Review: 'Alien Invasions! The History of Aliens in Popular Culture'

Because it isn’t very likely that aliens from other worlds have ever visited Earth, they can be imagined in any number of ways. Are they tentacled, bulbous-brained beasts? Are they green-skinned seductresses in brass bikinis and weird headgear? Are they friendly little, big-eyed chaps who just want to go (and phone) home? Are they hostile? Neutral? Are they super advanced or super primitive? Are they from distant galaxies or our very own moon?

Review: 'EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest'

In the 1950s, truthful depictions of bigotry in the U.S. were almost completely absent in pop culture. Shockingly, one of the few places where indictments of racism, anti-semitism, and other forms of prejudice could be found (if only sporadically) was in the controversial Shock Suspenstories of EC comics, which were so often denigrated as harmful to youth and generally disgusting. There were tales of racist harassment and mob violence with very explicitly stated morals. In “The Whipping” from ShockSuspenstories, a racist accidentally beats his own daughter to death think that he is actually attacking her Hispanic boyfriend. In “Hate!”, a drooling anti-semite impels a Jewish couple to kill themselves before discovering that his own biological parents were Jewish. In “Judgment Day!” from Weird Fantasy, a valiant astronaut who turns out to be African American instills hope in robots existing in a segregated society. These stories were told with the same unflinching audacity and ironic denouements of EC’s more celebrated crypt tales of oozing corpses and gore-devouring creeps.

Qiana Whitted’s EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest is the first book-length study of how EC comics dealt with race. Whitted analyzes the characters, the artist’s depictions of those characters, and such recurring themes as how the villains of these pieces tend to receive their comeuppances via a crippling sense of shame rather than EC’s usual ironic dismemberings. She often refers to the letters sections in these books to assess the effectiveness of the preaching in EC’s so-called “preachies.” The crass bluntness of the readers who did not appreciate these anti-racism messages is more shocking than any act of violence in the stories.

Whitted is generally and rightly complimentary of EC’s bravery in its depictions of race issues at a time when such things were not discussed in popular entertainments, though she also rightfully criticizes the comics’ tendency to reduce its black characters to victims with neither personalities nor voices— vehicles for delivering a message of intolerance and altering the lives of the white bigots who are usually the real main characters of the preachies.

Whitted also points out that EC could be guilty of the same kinds of broad racial stereotypes common to the fifties when spinning yarns of voodoo and zombies, but the overall tone of EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest is reasonably celebratory. It is also highly readable and attractively put together, illustrating Whitted’s points with numerous full-color panels from EC comics. While it may find its most natural home in the classroom, EC Comics: Race, Shock & Social Protest is a book that everyone interested in comics history should check out.

Review: 'It Crept from the Tomb'

From the Tomb is the abbey-normal brainchild of Peter Normanton, a long time aficionado of classic horror comics. Normanton and his supporting cast of GhouLunatics such as Frank Motler, Peter Crowther, and Barry Forshaw use the British ’zine as an outlet for historical retrospectives, artist tributes, and personal tales for collectors of E.C., Charlton, Marvel, and the rest’s most gruesome titles.

In 2016, Twomorrows Press anthologized a selection of these articles from past issues of From the Tomb in a collection that somehow slipped under my radar. However, I managed to snag a follow up collection called It Crept from the Tomb, which bundles up a sprint through the careers of lurid artists Lou Morales and Richard Corben, the interesting story of Britain’s answer to Fredric Wertham, a few non-critical histories of the depiction of anti-communist hysteria in comics (these pieces do not focus on horror comics and are flatly written in keeping with the dullness of the topic), a piece on sex comics (which reaches the odd conclusion that "Human progress has evolved precisely...because of the male’s objective fascination with the female form"), a look back at House of Hammer comics, a quick look at the history of vampires in the comics, etc.

I enjoyed the pieces most when historical details specific to Britain entwined with more personal stories. Barry Forshaw’s memories of acquiring a banned and exceedingly rare copy of the first Tales from the Crypt published in the UK (a hodgepodge of stories published in various American issues) is neat both for the rarely told history and the nostalgia-stoking details (he swapped a beloved toy for the comic) that will resonate with collectors who surely have their own such tales stored in their personal crypts. It Crept from the Tomb is also loaded with comic art, which mostly stick with the lo-fi B&W images of a true ’zine but also adorn a lengthy full-color spread in the middle of the book.

