Note: We rely on the fine people at Comic Book Plus and Digital Comic Museum for public domain digital downloads. Unfortunately, a full run of Fantastic Fears/Fantastic isn't available yet so we've had to resort to reading several stories via their reprints in the Eerie Publication titles, similarly available for download at this essential site. Though we'd obviously prefer to use the original comic books, we can't afford to purchase these very expensive issues. We thought this the best avenue rather than missing out on so many terror tales but, of course, it necessitates representing some artwork in black and white. We hope that you will agree with our decision and enjoy the stories in these altered formats. -Jose and Peter

Jose: There’s nothing like a horrible shipwreck to spice up your honeymoon. Pat and Lorna Fuller barely escape the wreckage of their cruise liner and use a safety raft to drift over to a deserted island. The signs look ominous: not only are there large, imposing sand dunes on the island, but the ground is riddled with strange claw marks too. It doesn’t take the couple long to discover their source. Pat races back from gathering firewood after hearing Lorna’s cries and sees a giant black ant trying to take a nibble out of his wife. Pat is able to beat the beast to a pulp, but any plans of escape are stymied by a troop of ants that have swarmed the beach. All the Fullers can do in defense is encircle themselves with a wide ring of fire to keep the monsters at bay. When the wood runs out and the flames die down, the Fullers take to beating the creatures off with sticks and running for the hills. In the scuffle Lorna is overtaken and hastily consumed by the ants. Maddened with grief, Pat lays waste to as many critters as he can before he too is defeated. Alas, even in death the lovers find peace, as their embracing skeletons testify.


Though it may be relatively low on the gruesome horror that has come to be typified with the pre-code comics, “Black Death” (from #4) earns brownie points for being a good old fashioned monster siege of the classic order. The threat of man-eating ants will be of particular nostalgic value to fans of radio drama, a medium which memorably adapted Carl Stephenson’s red-blooded saga “Leiningen versus the Ants” on several occasions. (The story also made it to the big screen as the Charlton Heston vehicle, The Naked Jungle.) “Black Death” takes a similar survivalist tact but there is a constant dark cloud of doom that hangs over our protagonists the entire way. The Fullers seem to have a sense that they’re licked from the start, running away for cover, their meager line of defense easily trumped by the patient insects. Their attempts at beating back the ants are wild and desperate, and though their failure is inevitable we still feel a tragic pang when Lorna is dragged away to the ants’ picnic. We sympathize with Pat’s final moments, determined to the bitter end to go down swinging. The final panel is grimly poignant, resonant with its message that some comforts can only be taken in death.


Peter: Two police officers, Pietro and Renzi, chase a criminal into the fetid sewers under the streets of Rome but somehow manage to lose him until a blood-chilling shriek alerts them. When, at last, they find the felon, he has been reduced to bones and shreds of flesh, eaten alive! Investigating further, the pair of frightened patrolmen uncover a gruesome treasure: an entire catacomb filled with human bones and a race of subhuman creatures. When the cops are cornered, Renzi tosses Pietro to the monsters and strikes a deal: he'll lead the ghouls to a smorgasbord of helpless victims if they'll rob banks for him. Millions in loot safely stashed away, Renzi keeps his side of the bargain by leading the flesh eaters to a camp for the homeless. The monsters gorge themselves on the poor and Renzi runs away, ashamed of his actions. When the cop doesn't show up for subsequent dinner invitations, the green ghouls come a'callin' at his place, kidnapping his wife and daughter and hightailing it back underground. By the time Renzi arrives to rescue his family, they've been picked clean. The monsters turn their attention to Renzi.


A decidedly unpleasant affair, "Fiends from the Crypt" (from the second issue, labeled #8) is one of those pre-code horror stories that make you appreciate why the code was born. Renzi may be a deviate and murderer, but his wife and daughter certainly didn't deserve the same fate as the Colonel's extra crispy drumsticks. Renzi's family become collateral damage as a result of his avarice and selfishness (the cop waves away any responsibility with a simple "This is a terrible thing I'm doing, but I must!"). The scene in the homeless shelter is particularly unsettling, with most of the events left to our imagination. It's a nasty, nasty little fable and I loved every panel!


Jose: Public commissioner Sam Green loves his work, but what he loves even more is the graft he receives from handing out construction contracts to the highest buyer. The public has seen one too many frivolous courthouses erected and not enough schools or homes for the citizens. An outcry is raised to have Green pay for his crimes. The fat cat and his toadie Maxie think they have this furor all figured out. After all, the judge on the case is getting a piece of the graft pie too! But justice is swift and Green is sentenced to 3-5 years in the clinker. This isn’t good news for Green: not only is his healthy allowance cut off, but he’s forced to stew inside a tight prison cell for hours and days on end, a punishment that is absolute torture for a man who needs breathing room in order not to feel “hemmed-in” all the time. Maxie arranges for his boss to get a cush job watching the cadavers get wheeled in and out of the prison morgue. Green’s new vocation allows him to come up with a brilliant escape plan. Biting down on his phobia, Green stows himself away in a coffin with the intent of being freed by Maxie upon his delivery to the city morgue. It all goes smoothly until Maxie arrives at the rendezvous and sees for himself just how frivolous the new city morgue really is. After all, where does one even begin to search in a facility fitted with over a thousand ice boxes to house its dead inhabitants…?


The just-desserts tale came to be identified with the suspense and horror titles over at Entertaining Comics, but on a few notable occasions the other pre-code publishers succeeded in “mimicking” the E. C. house style. “Caught in the Graft” (from #5) is one of these. With effective, sparsely-adorned artwork supplied by Harvey Comics stalwart Howard Nostrand, “Caught” remains a nice, clean-cut affair that hits all of the expected plot points without much fuss but a good deal of fun nonetheless. The narrative voice has a playful, sarcastic quality to it that is reminiscent of the way that E. C.’s stories would call out their villains (“Now the rest should be easy… what’s the matter, Maxie, something wrong?”) and a tone that matches the wiseguy attitude of the crooks and cheaters who populate the play. “Caught” may riff on old favorites, but the way it manages to offer up a new twist to the expected ending earns it further street cred in our book.


Peter: Living on a remote island, Lawrence Mason has only hatred for the millions of snakes that crawl across the landscape. He whiles away his oodles of free time by hunting out the serpents, shooting them, and dumping them in a huge pit. One night, while relaxing in front of a fire, Lawrence sees a beautiful woman peeking into his living room window. He brings her in to dry off by the fire and the girl introduces herself as Asptha. Mason quickly invites her to stay in his mansion and the gorgeous gal agrees. When Asptha retires for the evening, Lawrence finds a snake in the very chair she sat in! The next day, the new visitor comes out on the patio in time to witness Mason's morning ritual: shooting the snakes that have slithered into his garden. As they walk the island later that day, Asptha slips and falls into an underground cave and Mason climbs down to rescue her. What he discovers is a vast series of underground tunnels. At last finding his pretty house guest, Mason begs Asptha to follow him but the girl refuses, telling him this is where she belongs. Soon, the pair are surrounded by snakes and, as he lay dying, Lawrence Mason witnesses a terrifying transformation. Asptah is, in reality, the queen of the snakes!


I'll admit that the general plot line of issue #4's "Hissing Horror" (man who hates a species of animal so much that it comes back to bite him in the ass) has been done to death, and probably better in many cases, but there's something very charming about this particular variation. It may be the stark art or the goofy nuances (when Asptha reveals her true, slithery self, even her clothes transform into scales!). Why would a man who hates snakes so much retire to an island overrun with the things? Why does Mason dress up in a nice suit shirt and tie to go out in the garden and pick off the varmints? The daffy millionaire seems only sightly curious as to how this babe turned up on his island but then, once he got a look at her gams, I assume that the whole backstory became secondary to him.


Jose: This is the story of a coffin. Though the casket might be physically inert, the thinking mind that is part of its form is fully functional. It recounts its bloody beginnings as “a sturdy young oak” that provided shelter to Native American “savages” who proceeded to lay waste to a group of white settlers. From there the tree was cut down, along with its brothers, to be repurposed for later use. Still smarting from the severance, the tree takes vengeance on one of the lumberjacks by crushing him into a sappy pulp. Further tormented by the mutilations of a buzz saw, the tree is finally fashioned into a coffin fit for burial. Soon it is occupied with the body of one Mrs. Carson, a woman whom it is popularly believed was knocked off by her no-good husband. The coffin is ecstatic with the occupancy of the corpse, lovingly referring to the late missus as “it.” They have hardly been set into the ground when the coffin is dug back up and the corpse reexamined. When the body is found to carry traces of poison, the coffin is left empty and alone as Mr. Carson is punished for his crime. But the coffin needn’t worry, for soon it is joined with the cadaver of the executed Carson and placed back into the grave for all eternity to come.


Subtly perverse and wholly refreshing, “I, the Coffin” (from #7; reprinted Weird V. 1 #11) remains one of the more subversively imaginative yarns to come from the pre-code canon. Telling stories from the perspectives of traditionally non-living objects might not have been necessarily new to the medium—this story does actually pre-date the similar and more well-known “Tight Grip” from Tales from the Crypt #38—but the premise, when placed in the hands of a capable writer, always managed to bring a quirky and revelatory approach to familiar material. The talking coffin of this story is a particularly unique “anti-hero,” at turns droll and passionate in regards to life and death in a way that makes for oh-so-unsettling reading. There’s an almost sexual nature to the coffin’s longing for a body, a morbid coupling if there ever was one, that climaxes with the lovers snuggling under covers of graveyard earth. A cemetery workman’s winking jab about “reading so many of them horror stories” reassures us that this is only fiction, but it’s what occurs off the page behind closed doors (and under sealed lids) that will continue to resonate in the reader’s mind.

Shades of Poltergeist?

Peter: Lawrence Dawson was born with a rare disease which leaves his bones brittle and easily susceptible to breaks. One night, his doctor, Dr. Boyle, rings him and tells Dawson that he's just invented a cure for his ailment. Lawrence races over and takes his first dosage. Weeks later, he discovers that his condition has indeed been cured, but now his flesh as well as his bones have become rubbery and can stretch to impossible lengths. Realizing this is the key to his fortune, Dawson kills the doctor to keep him from talking and then makes his plans for world domination. The plan has to be put on hold though as Lawrence Dawson realizes he can't control his stretching abilities and even the simple act of walking down the street becomes near-impossible. Remembering his doctor mentioned a scientist named Harrell, Stretch heads to the egghead's lab. When the man of science mentions Boyle, Dawson freaks and murders him before the scientist can inject him with a stabilizing formula. When the cops track Dawson to his lair and tommy gun the door down, they discover a sickening puddle of flesh, blood, and clothing.


From panel one, of the brittle Dawson laid up in a hospital bed, to its icky, Lovecraftian climax, "Stretching Things" (from #5)  is The Ditko Show. A sneak preview of the delights to come half a decade later when Steve would become a mainstay of Atlas' science fiction titles, "Stretching Things" is an absolute uneasy delight. Borrowing elements from Quality's Plastic Man series and ripping off H.P.'s climax of "Cool Air," Ditko crafts an at-times funny, at-times genuinely scary fable of murder and greed. There's a moment when Dawson realizes he has no control over the holding of his own features that the reader almost becomes the character. What would you do if your face became silly putty and you couldn't get it back to its original shape? The final panel, what's left of Dawson's head melting into a pool of liquid flesh and blood, is one of the creepiest images of the pre-code era.




Jose: Sailing a vessel dubbed the “Sea Monster” seems to be begging for trouble, yet that doesn’t stop its nameless “strange, old” captain from heading into the Sargasso Sea with hopes of hauling booty from all the sunken wrecks out there. One of his mates tries warning the codger about the vicious creature that’s reportedly caused all those wrecks, but the captain’s optimism (and madness) knows no bounds. Even foul weather does nothing to dampen his mood and he calls on the legendary beastie to do its worse. Happily obliging, the seaweed abomination calls the Cap out and the next thing the two are tussling under the waves, ending in the Cap’s death. The directionless crew attempt to first cook the Cap’s lucky pet albatross before hitting on the idea to send it out with an S. O. S. message. The bird lands on another ship and is promptly knifed to death. The second crew does get the message though and they head out to save their brothers. Alas, they’re too late; the “Sea Monster” is now a ghost ship and the actual sea monster attacks everyone on the rescuing vessel. “There’s no hope no hope for any of us! [sic]” wails a doomed soul.

This is your brain on seaweed.

Indeed. Pity the reader who is just as hopeful as the late captain that “Floating Coffin” (from #3) will improve as it goes along, because this stinker only takes on more and more water until all expectations are effectively sunk. Whether from an unskilled hand or just plain apathy, the tale suffers most prominently from an underdeveloped conflict and faceless, exchangeable characters. We don’t have any description or clue as to what the monster is before we see it literally laughing in the Captain’s face. “Of course it was living seaweed,” we seem to be told. “What else were you expecting it to be?” The sailors on the “Sea Monster” never feel genuinely imperiled, and it’s a wonder why the Kelp-Thing simply didn’t send the ship to its briny end to start with. Instead of focusing on the crew of the “Sea Monster” and the danger lurking right beneath them, the writer then decides to bring in an entirely new crew through the bizarre transitional effect of the messenger-bird only for them to suffer the same fate as the “Sea Monster” right when they come into the A-Plot. There’s a good story somewhere in here, but unfortunately for us it takes a detour into the Bermuda Triangle and leaves us with this forgettable piece of driftwood instead.


Peter: Native American Jimmy Bear enlists to fight Commies in the Korean War and fast becomes a celebrity, winning every race he enters at his camp. Jimmy makes fact friends with most of his comrades, but there are still some amongst the platoon who dislike Indians and make their racism known to Jimmy. When the men get trapped on a hillside and the ammunition goes low, Jimmy Bear volunteers to hoof it to the armoury to bring back supplies. The young GI faces insurmountable odds but he makes it back, only to be faced with racist slurs upon his arrival. Jimmy Bear knocks a few teeth out and teaches his comrades an important lesson in brotherhood.

Only one story in the run of Fantastic/Fantastic Fears jumped out at me as being especially noxious and that would be "Race for Valor" (from #4), a sleazy, racist piece of drivel masquerading as something else entirely. Oh, sure, there were weak vampire tales and an unending run of resurrected corpses that made me yawn but no other strip came close to sheer amateur hour than "Race." The uncredited writer may have felt he was making a bold statement about racism in the 1950s but the double standard he displays is almost laughable. How can one feel anger that Jimmy encounters ethnic slurs from a fellow GI when Bear himself is bellowing out "Dirty goonie buzzards" and addressing the enemy as "gooks?" The unattractive, sketchy art only added to the unwholesome feeling I got from this loser. And, with absolutely no horrific element whatsoever,  this was a Fantastic Fear why?



NOTABLE QUOTABLES

Lord of the Dance will return after these messages.

“Can you make that invisible dope work?”
“I t-think so! I’ve watched Uncle do it enough!”
- “And Death Makes Three”

"How I hate them both! If only I could do something to injure them! It would give me great pleasure!"
- "Haunted Matador"

“First time I ever had to arrest a flower!”
“I still think he’s nuts! Cassidy probably choked himself!”
- “The Blood Blossom”

Up from the fetid stench of Rome’s ancient catacombs swarmed the horrible army—strange and sinister beyond belief, sworn to destroy humanity in their terrible bone crunching jaws, slavering after the smell of human blood!
- “Fiends from the Crypt”

"Ers - Da - Estt - Gn - Bor - Ta!*
(He was a fool and a knave and was doomed from the start!")
-"Fiends from the Crypt"

And everywhere, as far as the eye could view, Roy saw bananas -- and more bananas -- yes, General Moreno had plenty of bananas.
- "Zombie's Bride"

Like a terrible steel beast, the car crunches and crunches down the steep, rock covered side of the mountain! There is a sound like doomed planets colliding…
- “Careless Corpse”

Betty: Yeah, I'll get right on that.

“Fainted! Well, I’ll take care of her later! No fun in killing an unconscious woman!”
- “Careless Corpse”

Pelham Manor lay washed in the ghostly light of a half moon that was as sharp as the sickles used by the old Druids themselves!
- “Druid’s Castle”

"I'm scared to death, Chris. But I'll admit it's very thrilling!"
-"Druid's Castle"

When a man wants to live away from all others and have no contact with his fellow beings, something - is - wrong... the life he seeks is usually just death, hastening toward him, like a lover with open arms reaching out... these two know each other, the man and the death he chooses to call his own...
-"Hissing Horror"

"You go too far, ugly enemy! But you will join the legions of others lke you that I have slain! From the deepest corners of my heart I despise you... die! Die!"
-"Hissing Horror"

“You must have more cash somewhere!”
“Honest, mister, I haven’t! But here’s something worth more than money! It’s… the Devil’s Sketchbook!”
- “The Devil’s Sketchbook”

Kill the Drum Slowly

Love, they say is like dying a little! So if two lovers must die, what better way than to die together, hand in hand? Not in their wildest dreams could the two people of our story have foreseen the horrors that lay in wait for them in a lonely place! They shared a nightmare in which creatures from Hades, covered with the slime of ages, crawled over their shrinking bodies and, bit by bit, tore away the flesh until the blue bones were pitilessly exposed! If you want to sleep well tonight—don’t read this spine freezing tale of new bones for old…
- “Black Death”

Anne, upon purchasing a mummified human hand: “Just wait until I show it to the girls in the P. T. A. Club!”
- “Temple of the Beast”

“What do you think of it, Smith? A dinosaur egg?”
“No, too small! But it’s old! Very amazing find, sir! Might be a brontosaurus!”
- “Dragon Egg”

The Fiddler rules triumphant! Like a bloodthirsty vulture he roosts atop a smashed and bleeding world…
- “Demon Fiddler”

“Wow! Ain’t had so much fun since I used to beat up the little kids at home!”
- “Fear in the Jungle”

“Kaza knows not of what you speak, beautiful one! He also knows that if there must be a woman around, is good to have one who is good for eyes!”
- “Fear in the Jungle”

“We can live here, Mary, and none will bother us! The place is said to be haunted!”
“And so it is, now that we dwell here!”
- “If a Body Kill a Body”

“Mary! Did you do as well as I? I threw your mother from the ramparts!”
“Hee-hee! And I poisoned your father! He died terribly!”
- “If a Body Kill a Body”

“There was no escape from the horrible revenge of the man who wouldn’t stay murdered…”
- “Crack-Up”

“A very strange case indeed—I’d call it hyper-induced vampirism!”
- “Scream No More, My Lady”

Rude!

"Y-You - a vampire, too! And you're going to - Oh, no.."
"Oh, yes! Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho! And now, my dear..."
"Eeeeeekkk- Ohhhhh- Ahhhhhh-"
-"Scream No More, My Lady"

“Ugh—the very air has turned cold and she seems to waft an aroma that smacks of a tomb…”
- “The Tiger’s Paw”

“It took all of my strength to pull her away, but you must remember, this was not a woman, it was a full fledged tigress!”
- “The Tiger’s Paw”

Tommy Malloy was a fast man - with a dollar, a dame, or a racing car! But he never dreamed that someday he would drive that car of his right over the edge of reality and into the realm of dark doom from whence no man ever returns! For a man cannot live when a part of him is lost, even though the lost part is dead and long buried! This, then, is the weird and incredible story of the arm that came back...
-"Doom at the Wheel"


STORY OF THE MONTH

Jose: Insanity cannot be calculated or created with intent. It is an entirely accidental process. This is why some stories that have a certain level of insanity (or inanity) fall flat on their face, like “Floating Coffin,” while others seem to work in narrative derangement the way a painter might work in oils, as in the case of our third “coffin” story for this month, “Secret Coffin” (from #9). “Secret Coffin” suffers from a severe case of schizophrenia with a healthy dose of ADD tossed in for good measure. It simply cannot decide what it wants to focus on: first we see ghosts with no identity or backstory provided, then we’re introduced to an enterprising heir who wants to turn the family castle into a wax museum, then it focuses on him using murder to provide his exhibits, then the random ghosts reappear to deliver what we assume are just desserts before the whole shebang goes up in smoke. Repeating information, zipping through character development and action at breakneck pace, and feeling like a chunk of important panels have been left on the cutting room floor, “Secret Coffin” will leave your mind in the same shape as the haunted castle at its center: blown to pieces.








Peter: My compadre Jose makes a wonderful and entirely accurate observation about insanity in regards to pre-code horror funny books. My story of the month is the most insane color strip I've ever read. "Green Horror" has been one of my favorite dollops of 1950s goofiness since I read it in a reprint mag called Extinct! 25 years ago and provides one of the best examples of why we comic-nuts dig this stuff. So much to digest; so much to question. Why does George Thorton have such an irrational hatred for a random cactus? Because his wife is smitten with the thing? What kind of woman remarries mere months after the love of her life is found with an axe in the back of his skull? Why is the big green guy such a thorny subject for Hubby #2 as well? Why does our titular character expire after "spending his loose change" with the human object of his lust? I don't know. All I know is that "Green Horror" presents that perfect storm of great art (how about the Munch cameo on page 3, panel 3, and that great leer from Mr. Green in the climax?) and a solid...ly wacky script.








