Should You be in South Yorkshire ...

Horrific! https://share.google/stmQjPWCIDVqStOHO

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Looks good!

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Small And Hexcellent!

 It always amazes me what's out there to get. 

As a young teenager I was mad about Witches Tales comics and the related titles like Horror Tales, much to my Dad's 'horror'. I guess the covers were pretty gross!

Anyway searching for miniature bibles I came across tiny versions of Witches Tales ... For dolls houses! Now that's the kind of dolls house I'd like! 

I guess you can miniaturize anything! 

What would you make small readers?

Every Room is a Living Tomb

 

Not two old horror films I know at all but I love the garish poster art. There's just something about them.

Do you like them?

Horror Mask Mystery Solved

 Just over a year ago I posted a mystery miniature horror mask.

Made of flimsy plastic, it had a strange holder at the back.

There was much speculation as to what it could be in the comments at the time.

 https://share.google/OK9ESjQs4UBDYEE6I

As is often the case with these things the solution to the mystery has revealed itself when I was looking for something completely different this week!

Turns out it's a Creepy Funs like this! 

It's a sort of wall walker, the rear holder containing a sticky roll, like a small toilet roll! 

I couldn't find my exact one but here's a selection of Creepy Funs, which looks like they're from the 80's or 90's to me.

Do you like them?

For Your Eye Sockets Only

 What can I say about Alien Earth, the new TV series on Disney+?

Superlatives don't really cover it.

Think supremely fantastic and cringingly yucky in equal measure, maybe somewhere round the dripping joints between films like the Thing and Sputnik grafted onto a waiting open Alien.

Not for the faint-hearted and completely compulsive. 

For me the current icky award goes to one of the show's smaller varmints.

But before I reveal it, it's interesting to dawdle over some precedents ... But watch out!

This golden oldie sets the scene, a movie that terrified me as a kid and one I know as the Trollemburg Terror! Is it one you know?

This is the box art to a model kit.

Cuneo's painted slithering devils spring to mind as well, as introduced to us on MC by Wotan 17 years ago.

I just couldn't help jiggling this into a clip, but it's Cuneo's artistry.

Similarly Bill brought us his fondness for rubber uglies on MC and this oily eye-squid fits right in (a phrase which comes into its own on Alien Earth! 🐙 )

Once more I was compelled to meme it.

But none of these wrigglers can prepare you for the truly cringing orb that is Alien Earth's small and parasitic crawling eye!

You've been warned!

Yuk!

All My Ducks in a Row

 Imbued with an urge to spring clean the attic, I've stacked my old VHS tapes and sorted them alphabetically (yep, I've too much time on my hands!).

In a similar vein I've uncrated my old horror paperbacks and lined them up neatly in a bookcase.

When I get time (!) I'll sort these alphabetically too.

Always good to have a cold beer to hand when doing stuff like this!

Are you spring cleaning readers?

BBC Radiophonics One Last Time

I was interested to see on the BBC News that the BBC Radiophonics Workshop had a final reunion this winter at their old Maida Vale studio. 

As a youngster I adored the workshop"s fabulous LP records of horror sounds, two of which I still have, but probably the most impactive and famous thing they created was the Dr.Who theme tune.

All Gallafreyan pensioners now, these 1950's pioneers of electronica enjoyed once last blast together in February.

Like my own records from the 1970's, most of the workshop's iconic sounds can now be enjoyed and used by artists and musicians everywhere.

Did/ do you like their work readers! 

https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/bbcstudios/2025/bbc-radiophonic-workshop-

My Mini Lifeforce Vampire Spaceship

 Here's another of my new horror mood home-made minis.

This is the vampire spaceship from the '80's Tobe Hooper sci-fi shocker Life force.

I made mine using a small paper umbrella from MoonBase Miss's bits chest and some wire all trimmed to shape and painted black.

I took a few shots of the ship in Earth's orbit.

This is an original still from the movie. Have you seen it?

My Toy Cronos Device

 Spring sunshine seems to have lit the last sleepy chamber of my noggin and I'm dreaming up lots of new customs.

Here's one, in a horror mood, the dreadful Cronos bug device from the movie Cronos, a fantastically stylish 1993 debut flick from maestro Guillermo Del Toro before he got famous. Ron Perlman lumbers through it too.

