BY HANK REINEKE
To identify editor-publisher Richard Klemensen’s Little Shoppe of Horrors as simply a
fanzine is to do it a grave disservice. Such an appellation too often denotes an enthusiastic but decidedly
amateur magazine.
If you’re a dyed-in-wool-fan of fantastic cinema and were
knocking about in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you’ve probably gambled and subscribed
- at least once – to such a fanzine as described above. One mimeographed or perhaps having suffered the
ill-effect of poor off-set printing, lousy photo-reproduction, and variable
levels of scholarship. The earliest
issues of Little Shoppe of Horrors
(henceforth to be referred to as LSoH)
may have exhibited some of these mechanical deficiencies on inception, but over
its forty-three year history the content within its pages has never been short
of brilliant. LSoH is simply without
peer and has no comparable challenger in its field of endeavor; it’s indisputably
the most venerated encyclopedia of all things Hammer and British horror.
You’ve never heard of the magazine, you say? Well, if you’ve ever bought a useful book within
the last forty years that documented the history of British horror films - or one
of the better researched biographies of such key players as Christopher Lee or
Peter Cushing - you’re tangentially in debt to LSoH. Since its founding in June 1972, the resources of the
magazine have been plundered by the genre’s finest scholars. I suppose this is only fair. Many, if not all, of the most respected writers
painstakingly researching the tradition have earned their earliest bylines contributing
to the magazine. There’s hardly a figure
associated with British horror cinema, either in front or behind the camera,
whose stories, large and small, have not been annotated and shared within this
great magazine’s pages.
The fact that LSoH has
been based since its beginning in Des Moines, Iowa, half-a-continent and one
ocean away from the Hammer production offices in London, England, is simply mind-boggling. Not a world way, perhaps, but close,
especially in the pre-internet age. What’s
equally amazing is that, with the exception of the first six issues
(1972-1980), the succeeding twenty-nine have been published in the fallow years
following the studio’s sad descent into bankruptcy and irrelevancy in 1979. So the magazine has faithfully served these
past thirty-six years as the primary torch-bearer and celebrant of the studio’s
glorious legacy.
From the glossy and colorful artistically rendered front
and back covers to the impeccable research of their stable of writers – and in
spite of an indisputably erratic publishing schedule – LSoH has remained the nexus for all things British horror. The latest, issue no. 35, published October
2015, proves the passing of time has not even remotely dimmed the magazine’s
reputation for superlative reportage.
This spanking brand new issue features a gorgeous and
colorful fold-out cover, courtesy of artist Jim Salvati and equally impressive back cover art by Bruce Timm. Hammer stalwart Peter Cushing and lead
actress Susan Denberg are evocatively rendered in an atypical mad-scientist laboratory
scene from Hammer’s classic Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). Some twenty-eight of
the magazine’s ninety-eight pages are, not coincidentally, dedicated to an exhaustive
examination of all aspects of the film’s
production; synopsis’s, interviews, set-design sketches, a bevy of rare
photographs, clippings etc. A further
twenty-three pages examines Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) in equally acute detail. There’s also a look-back at the early fan-journal
Fantastic Worlds, part of the
magazines series “A History of Horror Film Fanzines.†As always, there’s a
plethora of book and DVD/Blu-Ray reviews, as well as a provocative interview
with actor Barry Warren (Kiss of the
Vampire (1963), Devil Ship Pirates
(1964) and Frankenstein Created Woman
(1967). The former article is the
seventh installment of the magazine’s “British Character Actors†series. There’s also the always erudite and
worthwhile letters to the editor column.
In June of 2015 we lost the great Sir Christopher Lee
and, in memoriam, the editor has exhumed an interview, courtesy of his friend
the late Bill Kelly, of the legendaryt actor. In this “open conversation†from the early 1990s, Lee reminisces about
his career and his many roles, including his iconic turn as Count Dracula in seven
Hammer productions and several more instances in continental knock-offs. In yet another segment, the author Tom
Johnson (Hammer Films: An Exhaustive
Filmography) offers an affectionate memoriam to Lee and shares both amusing
and poignant glimpses of the times their paths crossed. There are several moments when both Lee’s and Johnson’s
observations and ruminations are as laugh-out-loud funny as they are revealing.
Let’s face it. You
need this. With their in-depth coverage
of every aspect of the best – and lesser efforts – of British horror cinema, Little Shoppe of Horrors has… well, left
no headstone unturned.
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