As a student of film (particularly the horror-science fiction genre), I was thrilled to see “The Monster Times”. Needless to say, it was worth the lunch money I spent on it. It’s got more information and good reading in it than any two issues of “Famous Monsters in Filmland”.
I’ve been planning to write an article on Sci-fi of the ’50’s for quite a while, but you beat me to the punch with “Mushroom Monsters”. I was pleased to see that I am not the only one who recognizes the clear-cut characteristics that the ’50’s horror films displayed. I was also greatly pleased to find articles on two of the best films of the genre, King Kong and Things to come. They are, in my opinion, the two best films of the ’30’s. I think that the Nosferatu comic strip did not belong.
I think you should invite reader participation. Offer a test on horror film history each issue. Have a Q & A column where readers can answer other readers’ queries about certain films. Ask interested readers to submit lists of their ten favorite horror – sci-fi – fantasy films and publish a list of the most popular films.
Subjects I would like to see covered in future issues: Ray Harryhausen’s work, the Planet of the Apes trilogy, Rod Serling, Universal’s Monsters, Jack Arnold’s films, British, Italian and Japanese works in the field, special effects, composers and their music in the field, and actors like John Carradine, Claude Rains and Vincent Price.
One more question: How can I get to write for “Monster Times”?
A Fellow Aficionado,
P.S. I have a pretty good still collection.
The way you can write for us is this: send us a resume, samples of your writing, paragraphs describing several articles you want to write about … and include a list of the photos you have to illustrate them. It’s important that you include return postage, to ensure speedy reply.
We’re already working on most of the articles you suggest except for perhaps the Planet of the Apes “Trilogy,” which would have been better titled: The Dignity of the Apes; Beneath the Dignity of the Apes; and Escape from Beneath the Dignity of the Apes.
THEY HATE US!
Dear Sirs:
| welcome you to the monster magazine field. Your newspaper is generally good, and I like your format. Only because I am a horror and Sci-Fi movie buff can I dislike some of the things that are said in your articles. I noticed several mistakes in the paper concerning photo descriptions. On page one you have three photos, one of Max Steiner, another of Merian Cooper, and one which is supposed to be Willis O’Brien but is actually Don Post, creator of fine horror masks. On page eighteen in your description of the new book “The Ghouls” you have a picture of Karloff which you state is from the film “The Body Snatcher” but which is actually from the Karloff film “The Ghoul” which Boris made in England in 1933.
While Mr. Allan Asherman properly praised the classic “Things to Come,” Mr. David Izzo tried to put down the equally great classic above Lugosi’s triumph. Mr. C.M. Richards, in his nonsense-studded article on the films “The Golem,” also puts down another classic, calling “The Golem’ the first “Frankenstein,” therefore degrading Karloff’s classic. He has no evidence whatsoever to back up his “claim” that Mary Shelly was inspired by the Golem’s legend.
Hoping to see improvement, I am, Yours truly, William J. Meyer,
THE MONSTER TIMES tells it like it is, whenever possible. Many people in “Monsterdom” feel (and it is their right!) that Lugosi’s DRACULA was pure ham, and nowhere near the authenticity which the Hammer “remake” achieved. They deserve a “voice,” too! C.M. Richards is sorry you couldn’t be along with him when he took his class back to 1816 to witness the Mary Shelley “Golem” reading event. But it’s just as well. He’d probably have left you there. But you are right about the “O’Brien” photo. We’ll run a correct picture in a future Encyclopedia Filmfannica page about Willis O’Brien. OK?
STAR TREK WILL NOT DIE!
Dear Editor:
In reference to Chuck McNaughton’s article about “Star Trek” returning to the air with new shows, I would like to know if you could inform me of which network to write to about returning “Star Trek.” Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Wayne Pesqueira
P.S.
Your magazine is greatest in Science Fiction since the Frankenstein Monster.
Thanx. NBC ran STAR TREK one and a half seasons too many. They murdered the integrity of the show about halfway thru the 2nd season. It may sound preposterous, but it’s possible that STAR TREK could well be picked up by one of the “rival” networks, ABC or CBS. As CBS seems about the most intelligent of the three, these days (you can guess this, because Vice-Prez Agnew wants to talk them to death for running shows like “The Selling of the Pentagon”), it’s not unbelievable that they might be willing to take “the thinking man’s Buck Rogers” into their stable of shows, some near season.
Send us so many letters, postcards, boosts, detractions, bomb threats, etc., that the Post Office will have to deliver our mail with a bulldozer. Address all correspondence to: THE MONSTER TIMES, Box 595, Old Chelsea Station, N.Y., 10011.
Grave-robbing may be out of style, but fan exploitation isn’t. Monster fans deserve a reliable market test to rely upon before sending money to all-too monstrous manufacturers. Therefore, to dull the fangs of some vampires of our industry, we at MT innovate The Monster Market to product test items, and report accurately on them-and about the bargains, too!
IMPORTANT! If we are really going to be able to keep the monster magnates in line, we’ll need your help. Please write in and tell us of your experience in the monster market, whether it be good, bad or none of the above. Write to THE MONSTER TIMES, c/o The Monster-Market, P.O. Box 595, Old Chelsea Station, N.Y. 10011.
Product Tested: Venus Fly Trap. Available from: Various mail-order houses (see list). Price: (see price comparison chart).
“Horticulturists Unite! Beware of the man-eating plants!” How many times should this phrase have been uttered to groups of B-Movie safaris, as they enter the darkened jungles, or have been said softly by Hollywood-style natives as they reluctantly pushed on to lands unknown? The answer would be countless; and although it sounds quite ridiculous, it may come as a shock to learn that man-eating plants actually do have a sound basis in fact.
“Complete rubbish, bah, humbug.” I hear you mentally shouting as you read, but have you ever heard of the Venus Fly Trap? If you haven’t then perhaps you should know about this unusual Mediterranean plant that draws its nourishment from two highly different sources: (1) the normal way through its system of roots and fibers, and (2) the more deadly way of entrapping small insects and devouring them whole!
And it goes about this second action in a very clever way – especially for what (we hope) is non-thinking vegetable matter. The Fly Trap can usually stand from one to five feet tall and is adorned with an abundance of round prickly flowers all colored in varieties of rich red hues.
These flowers are open wide with usually a thin crease down the center and surrounded on the circumference with a throng of sharp and prickly bristles. All through the hot Mediterranean days, these flowers remain open to the air – exuding a noticeably sweet and pungent odor that can carry many yards from the plant’s rooted base.
Besides activating the olfactory glands in humans, this pleasant smell also beckons to the many forms of bugs and insects which inhabit the mass growth of the forested areas. Thusly, the Venus Fly Trap attracts its insect prey through the sense of smell as well as through its alluring highly colored petals – two almost unfightable inducements for an unsuspecting moth or gnat.
When the unwary insect is drawn to the planet, he will no doubt attempt a landing on one of the many sweet and colored flowers — this being his first, and final fatal mistake. For when the bug lights on the plant, the petals immediately close tight entrapping the insect between the two inside walls of the flower. And then to compound the horror that the excited bug must surely be experiencing, the walls emit a sticky acid-like substance which at first stops the insect cold – prohibiting him from any further attempt at escape. The victim must then lie helpless as more fluid is secreted through the inside walls until the bug is completely eaten away, with the acid returning to the body of the plant.
This, of course, does not happen within just minutes, the process usually takes approximately twelve hours, and before the next day can dawn the Fly Trap’s flowers are all open for business again – ready for another day of fun and profit.
And just think, you too can have a Venus Fly Trap in your own home. Just imagine the savings on insect sprays and room fresheners, when you have a sweet-smelling Fly Trap in your indoor garden to do all the dirty work. Just remember to keep the temperature up, and allow the plant to get plenty of sunshine. Being from the very southernly regions, the Fly Trap literally thrives on the heat and ultra-violet rays of the sun – aside from its bug-catching operation of course.
