Review: 'Haunted Horror'

Chamber of Chills. Web of Evil. This Magazine is Haunted. Baffling Mysteries. None of these golden age horror comics enjoy the familiarity of E.C.’s Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror, or Haunt of Fear, but they all share those books’ taste for ironic comeuppances and oozing creatures. They also suffered less high-profile but similar fates when the Senate Subcommitte on Juvenile Delinquency brought the whip down on horror comics in 1954. E.C.’s horror comics endured for a number of reasons. William Gaines bravely faced down the committee, which brought a temporary end to his comics but made him something of a celebrity, and rebuilt his empire with MAD Magazine. Then came the successful incarnations on screens big and small, guaranteeing Tales from the Crypt’s infamy among a lot of people who never even touched a comic book. And let’s not forget that the artists behind E.C.’s books were really, really amazing.

One will definitely recognize that Chamber of Chills, Baffling Mysteries, and the rest did not have illustrators of the caliber of Jack Davis or Graham Ingles (the oozing monsters are particularly poor looking), but they are still charmingly vile in their own ways. Take “The Constant Eye” (This Magazine Is Haunted… love that title!), in which the peepers of a dead man pursue the dude who offed him. Or “Black Magic in a Slinky Gown” (Baffling Mysteries), in which a spider woman takes revenge for all the squashed arachnids of the world. How about “Kill, My Minions of Death” (another fabulous title!) (Baffling Mysteries), which blends The Hands of Orlok and Frankenstein to shockingly gruesome effect? Let’s not even think about the necrophiliac sea creature of “Haunt from the Sea” (Journey into Fear)… it’s too horrible!

These horrible horrors are just a few of the stories Yoe Comics started compiling into a line called Haunted Horror in 2012. This is a really smart way to bring back lesser-known books that may not be able to sell as reissues on title alone. By skimming the cream of this creepy crop, horror comic freaks are not left wishing they were gazing at the Crypt Keeper instead.

Yoe has now compiled its first three issues of the Haunted Horror compilation into a sweet hardcover book of that same name. The full-color, partially glossy cover, with its groovy end papers depicting HH’s own ghoulunatics, contrasts the rough and ready presentation of these old comics. Unlike the E.C. Archives line that continues to drip out from a variety of publishers (the ball is currently in Dark Horse’s court with new volumes of Crypt and Vault now on sale and in the pipeline) there has been no attempt to recolor the original comics. They are printed on nice, course paper that makes it feel like you’re reading actual comic books. The Haunted Horror compilation also includes a couple of bonus stories that did not appear in its comic book form (one of which is presented in gorgeous pre-inked black and white) and an intro by horror comic geek supreme and Misfit Jerry Only.

April 1, 2010: Six Creepifying Decades of ‘Tales From the Crypt’!

April 2010 is quite a month for landmark anniversaries of spooky works. We have “Twin Peaks” turning 20 on the 8th and Bride of Frankenstein celebrating its 75th birthday on the 22nd. But today I’m going to take a little look at the 60th anniversary of a publication that was as influential on the horror genre as a whole as “Peaks” was on television and Bride was on film. I’m squawking about Bill Gaines’s short-lived, but unfathomably far-reaching, comic Tales From the Crypt.

The story behind Crypt, and its sister mags The Vault of Horror and The Haunt of Fear, is as hoary and familiar as the Crypt Keeper at this point. Gaines reluctantly inherited Educational Comics from his dad Max after the curmudgeon died in a boating accident in 1947. Bill rebranded the publication, which had been hawking tiresome fluff like Funnies on Parade and Picture Stories from the Bible, as Entertaining Comics, and the new EC commenced whipping out its now-revered war, crime, sci-fi, and horror comics. The stories introduced by the GhouLunatics— the Crypt Keeper, the Old Witch, and the Vault Keeper— as well as their accompanying art, may seem quaintly tame today, but one can’t underestimate their potency in 1950. Universal Pictures had only recently faded as the major force in horror entertainment, going out with a hilarious bang called Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948. The films Val Lewton produced for RKO were the only comparable films in terms of contemporary popularity and influence, but movies like Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, and The Body Snatcher were even more reserved than the Universal horrors, despite their lurid titles. None of these films crossed any lines regarding blood or graphic gore of any sort. The violence either involved bloodless swipings by the Frankenstein Monster or the directors simply cut away just as Dracula was about to sink his teeth into a victim’s jugular. Then in lurched EC’s horror comics. The difference betweens these picture books aimed at youngsters and the horror pictures of Universal and RKO was shocking. Gaines, Al Feldstein, and Harvey Kurtzman hacked out tales of rotting corpses rising from the grave to extract ironic but graphic retribution on their wrong doers. Star artists like Feldstein, Johnny Craig, Jack Kamen, Ghastly Graham Ingels, and Jack Davis matched the text with vivid depictions of putrefying flesh and grisly eviscerations. Not surprisingly, parents were horrified when they saw what little Timmy, Jimmy, and Janie were spending their dimes on.

