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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Four vintage Fangoria magazine ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, movies, music with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, music, vintage, zombies on October 30, 2013 by Paxton

Fangoria had a lot of great merch that you could purchase directly through the magazine. We saw the masks/costumes collections yesterday. Now let’s take a look at some of the other awesome items you could buy through the pages of Fangoria.

One of the first places I’d usually go, and the place I usually lingered on after I’d read the magazine, is the two page back issue order form. Checking out previous issues and what movies were covered was amazing. I love that they included many of the covers as well. You can see in the lower right I filled out the order form back in the day. I was optimistically hoping my parents would let me send away for some of the issues. I checked off issues #50 and #55 in the form. Issue 50 was the issue featured in the picture on the right with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). I always lusted after that issue and never got it. The other issue, #55, I’m less sure why I wanted. The cover pic is above the description with the Invaders from Mars remake on the cover and some first looks at Psycho III.

This ad showed up in Fangoria for many years. One of my favorites. I never wanted to own any of these shirts, I just liked the idea that they existed. I would never have been able to wear one of these shirts to school, so what was the point? Plus the shirts were $25 which was A LOT, even then. But the ad was very eye catching and fun. I like the guy in the luchador mask. WTF?!

Fangoria sold everything to make money within its pages. Here are some horror movie soundtracks for sale. Some of these I would imagine are pretty rare now. Some of these might possibly have been made custom. That Troll soundtrack couldn’t have sold too well. The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack is pretty great. But check out that list of eclectic movie soundtracks on the right. Teen Wolf? Warhol’s Dracula? The first Evil Dead? Transylvania 6-5000?! Wow.

The Gore Store was always a great stop in the magazine to see what cool books and props were being offered. This particular Gore Store is from 1987. Some cool film books about Night of the Living Dead and Stephen King. Also this page was a chance to order the annual Bloody Best of Fangoria issues. In this one you could order all the current 5 volumes of Bloody Best right there for $18 plus shipping. A little over $3 each. Not bad.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Vintage Fangoria mask ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, magazine with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, costumes, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, vintage on October 29, 2013 by Paxton

I’ve said before I’m a huge Fangoria fan. I still have all my old issues.

Here are some awesome mask ads from Fangoria magazine. Let’s put them in chronological order shall we?

First up:

A Monster Madness makeup kit ad from 1979 featuring several different types of masks. Three space alien designs, but check out C, on the far right. Does it look familiar? Maybe a bit like Darth Vader without the samurai helmet? The ad says the kits were designed by Dick Smith, but his name isn’t anywhere in the branding.

Ad for Don Post masks circa 1980. With the gear up to Empire Strikes Back that year, it’s not surprising that there are several Star Wars masks in this collection. Including a Bith cantina band member.

Massacre Masks ad from 1987. A fun ad showcasing not only masks but gaping wounds. It was always preferrable at the time to want to buy the goriest thing you could find in these ads and then wear them around your parents or other family members.

Nightmares masks ad from 1987. More gory, disgusting mask designs. Even back in the day I really liked the Letcher mask/hands in the upper left. I’m also in love with that “The Coffin” prop in the lower left. And the full size “The Corpse”? Yes, please. In 1987, those two items would set you back $875 plus shipping.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: 7 Vintage horror movie on VHS ads

Posted in Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, movies, vintage, zombies on October 28, 2013 by Paxton

In the late 80s-early 90s I was a big horror fan. I watched all the slasher movies and I bought and read Fangoria magazine every month. For a while, it was my favorite magazine. I even still have a bunch of my original issues.

Surprisingly, Fangoria didn’t have a LOT of ads, but every issue there was at least 1 big ad for some movie that was either about to come out in theaters, or getting ready to hit VHS and Laserdisc. They are glorious full page color ads. And I loved them. Here are a few of those ads I still have. You can click the images to see them BIGGER on Flickr.

Since my theme this year is zombies, I’ll start with a zombie movie. This ad is for Zombie Nightmare from 1987. It stars Adam West (yes, THAT Adam West) and Tia Carrere. A youth is killed by a group of rampant teenagers. A voodoo priestess resurrects the youth to enact revenge on his killers so he can rest in peace.

Here’s another 1987 ad for the first sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The bottom of the ad includes mail away offers for 3D posters, 6 ft cardboard standees and t-shirts. I love that they “suggest” you use a chainsaw to cut out the order form.

And here to finish off the 1987 hat trick is an ad for David Cronenberg’s The Fly. I love this image. I don’t think they needed the image of the Brundlefly in the upper left, I wish they would have left that out.

