I am making my second horror book now that I am about half way through with my history Jack Hill’s exploitation style cinema. The Jack Hill book was very informative and gave he in an insight that I did not have before into the world of low budget film making and in particular with working with Roger Corman. I would definitely like to find the Roger Corman auto-biography How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime in PDF format. Well my next hmemade book project is a hefty one at 313 pages and yet worth it. It is A History of Horrors: The Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer. I can’t wait to get it bound up and sit back and read through it and then provide some articles on what I learn. I may have to do some posts that add some new information to some of the many Hammer posts I have already done here. I also have collected almost every Hammer film ever made here and have them scattered about on several DVD discs. I just enjoy those films so much and have seen many of them several times. Some I have yet to actually see – such as The Stranglers of Bombay and Maniac – and look forward to some viewing as soon as I get through the movies I am watching now. I should say while I am the topic of movies I am watching that I have watched quite a few Vincent Price films in the last few months and have yet to write one blasted post on the man or his films. I will have to correct that situation soon. So in the mean time I lifted some images from the PDF of A History of Horrors and will share those with you. I left the text to the images so the context can be explained. I am sure most of these have never been seen online before. Most show behind the scenes activities or dinner parties for the Hammer bigwigs.

UPDATE: Got the book made today and thought I would post the cover to it. Again, like the Jack Hill book, it cost me about .50 to print as we used our own paper and printer to print it out. This is a great book and of course it would nice to own the real thing, but that is not going to happen here in China. Here are some scans of the covers. I had to make a cover in Word Doc for the fibery cover the printing places use and then put a color cover on the inside. The quality is pretty good.

IMAGES FROM A HISTORY OF HORRORS

MORE RARE PICTURES FROM THE HISTORY OF HAMMER FILMS >>

VERA CRUZ

1954/Director: Robert Aldrich/ Writers: Roland Kibbee, James R. Webb

Cast: Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Cesar Romero, Sara Montiel, George Macready, Jack Elam, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson

I love a good Western and some of my favorites types of westerns have to be what I call the Mexican Westerns. These sorts of westerns became popular during the sixties and typically featured renegade mercenary types from America who travel into Mexico for purposes that usually revolve around nothing more than money and gold. The backdrop is one of the many periods of revolution in Mexico during the late 19th century and into the early 20th century. Typically there is some sort of transformation in the motives of the mercenaries towards the end of the film away from gold and wealth to some sort of cause, or to something the men once believed in before life made them cynical and ruthless. The best examples are films like The Wild Bunch, The Magnificent Seven and The Professionals. One could also include the handful of legendary and influential Westerns by Sergio Leone and many other Spaghetti or Italian-Westrns as well some lone cowboy films – as opposed to a band of mercenaries –like Two Mules for Sister Sara with Clint Eastwood and Valdez is Coming with Burt Lancaster. While 1954’s Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush… Hush, Sweet Charolette, The Dirty Dozen, Flight of the Phoenix)  film Vera Cruz is not as violent or cynical as Sam Peckinpah’s classic of slow motion blood spatter it can still regarded as an early transitional western and the first of the Mexican Westerns of the sixties. The action takes place during the period of Mexican revolt against the French during the brief and troubled reign of Emperor Maximillian. Seems Austrian born Maxillian was none to keen on heading off to Mexico to manage the situation there but its hard to say no to repeated requests by Napoleon III. And he had good reasons for reservations since his short reign was marked by constant revolt by the rebels led by Benito Jaurez (the Jauristas) and his eventual overthrow and execution by firing squad. Most of these films do not try to be historical dramas and instead use the backdrop of Meixico’s civil unrest as a flexible vehicle for the conflicts between the gringo fortune seekers and whoever stands in the way of their loot and booty.

MORE ABOUT VERA CRUZ HERE >>

Found this beautiful story drawn by Bill Everett at Pappy’s Golden Age Blogzine. I was never a big fan of the Sub Mariner comics but collected them anyway as I loved anything Marvel as a young man. I liked the run when Gene Colan was drawing them and of course loved anytime Bill Everett made a guest appearance. Everett drew many of the early Sub Mariner stories and his finely detailed and painstakingly detailed pen and ink work set him off into a class by himself when everyone else was copying Jack Kirby. I sort of new something of Namora – Aquaria Nautica Neptunia – Prince Namor’s cousin and yet do not recall ever seeing one of her stories. Her own comic book only lasted three issues – way back in the late 40′s – and her character was killed off even in Sub Mariner # 50 of June 1972. I would have still been collecting almost every issue of Marvel comics that was being produced at the time, including Sub Mariner, and probably owned this at one time but do not really remember it. But anythng is possible in the Marvel Universe and namora was ‘resurrected’ as part of the Agents of Atlas and you get the info on that at this Wiki page (thanks to my old buddy Tony who I knew when we were both living  in Seattle – a Phd. in comic book lore -  for clearing up this issue). Here are some superb samples and a link to the entire story at Pappy’s Blogzine.

