I will always say that growing up in the 70’s was the best time to be a kid. We had THE BEST toys available to us and in my opinion, there has not been a better assortment of toys available to kids since. One of the top toy manufacturers at the time was MEGO, who specialized in the 8″ WORLD’S GREATEST SUPER-HEROES figures as well as MICRONAUTS and even a cool robot called 2-XL that played 8-track tapes full of interactive games and questions.
As 2011 winds its way down, we can all agree that this certainly wasn’t a stellar year for horror. This should not suggest, however, that it didn’t have a few note worthy genre entries on the whole. As everyone seems intent on doing a “Year of Review” we thought we might add our own picks for our favorite horror/sci-fi films of 2011.
Not long ago, we featured a 20th Anniversary piece on our beloved SCARY MONSTERS MAGAZINE. This was designed as a Tribute to both the magazine as well as its unassuming publisher, Dennis Druktenis. We are pleased to follow that up with an interview featuring another icon of SCARY MONSTERS – its incomparable main cover artist, “Scary” Terry Beatty!
ROCK N SHOCK 2011 brought together various cast members from the 80’s slasher franchise A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. The most noteworthy of these was Robert Englund who has appeared many times in my native Chicago at the FLASHBACK WEEKEND conventions. Despite this fact, I had never formally met him. I’m not exactly sure why that was, but I suppose it might have been that I was never a huge fan of those films. I know this is probably coming across as horror blasphemy right now but, “back in the day,” I preferred my horror deadly serious and didn’t care for the clever puns and humorous turn the series would end up taking.
It’s been hard for me keeping the details of THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW reunion (which took place last July at the FRIGHT NIGHT FILM FESTIVAL in Kentucky) quiet this long, but I just had to wait for the right moment. With the Halloween season now firmly at hand and the anticipated release of the film on blu-ray THIS week, at last the stars are in perfect alignment for the story to finally be told!
While it was the National Horror Host, Svengoolie, who is indirectly responsible for bringing the Daves together as friends, it has always been our stance that TERROR FROM BEYOND THE DAVES was really the bastard child of the 2010 Vampira Tribute and SCARY MONSTERS MAGAZINE. In reality, the two are complimentary of each other. Within the pulpy pages of the world’s only “REAL Monsters Magazine,” classic monsters as well as Horror Hosts have always been featured side-by-side. And why shouldn’t they be? For many of us adult Monster kids, it was the classic commercial hosts who introduced us to all the greats be it Godzilla, The Universal Monsters, the films of Hammer Studios, the wonderful “B” movies of Roger Corman, as well as those from directors who were slightly…ahem…less gifted.