And in case your home is free of flies and other roaming pests, the Fly Trap also enjoys munching on small pieces of raw steak, lamb, pork, with an occasional nip out of a stray cat.
And if you seem to be remembering some variations on the Venus Trap from your cinema viewings, try recalling Irwin Alien’s well-publicized remake of THE LOST WORLD back in 1960. This film features a host of man-sized plant traps that lay close to the ground somewhat like the tops of inverted mushrooms.
English sci-fi author John Wyndham’s novel THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS sparked the film of the same name that displayed herds of man-eating plants that even had the power of root movement. An excellent story in book form, the 1963 British offering failed to come up to the printed page’s high standard.
Two classic vegetable films would have to be Howard Hawks’ THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD and action director Don Seigal’s INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. Both films took new and innovative looks at the idea of intelligent vegetable life that could exist on other worlds than our own. Each is regarded as masterpiece in the fantasy genre and both are continually being placed on top ten fantasy film lists everywhere.
To a somewhat lesser degree we also could take a look at Roger Corman’s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. This picture, turned out in the still unbroken record time of 24/2 days, centered around a dingy restaurant with a very unusual conversation; a seven-foot-tall talking plant that would devour anything from a salami sandwich to a copy of yesterday’s Daily News. And you can well believe how hard that is to swallow!
Last and least among dangerous plants is a toss-up between two TV offerings. The better of the two appeared on ABC’s now-defunct adult science-fiction series THE OUTER LIMITS. Titled “Space Seed”, the episode was a direct copy from John Wyndham’s DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS – right down to the same destroying agent, H20.
The other nameless plant personality resided in the garden of Morticia Addams of that infamous Charles Addams’ Family. You may recall with fondness or disgust the Fly Trap arrangement she cultivated to ensnare unwanted victims as well as sing “My Wild Irish Rose” in the key of “C!”
In any case, it’s clear to see that the Venus Fly Trap, in one form or another, is here to stay for a long time. So why not get out there in your garden and get growing!
Jim Wnoroski
SOME MT TIPS TO VFT OWNERS:
Keep your VFT very warm … like about 75 to 85 degrees, and at about 90% humidity (near a leaky radiator or steam pipe in your comfy crypt, will mildewy do). But make sure also (Vampires take belated note:) that it’s at a sunny window with a SOUTH exposure. Ask your friendly neighborhood flower shop or greenhouse keeper what exactly “acid” soil with “low pH, half sphagnum and half peat moss” is. It’s too complicated, and would take a mad doctor or an hour to explain here, but that’s the type of soil you need. It’s said that the best way is to keep the plants in a brandy snifter with one or two inches of gravel at the bottom, for drainage.
What do you say about a lovely Venus-Fly-Trap that died?- “It should have been kept in the light!” that’s what you say. Heed this advice, and you need never worry about all them Giant Bugs on the Munch, in this here Creepish-Crawl-Ish. So dig in!
GRIPES AND GRUMBLES DEPARTMENT
Dear Monster Market,
Shades of Great Expectations, whatever happened to Steranko’s “History of the Comics” Vol. 2? Everyone in fandom, including my humble self, has been champing at the bit these many months just waiting for it to be published. Whoever dreamed up the ads for it, must have also composed the musical score for the Broadway play – “Promises, Promises!” Dig? I don’t know how long you other cats have been waiting, but I forked over my gelt nine months ago. Count um’–nine. You can give birth to a baby in that amount of time!——SO, shouldn’t Steranko’s lil’ brainchild be aborning – by now? I don’t know how he’s been spending this vast amount of time – or our money – but if he can drag himself out of Disneyland long enough, maybe we might get our goodies.
So please, Mr. Steranko, how’s about it? Since Washington crossed the Delaware – no matter how cold it was – why don’t you come across? Before we’re left cold! Thank you, and well-seasoned greetings from……….
Jimmy Thornton New York City
THE FACTS OF THE CREEPY CASE:
We set our researchers about, nosing for news of Mr. Steranko’s book. Jimmy – and it seems, according our best info, that History of the Comics, Volume II is at the printers, and has been there for some months. We wrote Jim Steranko about a month ago, and as of press time, we’ve still no reply. We have to admit, we’re also curious about the second volume of History of The Comics, as the first book is a visual treat, and we intend to review it rather favorably in an upcoming issue of MT.
Perhaps Mr. Steranko didn’t reply to our letter because he couldn’t believe a newspaper called “THE MONSTER TIMES” could be for real … but we are! If any other readers have ordered the second volume and think Mr. Steranko might take them for real, and answer them, they might write him, c/o SUPERGRAPHICS, 501 Spruce Street, Reading, Pa. 19602, and ask him the status of his long-publicized “new” book.
In our first issue, author Steve Vertlieb told us of THE MEN WHO SAVED KING KONG! In this second installment of the Kronicals of Kong, Steve shows us little-known facets of the most amazing of gems, the 20th-Century motion picture ad campaign. Ad promo is a fine science, and almost as creative and expensive as the movie itself. Sometimes more so, if a pretty bad movie is being pumped into the American public’s minds.
So, in HOW TO SELL A GORILLA, Steve tells us some interesting sidelights that make us drool with envy, wishing we could go back to that wonderful year, 1933, Great Depression notwithstanding, and watch how some of the largest cities in America went Kong-Krazy. But since we can’t, Steve’s article must serve as a time machine.
First Stop, ol’ Tinseltown itself Hollywood, California March 24th, 1933…..
“King Kong” had his Hollywood premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Friday evening, March 24th, 1933. The souvenir-program book contained the following publicity blurb: “Out of an uncharted, forgotten corner of the world, a monster… surviving seven million years of evolution … crashes into the haunts of civilization… onto the talking screen … to stagger the imagination of man.” Mystery magazine celebrated the event by beginning a serialization of the story in their February, 1933 issue. Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray were on the cover, and the cover blurb billed the tale as “The last and the greatest creation of Edgar Wallace.”
On opening night in Hollywood the Premiere jitters were building and managed to leave practically no one untouched. But this night was not the beginning of the suspense, only the climax, for rumors had been circulating for months as to who and what King Kong was to be. R.K.O. Radio Pictures purchased one of the longest commercials in advertising history when, on February tenth, 1933, the National Broadcasting Company aired a thirty-minute radio program to let America know of the impending birth of King Kong. It was a show within a show, a sort of coming attraction, complete with specially tailored script and realistic sound effects. Reaction to the broadcast was exactly as hoped for – merely tremendous!
Original publicity releases and newspaper ads gave out verbal previews of what was to come: “Monsters Of Creation’s Dawn Break Loose In Our World Today” … “Never before had human eyes beheld an ape the size of a battleship” … “They saw the flying lizard, the fierce brontosaurus, big as twenty elephants… and all the living, fighting creatures of the infant world.” … “The giant ape leaped at the throat of the dinosaur and the death fight was on. A frightened girl, in 1933, witnessed the most amazing combat since the world began.”
Trailers (Coming Attractions) at the time, normally accustomed to previewing the most exciting scenes in a picture in order to entice a given audience, were deliberately secretive and noncommittal. Only a huge, frightening shadow was seen by theatre goers, accompanied by warnings like “This is only the shadow of King Kong … See the greatest sight that your eyes have ever beheld at this theatre – beginning Sunday!”
for one night only the KING KONG Ballet!
Sid Grauman was a showman and had earned his reputation from years of inventive staging. On this night of all nights he wasn’t going to be caught with his curtains down. Grauman arranged for a very special seventeen act extravaganza to precede the first showing of “King Kong.” He hired dancers, singers and musicians for the gala evening. To be sure, it was a night that no one who was there would ever forget. Recreated in these pages is the original program produced for that memorable evening thirty-eight years ago. Outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, that opening night was a life-size replica of Kong’s head! Kneat!
