Zombies and Saturday Morning TV

Stumbled upon another Myron Fass publication in my collection... the Winter 1978 issue of Star Battles:

Superman: "Why are you shooting me in the back? Look! Up in the sky! Cylons! Shoot THEM!"

So naturally, that means more articles by (drum roll, please...) Tom Rogers!

In The Living Dead Return: George Romero Strikes Again, he covers Night of the Living Dead, The Crazies, Martin, and the then-upcoming Dawn of the Dead. I particularly like how, after denigrating the quality of Night of the Living Dead (by my count) four times in four paragraphs, he writes, "This is really a fine horror film, and this synopsis does not do it justice." Indeed!

In Saturday Morning Live Action, he covers a number of programs I remember fondly from my '70s childhood, though for some reason he decides to do so in alphabetical order, resulting in the discussion of some spin-offs before the original shows that spawned them.

This article is a good example of just how weird the '70s were, sometimes to the point of disbelief. Back in the '90s, before the advent of YouTube, it literally took me YEARS to convince one of my roommates that I hadn't made up The Lost Saucer, starring Jim Nabors and Ruth Buzzi as spacefaring androids with a pet Dorse. I don't think even the IMDb listing was enough to overcome his level of denial. Of course, when dealing with television of this calibre, that's a useful defense mechanism to have -- the same sort that allows Lovecraft characters to investigate Cthulhu while retaining their last vestige of sanity.

Monster Squad, Bigfoot and Wildboy, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Isis and Shazam! -- I'm beginning to get a clearer image of what went wrong with my formative years.

Brains and Blobs from Outer Space

Last week I discussed the June 1978 issue of Space Wars, the first science fiction magazine I ever read. Well, the very same month, publisher Myron Fass also put out this issue of Star Encounters. Besides having similar covers, they both also had articles comparing and contrasting Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Space Wars contained an article by Tom Rogers on Giant Monsters defending Earth from Alien Invaders. In Star Encounters, Tom writes about Brains and Blobs from Outer Space:

"Since 1933," Tom begins, "there have been about 30 films that have featured bodiless brains, outsized masses of living protoplasm and similar disturbing and unnatural things." He then goes on to cover classics of this subgenre, including The Blob (and the sequel Beware! The Blob!, a.k.a. Son of Blob), The Green Slime, and 27 other films (which for the sake of convenience I'll list in alphabetical order):

1. Angry Red Planet
2. The Atomic Submarine
3. Barbarella
4. Brain from Planet Arous
5. Caltiki, the Immortal Monster
6. The Colossus of New York
7. The Crawling Eye
8. The Creeping Unknown
9. Curse of the Fly
10. Donovan's Brain
11. Enemy from Space
12. Evil Brain from Outer Space
13. The Final Program
14. Flame Barrier
15. The Flesh Eaters
16. The H-Man
17. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
18. Island of Terror
19. It Came from Outer Space
20. Journey to the 7th Planet
21. Last Days of Man on Earth
22. Not of This Earth
23. The Space Children
24. Space Master X-7
25. The Unknown Terror
26. The Vampire Bat
27. X the Unknown

Number 12 above, Evil Brain from Outer Space, is one of the Starman (known in Japan as Super Giant) films (not to be confused with the movie starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen) recommended in the blog comments by fellow blogger Chris Elam:

Oh my stars, I remember that Brains and Blobs article! I liked the Fass publications because they covered plenty of weird stuff. This included running what was essentially fanfiction with articles like "What If Jor-El Had Been Wrong?" and the amazing theory that Tusken Raiders were adolescent Jawas.

Haha, yeah, different Starman. There are four of them, edited from Japanese movie serials (usually two-parters). Since you watched Green Slime on YouTube, here they are there:

Atomic Rulers

Invaders from Space

Attack from Space

Evil Brain from Outer Space

They're all out on DVD, if they float your boat.

Finally, because I'll take any excuse to post a Simpsons image, here is the poster for Treehouse of Horror XVII, which includes the segment "Married to the Blob," in which Homer morphs from morbidly obese into a giant blob and begins eating his way through (the citizens of) Springfield. Contains the best Dr. Phil cameo EVER (Hint: I'm not a fan).

Giant Monsters vs. Alien Invaders

This is the June 1978 issue of Space Wars, the first science fiction magazine I ever laid eyes on. I can remember my mother -- knowing what a huge "Star Wars" fan I was -- bringing it home from the store to surprise me when I was nine. Though I'd seen a handful of Godzilla movies by then, an article by Tom Rogers, "Giant Monsters vs. Alien Invaders," was my introduction to most of the monsters in the Toho pantheon, not to mention those outside it, like the giant turtle Gamera.

As this was back in the days before we had cable TV, much less VCRs, DVD players, or Netflix, I did not have the luxury of watching whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. No, back in the dark ages we had to watch what was on, while it was on, or miss it altogether. As a result, I recall spending countless hours studying the pictures and rereading the text of the article to get my monster fix, imagining movies that I have only recently managed to see (and many I still haven't).

Although the article sometimes reads like a 6th grade English assignment, is filled with lame attempts at '70s-era snark, and takes a derisive view of Japanese cinema in general, with the writer wishing more than once that the movies would just go away and never return, it was nevertheless a goldmine of information for 9-year-old me (despite containing dubious spellings of a number of monsters' names). And my elementary school friends were equally enthusiastic about it, because when I brought the magazine to school to show it to them, it was passed around the playground at recess like porn. (Which is in no way meant to imply that we were sharing porn in elementary school.)

The hallowed pages are posted below. Click to enlarge...