THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Who Trumped?

Welcome back dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! A few weeks ago we were rummaging in the games cupboard and unearthed a fondly remembered deck of cards that was essentially a set of Marvel superhero Top Trumps. They were made by the toy company Jotastar, who held a great many licenses to produce spin-off and tie-in tat for a variety of kid-friendly franchises and properties. However this Marvel card game was not their only foray in the twilight world of exactly-like-Top-Trumps-except-in-name-only card games. For in 1978 they produced another suspiciously Trump-like card game but tied to another legendary fictional universe - Doctor Who.

Back in 1978, Doctor Who was enjoying one of its many golden ages, for this was the era of the Fourth Doctor. And not only was Tom Baker's incarnation of the Time Lord that delighting the kids with his own brand of anarchy, humour and jelly babies. He was teamed up with popular companion (and in particular very popular with the Dads watching), Leela, she of the handy dagger and tribal garb, plus at that time was just coming to the end of a run of particularly scarifying stories, which had greatly expanded the Who canon of iconic monsters and villains. 

Now the card game produced by Jotastar was assembled by using pretty much the same template as their Marvel game, with the same rules being were used with minor tweaks here and there. Aside from the rules text being rewritten to include references to the long running  SF show, there was a slight change to the stats on the cards - while we still had the attributes Special Powers and Weapons, just like the Marvel deck, instead of Physical Strength we now had Mental Ability - a fitting change as the Doctor tends to outthink his enemies rather than throw buses at them.

Just like the Marvel game, you could divide the pack into to halves and play the good guys vs the baddies. However it is here that this game goes a little weird. For over the years the Doctor has had a long line of companions and assistants, plus he has met a host of good characters who have helped him out, such as the Brigadier, assorted Time Lords, Thals, and so forth. However somewhat weirdly, in the Heroes list the only familiar faces we have are the Doctor himself (obviously) and the TARDIS.  And instead of other characters from the show's history, we have the following - 

HEROES
Alexander the Great
Annie Oakley
Boadicea
Chaka King of the Zulus
Colonel James Bowie
Davy Crockett
Doctor Who
Geronimo
Hercules
King Arthur
Lord Nelson
Parthian Warrior
Robin Hood
Samson
Sherlock Holmes
Shiao Chi Samurai Warrior
Spartacus
The TARDIS
Thor
Wyatt Earp

Yes for some reason it was decided that famous historical characters should be the good guys. The rules refer to this disparate group as "the Legendary Legion". Now firstly it is only right and proper to question why we have mythological characters (such as Thor) and fictional folks (Sherlock Holmes) rubbing shoulders with actual historical personages. But to kids back in the 1970s the more important question was "Why the hell are this lot in here? They were never in the show!". Well alright, Wyatt Earp had appeared in an First Doctor Story The Gunslingers, back when the show still did purely historical stories without any alien monsters in. But even so, that was back in 1966, well before most of the target audience would have been able to remember, or even been born. So then, here was a Doctor Who game in which nearly the half the cards had bugger all to do with Doctor Who.

On the whole, looking at the selection of characters in the deck, I rather suspect the deck was devised by someone who had never seen the show properly - which would explain the good guys being pulled from history books. And as for the Aliens selection, it looks like they just went through the seminal Target tie-in tome The Doctor Who Monster Book which was first published back in November 1975 (and you can read about it here). And hence, there are no monsters more recent that Tom Baker's first season (Davros and the Zygons). However while it was suspicious there were no newer monsters and villains, in all fairness  it is a rather good list of famous foes! 

ALIENS

Davros
Gellguards
Omega
Sea Devils
The Autons
The Axons
The Cybermen
The Daemons
The Draconians
The Giant Robot
The Ice Warriors
The Mechanoids
The Ogrons
The Sensorites
The Silurians
The Sontarans
The Spiders of Metebelis
The Wirrn
The Yeti
The Zygons

However there is an obvious anomaly - for although we do have their creator, Davros, their hired muscle, the Ogrons, and two races they fought bloody and bitter wars with, the Mechanoids and the Draconians, the Doctor's most famous enemies, the Daleks do not appear,  Possibly this was down to the fact that Terry Nation, who originally created the intergalactic terrors, still owned the copyright to the Daleks, and indeed around this time he was considering various plans featuring the pepperpots from Skaro such as having them appear in Blake's 7 and developing a separate Dalek series.