At it's dark clicking heart is a 16th Century gold scarab. It contains an awful creature both wildly animating and terribly vampiric in nature. Hapless victims grasp it at their peril. 

An amazingly vivid film with an iconic prop, there are many pro models and beautiful replicas of this clockwork jeweled wonder online, so many in fact that. I found it hard to locate the original film prop!

This is my much simpler effort using one of Junior's beetles to create a sort of toy finish! 

And here's the hungry golden bug as seen in the actual film.

Have you seen it readers?

REMEMBERING MY CHIMERA

A few times selling on Ebay I have hit the jackpot. Well, my jackpot, anything over a tenner! ha ha.

This was one such sale five years ago, the small blue creature in the middle of the shot. Found in a box of tat at a car boot sale and purchased with the other figures for peanuts.

After some research at the time during the pandemic I discovered that the plastic creature was in fact a premium from an obscure line of lucky bags called Horror n Heroes, which have a collectors' cult following. The blue creature was and is a prized collectable for fans! The Chimera. Who knew!

You can read more about Horrors n Heroes here on the sadly now defunct Fantasy Toy Soldiers blog.

I'd never seen a Chimera before and haven't seen one since.

Have you?

Dr. Terrors House of Horrors:

1965's Dr. Terrors House of Horrors; what a film!  

Possibly only pipped to the post by Tales from the Crypt, Dr.Terrors has it all: great script, great sets, fabulous actors and lots of Gothic charm.

An Amicus portmanteau of real calibre, hosted on a trundling train by a tarot-reading Peter Cushing, it has so many great and memorable tales. 

The starter is set in a Scottish country house, that requires some work. The Architect hired is in fact the previous owner. On his return he uncovers much macabre goings on including a coffin in the cellar bearing the family name, something he lives to regret! 

Another tale deals with the arrival of the young new doctor in town - one uber-cool Donald Sutherland, the old one showing him the ropes. Sutherland's young wife begins to settle in whilst some locals fall inexplicably sick. It takes the old doctor to sort things out once and for all! 

The story of the suburban garden is yet another tale, this time starring the suave and hip DJ Alan Fluff Freeman. The Ministry are brought in to ID some unusual flora but flora is having none of it!

The remaining two tales are the best in my opinion: the art critic and top of the pile, the voodoo tune.

Christopher Lee plays the famous art critic, a fabulously pompous and conceited oaf, who, after tearing apart an elderly artist's entire ouvre, is publicly humiliated by a painting chimp. This sets off a chain of increasingly tragic and ultimately lethal events. Pomposity certainly doesn't pay!

Last but not least, my favourite story of all, the voodoo song. The bubbly Roy Castle is just wonderful as jazzman Biff Bailey, who lands a gig in the West Indies with his excited band. Whilst there, Biff witnesses a voodoo chant, writes down the catchy tune and thereby seals his fate! I won't spoil it, it really is a marvellously created short film, completely self-contained and a world unto itself. There's a charming moment where Roy stands in front of a poster for the very film he's in! Kenny Lynch is great too.

Do you like Dr. Terrors House of Horrors readers? Have you a favourite story?

The Ghoul: Tyburn's Terrifier

 I caught The Ghoul the other night.

Made by Tyburn [not to be confused with the much more successful Tigon] it was one of only three films the company released.

The Ghoul [not a word you hear now really] is essentially a slasher film spiced up with Indian Zitars and a large country house. Set in the Charleston age, the protagonists are two young couples from the English elite in a car race to Land's End. Two of them break down, the woman ending up at the hands of John Hurt's mad gamekeeper and then in the clutches of the Peter Cushing's even madder country gent and his Indian housekeeper. There's more madder things yet but I won't spoil it.

John Hurt's cruel gamekeeper is a great performance, as are the two beleaguered ladies. Cushing's performance as the tormented gent is OK, as is his housekeeper, but for me the most interesting character is the posh Army Officer.

Despite being in his civvies he displays all the spit and polish of his class and positively out-poshes everyone on his way to the truth. When pitted against John Hurt's fabulously deranged yokel on the treacherous bog we have the best bit of the film.