Finally, the moment that the huge audience in Hollywood had waited for was at hand. The house lights dimmed, the projectionist started his machine and a hush fell over the crowd. On-screen, the mammoth Radio Pictures tower beeped excitedly atop a spinning globe. It faded out and into a Radio Pictures Presents plaque. Finally, the logo faded out and onto the waiting screen came the title, in great block lettering, “KING KONG.” And, did it come? From the background, the title suddenly zoomed upfront to take its rightful place, prominently, in the foreground. It might almost have been an early form of 3-D!
It was rumored several years ago that a special fifteen-minute, introductory film was made for the premiere showing of the feature in Hollywood that explained, basically, how the technical wizardry in “King Kong” was accomplished. Supposedly, the “prologue” was never again seen outside of the Official” premiere.
Yet, according to the man behind the ape, Merian Cooper, no such film was ever made.
Your author spoke to Mr. Cooper about this, and “Coop” emphatically states that the film in question does not now, and never has existed. The studio wanted to keep their new discoveries private. After all the work and risks involved in the making this revolutionary film, no one at R.K.O. (least of all General Cooper), was about to advertise their secrets.
those censored scenes of rude, krude K
It has been said that newly rediscovered “Censored” scenes from “Kong” were snipped by Censors scissors in time for the big theatrical reissue in 1952 because they were too brutal and … well … sexy. Scenes were of King Kong playfully and naively inspecting the torn dress worn by Fay Wray, and then removing parts of it, lifting them to his nose and sniffing the strange scent; holding a villager between his teeth; smashing down violently a structure upon which natives were standing and hurling spears; grinding the head of a writhing native into the mud on the ground with his foot; climbing the outer wall of a New York hotel at which Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) was staying, in search of his captive at large, and finding the first woman he sees asleep in her bed, then drawing her to him out through the window, examining her in mid-air and, realizing that he has picked the wrong girl, callously allowing her to slip through his fingers and fall to the ground below; and, lastly, chewing casually on a native New Yorker. It’s surprising he didn’t break his teeth!
It may now be wondered, however, if those sequences weren’t actually discarded in 1933 after the first run engagements, and when the film went into general release, for the recorded “running time” listed in the original studio Press Book is one hundred minutes – some five minutes less than the film would last with the additional “Censored” scenes left intact. In 1952 it was still 100 minutes.
As big and exciting as the Hollywood premiere was, “King Kong” really gave its world premiere some three weeks earlier to the city that graciously destroyed itself for movie history. It was fitting and proper that New York City host the unveiling of Carl Denham’s Monster, King Kong, the eighth wonder of the world!
And so it was that on March 2nd, 1933, “King Kong” created almost as much chaos for real as he did in the film. This was no ordinary premiere for, so great was the demand to see the new film that, in the midst of America’s worst and most tragic Depression, two enormous theatres were required to play the film simultaneously in order to fill the public’s demand for seats. Both the Radio City Music Hall and The Roxy Theatre, with a combined seating capacity of ten thousand people, were filled for every performance of the film from the moment when the doors opened at ten-thirty A.M. on Thursday, March 2nd. Both theatres took out combined ads in The New York Times the day preceding the opening. Kong, himself, was pictured atop the Empire State Building holding Fay Wray in one paw, and crushing a bi-plane in the other. The caption next to the ape and atop the title read:
“KONG THE MONSTER!”
Huge as a skyscraper … crashes into our city! See him wreck man’s proudest works while millions flee in horror! … See him atop the Empire State Tower! Battling planes for the woman in his ponderous paw! “KING KONG” outleaps the maddest imagination!”
As in Hollywood there were stage shows here also. “Stage Shows As Amazing As These Mighty Theatres,” proclaimed the advertisement. “Jungle Rhythms” – brilliant musical production! Entire singing and dancing ensemble of Music Hall and New Roxy! Spectacular dance rhythms by ballet corps and Roxyettes! Soloists, Chorus, Symphony, Orchestras, Company of 500!” “Big enough for the Two Greatest Theatres at the same time!”
“Kong” played to standing crowds for ten complete performances daily. On the day of the opening a second Ad appeared in New York’s entertainment pages. The publicity blurbs read, in part, “Shuddering terror grips a city … Shrieks of fleeing millions rise to the ears of a towering monster. .. Kong, king of an ancient world, comes to destroy our world – all but that soft, white female thing he holds like a fluttering bird … The arch-wonder of modern times.”
When, in 1933, President Roosevelt declared a Moratorium and closed the banks, the following Ad appeared in New York’s papers: “No Money … yet New York dug up $89,931.00 in four days (March 2, 3, 4, 5) to see “KING KONG” at Radio City setting a new all-time world’s record for attendance of any indoor attraction. This is all the more startling considering that general admission prices were far less expensive (10c to 50c) than they are today.
Full-page ads in the trade journals were headed by the impressive lead-in, “The Answer To Every Showman’s Prayer.” And it was. This was no case of attempting to sell a loser, for “Kong” was truly a box office bonanza for all film exhibitors sharing in the feast.
how to spread a gorilla-pic thin
Fay Wray’s awesome scream is equaled in its popularity only by Johnny Weismueller’s well-known cry as Tarzan, The Ape Man. No one has ever attempted a guess at why Fay’s screaming should have so completely overshadowed the tries of all other actresses throughout the thirty-eight years since “Kong”’s first release but few would doubt her right to the title of the world’s most celebrated screamer. So, it is not surprising to learn that R.K.O. used that contract scream in the voices of countless other actresses who were not as healthily endowed. When Helen Mack opened her fragile lips to cry out in “The Son Of Kong” it was not her voice audiences heard but that of Fay Wray. As late as 1945 Fay’s scream could be heard for Audrey Long in the remake of “The Most Dangerous Game,” “Game Of Death.”
But, of all of the memorable sounds to come from “King Kong,” the immortal music score by Max Steiner has been heard the most. “Kong”’s thrilling and intricate themes have been played in such later films as “The Son Of Kong,” “The Last Days Of Pompeii,” “Becky Sharpe,” (the first FULL Technicolor feature) “The Last Of The Mohicans,” “The Soldier And The Lady,” (from Jules Verne’s “Michael Strogoff”) and John Wayne’s “Back To Bataan.”
Sets and props used in “Kong” also had ways of turning up before the cameras of other pictures. The huge log that Kong hurled furiously into the spider pit was seen in the very same jungle in “The Most Dangerous Game.”
The doors that Cooper had built into the heart of DeMille’s Roman wall were transposed two years later from the tropical heat of Skull Island in the East Indies to the Artic wastelands for duty in the second filmed version of H. Rider Haggard’s classic fantasy, “SHE.”
“Kong,” unlike many other elder film favorites seems to grow in stature with the passing years and is more cherished today than when it was first released back in the midst of the depression. At the box office “King Kong” grew more financially rewarding with every new release and must come second to “Gone With The Wind” in its number of new re-releases. It continued to come back to first-run theatres in 1938, 1942, 1947, 1952, 1956 and finally in 1970 for a limited engagement at “Art Theatres” across the country. Today’s film fans and critics have begun noticing all manner of subtle sophistications that totally escaped the more naive film-goers of the thirties.
the Merian who saved KING KONG
In 1932 the cast and crew of “King Kong” sent a Christmas card to Merian Coldwell Cooper that portrayed him, in caricature, shouting “Make it bigger. Make it big – ger.” Well, the prophecy was realized and Coop got his wish. Carl Denham, a thinly disguised replica of Cooper himself, said on the eve of their coming adventure, “I’m going out and make the greatest picture in the world, something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of. They’ll have to think up a lot of new adjectives when I come back!” Denham kept his word, and. so did Cooper. He gave the world the finest, best-loved and remembered fantasy in the history of Motion Pictures. And they did have to think up a lot of new adjectives when he came back.