However judging from some of the attributes given on the cards, it is equally plausible that the Daleks being missing was just a blunder. For it seems clear that not only had whoever devised the set never seen Doctor Who, they were also wildly oblivious to both history and even what was on the cards. For example, Boadicea has a Weapons score of 0 despite being shown waving a dirty great sword and riding in her famous chariot with spiky wheels!

Sadly also the artwork on the cards isn't quite as good as the Marvel pack. Some cards do like rather nice, and it's fun to see familiar faces for Whoniverse rendered in a pseudo comic-book style. On teh downside though, many are clearly copied from very familiar photos (hello again Target's Doctor Who Monster Book) and some look distinctly wobbly. Also as many of photos used as reference were in black and white (spookily enough just as they all were in Target's Doctor Who Monster Book), you can see where the artist has just been guessing what was in the dark, smudgy areas. The Ogron is a great example of this, with clear guesswork filling in many areas of shadowed detail, and the whole picture looking like a ripply funfair mirror reflection. See also the background face on the Spiders from Metebelis card, whose features have been clearly surmised from a blurry photo.

On the whole then, while it seemed like a brilliant concept, sadly this Doctor Who Trump Card Game didn't deliver on its promise. Nor did it live up to its Marvel cousin - while that card game had felt authentic and official, to the extent it was like a little loose leaf encyclopedia or guidebook for the Marvel Universe, the flawed execution of the Doctor Who game clearly marked it out as cash-in tat. Much like the Doctor Who Annuals of the same era (more on which another day) or the previously discussed TARDIS TUNER, while we were happy to have them - there wasn't a lot of merch about back then remember -  at the same time you knew they weren't exactly right; they weren't proper Doctor Who like the Target Books or the Palitoy Talking Dalek. In fact in many ways they were a pale shadow of Doctor Who cards given away free with Weetabix around the time which featured not only better art but an innate understanding of the series (and again, more on those another day)

However despite all that, the set now goes for a hefty price, with many sellers flogging off individual cards for a couple of quid a go. And while my inner collecting geek naturally baulks at breaking up sets and selling off cards one by one in this manner, at the same time I can understand why you might really want, for example, the Sea Devil or Mechanoid cards but be more than happy to pass on the wobbly Ogron... 

If you want to see the set without paying an arm or a leg you can download a copy here - DISCLAIMER - I have no idea about the legality of this

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Top Marvels! Part II

Last week we learned how in the mid '70s, there were two hot crazes gripping the playgrounds of the UK - Top Trumps cards and Marvel comics. And it was perhaps inevitable that these two titans would not only meet, but be fused together by colossal cosmic forces in a Stan Lee style plot twist!  Well, that was almost the case... For back then Top Trumps were still mainly concentrating on vehicles and military hardware and it would be several years before the brand began to produce packs that were tie-ins to fictional properties such as movies, TV shows or comics. Clearly they were missing a trick here, but in the shadows, other eyes were looking to seal a canny and timely toy licensing deal. 

Those eyes, presumably glowing with the uncanny light of comic-book radiation, or at least the prospect of big money to be made, belonged to Jotastar, a toy maker who would produce a great many tie-in toys for a variety of different kid-friendly properties, from the Mister Men and Hollie Hobby to The Real Ghostbusters and M.A.S.K. Now when it comes to games, rules mechanics are very hard to copyright, mainly because so many share commons ones i.e. roll a die and move that number of spaces, or play a card on your turn etc. Now in the case of Top Trumps, things were even murkier, as that game itself had evolved from earlier card games such as Quartets. Hence you could, quite legitimately produce a game with identical rules, and provided the magic words "Top Trumps" never appeared in the instructions, packaging or marketing there was very little to stop you.

Now while cars and motorbikes undoubtedly had an appeal for kids, Jotastar couldn't help but notice that superhero comics were greatly outselling motoring magazines down the newsagents. And so, in 1977, the Marvel Superheroes Card Game was launched, and news soon spread that there was now a marvel Top Trumps. Of course, that last two words in that sentence very carefully did not appear anywhere in the rulesor marketing, but kids everywhere instantly knew who to play this game - indeed the rules included could have been written in ancient runes of Latvaria and the game would still have sold shed-loads.

