Masters of the Universe promo

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
"Masters of the Universe"
(Click on images to view full-size.)

Say what you will about the film, that is one great piece of poster art.

The pages scanned in here are from a glossy newspaper-format promo magazine for upcoming Cannon films, which was sent to video stores at the time. This is to promote the VHS release of the movie.

I resisted watching this movie for nearly a year after it came out on video, as I considered it far beneath me. A movie based on a silly kid's toy line? No way would I watch this dreck!

But, I finally gave in and rented it; and surprise, surprise, surprise: I enjoyed it! People complain of it's cheesiness, but I like cheese in moderation, and this is like creamy Velveeta on a crisp, fresh Saltine cracker. As silly as it is, and it is very silly, there are some things to like about it. An awesome score by Bill Conti brings a weight and emotional impact not expected; Frank Langella as Skeletor brings to the role his voice and regal but wry bearing. Other things that stand out; Meg Foster's spooky eyes as Evil-Lyn, Teela's thong-enhanced tights, James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland from "Back To The Future") doing his usual character as Detective Lubic; epic sets and effects, bringing to life the Moebius art design. Somehow the movie succeeds in rising about it's toy-based roots and does it with a grin that says "we know it's dumb, but let's have some fun with it!"

The departures from the animated series concepts only served to make it a better movie, moving it more into a science fiction realm than that of sorcery. And bringing the action to Earth, involving a teen couple as our link to reality, makes the drama more close to home and relatable.

So, I've watched far, far dumber movies than this with lesser music, actors, effects and story. Why shouldn't I put this on occasionally and enjoy it for what it is? Cheese-Whiz squirted right out of the can onto the tongue.

Eerie Bones

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:

"Eerie Bones" from Tales from the Tomb magazine #2, April 1970
(Click on images to enlarge)

The dialog may be simple, but the underlying meaning is full of layered subtexts.

As covers go, this particular issue of TFTT was pretty tame compared to some of the others, which were literally dripping with grue and violence. I had come into the world of the graphic gore and horror of these mags around 1972 and they blew my little mind. I suspect they blew my mother's mind also because my issue disappeared shortly after I bought it. I didn't start getting them again until years later when I was able to pick up some back issues in comic shops, like this one.

"A woman's place is in the tomb," explains the husband vampire.

Here's a skeletally-oriented story that is fun, and illustrates the level of art and writing that was standard for these mags. Nothing truly spectacular, or deep, but good enough to send chills down the spine of the pre-teen audience that would buy it. The forbidden-fruit attraction made them especially exciting and were ones that you never let your parents find if you could help it.

So summon forth the inner kid again and let him enjoy this while your adult self takes a break.

So it's Snake 1, Skeleton 0 as the fight of the century ends. But the snake's victory was an empty one, since it's bony prey had no meat left to ingest. As for the hero's plan of burying the bones in different locations, I wouldn't count on that working for long. You just can't keep a good giant skeleton down.... especially one so eloquent. Using a combination of mime and subtle inflections, the creature was able to make a simple "Aaaarrrrgggrrrr!" communicate a plethora of emotion and loneliness.

Below are some of the later, more gruesome covers of the type that I was first introduced to. You will not find anything like this on the newstands today. Ah, the good ol' days, when a kid could take some change to the corner store and get some candy, soda and mind-searing images of death, mutilation, torture and terror. Today's coddled, over-protected kids would be traumatized. But we ate it up!

I suppose as long as the violence was monster-on-monster, it was easier to get away with. In reality is just desensitized us to the plight of the abused vampires, werewolves and ghouls.

Okay, it's safe, you can call your adult self back in now, and tell it that those cigarettes will kill them someday. And look out, your boss is headed this way.

Knight of the Living Dead

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:

"Knight of the Living Dead"

"Knave, thou art going down!"

(Image Source)

The spine-tinglingly-cool image above (visit the link for the source and even higher rez image) is really just a good way to introduce the comic I'm actually spotlighting, which is "Doomed To Battle" from Gold Key's Mystery Comics Digest #6, published in August 1972.

I scanned it in from my copy in large format so you can enjoy the artwork without squinting your eyes at the reduced size that the digest shrunk them down to.

The MCD issues alternated between three comics that they reprinted from: Ripley's Believe It or Not!, Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery, and Twilight Zone.

I've posted some covers before from the Mystery Comics Digests I have, but this is my favorite story from this particular edition, which collected the stories from the Twilight Zone comics they had put out in the past.

Hope you enjoy the story as much as I did, when I first got the book in 1972 as a tender young lad of 13. I remember I drew a picture recreating one of the panels in it, as I liked to do when an image caught my eye. The art is uncredited, so if you know who drew it, clue us in! Oh, and if anyone else has already posted this, sorry, I didn't see it!

And so, Sir Duane The Obnoxious must battle it out in limbo like Lazarus from Star Trek. Not a shocking twist, just a simple straightforward story of skeletal revenge. Sweet.

Return of the Living Dead 1985 article

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:

The Return of the Living Dead

Click to get a nice big image of this poster art.


The French poster for ROTLD, arguably better than the American.

Back from the dead and ready to party with a few friends.

The first issue of Forry Ackerman's new publication "Monster Land" which came out in February of 1985, contained an article on the then-upcoming movie "Return of the Living Dead." Poor old Forry, you remember, had been ousted from his position as editor of FM by the Warren company and this led to their parting. Forry was able to start up another virtual FM called Monster Land, with the "Monster" in the same familiar type and size as Famous Monsters, and this along with a painting of the Ackermonster, let fans know he was back in business... at least for a little while.

Below is the inside cover text which trumpeted the story of his return to publishing. Although not the focus of today's entry, I thought it still might be interesting to some that never saw it. Interesting phrasing of the copy, both for what it said in between the lines about the restrictions placed on him by Warren, as well as the "classic monsters" magazines versus the modern Fangoria-type mags. It was a sad reality that as his FM audience grew up, the younger readers coming to the magazine stands were looking for exactly what Fangoria was offering. And the older classic-monster fans who were still buying such publications were growing fewer. Even I fell into that category. What amused and amazed me as a kid no longer held the attraction, when Freddy Kruger and others were dripping blood and grue from the covers of Fango.

Another hi-rez artwork image for ya.

And now, for our feature presention... the ROTLD article. I remember that Zombie Summer... when so many classic Zombie and horror flicks came out. Aging fans still talk about it in hushed tones... it was like dying and going to zombie heaven... which I guess for a zombie is finding a schoolbus full of teens. And like they would have chowed down on such a gut-filled feast, we chowed down on the moist and meaty movies of 1985.

Tarman was happy to see the fresh-faced, "with-it" teens arrive to bring some life to the party.

Seeing ROTLD for the first time was an electrifying experience. Totally different than what was expected, it crackled with energy, humor and atmosphere. All we could do was sit back and be smacked in the face with one surprise after another, with the gore effects bringing screams to the audience in between the laughs. If zombie films are exciting today you can thank this movie for setting the tone for hyper-active undead action mixed with dark humor.

Enjoy the article below from 23 years ago, and relive the excitement of reading this before you saw the movie in the theater... or, for you young whippersnappers, try to imagine it. The article got me excited for it, but no-one was prepared for it when they saw it. I first watched it with a group of friends at a midnight showing, and I took my fabric pullover skull mask in my pocket. During the scene of the zombies coming out of the graves, I put it on and sat there watching the movie. In front of us were three already-scared teenage African-American girls, and when one looked back and saw me, she screamed, then the other two screamed, and they freaked. By the time the summoned usher came around with his flashlight, I had pocketed the mask and was wearing my best innocent face. Mean? Possibly. Fun? Oh, yeah...

Frank indulges in a bit of humorous foreshadowing.

It's interesting how designer Bill Stout refers to a "spore" being responsible for the return of the rotten ones, when the script revolves around the 2-4-5-Trioxin. So this interview must have been conducted early in the short production process. Also some of the designs and efforts he made to show various time periods were never seen in the film. Although a few make-ups of decaying zombies made it onto film, the majority of corpses in the crowd scenes just are regular people, albeit muddy, with very few make-up effects or even masks in view. The sudden change in make-up artists before the job was finished probably accounts for some of that, as time was running out to finish what was a big job. But the individuals we saw, such as Tarman, the woman half-corpse, and a few others, carried the film in terms of startling creations, the likes of which we had never seen before.

Nightmare Issue #13

The Skeletal Spotlight shines this time on:
The "Nightmare" issue #13 cover and story
(Click on images to enlarge)

In the summer of 1973, my skinny, bookish young 14-year-old self saw this issue of Skywald's Nightmare on the magazine rack at Chichesters Pharmacy on Vineville Avenue in Macon, GA. A cold thrill coursed down my spine, not only because I knew the Skywald mags to be the good stuff, but because the cover art was truly the fabric of nightmares. The beautifully rotting face of the living corpse on the cover was riveting. I quickly snatched it up, had it paid for and out of the store within 30 seconds flat.

Driven mad by high gas prices, he just had to let off a little steam.

Now, most all of the items that I would pick up at the drugstore during the weekend stay's at my Grandma's house, I would read as I walked back from the drugstore. Be it the latest Star Trek novelization, comic book, Monster Times, Famous Monsters, Castle of Frankenstein, Planet of the Apes, Dracula Lives, etc., they would all be perused as I walked the four blocks back home. But the rare issues of Skywald's Nightmare or Scream I lucked upon were saved til the night-time hours. It wouldn't be right to read them in the bright light of the daytime... no. That would be missing some of the special thrill.

After chowing down on the bagful of cheese Krystals I brought home for our supper, watching Kung Fu and the Saturday Night Movie on TV with Grandma, and finishing all the other magazines or comics I had bought, then... and only then...when it was after midnight, came the time for Nightmare. I retreated to my room, with a bedside lamp and a candle lit on the dresser. With a bottle of blue cream soda and some snacks on the table, I would almost reverantly take out the issue and open it. The horrors inside were devoured and absorbed into my young monster-hungry mind, filling it with delicious chills.

This is the first time I've presented an entire story in the Sweet Skulls blog. Usually I only feature the skull-centric cover art. But as I took out my old copy of this issue and scanned in the cover, I re-read the story and decided it would be a shame not to share the whole thing with you. So I spent about an hour scanning in the pages, then another hour cropping and formatting the images for posting. It took another hour to upload them to the blog page. The time required for all this is another reason I don't do it much; how Karswell does it on a daily basis is a mystery to me. I also don't want to encroach on territory already excellently covered by his blog "The Horrors Of It All," but since he mostly features pre-Code comics, and this is from a B&W horror magazine, I thought it was worth doing. As I have time, and if the story is good enough, I may do it again occasionally.

In the page details posted above you can see some of the panels that I really liked. Now, here for your enjoyment (I hope), is the complete story of "The Corpse," scanned in high-resolution. The ending really went differently from the expectations one usually has in these "revenge of the living dead" stories, another reason I liked it so much as a teen.

There you go... bet ya didn't see that one coming, did ya? Well, maybe you did, being so smart and all, but 14-year-old Fred didn't, and that's the standard I judge these old stories by.

Here's a bonus scan of a splash page about H. P. Lovecraft that I thought was well done. It looked like I did after I fell asleep reading the magazine and dreamed about all that weird stuff! Unlike most, I actually enjoyed my nightmares... they were like a realistic movie, and the scarier the better.