Were it not for Cooper and his deeply rooted faith in “Kong” the movie might never have been made. .. or, worse, it would have been made without its gifted creator continually at the helm. Without his belief in the possibilities of animator Willis O’Brien’s Stop Motion; his insistence that Max Steiner create an original music score for the film when the “Money Men” were against the idea; his feeling for authentic, far off adventure, “Kong” would have turned out a different film indeed and, quite probably, would be long forgotten by this time.
However, Merian C. Cooper was very much behind the making of the movie and he, more than Willis O’Brien and Max Steiner, was responsible for saving” KING KONG.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Max Steiner, composer of the shuddering music of KING KONG, has died. His obituary is on MT Teletype, page 11.
H.G. WELLS is without doubt the granddaddy-longlegs of modern science fiction. He was writing SF before the field even got its name=’twas called “Scientific Romances” then, back in the late 1880’s, when shoot-em-up adventures were called “Romances” and mushy and trivial hearts-and-flowers drivel was called “Literature”. Times sure change. The following story was written 3/4 of a century ago and was forgotten until your editor chaned upon it by accident, in his subterranean library, and figured it might well fit into this issue. It makes a prophecy which is quite interesting … and horrifying …
hen Captain Gerilleau received instructions to take his new gunboat, the Benjamin Constant, to Badama on the Batemo arm of the Guaramadema and there assist the inhabitants against a plague of ants, he suspected the authorities of mockery.
He was a Creole, his conceptions of etiquette and discipline were pure-blooded Portuguese, and it was only to Hòlroyd, the Lancashire engineer who had come over with the boat, and as an exercise in the use of English – his “th” sounds were very uncertain – that he opened his heart.
“It is in effect,” he said, “to make me absurd! What can a man do against ants? Dey come, dey go.”
“They say,” said Holroyd, “that these don’t go. That chap you said was a Zambo–“
“Zambo – it is a sort of mixture of blood.” “Zambo. He said the people are going!”
The captain smoked fretfully for a time. “Dese tings ‘ave to happen,” he said at last. “What is it? Plagues of ants and suchlike as God wills. Dere was a plague in Trinidad, – the little ants that carry leaves. Orl der orange-trees, all der mangoes! What does it matter? Sometimes ant armies come into your houses – fighting ants; a different sort. You go and they clean the house. Then you come back again; – the house is clean, like new! No cockroaches, no fleas, no jiggers in the floor.”
“That Zambo chap,” said Holroyd, “says these are a different sort of ant.”
Afterwards he reopened the subject. “My dear ‘Olroyd, what am I to do about dese infernal ants?”
The captain reflected. “It is ridiculous,” he said. But in the afternoon he put on his full uniform and went ashore, and jars and boxes came back to the ship and subsequently he did. And Holroyd sat on deck in the evening coolness and smoked profoundly and marveled at Brazil. They were six days up the Amazon, some hundreds of miles from the ocean, and east and west of him there was a horizon like the sea, and to the south nothing but a sand-bank island with some tufts of scrub. The water was always running like a sluice, thick with dirt, animated with crocodiles and hovering birds, and fed by some inexhaustible source of tree trunks; and the waste of it, the headlong waste of it, filled his soul. The town of Alemquer, with its meager church, its thatched sheds for houses, its discolored ruins of ampler days, seemed a little thing lost in the wilderness of Nature, a sixpence dropped on Sahara.
He was a young man, this was his first sight of the tropics, he came straight from England, where Nature is hedged, ditched, and drained into the perfection of submission, and he had suddenly discovered the insignificance of man. For six days they had been steaming up from the sea by unfrequented channels, and man had been as rare as a rare butterfly. One saw one day a canoe, another day a distant station, the next no men at all. He began to perceive that man is indeed a rare animal, having but a precarious hold upon this land.
He perceived it more clearly as the days passed, and he made his devious way to the Batemo, in the company of this remarkable commander, who ruled over one big gun, and was forbidden to waste his ammunition. Holroyd was learning Spanish industriously, but he was still in the present tense and substantive stage of speech, and the only other person who had any words of English was a negro stoker, who had them all wrong. The second in command was a Portuguese, da Cunha, who spoke French, but it was a different sort of French from the French Holroyd had learned in Southport, and their talk was confined to politenesses and the weather. And the weather, like everything else in this amazing new world, the weather had no human aspect, and was hot by night and hot by day, and the air steam, even the wind was hot steam, smelling of vegetation in decay: and the alligators and the strange birds, the flies of many sorts and sizes, the beetles, the ants, the snakes and monkeys seemed to wonder what man was doing in an atmosphere that had no gladness in its sunshine and no coolness in its night.
To wear clothing was intolerable, but to cast it aside was to scorch by day and expose an ampler area to the mosquitoes by night; to go on deck by day was to be blinded by glare and to stay below was to suffocate. And in the daytime came certain flies, extremely clever and noxious about one’s wrist and ankle. Captain Gerilleau, who was Holroyd’s sole distraction from these physical distresses, developed into a formidable bore, telling the simple story of his heart’s affections day by day, a string of anonymous women, as if he was telling beads. Sometimes he suggested sport, and they shot at alligators, and at rare intervals they came to human aggregations in the waste of trees, and stayed for a day or so, and drank and sat about; and, one night, danced with Creole girls, who found Holroyd’s poor elements of Spanish, without either past tense or future, amply sufficient for their purposes. But these were mere luminous chinks in the long grey passage of the streaming river, up which the throbbing engines beat.
But Gerilleau learned things about the ants, more things and more, at this stopping place and that, and became interested in his mission.
a new sort of ant, he says…
“Dey are a new sort of ant,” he said. “We have got to be – what do you call it? – entomologie? Big. Five centimeters! Some bigger! It is ridiculous. We are like the monkeys – sent to pick insects … But dey are eating up the country.”
He burst out indignantly. *Suppose – suddenly, war flares in Europe? Here am I – soon we shall be above the Rio Negro – and my gun, useless!”
He nursed his knee and mused.
“Dose people who were dere at de dancing place, dey ‘ave come down. Dey ‘ave lost all they got. De ants come to deir house one afternoon. Everyone run out. You know when de ants come one must – everyone runs out and they go ove the house. If you stayed they’d eat you, See? Well, presently dey go back; dey say, “The ants ‘ave gone.’ … De ants ‘aven’t gone. Dey turn to go in – de son, ‘e goes in. De ants fight.”
“Swarm over him?”
“Bite ’em. Presently he comes out again – screaming and running. He runs past them to the river. See? He get into de water and drowns de ants – yes.” Gerilleau paused, brought his liquid eyes close to Holroyd’s face, tapped Holroyd’s knee with his knuckle. “That night he dies, just as if he was stung by a snake.”
“Poisoned – by the ants?”
“Who knows?” Gerilleau shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps they bit him badly …. When I joined dis service I joined to fight men. Dese things, dese ants, dey come and go. It is no business for men.”
After that he talked frequently of the ants to Holroyd, and whenever they chanced to drift against any speck of humanity in that waste of water and sunshine and distant trees.
He perceived the ants were becoming interesting, and the nearer he drew to “hem the more interesting they became. Gerilleau abandoned his old themes almost suddenly, and the Portuguese lieutenant became a conversational figure; he knew something about the leaf-cutting ant, and expanded his knowledge. Gerilleau sometimes rendered what he had to tell to Holroyd. He told of the little workers that swarm and fight, and the big workers that command and rule, and how these latter always crawled to the neck and how their bite drew blood. He told her they cut leaves and made fungus beds, and how their nests in Caracas are sometimes a hundred yards across. Two days the three men spent disputing whether ants have eyes. The discussion grew dangerously heated on the second afternoon, and Holroyd saved the situation by going ashore in a boat to catch ants and see. He captured various specimens and returned, and some had eyes and some hadn’t. Also, they argued, do ants bite or sting?