The pack itself consisted of forty cards, two a card detailing the rules and another listing all the character in the deck. The pack was divided into two halves, twenty heroes, and twenty villains -  

SUPER-HEROES
Black Bolt
Captain America
Captain Britain
Daredevil
Ghost Rider
Goliath
Invisible Girl
Iron Man
Mr Fantastic
Spider-Man
The Black Panther
The Hulk
The Human Torch
The Mighty Thor
The Silver Surfer
The Sub-Mariner
The Thing
The Vision
The Wasp

VILLAINS
Absorbing Man
Dr Doom
Dr Octopus
Dr Strange
Galactus
Hammerhead
Loki
Mephisto
Morbius
Tarantula
The Abomination
The Dread Dormammu
The Green Goblin
The Gremlin
The Grizzly
The Human Top
The Jackal
The Red Skull
The Rhino
The Vulture
Tiger Shark

The rules of the game suggest dividing the pack into heroes and villains and for two players to have at it. An alternative is also suggested under the banner of GAME TWO - basically a brief couple of lines saying just shuffle the pack and divide it among the players and use the rules for GAME ONE.
However of course many kids came up with their own variant, such as pitting a small team of heroes, like for example all the Fantastic Four and seeing how they fared against an army of villains, or if they could take down their fellow heroes.

Indeed using the stats given on these cards - Physical Strength, Special Powers and Weapons - many a geek argument was settled. And fact-fans, in case you wondering how Civil War would play out in this deck, well it was no contest really - with Iron Man out-gunning Cap in all categories: Physical Strength - 8 vs 7, Special Powers - 5 vs 3, and Weapons 6 vs 5. Yep, Shell-Head wins every time! Now you may argue that these stats were just pulled from the air by some desk jockey at Jotastar, but these cards were OFFICIAL Marvel merch right? They even advertised in the pages of Marvel's flagship comics in the UK, The Mighty World of Marvel as seen below (which even cheekily included the word "Trump" just to ensure everyone knew what they were getting). And what's more you could even send off from a pack from the advert too in case your local toy emporium didn't stock it. 

And hence as they were not only advertised but sold in the pages of Marvel UK comics, this game felt like pretty definitive. Indeed even the rules sound like Stan the Man himself, complete with unnecessary capitals - "a game for challenge for two players in which those Mighty Marvel Super Heroes battle the most awesome array of Vicious Villains ever assembled!". Of course now we may question the actual selection of characters - Grizzly and the Gremlin but no X-persons - but it is a fascinating snapshot of the Marvel Universe as it was back then, an era before the likes of Wolverine, the Punisher and Venom became mega-favourites with the fans.

Back in the 1970s however, in an age before Wikipedia, and lavish coffee-table books on comics lore and history, this card game was more than just a fun pastime - it was a secret encyclopaedia of the Marvel universe. Remember that cheesy old song about how a soldier gets out of trouble for having a deck of cards by spinning an elaborate explanation of how the cards all remind him of something in the Bible? Well, that was close to how we felt about the Marvel Super Heroes Card Game, except we really sincere (unlike that soldier in the song who I suspect if he were a Top Trumps card would have stats such as BARE-FACED CHEEK 8 and BULLSHITTING SUPERIORS 9). And this was even more true I think for UK kids, who had only recently discovered this universe thanks to Marvel UK opening as few years earlier. Of course, even back then we knew there omissions - what no Nick Fury or Man-Thing? However this was a close to a guide book to the comics as you were going to get back in the mid-'70s. And hence that what it was to many of us - an encyclopedia with shufflable pages! 

Interesting around the same time, Jotastar would produce a very similar Doctor Who themed deck... But that's a story for another day...

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Top Marvels! Part I

Welcome back dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! While a new year may well be beckoning, rest assured that all of the crew here at the 'Orrible Old'Ouse have our eyes firmly looking to the past, where things may not have been better but certainly on many occasions were more amusing! Now on this blog, several years ago, we ran a lengthy series on the infamous Horror Top Trumps sets (which may well be resurrected in a new form at some point this year), however they weren't the only cultish decks available. And today we're going to have a look at another must-have pack! 

Now in case you don't know, Top Trumps is an enduringly popular species of card game, and the basics are as follows. Every deck has a theme, such as cars, tanks, animals, and each card features an particular item complete with a picture, sometimes a bit of text, but always with a list of statistics. To play the game, players pick one of these stats from the top card in their hand and compares it with the other players' card. Whoever has the highest or best stat wins that round, with the winner collecting the vanquished cards and adding them to his hand. The game ends when one player has got all the cards (or some one has a massive strop). It's a very easy game to learn, quick to play, and the game has been adapted to many themes over the years, ensuring that no matter what floats your boat, at some point there's been a Top Trumps deck to suit your interests. And yes, there have been adults only naughty decks produced over the years! 

