Creature Feature Classics: Castle Of Blood

Castle Of Blood, One Of My Favorite 
Barbara Steele Movies, Is Actually 
The Movie That Helped
 Get Me An A On My Midterm 
English Paper Back In High School. 
How Did That Happen?
 Well, I'll Keep That Story 
For The End of This Post.

Starring Barbara Steele And Directed By Antonio Margheritti This Is One Of The Classics Of The Golden Age Of Italian Horror Movies In The 

Early 60's. The Plot Concerns A Writer (George Riviere) Who Travels To An English  Town To Interview Edgar Allen Poe. They Proceed To Discuss The Metaphysical, Then Poe Admits That His Writings Weren't Made Up But Were Based On Real Life Incidents. The Reporter Scoffs At His Statement And Poe's Companion Lord Thomas Blackwood Challenges The Reporter To Spend A Night In His Haunted Castle Where Ghosts Reenact Their Murders On One Night Every Year. The Reporter Accepts The Challenge And As He Ventures Through The Creepy Gothic Castle He Encounters The Beautiful Barbara Steele And Falls In Love With Her. A Love Triangle Ensues Including A Pretty Daring For Its Day Lesbian Tryst And As Promised All The Ghosts Proceed To Revisit Their Deaths.

While Slow Moving At Times The Atmosphere 
And Steele's Performance Carry The Day 
In This One. The DVD From Synapse 
Even has A Deleted European Nude Scene! 
Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, 
Nightmare Castle, The Horrible 
Dr Hichcock, And Castle Of Blood
 Are, In My Opinion, The Best Examples Of 
60's Gothic Euro-Horror. Castle of Blood 
Was Later Retitled Castle Of Terror 
For Late Night TV And This Is The Version 
Which I Viewed In The Early 70's. 

Oh Yeah That Paper I Came Up With Dealt With 
The Idea Of Poe Being A Reporter Of All His 
Stories And Not Just A Writer Of Fiction, 

Same As The Movie. Luckily My Teacher 
Had Never Seen This Movie So 
I Got The Good Grade And 
Not An F For Plagiarism!

And Here's The Trailer!

Cartoonists Make Better Lovers: Alex Toth

While I certainly admire Alex Toth’s work from the 1940’s, it’s in the 1950’s when he came into that wonderful, concise cartooning style. He’s another artist who I failed to appreciate as a youth but man do I love his stuff now.

“Chance For Happiness” appeared in Standard Comics THRILLING ROMANCES issue 23, in 1953.

Pat

 

“Shattered Dream” is from a different Standard book, MY REAL LOVE # 5 circa 1952.

The Revolt Of The Machines

From Twilight Zone 12

A Nice Story With Beautiful

Art By The Great Al Williamson.

A Lot Of The Old EC Artists:

Williamson, George Evans, Frazetta,

Reed Crandall, Alex Toth And Angelo Torres Did Some Nice Work On The Early Issues Of Twilight Zone

Right About The Same Time

They Where Working For The

Warren Comic Books:

Creepy And Eerie.

The Police Blotter : Lepke

We’ve all heard the old saying “crime does not pay” but I’ll argue that in fact it did pay… well at least for the comic book industry. From 1942 until the advent of the CCA, the crime genre was a popular and profitable milieu that publishers exploited to the max. This series will be a platform for me to present you some of my favorite tales from the idiom.

This trend goes back to July of 1942 with the issuance of CRIME DOES NOT PAY issue 22. This comic magazine was published by Lev Gleason Publications and was the brainchild of writer Bob Wood and cartoonist Charles Biro. Perhaps it’s apocryphal but according to one version that I’ve heard the pair were at a New York City bar trying to come up for a new title for Gleason. While there they were approached by a man who offered them the "services" of a woman, that he had in a room above the bar. The pair declined the offer but later on they saw the man's picture in the newspaper and read that the police found a female kidnap victim at the building. Allegedly the crime inspired them to create the CDNP. A more sedate account maintains the bar setting but that the concept grew out of a general discussion of gangsters and law-breaking. Whatever the true account was, Gleason gave his okay to launch the new book.

If we accept CDNP 22 as the first crime comic, then the honor of drawing the very first crime story published goes to Harry Lucey. It was simply the luck of the draw that made his story the lead one in that historic issue. But I find the idea of a cartoonist so closely associated with the wholesome Archie series being the lead man in a such shocking and sensational milieu to be a deliciously perverse one. Here is “The Real Story Behind Lepke, Mad Dog Of The Underworld”. 

Pat 

Beyond The Grave

We've Got An Interesting Art Combo On This Charlton Comics Classic, Charles Nicholas

And Wayne Howard. Nicholas Was Usually Inked

By Vince Alascia And Howard Usually Inked 

Himself, But I Like This Collaboration A Lot!

And By Popular Demand

Some More Steve Ditko Greatness!