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!
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.
Still reeling from the experience of sitting through SHARK NIGHT 3D, I felt it was time to immerse myself in something a little less CGI and more “old school.” I had read on article on the new film, CREATURE, in the latest FANGORIA while also enjoying a preview of it a few weeks back. This film has a limited release and played at only a few theaters in my native Chicagoland. Therefore, I was forced to forgo my favored big screen location in favor of a less savory one. In some ways, however, this added to the overall grindhouse feel of the film and I felt it actually enhanced the experience.
There are few horror hosts operating today that can boast the mettle and determination of Virginia’s Karlos Borloff with regard to costume and prop creation. A life long fan of movie monsters (particularly the Japanese variety), Karlos began making masks in the 1970’s – when he was just 12 years old! “I used to shoot my own Super 8 Monster Movies and fight scenes,” says Karlos. “I was obsessed with rubber masks.”
The upcoming Horrorhound Weekend in Indianapolis is really a quadruple threat. You have celebrity guests, an immense dealer room, the horror hosts, and Maskfest! This is not to suggest, however, that any of these need be exclusive. While Maskfest could easily be a convention in its own right, horror hosts can be quite crafty themselves.
Since I was a teenager in the 80’s, the name Roger Corman meant alot to me. Though I didn’t get to see any of his films at the local drive-ins where they usually played, I did get to see them on videocassette and some of my fondest movie memories are of his films. How can you go wrong with monster movies filled with blood and all of the female nudity you could ever want? Just recently Shout Factory, the company that is releasing the long overdue Gamera titles, re-released a bunch of Mr. Corman’s films under their “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics” line. To be honest I already owned these titles in the previously released versions (New Concorde released this very same title in 2001 under their “Roger Corman Classics” series) but have been such a fan that I decided that buying them on Blu-Ray would be worth it. The first one I am going to talk about is probably one of the most controversial: HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP.
Terror from Beyond the Dave 