“Dese ants,” said Gerilleau, after collecting information at a rancho, “have big eyes. They don’t run about blind – not as most ants do. No! Dey get in corners and watch what you do.”
“And they sting?” asked Holroyd.
“Yes. Dey sting. Dere is poison in the sting.” He meditated. “I do not see what men can do against ants. Dey come and go.”
“But these don’t go.”
“They will,” said Gerilleau.
Past Tamandu there is a long low coast of eighty. miles without any population, and then one comes to the confluence of the main river and the Batemo arm like a great lake, and then the forest came nearer, came at last intimately near. The character of the channel changes, snags abound, and the Benjamin Constant moored by a cable that night, under the very shadow of dark trees. For the first time for many days came a spell of coolness, and Holroyd and Gerilleau sat late, smoking cigars and enjoying this delicious sensation. Gerilleau’s mind was full of ants and what they could do. He decided to sleep at last, and lay down on a mattress on deck, a man hopelessly perplexed; his last words, when he already seemed asleep, were to ask, with a flourish of despair: “What can one do with ants? … De whole thing is absurd.”
Holroyd was left to scratch his bitten wrists, and meditate.
It was the inhuman immensity of this land that astonished and oppressed him. He knew the skies were empty of men, the stars were specks in an incredible vastness of space; he knew the ocean was enormous and untamable, but in England he had come to think of the land as man’s. In England it is indeed man’s, the wild things live by sufferace, grow on lease, everywhere the roads, the fences, and absolute security run. In an atlas, too, the land is man’s, and all colored to show his claim to it – in vivid contrast to the universal independent blueness of the sea. He had taken it for granted that a day would come when everywhere about the earth, plough and culture, light tramways, and good roads, and ordered security, would prevail. But now, he doubted.
This forest was interminable, it had an air of being invincible, and Man seemed at best an infrequent precarious intruder. One traveled for miles amidst the still, silent struggle of giant trees, of strangulating creepers, of assertive flowers, everywhere the alligator, the turtle, and endless varieties of birds and insects seemed at hime, dwelt irreplaceably – but Man, Man at most held a footing upon resentful clearings, fought weeds, fought beasts and insects for the barest foothold, fell a prey to snake and beast, insect and fever, and was presently carried away. In many places down the river he had been manifestly driven back, this deserted creek or that preserved the name of a casa, and here and there ruinous white walls and a shattered tower enforced the lesson. The puma, the jaguar, were more the masters here….
Who were the real masters?
In a few miles of this forest there must be more ants than there are men in the whole world! This seemed to Holroyd a perfectly new idea. In a few thousand years men had emerged from barbarism to a stage of civilization that made them feel lords of the future and masters of the earth! But what was to prevent the ants evolving also? Such ants as one knew lived in little communities of a few thousand individuals, made no concerted efforts against the greater world. But they had an intelligence! Why should things stop at that any more than men had stopped at the barbaric stage? Suppose presently the ants began to store knowledge, just as men had done by means of books and records, use weapons, for great empires, sustain a planned and organized war?
Things came back to him that Gerilleau had gathered about these ants they were approaching. They ‘used a poison like the poison of snakes. They obeyed greater leaders even as the leaf-cutting ants do. They were carnivorous, and where they came they stayed….
The forest was very still. The water lapped incessantly against the side. About the lantern overheard there eddied a noiseless whirl of phantom moths.
Gerilleau stirred in the darkness and sighed. “What can one do?” he murmured, and turned over and was still again.
Holroyd was roused from meditations that were becoming sinister by the hum of a mosquito.
the monitor boat’s deathly cargo
The next morning Holroyd learned they were within forty kilometers of Badama, and his interest in the banks intensified. He came up whenever an opportunity offered to examine his surroundings. He could see no signs of human occupation whatever, save for a weedy ruin of a house and the green-stained facade of the long-deserted monastery at Moju, with a forest tree growing out of a vacant window space, and great creepers netted across its vacant portals. Several flights of strange yellow butterflies with semi-transparent wings crossed the river that morning, and many alighted on the monitor and were killed by the men. It was towards afternoon that they came upon the derelict cuberta.
She did not at first appear to be derelict; both her sails were set and hanging slack in the afternoon calm, and there was the figure of a man sitting on the fore planking beside the shipped sweeps. Another man appeared to be sleeping face downwards on the sort of longitudinal bridge these big canoes have in the waist. But it was presently apparent, from the sway of her rudder and the way she drifted into the course of the gunboat, that something was out of order with her. Gerilliau surveyed her through a field-glass, and became interested in the queer darkness of the face of the sitting man, a red-faced man he seemed, without a nose – crouching he was rather than sitting, and the longer the captain looked the less he liked to look at him, and the less able he was to take his glasses away.
But he did so at last, and went a little way to call up Holroyd. Then he went back to hail the cuberta. He hailed her agian, and so she drove past him. Sanya Rosa stood out clearly as her name.
As she came by and into the wake of the monitor, she pitched a little, and suddenly the figure of the crouching man collapsed as though all its joints had given way. His hat fell off, his head was not nice to look at, and his body flopped lax and rolled out of sight behind the bulwarks.
“Caramba!” cried Gerilleau, and resorted to Holroyd forthwith.
Holroyd was halfway up the companion. “Did you see dat?” said the captain.
“Dead!” said Holroyd. “Yes. You’d better send a boat aboard. There’s something wrong.”
“Did you – by any chance – see his face?” “What was it like?”
“It was – ugh! – I have no words.” And the captain suddenly turned his back on Holroyd and became an active and strident commander.
The gunboat came about, steamed parallel to the erratic course of the canoe, and dropped the boat with Lieutenant da Cunha and three sailors to board her. Then the curiosity of the captain made him draw up almost alongside as the lieutenant got aboard, so that the whole of the Santa Rosa, deck and hold, was visible to Holroyd.
He saw now clearly that the sole crew of the vessel was these two dead men, and though he could not see their faces, he saw by their outstretched ands, which were all of ragged flesh, that they had been subjected to some strange exceptional process of decay. For a moment his attention concentrated on those two enigmatical bundles of dirty clothes and laxly flung limbs, and then his eyes went forward to discover the open hold pile high with trunks and cases, and aft, to where the little cabin gaped inexplicably empty. Then he became aware that the planks of the middle decking were dotted with moving black specks.
His attention was riveted by these specks. They were all walking in directions radiating from the fallen men in a manner – the image came unsought to his mind – like the crowd dispersing from a bullfight.
He became aware of Gerilleau beside him. “Capo,” he said, “have you your glasses? Can you focus as closely as those planks there?”
Gerilleau made an effort, grunted, and handed him the glasses.
There followed a moment of scrutiny. “It’s ants,” said the Englishman, and handed the focussed field glass back to Gerilleau.
His impression of them was of a crowd of large black ants, very like ordinary ants except for their size, and for the fact that some of the larger of them bore a sort of clothing of grey. But at the time his inspection was too brief for particulars. The head of Lieutenant da Cunha appeared over the side of the cuberta, and a brief colloquy ensued.
“You must go aboard,” said Gerilleau.
The lieutenant objected that the boat was full of ants. “You have your boots,” said Gerilleau.
The lieutenant changed the subject. “How did these men die?” he asked.