However while the leading brand and game generally goes under the name of Top Trumps, thanks to the way the game evolved - namely being spawned by earlier card games such as Quartets and Ace Trumps (a history which is explained here) - no one company or individual own the copyright. Hence many different companies have produced Top Trumps-a-like games. In fact, even in 1977, the year Dubrec launched Top Trumps in the UK, within months rival companies had started producing their own Trumps-a-like games. And as it happens, one of the coolest decks to own back in the first flowering of Top Trumps mania, and one of the most fondly remembered, wasn't an official Top Trumps deck. 

But to set the scene, we first have to step out of the toy shop, carefully step over that hazardous pile of white dog poo, and pop in the newsagent next door. Just as in America, Britain had a flourishing comics industry entertaining the nation's kids, and just as the market in the US was dominated by two titans, Marvel and DC, weirdly enough,  it was the same state of affairs in the UK, with another DC - DC Thomson, publishers of venerable heavyweight titles such as The Dandy and The Beano, fighting it out with arch rivals IPC for dominance of the British comics market.  However in the 1972 the titanic twosome's fortunes were threatened by the sense-shattering arrival of a bold new outfit. Can you guess who that was true believers? 

Now American comic books had been finding their way to this septic isle for many decades beforehand. Famously in the war-years, US comic books were packed into the crates as padding. However thanks to the vagaries of shipping and having no proper national distribution network, while you could find copies of US comics featuring the likes of Batman and Spider-man in UK shops, it was somewhat a haphazard affair, and the mighty superheroes of Marvel and DC were better known through reprints by UK publishers such as Odhams Press or Alan Class Comics. However these reprint deals had petered out at the end of the 1960s, and hence in the early 1970s, Stan Lee decided it was high time to bring Marvel back to British shores. 

He realised that aside from the expense of shipping comic books to the UK, and lacking a proper means of distribution in Blighty, there was another tricky problem. And that was that UK comics were very different to their US cousins. Rather than been published monthly, British comics appeared weekly. They were twice the size, and rather than featuring the adventures of one character each issue, British comics were anthologies running several strips in every week. With characteristic insight, Stan realised that for Marvel to break the British market, they needed to radically rethink their comics. Like the Skrulls they would have to shapeshift to infiltrate the UK comics scene. And so, Marvel UK was born, an outfit based in that London, but taking orders from the Big Apple, with a remit to publish classic tales from the House of Ideas, but in a format that blended in with the home-grown British titles. Hence in early 1972, a new weekly comic appeared in newsagents up and down the land, The Mighty World of Marvel, which served up adventures featuring The Hulk, Spider-man and The Fantastic Four. 

It was soon joined by Spider-man Comics Weekly later in 1972, with more titles being added to the roster over the next few years. Pete Parker got a second title all to himself, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Superheroes featured tales of the X-Men and the Silver Surfer while The Titans brough British kids the adventures of Captain America, the Sub-mariner, Captain Marvel and the Inhumans. Outside the land of the spandex brigade, Marvel UK also thrilled kids with a Planet of the Apes tie-in comic and more exciting still, delivered spooky action with Dracula Lives that featured a selection from theer horror lines. In 1975 a young chap called Neil Tennant was put in charge - yes, the same Neil Tennant who is now half of the Pet Shop Boys - and his two year reign saw Marvel UK begin to produce their own UK-grown material for the Marvel Universe with the debut of Captain Britain in 1976. 

So then by 1977, the year Top Trumps was released, nay, unleashed upon the nation's kiddiewinks, Marvel UK had a thriving stable of titles and were giving IPC and DC Thomson a run for their money. Plus they had given Britain its very own Marvel superhero to boot! Marvel was no more an exotic import, but was now well and truly part of British pop culture. Now the initial decks in the Top Trumps range were very much vehicle obsessed, with packs themed around cars, motorbikes, tanks and planes. However some bright spark in a rival company noted how these card games were selling like hot cakes and had the smart idea of producing a game that might appeal to something other than the petrolhead market... 

NEXT TIME! Discover how kids in the '70s could play their own version of Civil War decades before Marvel had come up with that epic storyline! 

