Modern Pulp

March 14 2023

DEAD BUT NOT GONE

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.

Japan, Re-Animator, Weird Tales, H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Barbara Crampton, David Gale, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

Vintage Pulp

January 27 2022

THE FEMME FROM IPANEMA

Tall and tan and young and lovely, and when she betrays them, each one she betrays goes, “Argh...”

This interesting piece of art was sent to us by a friend, Leonardo, and it comes from Brazilian publisher Record for Raymond Chandler’s Perolas dao azar. The book comprises three Chandler stories, “Pearls Are a Nuisance,” “Finger Man,” and “The King in Yellow,” plus his crime essay, “The Simple Art of Murder.” If you’re an avid reader of old literature, “The King in Yellow,” may sound familiar. It was the name of an 1895 anthology by Robert W. Chambers, the best-selling U.S. author of the latter half of the nineteenth century, and the source of certain motifs used in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Chandler’s story isn’t supernatural, but it does allude to Chambers’ work.

The cover art is by Robert McGinnis and was previously used on Shell Scott’s 1971 novel Dig That Crazy Grave. Around then Record began spicing up some of its paperbacks with McGinnis art. We don’t know if he was compensated for his work. We’ve talked about this issue before, but long story short, we just can’t see an economic win for Record in buying McGinnis’s art. In a country as big as Brazil some artist could have painted a nice cover—and cheaply. Probably more cheaply than licensing art from McGinnis. We don’t know how it all worked, so we’re not saying Record stole the art, but still, you have to wonder. Thanks for sending this over, Leonardo.

Brazil, Grupo Editorial Record, Raymond Chandler, Robert McGinnis, Robert W. Chambers, H.P. Lovecraft, Shell Scott, cover art, literature

Vintage Pulp

January 16 2020

ZEST INTENTIONS

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 Magazine, Weird Tales, Michael Avallone, H.P. Lovecraft, Ragnhild Ollausson, Sophia Loren, Sabrina, Norma Ann Sykes, Delores del Rio, Jayne Mansfield, magazine art, literature

Modern Pulp

October 24 2017

SO FAR NO GOOD

Some things are better left undimensioned.

Stuart Gordon’s cult classic horror film From Beyond premiered in the U.S. today in 1986, but we’re sharing this Thai poster because it’s more attractive than the American promo. For the uninitiated, From Beyond is loosely based on an H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name about a scientist who discovers what is today a standard terror motif: if you can see them, they can see you. Lovecraft came up with this idea way back in 1920, spinning a tale about a machine called a resonator that enables humans to see horrific beings that surround us but reside in an invisible adjacent dimension. But once the scientist perceives them, the monstrous entities likewise perceive him—and come calling.

The film starred Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, two alumni from Gordon’s bravura gorefest Re-Animator, released the previous year. From Beyond doesn’t push the envelope as far as the earlier film, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means Gordon tempered his vision a bit. In other ways the films are quite similar. Both play the naked-woman-as-victim card, which can be uncomfortable to watch, since these days such sequences are not benignly received. As always, times change.

In From Beyond the nudity isn’t gratuitous exactly. One of the side effects of the resonator is that it frees the id, which is why you see Crampton go from buttoned up schoolmarm to brazen dominatrix in the promo shots below. Males are similarly affected. We searched for shots of co-star Ken Foree in his banana hammock undies—one of many famous moments from the film—but came up empty, so to speak. Regardless of the cultural shift that has placed movies like From Beyond, with its depiction of sexual assault, on shaky ground in 2017, we recommend it for true horror fans. The viewing may discomfit, but the villain is after all both man and monster, which makes him/it an interesting symbol for our modern age.

Thailand, From Beyond, H.P. Lovecraft, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel, poster art, cinema, horror, movie review

Vintage Pulp

November 9 2016

WRITER’S BLOCH

“The Thing” that wasn't there.

We’ve shared several covers from Grandi Edizioni Internazionali’s horror collection I Capolavori della Serie KKK but this one is kind of special. Translated into Italian by Fernanda Adami, this is a collection of horror master Robert Bloch’s early short stories. In case he isn’t familiar to you, he wrote Psycho. This book is called La Cosa, or The Thing because Bloch’s first story, a piece called “The Thing” appeared in his school magazine in 1932 when Bloch was only fourteen. But guess what? “The Thing” isn’t one of the stories in The Thing. Instead the book consists of four tales—“Colui che apre la via,” “Ritorno a Sabbath,” “Il segreto di Sebek,” and “Enoch.” In English these are “The Opener of the Way,” “Return of the Sabbath,” “The Secret of Sebek,” and “Otis.” Just kidding—it’s “Enoch.” Lovecraft fans probably already know of the first three stories because they appeared in Bloch’s Lovecraft inspired collection The Opener of the Way in 1945 and remain widely read pieces of Lovecraftian lore. So that makes this paperback a bit of a collector’s item. As if the great art by Benedetto Caroselli didn’t already do that. Yes, he painted a misleading illustration for a horror anthology but Caroselli and Grandi Edizioni Internazionali specialized in that. Want to see a particularly brazen example? Check here.

