Little Shoppe of Horrors #29 - The Abominable Dr Phibes

Although it has been out for the last six months or so I had not got around to reading this issue of Richard Klemensen’s long running British horror magazine until now – a few days before the next issue, focusing on Hammer’s Vampire Circus, is released.

In reading this issue on the Dr Phibes films I had an epiphany of exactly what it is that I so like about Little Shoppe of Horrors. It is the polyphonic, kaleidoscopic, triangulated approach that Klemensen takes.

Triangulation is a concept that I first encountered in relation to map-reading and orienteering and then in relation to social sciences research. It means that when you have multiple takes or perspectives on something then you are better able to pinpoint exactly what that something is.

Or, to bring it back to a British horror subject of particular relevance this week, that of Peter Cushing’s centenary, it is the way in which just about everyone who ever worked with Cushing indicates how he was a gentleman, a consummate professional, and was heavily affected by the death of his wife Helen.

Or, in relation to the Phibes films, it is how the various authors’ contributions not only cumulatively tell you just about everything you could ever want to know but also give you a sense of where the truth likely lies on those occasions when there are multiple conflicting or mutually reinforcing accounts.

For instance, the tension between Vincent Price and Robert Quarry on the second Phibes film appears to have stemmed less from anything either actor did than certain third parties insinuations that the latter was being groomed as a replacement for the former. Additionally matters of sexual orientation may have played their part, with contributor David Del Valle noting that Quarry was openly gay and Price’s daughter that her father bisexual and closeted.

Away from the Phibes films specifically another thing that emerged from the issue is the importance of the TV series The Avengers for 1960s and 1970s British fantasy cinema. While this had earlier been argued for by Matthew Boot in his study of the British horror cinema Fragments of Fear, it is the detailed discussion of director Robert Fuest’s work as a designer on The Avengers that makes all the difference here.

Another point that several contributors make is how The Abominable Dr Phibes makes little sense when considered in terms of conventional narrative logic (who/what is his mute assistant Vulnavia, for instance), but nevertheless works despite – or indeed because of – this. This in turn leads on nicely to the Vampire Circus issue, insofar as that film is so atypical and fantastique in the Hammer canon.

Bad Mags 2

Published by Headpress, Tom Brinkman's Bad Mags 2 is perhaps less a follow up to Bad Mags than a continuation of it, as signalled by the fact that the page numbering for the 260-odd page volume starts at 312.

Not having read the original, I can't say how it compares in terms of content, though I can say that if the first volume is anything like this I will definitely be getting a copy of it as soon as possible.

Brinkman's subject matter is, as the cover blurb states, "the strangest, most unusual and sleaziest periodicals ever published".

How far that's true on a wider basis, given the geographical and temporal frame of the US and occasionally Canada between the 50s and 80s is perhaps debatable, but only in terms of being stranger, more unusual, or sleazier in a pissing match way that is part and parcel of cult territory.

Indeed, this is something Brinkman confronts but then assiduously swerves away from in introducing the first of his subjects, magazines dealing with the occult and eroticism, insofar as he mentions Nugget as a fetish magazine that was launched in the wake of Playboy but which has "definitely mutated" since; I'll say no more on the subject here, but rather leave it for the curious to investigate at their own convenience. (Curiousity may be aroused or diminished by the toilet and pissing metaphors...)



What impresses in the discussion itself are the way it charts the cultural developments of the 50s, 60s and 70s, from the magazine Satan with its relatively vague use of an iconic Devil as a counterpoint to the Playboy bunny onto slightly more authentic publications, and as an organic introduction to what follows:

The dawning of the Age of Aquarius and the establishment of the Church of Satan are followed by two chapters on the murder of Sharon Tate and on Charles Manson that neatly show up the confused and contradictory situation in the USA circa 1970, while also illustrating how little has changed since.

Reading the headlines pertaining to Manson and the most famous victim of his cult, along with those focusing on other celebrities of the day, it is amazing how easily you could simply change the names and the graphical style and have a contemporary publication.

This quasi-random / Markov Model approach to text generation is something that also comes through in the fourth chapter, which discusses the career and work of Myron Fass, the king of US pulp in the 1960s and 1970s.

Quite simply, Fass did not care what crap he published, so long as it sold enough copies of a given title. His gimmicks included offering student discounts, without bothering to check the subscriber's credentials - who cared, as he was still making money anyways? - and, with his Official UFO magazine, presenting the incredible story - as in beyond credibility - of one Buddy Weiss, a Kasper Hauser / Brother from Another Planet type (Weiss even has a wooden horse!)

Often laugh out funny, the chapter provides a welcome respite from Manson and the fifth chapter, which discusses true crime and atrocity magazines, including the infamous Violent World, as immortalised by The Misfits in the song of the same name.

Lodi's finest are, however, conspicuously absent from the final chapter, on 'punk' magazines; I use the scare quotes because the difference between these opportunistic magazines' version of punk and the 'real', 'authentic' thing is a key theme.

Maximum Rock and Roll these magazines were not: they had no ideology, other than (an unironic) implicit endorsement of capitalism and consumerism, about as far from (idealist) punk anarchism as you can get, except when you consider that Malcolm McLaren had already subverted Situationism into a chaos = cash syllogism with his Sex Pistol puppets...

Yet, at the same time, one also thinks of Black Flag's 'creepy crawl' tours across the USA, or the Bad Mags style headline collages in Dead Kennedy's LP inserts, and thereby realises the way it all fits together; to paraphrase a Misfits bootleg, "If You don't know [what I'm talking about] then what the fuck are you doing here?" (These magazines would never try selling such bands - can you imagine Minor Threat or The Minutemen's responses?)

The appendix provides a checklist of Ed Wood's writings for 'Bad Mags' in the 60s and 70s. One of his pseudonyms was, tellingly, Ann Gora....

Brinkman is definitely someone who knows his (US) trash culture, whether noting the appearances of porn star Rene Bond in satanic/occult magazine layouts or the use of stills from Love Camp 7 and Snuff in their true crime/bondage counterparts.

In a word: essential.

[Bad Mags 2 is available from http://www.headpress.com]