Jose

1. "Corpses... Coast to Coast" (Voodoo #14)
2. "Fog Was My Shroud" (Voodoo #16)
3. "Demon Fiddler" (Fantastic #7)
4. "Out of the Grave" (Haunted Thrills #11)
5. "Be My Ghost" (Fantastic #8)
6. "I, the Coffin" (Fantastic #7)
7. "Fatal Scalpel" (Haunted Thrills #5)
8. "Trumpet of Doom" (Haunted Thrills #14)
9. "Nightmare Merchant" (Strange Fantasy #7)
10. "Cry from the Coffin" (Strange Fantasy #8)

CHAMBER OF CHILLS

#21 (#1) (June 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"The Old Hag of the Hills"★★
Art by Bob Powell
Mike Noonan feels strangely drawn to the land of his ancestors, Ireland, but waiting for him there is his old nanny, Colleen. Unbeknownst to Mike, the old gal is actually a witch bent on avenging her fallen comrades, all victims of Mike’s witch-hunting ancestors. Mike’s framed for murder, hanged and then rises form the dead to walk the earth for all time. A wild, nonsensical little fable that covers lots of ground without really resolving much of the drama but its Bob Powell’s art is nice to look at.

"Darker Than Death" ★1/2
Art by George Appel (?)
Despite warnings from the local sheriff, Cal Hodgins just has to visit the old Randall house, site of several grisly murders. What Cal finds is a giant winged horror… maybe. Back when radio ruled, horror stories usually ended with an expository that explained away the implied supernatural threat. “Darker than Death” has one of those ridiculous finales.
"The Chieftan of Death" ★★
Art by Vic Donahue
Sadistic native leader Mabu ventures to the dark gods to discover how he will die. “A silver spear from the sky” is the answer. The crazed ruler has all the spears in the village seized and, as he stands gloating in his new found power, he’s struck by lightning. Nice art (although Mabu looks like he’d be more comfortable in a Charles Atlas ad than in the jungle) but script meanders to its predictable finale.
"The Ghost of the Rue de Morte" ★
Art by Rudy Palais
Three young Parisian boys witness the ghost of the Rue de Morte, a specter that materializes every night at eight o’clock. One of the boys grows up to bemurdered (by his two friends) and becomes the new ghost of Rue de Morte. Very abrupt ending but, like Bob Powell, Rudy Palais always made things much easier to swallow.


#22  (#2) (August 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"The Vault of Living Death" ★1/2
Art by Vic Donahue
After a scientist murders his partner in order to take credit for their new anesthetic breakthrough, he’s haunted by the dead man’s corpse. Neither great nor awful, “Vault of the Living Death” is simply indicative of the kind of writing you might find in the pre-code horror titles, be they Harvey or Story or Prize or Atlas (EC, not to hammer the point home too many times, didn’t seem to suffer the same maladies as their competitors). “Vault” could very well have been titled, “Curse of the Analogy” for all its whacked-out metaphors (Matlock’s breast beat like the oars of the ferry to the infernal regions or how about The door of the fetid tomb, unaired, unlit for forty years, is forced open, and the air, with a gush like the sigh of a lost demon, rushes in). Like a giant pizza with loads of cheese and earthworms, “Vault” stumbles from page to wildly over-the-top page and I love it all the more for that.
"Creatures of the Swamp" ★★
Art by George Appel (?)
A psychotic artist uses black magic to transport himself and the girl he lusts after into the world of his paintings. Hilarious dialogue with boatloads of adjectives.

"Ferry of the Dead" ★
Art by John Giunta and Manny Stallman
A scientist pays a ferry skipper to bring him dead bodies so that he can build his own Frankenstein monster. The souls of the dead rise to wreak havoc. Quite a few of these stories make me believe that these writers were having a hell of a lot of fun coming up with this nonsense.
"The Snake Man" ★1/2
Art by Rudy Palais
Serpentine, a half-man/half-snake circus freak, is given shore leave to attend his mother’s funeral, but hatred for the humans around him during his trip drive him to violence. Searching for power through numbers, Serpentine seeks to enlist the aid of his fellow serpents but is eaten by a boa constrictor. Genuinely enjoyable, full-tilt whacko, with a bit of pathos thrown in.

#23 (#3) (October 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"Walking Dead" ★
Art by Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand, and Marvil Epp
Kurt Jensen receives the eyes of a dead man in an operation that restores his sight. Unfortunately for Karl, it seems the dead man wants his eyes back and is controlling what Kurt sees and, to an extent, what he does. Kurt books a trip to Spain to blow off a little steam and discovers the castle of the man who wants his orbs back! A meandering script (there’s a lot to the climax that makes little sense) is a big problem but there’s no denying that Powell, Nostrand, and Epp combine to work artistic miracles.

"Trip to Terror" ★
Art by Lee Elias
All his life, Perkins has been pushed around. One day he decides to push back. Actually, he pushes his work colleague in front of a train. It’s not long after that the guilt starts eating at him and he believes he sees his victim’s re-animated corpse, back to haunt Perkins. By-the-numbers “psychological thriller” with the put-upon victim becoming the aggressor and paying for it in the end.

"Monster's Maze" ★1/2
Art by Vic Donahue
Professor Stanley Harden and his two friends, Eileen and Tom Weber, stumble upon the ancient chamber of the Minotaur, filled to the brim with jewels and antiquities. They also trip over a frightening but puzzling artifact: a skeleton with a wristwatch! Harden gets an attack of the “greedies” and decides to wall in his partners but the plan goes awry and the professor finds himself, somehow, transported back thousands of years and in the presence of the minotaur himself. As events unfold, Harden realizes that the skeleton he discovered was, in fact, himself! EC Comics did oodles of time travel stories and I guarantee every single one of them made more sense than this dim-witted nonsense.

"The Doom of Living Ice" ★
Art by Pierce Rice



#4 (December 1951)
Cover by Lee Elias

"Two Ways to Die" ★
Art by Vic Donahue
(Stinker/ see review on page --)

"The Lost Souls" ★
Art by Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand, and Marvil Epp
(Jose/ stinker see review on page --)

"The Pale Light of Death" ★
Art by Pierce Rice

"Book of Vengeance"
Art by Vic Donahue
(Jose/ see review on page --)



#5 (February 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

"The Shrunken Skull" ★★1/2
Art by Bob Powell
(see review on page --)

"An Appointment With a Corpse" ★
Art by Pierce Rice (?)

"Operation -- Monster" ★★
Art by John Giunta and Manny Stallman

"Spirit in the Stone" ★
Art by Joe Certa



#6 (March 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

"Jelly Death"
Art by Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand, and Marvil Epp
(Jose/ see review on page --)

"Black Knights of Evil" ★★★
Art by Joe Certa
(see review on page --)

"The Seven Skulls of Magondi" ★★1/2
Art by Warren Kremer (?) and Lee Elias

"The Dungeon of Doom!"
Art by Vic Donahue
(Jose/ see review on page --)



#7 (April 1952)
Cover by Al Avison

"Pit of the Damned!" ★★★
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand
(see review on page --)

"Crawling Death"
Art by Abe Simon and Don Perlin
(Jose/ see review on page --)

"Garden of Horror"★1/2
Art by Joe Certa

"The Seal of Satan" ★
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta



#8 (May 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

"Green Killer!" ★★★
Art by Vic Donahue
(see review on page --)

"A Safari of Death!" ★
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

"Headless Horror"
Art by Abe Simone
(Jose/ see review on page --)

"Formula for Death" ★
Art by Rudy Palais



#9 (June 1952)
Cover by Al Avison

"The Eight Hands of Ranu"★1/2
Art by Vic Donahue

"The Captain's Return" ★
Art by Tom Hickey

"The Ice Horror" ★★
Art by Al Avison

"Demons of the Night" ★★★
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta
(see review on page --)



#10 (July 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

"The Face of Horror" ★1/2
Art by Vic Donahue

"Cave of Doom" ★★
Art by Al Avison

"The Dead Sleep Lightly" ★★
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

"Devil's Due" ★
Art by Rudy Palais



#11 (August 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Girl in the Moonpool” ★
Art by Bob Powell

“The Horror from the Shade”
Art by Rudy Palais
(Jose/ see review on page --)

“Return from Bedlam”  ★1/2
Art by Al Avison

“The Curse of Morgan Kilgane” ★
Art by Manny Stallman



#12 (September 1952)
Cover by Al Avison

“Murder at Moro Castle” ★
Art by Warren Kremer

“The Swamp Monster”  ★1/2
Art by Abe Simon

“The Bride of the Crab” ★★★
Art by Moe Marcus
(see review on page --)

“The Fruit of Death” ★★1/2
Art by Rudy Palais
(see review on page --)



#13 (October 1952)
Cover by Al Avison

“Man in the Hood”
Art by Bob Powell

(See review on Page --)

“The Lost Race” ★★
Art by Abe Simon

A college professor discovers a pit in Africa that houses a lost race going backward on the evolutionary timeline. The noxious gas in their honeycombed tunnels turns them not into basic protoplasm but huge semi-intelligent monsters. The professor, who gets a Insta-Beard right at the moment of his abduction, doesn't explode when lighting a torch in the flammable air, and maintains his ripped physique after a year as the monsters' prisoner, discovers that sniffing the gas has turned him into an oozy horror as well. One in a long, long line of "subterranean-dwellers-plotting-Earth's-domination" tales from the Harvey bullpen. Simon's work here seems more rushed than usual but retains his signature loopiness for a modicum of entertainment.

“The Man Germ” ★★
Art by Howard Nostrand

An intriguing pre-Fantastic Voyage premise is rendered rote from a by-the-numbers script and okay illustrations by Howard Nostrand, an artist who seemed to have more fun when mirroring the style of others. An entitled white jerk on an African safari comes across a stone colossus and, overcome by one of the odder compulsions of Harvey's tampering anti-heroes, decides to chisel his way inside of it. For science? Soon he is swept up in blood rivers, attacked by menacing cells and corpuscules, and finally crushed under the giant's beating heart, leading to the "death" of the colossus. Some backstory that detailed the jerk's intense fear of germs or insight into his "heartlessness" could've given the tale a nice poetic punch.

“The Things” ★★★
Art by Moe Marcus
Three treasure-hunters in Africa--sensing a theme?--pilfer a cache of gems from a stone idol that betrays the theft with gouts of blood and placing a curse upon the robbers' heads, namely a horde of hungry-hungry black ants desperate for their skin. There are all the expected plot points: the ring of fire keeping the terror at bay, the sudden but inevitable betrayal of one thief offering up his comrades, and finally the all-hope-is-lost finale. Marcus' box-jawed hysterics are put to good use here, with the mania of the last thief and the ants' skinning of their victims acting as especially nice touches.


#14 (November 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“It!”
Art by Vic Donahue

(See review on Page --)

“Down to Death”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Spider Man”
Art by Abe Simon

“The Devil’s Necklace”
Art by Rudy Palais



#15 (January 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Nightmare of Doom”
Art by Al Avison

“Vengeful Corpse”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Living Mummies”
Art by Don Perlin (?)

“Mind Over Matter”
Art by Bob Powell




 #16 (March 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Cycle of Horror”
Art by Al Eadeh

“Curse of the Black Panther”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“The Wax Man”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Creeping Death”
Art by Rudy Palais




#17 (May 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Amnesia!”
Art by Warren Kremer

“Big Fight!”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Bridge!”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Collector”
Art by Joe Certa



#18 (July 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Haircut!”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Atom”
Art by Joe Certa

“Friend!”
Art by Bob Powell

“The House!”
Art by John Giunta



 #19 (September 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias or Warren Kremer

“Happy Anniversary”
Art by Bob Powell

“Terrorvision”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Garzan the Magnificent”
Art by Joe Certa

“Black Passion”
Art by Jack Sparling



#20 (November 1953)
Cover by Howard Nostrand

“The Clock”
Art by Joe Certa

“Murder”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Lay That Pistol Down”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“End of the Line”
Art by Bob Powell



#21 (January 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

"The Choirmaster"
Art by Bob Powell

"Nose for News"
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

"The Death Mask"
Art by Joe Certa

"The Inside Man"
Art by Howard Nostrand



#22 (March 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

"The Ugly Duckling"
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

"Reincarnation"
Art by Jack Sparling

"Lottery"
Art by John Giunta and Manny Stallman

"The Skeptic!"
Art by Joe Certa



#23 (May 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

"Heartline"
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

"Invasion"
Art by Jack Sparling

"The Museum"
Art by Bob Powell

"Dust Unto Dust"
Art by Howard Nostrand



#24 (July 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

"Grave's End"
Art by Bob Powell

"I, Vampire"
Art by Howard Nostrand

"Credit and Loss"
Art by Mort Meskin and George Roussos

"Grim Years"
Art by Manny Stallman



#25 (October 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

(A complete reprinting of CoC #5)



#26 (December 1954)
Cover by Al Avison

(A complete reprinting of CoC #9)




WITCHES TALES

#1 (January 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"The Monster of Mad Mountain"
Art by Al Avison

"Voodoo Vengeance"
Art by Rudy Palais

"Launched in Blood"
Art by John Sink

"The Dead Won't Die"
Art by Tom Gill



#2 (March 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"The Evil Eye"
Art Uncredited

"Phantom in the Flames"
Art by Rudy Palais

"Massacre of the Ghosts"
Art by Al Luster

"The Man with Two Faces"
Art by Manny Stallman



#3 (May 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

"Tombstones to Tibet"
Art by Bob Powell

"The Puppets That Became Men"
Art by John Sink

"The Forest of Skeletons"
Art by Tom Hickey

"Revenge by the Full Moon"
Art by Manny Stallman



#4 (July 1951)
Cover Uncredited

"The Sewer Monsters"
Art by Bob Powell

"The Yellow Menace"
Art by Rudy Palais

"Death by Witchcraft"
Art by Rudy Palais

"Bells of Doom"
Art by Rudy Palais



#5 (September 1951)
Cover Uncredited

"The Spell of the Black Gloves"
Art by Bob Powell

"Share My Coffin"
Art by Rudy Palais

"The Clinging Phantom"
Art by Vic Donohue

"Curse of the Caterpillar"
Art by Rudy Palais



#6 (November 1951)
Cover Uncredited

"Murder Mansion"
Art by Lee Elias

"Green Horror"
Art by Bob Powell

"Servants of the Tomb!"
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

"The Thing That Grew!"
Art by Manny Stallman



#7 (January 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“League of the Damned”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Curse of the Statue”
Art by John Giunta and Manny Stallman

“Invitation to Doom”
Art by Vic Donohue

“Screaming City”
Art by Rudy Palais



#8 (March 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Toys of Terror”
Art by Lee Elias

“The Witch Who Wore White”
Art Uncredited

“The Man Who Had No Body”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Demon Flies”
Art by Joe Certa



#9 (April 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“Fatal Steps”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Waiting Grave”
Art by Vic Donohue and Warren Kremer

“Designer of Doom”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Tank of Corpses”
Art by Joe Certa



#10 (May 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“It!”
Art by Bob Powell

“The Flash of Doom”
Art by Vic Donohue and Warren Kremer

“The Flaming Horror!”
Art by Joe Certa

“Cloth of Terror”
Art by Manny Stallman



#11 (June 1952)
Cover by Al Avison

“The Unburied Mummy”
Art by Bob Powell

“Monster Maker”
Art by Joe Certa

“Return from the Tomb”
Art by Vic Donohue

“The Battle of the Birdmen”
Art by Abe Simon and Don Perlin



#12 (July 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“Reincarnation”
Art Uncredited

“The Web of the Spider”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Shower of Death”
Art by Manny Stallman

“The Man with the Iron Face”
Art by Rudy Palais



#13 (August 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Elixir of Evil”
Art by Lee Elias

“The Torture Jar”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Laugh, Clown, Laugh!”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Death Lies Ahead”
Art by Warren Kremer and Abe Simon



#14 (September 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“The Devil’s Own”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Transformation!”
Art by Vic Donohue

“Devil’s Diamond”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Scarecrow’s Revenge!”
Art by Rudy Palais



#15 (October 1952)
Cover by Joe Simon

“The Well of Mystery”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Fiend of the Nether World”
Art by Manny Stallman

“A Rage to Kill”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Art for Death’s Sake”
Art by Rudy Palais



#16 (November 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Gateway to Death!”
Art by Vic Donohue

“Revenge of a Witch”
Art by Abe Simon

“Midnight Limited!”
Art by Rudy Palais (?) and Joe Certa

“The Duel”
Art by Moe Marcus



#17 (February 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Bridge of Death”
Art by Warren Kremer and Howard Nostrand

“Dimension IV”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Creatures of the Bomb”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Mannequin of Murder”
Art by Manny Stallman



#18 (April 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Walpurgis!”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Bird of Prey”
Art by Abe Simon

“Star of Doom”
Art Uncredited

“Zodiac”
Art by Warren Kremer



#19 (June 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Pact”
Art by Bob Powell

“Jungle”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Honeymoon”
Art by Lee Elias

“A Matter of Taste”
Art by Jack Sparling



#20 (August 1953)
Cover by Warren Kremer

“Jazz!”
Art by Lee Elias

“Kiss and Kill”
Art by Bob Powell

“Shock!”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“I’ll String Along”
Art by Jack Sparling



#21 (October 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Invasion”
Art by Bob Powell

“Revenge”
Art by Manny Stallman

“The Chase”
Art by Jack Sparling

“Dead End”
Art by Howard Nostrand



#22 (December 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Day of Panic”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Chain Reaction”
Art by Pete Riss

“The Hunter”
Art by Bob Powell

“Double Crossed”
Art by Jack Sparling



#23 (February 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Henry Small… Huckster”
Art by Bill Benulis and Jack Abel

“Ivan’s-Woe”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“The Wig-Maker”
Art by Joe Certa and Jack Abel

“So What Next”
Art by Bob Powell



#24 (April 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Undertaker”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Mutiny on the Boundary”
Art by Bob Powell

“Eye Eye, Sir”
Art by Sid Check

“Monumental Feat”
Art by Manny Stallman and Joe Certa



#25 (June 1954)
Cover by Howard Nostrand

“The Ticket”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Ali Barber and the Forty Thieves”
Art by Bob Powell

“What’s Happening at—8:30 P. M.”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Monopoly”
Art by Manny Stallman



#26 (August 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Long Shot”
Art by Manny Stallman and Ross Andru

“Withering Heights”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Go Vampire”
Art Uncredited

“Up There”
Art by Joe Certa



#27 (August 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

(A complete reprinting of WT #6)



#28 (December 1954)
Cover Uncredited

(A complete reprinting of WT #8)



BLACK CAT MYSTERY

#30 (August 1951)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Gateway to Death”
Art by Vic Donahue

“The Thing from the Grave”
Art by Rudy Palais

“The Werewolf Must Kill”
Art by Lee Elias



#31 (October 1951)
Cover by Al Avison

“Bloody Red Rose”
Art by Rudy Palais

“The Tapping Doom”
Art by Manny Stallman

“The Sea Witch of Sandy Hook”
Art by Rudy Palais

“The Sleepwalking Killer”
Art by Rudy Palais



#32 (December 1951)
Cover Uncredited

“Baron of Death”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Satan’s Suit”
Art Uncredited

“Deadly Acres”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Arms of Doom”
Art by Rudy Palais



#33 (February 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Corpses from the Sea”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Army of Scorpions”
Art by Tom Hickey

“Grave on the Green”
Art by Vic Donahue

“Man Made Monster”
Art by Rudy Palais



#34 (April 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“Jack of Horror”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Shadows on the Tomb”
Art by Joe Certa

“Hand of the Yogi”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Halloween Nightmare”
Art by Manny Stallman



#35 (May 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“The Last Man on Earth”
Art by Bob Powell

“Forbidden Room”
Art by Joe Certa

“Marching Zombies”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Trick the Devil”
Art by Vic Donahue



#36 (June 1952)
Cover by Warren Kremer

“Rotting Demons”
Art by Bob Powell

“Battle of the Monsters”
Art by Vic Donahue

“The Last Man Returns”
Art by Bob Powell

“Whip of Death”
Art by Joe Certa

“Carnival of Death”
Art by Manny Stallman



#37 (July 1952)
Cover by Warren Kremer

“The Moth”
Art by Warren Kremer

“Kill No More!”
Art by Don Perlin and Abe Simon

“Doom Ranch”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Clock Struck—Doom!”
Art by Rudy Palais



#38 (August 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Fool’s Gold”
Art by Joe Certa

“Blood of a Witch”
Art by Moe Marcus and Rocco “Rocke” Mastroserio

“Death Wears Green”
Art by Vic Donahue

“He”
Art by Rudy Palais



#39 (September 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Ape Man”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Witch Killer”
Art by Rudy Palais

“The Body Maker”
Art by Warren Kremer

“Portrait in Blood”
Art by Vic Donahue and Rocke “Rocco” Mastroserio



#40 (October 1952)
Cover by Rudy Palais

“Curse Castle”
Art by Bob Powell

“Doomsday”
Art by Abe Simon

“Don’t Share My Coffin”
Art by Moe Marcus and Rocco Mastroserio

“Demons of the Sun”
Art by Rudy Palais



#41 (December 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“The Room of Mystery”
Art by Bob Powell

“Beast of Doom”
Art by Don Perlin and Abe Simon

“Path to Death”
Art by Moe Marcus and Rocco Mastroserio

“Live Man’s Funeral”
Art by Al Eadeh



#42 (February 1953)
Cover Uncredited

“Kiss of Doom”
Art by Joe Certa

“Next Attraction: Death”
Art by Moe Marcus and Rocco Mastroserio

“The Visitor”
Art by Don Perlin and Abe Simon

“Mask of the Murderer”
Art by Al Eadeh



#43 (April 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“My Husband, the Cat”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Devil Drums”
Art by Warren Kremer

