Friday, June 5, 2015

ADVENTURES IN HORROR NO. 2 (PART 1)


“The Stanley mags are just too over-the-top for my tastes. The covers look like the deviant wet-dreams of a sexually frustrated and psychotic teenager.” – From an online comics Forum

ADVENTURES IN HORROR
Volume 1, Number 2
December, 1970
Stanley Publications
Editor: Theodore S. Hecht

Fans of pulp men's magazines and horror stories got an extra Christmas treat when the second issue of Stanley Publications' ADVENTURES IN HORROR was published in December, 1970.

Not missing a beat from its premier a couple of months previous, this sophomore issue was packed from cover to cover with lurid tales with titles like, "The Blood-Drenched Corpse of the Priestess of Satan", "One More Victim for the Coffin's Curse of Horror", and "Bony Fingers From the Grave", and included at least one story by Ed Wood, writing under the preposterous pen name, Obadiah Kempf ("It Takes Two For Terror").

The magazine was most certainly intended for a red-blooded male audience, with its salacious titles and sleazy black and white photographs that were largely staged and taken in-house. One exception is a photo from HAXAN (WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES), obviously used for its combination of sex and satanism. Another is the pair of stills illustrating Kempf/Wood's story taken from his notoriously ridiculous, ORGY OF THE DEAD.

Included here are numerous advertisements for sex books, dating overseas girls, the legendary "blow-up love doll", and, somewhat perversely, a set of big-eyed "moppets" prints. After all, it was the swingin' seventies!



















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