BIBLIO WATCHDOG
70s MONSTER MEMORIES
Edited by Eric McNaughton 2016, Buzzy Krotik Productions
www.webelongdead.co.uk 408 pp., Softcover, £35 plus postage UK £5/Europe £12/ROW £20
Reviewed by Tim Lucas
This large, hefty, color-lavish compen- dium from the creators of WE BELONG DEAD magazine is a full-out wallow in 1970s horror nostalgia—by our count, 77 essays on different topics, bookended by a boisterous foreword by MONSTER MAG/HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR/ STARBURST publisher Dez Skinn and an afterword by Alan Frank, one of the genre’s foremost historians during that simpler, happier time. Not limiting itself to horror onscreen, the writ- ers gathered here latch onto a remarkably broad spectrum of media: films, television, books, magazines, comics, albums, posters, toys and trading cards—and a wealth of particulars within each of those disparate galaxies. Hammer’s Dracula series, Brian Clemens’ THRILLER, Lorrimer Publishing, QUASIMODO’S MONSTER MAGAZINE—you get the idea. Given the luxuri- ance of this surprisingly hefty tome’s presenta- tion, it cannot help but grab hold of anyone who lived through this period (obviously, every bit as impressive as 1960s horror culture was on its own young Dracolytes) and yank them back to an era that was more distinctive than is com- monly remembered—when the horror genre was fraught with both tradition and experiment, and restless in its determination to snare young fans while keeping the older ones hooked with ramped-up sex and gore.
70s MONSTER MEMORIES includes articles (“essays” is a loftier term than most of these pieces warrant) concerning all of the most im- portant American touchstones from FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND to CINEFANTASTIQUE, from Movies of the Week to vinyl soundtracks
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and Marvel Comics like TOMB OF DRACULA, yet it feels most specifically designed with the Brit- ish horror fan in mind. There is a reverence ex- pressed here for UK writers like David Pirie, Denis Gifford and Karloff biographer Peter Underwood, the magazine empire of Dez Skinn, the Pan Books of Horror Stories, THE WORLD OF HOR- ROR magazine and the like, that may not cause everyone’s nostalgia bone to resonate but which may well intrigue some unfamiliar readers to
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