“Black Knight”
Art by Moe Marcus and Rocco Mastroserio

“Eternity”
Art Uncredited



#44 (June 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Excursion”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Oil”
Art by Jack Sparling

“Destiny”
Art by Joe Certa

“Search for Evil”
Art by Howard Nostrand



#45 (August 1953)
Cover by Howard Nostrand

“Colorama!”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“Lynch Mob”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Knockout”
Art by Joe Certa

“I. O. U. One Body”
Art Uncredited



#46 (October 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“What Was the Discovery?”
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

“The Blonde Man”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Disc Jockey”
Art by Bob Powell

“Insomnia”
Art Uncredited



#47 (December 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Supreme Penalty”
Art by Bob Powell

“Low Noon”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Torture”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Regent 3-”
Art  by Joe Certa



#48 (February 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Lonely”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Les Miserables”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Pest Control”
Art by Jack Sparling

“River of Blood”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand



#49 (April 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Clean as a Whistle”
Art by John Giunta

“The Three Musketeers”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Paranoia”
Art by Bob Powell

“A Promise Kept”
Art by Joe Certa



#50 (June 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The King is Dead”
Art by Manny Stallman and John Giunta

“Moe Gambo”
Art by Bob Powell and Howard Nostrand

“White Heat”
Art by Joe Certa and John Belfi

“Here Today…”
Art by Sid Check



#51 (August 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Old Mill Scream”
Art by Bob Powell

“Come Back Bathsheba”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Punch and Rudy”
Art by Mort Meskin

“Switcheroo”
Art by Joe Certa



#52 (October 1954)
Cover Uncredited

(A complete reprinting of Black Cat Mystery #34)



#53 (December 1954)
Cover by Al Avison

(A complete reprinting of Black Cat Mystery #35)



TOMB OF TERROR

#1 (June 1952)
Cover by Warren Kremer

“The Dead Awaken”
Art by Bob Powell

“The Thing from the Center of the Earth!”
Art by Warren Kremer

“The Little People”
Art Uncredited

“The Wax Museum”
Art by Joe Certa



#2 (July 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Cult of Evil”
Art by Lee Elias

“The Quagmire Beast”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Last Word”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Crypt of Death”
Art by Rudy Palais




#3 (August 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“Crypt of Tomorrow”
Art by Joe Certa

“Cavern of the Doomed”
Art by Bob Powell

“The Cry of Satan”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Death Pact”
Art by Rudy Palais



#4 (September 1952)
Cover Uncredited

“Graveyard Monsters”
Art by Joe Certa

“His Brother’s Keeper”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Glacier Beast”
Art by Lee Elias

“Dirt of Death”
Art by Manny Stallman



#5 (October 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Rat Man”
Art by Bob Powell

“Marriage of the Monsters”
Art by Moe Marcus

“The Living Slime”
Art by Joe Certa

“Head of the Medusa”
Art by Rudy Palais



#6 (November 1952)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Survivors”
Art by Joe Certa

“Return from the Grave”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Volcano of Doom”
Art by Rudy Palais

“Found: The Lair of the Snow Monster!!!”
Art by Abe Simon



#7 (January 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Eyeless Ones”
Art by Warren Kremer

“Shadow of Death”
Art by Abe Simon

“Colony of Horror”
Art by Moe Marcus

“Beam of Terror”
Art by Rudy Palais



#8 (March 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Hive!”
Art by Lee Elias

“The Search”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“The Eyes of March”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Vision in Bronze”
Art by Don Perlin



#9 (May 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Bubble Cauldron Bubble”
Art by Lee Elias

“The Tunnel”
Art by Bob Powell

“Backwash”
Art Uncredited

“The Prize”
Art by Jack Sparling



#10 (July 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Big Joke”
Art by Bob Powell

“Noah’s Arg-h!”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“A Rose is a Rose”
Art by Al Eadeh

“The Trial”
Art by Manny Stallman



#11 (September 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Blood Money”
Art by Joe Certa

“The Rift of the Maggis”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Communist”
Art by Bob Powell

“The Closet”
Art Uncredited



#12 (November 1953)
Cover by Lee Elias

“Evolution”
Art by Manny Stallman

“Don Coyote”
Art by Bob Powell

“Tale of Cain”
Art by Howard Nostrand

“Gambling Fever”
Art by Jack Sparling



#13 (January 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Plague”
Art by Manny Stallman

“What D’You Know, Joe”
Art by Jack Sparling

“Out There”
Art by Bob Powell

“Germ Sequence”
Art by Joe Certa



#14 (March 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“End Result”
Art by Bob Powell

“Death Sentence”
Art by Sid Check

“The Harder They Fall”
Art by Jack Sparling

“The Outcast”
Art by Manny Stallman



#15 (May 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Dead Planet”
Art by Bob Powell

“Mirror Image”
Art by Joe Certa

“Break-Up!”
Art by Jack Sparling

“The Man Germ”
Art by Howard Nostrand
(Reprinted from Chamber of Chills #13)



#16 (July 1954)
Cover by Lee Elias

“The Report”
Art by Bob Powell

“Going—Going—Gone”
Art by Joe Certa

“All Keyed Up”
Art by Jack Sparling

“Tag…You’re It”
Art by Sid Check

by Jack Seabrook

"Crack of Doom" is based on a short story by Don Marquis called "The Crack of Doom" that was first published in the September 6, 1930 issue of Collier's and later reprinted in the February 1956 issue of Playboy, which is probably where Joan Harrison saw it and decided to buy the television rights.


Marquis (1878-1937) was a popular newspaper columnist in the 1920s who also wrote short stories. Best known for his series of stories featuring Archy and Mehitabel, a cockroach and a cat, there are over two dozen books that collect his work. A couple of movies were made based on a play he wrote and he spent a brief spell in Hollywood in the early 1930s writing dialogue for films; only four TV shows have been made based on his writings. Read more about Marquis at this excellent website.

"The Crack of Doom" begins in the card room at a men's club when several men tire of bridge and decide to play poker. Tom Ackley asks his old friend Mason Bridges to join them, but Bridges surprises him with a strenuous refusal. A week later, Ackley asks Bridges why and Bridges tells the story of the time he stopped being an honest man and, for a few hours, became a crook.

Ten years before, Bridges had been a partner in a firm in a suburb of New York City where, among other things, money was kept in a safe to help local merchants make change after banking hours were over. The partners in the firm felt free to borrow from the safe and leave I.O.U.s. Bridges, a poker fiend in college who now played twice a week in a small game among friends, was unhappy that Sam Clinker, a local politician with a large bank account, had begun to "bull the game," bluffing frequently and making large bets. Bridges did not like Clinker, thinking that the man had turned a friendly game of cards into a high stakes proposition, and was determined to get the best of him.

From the original publication

One night, Bridges realized that losses over the course of his last two games had left him in debt to the firm over $4000. He and his wife Jessie had $9000 in the bank, so he knew that he could pay back the money, but he wanted to win the money back by beating Sam, who had left $10,000 in the firm's safe that day. Borrowing $2000 of Sam's money from the safe, Bridges joined the game and, before he knew it, he had written a check for $2500 and was down a total of $8500. Thankful for the $9000 he had in the bank, he went home and woke Jessie to tell her, but she broke down and told him that she had lost money at bridge and then lost the rest of the $9000 trying to recoup her losses by playing the stock market.

Bridges reassured her and did not tell her about his own problem, but he suddenly realized that, without the $9000 safety net, he was now a crook who would probably lose his standing in the community and go to jail. He went to the office, took a bottle of scotch from the safe, and began to drink; deciding on a plan, he took another $5000 of Sam's money from the safe before returning to the game.

Hope, despair and alcohol drove Bridges to play Clinker's game and to bet big himself: as the night wore on, he won, lost, and won again, his vision blurred, his insides burning. The last hours passed in a haze, but he never forgot the last hand of poker he would ever play. Clinker had three tens and a king showing while Bridges had three queens and a king showing. The pot got bigger and bigger; Bridges raised $4000 and Clinker countered by raising $10,500; Bridges wrote a worthless check for $20,000 and threw it on the pile of money and checks, goading Clinker into calling him. Suddenly, Bridges looked at his hole card and saw that it was a jack--in his drunken, emotional state he had thought it was a queen.

"I waited for the shattering blast of the last trump," he told Ackley, but it never came. Clinker decided to fold rather than to put more money in the pot, and Bridges had won. He knew that he would not have had the nerve to bluff had he known the real card in his hand and decided that he would never again put himself at the mercy of a playing card. Bridges tells Ackley that that night was the reason he will never again play cards for money.

Robert Horton as the older Mason bridges

"The Crack of Doom" is available to read for free online here. It's title is a reference to biblical signs of the end of time and the waking of the dead on the Day of Judgment. In the story, Bridges mentions "the last trump;" this, combined with the story's title, shows the importance he placed on what he thought would be a turning point in his life.

Don Marquis writes a suspenseful tale that contains an interesting ethical question: when is a man a thief? Bridges takes money from his office safe and leaves an I.O.U. As his borrowing mounts, he believes himself to be an honest man because he knows he can repay the money from his savings. Yet when his wife reveals that the savings are gone, he realizes that he cannot repay the debt and is now a thief. Later that night, he wins back all of the money and can repay the debt, so he is no longer a thief. The question is an interesting one that could be debated at length but, happily for Bridges, Clinker does not call his bluff.

Robert Middleton as Sam Clinker

Robert C. Dennis adapted the story for television and it was broadcast on Sunday, November 25, 1956, as his first contribution to season two of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Directed by James Neilson, the show is a success that remains faithful to the story while enhancing it in ways that take advantage of the medium of television.

Though the story by Don Marquis begins in a men's club, Dennis moves the setting to a train racing through the night. Inside a bar car on the train, Bridges tells his story to Ackley. As Bridges, Robert Horton is made up to look like he is in his mid-40s to early 50s, with graying hair at the temples and a small mustache, and his colleagues appear to be of similar age. The story of the poker game is presented in flashbacks, with Horton looking much younger. Using a train setting for the frame sequence puts the men together in a confined space with time to kill; the darkness outside, lit occasionally by passing lights, and the sound of the moving train add a great deal of atmosphere and urgency to the tale.

This shot recalls 1940s private eye films

Dennis sets up the conflict between Bridges and Clinker by adding a scene in Bridges' office on the afternoon before the big card game. Clinker brings money to put in the safe and the two men are shown to be already at odds. That night, the card game is played at a large, octagonal table and Neilson mixes medium shots, close ups and overhead shots of the table.

Horton is wonderful as Bridges; handsome and heroic, he contrasts well with Robert Middleton as Clinker, who is overweight, more than a decade older than Horton, and menacing. Voice over narration by Bridges is used sparingly to convey his thoughts as he borrows more money from the office safe. By switching from the card game to scenes with Bridges alone to scenes in the present, Dennis keeps the story moving. High-contrast lighting is used in the late night office scene, as Bridges takes the last of Clinker's money from the safe. The voice over narration gives this portion of the episode a feeling like a 1940s detective film.

Dayton Lummis as Tom Ackley

Regarding the story's climax, it is important to remember that these shows were filmed to be aired once or twice and not to be studied carefully. The first view of the hold card is blurry and we can't tell what it is. There is a second insert of the card where it is clearly a Queen, though Bridges keeps his fingers over the "Q"s in the corners. In the final shot, the card is clearly a Jack. To someone watching the show without knowing the ending, the shot of the Queen card will pass by unnoticed.

Gail Kobe as Jessie Bridges

Dennis ends the show with a humorous incident after Mason leaves the club car. Ackley is asked if he would like to make a little bet to see who will pay for drinks and he refuses, having learned his lesson from Bridges' story.

"Crack of Doom" is a very entertaining adaptation of a classic story of suspense, where the writer, the director, and the actors all work together to bring to life the words on the page.

Director James Neilson was at the helm for twelve episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the last reviewed here was "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby."

Robert Horton (1924- ) was onscreen from the mid-1940s until the late 1980s and is still alive at age 91. He also had a career on the Broadway stage. He was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents seven times and starred in the series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1962. He maintains a website here.

Horton as the younger Bridges

Playing Sam Clinker is Robert Middleton (1911-1977), who was born Samuel Messer and who was a constant presence on episodic TV from the early 1950s until the late 1970s. He was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times and Thriller twice.

In small roles are Gail Kobe (1932-2013), as Jessie Bridges, and Dayton Lummis (1903-1988) as Tom Ackley. Kobe was also seen in the hour-long episode, "The Black Curtain," and Lummis was in Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956).

"Crack of Doom" is available on DVD here or may be watched for free online here.

Sources:

"Crack of Doom."Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 25 Nov. 1956.
"Don Marquis: Tall Tales and Light Verse."donmarquis.com. 15 Nov. 2015.
"The FictionMags Index."The FictionMags Index. 15 Nov. 2015.
Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001.
IMDb. IMDb.com. 15 Nov. 2015.
Marquis, Don. "The Crack of Doom."Collier's: 6 Sept. 1930, 7-9, 40, 43. UNZ.org. 13 Nov. 2015.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 15 Nov. 2015.
In two weeks: "John Brown's Body," starring Leora Dana, Russell Collins and Hugh Marlowe!

The game

The DC War Comics 1959-1976 by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Irv Novick

 All American Men of War 109

"The Killer Slot!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Irv Novick

"Landing Party!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Irv Novick

Peter: When Navajo ace Johnny Cloud is captured by the dirty scum Nazis, he manages to escape but the forest before him is fraught with peril. He remembers a time in his childhood (here we go again) when he and Running Deer found a falcon, mauled and killed by a hawk, and took the bird to the smoke-maker. The shaman informed the teens that, before the bird could rest in the after-life, it must rise and attack its killer. Sure enough, the dead bird took wing and brought down the hawk that ended its life. Johnny knows he must find and rescue his own jet or it will never rest either. As can happen with these stories, the jumping back and forth between various flashbacks can be awfully confusing but "The Killer Slot" is a solid little action thriller, made even more exciting by Novick's stellar art.


Novick's follow-up, "The Landing Party," doesn't fare as well (Irv's pencils look more like Jack Abel's to me), sinking from the weight of Hank Chapman's awful dialogue and TNT descriptions (...pretty soon I was out of the jungle and climbing the flank of the hill like a Sunday driver just let out of the insane asylum...). The tale is good for a few laughs, though; when our hero, a GI grunt whose entire squad is wiped out during a beach assault, has to steal a tank, he comes across a chasm high above a river. How to cross? Simple. Knock two huge trees down across the stretch and then simply drive your tank across! Why did it take us so long to win the war?


Jack: Your question applies to the first story as well. When Johnny Cloud is held at gunpoint by the Nazis, he suddenly breaks and makes a run for it, drawing their fire. Can't any Nazi shoot straight? He and they both realize that they are such poor shots that they are likely to shoot their own plane, which is behind Johnny, so they stop shooting!

As sometimes happens when reading DC War Comics, I had to look something up. This time, it's the term "Immelman." Kanigher writes that this will be "the tightest Immelman on record." Were this a Marvel comic, we'd get a footnote. DC readers had to scramble for the dictionary (or in my case, Wikipedia) to discover that the Immelman turn is a maneuver where a plane loops around and puts itself into a position to attack a plane that had been attacking it. It was named for Max Immelmann, a German WWI ace.

Joe Kubert

Our Army at War 155

"No Stripes for Me!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Fokker Fury!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

Jack: This is one of those great issues of Our Army at War that warrants discussion of both stories!

In the first story, Sgt. Rock meets Chip McKenzie, a general's son who keeps insisting "No Stripes for Me!" even though he earns promotion after promotion with his bravery. It seems Chip is antagonistic to the idea that anyone will think he is moving up through the ranks due to nepotism, so he resists being made an officer. Rock gives him one stripe, two stripes, and three stripes after he performs heroically in battle. Finally, when Chip nearly causes his father to lose his life to save Easy Co., the general orders Rock to promote his son to lieutenant, the first time a sergeant has promoted a soldier to a rank above his own! Kubert's art is outstanding and Kanigher scores points for not taking the Easy way out and having Chip die at the end of the story.

The second story is even better. Hans von Hammer, the enemy ace, is impressed with the honorable behavior of a British pilot who salutes him after the German flyer shoots down his plane. Von Hammer is isolated on land because everyone he meets thinks of him as a human killing machine. When he shoots down another English plane, he realizes that the pilot was out of ammunition and that, technically, he has killed an unarmed man in his "Fokker Fury!" A British pilot challenges von Hammer to an air battle and von Hammer accepts, then proceeds into the fray without ammunition, barely surviving only due to his own skills as a pilot. The British pilot realizes what has occurred and flies off, leaving von Hammer satisfied that he has regained his honor. Wow! If Kubert's art was good in the Rock story it is off the charts here, and Kanigher's tale matches the exquisite visuals. This bodes well for the Enemy Ace series, though Sgt. Rock tells us in the final panel that there will be no more stories unless readers demand them.

Peter: Why would Sgt Fury refer to the Jeb Stuart as "the Haunted Tank" when only Jeb knows about his ghostly friend? Kanigher was obviously having a great deal of fun with his new baby. Was he grooming the "Ace" to take over Our Fighting Forces or All American Men of War at some point? It's odd that the next appearance of The Hammer of Hell will be a two-issue stint at DCShowcase rather than one of the war titles, but perhaps Bob envisioned a greater readership if the Ace were given a short-term residence in a mainstream title. It's a stunning moment when von Hammer shoots down his enemy and then realizes the young pilot was flying sans ammunition. The Enemy Ace almost pleads with the doomed man to forgive him. Again, this strip seems to bring out the best on Kubert and Kanigher. A whole issue of RK and JK? Pure war heaven!

Next Week... Join us as we take a trip into The Vault of Horror!

by Jack Seabrook

"Silent Witness" features a brilliant script by Robert C. Dennis that eclipses the short story on which it was based, taking the germ of an idea and expanding it into a fascinating look at a man's guilty conscience.

"Eyewitness" provides the basic plot. The story was written by Jeanne Barry and published in the July 16, 1949 issue of Collier's. Taking up only a page in the magazine and running about 1500 words, "Eyewitness" opens as Don Mason commits a murder in his apartment, clubbing a woman named Claudia to death with a brass candlestick. After the crime, he looks up and sees into an apartment that faces his own, where a baby in a playpen is the only witness.

Mason puts Claudia's body in a metal foot locker and drives to an abandoned quarry, where he dumps the locker. Through his thoughts, we learn that he killed the girl after she smugly told him that she was leaving him for a man with money. Claudia worked at a hotel and no one at the high school where Mason teaches knew her. Ten days later, he is shaken when another teacher mentions in conversation that a study has suggested that a child as young as one and a half years can remember what she sees and talk about it later.

Pretending to be ill, Don goes home early; he approaches Linda, the baby, and her mother, and the baby starts to scream when she sees him. Her mother tells him that the girl is one and a half years old, which makes Mason worry that she will be able to identify him as a killer. A week later, he visits the baby again, when she's with a sitter, and again she shrieks when he appears. The sitter tells him that Linda is advanced and talks often.

The story was published here

Mason goes for a drive and is pulled over by a policeman, who reminds him to turn on his headlights. Returning to his apartment, he is suspicious of every footstep outside the door. The next day, Linda's mother brings him some mail and admires the candlestick, which we know was the murder weapon. Linda, the baby, sees Mason and screams. Unable to bear his guilt any longer, he drives to the police station and confesses. The next day, as Linda's mother reads about Mason's confession in the newspaper, a laundry man passes and says hello to the baby, who begins to shriek.

It's a subtle ending, where one assumes that the baby's shrieks had nothing to do with Mason or the murder. Ironically, the baby screams every times a man approaches, but Mason's own guilt makes him believe that the screams are evidence of the baby's ability to identify him as the killer, something she would surely do as soon as she was able. The story has some parallels with "Revenge," the first episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents to be broadcast, in which a woman identifies a man on the street as her attacker; after her husband kills the man, he realizes that she identified him only because of his gender.

As we have seen before in this series, Robert C. Dennis was often challenged to take short stories and expand or alter them to make them fit the requirements of a half hour television show. With "Eyewitness," he did such a fine job that his teleplay makes the twist ending of the story superfluous.

The TV version, titled "Silent Witness," begins with a closeup of a book, Shakespeare's Richard III, held in the hand of a college professor who is reading a passage from the play to his students. The professor is Bob (not Don) Mason, and the passage is one that begins: "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues" (Act 5, scene 3, lines 193-203). It is spoken by King Richard near the end of the play, on the eve of the battle that will take his life. He has just been visited by a series of the ghosts of those for whose deaths he is responsible, just as Mason will be visited by Claudia's ghost later in the episode.

Dolores Hart as Claudia

The camera pulls back and we see the professor; on the wall behind him are framed drawings of great men and on the shelf in front of those frames sit a couple of trophies. Yet Mason is not the stalwart man he appears to be, as we will learn, and the text he reads applies to him as well--like King Richard, his conscience will tell him he is a murderer and he will find in himself no pity for himself. The camera slowly pans around and we see the students, one in particular: a pretty girl who watches Mason closely from the front row. The camera cuts back to Mason and then back to a medium closeup of the girl, a knowing smile on her face.

