…is our way of getting the latest hot-off-the-wire info to you; reviews, previews, scoops on horror films in production, newsworthy monster curiosities, bulletins, and other grues-flashes. There are several contributors to our hodge-podge Teletype page … BILL FERET, our man in Show Biz (he’s a professional actor, singer, dancer with the impressive resume list of stage, film and TV credits to his name), makes use of his vast professional experiences and leads to Feret-out items of interest to monster fans, and duly report on them in his flashing Walter-Wind-chill manner.
The Apeman swings again. Tarzan is not dead, nor do I hope he ever dies. M-G-M has in the works a “new” TARZAN feature film to be done in period costume and shot in East Africa. Would that the public really new what Burroughs’ Tarzan was really like. If Hollywood had only done an authentic version of the novels, they might, but the typical image of the “Me, Tarzan. . .You, Jane” jungle man is dimwittedly false.
Did you know that he spoke fluent English, and even before he spoke English, he spoke fluent French, not to mention dozens of African dialects and some German too? That he lived in London for many years as Lord Greystoke, and owned a tremendous plantation in Kenya?
Allan Balter and William Read Woodfield are writing the screenplay. They worked on the ABC-TV film “EARTH II.” Please let them keep from mulching out more “processed” Edgar Rice!
And if you think Tarzan doesn’t belong in the Monster genre, you’re mistaken. He has been to more lost lands (Pal-U-Don), more lost civilizations (Opar, city of Atlantis with La, it’s high priestess), encountered more monsters (the prehistoric inner world of Pellucidar) and been to countless other horrific places and met more beings of Monsterdom. . than Conan, Back Rogers or Richard Nixon
While were on Burroughs, isn’t it about time someone thought about filming the “Mars” Books. (A princess of, warlord of, etc.) That would be the greatest accomplishment to see filmization in decades. (Whatever happened to the filming of Bradbury’s MARTIAN CHRONICLES?)
Deborah Kerr may star (hopefully) in AIP’s new screen version of “THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES,” Robert Fuerst, who just did AIP’s “WUTHERING HEIGHTS,” is directing. Miss Kerr, besieged by offers from every medium, is Wuthering if she’ll accept.
THE GREEN SLIME: Green and slimy – the picture, not the monster. American actors Richard Jaeckel and Robert Houton, abetted by a Japanese crew and director, do heroic battle with a pool of lime Jello. They win. The audience doesn’t.
Scheduled for a Broadway opening on April is a new “Supernatural drama’ titled “A GHOST STORY.”
DIE SCREAMING, MARIANNE, is due out of Britain. Starred in the contemporary suspense drama are Leo Genn and Susan George.
From Britain’s Hammer Prod. will be unleashed COUNTESS DRACULA, starring Ingrid Pitt. “The old bat is on the wing.”
Watch for an all Black Horror film entitled “BLACULA.” Strictly straight and scary, no camp.
And an entirely different production company is readying, BLACK DRACULA. Sounds interesting…
The First Annual Star Trek Convention (issue No. 2) was a resounding success. Over 3,500 starry-eyed Trekkies and Trekkie-eyed starers attended and met and congratulated the editors, publishers and staff of THE MONSTER TIMES, and, (if they weren’t too star-struck), also series producer Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Madjel Barret, who played nurse Christine Chapel on the series. D.C. Fontana, who wrote the ST rule book was there, as well as Isaac Asimov & Hal Clement, noted SF authors.
That 3,500 attendance figure is greater than any science fiction or comics convention ever, by the way. The Con made history, was written up in Variety, was covered on local news shows, and, of course, in THE MONSTER TIMES.
Roddy McDowall will be starring in a new teleseries titled “TOPPER RETURNS.” It’ll be great having the gregarious ghosts back in our midst (or, rather, mist?) Roddy once cut the definitive (memo) regarding of H.P. Lovecraft’s THE OUTSIDER… scour the old record shops for it.