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #26 - Dracula Pack XI

Welcome once again to that benighted realm of old horror tat that is the Tomb of the Trumps! No, don't touch that! You look with your eyes not with your hands! ...Anyhow, now that you're all behaving yourselves, let's unveils this week's lurid exhibits! First up, we have this goggle-eyed twonk! 

Now quite why this being was called Maggot we know not. For he is not some species of fly larvae, and is also clearly of a far too strapping build to warrant a name that implies being small and 'orrible. Although 'orrible and slimy 'e certainly is - enough to make me drop me aitches all over the shop! But enough quibbling over nomenclature, for considering some of the title/image combos served up by these deck, Maggot is definitely at the sensible end of things. So then where does this fellow originally hail from?

Well, as fans of tatty of TV SF may well have guessed, this beastie is actually one of the many silly aliens that menaced the Robinson family in the classic show Lost in Space! And here he is getting up close and personal with the nefarious Dr Smith! 

Yes, this was Keema who appeared in the episode The Golden Man in Season 2 of the cult series, and originally appeared in a somewhat less drippy from as, you guessed it, a golden man. Airing on December 28th 1966, this episode had the Robinsons encountering Keema who claimed to fighting against an evil frog - no, seriously! However in classic/cliche style (delete as applicable) it turned out that the nice and bling looking Keema was really the nasty one and the frog was nice. In traditional fashion, in the end the shifty sod was unmasked as being even more disgusting looking - yes, Keema didn't really look like a space glam rocker, but more like a meatball that had lost a fight with a pizza... 

Yes, this is one of those very rare instances where the Horror Top Trumps card actually is an improvement on the original! Anyhow, we are sticking with the outer space theme for our next exhibit! 

Now this knobbly horror will surely be easily identified by lovers of classic old SF flicks. And neatly enough, once again this is the revealed true form of a nefarious alien up to no good - the titular creature from 1958's I Married A Monster From Outer Space! 

Now if you don't know, this movie tells the tale of Marge Farrell (Gloria Talbot, no relation to Larry) who has just got hitched to Bill  (Tom Tryon). However very soon Marge suspected that he isn't quite the man she married. Is Bill ill? Unfortunately for Marge, Bill has been taken over by a monster from space, part of a covert invasion from a race facing extinction thanks to their own females dying out! Things look grim for humanity as these aliens just happen to be immune to bullets, but luckily for us, they prove to be powerless against dogs. And hence after their advance party has been torn to shreds by a pair of German Shepherds, the invasion is called off, and Marge is reunited with the real Bill who was stashed in their spaceship. 

And things turned out pretty well for Bill in real life too, with Tom Tryon making a successful leap from acting to writing, and penning a string of novels. And these days Tryon is probably bettered remembered as a novelist, having written several books such as The Other and Harvest Home that are now regarded as modern classics of weird fiction. 

Next week, we are once again in classic horror territory, with a pair of mis-titled cards featuring images from cult fright flicks! 

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #25 - Dracula Pack X

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...

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #24 - Dracula Pack IX

Welcome dear fiends to the strange and lurid world of Tomb of the Trumps! Once again we are hunting through cinematic tombs and exploring pop culture necropoli to discover the source of the frequently demented images that comprise the infamous original Horror Top Trumps! And we kick off this excursion into the weird depths with an encounter with a fellow who is something of a repeat offender in these explorations...

Now then, in a bizarre twist of fate, this card very nearly has a title that matches the image! I know, shocking isn't it! Anyhow, this ghoulish dandy presented above is a representation of The Red Death from Edgar Allen Poe's classic terror tale. To be more precise, this is actually our old friend Lon Chaney Snr. yet again, and what's more this Red Death, like The Hangman from a few weeks ago, is also taken from his classic silent version of The Phantom of the Opera too. For in that seminal silent movie, the hideous Erik attends a masque ball at the opera and comes dressed as Poe's personification of death, decay and disease... 

Once again Chaney, who the press of the day rightly dubbed the man of a thousand faces, created his own startling make-up for this scene. And a similarly startling make-up is the origin of the image that inspired our next card too! 

Now then folks, this one very nearly eluded me entirely! For the look of the Mad Axeman you could easily be forgiven for thinking that perhaps this was taken from some old demented comic featuring Frankenstein's monster! Indeed that top 'eavy 'ead and scrunched-up fizzog put me in mind of the long running version of Frankenstein's Monster created by writer and artist Dick Briefer that appeared in Prize comics in the 1940s! 