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Vintage Stephen King/Peter Straub interview from Fangoria magazine (1986)

Posted in books, Fangoria, magazine, nostalgia, Stephen King with tags books, Fangoria, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Talismanalong on August 21, 2013 by Paxton

So here I am, just past the half way point in my reading of the King/Straub fantasy epic, The Talisman. I’m going to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t totally looking forward to reading this book. I love King, but the book is kinda long and I kept flashing back to my reading of The Stand. And after the first 80 pages I just kept thinking, “I’ve made a horrible mistake.” But the book quickly started getting better and I’m much more comfortable now. I’m very much enjoying the book at the halfway point. It’s also getting me excited to read the sequel, Black House, as well as that Shadowland book I bought on a whim several months ago.

While trolling through my old Fangoria magazines, I found an article from The Bloody Best of Fangoria Vol 5. The Bloody Best was a compilation of previously published articles that Fangoria released at the end of each year. Essentially, it’s a reprint magazine. This particular volume was from 1986. The interview I’m sharing is with both King and Straub around the time of the release of the book. Like I said, the article was reprinted in 1986 for the compilation, but the article itself is from sometime in 1984.

You can click each of the images to see them BIGGER on Flickr.

For those that don’t want to read the article, there are a few interesting tidbits.

* King and Straub can no longer remember who wrote what. And the parts you think are King probably aren’t because they each tried to put tricks in the story and use each other’s style to fool their readers.
* Universal bought the movie rights to the book in 1984 and Spielberg was attached to direct. Even going as far as having a script commissioned. Obviously, nothing came of that.
* At this point in time, George Romero was set to direct a film adaptation of The Stand right after he finished filming Day of the Dead. King had written the script and whittled it down to a 2.5 hour movie and says in the article that “everything is in there”. But I’m not sure how that’s even possible.
* After The Talisman, Straub is mostly done with supernatural horror. He wants to focus on more crime and mystery. Which is what he does. His next three books are his famed Blue Rose Trilogy (Koko, Mystery, The Throat).

I mentioned Straub’s next few books after The Talisman above. Conversely, the next published book for Stephen King after The Talisman was Thinner, but that was originally under the Richard Bachman alias. The next KING book was the short story collection, Skeleton Crew. Which is one of my very favorite King books. But Thinner is rather good as well.

It seems like this article just ends. I guess the interview is concluded in the next issue. A bit disappointing as I wanted them to discuss any ideas for the sequel we wouldn’t see for like 20 years.

Another thing I thought before reading up on The Talisman was that King and Straub hated each other. That they started off as friends but the writing of the book drove a wedge into that friendship. That’s why it took so long to get a sequel. However, that’s clearly not the case at all. These guys were friends for years before The Talisman and they’ve been friends ever since. Interesting the ideas you overhear other people say that have no basis in reality.

So yes, I’m enjoying the book and I’d recommend it to anyone that is curious and already a fan of either author. However, since this is just the halfway point, there is still plenty of time for this book to go completely “off the rails”.

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Vintage ads for official movie magazines from the 80s

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags Fangoria, magazine, magazines, movies, nostalgia, pop culture on August 16, 2013 by Paxton

I’ve talked about movie magazines before. As a matter of fact, back in 2010 I took a look at the Back to the Future souvenir magazine. I love official movie magazines and I have a bunch of them. These magazines were the original movie supplemental material. We didn’t have DVDs and VHS tapes didn’t normally add anything extra (some did, but it was rare). I remember seeing ads for these magazines all over my favorite magazines. I’d fill out the form and select the ones I wanted as a wish list. Just hoping that someday I’d be allowed to order a Rambo or Star Trek movie magazine through the mail.

So, I was perusing through my old Fangoria magazines recently and found a couple of these movie magazine ads. They show a ton of the magazines and it’s great to see some of the covers. So on this lazy Friday, I thought I’d show you this 80s vintage goodness.

This first ad is from 1986.

I love how the magazines are spread out like you took the pile and threw them on the table. Amazing layout. There’s that amazing Rambo magazine. They also have Rocky II, Rocky III and Rocky IV magazines. As a matter of fact there are THREE Rocky IV magazines. AND, Stallone gets a “Best Of” magazine. Damn, he was at the height of his popularity here. As for all the Rocky IV magazines, when a movie was popular enough, it would not only get an official movie magazine, it would also get an official poster magazine and an official “movie book”. I put that last one in quotes because even though it’s called a book it was still a magazine, just with more content and glossier, color pages.

You can see some of the covers on this ad are for the poster magazines (Star Trek III, Rocky II for example). Some of the other ones pictured that I think look cool include the A View to a Kill as well as The Explorers. Take a look at the list in the yellow box at the bottom and there are listed several magazines that aren’t pictured. Annie, Superman III, High Road to China, SF Superheroes, TV Superheroes, Joanie Loves Chachi and Conan the Destroyer. I would buy every single one of these magazines today.

If I were to have ordered every magazine in this ad back in the day it would have set me back $75.35. Plus $24.90 for shipping. That’s $100.25 (incl shipping) for 26 different magazines. Which is about $3.85 each. NOT BAD. It would cost well over that now to track this mess down on eBay and trader sites.

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