Magazine

Remember how they used to use small bulldog clips or clothes pegs to display magazines, like washing drying on a line above and around the stand? Well, while shopping with my Gran, sometime in 1961/2, my eyes were caught by a magazine cover hovering above my head and beckoning me to take a closer look.  Nan was good enough to give me the money, half a crown (that’s 12 and half new pence) and I was soon the owner of something called ‘Fantastic Monsters of The Films’ (issue two). On it’s cover was an eerie green face with wide flaming eyes and the back cover unfolded to reveal an enormous colour image of a creature with a large exposed brain and crab like pincers in place of its hands. I would discover that image on the back cove was  the Metaluna Monster from a movie called ‘This IsIand Earth’. The magazine was full of similar stills, photos and pages of articals covering a world I didn’t know existed…that of Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy films.  I was enthralled by this new world and visited every newsagents and oddball shop in around the city center and our own housing estate, and discovered many shops that would become regular haunts over the next few years. I also discovered that this wasn’t the only magazine of it’s type and was soon the owner of numerous copies of Famous Monsters Of Filmland, Castle of Frankenstein, Mad Monsters, Horror Monsters and others that quickly built into the beginnings of a large magazine collection. I didn’t know it at the time but these magazines would eventually lead me into a dream of a job. As I grew older I would also buy Films and Filming, which at that time was about the only film related magazine on the British market, other than the saucy Continental Film Review. I was mortfied to read a Film & Filming review of two Toho Godzilla’s, where the reviewer simply repeated, word for word, the same review.  I gave the entire F&F collection, far from complete, to Dave Worrall when he left Derann. The Monster Magazines were the final straw for my father, who thought my ‘hobby’ unnatural, unhealthy and a waste of money. His tantrums and tactics may have upset me, but had little effect, in fact by now I had begun to take an interest at what was showing at the local cinemas and would walk past, just to look at the posters and stills. Three of Wolverhamptons’ cinemas (Gaumont, ABC and Clifton),  were very close together and  I could pass them on the way home from school with just a short detour. I can remember the one for ‘Gorgo’, ‘The Day of the Triffids’, ‘Varan The Unbelievable’ and an extraordinary one for the film ‘Frankenstein’s Daughter’ and ‘Attack of the Crab Monsters’. Back home the monster magazine collection grew steadily over the years, and saw the demise of Famous Monsters and heralded in newcomers like G-Fan, Starlog, Fangoria, House of Hammer and Gorezone. I had a regular subscription to all of these and a few other magazines until the late 90’s when my British supplier in Birmingham folded. In later years I was forever on the lookout for magazines at the various conventions I attended with Derann and was always ‘Happy as pig in muck’ if I came across an old and much needed goodie. All are now stored in the Attic!