Blood on Black Satin episode one

'Blood on Black Satin' episode one
by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy
Episode One (from Eerie #109, February 1980)

One of the most impressive strips ever to appear in a Warren magazine was the three-part 'Blood on Black Satin', written by Doug Moench, and gifted with outstanding artwork by Paul Gulacy. 

The inaugural installment appeared in Eerie 109 (February 1980) and parts two and three in issues 110 (April 1980) and 111 (June 1980).

Posted below is the first episode; the succeeding episodes will be posted in the future here at the PorPor Books blog.

These scans are taken from the original comic and done at 300 dpi, using the graytone setting on my Plustek book scanner. I then used Corel Photo-Paint to autoadjust the images for fading and sharpness, although this creates jpeg files each 18 - 22 MB in size - hopefully the web page won't crash when loading. 

For reasons that are unclear, some of the pages present with a sepia tint, despite being auto-adjusted; I suspect this is an issue with Blogger, as when I examine the images in Photo-Paint, they display no tinting.

I expect they will be as good as one can get, at least until Dark Horse / The New Comic Company produce all three episodes in an upcoming Eerie Presents hardbound volume....

The Vampire Cinema

'The Vampire Cinema' by David Pirie

Quarto Books, 1977

Back in the 1970s, before there was an internet, or an amazon.com, one primary way to acquire PorPor books was via the companies that specialized in selling remainders through mass-mailed catalogs. 

One of the larger such companies was Publishers Central Bureau, or PCB. Their distinctive two-tone catalogs regularly would arrive at my house as part of the junk mail.

'The Vampire Cinema', published in 1977 by Quarto Books, was a perennial entrant in the PCB catalog, and in late 1978 I ordered it.

'The Vampire Cinema' is actually a pretty good overview of vampire movies up till the early 70s. It's well illustrated with copious, often full-page, color,  black and white, and tinted stills.

Pirie's chapters start off with a look at vampires in popular fiction and mythology; move on to the early vampire films, such as Nosferatu; the Universal films featuring Bella Lugosi; and then the Hammer vampire films, staring Christopher Lee as Count Dracula.

The chronology then moves to the Eurotrash, low-budget 'sex' vampire films of such directors as Jean Rollin and Roger Vadim. Blurring the lines between softcore porn and art house horror, this sub-genre also was exploited by Hammer, with early 70s movies such as The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil, Countess Dracula, and Lust for a Vampire.

The book's final chapters touch on the mixed success Hammer experienced with taking its Dracula series to the 20th century, as well as an overview of the 'New American' vampire films of the 70s, such as Blacula and Count Yorga. 

Pirie makes the argument that the American low-budget horror cinema made a crucial transition in subject matter, taking the European image of the vampire as a seductive aristocrat, and converting it into a zombie or ghoul with a more grim and unglamorous aesthetic.

'The Vampire Cinema' closes with a brief overview of The Latin Vampire, as epitomized by Spanish and Italian productions of the 60s and 70s.

I suspect that anyone under 30, exposed to the tsunami of vampire content dominating today's popular culture, is going to find the content of 'The Vampire Cinema' to be quirky and quaint. 

The book's most appreciative audience will probably be found among those who subscribe to Shock Cinema and search the cult cinema websites for the DVDs available for some, but not all, of the films covered in 'The Vampire Cinema'. In other words, those who grew up in the 60s and 70s and still have a nostalgic fondness for the Old School approach to horror movies. 

This book is for you....and copies can be found at the usual online sources for under $10.

Book Review: The Black Horde

Book Review: 'The Black Horde' by Richard Lewis

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Black Horde’ (166 pp., Signet, October 1980) first was published in the UK in 1979 under the title ‘Devil’s Coach Horse’. 

The ‘Devil’s Coach Horse’ actually exists; it's a species of Rove Beetle commonly found in backyards in the UK. A predator on other invertebrates, it has strong jaws capable of giving people a good nip:

courtesy of Robert Wright's Twitter account, https://twitter.com/entorob/status/303823427914051584

Richard (E.) Lewis has written a large number of novels for the adult and young adult markets. ‘The Black Horde’, along with his other novel ‘The Spiders’ (1987), doesn’t pretend to be anything other than the literary equivalent of the low-budget, ‘monster of the week’ movies that appear on the SyFy Channel.

The plot is simple and direct: while working overseas, John Masters, a British entomologist, discovers a new species of rove beetle, one resembling the Devil’s Coach Horse. While transporting live specimens back to the UK, his plane crashes in the Alps, and Masters is fatally injured. With the coming of Spring and the melting of the snow, his corpse is recovered from the mountain top and shipped home. 

It turns out that the enterprising beetles have used Masters' body as an impromptu shelter, and they emerge from the corpse at a British mortuary........ and escape into the wild. This is a disaster in the making.