Review: 'Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics'

In a time when fine artists were more likely to thumb their noses at comics than take jobs drawing them, Reed Crandall was happy to get the work. The fine sense of form and movement that informed his elegant and eclectic paintings, sculptures, and illustrations served him well when drafting Captain America, Blackhawk, and Doll Man to make ends meet. While his early work was usually anonymous, he began to make a name for himself when he started receiving his due credit while working for E.C. Comics, depicting some of the company’s most memorable crypt tales, such as “Carrion Death” and “Only Skin Deep”.

Reed Crandall’s art was exceptional, but based on Roger Hill’s new illustrated biography Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics, the man may have been a bit of a blank slate. Hill describes the varied beats of Crandall’s history, but only the most essential ones of the man’s life get a mention, and Crandall’s personality remains frustratingly aloof. On occasion, a friend or acquaintance briefly describes Crandall as nice, humble, and a bit insecure about his work while dwelling on his art in far greater detail. The fixation on his work implies there wasn’t much to the man when he wasn’t at the drafting table. That could have been the case, but I doubt most people can be reduced so glibly. This also leaves Hill’s text a bit lacking in substance since so much of it is spent synopsizing plots of comics Crandall illustrated or describing Crandall’s artwork (textually, the book is more satisfying as a history of the early comics industry than a biography). The copious color and B&W illustrations included in this volume—which includes both Crandall’s comics work and his fine arts work— speak much louder about the artist’s talent. A flawless counterfeit of a King of Hearts card will make you gasp when you realize Crandall created it when he was only ten years old. That the man was such a master of his medium may overshadow his inner self in Reed Crandall: Illustrator of the Comics, but his mastery also makes the book a constant marvel to gaze at.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 361

The Date: September 25

The Movie: The Vault of Horror (1972)

What Is It?: Amicus’s second portmanteau to mine classic E.C. Comics for big-screen fodder isn’t quite as consistent as Tales from the Crypt, and the vampire makeup (a handful of joke-shop fangs) in “Midnight Mess” is laughable, but this is still a quality collection of spook stories. Best of the bunch is “Drawn and Quartered”, one of E.C.’s best stories and one of the best portmanteau episodes in the history of portmanteaus.

Why Today?: Today is Comic Book Day.

Farewell, Jack Davis

Sad news in the comics world today, as we lost the man who was quite possibly the greatest comics artist who ever lived, quite likely the greatest artist in E.C.'s classic horror comics staff, and quite certainly the last surviving artist on that staff. Jack Davis brought a delightfully gross twist of humor to his unmistakable illustrations, which would also serve him well when controversial titles such as Tales from the Crypt and The Haunt of Fear folded and he moved along to MAD Magazine. His character-crowded movie posters for flicks such as Bananas;  It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World; and American Graffiti were just as immediately identifiable as his work. And with all due respect to that puppet, Davis's Crypt Keeper remains the definitive one as far as I'm concerned. 

Jack Davis died following a stroke at age 91. I'd like to think that he'd appreciate my wish for him to crawl from the grave covered in muck and ooze and draw one last gleefully grisly comic for us.

Review 'A Bucket of Blood' Blu-ray

Because of their chintzy budgets and on-the-fly productions, early Roger Corman efforts like Attack of the Crab Monsters came off more like parodies than the director probably intended them to be. With A Bucket of Blood, Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith embraced the goofiness and transformed what could have been a serious low-budget horror about an artist who incorporates corpses into his work into the first great Corman/Griffith horror comedy. With the wonderfully sympathetic Dick Miller as Walter Paisley, a nebbish who aspires to be as much of an “artist” as the pretentious beatniks who frequent the coffee bar where he waits tables, A Bucket of Blood isn’t as outrageous as The Little Shop of Horrors, the film in which the Corman/Griffith magic fully blossomed (a-hem), but it is amusing and sometimes fairly horrifying. Its plot could have been ripped right from the pages of The Vault of Horror (in fact, it shares quite a few similarities to “Easel Kill Ya” from The Vault), and its cartoonish approach to dialogue, characterization, and design also has the feel of a live-action E.C. comic without the color. 

