amicus horror and the art of self-referencing

I've always appreciated references to films in other films.

Not sure what it's called but I call it nesting. I suppose its a form of product placement. My favourite kind is horror, which I've blogged about a number of times.

As its soon the season of the Witch I have been catching up on some classic British horror anthologies by specialists Amicus, namely Vault of Horror and Dr. Terrors House f Horrors.

In Vault of Horror from 1973, during the buried-alive story, the protagonist, one Mr. Maitland [itself a horror trope] sits reading a book. The paperback is one I have myself, the film tie-in to its sister film Tales from the Crypt no less!

In the same scene we see another bigger coffee-table book called Horror Comics, a book I don't know at all. Does anyone recognise it?

In the 1965 anthology Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, Biff Bailey, an ambitious jazz composer, steals a secret voodoo melody, As he's being hunted down he falls over a bin and stands to look at a cinema poster. Its a poster of the very same film, a excellent example of the more unusual self-referencing.

That's it for now. I'm sure there'll be more Horror to pore over this Halloween.

If you like nesting in films or the Maitlands trope then click on the label link below.

Post Mortem:

Reader Steve P. has cracked it! Compare these:

Vault of Horror book [at ninety degrees]

and Steve P's solution, Horror Comics of  the 1950's published in 1971! Well done Steve!

Here's its spine - images courtesy of Worthpoint.

Perhaps a new mystery is which books are on the bookshelf behind Maitland in the scene? Alas my laptop is simply not good enough to pick them out.

bubbles rose from the black lagoon

The last of Universal's classic monsters,

Brian's Creature walks among us!

monster toys I never had: dracula's soil

There were countless monster toys I never had and that's saying a lot because my late great Folks provided me with a healthy supply of spooks and grue almost every week in the Sixties and early seventies.

But some trinkets from the dark nursery did elude me and one of those was Dracula's Soil.

Now I'm unsure if that was its correct name, it may have been Dracula's dirt or something but essentially it was meant to be a small quantity of soil from Dracula's coffin.

I recall seeing this stuff advertised all the time in comics. Like those other tantalising sensations Sea Monkeys and Dim Mak, Dracula's Soil offered young boys and ghouls the chance to own, yes own, a pinch of the Count's bed muck! Who could resist!

Well despite the Master's transatlantic allure I did resist and never possessed his heinous loam. God knows what would have happened if it had inadvertently spilt onto my Mum's prize begonias. They may have bitten her and turned her into one of his floating Brides!

Like Renfield I did conjecture the depth of the Dark Prince's power though. Could the mail-order soil bring insects back to life? Would dead flies fly once more into the vapona only to rise and fly again? Would demised woodlice reanimate to become small crabs of the undead! Yuk!

I was also baffled by the logistics of the dirt's availability. Just how much of it was there? How big was Drac's coffin? What if million's of kids everywhere bought some and loosened the very foundations of Castle Bran? What if Transylvania itself vanished from the face of the earth as billions of tons of land was dug up for budding vampires everywhere!

My final thoughts on the soil that never was can be summed up as the dilemma of packaging. In Bram Stoker's toothy tale the Dark One's native humus is shipped through Europe in huge crates to arrive at Carfax House near the Thames. Is this where the comic book muck would end up, a sort of Amazon-like pick-up point where you took an empty Smarties tube or Screwball cone to get filled?

Dracula's own coffin went by sea on the Demeter making landfall in the Yorkshire sea port of Whitby. No-one on board the Demeter survived except for a large black dog, which leapt from the dead hulk and pelted towards Carfax hundreds of miles south, no doubt to stop all his favourite detritus being sold to young comic fans with Smartie tubes!

Back to reality and I always assumed the soil was sold in small bottles but they may have been miniature coffins. I forget. Whatever it was it can't have been big. Imagine Wickes pulling up and dropping off one of those massive builders' sacks on the kerb and your Mum saying ' What on earth is that Woodsy?'. 'What? that? Its just three tons of Count Dracula's coffin dirt Mum!' ha ha.

The mind boggles or maybe I should say, the mind bottles! 

I never did succumb to buy Vlad's bedding. I left his soil alone and like Bram said, the plot thickened!

Like the Count I shall reflect no further. Did you purchase any of the Impaler's litter?

my favourite monster toys: glow globs

Back in 1967 when I was 6 I adored these little globs of luminous spookiness. You could stick them on your walls, ceiling, cupboard, window or door.

I loved it when my mum turned my light off at night and I could see my glo globs giving off a ghostly aura.

They had an indescribably satisfying smell too - like Pugsley's Play Doh - and they had nifty names too like Blue Boo!

I'd love glo globs back in my life! Would you readers?

mystery space toys

This is an old lot of vintage toys I got from car boots years ago.

Just what are the two white toys at the front? The white panel and the white spaceship?

a familiar purring

Saw these two agents of darkness communing on Todmordon canal today.

Hark Halloween's heralds.

brian's Halloween pumpkins spotted in new jersey

Check out my yard decorations for Halloween.

These inflatable ghosts and ghouls are quick to set up,look great and last for years.

When Halloween is over, you simply deflate them and stuff them back in the box for a year. A great way to light your walkway on a dark spooky night in the Pine Barrens!

Brian

topo gigio figures: century 21?

I have an incomplete Century 21 Topo Gigio plastic figure.

I saw this online on pinimg.com of someone's collection and wondered if the Topo's here where Century 21. I don't think they are.

Has anyone got a complete Century 21 Toys Topo Gigio doll?