Alternatively you might be thinking that this card may possibly be the result of our Unknown Artist squashing up a still from a Universal Frankenstein flick - after all,  the Mad Axeman's garb does looks a little bit like the snazzy fleecy jerkin sported by the Monster in Son of Frankenstein (1939).  However, as it turns out, this card is nothing to do with Frankenstein in any incarnation at all! 

Purely by chance I was revisiting an old Robert Fuest flick. Now Fuest was of course responsible for the two classic Dr Phibes movies, and in the last year I'd also revisited two of his other cinematic outings And Soon the Darkness (1970) and The Final Programme (1973) for my podcast (see here and here respectively). Hence I thought I might as well revisit  another of his movies from that era, 1975's The Devil's Rain, a Satanic biker flick that features not only a young John Travolta and William Shatner, but Ernest Borgnine as the Devil! Now if that cast isn't notable enough, the movie features a climax where Mr Borgnine is transformed into a hell-goat and the whole gang of Satan worshippers are melted by supernatural acid rain! 

And it was in that memorably finale where all and sundry liquefy in a quite glorious splatastic fashion, I suddenly leapt up shouting "Mad Axeman!" For behold! Lose the horns and here he is! 

And there we have it - Ernest Borgnine as a melting goat-man! You'll never see Airwolf in the same light ever again now!

Next time we meet another two gentlemen who come bearing the epithet 'mad', but there'll be no liquefying goats I promise!

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #23 - Dracula Pack VIII

Ah the dear old Incredible Melting Man! Back when these cards first hit the stores, this chap needed no introduction as he was something of a playground legend. Thanks to ill-timed TV spots, inappropriately scheduled trailers, and of course assorted reports from older siblings 1977's The Incredible Melting Man was one of those titles that a lot of kids desperately wanted to see,  but thanks to the UK's film classification rules were highly unlikely to. Daft really, as the tale of an astronaut who turns into a huge puddle of goo had kid's entertainment written all over it! After all, this was the era when cans of Slime were all the rage! 

Alright, there was all that business with eating folks to slow down his melting but we could have handled that! We didn't buy that "first new horror creature" lark - we'd all figured out that this was just a splattery version of The Incredible Shrinking Man! And provided there wasn't a freaking terrifying giant spider in it, most of us reckoned we could handle seeing ol' Melty gnawing on a limb or too... Of course that was never going to happen, as it was this movie wouldn't be still in theatres when we'd all grown up enough to be let in, and obviously, this was a movie that would never get shown on the telly... 

But.... a few year later, the dawn of the home video era, or perhaps more accurately, the dawn of the little shops whose owners would happily hire out all manner of dubious material to little kids era, meant that we finally got our wish!  And you know what - the movie's rubbish! Brilliant effects from a young Rick Baker mind you, but other than that utter tosh! Ah well... Some things are best left in the imagination, and old Pizza-face is one of 'em! 

So then, moving on to our next card, it looks like we are in one of the better neighbourhoods in Monster Movie Land! Or at least, so it first appears... 

Ah King Kong! A true classic! Up there with Dracula and Frankenstein in the ranks of the monsters everybody on the damn planet knows! However - and prepare for a shock here - this ISN'T King Kong. Nope, it's not the Beast from Skull Island in any of his assorted screen incarnations! And yes, that does included the somewhat mangy looking suitamation versions from the likes of Toho. However this is a close relative of Kong, albeit linked to the cinema's most famous movie primate via a little bit of legal DNA.

Basically the story goes like this... Back in the 1950s, exploitation kings AIP had had great success in taking old movie monsters and giving them a modern spin - hence Universal's Wolf Man spawned I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), Victor Frankenstein gained a modern day descendant in I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (also 1957), and the Count inspired the teens menaced by vampires flick Blood of Dracula (yes, 1957 again). 

Now then the genius behind  I Was a Teenage Werewolf was a chap maned Nat Cohen, who thought the time was right for a giant gorilla thriller along the lines of King Kong but now in glorious colour! And given the success of AIP's teen monster trilogy, he was soon given a big bag of cash to go and make that happen. And hence he threw a large wedge at RKO - $25, 000 in fact - for the rights to the Kong name, and work began on a movie with the working title "I Was a Teenage Gorilla". I kid you not! However rather than the teen Americana that informed the previous monster movies, this project soon took a different direction. It skipped over the pond to merry England and Konga (1961) was born!    

