Famous Mounters of Filmland 1974 NY Convention
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ack in 1958, we introduced comics industry on its ear with After a too-long vacation, Will FAMOUS MONSTERS OF a bold and daring War maga- Eisner's trend-setting crime- FILMLAND Magazine, the zine known as BLAZING buster, THE SPIRIT is back world's first monster-fan pub- COMBAT. It was one of the . and in a Warren magazine lication. It spawned a rash of first publications to speak out of the same name. His return imitators. against warfare in general, has caused a sensation seldom In 1964, we gave the world and Viet Nam in particular. matched in the comics indus- CREEPY Magazine. It was the In 1969, we beat Women's try. first comics magazine to meld Lib to the punch by giving The Warren magazines have moody black and white art- equal time to female mon- become synonymous with in- work with expertly written sters. We called our character credible color sections, inno- horror stories. VAMPIRELLA. And she is, to- vations in story-telling, beau- We followed this with EE- day, one of the most popular tiful artwork, and chilling sto- RIE Magazine, a companion personalities in the comics ries. book for CREEPY. They have medium. Remember our name; you spawned a rash of imitators. Now, in 1974, we have once won't forget our magazines! In 1965, we knocked the again made comics history. Nothing about us is ordinary. A ALICE IN MONSTERLAND J 1 all-time-great reprint from FM#1! Choice P mini-histories of the men who made the mon- 4 ster movies great! Chaney! Karloffl Lugosi! 44 WHERE'S VERNE LAIMGDOIM? 11 He's liable to be anywhere! You'll find him 1 behind the monster's mask, behind recording labels, behind FM's popular makeup articles! Directors JAMES WARREN PHIL SEULING Managers EARLY MONSTERCONS s„„n JONNI LEVAS A after Famous Monsters' creation, filmonster NICK PAPPAS m^m fans began to unite. The First Annual Famous E Monsters Convention is inescapable result! Souvenir Book JAMES WARREN FORREST J ACKERMAN JA IT'S THE ACKERMOIMSTER Production 1 He remembers and speaks for the past, knows W.R. MOHALLEY III the present and tells what he knows. As the SHERRY BERNE friend of phantoms, he speaks for monsters! LOUISE JONES SHELLY LEFERMAN Communications DAVE WEISS TOM FAGAN AN PHIL (PHANTOM) SEULING J Jf He stalked silent corridors, plotting awful Registration JLfl A revenge. He would lead them to the Monster's NORMA LEVINE hall, where they would pay for his madness! JIM LEVAS BARBARA STEIN-SCHWARTZ HELEN SIRAKIDES JIMMY PAPPAS SUE LEVINE *%g% MEETTHE WARRENMONSTER He's the Dr. Frankenstein of the filmonster Security ELI FRIEDMAN M tl magazines, creating the leading horror pub- RON SCALA lication! If it's best, it's Jim Warren's! MARK COLLINS STEVE COLLINS KENNY PISANI PETER MARONICH BRIAN TAYLOR KATZ k ROBERT (PSYCHO) BLOCH DAVID FRIED MITCHELL ZYKOFSKY 1 What could scare the man who stopped a mil- 1 lion hearts? Frighten the fiend who froze a LARRY ADLER " DOUGLAS RICHARDSON EC sea of blood? Bloch tells! Can you take it? STEVE GILARY PAUL KUPPERBERG mm JOHN VANIBLE EE Films FM COVER ARTISTS what do you JOHN SHIKE " say, after you see they're the best? If you ADAM GEWANTER kf know the best when you see it, you probably know the artists — Basil Gogos & Ken Kelly! Additional copies of this book available lor S2.00 from Phil Seuling, Boi 177, Coney Island mm Station, Brooklyn, N.V 11224. or Irom Warren Publishing Co,, 145 E. 32nd Street, New York, 1 N.Y. 10016. Dealers: Inquire about quantity rates from either Mr. Seuling nr Warren Pub- lishing. k WHO rs SAM SHERMAN? He* 1 the movie producer & distributor. He moves FAMOUS MONSTERSIBS Registered U.S. Pa- t the script to the screening room to the lo- 1 tent Office. Marca Registrada. Marque Depo- COi see. FAMOUS MONSTERS is owned by Warren s cal theatres! He makes monster movies movelJ Publishing Co, and is used by permission. be reproduced without written permission. 