Class is dismissed but the girl lingers, asking Professor Mason if the line, "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues," is a Freudian reference--"You're not getting a guilt complex, are you, darling?" she says. We realize that they are having an affair. By calling him "darling," it's clear that their relationship is not a new one; she insists on seeing him tonight but he defers, telling her that he has to take his wife out to a dinner party. She reminds him that it is the night of his wife's gym class, which shows that Claudia knows him so well that she is aware of his schedule. He says that he won't see her again but she walks out of the classroom as if ignoring his statement.

That night, Mason is at home, sipping a cup of tea and adding a dash of liquor. He asks his wife Nancy if she'd like to "go for a drive, see a movie." She is surprised but he claims that this is a normal, middle-class impulse; she responds that he never has impulses of any kind--if she only knew! The couple appears happy on the surface but he is troubled by what he's done and must keep hidden. She gets ready to go to the gym, remarking that "I've got to control my figure if I'm going to compete with all the jail bait in your classes." Like Dennis's script for "A Little Sleep," earlier in 1957, his script for "Silent Witness" shows a more open approach to sexual themes than had been common in the first two seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, where the producer tended to rely more on classic short stories and remakes of episodes of Suspense; now, things are starting to get more contemporary, a trend that will continue through season seven.

As Nancy readies herself to leave, the telephone rings and Bob answers--it's Claudia on the line, calling to tell him that she is babysitting next door at the Davidsons' house. Bob looks through a window and sees the girl painting her nails, a siren tugging him away from his wife and his home. She threatens to come over and expose him. He tells Nancy that the call was from one of his students, ironically adding that "She's having a hard time with Richard the Third." Nancy responds, telling him to "see to it he makes an honest woman of her." Mason is thus associated with the king who was troubled by his conscience, while Nancy unwittingly encourages him to marry Claudia! This is great writing, with characters talking to each other in a way that seems innocent while we see the double meaning behind their words.

Next door, the baby is in a playpen, being watched by Claudia. Mason enters and the couple embraces, kissing passionately. "This is absolutely insane!" he tells her, and she replies that "You're like an avalanche, Bob--takes a lot to get you moving." She does not realize that she is about to become a victim of that avalanche. The high contrast lighting and suspenseful music cues in this scene are particularly good; in fact, the music in this episode is entirely appropriate, suggesting that the problems of prior seasons where the incidental music did not match the events on screen may be a thing of the past. Bob pulls the window shade closed, hiding his guilt. Claudia asks him if he likes babies, inferring that she wants to start a family with him, and he tells her how dangerous their relationship is. He calls himself stupid for getting involved with her but she says that they are going to get married. He tells her that he will not leave his wife and offers to give her money to end the affair; she threatens to smear and ruin him.

Don Taylor as Prof. Mason

There is a tight closeup of Bob's face and the music starts up again. He smiles like a demon, pleased with an idea that has come to him. He crosses the room and strangles Claudia to death. She collapses to the floor and the baby starts to cry. The baby's cry shatters Bob's trance-like state and he looks in horror at what he has done. He backs away and the screen fades to black.

Harry Bellaver as Sgt. Wagner

Alone in his classroom, Bob gets a visit from Sergeant Wagner, a police detective who is interviewing all of the teachers. Wagner asks about Claudia and wants details about "The men in her life--you know what I mean?" Mason says that she was pretty but not much of a student. "Kind of wild, huh?" the sergeant chuckles. It is rather shocking to see the two men discuss the dead young woman in this way, since they are both dismissive of her and Sgt. Wagner seems overly interested in the details of her love life. As in "A Little Sleep," an attractive young woman who is sexually active is murdered, as if this is the correct punishment for her behavior in the repressed 1950s. Wagner suspects that the murderer was someone Claudia knew and comments that the baby was an eyewitness.

Pat Hitchcock as Nancy

Back at Mason's house, Nancy is exercising while talking on the telephone, still trying to keep up with her husband's "jail bait" students and blissfully unaware that it's too late. She says that the telephone has been ringing all day and comments on "the morbidity of people," though she tells him with excitement that a detective came to visit her. As Nancy, Pat Hitchcock demonstrates a very Hitchcockian interest in crime and murder. Even Nancy assumes that Claudia was "that kind of a girl," who must have known a lot of men: she says that "None of the other girls got themselves murdered--she must have been different!" Again, like Wagner, Nancy assumes that Claudia's behavior led to her murder. There is no sympathy for the young woman who has been killed by a violent act, there is only judgment.

Mercedes Shirley as Mrs. Davidson

Reinforcing her priorities, Nancy states that she fells sorry for Linda, the baby, because "an experience like this could have a very serious psychological effect on her." Dennis has taken the elements of the short story and reshuffled them like a deck of cards: instead of another teacher planting the seed of this idea in Bob's head, it comes from his wife, a character invented for the TV show, much as Dennis essentially invented the character of George in "Mail-Order Prophet" and made him a key figure in that drama. Nancy tells Bob that Linda is 14 months old and will be talking soon. He takes out the trash and runs into Linda's mother, Mrs. Davidson, who has Linda in a baby carriage. Mrs. Davidson's husband is in the Army and is stationed in Germany, so she is home alone with the baby and she is frightened, not surprisingly, since a murder was committed in her living room! Like Nancy, she worries that subconscious damage to her daughter will manifest itself years later. Bob leans in to look at the baby and she begins to cry. He walks away, worried.

Mason comes home late from work, surrounded by shadows. It's Nancy's gym night again and he looks ill. The baby next door cried all through the prior night and the high-contrast lighting underlines Bob's inner turmoil. Nancy leaves him at home alone with a drink. He is worried that the baby is starting to talk and he looks out the window at the neighbors' house, where we see Mrs. Davidson putting the baby in a carriage on the screened-in back porch. Bob watches from behind a bush in his back yard and, when Mrs. Davidson disappears inside her house, he hops over the privet hedge and enters her porch. Does he plan to murder the child? He looks at Linda and she starts to cry, alerting her mother. Bob rushes out through the screen door and hides. His guilt and shame have begun to overwhelm him. He is not sleeping, he looks ill, he hides in the shadows. He runs home unseen.

Later that evening, Sgt. Wagner pays a visit. He is investigating the report of a prowler next door and jokes that "if this keeps up I'm going to have to have a talk with that kid." Wagner behaves strangely each time we see him, often chuckling and displaying little of the serious tone we would expect from a detective investigating a murder. In fact, Mrs. Davidson, the next door neighbor also behaves strangely, her speech overly dramatic when she talks to Mason in the back yard. Even his own wife exhibits strange behavior, seeming unusually cheerful although a young woman was murdered in the house next door. All three present a stark contrast to the behavior of Mason, who is consumed with guilt, fear and shame, having an internal struggle that he cannot share with anyone and which has begun to cause changes in his external appearance and behavior.

Katherine Warren

In the morning, a policewoman sits outside with baby Linda in a carriage. She tells Mason that Linda said her first word that morning and adds: "Once they start talking you can't keep them quiet." She leaves the baby briefly in Mason's care. The suspenseful music starts to play and we see a tight closeup of his face, similar to the one that we saw right before he killed Claudia. His eyes dart around as if he's looking for witnesses. Is the baby in danger? Is he getting close to committing another murder? We don't know for sure, as the scene dissolves to his classroom, where we see that another pretty student is sitting in the front row. She approaches him after class and he looks up and sees Claudia, like a Shakespearean ghost come to torment him. A look of horror crosses his face and the ghost of Claudia dissolves, leaving the new girl standing in front of him. Is he thinking that another affair could be in the offing? He shuts down the possibility by dismissing her brusquely, telling her that "I never give special help to one of my students."

Claudia's ghost

dissolves into . . .

Theodora Davitt as the new girl

The music reaches a crescendo. We see Mason walking home and looking lost. In this scene, as in the rest of this episode, the camera is mobile and there is fine lighting and a good use of low angle shots. Mason walks all the way to the police station, where he confesses to Claudia's murder.

Walking to the police station, a low angle shot

Inside the police station

"I killed Claudia Powell."

The show should end here, but Dennis was forced to tack on one more scene to utilize the twist ending from the story. Mrs. Davidson's husband comes home from his Army posting and they go into the house, where he looks at the baby and she cries. Mrs. Davidson explains that the baby cries every time a man comes near her. The scene fulfills a plot function and wraps up the business about the baby, but Dennis has transformed the story so completely into an investigation of Mason's guilt that the final scene seems unnecessary and detracts from the mood that has been established.

Mercedes Shirley and William Boyett

I was unable to find any other credits for Jeanne Barry, who wrote the short story, either in print or on screen, but I did find an obituary that seems to be hers. A woman named Jeanne Barry died in  2006 at age 87 in Chicago. She had been a reporter for two Chicago papers, The Daily Calumet and The Chicago Tribune, and she was also the Director of Public Relations for DePaul University. The obituary notes that she was a freelance writer of travel, fiction, poetry and TV. Was this the same Jeanne Barry who wrote "Eyewitness"? It seems quite possible.

Fortunately, the other people involved in this episode are easier to identify. The excellent direction is by Paul Henreid (1908-1992), the actor turned director who directed 29 episodes of the Hitchcock series. He had directed two films, one in 1952 and another in 1956, and acted in both. It appears likely that his first directing jobs where he was not also a featured actor were his work for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, beginning in the spring of 1957; "A Little Sleep" was the second of his shows to be broadcast and "Silent Witness" was the third.

It's interesting to note that "Silent Witness" was broadcast the week after "Heart of Gold," which was the first episode of the series to be based on a story by Henry Slesar, who would supplant Robert C. Dennis as the show's most frequent contributor of stories and scripts over the next four seasons.

The star of the show is Don Taylor (1920-1988), who plays Mason. He was in the Air Force in WWII and acted in films starting in 1943, including The Naked City (1948). He was on TV starting in 1954 and this was the only episode of the Hitchcock series in which he acted. In 1956, he had a career change and, like Paul Henreid, began to direct episodic TV, which kept him busy for the next 30 years, until his death. He directed seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including Henry Slesar's "The Right Kind of House." Among his other movies and TV shows as director were Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977), and two of the best episodes of Night Gallery, "The Messiah on Mott Street" and "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar." Taylor even wrote a few TV shows and a TV movie. He also had the good fortune to be married to Hazel Court from 1963 until his death.

Dolores Hart (1938- ) gives a strong, believable performance as Claudia. After an uncredited role in Forever Amber (1947), she had a supporting role in Loving You (1957), the first film to star Elvis Presley, and then she made "Silent Witness." She had a handful of TV and film credits over the next six years before leaving the business to become a Benedictine nun. She has been a nun at an abbey in Connecticut for over 50 years and she was the subject of an HBO documentary called "God is the Bigger Elvis." She also wrote an autobiography in 2013.

Nancy, Mason's wife, is portrayed by Pat Hitchcock, Alfred's daughter, in one of her ten appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. We last saw her in "The Belfry," as the schoolteacher who rejects Clint's advances.

Harry Bellaver (1905-1993) plays Sgt. Wagner. A veteran of stage, screen and television, he appeared on Alfred Hitchcock Presents twice but is best known as one of the policeman on Naked City, appearing in nearly every episode of the series, which ran from 1958 to 1963.

As Mrs. Davidson, Mercedes Shirley (1926-1999) gives an enthusiastic performance. William Boyett (1927-2004) appears in the last scene as her husband. The policewoman is played by Katherine Warren (1905-1965) and the pretty blonde student who tries and fails to get extra help from Professor Mason is played by Theodora Davitt.

"Silent Witness" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read the original short story here. The episode aired on CBS on Sunday, November 3, 1957. For a more irreverent look at this episode, click here. The website Genre Snaps has reviewed episodes from late in season one through season four from a lighthearted and entertaining perspective.

Sources:

Barry,Jeanne. "Eyewitness." Collier's. 16 July 1949. 42.

FictionMags Index. 17 Feb. 2016. <http://www.philsp.com/homeville/fmi/0start.htm>.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001.

Hart, Dolores. The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows. Ignatius Press, 2013. Accessed through Google Books on 17 Feb. 2016.
IMDb. IMDb.com. 17 Feb. 2016.

"In Memoriam - Jeanne Barry." DES News Updates. 1 Oct. 2010. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016. <http://desretirees.blogspot.com/2010/08/in-memoriam-jeanne-barry.html>.
"Silent Witness." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 3 Nov. 1957.


Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 17 Feb. 2016.


In two weeks: "The Diplomatic Corpse," starring Peter Lorre and George Peppard!

And Special Guest Host John Scoleri!

The Crypt of Terror #17
(April-May 1950)
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Death Must Come" ★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

"The Man Who Was Death" ★★
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Bill Fraccio

"The Corpse Nobody Knew" ★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by George Roussos

"Curse of the Full Moon!" ★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

HISTORY LESSON #1: The Crypt of Terror (like most EC titles) began life as another comic book; well, actually three different comics. First as International Comics (for five issues), then morphing into International Crime Patrol for a single issue, before downsizing to the easier-to-digest Crime Patrol for a further ten numbers. Legend has it that publisher Bill Gaines and editor Al Feldstein took notice of the horror titles at their local newsstands in 1949 and decided to give it a go. Crime Patrol #15 and #16 feature EC's first venture into horror stories (in fact, a few of them are hosted by The Crypt-Keeper and it can be argued that all 4 tales in #16 are horrific in theme) but The Crypt of Terror #17 is the first acknowledged EC horror title. You'd never know, based on the quality of the quartet included herein, that EC would soon take the comic world by storm. These are lukewarm imitations of some of the less-than-frightening fables found in the competition at the time and only one, "Death Must Come," features supernatural elements.

Executioner Edgar Bowman becomes so obsessed with his job as state executioner that he feels robbed when a spate of murder trials end in "Not Guilty" verdicts. Bowman takes the law into his own hands and begins executing those found innocent until a crew of clever cops catches him in the act. The finale sees Edgar being ushered to the electric chair, screaming and mewling like the prisoners he once executed himself. A decent read but, like "The Corpse Nobody Knew" and "Curse of the Full Moon," a story that could have easily been produced for the Crime Patrol title. Artist Bill Fraccio later teamed with inker Tony Tallarico (under the joint pseudonyms of Tony Williamson/Tony Williamsune) to contribute several stories to the Warren mags.


I never could force myself to become a Johnny Craig fan; his style and execution are first-rate, no denying, but they stuck out like a sore thumb when compared to Ingels, Davis, and Wood. Having said that, Craig's art is the best thing about "Curse of the Full Moon," a werewolf story that never actually features a werewolf. It's one of those tales where the murderer is under our noses the entire time and we know he's there. "The Corpse Nobody Knew" is an awful detective story and the less said the better. -Peter Enfantino

Jack: Maybe it's the fallout from reading too many issues of Ghosts and Unexpected, but I really enjoyed this comic! Four stories, 28 pages of comics, and art by Feldstein and Craig? Bring it on! I thought "Death Must Come" was the best story of the group. The art by Fraccio and Roussos looked like a holdover from the Golden Age to me, while Feldstein's and Craig's work seemed to point toward a New Trend. And I love the host!

Jose: I may be suffering from the same desert-mania as Jack, but CoT #17 is a refreshing breeze compared to some of the mind-numbing offerings from the other pre-coders I've been reading lately. I enjoyed the madly scientific twist on Dorian Gray in “Death Must Come,” and Fraccio’s art, which didn't wow me on my first reading of “The Man Who Was Death” many moons ago, has some pretty cool subtle touches that I never fully appreciated, such as how he shadows the executioner's bald head to look like a skull, though there is a funny bit where a plainclothes detective espousing a theory in one panel takes it up in the next as a totally different uniformed officer! “Corpse” is strictly standard second-tier detective stuff, nothing remarkable or indicative of EC’s subversiveness to come. And though we may have correct suspicions about the killer in “…Full Moon,” the revelation is handled effectively and is actually rather chilling for exposing the culprit as not a creature of myth but a psychopathic killer able to rend humans to bits. Definitely spookier than Lon Chaney Jr. in the Yorkie Terrier get-up.

John: Coming into this free of the years of comic-boarding torture my fellow comrades have endured, I'm more in line with Peter in my assessment of this initial batch of EC Horrors. And one thing I want to know--have the 'Crypt of Terror' tales from the preceding issues of Crime Patrol been reprinted? If so, I'm somewhat shocked that Peter the completist didn't have us kick off with those stories that ultimately led to the rebirth of EC. I can't bring myself to elevate any one story in this issue over the other, but my biggest disappointment (in terms of my lofty expectations not being met) had to be the near absence of the werewolf in "Curse of the Full Moon." These aren't the ground-breaking, no-holds barred EC Comics I've come to expect. But since this is just the beginning, it's only fair to cut them some slack.


The Vault of Horror #12
(April-May 1950)
Cover by Johnny Craig

"Portrait in Wax!" ★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

"The Werewolf Legend" ★
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"Horror in the Night" ★
Story by Al Feldstein (?)
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

"Terror Train" ★★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

After a terrific cover by Johnny Craig, we get what may be our first classic story in “Portrait in Wax!” Ah, Paris! It’s the mid-1930s and, on the Left Bank, that haven for struggling artists, live two roommates: Robert, an artistic genius who cares nothing for money, and Henry, who lacks talent but loves cash. Henry starts to sell Robert’s etchings as his own but when Robert finds out and threatens to ruin him, Henry throws acid in his roommate’s face and then kills him by dumping his body in a vat of acid.

Free to profit from his wrongdoing, Henry lives it up for the next few years, selling Robert’s etchings until he runs out. Just in the nick of time, he meets a brilliant sculptor and makes a proposal—Henry will sell his statues as if they are Henry’s and the sculptor will be allowed to work alone and his statues will be only of the recently dead. Henry’s life remains happy and prosperous until one day he drops a statute and discovers that it is really a corpse covered in wax.

Henry confronts the sculptor and punches him, only to discover that his face is wax as well and that he is really Robert, who did not die but rather planned an elaborate scheme to get revenge on Henry. Henry dies of a heart attack and soon we see that his is the final statue to be created by the sculptor.

Don’t think too hard about some of the plot points in Craig’s story, such as how Henry could think he was murdering Robert by dropping him in a vat of water, as the Vault-Keeper tells us in a final panel post-script, or how keeping Henry rich and famous constitutes revenge. Just enjoy the wonderful twists and turns and the great art. The story owes a debt to Mystery of the Wax Museum but it’s a great start to this series.

“The Werewolf Legend” is very similar to “Curse of the Full Moon!” from Crypt of Terror 17 (above) and has some confusing credits. Russ Cochran writes that it’s by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood (it’s signed at the bottom of the first page), while the Grand Comics Database points out that Bill Mason credits Gardner Fox as writer. I think it’s safe to assume that Fox didn’t draw it and Wood didn’t write it, so the only thing we can’t be sure of is the nature of Harrison’s involvement. My guess is that he penciled it and Wood inked it, since the art only resembles that of early ‘50s Wally Wood if you close your eyes and wish really hard.

“Horror in the Night” features some art by Kurtzman that reminded me of what we saw from the pen of Ramona Fradon at DC in the ‘70s. The story is nothing to write home about.


Finally, “Terror Train” by Feldstein is fun but includes a twist we’ll see again in our EC journey—that of the character who endures horror after horror only to be revealed as insane at the end.—Jack Seabrook

Jose: I believe this was the first pre-code horror comic book I read in its entirety, so of course it’s going to hold a deeply nostalgic place in my heart. The 14-year-old me would probably tell you that every story in VoH #12 was just dandy, and to a certain degree I think that still holds true. “Portrait in Wax” and “The Werewolf Legend” both recall the landscapes of Gothic horror cinema and literature, while “Horror in the Night” stands as one of the earliest examples of EC delivering the brutality. The theatrical staging of the tale (husband and wife in a hotel room with a ghostly chorus of one dreamer) keeps most of the actual violence off in the wings, but this coupled with Kurtzman’s art—which always looked like it would be better suited to more blackly comic yarns but hardly ever was in the horror titles—combine for truly disturbing effect. I remember being quite taken back by the devoutly non-supernatural terrors at the heart of the couple’s existence: insanity, the death of an infant child, suicide. Pretty hard-hitting stuff. “Terror Train” seems like a callback to the thrillers of old time radio, where wives were forever in peril of being done in by their calculating spouses. Feldstein’s script escalates quite nicely, from mild apprehension to pervasive paranoia to full-on nightmare with a train car full of corpses and death by premature burial. Yowza!

Peter: After reading the entirety of Vault of Horror #12, I feel like one of those traffic cops yelling at the crowd, “Move along. Nothing to see here!” What is on display is a variety of cliches and red herrings (the cursed descendant who’s not really a werewolf but the victim of an elaborate, evil plan; a woman who believes her husband is out to kill her and is actually an escaped inmate) no better than those found in the competition at the time (and one only has to read our “Dungeons of Doom” columns to know how prevalent these old plot hooks were). Fortunately, we’re all Monday morning quarterbacks on this journey and we know, based on the evidence, that Gaines and Co. were just finding their feet on the way to something magical. On a positive note, the art here is never less than eye-catching and, in some instances, quite fetching. Kurtzman’s quirky “camera angles” and panel layouts on “Terror Train” force you to turn pages despite a script tantamount to Sominex. In a rare turnabout, the adaptation of "Horror in the Night" for HBO's Tales from the Cryptis much better than the source material. Russell (Highlander) Mulcahy directs a script that pretty much jettisons quite a bit of the VoH story other than the Groundhog Day-like plot hook.