Italy, Grandi Edizioni Internazionali, I Capolavori della Serie KKK Classici dell’Orrore, Robert Bloch, Benedetto Caroselli, H.P. Lovecraft, Fernanda Adami, cover art, literature, horror

Intl. Notebook

March 16 2016

ENDLESS LOVECRAFT

Newly unearthed manuscript by horror master set to be auctioned in Chicago.

A newly discovered manuscript written by otherworldly horror writer H.P. Lovecraft has been found in a collection of magic memorabilia in Chicago. The 31-page piece, titled “The Cancer of Superstition,” is said to have been originally commissioned by Harry Houdini in 1926. Houdini died that year and the project fell by the wayside, but the typewritten pages were conserved by Houdini’s widow Bess, and her manager, Edward Saint. The sheaf of pages will be auctioned April 9th, with bids starting at $13,000 and a final price estimated to reach $25,000 to $40,000—a pittance considering Lovecraft’s fans will probably pay plenty to buy anything published bearing the icon’s name.

This story dusted off some nice memories for us and brought a smile to our faces because—as any Call of Cthulhu geek knows—the real-life pairing of Lovecraft and Houdini is like ice cream paired with caramel sauce, or a census-taker’s liver with a fine Chianti. We’d go so far as to say that any Call of Cthulhu keeper worth the title incorporates Houdini into the game eventually. In our long-running C of C campaign—years before we had girlfriends and an inkling that there were equally sticky but much more enjoyable ways to spend a Saturday night—Houdini appeared in a session only to promptly have his head melted by an interdimensional horror.

There’s some small question whether “The Cancer of Superstition” was written by Lovecraft, or if it was actually penned by fellow author C.M. Eddy and merely polished by Lovecraft, but we suspect doubts on that score will always remain. After years of doing this site and trying to track the original authors of numerous obscure novels we know some questions about the provenance of literature are destined never to be answered.

So get your bidding hats on. Since anyone out who’s seriously into Lovecraft and Call of Cthulhu is a supernerd (we mean that affectionately, as former nerds ourselves), you’ve probably squirrelled away plenty of cash from your career in computer sciences or botany or something. Don’t let the manuscript fall into the hands of some empty suit hedge fund manager from upper Manhattan. And for those of you who haven’t read Lovecraft and have no idea what we’re talking about, we highly recommend you give him a try if you feel like a little literary horror. Just don’t read too much about Lovecraft as a person. Some of his views were even more terrifying than his stories.

Chicago, H.P. Lovecraft, C.M. Eddy, Harry Houdini, Bess Houdini, Edward Saint, horror, sci-fi

Vintage Pulp

February 6 2013

H.P. COVER CRAFT

Look, but only if you dare.

Above, two awesome covers for H.P. Lovecraft’s classic horror tales The Dunwich Horror and The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth (plus other stories), printed by Bart House, a New York City-based publisher that got its name from the structure that was its home—the Bartholomew Building on East 42nd Street. Lovecraft wrote Dunwich and Innsmouth in 1928 and 1931, but these editions appeared after his death—in 1945 and 1944 respectively. Lovecraft is an author most recognize, but surprisingly few have actually read. He’s sort of the horror version of The Godfather movies—everyone knows all about them, but it’s incredible how few have actually sat through them. If you don’t know his writing, his style can admittedly make for a difficult read. Plus there’s not much emotional payoff—his heroes generally face mind-bending horrors that simply can’t be beaten, which means you have to get used to them awaiting an inevitable death or going insane. But that’s one reason we like him more and more as time goes by—in this post-millennial era, what is more appropriate than a battle against forces too powerful to beat, too complex to comprehend, and too corrupt to look upon without losing every shred of your own goodness?

New York City, Bart House, Bartholomew House Inc., The Dunwich Horror, The Weird Shadow over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft, cover art, literature, horror

Modern Pulp

November 30 2009

ALIEN INVASION

Giger retrospective taps into sexual obsessions and primal fears.