3 Your destination is Horror House, right next door to Mystery Mansion, located at the busy Karloff calls it "folklore," intersection of Scream Street and Beastman Blvd. The fiendly cop on the corner? Yes, that's Hollywood calls it Frankenstein. Boys and girls, moms and pops, grand-dads and grandmas, let's face it: a little horror now "big boxofficc" and then is relished by the best of men. Or, put another way: everybody loves a mon- ster. Well, perhaps not everybody; maybe not -cither way, the horror the hapless heroine who's being pursued, or the hero who's liable to get hurt in a struggle, or the anonymous little man who has to clean up the films boast a glorious mess in the laboratory or the castle or the city after the demon has done his dirty work; but nearly everybody. history of entertainment Especially watchers. People (like you) not di- rectly involved. Folks who can sit back in the safety of their wide-screen movie house, parked with us through the mirror into the wait- car at the drive-in theater, or comfort of their Steping world of things wonderfully weird. Into own living room in front of TV, and watch other the celluloid land of dark developments, where folks be frightened by the creatures that come shadows like smoke-forms in a realm of dreams from out of the past, from out of folklore, and take on uneasy shapes. from out of the future, from outer space. Follow the blood-red sign that reads: THIS This, then is a kind of history of horror films. WAY TO THE MONSTERS. And if you lose So, fasten your safety belts, tauten your nerves, your way, ask the nearest scarecrow for direc- steel yourself (like Robby the Robot) and— tions. Here we go into the wild grue yonder! 4 The photo worth 10,000 words THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Patrons screamed and fainted when Lon Chaney appeared In this guise in 1925. the man of a thousand faces ful of razor-sharp teeth. Black cape and top hat completed the effect. Lon Chaney, in the words of Jimmy Durante, THE MIRACLE MAN made Chaney famous had "a million of 'em!" Endless different over night in his contorted role as Frog, the fake characterizations. From 1913 to 1930 he appeared cripple, whose paralyzed limbs were "miraculous- in the fantastic total of approximately 150 films! ly" cured in the climax of the picture. In these his appearance varied so widely that no THE PENALTY presented Chaney without one ever knew what he was going to look like any legs at all, this effect being painfully created next, and the popular saying of the time became, by his padding his knees with leather and walk- ing on them. For this "Look out! Don't step on it— it may be Lon Cha- purpose he had a harness ney!" specially constructed to constrict his legs, which were bent up behind him. WHILE PARIS SLEEPS presented him as a THE ROAD TO MANDALAY cast Chaney as mad scientist. a semi-blind man. He achieved this effect by cov- LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT cast him in ering one eyeball with a coating of white collo- the role of a human vampire with a fuzzy shock dion to give the impression of a cataract. of white hair, a pair of bulging eyes, and a mouth- TREASURE ISLAND saw him blind again, this time as the pirate in Robert Louis Steven- son's classic. A BLIND BARGAIN gave two Chaneys for the price of one: mad scientist and ape man. THE MONSTER saw him once again cast as a mad scientist. THE UNHOLY THREE demonstrated his versatility, for within the same picture he played the dual role of a side-show ventriloquist and an old woman. MR. WU, OUTSIDE THE LAW and BITS OF LIFE were all Oriental roles. THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, one of his two top characterizations, was one of the most elaborate and painful. Chaney literally threw himself into the soul of Quasimodo, the demented bell-ringer of the Parisian church. The rubber hump attached to his back weighed him down with 70 pounds. In front he wore a breast- plate similar to the pads (including shoulder) of football players. A light leather harness joined breastplate and "backplate" in such a fashion that Chaney could not have stood erect even had he tried. Over all this he wore a rubber suit, tint- ed the color of human flesh and with animal hair affixed. Modeller's putty was worked onto his face, misshaping it, and a set of false teeth over his own gave him a wicked fanged appearance. A matted wig of filthy hair completed his guise, which he donned daily for the better part of 12 weeks. chaney was champ! 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 Le- roux, described the character, the Phantom was a masterful but mad musician "whose face was so hideous that he was forced to haunt the inner- most 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 devil with the application of less pain than Chaney deliberately subjected himself to for his art. As the Phantom, Chaney inserted a device in- to his nose that caused his nostrils to flare.