Captain Gerilleau embarked upon speculations that Holroyd could not follow, and the two men disputed with a certain increasing vehemence. Holroyd took up the field glass and resumed his scrutiny, first of the ants and then of the dead man amidships.
battalions of ANTS with ARMOR!
He has described these ants to me very particularly.
He says they were as large as any ants he has ever seen, black and moving with a steady deliberation very different from the mechanical fussiness of the common ant. About one in twenty was much larger than its fellows, and with an exceptionally large head. These reminded him at once of the master workers who are said to rule over the leaf-cutter ants; like them they seemed to be directing and coordinating the general movements. They tilted their bodies back in a manner altogether singular as if they made some use of the forefeet. And he had a curious fancy that he was too far off to verify, that most of these ants of both kinds were wearing accouterments, had things strapped about their bodies by bright white bands like white metal threads….
He put down the glasses abruptly, realizing that the question of discipline between the captain and his subordinate had become acute.
“It is your duty,” said the captain, “to go aboard. It is my instructions.”
The lieutenant seemed on the verge of refusing. The head of one of the mulatto sailors appeared beside him.
“I believe these men were killed by the ants,” said Holroyd abruptly in English.
The captain burst into a rage. He made no answer to Holroyd. “I have commanded you to go aboard,” he screamed to his subordinate in Portuguese. “If you do not go aboard forthwith it is mutiny – rank mutiny. Mutiny and cowardice! Where is the courage that should animate us? I will have you in irons, I will have you shot like a dog,” He began a torrent of abuse and curses, he danced to and fro. He shook his fists, he behaved as if beside himself with rage, and the lieutenant, white and still, stood looking at him. The crew appeared forward, with amazed faces.
Suddenly, in a pause of this outbreak, the lieutenant came to some heroic decision, saluted, drew himself together and clambered upon the deck of the cuberta.
“Ah!” said Gerilleau, and his mouth shut like a trap. Holroyd saw the ants retreating before da Cunha’s boots. The Portuguese walked slowly to the fallen man, stooped down, hesitated, clutched his coat and turned him over. A black swarm of ants rushed out of the clothes, and da Cunha stepped back very quickly and trod two or three times on the deck.
Holroyd put up the glasses. He saw the scattered ants about the invader’s feet, and doing what he had never seen ants doing before. They had nothing of the blind movements of the common ant; they were looking at him.. as a allying crowd of men might look at some gigantic monster that had dispersed it.
“How did he die?” the captain shouted.
Holroyd understood enough Portuguese to say the body was too much eaten to tell.” “What is there forward?” asked Gerilleau.
The lieutenant walked a few paces, and began his answer in Portuguese. He stopped abruptly and beat off something from his leg. He made some peculiar steps as if he was trying to stamp on something invisible, and went quickly towards the side. Then he controlled himself, turned about walked deliberately forward to the hold, clambered up to the foredecking, from which the sweeps are worked, stood for a time over the second man, groaned audibly, and made his way back and aft to the cabin, moving very rigidly. He turned and began a conversation with his captain, cold and respectful in tone on either side, contrasting vividly with the wrath and insult of a few moments before. Holroyd gathered only fragments of its purport.
He reverted to the field glasses, and was surprised to find that ants had vanished from all the exposed surfaces of the deck. He turned towards the shadows beneath the decking, and it seemed to him they were full of watching eyes.
The cuberta, it was agreed, was derelict, but too full of ants to put men aboard to sit and sleep: it must be towed. The lieutenant went forward to take in and adjust the cable, and the men in the boat stood up to be ready to help him. Holroyd’s glasses searched the canoe.
He became more and more impressed by the fact that a great if minute and furtive activity was going on. He perceived that a number of gigantic ants – they seemed nearly a couple of inches in length – carrying oddly-shaped burthens for which he could imagine no use – were moving in rushes from one point of obscurity to another. They did not move in columns across the exposed places, but in open, spaced-out lines, oddly suggestive of the rushes of modern infantry “advancing under fire. A number were taking cover under the dead man’s clothes, and a perfect swarm was gathering along the side over which da Cunha must presently go.
He did not see them actually rush for the lieutenant as he returned, but he has no doubt they did make a concerted rush. Suddenly the lieutenant was shouting and cursing and beating at his legs. “I’m stung!” he shouted, with a face of hate and accusation towards Gerilleau.
Then he vanished over the side, dropped into his boat, and plunged at once into the water. Holroyd heard the splash.
The three men in the boat pulled him out and brought him aboard, and that night he died.
a waiting game – anxiety and fear
Holroyd and the captain came out of the cabin in which the swollen and contorted body of the lieutenant lay and stood together at the stern of the monitor, staring at the sinister vessel they trailed behind them. It was a close, dark night that had only phantom flickering of sheet lighting to illuminate it. The cuberta, a vague black triangle, rocked about in the steamer’s wake, her sails bobbing and flapping, and the black smoke from the funnels, spark-lit ever and again, streamed over her swaying masts.
Gerilleau’s mind was inclined to run on the unkind things the lieutenant had said in the heat of his last fever.
“He says I murdered ‘im,” he protested. “It is simply absurd. Someone ‘ad to go aboard. Are we to run away from these confounded ants whenever they show up?”
Holroyd said nothing. He was thinking of a disciplined rush of little black shapes across bare sunlit planking.
“It was his place to go,” harped Gerilleau. “He died in the execution of his duty. What has he to complain of? Murdered! . . . But the poor fellow was – what is it? – demented. He was not in his right mind. The poison swelled him …. Uom.”
They came to a long silence. “We will sink that canoe – burn it.” “And then?”
The inquiry irritated Gerilleau. His shoulders went up, hid hands flew out at right angles from his body. “What is one to do?” he said, his voice going up to an angry squeak.
“Anyhow,” he broke out vindictively, “every ant in dat cuberta! – I will burn dem alive!”
Holroyd was not moved to conversation. A distant ululation of howling monkeys filled the sultry night with foreboding sounds, and as the gunboat drew near the black mysterious banks this was reinforced by a depressing clamor of frogs.
“What is one to do?” the captain repeated after a vast interval, and suddenly becoming active and savage and blasphemous, decided to burn the Santa Rosa without further delay. Everyone aboard was pleased by that idea, everyone helped with zest; they pulled in the cable, cut it, and dropped the boat and fired her with tow and kerosene, and soon the cuberta was crackling and flaring merrily amidst the immensities of the tropical night. Holroyd watched the mounting yellow flare against the blackness, and the livid flashes of sheet lightning that came and went above the forest summits, throwing them into momentary silhouette, and his stoker stood behind him watching also.
The stoker was stirred to the depth of his linguistics. “Sauba go pop, pop,” he said, “Wahaw!” and laughed richly.
But Holroyd was thinking that these little creatures on the decked canoe had also eyes and brains.
The whole thing impressed him as incredibly foolish and wrong, but – what was one to do? This question came back enormously reinforced on the morrow, when at last the gunboat reached Badama.
This place, with its leaf-thatch-covered houses and sheds, its creeper-invaded sugar-mill, its little jetty of timer and canes, was very still in the morning heat, and showed never a sign 35 of living men. Whatever ants there were at that distance were too small to see.
“All the people have gone,” said Gerilleau, “but we will do one thing anyhow. We will ‘oot and vissel.”
So Holroyd hooted and whistled.
Then the captain fell into a doubting fit of the worst kind. “Der is one thing we can do,” he said presently.
“What’s that?” said Holroyd. “Oot and vissel again.” So they did.
