Haunted Hot Rods

I was, and still am, I guess, a monster kid. I think I have shared before the story about how one fateful afternoon in the 1980s I was exposed to Tod Browning's Dracula, and my mind was suitably blown and primed to seek out monster movies, and related ephemera, from that point forward. Of course to present that as the moment I was introduced to monsters in the pop cultural sense, would be inaccurate, because I had by that point, already been toddling around in Incredible Hulk t-shirts since I was in diapers, and had had a shoe box full of Masters Of The Universe figures–a large number of which were monsters of various sorts. 

As I grew older, and my interests diversified, monsters (more so than straight "horror") stuck with me. And as I got into comic books, and later music and other things, I found these amazing overlaps in the spheres of the Venn Diagram of my hobbies. There's surf music about monsters?! There are comic books with monster stories?! I quickly grew to favor supernatural comic book characters like Deadman, Ghost Rider, Werewolf By Night and Swamp Thing, and scoured the weekly TV Guide for listings of monster and sci-fi movies on AMC (back when they were more akin to what TCM is now, than a version of early 90s HBO). Fortunately the late 80s/early 90s burgeoning basic cable market was flush with shows like Werewolf, Forever Knight and Monsters, and the Universal Monsters were back in vogue, popping up in everything from toys to Doritos packaging.  

As I pursued these various interests I found that the offerings to discover were often unilaterally declining in quality the more recently they were produced. Straight-to-video horror might have a certain outsider charm to it, but something like Galaxy of Terror or Creature didn't seem to hold a candle to Creature From The Black Lagoon or The Mad Ghoul. I don't like gore if it's the focal point of a movie/comic/novel, I don't enjoy films about groups of people, often teenagers or thirty-somethings playing teenagers, being systematically butchered in novel ways by some psychopath in a mask. I also don't have time for parodic material that doesn't respect the source. Was I whole-heartedly obsessed with The Misfits when they crossed my path? You bet! But metal that glorifies senseless brutality, not so much. 

Yadda yadda yadda. My brand of horror has always been more Hammer Films, Boris Karloff, EC Comics and Famous Monsters of Filmland than Fangoria, Rob Zombie and the hyper graphic Twisted Tales. That isn't to say there isn't a great deal of contemporary horror stuff that I greatly enjoy, but prior to the 1970s the idea seemed to be providing entertainment, not entrails. I like a bit of fun with my fear and there's lots of great stuff buried in the past if you dig for it. I've dug out a 1964 issue of Pete Millar's Drag Cartoons magazine to share today. It's a quick little hot rod monster mash produced by noted animation designer and cartoonist Alex Toth. Page 3 is a little faded but still reads just fine. Note the resemblance of the Monster in this strip to Dick Briefer's design for the creature in his Frankenstein comics (pictured below).

Cartoonist Dick Briefer had two different creature 
designs for two different iterations of his Frankenstein comics,
one humorous and cartoony, one menacing for straight horror
stories. The above is a panel from a horror-oriented 1954 issue.

 I'm not a gearhead by any measure; both of my grandfathers were career body men for various dealerships, my appreciation, however, is more or less confined to the aesthetic appeal of vintage car body design and the George Barris TV car creations, hence why I have the source material for this here post.

Enjoy.