The uproar was exacerbated by a phony-boloney psychiatrist named Fred Wertham, who published a scanty little “study” called Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. The book drew all sorts of spurious connections between horror comics and juvenile delinquency. Outrageously, Seduction led to horror comics being brought before a senate inquisition. When Bill Gaines volunteered to be the industry poster boy by defending his work at the hearings, EC absorbed all of the public disgust directed at the genre, which also included sub-par, non-EC titles like Terrifying Tales, Chamber of Chills, Ghostly Weird, and Horrific. Gaines was forced to discontinue his horror titles. No matter. He soon rebounded with a satirical comic called Mad, and the remainder of his career was made in the shade.

Yet, Tales From the Crypt and its associates were not dead, either. The comics may have ceased publication, but the aftershocks they emitted continued to ripple through the ozone. As the stodgy ‘50s segued into the swinging ‘60s, the kind of grue that speckled the pages of Tales From the Crypt crossed over to the cinema. The films Hammer Studios started producing in the late ‘50s gave horror followers their first glimpses of Technicolor blood. Hitchcock’s Psycho forced horror out of the Gothic castles and graveyards of yore and into the kind of contemporary setting that served as the background for many a tale from the crypt. 1968 saw the first film to pay direct and humble homage to EC’s horror comics. Night of the Living Dead was a graphically violent, slightly campy, relentless, and socially conscious horror movie that may as well have been peeled right off the page of a vintage issue of Crypt. No surprise that George Romero was an EC fanatic back when Frank Wertham was busy spoiling everyone’s fun. So were John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, Joe Dante, and R.L. Stine.

In 1972, Hammer’s chief competitor, Amicus, produced a tribute film called Tales From the Crypt, which adapted five EC chillers. Although the film skimped on the humor that was a Crypt staple (Sir Ralph Richardson’s grumbly Crypt Keeper couldn’t hold a candelabra to the incorrigible wise-cracker illustrated by Jack Davis) it still stands as the best horror portmanteau because of a cracking cast (Peter Cushing! Patrick McGee! Joan Collins!) and director Freddie Francis’s deft hand with crafting striking visuals and scenes of nearly intolerable suspense. The first and final sequences— “And All Through the House…” and “Blind Alley”, respectively— are particularly intense. Amicus followed with the slightly less spectacular Vault of Horror the following year.

Meanwhile, Romero continued diving into EC territory with further creeptastic offerings like The Crazies and Dawn of the Dead, before giving EC its most direct props yet. Creepshow did acknowledge the comics’ humor and style, even if the acting and Stephen King’s script were not on a par with Francis’s film. Romero then took his comic-vision to the small screen with the syndicated horror series Tales From the Dark Side, the success of which paved the way for the most popular and enduring pure horror anthology series in TV history. Yep, boils and ghouls, I’m talking about HBO’s Tales From the Crypt, which ran from 1989 to 1996 and spawned two feature films, a Saturday Morning Cartoon called Tales From the Cryptkeeper, and a kiddie game show called Secrets of the Cryptkeeper’s Haunted House. Most importantly, it introduced a new generation of creeps to Bill Gaines’s classic comic. In 2007, independent publisher Papercutz resurrected Tales From the Crypt in comic form, and even stirred a bit of controversy after printing a 2008 cover depicting a hockey-stick wielding Sarah Palin to illustrate an anti-censorship editorial by Bill Gaines’s daughter, Cathy. Clearly, the Crypt spirit is still alive and well after 60 years.