Welcome! Come in! Sit down! No, not there... that might leave a stain... Yes, there will be fine! So then, welcome once again gentle reader to the Tomb of the Trumps, a weekly exploration into old horror tat that I genuinely think may well be eroding my sanity... But I'll be in good company then this week with these two demented gentlemen!
Now then, once upon a time there was a horror flick entitled "The Mad Magician" - it was made in 1954 and starred the great Vincent Price. This early 3D shocker saw Price as a master of stage magic using his skills to take revenge on a host of enemies and rivals. However this card has precisely bugger all to do with that particular movie! Instead, what we have here is the return of a familiar face...
Yes folks, it's the great Lon Chaney Snr. again! This is his fourth appearance over all, and his third appearance in this set - seriously, I'm beginning to think I should rename this deck the Chaney Pack! However this time it's not another incarnation of Erik from Phantom of the Opera (1925) - here we have the Man of a Thousand Faces in another of his terrifying own make-up jobs, as a vampire in London After Midnight (1927). Sadly this horror-themed mystery movie directed by Tod Browning, who would go on to direct classics such as Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932), is now sadly lost, although hopes persist a copy may turn up somewhere. Tod Browning himself would later remake the movie in 1935 as Mark of the Vampire starring Bela Lugosi as the titular fiend. And in 2002 Turner Movies reconstructed a version using the extensive set of stills taken during the production and it has been released as part of Lon Chaney DVD collection.
Anyhow, time to move on to our next card... Now don't confuse this chap with last week's Mad Axeman...
Mercifully, there are no melting Satanic goats involved this time, and this chap is considerably easier to identify. Now while "Madman" isn't a bad title for the card, "Mutant Man" would be nearer the mark. For this is exactly what he is - a unfortunate fellow mutated and driven homicidal by slow poisoning from dodgily dumped chemicals.
He appears in the 1972 Brit SF horror flick Doomwatch, produced by cult studio Tigon and directed by Hammer regular Peter Sadsy. Now the movie itself was a big screen spin-off from a popular BBC series of the same title. Devised by Dr. Kit Pedlar and Gerry Davis- the creators of Doctor Who's Cybermen - Doomwatch followed the investigations of a group of boffins faced with assorted ecological and technological threats to humanity. It's probably best remembered these days for the episode Tomorrow the Rat which saw a young Robert Powell being menaced by man-eating rodents. However the movie, while it did feature appearances from the regular cast of the TV show, cast two familiar faces to lovers of cult movies/TV as a pair of new characters to star in the big screen adventure. Hence we have Ian Bannen and Judy Geeson dispatched to a remote isle where something nasty in the water is making monsters of the locals, proving yet again, that like The Wicker Man and Nothing But The Night, remote Scottish islands were to be avoided at all costs in the early '70s.
Next time, we encounter two horrors whose origins lie beyond the stars.... Well in tatty old SF movies at any rate...
5 comments:
Despite their poor stats, I'm quite fond of both of these guys. And they're pretty good efforts from the Unknown Artist/s. Speaking of which:
REWARD: A Zetan Warlord T- Shirt, grey, size L, contains typo, to anyone who can identify said artist/s conclusively.
I also spend an unhealthy amount of time pondering the identity of the Unknown Artist. One wonders if he or she is still alive, and if they are would they even remember doing them? They could have well been drawn by some staff artist or student with no interest in the macabre and quietly omitted from their CV.
I like picking up 70s era horror film reference books and having a browse through, hoping to find all the pictures that "inspired" the artist in one obscure, forgotten tome. If I ever find it, hopefully fully annotated by said artist, drawings crudely daubed over with prototypic pen etchings and the owners name on the inside of the dust cover, I'll be sure to let you no c/o this forum.
ST.CLAIRE
Had these cards depicted Star Wars characters "Cantina Creatures" .... etc, they would have boomed big time and the artist would have probably became a minor celebrity charging for 20 quid for an autograph and considerably more for a piece of artwork. Alas, it was to be Horror and possibly Western Gunfighters and cult-mystery-star status for a number of 30/40 something genre enthusiasts.
Someone suggested in the comments previously that they believed that there may have been more than one artist responsible. It would be interesting to get that checked out by a scribing expert. Is there any forensics boffin that follows this blog and doesn't mind spending their free time proving or disproving some hearsay or other about a 35 year old deck of gaudy scare cards able to help out?
out here?
ST.CLAIRE
There can be no doubt that these cards were produced by one consistent hand. The level of detail of each illustration varies as a result of external factors such as concentration and speculatively time, but the actual style of each does not. Consistent tropes that are repeatedly utilised to disguise or otherwise alter the original drawings are consistent throughout both packs.
I would add that the cards sporting the most basic illustrations I.e The Slime Creature, Devil Priest, The Gorgon, Martian Warrior and Granite Man are the most original of the works. Read into that what you may
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