was easy to believe he was telling the truth.

    Hollywood Producers requiring creatures for I WAS A FRACTURED FRANKENSTEIN or THE GASSER FROM OUTER SPACE (well, that's the way the soda pops) or I WAS A PREHISTORIC DRIP (yep, that's the way the water falls), just dial IT – 1313, and if a Monster answers, don't hang up, he'll call his Boss to the phone for you right away.

"HELP!"

    For ages children have asked parents, school students have asked teachers, and deep thinkers have asked themselves this same puzzling question: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

    And ever since the first monster movie sent shudders up and down spines like venetian blinds, theater patrons have asked themselves a similar question which televiewers are now taking up. Movie-goers and teevee-stay-at-homers are joining forces to ponder: “Which comes first, beauty or the beast? For wherever Beauty walks, the Beast is sure to shamble.



    How successful would Frankenstein have been without a woman to menace?

    Over what would Marla English have looked wide-eyed and terrified in THE SHE CREATURE if the lobster lady had not crawled out of the ocean to frighten her?

    Would Dracula's thirst have been satisfied So sweetly if he hadn't had such a comely wench with whom to quench his dry throat?

    And with whom could the Egyptian heroine have got so chummy if the nice bone-dry mummy hadn't appeared on the scene?

    Young ladies who are dying to make a living need monsters to scare the yell out of them, and even monsters must eat and nobody is going to feed them unless they do a bang-up job of frightening the ladies fair.

    The most valuable asset of a horror movie star is her lungs. Some contracts call for a non-smoking clause during her enactment of a role in a monster film, so that costly delays will not ensue should she develop a cough or sore throat.

    A common cold can be dangerous or even fatal to a horror queen, for without her scream half the battle is lost.

    Since “dubbing” was invented, some unknown actresses who never receive billing have made a substantial living out of screaming: they earn their daily bread and butter by yelling their heads off for beauties who have looks and acting ability but not a hi-fi screech.

    A hi-fi holler is worth top dollar in horror movies.

    Scary-o-phonic sound was first heard in KING KONG when the heroine was put through her classic paces. Asked to make faces before a camera, as though she were looking higher and higher and higher until suddenly, she saw a monster several stories tall, Fay Wray nobly gave out with a series of shrieks so piercing that some people's eardrums almost popped. It was the shock heard 'round the world.

    If there's one thing monsters love, it's making beautiful girls scream. They don't even have to touch them, just let them glimpse their ugly kissers—as long as they get one big yell out of them before they go limp, the monster's night has been worth living.

    In fact a monster, whose best working hours are generally after midnight, will even prowl by day if he has good reason to believe he may run across a beauty who'll do her duty by monsterdom and open up her mouth and make with her vocal chords.

This hopeless heroine is really getting carried away. By the world's most famous monster. In FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN.

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Can you blame her husband for leaving her at the alter – of science?

    And, by the same token, Beauty without her Beast would be like bread without yeast, school without vacation, rock without roll, an LP record with a 78 rpm player, and coca without cola.

    So, experts say, yellavision is here to stay and hi-cry heroines will keep heroes busy running to their rescue long after the first rocket has reached Mars And if there are any monsters on Mars, we may depend upon it that great Martian movie beauty queen, Marsaline Mahnro will scream her throat as dry as the Martian sands'.

Watch your step, DR. CYCLOPS, that's our little Nell that you're about to turn into j-e-l-l-e.

    “Dracula is the coolest!”

    “Yeah, he's a real champ vamp. But who wouldn't be cool, sacking out all day in an underground coffin and flying around all night in a bare bat's skin?”

    This, and conversations similar to it, are typical of televiewers' comments throughout the land as they turn from re-re-re-revivals of that perpetual favorite among fans of vampire films, DRACULA.

    The scene: An average living room with a TV set, tuned to a late-night showing of DRACULA.

    The classic melodrama has just drawn to its conclusion: the aged professor, having had plenty of time to think about it, has just “thunked” the pointed wooden stake

through the centuries-old heart of the evil blood-sucking creature.

    Next week: DRACULA'S DAUGHTER.

    Moral: You can't keep a good vampire down. While a bad one is, well-mur-der!

    It was a natural that vampires, witches, ghouls and all manner of "things that go boomp in the night" should come to TV in a bumper crop.

    In fact, it was a super natural.

    The supernatural has come to the tele-channels on & monster scale. So far the scale has not been identified, whether it came from Moby Dick, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, but all agree it is a MONSTER scale.

    There is no truth to the rumor that Universal-International Studios is going to cast Esther Williams as a damp vamp in an underwater horror film called THE FATHOM OF THE OPERA, but it is true that all roads lead to Universal Studios when the topic turns to monster movies. And not only the topic but the trend turned to monster movies last summer.

    When news leaked out of the vault that the fabulous full-length horror features in Universal's motion picture library were being exhumed like a mummy for individual telecasting, TV station managers with long memories wired, phoned and sent carrier-bats to Screen Gems (an agency that markets films for television) requesting a flock

of said movies. They recalled how a whole new horror cycle had started up overnight 15 or 20 years ago in Beverly Hills, Calif., when the manager of the local theater, having no current product to show, had revived FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA on a double bill. Such enthusiastic crowds had appeared out of nowhere that he was forced to run the pictures 24 hours 'round the clock to standing-room business.

    The vampire virus spread, and soon DRACULA was swooping low again through the country, collecting blood and dough wherever he dived, in the company of his muscle-man companion, “cranky Franky.”

Bewitching? What else would you expect from a witch woman on TV!

    So there is really nothing unusual about the enthusiasm displayed for a fine collection of monster movies when you get right down to considering the facts about films shown on television. The way it works is (hold onto your wigs, here we go behind the scenes to reveal inner workings that even Ripley didn't know till now):

    In 'most every city, town and hamlet (how'd Shakespeare get in here?) in the country, at least one TV station plays feature motion pictures after 11 p.m., using some such title as "The Late Show," "Midnight Melodrama" or "Night Owl Theater.”

    Now the TV stations purchase these movies in lots of from 6 to 600 from various distributors, and schedule them according to the known tastes of their particular audience. These stations usually buy good pictures, but they rarely seem able to collect enough of a kind to insure a faithful following of watchers.

    Inspiration: gather together all the great Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, Rathbone, Lorre, etc., horror films, and sock them over the tele-waves, wave on wave, week after week, for 52 weeks!

    Among horror programs created in the past for the TV networks, there had been only one devoted to the supernatural --"Lights Out" - which was finally killed off by the competition of "I Love Lucy.'

What the well-dressed Mummy is wearing this season. In the hey-days of the Egyptian Pharaohs they made clothes like these to last 3000 years. From THE MUMMY’S TOMB. And the first one says “tomb much” gets embalmed!

   KONG the box-office champion and sensation of the New York telecasts set the men in the gray channel suits thinking, thinking the most "horrifying" thoughts.

    HORROR ISLAND—now there was a picture that should prove a treasure island on TV. SHE-WOLF OF LONDON: beauty or beast? Woman or monster?

    Wouldn't TV be great for showing terror from the time of the Pharaohs! Horror that lay entombed for 3,000 years, then returned to life to bring death to the living. THE MUMMY!

    And how about MAN-MADE MONSTER. death-dealing dynamo! All the furies of nature in his electric-charged body, his revenge-wracked brain.

    Greater and greater the list grew. And grue!

    HOUSE OF HORRORS.

    THE MAD GHOUL.

    NIGHT MONSTER.

    THE MUMMY'S HAND... THE MUMMY'S TOMB ... THE MUMMY'S GHOST.

    And a name to conjure with: Edgar Allan Poe, mystery master of the macabre. His masterpieces: MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE ... THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET... THE BLACK CAT ... THE RAVEN.

    Across the nation TV stations held preview parties for their new “Shock!" program. Masked waiters served tomato juice "buckets of blood" to blood-thirsty prospective sponsors in TV studios decorated like haunted houses.

    Local stations came alive and vied with neighboring towns to outdo each other in scary stunts. Frankenstein monsters multiplied like amoebas, and stalked the streets of scores of American towns.

All together, now, to the tune of well-known singing commercial: “You'll wonder where the werewolf went, when you brush his teeth with wolf bone, gent.” Henry Hull as the. WEREWOLF OF LONDON.

    In New York, Mary Shelley's famous Monster toured the business district in a horse-drawn hearse.

    The hearse that drew the Monster through the busy streets of New York was painted blood-red rather than the usual black. Franky's traveling companion was a lady vampire on her way to see a psychiatrist. She had a strange complaint: she slept at night and prowled by day.

    Four days before the 1957 World Series, the Monster got in line at the Yankee Stadium to buy the first bleacher seat. The ticket-seller blanched as white as a ghost. You can imagine what happened when the umpire met the vampire!

    In Philadelphia, a somewhat more sober city than New York, the Frankenstein monster rode around town in an ancient Packard Limousine with the local version of Vampire hanging on his arm. Yes, hanging. It was a very short rope and she didn't have to hold her breath more than an hour at a time.

    Anyway, what's so strange about that? Viewers of "Shock!" and "Nightmare" have been known to hold their breaths through 90 minutes of a horror film.

    In Los Angeles a starlet with her hair standing on end monroe'd her way through the streets to the city desks of newspaper

offices and TV Page Reviewers to present them with Do-It-Yourself Nightmare Kits.

    And so, accompanied by a fantastic amount of fanfare from billboards to busy streets, the Hep Parade of Horror Pix went on the air late in '57. Batwings beat the air; you, couldn't even breathe the air around a TV set on Nightmare Night without detecting the odor of a secret potion mixed by a mixed-up mad scientist.

    Whole new series of frightening films are being planned especially for television. Boris Karloff will be back soon in no less than thirty-nine TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN. The unstoppable INVISIBLE MAN will create undetectable disaster, in a brand new TV series.

    THE WAXWORKS OF MME TOUSSAUD and new adventures in the HOUSE OF WAX will reveal each other for horror-ratings - but at the same time they'll have to watch out for GRAND GUIGNOL!

    Rock 'n' roll is giving way to shock 'n' ghoul.

Working in horror films seems to have given this boy the Big Head. He's to be seen on the telescreen In HOUSE OF HORRORS.

    If you are a dyed in the wolf horror fan, or if you collect pinup pictures of Karloff, Lugon, Chaney, Peter Lorre, Tor Johnson, John Carradine, Basil Rathbone and similar stars, you will be sure to recognize the right answers to most of the questions in this quiz.

    If your nose has been glued to your TV for such shows as SHOCK, NIGHTMARE, WITCHING HOUR, etc, maybe it can be unstuck by an application of soap and hot water.

    If you miss more than half the questions, you had better memorize the contents of this magazine. If you miss all the questions, you've been missing a lot of the fun in life!