Not one of the best horrors you'll ever see but still Tyburn did a decent job, biting at the ankles of the mighty Hammer. I watch the Ghoul at least every other year.

Have you seen the Ghoul?

DR. PHIBES: ROSE AGAIN BUT SANK WITHOUT A TRACE

I caught Phibes last night. Dr. Phibes that is, when he's gone and risen.

Staring Gothmeister himself Vincenzo Price, I do like a Phibes film. I saw them both many years ago and fancied a non-anthology last night. And there it was on You Tube free of charge!

Personally I think the first Phibes, the Abominable one, is better than this sandy re-birth, but it does hold its own. The setting in Egypt is fabulous and the sets are worthy of Howard Hughes! Pyramids, rivers, gates of eternity, sarcophagi, deserts, statues and more!

The despatching of his enemies is once again a gory affair - this is 1972 after all - and we are 'treated' to all manner of horrendous ends inserted between the lavish organ playing and the puppet orchestra.

The dead Missus Phibes, one Victoria - 'played' by an uncredited Caroline Munro no less - gets lots of mentions but its the swirling chiffoned maid Vulnavia that steals the show. There is something very unsettling about Vulnavia and the care she takes looking after her mad master. And she never says a single word - no lines to forget for Vulnavia then!

Valli Kemp played the role, an Australian model who was involved with pop impresario Jonathan King [since disgraced]. She got a ten-year contract with Dr. Phibes, as the studio expected the character to just keep on rising. Kemp appeared in Rollerball before going back to Australia, where she teaches art in Newcastle, Sydney.

I've read that a different actress played this role in the first film, Virginia Northup, erstwhile Baroness of Hull. The Abominable Dr. Phibes was her final film role.

I can't help comparing the whole Phibes-Vulnavia-Avenging Nutcase-scenario to that of Theatre of Blood a year later, to my mind a much more accomplished and enjoyable romp into posthumous wrath and theatrics.  Price is ably assisted by Diana Rigg in this and its a genius combination, as she's such a good actress and fabulous speaker [and so well known from the Avengers!]. Even the police slapstickery is better with Eric Sykes and Milo O'Shea pulling it off beautifully. Ian Hendry adds some 1970's class and off we go. And who can forget Robert Morley's poodled demise!

There is another similar Vincent Price vehicle, Madhouse, where he plays Paul Toombs. I even have the novelization of this but can't recall much detail at all.

Needless to say, I enjoyed watching Dr. Phibes and all the 'priceless' memories it brought back!

Do you Phibes treaders?

THE VAULT OF HORROR AND A HOT LEMON PLEASE

 I caught the Vault of Horror the other sleepless night.

Another Amicus anthology and possibly less well known than Tales from the Crypt.

There are some stand-out performances by really great actors here. My favourite segments, three of the five, are:

Midnight Mess: the one where the brother murders the sister but falls foul of the 'locals' in the restaurant that night. I wont spoil it, suffice to say, the the final scene of the protagonist upside down was one I saw pictured as a young monster nut in my copies of Dennis Gifford's and Alan Frank's horror film guides, an image that's stayed with me my whole life! I understand that that scene was deleted from certain showings, with a still of it shown instead!

The restaurant in this section was in Richmond, London and the site Reel Streets depicts this and other locations in the film then and now, which is fascinating and I appreciate how much work it must have taken.

https://www.reelstreets.com/films/vault-of-horror-the/#:~:text=The%20Vineyard.&text=When%20his%20sister%20doesn't,The%20Vineyard%2C%20Richmond.

The Neat Job; Glynis Johns and Terry-Thomas do such a 'neat job' of this section too, its a fabulously compact and complete world in itself and revolves around, yes, obsessive neatness. 

The house used is once more a portal into my Parents' home in the early 1970's and I love to notice the ornaments and artefacts: the big lamps, the magazine rack, the enormous flower clock, the thick impasto paintings and the records - I think we even had the classical one Glynis Johns returns to its sleeve. Its a startlingly good section and the domestic tension rises to fever pitch before ... bam! I adore the crazed woman's insane wide-eyed stair and the mad cackle at the end. 