For these are not ordinary rove beetles, preying on small insects; instead, these rove beetles prefer the taste of human flesh. With their sharp mandibles, they can chew their way into exposed skin in a matter of seconds. Once embedded in the internal organs of their victim, the beetles lay eggs, which rapidly hatch into flesh-eating larvae, which in turn mature into pupae, and then adult beetles, completing the cycle.

Young entomologist Paul Adams, a colleague of the departed Masters, finds himself called in as a subject matter expert when the police receive disturbing reports of people being eaten alive by beetles. As Adams and the authorities soon learn, these isolated incidents are the forerunners of much greater horror to come, as the beetle population expands and swarms of hungry insects trespass on the English countryside in a frenzied search for warm, sustaining flesh….

‘The Black Horde’ shows considerable influence from the horror novelist James Herbert, adopting the clipped, declarative prose style favored by that author and the regular inclusion of passages of gore and grue. 

As with many of Herbert’s novels, ‘The Black Horde’ alternates its main narrative with vignettes in which people – most often couples having sex – find themselves at risk of a bloody, painful, terrifying death at the mandibles of the ravenous beetles. 

I can’t recommend ‘The Black Horde’ as a masterful example of the horror genre, but if you are looking for a brief ‘pulp’ read, something on the order of a James Herbert out-take, it fits the bill.

Heavy Metal October 1983

'Heavy Metal' magazine October 1983

 

October, 1983, and in heavy rotation on FM radio and MTV is 'In A Big Country' by the Scottish New Wave band, Big Country.

The October 1983 issue of Heavy Metal magazine features a front cover by Luis Royo, and a back cover (a portrait of Ranxerox) by Liberatore.

The Dossier section opens with an interview with a documentary film-maker about his recent work, a film about Bob Dylan. By 1983 Dylan had lapsed into well-deserved obscurity, and this film did little to resurrect his career, which would be effectively killed once and for all by a disastrous performance at the close of the Live Aid concert in 1985.

The Dossier moves on to a brief overview of Harlan Ellison's literary career; an advertisement for the biography Loving John [Lennon] by former girlfriend May Pang; and a cultural analysis of the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon (?)........ it must've been a slow month for Dossier content.

 

John Glen, director of the just-released Bond film Octopussy, gets an interview,as does the director Walter Hill.

For the comics content, the October issue offers up new installments of 'Tex Arcana', 'The Odyssey' by Navarro and Sauri, 'The Third Song', by Jodorowsky and Arno, and 'Ranxerox', by Tamburini and Liberatore.

Perhaps the best strip in the issue is another of the 'red convertible' tales by Didier Eberoni, this one titled 'Nimble Fingers', with a plot by Rodolphe. 

Its existential theme is well-served by the great artwork of Eberoni, whose meticulous rendering of the grassy fields, the tree branches and twigs, and the contours of the rocks.

Book Review: Inseminoid

Book Review: 'Inseminoid' by Larry Miller

1 / 5 Stars

In the aftermath of the success of the 20^th Century Fox film ‘Alien’ in the Summer of 1979, schlock producers released a stream of low-budget imitations: ‘Alien Contamination’ (1980) ; ‘Inseminoid’ (aka ‘Horror Planet’) (1981);  ‘Parasite’ (1982); and ‘Xtro’ (1982).

This novelization of 'Inseminoid' (158 pp) was released in April, 1981 by UK publisher New English Library.

Team Nova is an archeology expedition housed in an installation on a remote planet. In the course of excavating some ancient ruins, the team discovers a burial crypt containing a deceased alien creature, preserved in a sealed, coffin-like chamber.

When the alien is returned to the laboratory, it gradually comes back to life, to the astonishment of the crew. However, their carelessness about securing the alien proves their undoing, as the creature succeeds in escaping, and rapes crewmember Sandy.

The hapless Sandy rapidly devolves into a pregnant, homicidal quasi-alien, endangering the lives of the rest of the crew. Can the surviving members of Team Nova kill Sandy…or will she succeed in giving birth to the alien offspring ?

I never saw more than brief snatches of trailers of ‘Inseminoid’ when it was released back in the early 80s. Needless to say, the segments I did see confirmed the film’s low-budget, schlocky underpinnings. The film did have a strong cast of veteran British actors, including Stephanie Beacham (‘Dynasty’, ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’), Victoria Tennant (‘Flowers in the Attic’), and Judy Geeson (‘Star Trek Voyager’).

The novelization differs from the film in terms of selected scenes and events (i.e., the fate of Sandy). But not unsurprisingly, the novelization really fails to improve on the original script, in terms of making a dud narrative into something worthwhile. Some of the goofy contrivances that take place in ‘Inseminoid’ exist for no other reason than to provide the film with an opportunity to display disemboweled corpses, a la Alien.

What little suspense that exists in the narrative comes about mainly because the crewmembers of Team Nova are abysmally stupid and clumsy. In the end, I wound up rooting for the monster, if only because so many of the horny, dim-witted crew-members deserved to die.

In summary, even the most dedicated fans of Bad Films may want to pass on the novel or DVD of 'Inseminoid'.