John: After complaining about the lack of werewolf in “Curse of the Full Moon!” from Crypt of Terror #17, "The Werewolf Legend" provides an example that one should be careful what they wish for. I found "Portrait in Wax" to be the most entertaining tale in this issue, perhaps thanks to the Dr. Phibes vibe of the final panels. Two issues in, and I'm still longing for the art and stories that I know will ultimately represent the best of the EC Comics tradition.

HISTORY LESSON #2: VoH continued its numbering from War Against Crime, one of the better “Pre-Trend” titles (at least of the handful I’ve read), a book aimed at taking a slice from Lev Gleason’s multi-million selling, ultra-violent Crime Does Not Pay, a veritable smorgasbord of rapists, murderers, and underworld gangsters that, along with EC, helped Fred Wertham give illustrations to his theories. Like Crypt of Terror, War Against Crime featured horror stories in its last two issues (“Buried Alive” and the awful “Mummy’s Curse,” both drawn by Al Feldstein), both advertised as "From The Vault of Horror!"
The Haunt of Fear #15
(May-June 1950)
Cover by Johnny Craig

"The Wall: A Psychological Study" ★★★
Script Uncredited (probably Johnny Craig)
Art by Johnny Craig

"House of Horror" ★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

"The Mad Magician" ★
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"The Thing in the Swamp!" ★★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

Haunt of Fear #15 has virtually the same lineup of creators in the same order as Vault of Horror #12 and, once again, Johnny Craig takes the prize for best story with the lead off tale, “The Wall,” subtitled, “A Psychological Study.” Neal Harper is a man with a problem. His wife Clara cares more for her new cat, Snooky, than she does for her husband! Tired of being sent out in the snow to fetch milk for the cat, Neal snaps and swings something (a fireplace poker?) at the cat, but he misses Snooky and accidentally kills Clara. As he thinks about how to dispose of the body, he spies a pile of bricks in the cellar and, before you can say Edgar Allan Poe, a new wall has appeared and behind it lays the body of Clara.

Neal can’t find Snooky and thinks he must have walled the cat up with his wife. After a night of fitful sleep, Neal awakens and hears the cat howling. The noise drives him crazy so he knocks out a single brick from the bottom row of the wall and reaches in to grab Snooky. Instead, he feels his hand being torn to pieces by an angry feline. A couple of the boys in blue appear and knock down the wall. Snooky also appears—the cat was busy having kittens and was not behind the wall after all. Unfortunately, Neal now has to explain about his wife’s corpse.

Yes, it’s derivative of Poe’s “The Black Cat” (and where do those cops come from, anyway?), but Craig’s art is brilliant, especially the layouts which, to my eye, owe a big debt to the sort of things Will Eisner had been doing in The Spirit for about the last five years. Neal has a Hitler mustache and haircut for no apparent reason, and I still can’t figure out what object he uses to kill Clara, but this is great work overall. It’s not easy to pick one or two panels to reproduce because there are so many good ones.

“House of Horror” at least has better Kurtzman art than “Horror in the Night,” but it’s a trite tale of a fraternity prank and a haunted house that ends without a resolution, kind of like a story from Ghosts at DC in the ‘70s.

“The Mad Magician” is standard fare with nice-looking art, but the idea of a magician who really saws people in half should have led to some more gruesome sights than those we’re treated to.

“The Thing in the Swamp!” should be better than it is, what with Feldstein spinning a yarn about a science experiment gone wrong and the swamp blob that resulted. As in “The Mad Magician,” the blob could be a lot more interesting.


Three EC comics into our study and so far Johnny Craig is beating the competition hands down!--Jack Seabrook

HISTORY LESSON #3: As with Crypt and Vault, Haunt continued numbering from a title that had nothing to do with the horror genre. The first four issues were devoted to the Laurel and Hardy-esque duo of Fat and Slat and then the title morphed quietly into Gunfighter (which saw 10 issues before giving way to Haunt).

Peter: I thought “The Wall” would be so much better than it was but, in the end, it was simply a Cliffs Notes version of “The Black Cat,” complete with an expository just in case we don’t get that Neal Harper is eaten up with guilt for murdering his wife and only imagines the cat’s howls. So much better, to me, was “House of Horror.” While Jack didn’t appreciate its vague climax, I applaud the fact that Feldstein and Kurtzman held back, letting us imagine what Wilton saw in his final moments. It’s become a cliche to say that what we don’t see is even more frightening than what’s shown but, in this case at least, that’s true. “Mad Magician” predates the cinematic potboiler starring Vincent Price by four years and contains a fabulous psycho who has no problem sawing men in half until he gets it just right but “Thing from the Swamp” is a stinker. Funny that, just three years later, EC will send up the whole swamp creature fad in Mad #5 and hit on all the dopey notes present here.


Jose: Adaptations of well-worn material can still succeed with the right amount of originality and panache, and Craig’s version of “The Black Cat” is innovative enough in the manner in which the art reflects the psychological states of its characters to be powerful in its own right. While I didn’t and still don’t consider “House of Horror” a Great Work of Art, its conclusion is unsettling in the restraint it demonstrates by not disclosing just what it was that snatched those poor fraternity pledges from this Earth and left the group’s leader a gibbering wreck. It has the ring of a classic urban legend, which is fitting as EC sourced this tale from the “Trail of the Tingling Spine” chapter in Bennett Cerf’s Try and Stop Me. “The Mad Magician,” for as neat as its gloomy seaside castle and Vincent Price-lookalike villain are, doesn’t quite do the trick for me. And call me crazy, but I have a small soft spot for ol’ Blobby from “The Thing in the Swamp.” Sure, maybe the story moves as fast as molasses in winter, but the sequence detailing the creature’s birth in the mucky swamp and its progressively elevating diet fulfilled some inner need in me to witness a ravenous protoplasm clean the slate of nature. Go figure.

John: While I forgive "The Wall" for taking POE-tic license with "The Black Cat," I personally just didn't enjoy the tale as much as my fellow readers. My interest was piqued when I turned the page to "The Mad Magician"--the first tale whose art actually impressed me, though I found the overall tale lackluster. Worst of all, I was shocked to get to the last panel and read about (rather than see) our villain cut in two! This isn't the stuff of legend, that's for sure. I had higher hopes for "The Thing in the Swamp," but that's my fault for expecting more Heap/Swamp Thing/Man-Thing than Blob.
Weird Fantasy #13
(May-June 1950)
Cover by Al Feldstein

"Am I Man or Machine?"★
Story by Al Feldstein (?)
Art by Al Feldstein

"Only Time Will Tell" ★★★★
Story by Al Feldstein and William Gaines
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"The Men of Tomorrow" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein (?)
Art by Jack Kamen

". . . Trip Into the Unknown" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein (?) or Harvey Kurtzman (?)
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

WF didn’t exactly get off to an auspicious debut with a story called “Am I Man Or Machine?” written and drawn by Al Feldstein (with a little co-authoring by Gaines), inspired by the disembodied brain stories that were the rage at the time (Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan's Brain being the most famous example). Roger Harvey shows up at the door of his fiance Diane, who’s a little shocked to see him since he was killed in a car crash two years before. Roger explains that, though his body was killed in the accident, his brain was kept alive by two brilliant scientists in a jar of liquid.  With amazing technologies, the two doctors manage to create a plastic body for Harvey’s brain (one that is, amazingly, so lifelike no one notices Harvey looks like a life-size G.I. Joe doll) and teach him how to use it. When Roger finishes his story, Diane sighs and admits that two years was a long wait and she went off looking for love elsewhere. Though she’s married, she offers to dump her husband and run away with Roger. Realizing that he can’t give her the love she’ll need, he instead tells Diane that the whole story was an initiation prank and, one would think, heads off to find a window mannequin he can call his own. Of course, my warped brain wants to see the alternate ending where Roger takes Diane up on her offer and shows her just what this plastic body can do!

"Am I Man or Machine?"

In the superlative "Only Time Will Tell," Steve Dorner is working on a time travel machine but just can’t seem to get it right. One day, a hole opens in his wall, a man steps through and asks Steve to accompany him through the portal to the future where he’s working on a similar gadget. Evidently, Steve knows something Mr. Future doesn’t. Steve helps the man and then ducks back through the portal, clutching half of the blueprint for Mr. Future’s machine. Having only half of the blueprint, Steve is only able to get his portal to semi-work. After decades of work, Steve finally cracks the code, but needs some assistance. Realizing that the only man who knows enough about the portal to help is himself, he steps into his time tunnel and goes back twenty years to enlist the aid of...Steve Dorner. When the big picture finally hits Steve, he’s left to ponder the circle he’s eternally trapped in. Fabulous time travel tale that raises lots of complicated and fun questions. As the scientist himself wonders about the half of the blueprint he has in his possession after twenty years:

“It matches perfectly with the half that was just left here. That means that the half of the blue print which my younger self just tore off and took back with him, and THIS HALF that I have here - which I took from myself twenty years ago - are the same piece. Therefore, I only managed to build this machine with the aid of the half of the diagram that I took from myself! But who originally drew the half that I stole, copied and later put in the drawer?”

Who indeed?

"Only Time Will Tell"

Harry Harrison, the author of “Only Time Will Tell,” later became a major force in science fiction, authoring hundreds of novels and short stories, including four very popular SF series: The Stainless Steel Rat, the Deathworld trilogy, Bill the Galactic Hero (a hilarious spoof of SF that later became a comic book series), and  Eden (intelligent dinosaurs). Harrison also wrote Make Room, Make Room! (1966), the basis for the film Soylent Green (1973).

A trio of explorers stumble across the legendary Kador Valley in the lackluster "The Men of Tomorrow." The scientists discover that the villagers are mute but communicate through telepathy. Americans being Americans, the boys can't leave well enough alone and begin teaching the primitives how to speak, an act which somehow eliminates their telepathic powers. This creates a rift between those who can talk and those who can't and, very soon, our "heroes" discover that the ancient race has discovered atomic power and how best to use it. The earliest example of an EC "preachy,""The Men of Tomorrow" sinks under the weight of its huge gobs of expository dialogue and its heavy-handed message. Teaching the savages to speak somehow introduces them to the Western culture's yen for "lying and deceit and corruption!" Obviously, the bomb was their idea long before "we" corrupted them. Of all the EC artists, Jack Kamen is the blandest and most out of place in this stellar bullpen, lacking anything approaching style or flair. His art just sits there. Mind you, "Men of..." is probably not the best example of Kamen's work since several of the panels (such as the hilariously crowded chase scene to the left) have so much verbiage, the drawings seem almost an afterthought.

"The Men of Tomorrow"

Professor Oppenheim and his small crew hop aboard a rocket ship and take a "...Trip into the Unknown, " searching for the distant Planet X, a world thought to have the same atmosphere as home. When the team land on "X", they find a desolate, scarred landscape, the result of some sort of catastrophe, and are attacked by "hostile creatures." The crew are able to make it back to their ship and rocket out of the dangerous situation. While heading home, they read some of the newspapers they've taken, detailing the last days of civilization on earth. For the entire story, of course, we're led to believe that these are earthlings searching for some nirvana in space rather than an alien scouting party come to our world but if you re-read the entire tale you realize that the story's writer (who may be either Al Feldstein or artist Harvey Kurtzman) never really cheats or misleads us. It's a fun Wham-O moment that will be tweaked and re-presented a few more times over the life of the EC line. Harvey Kurtzman's art is fabulous, cartoony but not amateurish, and you can see his storytelling skills blossoming. In a few months, Kurtzman will revolutionize war comics before doing the same to funny book humor. -Peter Enfantino


Jack: I loved “Am I Man or Machine?” It’s a great story with the best art this month (so far) from Al Feldstein and a moving story. Like the other three tales in this issue, it’s science fiction, not fantasy. Science fiction was looked down upon in 1950 and perhaps Gaines called the comic Weird Fantasy to try to avoid the negative connotations of the term science fiction. “Only Time Will Tell” is a great story as well, with hints of the Wally Wood we’ll come to love and a narrative that makes this a comic for adults—or at least mature kids. “The Men of Tomorrow” is so wordy that it’s almost a spoof and the heavy-handed tone is one we’ll see again. “ . . . Trip Into the Unknown” features decent art but was anyone surprised that the planet was Earth? I don’t think this was a new twist even in 1950.

Jose: The first issue of Weird Fantasy certainly isn’t a startling debut as far as the stories are concerned, but the art from Feldstein, Wood, Kamen, and Kurtzman is certainly pretty to look at and interesting in how diverse they are from one another. The Gemstone reprints definitely complement the illustrations nicely, with crystal-clear reproductions and a vibrant color palette that pops off the page, as can be seen in the panel grabs. I agree with Jack that “Am I Man or Machine?” has some merit to it; though the laboratory scenes are a little heavy on the pseudo-scientific exposition, the script hedges into some darkly philosophical territory when Roger encounters an empty—and by extension, godless—universe upon his moment of death. Can I admit here that I was left scratching my head during “Only Time Will Tell”? I don’t think it was the fault of the script at all, but for some reason I got lost amidst all the paradoxical ruminations. The other two stories are nowhere near as intriguing. “The Men of Tomorrow” reads like an action-starved travelogue before it decides to pep things up with an explosion (it doesn’t help). And I would like to think that “…Trip Into the Unknown” was Gaines’ and Feldstein’s way of saying "Well, we got the ‘It was Earth the whole time’ chestnut done and over with it…" but as Harry Harrison would say, only time will tell us for sure.

John: When I see someone step out of a time portal in a time-travel story (as in "Only Time Will Tell"), it's basically understood that said person is the same person we've been following, only older/younger. It's probably not fair to judge these stories by their predictability today, but I have a hunch we haven't read our last tale that will have been telegraphed from the first page. The trick is how captivating the art and story is in the intervening pages...

HISTORY LESSON #4: No one even turned their head when EC Comics’ Moon Girl became A Moon, A Girl... Romance with its ninth issue in 1949 and, if we’re to believe William M. Gaines, EC’s publisher, not many more noticed when that title was dropped for the catchier Weird Fantasy in 1950. Moon Girl featured the title super heroine created by Sheldon Moldoff and written by Gardner Fox, while A Moon, A Girl... was stocked with love stories with titles like “I Was Jilted and Had No Desire to Live” (written by Al Feldstein), “I Thought I Loved My Boss” (art by Wally Wood), and “Hearts Along the Ski Trail” (also by Wood).

Moon Girl’s real claim to fame is that it featured EC’s first horror story, “Zombie Terror” in issue 5 (by Johnny Craig). So, lost in a sea of romance titles, A Moon, A Girl... gives way to EC’s first science fiction anthology title (well, technically it’s tied for first since the premiere issue of Weird Science appeared the same month).

 Weird Science #12
(May-June 1950)
Cover by Al Feldstein

"Lost in the Microcosm" ★★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

"Dream of Doom" ★★
Story by Harry Harrison (?)
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"Experiment . . . in Death" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen

"'Things' from Outer Space" ★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

Lab assistant Karl, visibly shaken, relates his tale of incomprehensible woe to a psychiatrist. It all began in the workshop of the brilliant Professor Einstadt, a genius who discovered a chemical compound that, once administered to a test subject in the form of a breezy coat of pressurized gas, could shrink any object down to microscopic level. But here’s the kicker: the subject is doomed to shrink to ever-tinier proportions indefinitely. Too bad that Karl, inexperienced in the maintenance of the professor’s equipment, accidentally douses himself in the mist. Einstadt is horrified to find his shrunken assistant upon his return and, seeing no other way to help him, applies the gas to a revolver so that Karl may defend himself and, if necessary, take his own life.

Soon Karl has sunken into the sweat glands of the professor’s hands with no time to consider his incredible plight as he’s attacked by hungry corpuscles. And so it goes, Karl shrinking and shrinking all the way to subatomic levels, discovering universes hidden within the cells of the professor’s being and the galaxies within those. Karl attempts to land himself on nearby planets and beseech help, but when he isn’t being understood by the indigenous peoples he is inadvertently bringing destruction to their world. Finally reaching a realm where his language is understood, Karl laments to the psychiatrist that even the doctor’s ignorant world is ill-prepared to find a solution for his malady. Shrinking from sight, Karl leaves the mystified therapist pondering the possibility of there being worlds within Earth and civilizations more advanced than that of the United States in which he lives.


While readers of science fiction will undoubtedly be reminded of Richard Matheson’s seminal The Incredible Shrinking Man, “Lost in the Microcosm” takes the main adventure of that story and runs with it well past the conclusion of Matheson’s novel. Karl’s wonder and godlike playfulness at discovering the swirling cosmos within cells within cells is palpable through Kurtzman’s art, with compositions that range from the absurd (Karl wiping out a city with a tsunami induced by his sneezing) to the awe-inspiring (the wordless panels of Karl staring into starry space and kneeling on a planet’s horizon like a felled Colossus). It’s positively mind-expanding, one of the trippiest excursions into the land of graphic speculative fiction ever committed to print.

The Harry Harrison-scripted and drawn (with inks from Wally Wood) “Dream of Doom” can’t help but suffer, not only from its old hash storyline but from the fact that it seems like a glaring rip-off when placed right next to “…Microcosm.” The narrator here is basically going through the exact same thing as Karl, with subatomic hijinks here substituted with a mixed-up river of dreams. There’s no sense of discovery or change in “Dream of Doom” though; our benighted hero simply goes from one fantasy to the next ad infinitum, never changing his course or doing anything besides saying “Ahh, surely this must be reality!” Keep your eyes peeled for comics publisher “Gill Baines”!

“Experiment in Death” is pretty ho-hum by any measurement though. Scientists Henry and Carlton (no relation) are working on developing sound waves that can break air bubbles that develop in the bloodstream and effectively bring people back from clinical death. But the enticement of peeking behind the dark veil becomes too much for Carlton to resist…

Peter mentions Kamen’s stiff, cookie-cutter art above and, while I think ol’ Jack had his chance to shine in different assignments, this is certainly one of his more by-the-numbers pieces. Hilariously, Feldstein insists on having the two scientists address each other by name in almost every panel, as if it were important to keep reminding us what great chums they are. The turnabout at the tale’s conclusion is pretty neat, predating Flowers for Algernon in its own way, as assistant Henry discovers that any subject who crosses over death’s threshold for fifteen minutes is sure to return to life a raving maniac. The individual pieces of the story show some promise, but when cobbled together I can’t help but feel that there’s some integral spark missing from this experiment.

The issue ends on a pretty low note with Feldstein’s contribution, “ ‘Things’ from Outer Space.” (What’s with those quotes on “things,” by the way? At no point does any character start stuttering about “Them things what came from the spaceship!” or some such nonsense.) Dr. Lane motors out to a newly-formed crater with Miss Parker in tow where they discover a strange, processed metal that doesn’t contain a single element known to man. Spoiler alert: it’s from a ship belonging to aliens with eyes in their foreheads. The doc is captured, Miss Parker escapes, authorities of law enforcement and government are notified, and Miss Parker is promptly sent to an asylum for spouting her lunatic “theories.” The whole delivery feels so staged and arbitrary that the tale never even becomes a mildly interesting potboiler, and it’s yet another of E.C.’s SF tales that suffers from those damn overinflated word balloons. -Jose Cruz


Jack: This is a great comic but it’s the weakest of the five we read for this post. Why do all of the stories seem familiar? Were these ideas ones that had been explored in science fiction pulps prior to 1950? They certainly went on to be the subject of books, movies and TV shows in the decades that followed. Did Richard Matheson read “Lost in the Microcosm”? Did Rod Serling read “Dream of Doom” and “ 'Things' From Outer Space”? I doubt it, but the themes and images are very familiar to those of us who grew up watching The Twilight Zone! Of the four stories in this issue, I liked “Experiment . . . in Death” best because I did not know what was coming next.

John: As the resident bare•bones Matheson-junkie, I found "Lost in the Microcosm" particularly interesting. The story itself seems to take a page out of H.G. Wells'The Time Machine as the story starts off with a disheveled Karl telling his story to another professor. While it does predate The Shrinking Man by 6 years, as fellow prof Jose points out, Matheson's novel ends where this story really takes off. I did find it amusing that Professor Einstadt's first instinct was to offer Karl a revolver (which we see him fire six times in the course of the story... I was waiting to see if he'd end up using more bullets than would have been in the gun!). And it was a particularly creepy turn to have Karl end up in the Professor's pores. I guess if you spent enough time looking through a microscope, you might feel comfortable facing blood cells as big as you. All in all a fun exercise exploring the nature of the universe.

HISTORY LESSON #5: Three titles gave life to Weird Science: Happy Houlihans (2 issues), Saddle Justice (6), and Saddle Romance (3). I’d love to read a book focusing on all the EC “Pre-Trend” titles like those listed but I sure wouldn’t want to write it, based on the few issues I’ve read.

Peter: The problem I have with the early issues of Weird Science (and, to a lesser extent, Weird Fantasy) is that many of the stories included within its covers feel like they’ve been written by someone who was just gifted a twenty-volume set of How The Universe Works. Eventually, Gaines and his staff of writers will grow out of that and remember that it’s the plot that drives these little fables and not the gizmos. “Lost in a Microcosm” and “Dream of Death” are pretty much the same story (man shrinks and keeps seeing new worlds vs. man keeps falling asleep and waking up in new situations) but “Dream” is a bit more entertaining thanks to Wally and it introduces a gimmick that will get a lot of mileage in the EC funny books: the artist and writer as character. “‘Things” is a predictable bit of fluff but  “Experiment… in Death” has a great plot hook that predates Stephen King’sPet Sematary by three decades. With a genuinely nasty climax, “Experiment” is easily the best story in the first issue.

