THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH and THE MOLE PEOPLE: TWO PHOTO-COMIC MAGS FROM WARREN
When once I wore a younger man’s coat I had quite the collection of Warren Magazines. I cannot remember the total number of the issues of Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and Famous Monsters of Filmland I owned at the time but it was a lot. I also had original copies of all four Blazing Combat books and all the magazines were well tended. Well, they are all long gone except the memory though I now own about almost everything Warren ever printed in digital form. I know that a jpeg file is not the same as a piece of paper but there is the simple reality of how much or many of a thing you own and how much it weighs and how much space it consumes. So I settle for second best now. Computer files. One set of Warren books I could never get my hands on but always coveted were a set of experimental titles they put out in 1965. Along with the double feature issue for the Hammer films Curse of Frankentstein and Horror of Dracula were the “photo-comics” made for The Horror of Party Beach and The Mole People. I knew they existed because I saw them advertised in the back of the Warren mags I collected. The back pages were loaded with cool ads for books, novelties and records and 8mm film clips. While the books did well in some foreign markets in Europe and Mexico the books basically flopped sales wise in the States and were discontinued. Here are the covers and some sample pages. There are about seventy pages per book and that is simply way to much to post here in their entirety. I think the books were sort of neat ideas and I hope I can find the Frankenstein/Dracula double feature soon. I actually did see a real copy of that magazine once and got to thumb through it. There was also release the same year a “how to” photo magazine that featured make up techniques by Dick Smith (make up effects for films like The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Scanners, The Godfather among many others) that I would like to have a look at someday.
SAMPLE PAGES FROM THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH
MY NECROTIC CINEMA BLOG 
MY PHOTO BLOG @ TUMBLR
YOUTUBE VIDEO CAVALCADE
YOUTUBE UCAFE PODCAST
September 6th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Awesome, man. I put a pic and link to this on my Tumblr blog. Still great stuff going on here, although I’m ashamed to admid I’ve been lagging behind on this and other blogs I enjoy. It’s hard to find time to both write and follow blogs!
September 6th, 2009 at 4:22 am
Same here. I do not have time to really explore blogs like I used to. Trying to keep this updated and dealing with my bad connection and the fact all decent blog services (WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, Blogsum…) are blocked here in China makes simple blog reading hard. Of course can use proxies but then I may not be able to comment. I almost need that last sentences with ‘and so on” which is a commonly over used phrases here in China. My students end almost every other sentence with ‘and so on’.
Some minor changes here actually in that the focus in more and more on movies and horror mags and comics (like this post) and less on music and media related posts. Those will not stop but the focus will be on movie articles. Media posts take a lot of time and energy though my recent post on Texas Metal band Dead Horse drew more attention after a while than I anticipated and so was rewarding. So more selective is the key. Even the Podcast which I spent so time figuring out has gone by the way side simply because of the amount of work that goes into it, though it may be returning in a slimmed down version. Maybe 10 minutes or less per Podcast. I am going to try to hit my hard won 200th post soon. well, 30 posts still.
I have about 95% of everything Warren ever did in digital format so you can expect to see more and more of stuff from that legendary company. I recently got a rare documentary on Forrest J. Ackerman but no real way to upload it and share it yet due to video sites all being blocked here too and it is not easy to get the material uploaded, but I will try. It is pretty good.
Thanks for the visit.
Bill