CHEESECAKE WITH YOUR HORROR?

The topics you see here today were posted on this blog over a dozen years ago when it was still named MONSTER MAGAZINE WORLD. I thought it might be time to dust them off and bring them out into the light of day once more after all these years. The text has been edited and revised and new images have been added.

THE PUBLISHING TEAM of brothers Myron and Irving Fass churned out magazine titles fast and furious during the 1950's and into 1970's. A whacked-out mix of girlie magazines, monsters, UFO's and anything capitalizing on the most current pop culture craze on which a buck could be made, it is older brother Myron's EERIE PUBLICATIONS horror and sci-fi comics magazines that are remembered most out of the melange.

The eccentric publishing empire is fondly remembered for its lurid covers of monsters beating up and eating other monsters, busty vamps ripping up hairy werewolves with their claws and gobs of blood and gore so extreme as to be ridiculous. Still, they lasted for about 15 years and ensured that the name "Fass" would be indelibly etched on the scroll of monster magazine history.

The June 1963 issue of FOTO-RAMA, a girlie magazine racy for the day but tame by today's glut of unimaginative feasts of flesh contained the usual page-count of pin-up photos. Posed in a manner that was risque but not raunchy, any bare breast that showed a little too much was tipped with a heart-shaped censor's mark, a little more revealing than the well-known "censor's strip" that was commonly used on magazine photographs that might be considered objectionable by the general public. The magazine's masted listed the art director as one Irving Fass.

Foto-Rama was one of the many magazines churned out by the
Eerie Publishing empire of brothers Myron and Irving Fass.

Monsterologists might also be interested to know that a hidden bit of monster magazine lore lurked within this issue of FOTO-RAMA. Found deep into its pages was a full-page ad for the 3-issue run of a horror title produced by Fass called THRILLER.

For only a buck and an extra 2-bits for postage, you would receive a trio of terrifying magazines that promised stories about weird gals and ghouls that were "guaranteed to send shivers down your spine and scare the yell out of you." You could read about a wanton witch and meet the gal would like "somebody to lay her in her grave." You get the picture.

The masthead of Foto-Rama listing Irving Fass as art director.

To tie it in with the marketing of the adult readership, a stack of 5 "cheesecake" photo pin-ups was offered as a premium (check out the pics -- 8if that's what they called cheesecake I'll jump off my second-story deck). Also of note is the fact that this ad was used in PHOTO LIFE, another Fass publication -- you can see that it was pasted up from the other magazine from the title at the bottom of the ad.

All-in-all a fascinating tidbit of monster mag trivia, don't you think?



For only three bucks you could get three monster mags
plus five cheesecake photos from "Portrait Enterprises".

But wait! That's not all!

It's no secret that "Crass" Fass and family are well-known as the magazine publishing kings of horror exploitation. Their empire attempted everything, using something akin to the old-fashioned method to see if your pasta is done by throwing some on the wall to see if it sticks. In efforts to make a buck, they published everything from a Kennedy special, the occult, men's mags, Western mags, monster mags, you name it -- their output of genre titles far exceeded even Warren's varied lines.

With the exception of longer running magazines such as WEIRD and HORROR TALES, titles were usually one-shots or otherwise short-lived. One attempt at jumping on the "adult humor" bandwagon was OGLE. Part satire, part spoof and part men's mag, it ran for a few issues, then petered out (no pun intended) like so many others.

Of interest to monster fans, however, was a three-page spread in OGLE #4 (August 1960) called "Ogle Goes to a Monster Rally". It includes several pictures of posed shots and even a still picturing Paul Blaisdell's IT, THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE.

In typical exploitative style, the photos were provocatively posed with women either shown as victims or femmes fatales. It is commonly thought that the subjects in these photos were either staffers dressed up or cheaply-hired actors. Knowing the frayed shoestring of a budget that the Fass' worked off of, I'd put my money on the staffers.

Another article in OGLE #4 was a pictorial piece that claimed editor Myron Fass was really a woman! Of course, it was just another excuse to use cheesecake photos of an attractive and bosomy woman, posing in apparel as flimsy as the premise of the article.

A caricature of Myron Fass on the back cover of Ogle #1.

And finally, another obscure gem I came across these many years ago. The text has been revised and updated along with a new special bonus.

There has been plenty of humor in monster magazines over the years. By their very nature, monsters are fodder for satire and parody, mainly because we like to laugh at things that would otherwise make us shudder in fear. One of my theories about the pop culture phenomenon and its cousin, the entertainment industry, is this: the more a subject can be made fun of, the more success and longevity it has. I'm sure there are some exceptions to blow this thought out of the water, but the corroboration seems to fit for me. After all, some of the most fondly remembered of the 1960's monster products that were heaped on us Monster Kids were funny things like the "Big Frankie" model, the "Frankenstein Loses His Pants" motion toy, the "Monster Old Maid" card game, and hit TV shows like THE ADDAMS FAMILY and THE MUNSTERS.