Next Week in Star Spangled DC War Stories Gentleman Gene Does It Again!

And, in two weeks... 20 More Frightening Fables!

The DC War Comics 1959-1976 by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Andru & Esposito

 Star Spangled War Stories 121

"The Killer of Dinosaur Alley!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito

"Wanted: 4 Tiger Tanks"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Gene Colan

Peter: As a cop, Stoner tried his best to uphold the law but his brother, Manny, the black sheep of the family, is a honcho in the mob and a murderer to boot. When Stoner witnesses Manny perform a rub-out on a rival gangster, he swears he'll bring his sibling to justice no matter what. On the way to "the death house," the train they're riding derails and Manny escapes, leading Stoner's colleagues to cry "foul." To escape the derision, Stoner enlists and demands a place in the Suicide Squad, a WWII elite team designed exclusively for missions "no one comes back from." When an American sub is gobbled up by an unknown force, Stoner parachutes down to the spot to investigate and finds a giant crayfish has the sub in its claws. With the help of a frogman, Stoner manages to blow the big little lobster into shrimp cocktail but the biggest shock of the day comes when the two men re-board the vessel and the frogman unmasks to reveal (go figure!!!!) ... fugitive Manny, now known to his C.O. as Bill Anderson! What are the chances? Manny reveals to his bro that he's decided to turn over a new leaf and do good for the world but Stoner assures the thug that the moment the war ends, he'll fry. The brothers are assigned to check out a nearby island to make sure it's dino-free. As we expect, it's not, and Manny pays the ultimate sacrifice for a life of evil and general bad manners during an attack by a giant from the prehistoric stone age. Stoner reflects on life, happy he was able to see his big brother redeem himself before becoming dino-chow.


Bob Kanigher offers up yet another riff on the "two guys who hate each other on an island full of dinos" with "The Killer of Dinosaur Alley"; yep, it's a bit hackneyed, but the story is entertaining at times. Nice to see Bob at last acknowledging that the worst kept secret in World War II was that the Pacific was stinking with prehistoric nightmares when Stoner reflects on the "'section B reports... about a dinosaur age waking up on uncharted islands." I suspect Kanigher may be leading up to breaking open the War That Time Forgot a little more to initiate some new plot lines. "Wanted: 4 Tiger Tanks" delivers with its gorgeous art from Gentleman Gene Colan but, all through the tale, I kept wishing for some kind of magical wand that would erase all the captions and word balloons. Four brothers in the same tank squad. Oh, and they all played football in college. Where have I heard that one before?

Colan makes it all okay!

Jack: Are we supposed to take from "The Killer of Dinosaur Alley!" that the Suicide Squad is made up of men so miserable that they don't care if they live or die? That seems to fit about half of the members we've seen so far--the ones who feel guilty about something that happened in civilian life. But what about the other half? The bit where Manny escapes due to a train crash en route to the death house is a clear reference to The Fugitive, which premiered on TV in September 1963 but which really took off in popularity in season two, when this story was written. Having one brother be a cop and the other a gangster also recalls Warner Bros. crime films like Angels With Dirty Faces. Kanigher was pulling from lots of sources to keep coming up with plots month after month.

Kubert

Our Army at War 156

"The Human Tank Trap!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Penny in the Slot!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jack Abel

Jack: Easy Co.’s newest member wanted to join the fighting men but had to settle for the role of medic because he’s near-sighted. He has studied everything about Sgt. Rock’s company, though, and knows the history of the heroic healers who came before him. Apple-Cheek Adams, Easy’s first medic, was killed during Easy’s first beach assault after he dragged a boatload of wounded men ashore. Tall Pete was another Easy Co. medic; he dove on a mortar and lost his life saving the wounded men he had helped. The new medic, only known as “the chick,” flubs his first few combat experiences. Yet when the chips are down, he brings back a wounded man under heavy fire. Sgt. Rock is so impressed that he promotes the medic to combat infantry and hands him a bazooka, which the chick uses to destroy a Nazi tank before breathing his last and joining the long line of Easy Co. medics to die in the line of duty.

For most of its length, "The Human Tank Trap!" follows a familiar Kanigher formula, where a new member of Easy Co. is introduced, then scenes of current battle are interspersed with flashbacks that relate to the present activity. As such, it’s nothing new, but the conclusion, where the chick demonstrates his fitness for combat and loses his life in the process, reaches an emotional peak that is not present in the rest of the tale.

by Jack Seabrook

According to the onscreen credit, Robert C. Dennis's teleplay for "The Diplomatic Corpse" is based on a story by Alec Coppel, a writer who was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1907. He moved to England in 1927 and his first play was produced in 1935. In 1937, he had a hit on the London stage with I Killed the Count, which was later adapted for the only multi-episode story of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, airing over a three-week span in March 1957. The play had been performed in the U.S. on Broadway in 1942, though Coppel returned to Australia during WWII. He continued to write plays, as well as novels and screenplays--his screenplay for The Captain's Paradise (1953) was nominated for an Academy Award.

View of the mission from Vertigo

Moving to Hollywood in 1954, Coppel wrote teleplays and screenplays, including some uncredited rewrites on Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief (1954). He worked closely with Hitchcock in 1956 and 1957 on the script for Vertigo (1958), which was filmed in the fall of 1957, the same period in which "The Diplomatic Corpse" was filmed. Early in the episode, the main characters visit a Spanish mission in southern California; Vertigo also featured a Spanish mission prominently. It may well be the same mission, in San Juan Bautista--Hitchcock added the high tower with a matte shot for the film.

Coppel continued to write novels, screenplays, teleplays, stage plays, and radio plays for another 15 years until his death in 1972. "The Diplomatic Corpse" does not appear to be based on any published short story. It is possible that Coppel pitched the story as an idea to Hitchcock or Joan Harrison while he was working on Vertigo. Robert C. Dennis's teleplay is in the Broadcasting Collection of the American Radio Archives; it is dated May 1, 1957, with a last revision date of October 4, 1957. The episode aired on December 8, 1957.

The mission as seen in "The Diplomatic Corpse"

"The Diplomatic Corpse" opens with a shot of a car driving along a California highway, then moves inside the car,where rear projection shots continue the journey. Traveling together are three people: Evan Wallace, a young architect, Janet, his wife, born in England but now an American citizen, and Janet's aunt, who expresses her displeasure with the scenery and cannot understand why Janet left England for California. They stop at a Spanish mission about 60 miles from Tijuana and the aunt is unimpressed when Evan remarks that the building is over 200 years old; she responds that Westminster Abbey is over 900 years old. The show was filmed in a studio and the scenes at the mission are also done with rear projection.

Isobel Elsom as Janet's aunt

Janet's aunt announces that she wants to go to Mexico and, after some argument about the rules governing border crossings, Evan agrees to take her. The three cross the border as the aunt naps in the back seat. Arriving in Tijuana, Evan and Janet try to wake her up, only to discover that she has died. At this point in the show, the music cues make it clear that it is a comedy. "The Diplomatic Corpse" is one of those stories where characters do not go to the police when it would make sense to do so and, as a result, their problems mount. Evan and Janet cover the body with Janet's coat and enter the Cantina El Toro; there, Evan reveals that: "She was an old tyrant. We put up with her crazy whims for only one reason." Janet explains that, as the aunt's only relative, she stands to inherit 30,000 pounds.

George Peppard as Evan

When Evan and Janet come out of the cantina, they discover that their car has been stolen, the corpse along with it. Evan refuses to call the police because he fears that they will be accused of smuggling a corpse into Mexico. The idea of simply telling the truth does not seem to enter his head, but then doing so would not allow the plot to unfold. He suggests hiring a private detective and they are next seen in the office of Tomas Salgado, who rightly assumes that they are in trouble. Evan and Janet tell him that their car was stolen but do not mention the corpse in the back seat. Salgado asks if "the car she is hot" and whether they would object to him notifying the police. He recommends that they check into a local hotel and charges them $20 in advance for his services.

Peter Lorre as Salgado

Salgado is the stereotypical foreigner taking advantage of wealthy American tourists. Evan and Janet check into a hotel and soon the police knock on the door. They have found the missing car and Evan expects the worst, but the lighthearted music cues telegraph to the viewer that there is nothing to worry about. Evan walks gloomily out to inspect the car but, when he looks inside, the body is gone. It seems that a young man took the car for a joy ride. But where is the body? Janet wants to go home but Evan explains that they need her aunt's body in order to prove that she is dead and collect the inheritance.

Mary Scott as Janet

Back at the cantina, they find Salgado napping and wake him; he cannot understand why they are not satisfied with the service he has rendered. They explain about the missing body and his face lights up at the suggestion of "Kidnapping!" or "Murder!" but he is disappointed to learn the truth. Charging another $40 in advance, Salgado soon locates the car thief but tells Evan and Janet that he needs another $10 to get him out and learn what happened to the body because "freedom will loosen his tongue." Evan and Janet join Salgado in the cantina, where they meet Rafael, a teenage boy who speaks no English. He admits to having stolen the car but says that it was empty when he found it.

Resigned to going home without the corpse and down to their last $22, Evan and Janet sit dejectedly in their hotel room when Salado arrives and announces that Rafael had found their abandoned car in front of a funeral home, where Janet's aunt's body now lies. He takes the last of their cash and promises to make the arrangements to send the body back to America. Evan and Janet later watch as the hearse passes safely through customs.

In the final scene, they are back in the U.S., waiting in an ante room until a doctor calls them in to a room where a coffin lies. The doctor tells Evan that death was due to natural causes, but when Evan looks at the body in the box, he sees the corpse of an elderly Mexican man where his aunt's body should be. "We'll have to go back to Mexico!" he says. "I'm gonna murder that crook, Salgado!"

Of course, "The Diplomatic Corpse" is a comedy of the sort that works perfectly on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The idea of a comedy involving an inconvenient dead body had been explored by Hitchcock in The Trouble With Harry (1955) and this episode of the TV series shares the same irreverent tone in its approach to a problematic corpse. The program is directed by Paul Henreid (1908-1992), the actor-turned-director who directed the prior episode scripted by Robert C. Dennis, "Silent Witness." Here, Henreid does his best to evoke the heat and discomfort of Tijuana, mainly through some shots from high above the hotel room that allow us to see the ceiling fan above Evan and Janet's heads, and also through some bits of business where a long piece of flypaper hangs from above in the middle of a scene.

The highlight of the show is Peter Lorre's performance as Salgado. He is delightfully enthusiastic and commands the screen every time he appears. In one funny moment that looks ad libbed, he searches in his pocket for something and pulls out a pair of handcuffs, shrugging and muttering, "Tools of my trade." Lorre was born in 1904 in Austria-Hungary and appeared in many great films in his long career, including Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Secret Agent (1936). He was in two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the other was "Man From the South," one of the best of the series. It may seem odd to have an actor of central European heritage playing a Mexican character, but Lorre often played against ethnic type; he was the Asian detective Mr. Moto in a series of films and, in "Man From the South," his character is Hispanic.

George Peppard (1928-1994) plays Evan; he was well-known during a career that lasted over 40 years, but his most sustained exposure came from the 1980s TV series The A-Team (1983-1987). This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

Playing the role of his wife Janet is Mary Scott (1921-2009), who was not English after all. Born in Los Angeles, she appeared in movies beginning in 1942 and on TV beginning in 1951. She is best remembered today for her roles in eight episodes of the Hitchcock TV show. In the late 1940s, she was on Broadway in a production of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra when she met the English actor Cedric Hardwicke; she got pregnant and he divorced his wife. Hardwicke and Scott wed in 1950, when he was 57 years old and she was only 29. She later wrote an autobiography called Nobody Ever Accused Me of Being a 'Lady' and there is an interesting obituary here.

Janet's aunt, who is never given a name, is played by the English actress Isobel Elsom (1893-1981); perhaps the fact that she was English is why Janet's character had to be English as well, even though Mary Scott was from California. Elsom was a veteran of stage, film and TV, who appeared onscreen from 1915 to 1964, including roles in 1947 in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux and Hitchcock's The Paradine Case. She was on TV from 1950 to 1965 and appeared five times on the Hitchcock show, including "Back for Christmas" and "Final Vow."

Peter Lorre was born In Austria-Hungary and plays a Mexican. Mary Scott was born in California and plays an English woman. It's fitting that John Verros (1905-1996), who plays the police chief, was not Mexican, either--he was born in Greece.

"The Diplomatic Corpse" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read another assessment of the episode here.

Sources:

"Aust Lit--Alec Coppel."<www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/A46221>. Accessed 24 Feb. 2016.

Berard, Jeanette and Klaudia Englund, comps. Television Series and Specials Scripts: 1946-1992. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2009. 12.
"The Diplomatic Corpse." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 8 Dec. 1957.

Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Churchville, MD: OTR Pub., 2001.

IMDb. IMDb.com. 24 Feb. 2016.

McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. NY: Regan Books, 2003. 541-560.
Vagg, Stephen. "Alec Coppel: Australian Playwright and Survivor."Australasian Drama Studies 56 (April 2010): 219-232.

Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 24 Feb. 2016.

In two weeks: "The Deadly," with Phyllis Thaxter and Lee Philips!

Craig

The Crypt of Terror #18
(June-July 1950)

"The Maestro's Hand!" ★★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

"The Living Corpse" ★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Wally Wood

"Madness at Manderville" ★
Story by Ivan Klapper (?)
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

"Mute Witness to Murder!" ★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

Admiring the gorgeous sky and stars one night, Pam witnesses her neighbor murder his wife and the shock leaves her mute. When her husband discovers his wife's malady, he calls Dr. Bask to examine her. Unfortunately, for Pam, Dr. Bask is her murdering neighbor! Suspicious of the woman's sudden handicap, Bask has her committed, explaining to Pam's husband that some sudden shock has left the woman a violent psychopath. Trussed up in a straitjacket and speechless, Pam can't get her story told and, very soon after, she gets really bad news: knowing that Pam's speech will eventually return, Bask has scheduled brain surgery and tells Pam there will be an unfortunate slip of the scalpel. That night, Pam discovers that her voice has returned but she keeps mum. The next day, Bask comes into his patient's room to lead her to the operation and, as he undoes her truss, Pam beats him furiously. The strain is too much for the doctor's weak heart and he collapses. As he is dying, he discovers that his intended victim's voice has returned and pleads for Pam to tell an orderly he needs help. Pam answers in the negative and, instead, watches him die.

Voyeurism isn't played up as much in "Mute Witness to Murder" as it would be in Hitchcock's Rear Window (which hit screens four years after this story) but it's hinted at. Pamela wouldn't have been involved in this madness if she had simply obeyed her husband and retired to bed rather than spy on the domestic squabble-turned-murder across the alleyway. The hook is a bit contrived, I'll admit. Of all the doctors to call, it would have to be the murderer, wouldn't it? More powerful is the climax where Pam eschews "the moral thing to do," and ignores Bask's pleas for help. At one point, Bask cries "But... you can't just let... me die! Save me... please..." and Pam answers him with a cold, sharp "No." Johnny Craig, like Jack Kamen, can have an almost boring sameness to his work (his panel design is anything but startling) but no one can deny that he draws a great dame. Pam was played by Patricia Clarkson in the second season episode of Tales from the Crypt (HBO, 1990) rendered almost unwatchable by a hammy performance by Richard Thomas (as Dr. "Trask") and an awful score by Jan (Miami Vice) Hammer. The only aspect of the script that improves on the original story is the role of Pam's husband (Reed Birney), who actually shows interest in his wife's condition and questions whether she should be in a mental hospital.

"The Maestro's Hand"

"The Maestro's Hand" draws more than a little inspiration from The Beast With Five Fingers (1946) and its finale is predictable but Al Feldstein's art is a hoot, especially Dr. Hellman's swirly eyes. It's no wonder the gorgeous Virginia went looking elsewhere for love and satisfaction, even if she did wind up with a greasy piano player who looks like Robert Goulet. "The Living Corpse" and "Madness at Manderville" are both skippable but for Wally Wood's art (still in an almost cocoon-like state at this point) on "Corpse." -Peter 

Early Wood just doesn't give us wood.

"Manderville"

Jose: “Mute Witness to Murder” is clearly the strongest story here, even if it does lift its basic premise from the 1946 film Shock, starring none other than Vincent Price as the dastardly doctor. While he certainly doesn’t reach the Gothic heights of Graham Ingels or the moribund caricatures of Jack Davis, Johnny Craig was always a great stylist, in my mind, and the fact that he was a double threat writer-and-artist was certainly no small feat. His renderings of Dr. Bask are especially unnerving; the reptilian smiles and smugness Craig captures in the character makes him feel more genuinely dangerous than any number of ghouls or witches. The finale is a master class in finely-wrought tension. I love Feldstein’s Disney Witch-looking Crypt-Keeper that opens up “The Maestro’s Hand.” Perhaps I’m just full of soft spots (see my love for the “Thing in the Swamp” blob from the previous post), but one of my endearing loves is for the ambulatory hand story. It’s such an old-fashioned conceit, the human appendage turned into a spidery monster with a mind of its own, that I can’t help but be tickled every time I encounter it. Sure, it has a cop-out ending, but it still gets an “A” for effort. This won’t be the last time Feldstein resorts to his swirly-spectacles look, and like Peter I just adore it. (Who else here has picked up on ol’ Al’s trademark hypno-circles that crop up in his work?) “Madness at Manderville” is way more insufferably leaden and tin-eared than I remember it from my youth; a very pale carbon copy of the themes that Kurtzman put to better use in “Horror in the Night” from last post’s Vault of Horror #12. And while “The Living Corpse” is another example from the school of “mystery stories that aren’t really mysteries” that other companies were publishing at the time, it does have some pretty nifty nightmare imagery that, even when coming out of the blue, still manages to give the story a nice hallucinogenic touch.

Jack: Troublemaker that I am, I preferred “The Maestro’s Hand!” to “Mute Witness to Murder!” I’ve always loved The Beast with Five Fingers, so this rip-off with mostly fantastic art by Feldstein was a blast. There are a couple of panels where he really messes up, but for the most part it’s wonderful. I was disappointed with Wood’s art on “The Living Corpse” and I’ve been underwhelmed by what we’ve seen from him to date, though I know he’ll get really good very soon. Kurtzman’s art is quickly growing on me, and his stylized work on “Madness at Manderville” nearly makes up for a too-wordy script. Craig’s story has the best balance of story and art, but the tale is a bit plodding despite a strong finish.

John: I'm with Jack on this one. “The Maestro’s Hand,” while somewhat silly, was the most fun in this issue. I'm finding it difficult to roll back my sensibilities to appreciate these tales as readers might have back in 1950. In “Mute Witness to Murder!” I couldn't get past Pam's inability to non-verbally communicate what she saw, say by writing it down before she was locked away in a strait-jacket. But that said, Johnny Craig's art was the best in the issue.

Craig

The Vault of Horror #13
(June-July 1950)

"The Dead Will Return!" ★★★★
Story Uncredited
Art by Al Feldstein

"The Curse of Harkley Heath" ★1/2
Story Harry Harrison(?)
Art by Harry Harrison & Wally Wood

"Doctor of Horror" ★★ 1/2
Story Uncredited
Art by Graham Ingels

"Island of Death" ★★
Story by Harvey Kurtzman
Based on the story, "The Most Dangerous Game"
by Richard Connell
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

Hank is being laid to in-medias-rest as we come into the issue’s lead story following our jolly ol’ Vault-Keeper’s introduction. The murdered man’s wife, Flo, and her lover, Bert, have the plan all worked out: the body’s to be dumped into the unforgiving ocean, Hank is to be reported missing and last seen on a fishing trip, and the conniving couple shall reap the rewards of their crime in the form of the hidden stash of dough Hank has squirreled away in the lighthouse he owned. It’s E. C. Revenge 101 by way of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. And as our lovers soon find out, so does the ferryman, for Hank’s nibbled corpse has a nasty habit of washing up from the River Styx and right back onto the beach in front of the lighthouse. Try as the couple might, they cannot free themselves of its accusing presence. It’s only when Flo finds herself alone in the lighthouse one night that Hank officially rises to the occasion and stalks his cheating wife to the top of the tower, Bert meeting an equally ghastly fate when he returns.

“The Dead will Return” might just be the first bona-fide horror classic to come from the company’s bullpen. The script, which remains uncredited, is a prime cut of steak totally shorn of the narrative fat that weighed down many of EC’s contemporaries (and they themselves, at times). The unnecessary lead-up to the murder is completely disposed of, economically recounted in a later monologue that finds Flo venting her doubts and fears as she waits alone in the primal dark. Feldstein’s pen sparkles throughout; his thick, heavy lines are crisp and exact, giving us just enough detail in the small glimpses we see of Hank’s waterlogged corpse. Indeed, the decision to keep the reanimated husband completely in the shadows is a wise one. It keeps us questioning the supernatural implications of the conflict and results in one of the most suspenseful set pieces we’ve seen yet: Flo’s terrified retreat up the lighthouse’s winding spiral staircase as—something—follows ardently behind.