The Film Detective’s new blu-ray presents that comic aesthetic quite well. Like so many of Corman’s early films, A Bucket of Blood is in the public domain and has been subjected to a lot of lousy home video releases. The Film Detective should be commended for going to the original 35mm source, especially in light of all the ninth-generation crap out there. Appearances of tiny white specks are fairly regular, but they aren’t especially intrusive and there are no major scratches to speak of. No edge enhancement has been applied to sharpen the naturally soft look. The film looks its best when there are strong blacks on screen to contrast the more washed-out whites. The mono audio is clear, which is especially complimentary to the cool jazz score, though there is a constant buzzing undercurrent noticeable during the music-less passages. There are no bonuses, but considering that A Bucket of Blood probably wasn’t high on any other home video company’s to-do lists, it’s groovy that it has received an HD release at all.

Review: 'Wally Wood’s E.C. Stories Artisan Edition'

Late last year when I made my wish list for 2015 here on Psychobabble, the first and most far-fetched entry on the list was for IDW to take “The E.C. Archives” out of Dark Horse’s hands and begin reprinting authentically colored and textured collections of Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, and The Vault of Horror. This was far-fetched because Dark Horse clearly had no plans of relinquishing such a valuable catalog and already had additional editions of “The E.C. Archives” scheduled for the coming year. Sigh.

That being said, IDW’s Wally Wood’s E.C. Stories Artisan Edition ain’t a bad consolation prize, even though it is merely a soft-cover edition of a book already published back in 2012 and it lacks any of Wood’s horror stories. However, as far as texture and authenticity go, it can’t be beat. This collection of Wood’s sci-fi, war, and two-fisted tales is very different from those garishly colorful, completely digitized books Dark Horse has been trotting out. The Artisan Edition series presents classic comics in the raw, before they were colored or cleared of pencil notes and pasted-in edits. This kind of book is definitely geared toward a very particular reader with an interest in the process before the final product. Fortunately, Wood’s intricate, lovingly rendered artwork translates quite well to black and white. The pieces in this book demand to be studied deeply to be fully absorbed. It’s the kind of book that rewards repeat perusals.

It would have been nice if editor Scott Dunbier had tossed in a horror story or two. Wood was never super prolific in E.C.’s horror titles, though he did create at least one true classic, “Judy, You’re Not Yourself Today” for Crypt (he also wrote one of the entire E.C. line’s very best stories, “Drawn and Quartered!”; Jack Davis delivered the art). Perhaps the availability of original artwork was a reason Wood’s horror work got shut out.

Still, there is certainly a lot of horror in Wood’s stories, which often veer toward the apocalyptic and depressing. A little boy gets his wish to have his workaholic astronaut dad return home for good in the melodramatic yet devastating “Home to Stay”. “Down to Earth” is a litany of airline disasters. In the poetic “My World”, Wood lays out his cynical world view explicitly with a dash of hope only evident in “The Children”, the only one of his stories in which love trounces cynicism. “Project... Survival!” is inadvertently scary due to its disconcerting distrust of science in all forms, though the fact that the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings preceded these stories by just a few years makes that extreme stance somewhat more understandable. Wood powerfully illustrates an account of that particular historical horror story in a devastating piece penned by Harvey Kurtzman, though the fact that Wood didn’t write most of the war and thriller stories means they’re generally less grim and pulpier than the sci-fi ones.

Review: 'Howard Nostrand’s Nightmares'

Howard Nostrand brought artistry to non-E.C. horror comics like Chamber of Chills and Witches Tales by consciously copying E.C.’s greatest artist, Jack Davis. The approach was contrived, but it worked because Nostrand’s stories were utterly bizarre in ways that E.C.’s often-formulaic morality and thing-rises-from-the-grave tales rarely were. There is a child’s rambling logic to things like “Zodiac”, in which a pair of astrologers conjure zodiac icons to do their evil bidding, “Search for Evil”, in which a Crypt Keeper lookalike brings a mad scientist’s “see no evil, hear no evil” monkey statues to life to procure victims for his experiments, and “TerrorVision”, in which a space octopus forces some dudes to build a TV. In pieces such as the corpse-narrated “The Lonely” he approached E.C.’s yucky gruesomeness and did the same for its intelligence and humor with the vampire-narrated “I, Vampire” (while also using vamps as metaphors for prejudice half-a-century before “True Blood”).

And as much as artists Sid Jacobson and Craig Yoe underline Davis’s influence in their introductory essays to the new anthology Howard Nostrand’s Nightmares, Nostrand had an eye for detail that was all his own. Marvel at the intricacy of the opening splash panel of “The Rift of the Maggis” before guffawing at the gleeful nastiness of the story that follows. And when Nostrand out-and-out rips off E.C., as he does when employing that comics’ trademark first-person pov device or redrawing its most famous character in “Zodiac”, you at least have to admit that the guy was smart enough to steal from the very best.

Psychobabble’s Ten Most Terrifying Tales from the Crypt Comics!

 Heh, heh… good evening, Kiddies! I see it’s time for me to give you another spine-tingling post here on Psychobabble, and today’s chiller is no less than ten of the most horrid hunks of horror to appear in Entertaining Comics’ Tales from the Crypt magazine! And when I say Tales from the Crypt, I mean Tales from the Crypt, and not The Haunt of Fear or The Vault of Horror, because…well… I haven’t read all of those comics yet! So while favorites like “…And All Through the House…” and “A Grim Fairy Tale!” may be missing from this list, I’m sure you’ll agree the following stories earn the terrible title… Psychobabble’s Ten Most Terrifying Tales from the Crypt Comics!

1. The Living Corpse (Tales from the Crypt #18; artist: Wally Wood)

Its first tale to really nail both story and art reared its hideous head in just the second issue of Tales from the Crypt (never mind the kooky numbering system…issue 18 is really issue 2). Despite its unimaginative title, “The Living Corpse” establishes a strong mystery (why do these damn corpses keep coming to life and sprinting from the local morgue?) and resolves it with a clever series of twists. Though “The Living Corpse” isn’t a supernatural tale in the end, Wally Wood’s hallucinatory depictions of the morgue attendant’s fears are as nightmarish as anything in any zombie story.

2. Reflection of Death! (Tales from the Crypt #23; artist: Al Feldstein)

E.C.’s crypt keepers loved to pull the gimmick of placing you in the story with second-person narration. This gimmick was never used to more purposeful effect than in “Reflection of Death!”, in which you walk away from a car crash only to have everyone who sees you completely freak out? Why? Well, let’s just say that the Return of the Living Dead makeup crew must have drawn a lot of inspiration from Al Feldstein’s artwork when creating the Tar Man. Plus, the title panel monster mash illustration is fab!

3. Drawn and Quartered! (Tales from the Crypt #26; artist: Jack Davis)

A dose of voodoo causes everything that happens to an artist’s paintings to happen to the things his paintings depict. A horrible and classically ironic revenge plot ensues as the artist works overtime painting everyone who’s ever wronged him. What may be the cleverest of all E.C. horror stories is matched with Jack Davis’s signature goopy artwork.

4. The Ventriloquist’s Dummy! (Tales from the Crypt #28; artist: Graham Ingles)

Although the evil dummy trope has been done to death by now, it had only really been tackled once in the British portmanteau film Dead of Night before “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy!” Maybe that’s why this story so avoids the clichés of this type of story. Instead of the usual “dummy become outlet for ventriloquist’s madness” tale, we get a crazy conjoined twin one. The classic “Tales from the Crypt” episode this comic inspired diluted the horror with comedy. The comic is all horrific, and “Ghastly” Graham Ingles’s art makes good on his nickname.

Review: 'The Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead'

As much as I love monsters, I’m pretty burnt out on the whole zombie craze that really needs a pickaxe through the brain at this point. So I cracked open Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger’s The Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead without a load of enthusiasm. I was relieved to learn it’s basically mistitled, though I’m not sure what would have been a better name for an eclectic encyclopedia that gathers together plenty of zombie-related entries (films such as Night of the Living Dead and Shaun of the Dead, alleged real-life voodoo practitioners such as Papa Jaxmano and the Chickenman, “zombifying” diseases like Mad Cow, etc.) and a lot of stuff that really doesn’t have much to do with its ostensible topic. True blue-skinned zombie devotees might get frustrated with entries covering monsters (space aliens and Texan gargoyles) that don’t have much in common with zombies. They may question the inclusions of AIDS, human cannibals like the Donner Party, and the Apocalypse, or wonder where genuinely zombie-related items like “Tales from the Crypt” and The Song of Ice and Fire/“Game of Thrones” (with its zombie “wights”) are. They may also get exasperated with an entry on Armageddon that not only has nothing to do with zombies but has nothing to do with Armageddon either (it’s about the U.S. Marine Corps’ detestable practice of having biblical quotes inscribed on rifle sites at great expense to taxpayers). As a reader who wasn’t really looking forward to immersing himself in an endless orgy of zombienalia, I really enjoyed the off-topic facts, myths, and rumors and the lively, often humorous way Redfern and Steiger share them.

Review: ‘Adventures into the Unknown: The Pre-Code Horror Anthology’

All Horror comics will always cower in the shadows of EC’s terror titles. Tales from the Crypt will forever remain notorious for introducing young comics enthusiasts to oozing corpses, bringing down the whole shebang when Bill Gaines defended his wares against the “frigid old maids” of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, and for reanimating as a tremendously popular HBO series in the late ‘80s. But there’s one thing EC cannot claim for itself: it wasn’t the first Horror comic series. That distinction belongs to the ambiguously titled Adventures into the Unknown. Published by the American Comics Group for a record 20 years (1948-1967), the comic somewhat managed its longevity by skulking under the radar. The Senate did not target Adventures because its title avoided red-flag words like “Terror” and “Horror” and the artists generally avoided gore even before the whip came down in the mid-‘50s.

Farewell, Ray Bradbury

I had my issues with Ray Bradbury's prose, which is purple as grape Kool-Aid, but not even I can question the man's influence on science-fiction, and more on point for this particular site, horror fiction. Bradbury had such high regard for the written word that the greatest horror he could imagine was its outlawing, and Farenheit 451 still stands as one of the few truly original dystopian novels because its focus is so keen and its resolution is so strangely optimistic. He was also able to locate the terror in more personal matters, such as aging (Something Wicked This Way Comes) and the realization you never really know your partner (the seemingly silly yet utterly terrifying short story "Gotcha!"). Without Bradbury there probably would not have been a "Twilight Zone" or E.C. Comics or, well, "Ray Bradbury Theater". With such a rich life, Bradbury's death at the ripe age of 91 yesterday can't quite be called tragic, but it is sad and he will be missed.

Review: The EC Archives: ‘The Haunt of Fear Vol. 1’ and ‘The Vault of Horror Vol. 2’

Russ Cochran was just another young reader with a zeal for gooey reanimated corpses when E.C. started publishing its controversial, influential, sublime series of horror comics in the early ‘50s. He has since attained a fan’s ultimate dream by becoming directly involved with his favorite comics, republishing Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear since 1971. These included reprints of individual comics and hardback, black and white anthologies. In the late ‘00s, Cochran masterminded his splashiest revamps yet. Gemstone Publishing’s “E.C. Archives” series featured six original comics chronologically contained in recolored, annotated, hardback collections. Some fans took issue with the digital recoloring jobs, but purism be damned, these collections looked fantastic and were clearly made with the love and attention-to-detail of a long, longtime fan.

Then in 2008, with several new volumes in the series announced, The E.C. Archives came to as unceremonious a halt as the original comics did when the officious senate shut them down sixty years ago. Rumors began floating that Gemstone was having financial troubles, and Cochran’s fine series was left in limbo for three years. Well, it’s time to breath a relieved sigh of “Good lord! Choke!” because The EC Archives have finally resumed on GC Press, a boutique imprint Cochran cofounded with fellow super-fan Grant Geissman, author of such titles as Collectibly MAD: The MAD and EC Collectibles Guide and Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s EC Comics!

Lovers of the series will be delighted to see that Gemstone quality has carried over to GC. The Haunt of Fear Volume 1 and The Vault of Horror Volume 2 are full of more wonderful supplemental essays by Geissman and Bob Stewart, who wrote a series of insightful issue-by-issue essays for Vault. Cochran and Geissman snagged two more prestigious personalities to contribute forwards: John Landis (Vault) and Robert Englund (Haunt). Of course, the stars of these volumes are the comics. Purists may be further riled to see that the images are more vivid and nuanced with highlights and shading than the Gemstone versions, but why squawk when there’s so much here to adore? Graham Ingels’s ghastly ghouls and gore oozing off the pages. Jack Davis’s cheeky, bulge-eyed characters capturing the more humorous side of the E.C. ethos. Witness the evolution of The Haunt of Fear, which began in somewhat slapdash fashion, recycling tales from both The Crypt and The Vault and lacking the essential wise-cracking horror host, to the introduction of our old pal The Old Witch at the end of the second issue, to her owning her GhouLunatic role in the fourth one. Terrifically terrifying tales include such creeping classics as “Horror Beneath the Streets” (starring none other than E.C.'s own William Gains and Al Feldstein!), “The Wall” (not-so-loosely based on Poe’s “The Black Cat”), "The Monster in the Ice" (a postmodern sequel to Frankenstein), “The Reluctant Vampire (which became one of the best episodes of the HBO’s Crypt series, with Malcolm McDowell in the title role), and the demented debut of the “widdle kid” stories starring homicidal tots. So wait no longer, boils and ghouls, and get your claws on these essential new E.C. Archives collections. Gasp!

A Brief Tribute to William Gaines

One hairy paw holds a severed head aloft, its lips dripping thick strands of drool. The other clutches an axe caked with black muck. The body lies on the floor, a short skirt hiked up to provide a teasing glimpse of slender legs.

Senator Kefauver: Do you think that is in good taste?

Mr. Gaines: Yes, sir; I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it and moving the body over a little farther so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.

William Gaines was a smart guy, so it’s tough to believe he actually did think this infamous Crime SuspenStories cover was “in good taste.” It’s lurid comingling of sex and violence is as “tasteful” as your average ‘80s slasher flick. And since when has anyone expected horror to be in good taste? Was the Frankenstein Monster’s drowning of a little girl in good taste? Was Mr. Hyde’s serial rape of a woman in good taste? But how else was he supposed to respond, standing before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency accusing him and other comic book mongers of corrupting kids with such images?

Nearly ’60 years down the road, the fact that comic books of any sort were deemed a serious enough threat to warrant a congressional investigation is just as absurd as Gaines’s insistence his comics were tasteful. They weren’t. Even dicey horror films like Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde didn’t dare to unveil the graphic grotesqueries of Crime SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear, with their axe-murdering Santa Clauses, cannibalistic deli owners, and homicidal baseball teams. But considering there were no tales of actual “juvenile delinquents” gutting their classmates and using their entrails as a makeshift baseball diamond, the effects of these stories were relatively negligible. So Gaines rightfully believed it was his duty to stand before the senate to defend his wares. No other comic owner had the guts to stand beside him, leaving Gaines as the face of the horror comics "problem." E.C. comics were out of business by 1955, just months after he testified before the senate, unable to recover from the media backlash that painted him as a corrupt, craven creep who preyed on youth to fill his coffers.

Of course, William Gaines bounced back almost immediately when he switched from gore to guffaws and made a fortune with MAD magazine. Horror comics never made as dramatic a comeback, but the influence of Gaines’ work may have had the most profound effect on horror since 18th century Gothic scribes Shelley, Stevenson, and Stoker. George Romero, John Carpenter, Joe Dante, and R.L. Stine are just a few of the horror purveyors who grew up on E.C. Horror Comics, and its influence is instantly recognizable in these filmmakers and writers’ work, not just in the gore, but the social conscience, wry satire, and demented playfulness. The Crypt Keeper’s macabre punning is the clearest precedent for the horror hosts— Zacherley, Vampira, Ghoulardi—integral in helping the genre make a comeback in the ‘60s after a poor showing in the prim and prudish ‘50s, the same decade that saw E.C. Comics flicker out nearly as soon as it caught fire.

Those who were influenced and effected by E.C. Comics never forgot Gaines’s contributions to the horror genre even as they were overshadowed by MAD for decades until Tales from the Crypt came back in vogue in 1989 when HBO’s long-running series debuted.

The Return of 'Tales from the Crypt'

You know how you've always wished you had a deeper understanding of brow-beaten men who gasp "Good lord!" when their murdered wives return from the grave for gruesome revenge? No? Me neither! That's not stopping original "Tales from the Crypt"-producer Lou Adler from partnering with Andrew Cosby (co-creator of the goofy Syfy series "Eureka") to create an hour-long show based on the influential horror comic. The producers have completed an all-new "Tales from the Crypt" bible and will soon start shopping their show to networks and cable channels. According to Deadline.com, Adler and Cosby's "Crypt" will do away with the anthology format of the HBO show in favor of a serial with recurring characters pulled from the comic... but in a more "modern context." Good lord.

And All Through the House...

Well, evil elves, the holiday season has descended upon us like some massive, garishly decorated bird of prey once again (in the case of most department stores, it descended sometime around mid-August). One might think the season of good-will-toward-men (just men? Typical) is anathema to the ghouls, gremlins, and sundry grotesques lurking in the Psychobabble vaults. But then one would be wrong. Psychobabble is a big fan of the season’s lights and tinsel, if not all that Jesus stuff. And though the December holidays may not offer the monstery delights of Halloween season, they are not exactly devoid of scares. Just take a look at A Christmas Carol. Lest we forget, Dicken’s deathless tale is actually quite frightening. At its heart, A Christmas Carol is the story of an old crab terrorized by a bevy of ghosts, who threaten him with nothing less than an early death if he doesn’t get with the hall decking. The better adaptations, such as Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1951 version with Alistair Sim as miserly Scrooge or Clive Donner’s 1984 take starring George C. Scott, embrace the story’s horror elements readily. I took in the Donner version for the first time in twenty or so years recently and was surprised by how chilling its overall air of gauzy decay and its depictions of Jacob Marley and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come remained. Even The Ghost of Christmas Past, played with withering detachment by Angela Pleasence—daughter of classic horror mainstay Donald!—creeped me out. The film is only missing the terrifying sequence from Dicken’s novella in which Scrooge looks out his window to see a tormented torrent of tortured phantoms in the snow.

There have been a number of other feature length holiday horror films, ranging from the genuinely creepy (1974’s Black Christmas) to the delightfully deranged (1984’s Gremlins) to the out-and-out campy (1980’s Christmas Evil) to exploitative, slice-‘em-up-Santa shit (1984’s Silent Night, Deadly Night). The latter genre actually has its roots in one of the season’s best fusions of sleigh bells and slay hells. “And All Through the House” appeared in the February/March 1954 issue of The Vault of Horror. Johnny Craig’s tale of an escaped psycho in a Santa suit is unusually layered for an E.C. comic.

Most such stories would give us one weapon-wielding loony, but Craig cleverly made the stalkee a housewife who committed her own murder just moments before evil Santa closes in on her house, threatening her and her daughter. It’s among the most memorable stories in E.C.’s all-too brief history, so memorable that it was treated to two direct adaptations. The first of these appeared in Freddie Francis’s superb 1972 portmanteau, Tales from the Crypt, and starred Joan Collins as the housewife double-tasked with disposing of her husband’s freshly killed corpse and avoiding Saint Nick’s crazy clutches.

Even better is the version that appeared in the debut three-part episode of HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt”, which may be the series’ best half hour. Director Robert Zemeckis gives us a more shadowy environment and a more monstrous Santa (the wonderfully weird Larry Drake), as well as the authentically gorgeous X-mas tableau that opens the episode, only to be wickedly and ironically shattered by its first murder. Zemeckis’s ex-wife Mary Ellen Trainor does a terrific job as the frazzled housewife, especially when she loses her shit in the episode’s concluding moments. Holiday horrors get no better.