Now in this movie, instead of the usual go off to some remote jungle place and capture one helluva monkey plot which served various versions and sequels for King Kong and Mighty Joe Young so well, Konga has well meaning but mad boffin Dr. Charles Dexter (played by genre legend Michael Gough) experimenting with a growth formula. He makes all kinds of giant plant and animals before testing it on a young chimp... Now swiftly stepping passed awkward questions such as how does a growth formula manage to turn one species of ape (i.e. a chimpanzee) into another different one (i.e. a gorilla), Konga surprisingly doesn't have the monster-sized monkey escape and run amok as usual. Instead our prodigious primate is hypnotized by the wicked Dr. Dexter to go and wreak revenge on his rivals and enemies!

Is it a good film? Well, not really... But a prime slice of monkey business? Certainly is! While the movie isn't as fun as the Godzilla-knock-off Gorgo who menaced 1960s Blighty, Konga is certainly more entertaining than The Giant Behemoth, a radioactive saurian that stomped London in the same era. But like Gorgo, Konga got his own comic series from Charlton, which you can read for free here!

Next week - the return of a familiar face and some unpleasantness involving a goat and Ernest Borgnine!

TOMB OF THE TRUMPS #22 - Dracula Pack VII

Welcome dear fiends once more to that subterranean home of terrible old horror tat - the Tomb of the Trumps! Now then after the somewhat obscure goings-on of last episode, this week we are back in classic territory - on terror firma as it were! Heh! Heh! Heh!

Now then, do I really have to explain who The Hangman is? Well, on the off chance you don't know, this green faced sadist is actually the great Lon Chaney in the classic 1925 silent version of The Phantom of the Opera! Behold! 

Now for me, and indeed for many movie buffs, the Chaney version of Phantom of the Opera is still easily the best screen adaptation of the classic novel by Gaston Leroux. Not only is it the most faithful, but still, nearly a century later, no one has bettered Chaney's own self-created make-up for the disfigured Erik. 

However as much as I'd like to sit and gush about the 1925 Phantom - seriously folks, if you've not seen it, do seek it out - we have other business with this card! For as is traditional with these old Horror Top Trumps, there's more than one source being used here in this Hangman tableaux. For yes, his victim is lifted from a still from an old horror flick too. And it's from another classic too! Yes, the Hangman's victim is poor old Dr. Marcus (played by John Carson) in that cult collaboration between Hammer and Brian Clemens Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (1974)!  

Although, that being said, at first I did heavily suspect the Hangman's victim was none other than Christopher Matthews in anopther Hammer flick of the same vintage, Scars of Dracula! However I think that's just down to our Unknown Artist squashing the head a bit and colouring the hair blonde!

 However we're still on a classic tip with our next card too... Hang onto your hats... and your noggins too, for it's Headhunter! 

Now then despite the fearsome appearance of this card, Headhunter doesn't hail from some forgotten green hell horror flick full of savages and tropical blood rites! Rather like his deck mate Cannibal, this fearful brute is actually based on a pic from a non-horror movie. Yes, Headhunter is actually the genie - played by Rex Ingram - from the classic fantasy flick The Thief of Baghdad, made in 1940 by cinema legends Alexander Korda and Michael Powell.   

However once again, our work here is not yet done. For does not that out-of-scale little white noggin ring a distant bell or two? Well, it certainly always looked vaguely familiar to me too. And at first from the somewhat different style of inking used, I suspected that this little white bonce was perhaps a lift from a horror comic. But then, a penny suddenly dropped - the heavy crude lines weren't due to it being a steal from a comic-book, but because it was taken from a blurry old still. And noting the wonky ears, the one quizzically raised eyebrow, and the beaky snooze, there was only one place this could have come from - Nosferatu (1922)!

Yes, I heavily suspect that Headhunter's trophy is actually based on this still from the classic silent horror masterpiece. And I'm guessing from the heavy lines used by our Unknown Artist, he was working from a poorly printed and/or much magnified picture of the face of Graf Orlock as seen in this famous shot. Hence it's something of a loose likeness I grant you, but there are clear similarities, and too many to be a mere coincidence methinks.

Of course, as usual if you have any better idea, do let me know! Next week we discover an unlikely pairing of a killer monkey and a puddle of goo!