FEMME FATALES NO. 1 (PART 1)

 

FEMME FATALES
Vol. 1 No. 1
Summer 1992
Publisher: Frederick S. Clarke
Editor: Bill George
Pages: 68

The title of this magazine has always bugged me because it mixes a singular and a plural. Since it featured multiple actresses on its pages, the proper title of FEMME FATALES should be FEMMES FATALES, doggone it! It is surprising, especially when coming from the mind of a publisher like Frederick S. Clarke. In any event, a minor quibble over a major entry into the sci-fi/monster/fantasy magazine market in the 1990s.

Subtitled, "The Luscious Ladies of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction", FF, despite it thematic premise, was really a men's magazine. The editor, Bill George, was a devoted collector of glamour and pin-up art and explained on the editorial page of the first issue that FF was dedicated to showing plenty of "exotic" photos. True to his word, George filled each issue with provocatively posed photos that were more suggestive than salacious.

Brimming with the ladies that put modern B-horror and Sci-Fi movies on the cinematic map of the eighties and nineties -- Brinke Stevens, Debbie Rochon, Jamie Lee Curtis, Barbara Crampton, Robey, Michelle Bauer, Linnea Quigley, et al -- FF was nevertheless a very editorially intelligent and sophisticated publication. Had there been other professionally published and commercially marketed magazines like it, FEMME FATALES would have surely been the PLAYBOY of the bunch.