"The Curse of Harkley Heath"

“The Curse of Harkley Heath” is an old dark house chestnut of the English moor variety, a reconstruction of Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” filled with duplicitous relatives out for the inheritance and a familial curse that may-or-may-not be real. Chances are your guesses concerning the plot’s trajectory are completely accurate based on this summary. “Island of Death” uses for its source a more contemporary classic, “The Most Dangerous Game,” that public school favorite, and Kurtzman’s script is much more obvious in its pillaging of the material. (This is essentially the same type of pulling-over that the company would later attempt with Ray Bradbury’s “The Emissary,” with memorable results.) Square-jawed hero “Stephen Crane” faces off against maniacal Count Cabeza on the “Island of Death,” but this abbreviated adaptation proves a tad unkind to Connell as most of the original story’s suspense and sadistic banter between the characters is vetoed for a more streamlined tale. Death by bees is certainly no replacement for a duel ending in mauling-by-bloodhounds.

The typical EC reader.

Creepy artiste extraordinaire “Ghastly” Graham Ingels makes his first splash in this batch of horror titles, including this issue’s “Doctor of Horror.” Reading the story reveals it for the fairly rote body snatcher-saga that it is, but simply to look at Graham’s artwork is to stare into the Gothic abyss that he seemed to easily conjure in every assignment without fail. Whereas guys like Feldstein and Craig worked in bold, clean-cut styles that aimed for an air of naturalism, Ingels wrought torture upon the page with expressionistic furor. Everything, from characters to setting, looks to be always in a state of agony or decay. When madmen rave, their mouths fill with thick cobwebs of saliva; hands are always long-jointed, bony, perfectly suited for the letting of blood. Even his sultry female characters, when they did appear, look like their curves are from the benefit of putrescence more than the All-American pulchritude of Jack Kamen. Looking at Ingels’s art produces the exact same emotional response as reading Poe. Perhaps this is a rather sorry review of “Doctor of Horror,” but all you really need to know in order to enjoy this tale is who it was that drew it. -Jose 

Peter: "Harkley Heath" is a warmed-up slice of Gothic meatloaf but a slab that's been out of the refrigerator for a couple days. It's not very tasty but you should have known better from the start. While I don't think "The Dead Will Return" is a classic, I do like certain bits of it, chiefly the climax that doesn't spell everything out for the reader. The evidence that Hank has been traipsing around the lighthouse is everywhere but we never actually see the corpse reanimated, do we? In a couple years, Feldstein (and Gaines and Craig and so on) won't be so keen on keeping the reader guessing.

Seabrook approved.

Jack: I love both Feldstein’s art and the lighthouse setting of “The Dead Will Return!” and I also love Flo’s array of low cut and off-the-shoulder dresses and blouses. She has an impressive selection of outfits for someone living in a lighthouse! The GCD credits “The Curse of Harkley Heath” both to Harrison and Wood, which gives me more to do in my ongoing search for the great artist that Wally Wood would soon become. I was disappointed in “Doctor of Horror” and thought it suffered from the “curse of the third story”—way too wordy and only so-so art from Ingels. Reading these EC tales is giving me a new appreciation for how hard it is to balance words and pictures, since some of the stories have way too many of the former crowding out the latter! I continue to enjoy Kurtzman’s work in “Island of Death,” though the changes to the uncredited source story don’t improve it.

John:"The Dead Will Return!" finally delivered on what I've been expecting from these EC titles. And I'd say it's Feldstein's best work yet. Sure, we don't see the shambling corpse, but dead bodies don't just find themselves wrapped in seaweed at the top of a lighthouse. Can't wait to read more like it! While I wasn't particularly enamored with "Doctor of Horror," it helped me recognize the influence Ingels had on artist Bernie Wrightson. I was disappointed with "Island of Death," which proves you can make a lackluster adaptation from the best stories... 

Craig

The Haunt of Fear #16
(July-August 1950)

"Vampire!" ★★★1/2
Story Uncredited
Art by Johnny Craig

"Horror-Ahead!" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"The Killer in the Coffin!" ★★1/2
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Graham Ingels

"The Mummy's Return!" ★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen

Marsh Island, “a patch of land off the Louisiana coast,” is not only infested with swamps but also the bloodsucking undead, and it’s up to the good Dr. Jim Reed to sort out the deaths that have been plaguing his home. Trouble is, no one else is buying into the vampire theory, and the physician soon finds himself the butt of many an uncreative joke about bats. There seems to be a change in the wind when Jim discovers that the last victim was the maid of local aristocrat Mr. Winslow, and the older gentleman’s strange manners and insistence that the doctor attend to his ailing daughter at night—not to mention the presence of bite marks on the beautiful Nelda’s throat—seem to confirm that Jim is on the right track. The discovery of a dirt-lined casket in the basement seals the deal. Desperate to save Nelda from her predatory father, Jim confronts Winslow in the swamp and drives a stake through his heart. But Jim’s announcement of victory is met with rather a chilled  reception: Nelda admits that it is she who is the vampire and that she was sick only because her father hadn’t been able to provide her a victim. Now that Jim’s here, she doesn’t have to worry about that.

The swamp noir of "Vampire!"

Johnny Craig asserts his control of story and art once again in the swampy noir “Vampire,” economically moving the reader through eight pages of intrigue that build up to the grim moment of revelation. Craig flavors the tale with shots and lighting that show the influence of the cinema on his work, and though the twist at the end may be well-worn to our modern eyes, it must be stated that Craig never once shows his hand or compels his characters to act in an inane way in service of the surprise. “Horror-Ahead” is a game old sport but nothing really revolutionary. It does a nice little spin on the “unseen narrator” gimmick of prose fiction, but this is probably the worst of the Harrison/Wood collaborations that we’ve seen so far.

Even healthy folks look sick in "The Killer in the Coffin."

Ingels manages to make every day life a horror show with every panel of “The Killer in the Coffin,” and while it might not be his best it still possesses the same sumptuously Gothic thrills that we admire him for. And you have to give it up for that double-sting ending, one that finds our calculating henpecked husband feigning death from plague in order to murder his overbearing wife and take off with a young chickie, only to be buried alive along with all the other diseased corpses while his paramour lies helpless at the hospital, deranged from the exact same illness. I love the way that all the Egyptians from the flashback in “The Mummy’s Return” speak perfect English but then start chanting hieroglyphic symbols when trying to raise the dead, not to mention the fact that evil pharaoh Khufu has underlings carry out the assassination of a romantic rival because he doesn’t want blood on his hands but then goes ahead and knifes his wife to death himself. A ho-hum affair to put the wraps on this issue.
 -Jose

Feldstein

Weird Fantasy #14
(July-August 1950)

"Cosmic Ray Bomb Explosion"★★★
Story Uncredited (Bill Gaines?)
Art by Al Feldstein

"The Black Arts"★★★
Story Harry Harrison (?)
Art by Wally Wood and Harry Harrison

"The Trap of Time!"★★
Story Al Feldstein (?)
Art by Jack Kamen

"Atom Bomb Thief"★★★
Story Al Feldstein (?) Harvey Kurtzman (?)
Art by Harvey Kurtzman

Kurtzman's splash page

Working at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1946, Paul Arnold seems to be nothing more than a mild-mannered nuclear physicist’s assistant. Little do his colleagues know that he is, in reality, an “Atom Bomb Thief!” For years, he has been sneaking data out of the plant and giving it to his associate, Karl. Together they intend to sell the plans for the bomb to the highest bidder. They fly off together over the Pacific to meet the agents of foreign powers but Karl pulls a double-cross and accidentally shoots out the plane’s control panel, causing a very wet crash landing. Paul escapes on a raft and leaves Karl to be eaten by a hungry shark. Washing up on a desert island, Paul is horrified to discover that the date is July 25, 1946, and he is standing on Bikini Atoll, where an atomic bomb is being detonated.
I hereby take back anything I ever said about Harvey Kurtzman. His splash page is stunning and his final page is brilliant. I did not see the surprise ending coming and it’s a blast! The other stories in this issue are not bad, either, from the self-referential “Cosmic Ray Bomb Explosion” to “The Trap of Time!” which features more slick art by Jack Kamen and a plot twist we’ve all read before. The Harrison/Wood collaboration, “The Black Arts,” could fit well in just about any of the horror or fantasy books this month.--Jack

The DC War Comics 1959-1976 by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Kubert

Showcase 57

Enemy Ace in
"Killer of the Skies"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

Jack: Hans von Hammer, the Enemy Ace, is on patrol with his squadron when they encounter a pair of planes, one French and the other English, bombing a German train. The German ace manages to shoot down both planes but is wounded in the battle. Returning to the airfield, von Hammer witnesses two German planes being driven to the ground by a single Canadian plane flown by the Hunter, who drops a note challenging the two planes to come back up and fight him in direct air combat.


Hans von Hammer leads the other two planes back into the sky, where they try to fight the Hunter but are both shot down as von Hammer stays out of the fray. The Hunter and von Hammer know that they will soon meet head on, but first the Enemy Ace must stop an Allied plane that is shooting at German observation balloons. That task accomplished, von Hammer receives a note from the Hunter challenging him to a duel. Evenly matched, the two experts take to the skies and shoot each other down. On the ground, von Hammer holds a gun to the Hunter, intending to take him prisoner, but the Canadian dies next to his plane, another victim of the killer sky.

Kanigher and Kubert show their mastery of the form in this 24-page story that features exceptional art and mature storytelling. I remember having this comic years ago and the cover is a classic.

Peter: After three appearances over in Our Army at War, Hans von Hammer ("The Hammer of Hell") gets a chance to shine at full-length, and shine he does. A multi-layered, textured script and eye-popping visuals combine to make this one of the greatest DC War comics I've ever read. Kanigher, obviously inspired by his new character, seems to become a novelist here rather than a short story writer. We know Bob is a good scribe, we've seen dozens of A+ scripts out of the guy this past six years, but "Killer of the Skies" transcends funny book writing and almost has a PBS war documentary feel to it. You just can't see this creation with a pooch or facing dinosaurs. The dialogue flows almost like a poem (I watched the great pilot speed toward his own line--a fighter who flew without helmet or goggles--the better to feel the wind of battle skies against his face.) and there is, literally, not one wasted word. BK has the unenviable position (and remember, this was 1965, before dark and gloomy comics were the rage!) of attempting to win over an audience with a character we should be hissing and booing at but, because this Enemy Ace is so valiant, so much a man of principle, we suddenly see there are two sides to war.

In this installment, von Hammer must face his counterpart, a Canadian ace who's been mopping up the skies with the Hammer's comrades. Even while killing this scourge, the Enemy Ace admires the man's dignity and valor. We see bits of von Hammer's "home life," nothing more than a butler and trophy cups of his kills to keep him company. He's just a man waiting for his turn to come out on the losing end.


Guest commentary by Marvel University Professor Mark Barsotti

There's a lot to unpack here, so let's hop in the cockpit and take to the air.

I read "Killer of the Skies" as a young kid, date unknown, but it wasn't upon publication since I was only four in mid-1965 and still mastering Dr. Seuss. The story was either reprinted in another DC war comic or I picked up the original at this non-chain store in our suburban Denver neighborhood that had odd stuff, like random, several year old comics selling for a quarter. I bought Avengers #6 there (circa '67), with Zemo and the original Masters of Evil, which, after reading several times, I cut up, pasting panels into a scrapbook...

But Von Hammer made quite an impression and was never subject to the scissors. While I couldn't have articulated it then, even as a kid it struck me how different Enemy Ace was. First, of course, Hans is the enemy, the Hun, the Kraut, and for Combat-watching, multiple G.I. Joe-owning tykes, hopping in the cockpit with the German Rittmeister was... remarkable easy. Such is the power of top flight storytelling.

"Before I do a script, two things must happen," says writer Robert Kanigher, as quoted on the webzine Dial B for Blog, "I must see the characters in the darkened theater of my mind. And I must feel their emotions as if I were inside their skins."

Kanigher creates a rich aristocrat who is neither prideful nor pompous, a "human killing machine" without bloodlust, who salutes the fallen, friend and foe alike, but is shunned by his fellow pilots as if he were a demonic force, a loner, whose "only 'friend'...in the world" is a wolf, another killer from the primeval Black Forest.

And Joe Kubert's art conjures a grim but gripping airborne ballet, scored by chattering machine guns - a series of vertiginous loops, swoops, turns and dives; men playing chicken at 10,000 feet in flimsy, wood and cloth contraptions - as the "Hammer of Hell" plies his deadly trade.

"I think trying to inject the feeling of flight on a six by nine inch piece of paper is not an easy thing to do, yet it was a very enjoyable task," Kubert* said. He just made it look easy, filling the skies with a variety of planes, rendered with verve and realistic detail. His Von Hammer is Prussian nobility personified, chiseled cheekbones and pale blue eyes, remote but not haughty. Kubert's characters were always varied and memorable; he was an early exponent of the "photo-realism" that Neal Adams would be lauded for bringing to superheroes a couple years down the line. Kubert's one of those artists that, at the top of his game, is so consistently excellent, he's easy to take for granted.

Re-reading this tale, what also strikes me is the downbeat realism Kanigher and Kubert bring to the meat grinder reality of war. There are no winners, only survivors. Von Hammer's aerial exploits are entirely believable (alas, this will start to change to meet the demands of the medium, with the very next issue), and comparing this war story to the over the top, "funnybook" exploits of, say, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, completely upends that myth that Marvel was always striving for "realism," while DC trafficked in kiddy fantasy.

"Killer of the Skies" is about as real as comics got in 1965. It subverts the "evil German" stereotype, offers a non-heroic, bleak and bloody look at war, and all while telling a gripping, page-turning tale. Masterpiece is a high bar, an easy term to toss around, but Von Hammer at the controls of his crimson, Fokker Dr. 1 - at least for this issue - certainly flirts with that rarified atmosphere.

*quoted in the same blog post

Heath & Adler

Our Fighting Forces 94

"The Human Blockbusters!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Jack Abel

"The Zep and the Mosquito"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Irv Novick

Jack: A bit of R & R with some island gals is rudely interrupted when Gunner and Sarge are assigned to work with a tank corps to drive Japanese suicide bombers back from the Allied side of the island. After witnessing soldiers with TNT belts and engaging in some fierce hand to hand combat, G & S are menaced by enemy soldiers holding flamethrowers.

Fighting fire with fire stops the assault, but the two men are soon back in frogman gear, putting a radio-controlled belt on an enemy sub so an Allied sub can target it for a torpedo shot. A last-minute escape from the doomed enemy sub is in order when Sarge's foot gets caught, but avoiding an explosion only means swimming right into the waiting arms of enemy frogmen. Underwater hand to hand combat ends when Gunner uses his radio-belt to signal for another torpedo and blammo!--no more frogmen. Gunner and Sarge end the story (and the series) back on the beach with the native gals.

The cover says "Only DC features Gunner and Sarge--the marines who always fight on a bull's-eye!" and the last page of the story tells us to "watch for the next terrific TNT caper," but it was not to be the case.

Peter: Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow... not! After 50 long, tedious, inane, borderline-racist, and disposable installments, we must bid adieu to the trio known as Gunner, Sarge, and Pooch. At least for a while that is. Never fear, GS&P fans (I'm looking at you, Jack), the Martin and Lewis of DC War will return in OFF #123 (February 1970) as part of the aptly-titled feature, The Losers . The Losers will be comprised of several DC War characters who lost their own titles over the coming years (and, yes, that sentence is confusing, sorry). The feature section of OFF will now give way to several other short-term series, none of which can be half as bad as Gunner, Sarge, and Pooch (fingers crossed). One wonders if the fabulous and meticulously characterized Colonel Hakawa will become a victim of the axe or if his buck-toothed visage will pop up in the future. One can only hope! As for the final installment? Well, I have to admit the series goes out on a high note (for Gunner and Sarge, that is); a fairly readable script devoid of intelligent dogs and Hakawa one-liners. "The Zep and the Mosquitos" is about as silly as Hank can get, complete with Snidely Whiplash Commandant and his continual complaints about mosquitoes. The G.I. Joe toy ads are much more enjoyable.

Heath

 All American Men of War 110

"The Co-Pilot Was Death!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Irv Novick

"Aces of Dread!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Irv Novick

Peter: Captain Johnny Cloud is perhaps a bit surprised that the newest member of his squad is his old nemesis, Silent Bear, once a competitor for the affections of (now Nurse) Running Deer. For her part, Deer has no idea which way she leans as far as her heart is concerned and she tries to remain neutral. The boys, however, remain just as competitive in war games as they were at romancing on the reservation. During a particularly hairy mission, Bear is shot down and Johnny lands to rescue him. Both men are taken prisoner by Nazis seeking knowledge of the Allies' new base, the Master Control Radar Complex. Using devious torture methods, the Germans intend to wear our heroes down but Cloud and Bear get the jump on the devils and escape in a Nazi plane. During the escape, Silent Bear is killed and, at last, Running Deer can make her choice.

The latest in a long line of coincidences that make up the life of Captain Johnny Cloud, "The Co-Pilot Was Death!" is samey but not a bad time-waster. Novick's art is stirring and his air battles well-staged. One of the fascinating tidbits that comes out when we're reading DC War stories is that the Nazi commandants were genetically engineered to have bad sight in one eye, thus the obligatory monocle. "Aces of Dread!" is yet another Hank Chapman sibling tale, this time centering on two identical twins who pilot Spads in WWI. And, before you ask, yes, they did compete in sports. These days, I really "Dread" reading something with the Chapman brand.

Jack: The Johnny Cloud story falls somewhere in the middle for me--not among the worst of the series but at the same time not among the best. The air battle sequences are good, as you point out, and the highlight of the story is Silent Bear's sacrifice at the end. Johnny Cloud always seems to be moping around, thinking he's not good enough and that someone else is better. Usually, he proves himself wrong, but in this instance I think Silent Bear showed he was the better man. Running Dear will have to settle for second best.

Kubert

Our Army at War 157

"Nothin's Ever Lost in War!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Spotter on the Spot!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Irv Novick

Jack: A new outfit sent to relieve Easy Co. is wiped out save for a single soldier who has a haunted look in his eyes and who keeps repeating that everything and everyone are lost. Rock insists that "Nothin's Ever Lost in War!" and gives the soldier a well-deserved smack in the face, but to no avail.

The new soldier, nicknamed "Lost," tags along with Easy Co. and witnesses Rock's heroics as the sergeant mans the gun of a downed Allied plane and shoots down two Nazi planes. Rock follows this up by taking the controls of an Allied tank and defeating an enemy tank, but Lost still complains. Rock next takes the position of a dead machine gunner and tries to hold off enemy troops. Shaken by an explosion, the sergeant wakes to find that the Nazis have taken Lost prisoner. Easy Co. catches up with the enemy and a fistfight ensues; Lost finally rises to the occasion and takes a bullet meant for Rock. It's only a flesh wound, though, and as he walks off with Rock he finally admits that "Nothin's ever lost in war--especially a sergeant!"


I was on the fence about this story, filled as it is with one of Kanigher's patented phrases that are repeated over and over, until I got the the two-page spread by Kubert that depicts the hand to hand combat. I can't recall ever seeing Kubert do such a large format piece of art in one of the War stories we've read to date, and this alone put the story over the top for me.

Peter: "Nothin's Ever Lost in War" is the antitheses of "Killer of the Skies," it's RK on cruise control. I'll give the man the benefit of the doubt; the Enemy Ace classic probably sapped Kanigher dry for August 1965 and so what we got was the lesser Kanigher in the other titles. The constant "Lost! Lost! I'm lost! You're lost! My sister's lost! Pooch is lost!" is like a weak song that keeps coming back to its chorus to distract from the fact there's nothin' else there. The "lost" soldier reminded me of Doctor Smith from Lost in Space, constantly moaning: "We're doomed. Doomed, I say!"

Hank Chapman continues to churn out lots of stories that involve brothers who competed on their college football team and then are, inevitably, assigned to the same platoon/division/fortress/ submarine and "Spotter on the Spot" is nothing new or interesting with its dynamite pair of brothers as artillery commander and "spotter" (the guy who relays back co-ordinates of enemy whereabouts). Surely, Hank had more cards up his sleeve?

Next Week: You Will Believe in Ghosts!

by Jack Seabrook

"Suburban Tigress" was first published here

In a 1911 poem, Rudyard Kipling wrote that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male." Robert C. Dennis alludes to this sentiment with his teleplay for "The Deadly," which is based on a short story by Lawrence Treat called "Suburban Tigress," first published in the July 1957 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

As the story begins, Margot Brenner sits at home alone, thinking of her husband's upcoming promotion and of their plans to adopt a baby. A plumber named Jack Staley arrives to fix a leak in the cellar. Margot is nervous at the thought of being alone in her home with the burly man, and she is concerned when he says that he needs to open a valve upstairs to keep the basement from flooding. When they are upstairs together, he is entirely too familiar, commenting on a painting she made, as well as her bedroom slippers and the quilt on her bed.

Staley fixes the leak and tells Margot that his fee is $500. He plans to blackmail her, explaining that he has been there for three hours on what was a five-minute job and that he can describe her bedroom in detail. Though he has already collected money from other women in the neighborhood, Margot resists and so he gives her until the next day to get the money.

Phyllis Thaxter as Margot

Meeting her husband at the train station, Margot keeps quiet about the plumber's blackmail scheme. The next morning, she calls the police to report Staley. She goes to the bank to withdraw money and comes home to meet Detective Thompson, who listens in hiding when Staley arrives. Somehow tipped off to danger, the plumber denies having asked for money and Thompson does not believe Margot's story.

