INVISIBLE RAY FILMBOOK . . . FROM 1936!

Long before Forrest J Ackerman thrilled us Monster Kids with them in his Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the so-called "filmbook" had enjoyed some popularity in the earlier movie fan magazines. The format, a text narrative of a film story accompanied by various stills from the movie, had even been quite successful as far back as 1912 with the hardbound books of movie tie-ins known as Photoplay Editions, which used both reprints of novels that were made into movies as well as fictionalized film scripts.

Here, for your holiday reading pleasure, is the photo film story of Universal's 1936 production of The Invisible Ray, starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Frances Drake. It appeared in the January 1936 issue of Movie Action magazine, coincidentally the same week that the movie was released. No credit is given for the authorship, but being in the pulp magazine format of the day, it was most likely penned by a staff writer.

This article has previously seen a little exposure on the web, but I came across it while researching a book project and thought it relevant to readers of MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD.