Review: 'Atlas Artist Edition No. 1, Featuring Joe Maneely'

Joe Maneely is not as well known as, say, Steve Ditko or Jack Davis among comics connoisseurs. He didn't get a chance to be. After ten years of work with Atlas Comics, Maneely died in an accident on a train at the age of 32. 

One cannot help but ponder what might have been when viewing one of the roughly 3,500 pages of artwork he produced in his brief career. 215 of them are anthologized in Atlas Artist Edition No. 1, Featuring Joe Maneely. He was apparently game for any assignment, working on sci-fi, horror, medieval, old-west, war, humor, romance, and (aging least successfully, of course) "yellow-peril" stories (a-hem).

His style remained consistent regardless of subject matter: lots of detail, hatched shadows, etched faces. There's a hint of the underground comix to come a decade after his death in his style, although its unlikely that an old-fashioned worker like him would have found a place in that grass-perfumed nook of comics-dom.

What-might-have-beens aside, what is may not always be A+ storytelling—there's a reason titles like Haunted! and Adventures in Terror are not as well-remembered as Tales from the Crypt, and a Seven Year Itch parody from comedy-comic Riot is anything but a riot and barely comedy—but Maneely's artwork is always top-notch. This volume captures it with incredible respect. Atlas Artist Edition No. 1 is an over-sized hardcover with beautiful reproductions of 38 stories and a gallery of Maneely's covers. The coloring is wonderfully authentic—none of that garishly-digital recoloring that has absolutely ruined many an EC-anthology. This is the way classic comics reprints should be done.

Review: 'The Horror Comic Never Dies: A Grisly History'

In the days when the scariest movies offered nothing more potent than guys skulking around in scaly rubber suits, horror comics genuinely shocked and disturbed. On their pages, eyes popped from skulls or were punctured with sharp objects. Entrails spilled. Dripping things clawed out of fetid graves. Horror comics were gross, they were goopy, they were ghastly— so naturally kids loved them. Parents, however, found them disgusting and deleterious. The horror comic issue (pun!) was of such significance that it clawed its way right on up to a series of senate sub-committee hearings in 1954.

If you’re even a casual student of comics history, you already know all this and have probably boned up on the topic (pun!!) by viewing documentaries such as Tales from the Crypt: From Comic Books to Television or reading books such as David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague. If you’re pressed for time, you can also check out Michael Walton’s new book The Horror Comic Never Dies: A Grisly History, which sprints through the history of horror comics in about 95 pages, understandably lingering on the horror comics scare of the fifties, though not with Hajdu’s level of attention. I’m not sure if I learned anything significant that I didn’t already know, but Walton’s telling of the tale is sprightly and well-written. He uses his next 40 pages to provide conversational, lightly critical synopses of numerous twenty-first century horror comics (and a few films based on horror comics) that may inspire you to discover something you’ve not previously read, though without examples of art this section is missing a major factor for drawing new readers to comics.

Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes: Day 11

Does the mere idea of stepping into another mall, watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the zillionth time, or talking to your loved ones make you throw up? Then settle your bowlful of jelly into the La-Z-Boy® and deck your hall with today’s installment of Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes instead! Merry vegetating!

Series: Tales from the Crypt

Episode: “And All Through the House”, in which HBO’s adaptation of classic EC Comics debuts with its best-ever episode. This was not the first screen adaptation of Johnny Craig’s twisty tale of a murderer having to dispose of her husband’s corpse while also protecting herself and her child from a psycho Santa on Christmas Eve, but it is even better than the excellent one in the 1972 Tales from the Crypt feature film. Director Robert Zemeckis gets both the nerve-wracking suspense and the warm-and-wonderful X-Mas atmosphere absolutely perfect. The opening shot of Christmas decorations as Nat King Cole's “Christmas Song” plays on the soundtrack is as beautiful and nostalgia-stoking as a Currier and Ives print. The way Zemeckis shatters that visual with a sudden shock of violence is just as beautiful. A perfect half hour of holiday TV.

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.

Farewell, Miguel Ferrer

Sad news today. Miguel Ferrer, the gruff actor beloved here at Psychobabble for his unforgettable turn as Special Agent Albert Rosenfield on Twin Peaks and in the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, has died of cancer at the age of 61. Ferrer had quite a resume. As well as being the show-biz offspring of Rosemary Clooney and José Ferrer (who also worked with David Lynch in Dune), he was a drummer who played on Keith Moon's cuckoo solo album Two Sides of the Moon, and of course, an actor. Throughout his very prolific career he appeared in such cool items as the underrated Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the genuine cult classic Robocop, and Tales from the Crypt. In a sad coincidence, he also ran lines with Carrie Fisher when she was gearing up to audition for Star Wars. However, it was his embodiment of the  cynical special agent who also professes to live in the footsteps of Gandhi and King that may have won him the most fans. As Rosenfield, Ferrer was off-puttingly hilarious, and his statement of purpose to Sheriff Truman was one of the most brilliant scenes in a show with now shortage of them. Fortunately, we'll get to see him in the role one more time this May. Anyway, here's that classic scene one more time.

I love you Sheriff Truman. Love you Agent Rosenfield, too.

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 20

Series: Tales from the Crypt

Episode: “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy”, in which lousy, aspiring ventriloquist Bobcat Goldthwait longs to learn the secrets of puppet-master Don Rickles. Rickles was once the greatest in the business, but now he’s retired, and apparently, hooked on dope. Not quite, boils and ghouls. The secrets behind Rickles’s syringe and miraculous ventriloquism skills are too amazing, too bizarre, too disgusting to reveal here. However, I will say that “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” was the talk of the high school halls after it aired in 1990, and it is most certainly one of the most memorable tales The Crypt Keeper ever dredged up.

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.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 153

The Date: March 1

The Movie: Tales from the Crypt (1972)

What Is It?: The greatest horror portmanteau ever made adapts five tales from the greatest horror comics line ever published.

Why Today?: On this day in 1922, William M. Gaines is born. It’s just a matter of time before “Good lord! Choke!” and “Blecch!” enter the lexicon.

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.

Psychobabble’s 2015 Wish List

Four years ago, I posted my 2011 wish list here on Psychobabble. A couple of these indulgent dreams came true, such as the long-awaited release of Island of Lost Souls on DVD and the even longer awaited release of the deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. That the majority of those wishes I made in 2010 did not come to pass has done nothing to kill my lovely, lovely dreams for 2015. Here are some things I’m hoping will exist next year, some far-fetched, some within the realm of possibility. 

1. E.C. Horror Comics Reprints by a Publisher Other than Dark Horse

OK, so it is cool that the intermittent anthologizing of E.C.’s infamous horror comics of the fifties has not croaked despite "The E.C. Archives" changing publishers several times, but what began with a fairly acceptable level of digital meddling by Gemstone Publishing in 2006 has gotten way out of hand in the hands of Dark Horse. Carlos Badilla has recolored these classic comics with a heavy hand that leaves them unacceptably modern and soulless. I would love to see a company like IDW, which does not screw with original coloring whatsoever and even prints on textural, comic-style stock (as opposed to Dark Horse’s glossy pages), tear the property out of Dark Horse’s greasy hooves. As Dark Horse has more E.C. anthologies on tap for 2015, I understand that this is one of the most unlikely wishes on this list, but it’s no more out there than my wish to breathe underwater, which I’m also hoping will come true next year. Keep your webbed fingers crossed.

2. Beatles Singles Box

From the far-fetched wish to the inevitable one, Capitol/UMe has been giving us so much superior-quality Beatles long-playing vinyl over the past couple of years that I’d wager the probability of them rereleasing the short-playing records is pretty probable. The original picture sleeves and a neat classic 45s carry-case are givens. The only stumbling box might be a relative lack of interest in singles, but if R.E.M. and The Turtles can get the singles box treatment, I don’t see how the most popular group in the galaxy would get passed up. I do think we’ll have to wait until after Capitol/UMe reissues The Beatles’ U.S. albums on vinyl (likely with the original bad echo and bad duophonic mixes the recent CD box lacked), but can that be far away?

3. Rolling Stones in Mono

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: '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.

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.

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.

Psychobabble's 10 Most Petrifying Portmanteau Episodes

portmanteau (noun \pȯrt-ˈman tō\)
1. a large suitcase for traveling
2. a word formed by blending two or more other words
3. a horror movie anthologizing two or more distinct episodes into one horrifically zany, often inconsistent, sometimes spectacular whole, all bolted together with a wraparound story usually resolving with a ghastly ironic twist.



1. “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” from Dead of Night (1945- dir. Alberto Cavalcanti)

Psychobabble’s 200 Essential Horror Movies Part 6: The 1970s

In this feature, Psychobabble creeps through 100 years of horror cinema to assemble a highly personal list of the genre’s 200 most monstrous works, decade by decade.

(Updated in September 2021)

93. Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny, and Girly (1970- dir. Freddie Francis)

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.

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.