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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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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: House of Hammer magazine #13 (1977)

Posted in Genres, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Halloween, Hammer Studios, holiday, magazines, monsters, zombies on October 22, 2013 by Paxton

Comic editor Dez Skinn had conceived of a horror fan magazine called Chiller. He worked right next to the production offices of Hammer Studios, and after walking past the front door one day he decided to talk to Hammer about licensing their name to use on the magazine. In the 70s, Hammer Studios was a giant in the horror movie industry. Their Frankenstein and Dracula franchises were huge hits. They thought this new Hammer fan magazine was a great idea. They changed the name from Chiller to The House of Hammer. The magazine covered new releases as well as old. Originally it was only going to cover Hammer movies, but it became clear that there would not be enough content so they opened it up a little bit to cover new genre pictures currently in release. Sort of a prototype Fangoria. The first issue was published in 1976.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Hammer Studios. Their gothic horror films are classics. Especially, like I said, their classic Dracula series with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

In October 1977, The House of Hammer #13 was released. As you can see, the cover story was Hammer’s 1966 zombie flick, Plague of the Zombies. There was also a preview of Star Wars as it wouldn’t premier in Britain until Dec 1977. One of the cool things this magazine did was to feature comic adaptations of some of Hammer’s classic movies. In this issue they adapt Plague of the Zombies. It’s actually really well done. The adaptation was written by Steve Moore with artwork by Trevor Goring and the awesome Brian Bolland of Killing Joke and Watchmen fame. Below are the first four pages. The entire adaptation is about 13 pages, so you’ll have to click through to my Flickr set to see the entire thing. If you click the first page below (with the movie title), you can read it full size on Flickr then just click the right arrow to move to page two.

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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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AWESOME-tober-fest 2012: Marvel Comics’ A Nightmare on Elm Street magazine (1989)

Posted in A Nightmare on Elm Street, comic books, Freddy Krueger, magazine, movies, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2012, comic books, Freddy Krueger, Halloween, holiday, magazines, Marvel Comics, Nightmare on Elm Street on October 18, 2012 by Paxton

In 1989 Marvel comics released the magazine Freddy Krueger’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The magazine had gorgeously painted covers by Joe Jusko. The interior art was in black and white and done by Rich Buckler and Tony DeZuniga. Tony DeZuniga also worked on the awesome MGM’s Marvelous Wizard of Oz magazine I’ve talked about before for my Oz series. The interior stories were written by Steve Gerber. The magazines were published around the release of Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. At the time, comics were coming under fire for being too violent and Nightmare 5 was getting protests in LA for this very reason. This general backlash caused Marvel to decide to cancel the magazine after issue #2. Marvel wasn’t receiving pressure from anyone and the magazine actually sold fairly well, Marvel just wanted to avoid any problems so they quietly folded the magazine.

It’s a shame the magazine was canceled. The story was pretty interesting. The first issue even has a few pages devoted to its own version of Freddy’s origin involving Amanda Krueger’s entrapment, beating and rape within the walls of a mental hospital. The art is pretty good too, especially in the first issue. The second half of the second issue, though, the art becomes a little uneven and a little inconsistent. Sometimes it’s nicely inked and sometimes it looks like pencil drawings. A little weird.

Check out two samples of the art. On the left is a nicely inked page from early in the issue and on the right is a page that looks more “pencil-like” with very little inking. You can click the images to see them BIGGER.

It goes on like that for the last 10 pages or so. Sometimes only one panel on the page will have the “pencil” look. I guess they knew the mag was being canceled and just rushed it out. Which makes sense since the second issue of this magazine is extremely hard to find.

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