I am usually not the sort of blogger to try and veer too far off the theme of the blog. I try to keep as focused as I can on the needs of the blog with what little free time and energy I have. But sometimes I enjoy reading this sort of thing on other people’s blog sites and so I thought I would give a brief glimpse into what is going in behind the scenes so to speak. First I should mention that there is really no horror culture worth mentioning here in China. No comic books culture either. Simply does not exist comfortably along side a skewed Marxist education I suppose. I am a person who likes ‘real’ things when I can get them. By this I mean, for example, books rather than PDFs. Nothing wrong with PDFs and CBRs and digital media. It is where the world is heading and who am I, a mere ESL teacher in China born in the humble hamlet of Peru Indiana, to stand in the way of progress. But I love to lie in bed and read before I fall asleep. Back to my Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allen Poe lately and yet sometimes I want some lighter fare. Something with pictures even.There are no magazines or books here in English worth looking at and certainly no horror book section in the dreary book stores here. In Kunming there is a book stores with a narrow selection of western literature that sells for about threes the normal cover price. A five dollar paperback can cost fifteen here easily or 105 RMB. Commie bastards! I would have nothing if not for the subversive underworld of bittorrents and Rapidshare files. I have literally  thousands of PDF and CBR type files. I can actually enjoy looking at comic books on my PC since I got my new flat screen monitor. But I miss horror books. Film books in general. I fixed that by printing out my PDFs and taking them to the printer and having them cheaply bound for about .50 cents. Yes, the Jack Hill (224 pages) book cost me about .50 to make.

SEE WOODY THE DOG AND MY TOOTH BRUSH HERE! >>

Anyone who has seen any assortment of paperback or men’s magazine covers from the 40’s to 60’s has most certainly gawked in wonder at more than a few that were painted by one of the kings of the genre, Norman Saunders. Saunders was a prolific illustrator who was known for turning out high quality paintings within tight deadlines. He is most remembered for his lurid crime scene type paintings with gun totting tough guys and even tougher gals in dramatically lit poses. But he was able to handle most any design themes the magazine field including combat, westerns, science fiction and even sports illustrations. He also painted a famous series of trading cards for Topps in 1962 called Mars Attacks whose images later inspired Tim Burton to create his film of the same name. He was born Normand Blaine Sanders (he signed a lot of his work Blaine that he did outside his main job at Fawcett) in 1907. He would later drop the ‘d’ from Normand. At the age of three he suffered an accident that left him blind for six months. Luckily his sight was restored after several surgeries and he soon began drawing everything he saw, no doubt in appreciation for his restored vision. He was hired by Fawcett Publications and as the story goes he unknowingly hitched a ride with a couple bank robbers from North Dakota who had the young Saunders keep lookout for cops from the back of their Model-T. He was a hard working artist whose work did not seem to suffer from their rushed qualities. The colors are bright and lurid and the content is consistently exciting and dangerously erotic. It is the because of the work of men like Saunders that the artwork from the pulps now are treasured by collectors over what was produced in the ‘slicks’ of the same period. I could never tire of looking at stuff like this.

MORE OF THE AMAZING ARTWORK OF NORMAN SAUNDERS HERE >>

I was watching The Keep last night and was struck by the film’s soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. I have the soundtrack, and almost all of their music, but have seldom listened to it as I tend to listen to the same things over and over. I mostly listen to Stratsofear, Phaedra, Ricochet, Exit and Force Majeure. I also, however, listen quite a lot to the Thief and Sorcerer soundtracks. I recently got in both the AVI files for Thief and Sorcerer but have not had a chance to rewatch them as I ahve them them both a few times already. I also got in The Keep at about the same time and it is all a matter of strange coincidence that Tangerine Dream did the soundtracks to the three films. The group would undergo many lineup changes and the once three man outfit at some periods had four or more musicians. The lineup for Sorcerer is Edgar Froese, Peter Baumann and Christopher Franke. As far as I am concerned this is the lineup that did most of the groups most memorable music during the 70’s on the Virgin label. The first Tangerine Dream album I bought was Stratosfear with the original Virgin label designed by Roger Dean on the vinyl. Some parts of Sorcerer sound like very similar to sections of Stratosfear. The lineup for Thief and The Keep – both films directed by Michael Mann – is still Froese and Franke  but with Johannes Schmoelling taking Baumann’s place here and on much of the work done in the 80’s. I am not an authority on the group and later there are many lineup changes and the mood of the music changed at times but not too drastically. I tried to supply some more upbeat selections from the recordings here rather than some of the meandering incidental music that is nice to listen to while blogging but not the best examples to try and hook a new listener with. This style of music is what really helped me move from being a believer in vinyl and analog to someone who prefers digital music. The music of Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno, Vangelis and Philip Glass has to be heard without surface noise and skips. I know there are the true believers who see digital as the end of music as we know it but I am not one of those. I welcome evolution and the necessary extinction of the BSR turntable and the 8-Track tape in order to bring forth a fitter form of listening pleasure. Enjoy the selections here in all their sacrilegious digital glory.

LISTEN TO SELECTIONS FROM TANGERINE DREAM SOUNDTRACKS HERE >>

I tend to not regularly check the sites I belong to that do that ranking thing. I have slipped off the proverbial ‘radar’ at Horror Blips and over all have gotten back into a frame of mind I had when I first began blogging; and that is  that I have achieved something if I just see my site on some body’s blog roll and I did not have to bride them to put it there. I am not competitive enough to pander and promote my blog and it seems to exist in that border world of horror/cult movie blogs, somewhere between fairly popular and totally unknown. There are some cool ‘unknown’ blogs out there and I guess I am happy (in that resigned to be a loser sense) mine is one of them. But earlier I was monkeying around with my sidebars here and at Necrotic Cinema and decided to check into the Horror Society 100 and was happy to see The Uranium Cafe at #3 (beating even the perennially popular Chuck Norris Ate My Baby for a day at least) and that even dear little Necrotic Cinema was ranked in the top 30 there. Not sure how the stats are tallied and I may not even check back there for another month or more but it just seems cool to  expect to see myself at 100 or worse and there is my humble site at number three and I did not even have to post pictures of nekked girls or beg all my friends on Facebook or Twitter to click the banner to boost my rank artificially. I did the old fashioned lazy way. By doing nothing but blogging. To be honest it inspires to me to work a little harder since it seems someone out there likes the site and the work I put into it. Thanks to whomever you are.