‘Dr. Phibes’ will return again, and again, and again. Even before the sequel has been released, a third (sequel to the sequel) has been planned.
They’re casting now for a future Broadway play entitled “SYDNEY AND THE WEREWOLF’S WIDOW.” Auditions will be held only during the light of the full moon. As New York’s pollution index is rising, it could be years before it gets staged. Gotham has Batman, anyway.
(The “Are you ready?” item) Gazotskie (?) Films are presently lensing SCHLOCK. That is not a bastardized version of Shleppy Shock, but rather a shortened form of ‘Schlockthropus.’ The SCHLOCK is described as a missing link. Veteran make-up artist, John Chambers, turns actor in this anthropological opus. Mr. Chambers won an Oscar for his ape artistry in THE PLANET OF THE APES, and also heads the make-up department at Universal.
Lensing right now is the film adaptation of Tom Tryon’s horror novel, “THE OTHER”. Robert Mulligan, who did just a terrific job with “Summer of ’42,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is directing. That superb actress, Uta Hagen is one of the co-stars. Twin-brothers (this one is split scream), one of which is nice, and good, and kind to animals, and ‘the other’ is a murderer … several times over. (The sounds so familiar). Regardless, with Mulligan behind the project, you can count on a chilling fi
MALPERTIUS, stars Orson Welles and Susan Hamshire (of “The Forsythe Saga’ fame). Continental songstress, Sylvie Varton will co-star. It’s described as a mystery thriller to be shot on location in Belgium.
Rosemary Murphy is joining Joseph Campanella in the sequel to “WILLARD”, called “BEN”, a Bing Crosby Production. All we can say is: “Rat-on!” Now if Hope & Crosby would only team up with the cheesy nibblers and produce “The Road to Switzerland.”
AIP will produce DEVILDAY, about a Horror movie actor who takes his roles a little too seriously. Now if they’d only do one about a Hammer screen-writer-hack who does likewise call it DRIVELDAY
Watch for “WHO KILLED MARY WATSHERNAME?,” with Red buttons and Sylvia Miles, “TALES FROM THE CRYPT” (of relation to the belated EC comix) with Joan Collins and Peter Cushing (who?); “TOWER OF EVIL” with Jill Haworth; “BARON BLOOD” with Joseph Cotton and Elke Sommer … Miss Sommer is one of Hollywood’s most notable character assassins according to Roman Polanski.
There was a rating dispute concerning AIP’s shocker “WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO?”, formerly the “GINGERBREAD HOUSE,” starring Shelley Winters. It will be released under the rating “Not for sub-teenagers.”
Due out this week is a BADTIME STORIES special treat for horror, monster and sci-fi fans – a book, written and drawn by the dean of doom & death-wish, Berni Wrightson. We will be reviewing BADTIME STORIES in an upcoming issue, printing sample pages of its horrific art, and all that there good stuff.
The piece of art excerpted here is from a wrenching Wrightson yarn of an alien “Slayer” who hunts other aliens – and hangs their heads on his trophy-room wall. More info in the coming review.
British TV will be having what we don’t. Hope someone gets wise and sends it our way, that is a new teleseries, “THEATRE. MACABRE” starring the grand monarch Christopher Lee. Maybe if it does well there, they’ll repeat it here. One cannot have enough corn on the Macabre.
And I finally got a little scoop (no, not of plasma ice cream). Just talked to Mr. John Flory, formerly with Paramount and now Eastman Kodak, who will be filming several new science fiction films under his new company, Spacefilms, Inc. Mr. Flory will be filming such well-known authors as L. Ron Hubbard, Lloyd Biggle, Jr. and… James Blish.
Mr. Flory, told me briefly of his ambitious future plans, and informed me, that he was the first photographer to utilize the Hale Telescope at Mt. Palomar commercially, even though it had a waiting list of several YEARS.
Enough for now! My carrier-bat just died of exhaustion.