The vintage monster magazines were full of humorous horror hi-jinx. In the early days this usually took the form of stills from monster movies with word balloons or captions that consisted of wince-inducing jokes. Trading cards like Leaf's SPOOK STORIES and Topps' YOU'LL DIE LAUGHING were, of course, intentionally humorous as well. So, too, were later magazines like MONSTERS TO LAUGH WITH. Major Magazine's FOR MONSTERS ONLY combined serious monster movie text and photo articles with some of the best gags and comic strip parodies ever put on paper. That it was a companion publication to the mainstream humor magazine CRACKED is not a coincidence. Even MAD magazine was known to lampoon monster movies and their stars on a regular basis -- so much over the years, that there was enough material to fill a hardbound book called HORRIFYINGLY MAD.

But, as an overly-inquisitive Monsterologist, I have sometimes wondered, what was the first magazine that featured a monster parody? I'm not talking about the odd cartoon with a werewolf or vampire as the subject. I'm talking about a full-length article in a magazine that took movie monsters as a subject and turned them into something that was designed for readers to laugh at.

I think author and Warren historian David Horne may have the answer.

You may recall David as the mad scientist with the chemistry set of "Creepy" culture that bubbled and frothed itself into the book called GATHERING HORROR A COMPLETIST COLLECTOR'S CATALOGUE AND INDEX FOR WARREN PUBLISHING. Folks, I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- if you have the slightest interest in having at your fingertips as much information about the Warren publishing empire as is currently collected between two covers, you owe it to yourself to seek out and purchase a copy of the long-out-of-print GATHERING HORROR. I liked the first copy I bought so much that I ordered a second just to have as an "archive edition", unread and untouched by human hands, as I like to think.

Mentioned on page 474 of this nearly 700-page tome is a 'zine with a cover price of 25 cents that could well contain the very first monster movie parody. The information in the book is based on info gathered from the description of a copy that went up for auction some time ago. Well, David finally landed his own copy so he's got a little more on it.

SUNDIAL was a humor magazine published by students of Ohio State University that began way back in 1911 and predated a similar publication, NATIONAL LAMPOON (originally created by students at Harvard U as the HARVARD LAMPOON) and MAD magazine. David says that Harvey Kurtzman, the creator of MAD once commented in an interview that he had been partially inspired by the college humor mags that were around then, although he did not mention SUNDIAL or any others in particular. It is not known who exactly worked on it, how often it came out, or how widely it was distributed, but I would venture a guess that anyone in possession of this 'zine could consider themselves the lucky owner of a likely scarce -- and probably rare -- bit of American ephemera.

David Horne elaborates: "SUNDIAL occasionally did parody versions of other magazines--for example, there was a parody of LOOK magazine and another one of the NEW YORKER. This particular issue, of course, [MOVIE SCREEN]was a parody of the movie magazines that were popular at the time. It came out in 1949, although as my listing notes, there are three different months listed [the front cover states May, the Table of Contents says March, and in the indicia, it's June], so it's hard to tell exactly when. It's numbered volume 37, number 8, for what that's worth. Of course, the interest to monster magazine fans is the cover, which so presciently foreshadows the cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS #1, which came nine years later. The magazine is actually pretty funny, including the cover article (technically about Frankenstein's monster, although it just calls him Frankenstein). The article [entitled, "The Private Life of Frankenstein"] talks about the monster's home life and "acting" career, and includes a picture of him barbecuing in a suburban back yard. As I said in the book, there's no way to know whether Forry or Jim Warren saw this before making their own magazine, but it's an interesting curiosity all the same."

And how, David!

So, could this be the first instance of a feature-length parody of a monster movie star? Until another, earlier dated example shows up, we'll have to assume that it is. And, that's part of what makes Monsterology so much fun -- seeing what continues to be uncovered and discovered from the cobwebbed chronicles of time. At the very least, it could be a tidbit for a revised edition of THE ANNOTATED FAMOUS MONSTERS #1!

Now, hand on to your pointy hats, fellow Monsterologists. Stashed away in the moldy and musty depths of the Mysterious Mansion is this gem -- "The Private Life of Frankenstein" article as published in SUNDIAL'S MOVIE SCREEN parody issue! Written by one Hedda Gabler (an Ohio State University student?), several pictures accompany the article with the monster looking like he's literally got egg on his face. The man under the makeup is unknown, but it might be Miss Gabler in these photos. Enjoy reading this obscure monster rarity!

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