The captain walked his deck and gesticulated to himself. He seemed to have many things on his mind. Fragments of speeches came from his lips. He appeared to be addressing some imaginary public tribunal either in Spanish or Portuguese. Holroyd’s improving ear detected something about ammunition. He came out of these preoccupations suddenly into English. “My dear ‘Olroyd!” he cried, and broke off with “But what can one do?”
the ants attack their next target
They took the boat and the field glasses, and went close in to examine the place. They made out a number of big ants, whose still postures had a certain effect of watching them, dotted about the edge of the rude embarkation jetty. Gerilleau. tried ineffectual pistol shots at these. Hotroyd thinks he distinguished curious earthworks running between the nearer houses, that may have been the work of the insect conquerors of those human habitations. The explorers pulled past the jetty, and became aware of a human skeleton wearing a loincloth, and very bright and clean and shining, lying beyond. They came to a pause regarding this….
“I ‘ave all dose lives to consider,” said Gerilleau suddenly.
Holroyd turned and stared at the captain, realizing slowly that he referred to the unappetizing mixture of races that constituted his crew.
“To send a landing party – it is impossible – impossible. They will be poisoned, they will swell, they will swell up and abuse me and die. It is totally impossible …. If we land, I must land alone, alone, in thick boots and with my life in my hand. Perhaps I should live. Or again – I might not land. I do not know! I do not know!”
Holroyd thought he did, but he said nothing.
“De whole thing,” said Gerileau suddenly, ” ‘as been got up to make me ridiculous. De whole thing!”
They paddled about and regarded the clean white skelton from various points of view, and then they returned to the gunboat. Then Gerilleau’s indecisions became terrible. Steam was got up, and in the afternoon the monitor went on up the river with an air of going to ask somebody something, and by sunset came back again and anchored. A thunderstorm gathered and broke furiously and then the night became beautifully cool and quiet and everyone slept on deck. Except Gerilleau who tossed about and muttered. In the dawn he awakened Holroyd. “Lord!” said Holroyd, “what now?” “I have decided,” said the captain. “What – to land?” said Hõlroyd, sitting up brightly.
“No!” said the captain, and was for a time very reserved. “I have decided,” he repeated, and Holroyd manifested symptoms of impatience.
“Well, – yes,” said the captain, “I shall fire de big gun!”
And he did! Heaven knows what the ants thought of it, but he did. He fired it twice with great sternness and ceremony. All the crew had wadding in their ears, and there was an effect of going into action about the whole affair, and first they hit and wrecked the old sugar mill, and then they smashed the abandoned store behind the jetty. And then Gerilleau experienced the inevitable reaction.
“It is no good,” he said to Holroyd; “no good at all. No sort of bally good. We must go back – for instructions. Dere will be de devil of a row about dis ammunition – oh! de devil of a row! You don’t know, ‘Olroyd….”
He stood regarding the world in infinite perplexity for a space. “But what else was there to do?” he cried.
In the afternoon the monitor started downstream again, and in the evening a landing party took the body of the lieutenant and buried it on the bank upon which the new ants have so far not appeared…
a grim prophecy…
I heard this story in a fragmentary state from Holroyd not three weeks ago.
These new ants have got into his brain, and he has come back to England with the idea, as he says, of “exciting people” about them “before it is too late.” He says they threaten British Guiana, which cannot be much over a trifle of a thousand miles from their present sphere of activity, and that the Colonial Office ought to get to work upon them at once. He declaims with great passion: “These are intelligent ants. Just think what that means!”
There can be no doubt they are a serious pest, and that the Brazilian Government is well advised in offering a prize of five hundred pounds for some effectual method of extirpation. It is certain too that since they first appeared in the hills beyond Badama, about three years ago, they have achieved extraordinary conquests. The whole of the south bank of the Batemo River, for nearly sixty miles, they have in their effectual occupation; they have driven men out completely, occupied plantations and settlements, and boarded and captured at least one ship! It is even said they have in some inexplicable way bridged the very considerable Capuarana arm and pushed many miles towards the Amazon itself!
There can be little doubt that they are far more reasonable and with a far better social organization than any previously-known ant species; instead of being in dispersed societies they are organized into what is in effect a single nation, but their peculiar and immediate formidableness lies not so much in this as in the intelligent use they make of poison against their large enemies. It would seem this poison of theirs is closely akin to snake poison, and it is highly probable they actually manufacture it, and that the larger individuals among them carry the needle-like crystals of it in their attacks upon men.
Of course it is extremely difficult to get any detailed information about these new competitors for the sovereignty of the globe. No eyewitnesses of their activity, except for such glimpses as Holroyd’s, have survived the encounter. The most extraordinary legends of their prowess and capacity grow daily as the steady advance of the invader stimulates men’s imaginations through their fears.
These strange little creatures are credited not only with the use of implements and a knowledge of fire and metals and with organized feats as we are to such feats as that of the Saubas of Rio de Janeiro, who in 1941 drove a tunnel under Parahyba where it is as wide as the Thames at London Bridge – but with an organized and detailed method of record and communication analogous to our books.
So far their action has been a steady progressive settlement, involving the flight or slaughter of every human being in the new areas they invade. They are increasing rapidly in numbers, and Holroyd at least is firmly convinced that they will finally dispossess man over the whole of tropical South America.
And why should they stop at tropical South America?
Well, there they are, anyhow. By 1911 or thereabouts, if they go on as they are going, they ought to strike the Capuarana Extension Railway, and force themselves upon the attention of the European capitalist.
By 1920 they will be halfway down the Amazon. I fix 1950 or ’60 at the latest for their discovery of Europe.
-Herbert George Wells, 1897
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR: DAN GREENE, who did the captivating pulp-magazine-like illos for this story, is one of comic art and Tilustration’s newest rising young talents. Last Issue we goofed and credited the illos to someone else. Sorry Dan!
The CON-CALENDAR is a special exclusive feature of THE MONSTER TIMES. Across this great land of ours are quaint and curious gatherings of quaintly curious zealots. The gatherings called “conventions,” and the zealots, called “fans,” deserve the attention of fans and non-fans alike, hence this trail-blazing reader service.
To those readers who’ve never been to one of these hair-brained affairs, we recommend it.
Detractors of such events put them down by saying that they’re just a bunch of cartoonists and science fiction writers and comic book publishers talking, and signing autographs for fans who, like maniacs, spend sums on out-of-date comics, science fiction pulps, and monster movie stills. But that’s just the reason for going. If you want a couple of glossy pictures of Dracula or King Kong, or a 1943 copy of Airboy Comics (God alone knows why) or if you wish to see classic horror and science fiction films, or meet the stars of old-time movie serials, or today’s top comic book artist and writers-or if you just want to meet other monster or comics science fiction freaks, like yourself, and learn you’re not alone in the world, OR if you want to meet the affable demented lunatics who bring out THE MONSTER TIMES, go ahead and visit one of those conventions. We dare ya!
MARCH 12, APRIL 9, MAY 14 THE SECOND SUNDAY – PHIL SEULING – 2833 W. 12 – B’KLYN, N.Y. 11224 STATLER-HILTON – 33rd ST & 7th AVE. – NEW YORK CITY $1.00 (10 A.M. to 4 P.M.) COMIC BOOK DEALERS & COLLECTORS – No Special Guests
MARCH 3-5 – FRI., SAT., SUN. CANADA CON – TOM ROBE – V.W.O. – 594 MARKHAM ST. – TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA INFO. NOT AVAILABLE – WRITE CONVENTION Infor Not Available Write Con. Comic Books, S.F. – Pulps, Nostalgia-oriented.
MARCH 25-27 FRI., SAT., SUN L.A. CON – JERRY O’HARA – 14722 LEMOLI AVE. – CARDENIA, CALIF. 92249 L.A. HILTON, LOS ANGELES. Infor Not Available Write Con. Comic convention; comic books, strips, Guest speakers, Cartoonists.
MARCH 31, APRIL 1, 2 FRI., SAT., SUN LUNA-CON – DEVRA LANGSAM – 250 CROWN ST. – BKLYN, N.Y. 11225 STATLER-HILTON – 33rd ST & 7th AVE. – NEW YORK CITY Infor Not Available Write Con. New York’s Biggest Annual Sci-Fi Convention – Big-Time Writers Galore!