We’ve always liked the work of biomechanical airbursh artist H.R. Giger. Most people associate his art with the Alien franchise because he did the production design for the original film, and all the sequels have built upon that foundation, but Giger is about more than slimy, vicious monsters.

For instance, the piece you see above, “Birth Machine,” is quintessential Giger. The crucial clue to its meaning comes from the title. And as we look closely, we see a pistol in which the bullets are half human creatures who themselves are holding pistols. If we assume each of their pistols in turn contain little bullet men with more guns loaded with more bullet men, we understand that Giger is making a statement about us killing ourselves through overpopulation. In a sense, each of us is a weapon, loaded with deadly ammunition and lacking any sense of restraint that might help us see that our state of perpetual war and environmental destruction derives from the fact that there are simply too damned many of us. Or something like that.

We bring all this up because we saw a Giger exhibit in person at the Kuba Art Gallery in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, and the pieces were extremely interesting. They’re otherworldly, yes. Biologically weird, certainly. Relentlessly vaginal, absolutely. Giger is well known for those motifs. But there’s also a darkness and density to the pieces that is very impressive in person. Their geometry and the physics implied within are Lovecraftian, which is why we weren’t surprised when we saw that two of Giger’s early pieces were representations from the great horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction. The exhibit also included a larger than life movie alien menacingly perched on a wall, as well as a macabre dinner table with six biomechanical chairs. If a Giger exhibit ever comes to your town, by all means, go. Any effort will be worth the time and energy spent to see this unique master’s nightmarish work in person. We have more images below, and we apologize for their blurriness, but we were too terrified by the art to focus.

Switzerland, Spain, Donostia-San Sebastian, San Sebastian, Alien, H.R. Giger

Vintage Pulp

January 14 2009

LOVECRAFT CHEESE

Never has a writer of such quality suffered so many bad adaptations of his work.

Thirty-eight years ago today in Hollywood, sexploitation producer Roger Corman premiered a film based on H.P. Lovecraft’s macabre story The Dunwich Horror, and it was almost good. Wait, did we really just say that?

*sigh*

Not to get all self-pitying here, but us Lovecraft fans have been so desperate for so long for a truly great HPL movie, we’ll see merit in virtually any lame attempt. But when we are honest with ourselves—really truly brutally honest—we have to admit this movie is a stinkbomb. Lovecraft is simply difficult to adapt. So difficult, in fact, that if you remove Stuart Gordon from the discussion, virtually all the movies based on his material have been awful.

But even if The Dunwich Horror disappoints, the poster is rather interesting, with its implied violation by a hydra-like monstrosity. Incidentally, of special note here is the presence of writer Curtis Hanson, who would go on to direct the great L.A. Confidential. Nice comeback, Curtis. As for us, we’ll just plan on seeing the low budget Dunwich remake slated for release later this year, and hope Guillermo del Toro’s big budget At The Mountains of Madness actually films sometime this century.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror, L.A. Confidential, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro, Curtis Hanson, Stuart Gordon, poster art, cinema, literature, horror, movie review

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

October 7

1959—Dark Side of Moon Revealed

The Soviet space probe Luna 3 transmits the first photographs of the far side of the moon. The photos generate great interest, and scientists are surprised to see mountainous terrain, very different from the near side, and only two seas, which the Soviets name Mare Moscovrae (Sea of Moscow) and Mare Desiderii (Sea of Desire).

October 6

1966—LSD Declared Illegal in U.S.

LSD, which was originally synthesized by a Swiss doctor and was later secretly used by the CIA on military personnel, prostitutes, the mentally ill, and members of the general public in a project code named MKULTRA, is designated a controlled substance in the United States.

October 5

1945—Hollywood Black Friday

A six month strike by Hollywood set decorators becomes a riot at the gates of Warner Brothers Studios when strikers and replacement workers clash. The event helps bring about the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, prohibits unions from contributing to political campaigns and requires union leaders to affirm they are not supporters of the Communist Party.

October 4

1957—Sputnik Circles Earth

The Soviet Union launches the satellite Sputnik I, which becomes the first artificial object to orbit the Earth. It orbits for two months and provides valuable information about the density of the upper atmosphere. It also panics the United States into a space race that eventually culminates in the U.S. moon landing.

October 4

1970—Janis Joplin Overdoses

American blues singer Janis Joplin is found dead on the floor of her motel room in Los Angeles. The cause of death is determined to be an overdose of heroin, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol.