Vanity Scare #15

CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN (#25, June 1975)

These days, we take certain things for granted.  For instance, you have incredible writers like Dom Coccaro churning out steadfast, high-principled content in the field of horror journalism (he also excels in other fields and is said to be "about that life").  But horror journalism didn't always exist.  You couldn't always rely on Fangoria or Rue Morgue for knowledgeable reviews of current flicks.  Of course, those are fusty, outdated references, but you couldn't always fall back on the Internet either.

Records indicate that serious commentary on the genre didn't transpire in magazine form until Castle of Frankenstein.  Print editor Calvin Beck started the rag in 1962.  I imagine that it carried an underground vibe, seeing as how there was no corporate advertising and it was honor-bound to its own unorthodox publishing schedule.  New issues were simply made available when they were completed.  All told, CoF reached twenty-five installments before Beck decided to pull the plug in favor of writing fiction.

I'm surprised that it took so long for monster movies to be seen as art.  Why shouldn't they have their own omnibus of editorials, their own glossy gazettes?  Reading anything from decades past, you're going to matriculate the way perspectives have changed over time.  Just glancing at the fan letters, I learned that film critics were once valued with brighter esteem.  What happened?  You can barely call "film critic" a job nowadays.  No one will pay you for your opinion, unless you have held that post for a perdurable spell (Leonard Maltin comes to mind).  Film itself has depreciated in worth, so it tracks that coverage of the medium has been devalorized.

Fuck, that's depressing.  Why don't we talk chainsaws?  You and me!  If you don't know (and you should, excepting the condition that you're new here), my favorite motion picture is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The original, you human dunce cap!  Don't ever ask again!  Anyway, Richard Buonnano pens an excellent piece on Tobe Hooper's magnum opus.  The whole article is about the badassery of the thing and how it's infinitely scary.  Remember, this was written less than a year after its release.  Do I really need to explain why it's such a fun read?

I enjoyed the interview with Darren McGavin, conducted in between seasons of The Night Stalker.  Man, what a nifty show.  It wasn't given much of a chance to succeed, but it prospered in spite of a baleful slot at the anus-end of primetime.  The George Pal sit-down is merry stuff.  It made me revisit The War of the Worlds, and it made me want to revisit The Time Machine. Speaking of inspiration, I really want to check out Andy Warhol's debauched double feature after leafing through words of praise on his Dracula and Frankenstein (well, words of praise and words of...nevermind).

Clearly, there is a wealth of material for nerds to bite into here.  I don't need to sell it.  Kudos to Marcus Boas for the eye-catching cover, which wraps around to the back.