This Trick' ll Kill Ya: my final fave segment of this Amicus pick 'n' mix stars Curt Jürgens and Dawn Addams as a married magic act searching for a new trick in India, a trick they are prepared to use extreme prejudice to get. 

The most alarming scene, certainly when I was a nipper first seeing it, was the sudden disappearance of the wife near the ceiling and the resultant slowly- slicking blood patch. Yuk!

The remaining two sections are fine, just less memorable for me, although the appearance of two young stars from TV's Doctor in the House is a plus. I so remember that series and similar young shows like Man about the House, The Lovers, Please Sir and the Fenn Street Gang. Do you? Happy days!

Do you like Vault of Horror? Have you a favourite bit?

TALES FROM THE CRYPT AND TWO PARACETOMOL PLEASE!

With my circadian clock clogged with up snot I'm not sleeping when I should. Hence I was up late last night nursing my cold, drinking more hot tea and watching more old films, horror films; Amicus anthologies to be exact, those Seventies-set competitors to Hammer's more gothic output.

The first I watched, Tales from the Crypt, is one I associate totally with my older brothers when they were teenagers in the early 1970's. Advertised in the newspaper at the time, along with all the other films on, they saw it at one of the three cinemas in Preston town centre at the time: ABC, Odeon or Ritz. I was a mere boy of 10 when Amicus released Tales from the Crypt in 1971, a classic 'X' for 18's only. 

An earlier American generation, nearly twenty years earlier, would have enjoyed the original EC comic it was based on but I don't think I knew about EC then. Creepy and Eerie were the US imports of note at the time. Maybe my older brothers had heard of EC, I don't know. Nowadays, I'm pleased to say I have a few EC reprints keeping my Warren's company.

Amicus's Tales from the Crypt is that wonderful thing and perfect Christmas fayre; a selection box with something for everyone: Joan Collin's raving Santa, the monkey's paw-styled Death on a motorcycle,  Ian Hendry's late crash victim, the amazing Blind Institute story and of course Grimsdyke the binman's story is simply fabulous and so well made.

But my personal favourite is And All Through the House, the first story and the one set on Christmas Eve. I adore this nostalgic tale starring Joan Collins and the ubiquitous Chloe Franks. The contemporary 1970's set reminds me so much of my parents' house; the Xmas tree, the cards, the decorations and the Seventies décor such as the big radio playing carols, the huge chunky nail-art style pictures and of course the massive transparent cigarette lighter that needed two hands! Its so evocative I can almost touch my past and step right into it, which is indeed a storyline in another portmanteau!

I won't spoil it, although I imagine everyone reading MC will have seen Tales from the Crypt. Needless to say, as in the original EC comics, cardinal sinners, especially the greedy ones, are punished ruthlessly and their just desserts dished out with a very large hammer indeed ... or a spade ... or a sword!

I will say that watching And All Through the House was the start of this year's Christmas for me last night, such is its nostalgic power every year.

I  couldn't locate Crypt's Amicus stablemate Vault of Horror immediately but eventually found it for free on You Tube, but therein lies another tale ..., five!

Do you like Tales from the Crypt? What's your favourite segment? Do you have any EC comics?

I'm Seeing More Things

Back when we were in Germany I saw these strange bubble candle blocks. They brought back memories of Dr.Who interiors and Sci Fi locations. What do you think?

Similarly these hand candles - handles! - stirred my id of monsters therein.

Those being the dreadful Hand of Glory in the film, The Wicker Man, placed menacingly by the bedside of the young doomed constable played brilliantly by Edward Woodward.

These small LED-lit Christmas houses, especially the one on the right, though quaint for sure, made me think of less festive dwellings ....

..... namely the iconic Bates house in Hitchcock's seminal Psycho. His Mother's in the window too! 

And equally, though less so, the Marston House in the terrific 1979 Stephen King mini-Series, Salem's Lot. Would you go in it? 

LUSTIGE GESPENSTER PARADE: GERMAN HORROR STICKERS

 I recently saw this sticker set online.

Horror Parade and Lustige Gespenster Parade.

By Americana of Munich.

The albums look great!

Fantastically detailed cards and pages.

They came in 10 pfennig packets. You got three sticker pictures.

Well over a hundred!

The art looks original and not lifted.

What do you think?

Anyone got a set?