| Modern Pulp | Mar 14 2023 |
Classic horror feature still shocks and thrills.
It was inevitable that we'd get around to this movie. It was only a question of which poster we'd choose. Above you see a bizarre Japanese promo for Stuart Gordon's cult horror epic Re-Animator. In Japan it was titled Zombio – 死霊のしたたり, and the Japanese means “dripping of the dead,” which is pretty weird. But then so is the movie. It's an at times darkly comic splatterfest about a medical student obsessed with life after death, and it starts gory and quickly goes places you can't possibly expect. The source material is H.P. Lovecraft's tale, “Herbert West—Re-Animator,” first published in the pulp magazine Weird Tales in 1922.
The plot is only loosely based on what Lovecraft wrote. The movie follows a medical student played by Jeffrey Combs as he tries to defeat death by using a phosphorescent green re-animating agent of his own creation, and in so doing manages to drag promising fellow student Bruce Abbott and his girlfriend Barbara Crampton into a downward spiral of lies, illicit research, corpse abuse, and worse. It's even more catastrophic than it sounds. Meanwhile, a pompous and established physician-instructor played by David Gale becomes simultaneously jealous of Combs and lustful for Crampton, with results that are—in a word—totally insane. Well, two words.
We suspect that Re-Animator is one of those movies many have heard of, but not many have seen. There's more than just gore and that infamous sequence where Crampton is molested by a decapitated head. There are also cross-currents of blind ambition, skewed medical ethics, middle-aged lust for the young, and parental love, as well as overarching questions about human consciousness. It's a movie about obsession, but on multiple levels. Of course, it's also a movie done on the cheap, which leads to a few amusing efx, but overall it transcends its limitations, and for horror fans it's an absolute must. Re-Animator premiered in the U.S. in 1985 and crept into Japan today in 1987.
We suspect that Re-Animator is one of those movies many have heard of, but not many have seen. There's more than just gore and that infamous sequence where Crampton is molested by a decapitated head. There are also cross-currents of blind ambition, skewed medical ethics, middle-aged lust for the young, and parental love, as well as overarching questions about human consciousness. It's a movie about obsession, but on multiple levels. Of course, it's also a movie done on the cheap, which leads to a few amusing efx, but overall it transcends its limitations, and for horror fans it's an absolute must. Re-Animator premiered in the U.S. in 1985 and crept into Japan today in 1987.
JapanRe-AnimatorWeird TalesH.P. LovecraftStuart GordonJeffrey CombsBruce AbbottBarbara CramptonDavid Galeposter artcinemahorrormovie review
| Vintage Pulp | Jan 16 2020 |
It was a different flavor of men's magazine.
Zest magazine, with its bold graphics and cover portraits, looks like a classic mid-century tabloid, but its banner tells you it's really a men's magazine. It lives up to its billing in this issue from January 1956—issue number one, actually—with short stories from Michael Avallone and H.P. Lovecraft, real life adventure tales, scare stories (“Is Your Daughter a Sex-Film Star?), glamour photography, and humor.
The Lovecraft tale, “Rats in the Walls,” is called “the greatest horror story ever written.” We wouldn't go that far, but it's freaktacular, like everything Lovecraft wrote. It had originally been published in Weird Tales in 1924, and we imagine that its bizarro mutant/cannibalism themes were pretty shocking back then. The Avallone story, “The Glass Eye,” is novella length. He had already published three novels and was building a reputation as a reliable author of thrillers, which makes his inclusion a nice coup for a new magazine.
The photography in Zest is just as impressive as the fiction. Readers get to see rare shots of major celebs such as Sophia Loren, Sabrina, and Delores del Rio. All in all Zest was a high budget effort, but it lasted only two issues. Why did it fold? No idea on that. Competition in the market was plenty stiff at the time. On the other hand, maybe two issues are all that were planned. We're thrilled to show you one of them, comprising thirty-plus scans below for your Thursday enjoyment.
Zest MagazineWeird TalesMichael AvalloneH.P. LovecraftRagnhild OllaussonSophia LorenSabrinaNorma Ann SykesDelores del RioJayne Mansfieldmagazine artliterature
| Vintage Pulp | Aug 7 2012 |
Gramercy Press brings together some of the earliest and best vampire stories.
As regular readers of this site know, whenever our friends over at National Road Books get their hands on a particularly pulpish title, they send us scans. Yesterday, they e-mailed over a classic—the 1982 collection Weird Vampire Tales from Gramercy Press. Inside are shorts from some of the writers who helped build the foundation horror literature stands upon today. We’re talking August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, Greye La Spina, Frank Belknap Long, Seabury Quinn, and many others. The collection also contains Robert E. Howard’s famous “The Horror from the Mound,” a tale set in the old west about a cowboy’s growing suspicions that a nearby Indian burial mound is something entirely different. In all Gramercy packs thirty stories into this hardback, all of them culled from 1930s pulp magazines, and they even top it all off with an illustration by veteran Weird Tales illustrator Virgil Finlay. Highly recommended.
Gramercy PressWeird TalesVirgil FinlayAugust DerlethFrank Belknap LongClark Ashton SmithGreye La SpinaRobert E. HowardSeabury Quinncover artliterature