When the tragic news of Max Steiner’s death reached this reporter, my initial reaction was one of deep sorrow. The feeling that I had lost an old and dear friend somehow stayed with me throughout that evening for, like all of us, I had grown up with Max Steiner.
I had heard his warm, unforgettable melodies played a thousand times and more. And now the man who created so much beauty, so much joy is gone. My head is filled with his music, and it’s a concert on a grand scale. I can hear the full, rich strains of “Gone With The Wind,” and Tara; the terrible coming of “King Kong”; the eloquent simplicity of “The Life Of Emile Zola”; the painful beauty of “Dark Victory” and “Now Voyager”; the thrilling “Charge Of The Light Brigade”; the wonderful suite from “The Big Sleep”; the exciting theme from “A Dispatch From Reuters”; and the breath-taking score of “The Most Dangerous Game.”
All these and so many more sing in my mind tonight. These are but a part of the precious legacy of a giant among artists, a man who truly could be called The Father Of Film Music.
Max Steiner has left us at last, but not alone. He has bequeathed us his music, and I assure you that no millionaire ever left as rich a legacy to his heirs.
David L. Wolper, long-time producer of documentaries has outdone himself on THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, which is still playing local theatres across the country. Although it is factual, it’s conclusions are more chilling than most science fiction and horror novels.
The conclusion? That we will someday be replaced by insects. That insects are the really superior life species, and will outlive and outlast and outeat us, someday not too far away. How did they come up with such a conclusion? Well, here are the facts which THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE portrays for us on the moth-eaten silver screen…
Fifty million years before the first bird appeared on earth, the insect had accomplished flight.
Today, as most other animal species are diminishing in population, only two-MAN and INSECT are definitely on the increase. Man, because he is the only creature able to change his environment and the insect, because he is the only creature who can adapt to any changes man can make.
Insects can pull objects a hundred times their weight, jump a distance fifty times their size, consume as much as a hundred times their weight each day. The longest jump by a man is 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches.
In the time it will take a single human embryo to develop, the coddling moth could reproduce 401,306,000,000 of his kind.
The African termite carefully cultivates an underground mushroom garden for its food supply.
A plague of locusts can be considered a single animal; its body covers 400 miles, its mouth consumes 80,000 tons of food each day.
The queen termite, solely responsible for reproducing the species, can lay up to an egg a second-86,400 eggs a day. She has a normal size head and thorax, but her abdomen is 500 to 1,000 times larger than the normal termite.
When one bee finds a rich bounty of nectar, she shares it with all. In a dance of exacting language, she informs the tribe of its precise location-the distance, the direction, even the particular variety of flower.
When an ant wants to pass on important information, such as the news that a large amount of food has been discovered, it performs a kind of dance, akin to those used by bees to tell each other about the direction and distance of a good source of nectar.
On the march in their never-ending search for prey, the driver ants form a column one mile long, twenty million strong.
If our world was destroyed and only one man and one woman were left alive, it would take over a million years to put it back together the way it is today. Ants can re-create their society in two weeks.
Science has identified more than 600,000 species of insects, yet is estimate that only two-thirds are known and one-third is yet to be discovered.
These facts are distributed in lobbies by the producers of THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE to those who see the film. We suppose they’re true, and have no reason to doubt, but gee! We sure hope they’re lying!
…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.
It was a typical winter’s day in New York City’s exotic Lower East Side when exterminator Roacho Rizzo began his daily rounds. Somewhere, beyond a gray veil of pollution, the sun was shining and the temperature stood at a pleasant, air-inverted 95 degrees, as Roacho took several giant steps throughout the litter-strewn streets to get to his first destination.
ANT MAN: He was in reality Henry Pym, a scientific chemical genius; who discovered a way to shrink down to ant-size and communicate with the insects. His female partner was the ‘Wasp.’ Together, they fought crime in Marvel Comics.
The BLACK WIDOW: She was really Miss Linda Masters. As the Black Widow, she set out to avenge the death of her husband. Her only disguise was à mask. Though she wore clothes. She first appeared in CATMAN COMICS No. 1. (In 1941, she was drawn by Allen Ulmer.)
The BLUE BEETLE: In reality, he was Dan Garrett. His uniform was blue, skin-tight, chainmail armor – with a blue mask. He used a magic blue lamp or lantern as a weapon. He first appeared in Mystery Men Comics and then got his own comic book later on. Many comics used him as a guest star, along with their regular superheroes. The artist that drew him was Charles Nicholas.
The FIREFLY: He wore a costume something like Air-Wave’s uniform. One of his special gifts was the artificial power to glow in the dark, in order to surprise criminals. Like many in the 1940’s, he fought Nazi agents.
The FLY-MAN: Was really Clip Foster, a prizefighter. His father, who was an inventor, created a serum that could shrink humans to the size of a fly. He was never able to regain his normal size. (He was in ‘Family Comics.’)
The FLY: He was no relation to ‘Fly Man’ In the beginning, he fought alone; but later on he adopted a female partner who came to be known only as Fly Girl. Together, they fought internal and international wrong-doers.
The GREEN HORNET: In reality, he’s Britt Reid; young publisher of the newspaper known as the ‘Daily Sentinel.’ He chose the name and emblem of the Green Hornet, because this type of insect is the angriest when aroused.
The HOODED WASP: The Hooded Wasp first appeared in SHADOW COMICS in the year 1942. He had a young teenage partner known as ‘The Wasplet’, who was in reality Jim Martin. They fought crime and Nazi agents.
The MOTH: He made his first appearance in MYS* TERY MEN Comics in 1940. Not much is known of him…though he probably beat up plenty of bad guys.
The RED BEE: In reality, he was Rick Raliegh; and was in Hit Comics. Another man-of-mystery, known but to God and the 3 people in the world who must have read him.
The SCARAB: He was named after the mystical, sacred Scarab; an insect considered holy in ancient Egypt. He wore the magic Scarab medallion around his neck at all times, for protection. He used mind and magic to fight crime.
The SILVER SCORPION: She was really Betty Barston, and she made her first appearance in Daring Mystery Comics in 1941 as a guest star.
The SPIDER: Like the Shadow, he was a rich playboy on the side. His black costume was like the Shadow’s except that it was lined with webs. His partner was an East Indian named Ram Singh. As a team, they fought Nazis n criminals.
SPIDER MAN: Peter Parker was bitten by a spider crawling with atomic radiation, and became Spider Man; with all of the powers of a spider. His greatest nemesis was the editor of the newspaper he worked for. (Marvel Comics.)
The SPIDER WIDOW: She began her crime-fighting career in Feature Comics No. 57. In reality, she was really Dianne Grayton; she had no particular powers. She used spiders to frighten her enemies. (As early as 1942 – drawn by Frank Borth.)
SPIDER WOMAN: She was really Helen Goddard, and she made her first appearance in Major Victory Comics No. 1 in 1944. She also fought Nazis n’ Japs.
The TARANTULA: was really John Law and first appeared in 1941, in DC’s Star Spangled Comics.
The WASP: She was the female assistant of Ant Man. With the scientific help of Henry Pym (Ant Man), she could be reduced to the size of a wasp; — wings n all. The Wasp first made her appearance in Marvel Comics in 1965.
The WASP: (Not the Marvel version), was really Burton Slade; and made his first appearance in 1939 in Silver Streak Comics. Drawn by J. Fletcher.
YELLOW-JACKET: Here was an unusually colorful comic book superhero. His costume was modeled after a giant bumble bee. It was mostly composed of black and yellow stripes, from head to toe; with an eye mask attached to it.