After the men leave, Staley telephones; he returns to the house that afternoon. To his surprise, Margot has gathered three other women whom Staley had blackmailed. They record his demands on tape and he agrees to stop his blackmail. The women inform him that they will only remain quiet if he provides free plumbing for the new preschool nursery. He likes the idea of the good publicity it will bring for his business and leaves feeling satisfied with himself.

That evening, Margot meets her husband at the train station, able to say truthfully that "I settled with the plumber."

In a comment on the TV adaptation of his story, Lawrence Treat expressed astonishment that the teleplay used his story and much of his dialogue and he got "nothing extra." Perhaps Treat's memory was fuzzy when he wrote this comment for the book, Hitchcock in Prime Time, which was published in 1985, since a comparison of the show with the story demonstrates that Robert C. Dennis did a fair amount of rewriting.

Retitled "The Deadly," the episode was broadcast on CBS on Sunday, December 15, 1957. Once again, Dennis adds expository scenes to the beginning of the story. Here, Margot arrives at the train station, where two women gossip about Anne Warren, who does not look like a "happy young bride." Margot approaches Anne, who knows that she is the object of gossip and asks Margot how to balance a bankbook. Margot tells her, smiling: "That's simple! You just doctor the books, cheat on the budget, and steal from yourself!" It's meant to be a humorous comment, but in the first scene we see that Margot is a bit older than Anne, as well as wiser and more pragmatic. These qualities will allow her to deal with the blackmailing plumber more successfully than did her neighbors.

Jacqueline Mayo as Anne Warren

Anne is sad, so Margot invites her to dinner; Anne tells Margot that she and her husband Joe have not been going out much. Margot's husband then gets off of the train and she drives him home, telling him about the leak in the basement. Her husband says that Joe Warren is a "jealous, suspicious guy," and Margot comments on the lack of excitement in the suburbs, causing her husband to remark that "what you need is a good knife murderer or one of those juvenile gangs." Margot drives on, very much in charge of the situation. At home, she prepares dinner while her husband makes a brief and unsuccessful effort to fix the leak in the cellar himself. They joke about his not being the jealous type and this sets up an unspoken contrast with the Warrens.

The initial scenes of "The Deadly" tell us all we need to know to set up what follows, which corresponds to the plot of the story almost to the end. We discover the source of Anne Warren's sorrow and watch as Margot demonstrates how to handle a blackmailer. Staley lingers in her kitchen and uses what he observes to estimate her husband's income. Dennis removes elements of the story, including the Brenners' plan to adopt a baby, Mr. Brenner's impending promotion, and Margot's concern that her husband does not telephone her while the plumber is in the house. In their place, he presents a stripped-down version of the story that demonstrates why "the female of the species is more deadly than the male."

Lee Philips as Jack Staley

In Treat's story, Staley fixes the leak and charges $500; in Dennis's teleplay, Staley merely gives an estimate, which makes the duration of his stay even more suspicious. The scene where Staley returns to the house and is overheard by the police detective in hiding is curious, since there is no clear explanation of how Staley is tipped off to the presence of the law. Margot thinks he might have seen two cups of tea on the living room table, but this is not possible, since their initial dialogue occurs before Staley enters the room. An important change from the story comes when the detective suggests to Margot that she get other female victims together; this leads to the climax, where Margot and six of her neighbors gang up on Staley in the living room. This time, instead of telling him to do the plumbing at the preschool, they make demands that are more selfish, giving him a list of projects in their own homes that they expect him to do for free. Staley's crimes have been dealt with in kind: the blackmailed have become the blackmailers in a humorous and very fitting transference of guilt.

Craig Stevens as Lewis Brenner

"The Deadly" is directed by Don Taylor (1920-1998), who played the murderous college professor in "Silent Witness," another episode written by Robert C. Dennis and Taylor's only appearance on the Hitchcock show as an actor. Behind the camera, he directed seven episodes of the series, including Henry Slesar's "The Right Kind of House," in a directing career that spanned over thirty years.

Phyllis Thaxter (1919-2012) stars as Margot; she was onscreen from 1944 to 1992 and appeared in nine episodes of the Hitchcock series. She was also seen on Thriller and The Twilight Zone, and later in her career she appeared as Ma Kent in Superman (1978).

Playing Jack Staley, the plumber, is Lee Philips (1927-1999). Like Don Taylor, he started out as an actor and later became a director. His acting career spanned the years from 1953 to 1975; as a director, he worked from 1965 to 1995, almost exclusively in television. He was seen on The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and four times on the Hitchcock show, including Cornell Woolrich's "The Black Curtain."

Frank Gerstle

Margot's husband is played by Craig Stevens (1918-2000), a familiar face to fans of classic TV. Born Gail Shikles Jr., he was on screen from 1939 to 1988, including a role in Otto Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950). On TV, he was the star of Peter Gunn (1958-1961) and he was also a regular on the short-lived Invisible Man (1975-1976).

Smaller parts in "The Deadly" are played by:

*Frank Gerstle (1915-1970) as the detective; he was a busy character actor between 1950 and 1970 who appeared on the Hitchcock series three times and in Roger Corman's The Wasp Woman (1959).

*Anabel Shaw (1921-2010) as Rhoda Forbes; her career mainly spanned the years from 1944 to 1958 and she was in Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door (1947) and Gun Crazy (1950). This was her only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

Peggy McCay, Anabel Shaw, Sally Hughes

*Peggy McCay (1927- ) as Myra Herbert; she has been onscreen since 1949 and on the soap opera Days of Our Lives since 1983; she also had important roles in two of the Hitchcock hours--"House Guest" and "The Magic Shop."

*Jacqueline Mayo (1933- ), who plays Anne Warren and resembles Mia Farrow; she had a decade-long career but only got small parts and not many of those.

*Sally Hughes as one of the blackmailed women; notable for her later role as the pulchritudinous Miss Putney, the dental assistant on "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat."

"The Deadly" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. For a funny take on this episode, click here.

Sources:
"The Deadly." Alfred Hitchcock Presents. CBS. 15 Dec. 1957. Television.
"Galactic Central." Galactic Central. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.

In two weeks: "Together," starring Joseph Cotten.

by John Scoleri

Johnny Craig

The Crypt of Terror #19
(August-September 1950)

"Ghost Ship!"★★★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

"The Hungry Grave"★★
Story by Gardner Fox
Art by Graham Ingels

"Cave Man"★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

"Zombie!"★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

Daniel King is a guest at the Haiti plantation owned by Mr. Richards, who tells him that tonight is Voodoo Night, when the natives join in a black magic ritual in the jungle. King grabs his camera and heads out, hoping to gather some good material for an article he’s writing about the island. Deep in the dense undergrowth, King watches as the natives dance around a fire and prop the corpse of a woman up against a pole. King watches as the corpse regains its life and transforms into the figure of a beautiful woman. The dancing stops when the camera flash goes off and King makes a run for it.


Al Feldstein’s “Ghost Ship!” opens the issue and is a very effective little ghost story, while Fox and Ingels provide “The Hungry Grave,” which meanders along until it reaches a nice final panel after a twist straight out of Rigoletto.-Jack 

"Ghost Ship!"

Peter: All-in-all, a mediocre issue of The Crypt of Terror (the last to sport that title). Oddly, "The Hungry Grave" lacks an intro from any of the horror hosts. "Cave Man" provides the template for a thousand pre-code horror stories (probably half done by Harvey), that of the thawed prehistoric man/beast who then wreaks havoc upon today's world. Johnny Craig can't seem to jazz the theme up either. Though not as boring an artist to me as Jack Kamen, Craig lacks the detail and style found in the work of Ingels, Feldstein, Wood (at least, the Wood of the near future), or Kurtzman and a lot of his characters look alike (complete with the trademark dangling cigarette). Say this though, Johnny could pump out some snazzy covers.

"The Hungry Grave"

Jose: Peter’s certainly correct in pointing out the relative staleness of all the stories in this issue. (With the exception of the evocatively-titled “The Hungry Grave,” they all remind me of the simplistically named entries from Amicus’s first portmanteau chiller Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors—“Werewolf,” “Creeping Vine,” etc. And they’re all just about as polished.) “Ghost Ship” is like a horror-lite episode from an old time radio show, and “Cave Man” is fairly undistinguished minus some of Craig’s subtlety in communicating character without word bubbles or captions, i.e., the nasty curator’s realization that the Neanderthal is alive. And I don’t care what anyone says, but those shots of ol’ Tarzan shivering into his second “death” are tear-jerkers! “Zombie” is probably the most dynamic of the bunch, solely based on Craig’s cinematic artwork. Some of the voodoo scenes are just quietly stunning, enough to grip your attention from across the five and dime and get you to buy the book.

John: I think Al Feldstein must have forgotten who he was writing for. As I read "Ghost Ship" I looked forward to discovering the twist, and was impressed when the tanker passed right through the ghost ship of the title. Ah, the protagonists must have died in the plane crash, I thought. Imagine my surprise when it was explained that they not only lived, but they were rescued, with their story dismissed as a hallucination. What a disappointment! But fortunately that set my expectations low going into Fox and Ingels's "The Hungry Grave" which, while not groundbreaking (pun intended), was a solid story in line with what I expect from EC. I would have completely dismissed "Cave Man" if not for the three panels Jose mentioned above. Johnny Craig can draw a rotting corpse with the best of them, and while my tastes in the living dead lean more towards the George Romero camp, the voodoo tale "Zombie!" was better than I had expected. 

Johnny Craig

The Vault of Horror #14
(August-September 1950)

"Voodoo Vengeance!" ★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

"Werewolf" ★
Story by Harry Harrison
Art by Harry Harrison and Wally Wood

"Rats Have Sharp Teeth!" ★★
Story by Gardner Fox
Based on "The Graveyard Rats" by Henry Kuttner
Art by Graham Ingels

"The Strange Couple!" ★★
Story and Art by Al Feldstein

Things heat up for Sally in the climax of "Voodoo Vengeance!"

Looking for a trinket for his wife, Sally, Caleb Standish happens upon a small curio store and is told by the owner that the specialty of the house is voodoo dolls. Caleb pshaws the idea but the eerie old man tells him that should he ever need to get rid of someone, come back and they'll do business. Caleb races home in time to spy his gorgeous young wife in the arms of a lover. Bitter and heartbroken, Standish heads back to the curio shop the next day and orders a voodoo doll of his wife. The next few weeks are heavenly as Caleb manages to keep Sally bedridden with various ailments but, feeling guilty, he confronts Sally with her adultery and offers to give her a second chance for a happy marriage. Sally laughs in Caleb's face and begins tossing electrical appliances his way. Out of lamps, she grabs the next available object, her own voodoo doll, and tosses it at Caleb's head. The pitch is out of the strike zone and lands in the fireplace . . . with predictable results. "Voodoo Vengeance" is how to transform the done-to-death infidelity hook into something much more entertaining. Craig's art is absolutely perfect for the story, Standish the kindly old gentleman and Sally the coquettish hussy with a great set of headlights. Extra credit for the denouement, which gives us Caleb's reaction to the sight of his wife either melting or spontaneously combusting.

Caretaker Abner Tucker stumbles onto a goldmine when he starts robbing graves. A system of underground tunnels makes it easy for the old ghoul to pilfer jewels, coins, and even gold from the caskets but the deep, dark alleys hold perils: giant, hungry rats! When Abner lays traps and poison and wipes out a good portion of the vermin, the survivors band together and chew through the tunnel supports. The ensuing collapse buries Abner alive. "Rats Have Sharp Teeth!" is a loose adaptation of Henry Kuttner's first published short story, "The Graveyard Rats," (from Weird Tales, March 1936), one of the first of the authorized adaptations to appear in an EC funny book (as opposed to the "homages" and blatant rip-offs of anything from Shelley to Lovecraft that would appear from time to time). The subject matter could only have been assigned to Ghastly (could you imagine Kamen or Craig landing this one?) and he doesn't disappoint. Abner Tucker is the prototype of just about every arthritic bad guy to come.

Ingels!

Surely, there's more Harry Harrison than Wally Wood in "Werewolf," a truly awful story about mountain climbers who encounter lycanthropy at high altitudes. The art borders on amateurish (although there are some interesting stylistic flares as on the intro page which incorporates the title into the background a la Will Eisner) as does the simplistic story; the whole resembles the work found in one of the lesser pre-code titles such as Fantastic Fears or Adventures Into the Unknown. Needless to say, John is still looking for a good werewolf story. "The Strange Couple" is another variation on the unending nightmare hook; a man is stranded in a downpour and must seek refuge at a creepy, dilapidated house belonging to a weird husband and wife. She insists to her guest that her husband is a vampire and the husband lets on that his wife is a ghoul. That night both of them enter his room to drain and eat him. He wakes up back in his stalled car, sees a strange house and approaches. The same couple opens the door . . . This plot device would be used to much better effect by Feldstein the following year in the classic "Reflection of Death" (from Tales from the Crypt #23). Hepsibah, the ghoulish wife, is a dead ringer for The Old Witch.-Peter 

Jack: Johnny Craig’s second voodoo story of the month is an outstanding tale of vengeance, set not in the jungle but in a more mundane locale. The Harrison/Wood stories are the closest thing we’re seeing to Golden Age art and writing in the EC comics so far, which makes them look hopelessly backward next to the work of Craig and Feldstein. The Ingels entry is well done, though I expected a more gruesome ending. Feldstein’s effort disappoints—though I like stories told in the second person, the “it was only a dream” climax followed by the circular ending was a real letdown.

Deleted scene from The Wizard of Oz.

by Christine Scoleri, John Scoleri and Jack Seabrook

This post is part of the "The Bette Davis Blogathon," in commemoration of her 107th birthday, hosted by In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. Click here for links to other posts in the blogathon!


The story

Burnt Offerings opens with what seems to be a family of three—Ben and Marian Rolfe and their young son David—heading off in the family station wagon to a vacation at a big old house in the country.

Burgess Meredith in a really bad wig

They arrive at the house and meet Arnold and Roz Allardyce, an aging brother and sister, who tell them they can rent the house for $900 for the whole summer as long as they agree to take three meals a day up to their elderly mother, who never leaves the house.

The Rolfes go home to think it over and Ben, being sensible, sees the whole setup as kind of weird and one to stay away from. Marian talks him into it and soon enough they're back at the house for the summer, with Ben's aging Aunt Elizabeth in tow. The place is old, dark and dusty, but Marian does a heroic job of cleaning it up while the guys relax. Or do they?

How boys learned to swim in the '70s.

Once the swimming pool has been cleaned and filled, Ben and David enjoy a dip, though things turn unexpectedly dark when a bit of fun turns into Ben trying to drown his son. The nights aren't so great for Ben, either, since he's troubled by a recurring nightmare of his mother's funeral, where a spooky chauffeur paid way too much attention to the young lad.


Ben and David reconcile and, that night, it looks like the old man is going to get lucky at the pool when Marian decides to go skinny dipping. But something in the house seems to exert a strange hold over her and she keeps poor Ben from satisfying his 1970s male urges out on the front lawn.

Not tonight, honey--I'm under the spell of a sentient old house.

And what of old Aunt Elizabeth, who finds herself feeling strangely tired and wanting a nap in the middle of the day? Ben is outside happily hacking away at some overgrown plants when he thinks he sees the same spooky chauffeur from his dream pull up by the house. That night, David nearly dies when a gas heater malfunctions in his room, and the next day, Marian is blaming Aunt Elizabeth, who really doesn't remember much of what happened.

I told you we should have gone to the Hamptons!

Marian is getting more and more invested in the house (and dressing more and more like an old lady), so when David drops a crystal bowl and it shatters, she freaks out. Before you can say The Shining, Auntie is near death in her bed and Ben is cowering in the corner when he sees the spooky chauffeur pull up and enter the Aunt's room, helpfully shoving a coffin on wheels toward her bed.


After the inevitable funeral, the house seems to be looking much better and Marian is dressing like she's on Downton Abbey. When Ben notices that pieces of the house are falling off in an overnight rainstorm and being replaced with new ones, he grabs David, hops in the car, and heads out—only to be stopped by a tree that falls across the road. Ben is injured and not doing much moving or talking, so when David decides it's a good idea to test out his swimming skills in the deep end of the pool, it's up to Marian to save him.

Karen Black's hair is the scariest thing in this movie!

All three finally agree that it's time for summer vacation to come to an end and they pile in the station wagon. But wait! Marian realizes she forgot to say good bye to old Mrs. Allardyce up in the attic. Big mistake! When she does not come out of the house, Ben goes in to get her and finally gets inside the old woman's bedroom. Surprise! The elderly woman sitting in a chair with her back to the door is not Norman Bates's mother, but instead Marian, who suddenly is looking old and creepy.



She pushes Ben out of the window and he falls to his death, landing headfirst on the windshield of the station wagon and getting blood all over David's shirt.


David runs out, yelling for his mother, but the house's tall chimney falls on him and crushes him. In the final scene, we hear Arnold and Roz in voice over and the camera goes through the newly-restored house—they are thrilled to have mother back and in the pink of health.


The novel

John: Robert Marasco had a Tony award-winning play under his belt (Child’s Play) which had also been adapted to a film when he wrote his first novel, Burnt Offerings (1973). Redbook magazine ran an abridgement of the novel in early 1973, with the curious replacement of Aunt Sarah for Aunt Elizabeth. The novel itself is an effective haunted house tale, and was Stephen King’s selection in Stephen Jones and Kim Newman’s Horror: 100 Best Books. The book deals more with the family's life in Queens before heading out to their ultimate vacation rental. Sadly, Marasco died in 1998 with only one other novel to his credit, a mystery/thriller,  Parlor Games (1979), that lacks acclaim of Burnt Offerings. In 2011, Centipede Press reissued the book in a deluxe hardcover limited edition of 150 copies, with an afterword by William F. Nolan and signed by Nolan and cover artist J.K. Potter.

The screenplay

John: Marasco had written his own screenplay adaptation, but Curtis was not happy with it. He enlisted William F. Nolan to work with him on a new screenplay. Nolan had previously scripted the telefilm The Norliss Tapes and the two segments you've likely forgotten from the Karen Black TV movie Trilogy of Terror (Richard Matheson scripted the unforgettable Zuni Fetish tale adapted from his story "Prey"). I do think the film improves on the novel's ending, but in many other ways it's a rather faithful adaptation. In a new interview on the 2015 Kino Lorber DVD, Nolan makes new claims as to how he envisioned the chauffeur character that I personally think are ridiculous; that the chauffeur was the physical manifestation of the house, preventing them from leaving—claims he did not make in the commentary with recorded for the first DVD release in 2003. And claims that are not substantiated by most of the scenes in which the chauffeur appears. While the chauffeur was enhanced from the book (the funeral flashback in the film is specifically based on a memory from Curtis's mother's funeral when he was just 13), he is present throughout the novel as in the film: introduced in an early dream sequence, appearing when Ben is working in the yard, again when Aunt Elizabeth dies, and finally when Marian drives Ben and David back to the house after they attempt to leave.

Jack: I thought the chauffeur represented Death, since he seems to appear right before a character either dies or nearly dies.

Christine: It's commonly agreed that the smiling chauffeur is one of the most frightening aspects of this film. After the attempted escape, when Ben looks over at Marian, he sees the chauffeur in her place, which might lend some support to him being a manifestation of the house (fortunately for Benji, this didn't happen during the skinny dipping pool scene, which would have been truly disturbing), though I agree this makes little sense in the greater context of his appearances. He does seem to embody death looming over the family; however, I believe the chauffeur is there mostly just to scare the pants off of all of us. He seems to be so pleased about folks dying. That's just wrong.


Christine: Dan Curtis stated in his commentary that he hated Marasco's ending and it took him 15 minutes to rewrite it, later confessing that he stole the ending from Night of Dark Shadows, where Quentin goes back into the Collinwood house at the end of the film only to be possessed and advance threateningly on his wife.

The music

John: Regular Dan Curtis composer Robert Cobert turns in what might be his most effective score for Burnt Offerings. The music box theme he created for the film is particularly haunting. In 2011, the soundtrack was finally released on a limited edition CD. Perhaps most famous for scoring Dark Shadows, Cobert worked on just about every Dan Curtis project up through his World War II miniseries dramas The Winds of War and War and Remembrance.

Christine: Dark Shadows fans will likely hear some resemblance between Mrs. Allardyce's music box and Josette's music box theme, along with some other familiar notes from the daytime drama. The eerie music helps to establish a malevolent atmosphere.  

The cast

John: Despite a collection of high caliber talent in lead and supporting roles (Oliver Reed, Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Eileen Heckart, Dub Taylor, and our lady of honor, Bette Davis), the film is remembered fondly by most thanks to the chilling, dialogue-free performance of veteran character actor Anthony James as ‘The Chauffeur.’ James's first and last film roles were in Best Picture winners (In the Heat of the Night and Unforgiven respectively), and while he had a notable career playing unsavory characters, through the simplest of smiles his chauffeur left a lasting impression on a generation of young filmgoers. Growing up watching horror films from a very early age, I quickly got past the point where they were frightening. But his smiling chauffeur made a lasting impression that I still appreciate to this day. So much so that several years ago, I reached out to the actor and was quite surprised to receive a call from him. We had a wonderful chat, I found out that he had retired from acting and had pursued his passion in fine art. He was incredibly gracious with his time, a soft spoken man responsible for so many nightmares to so many children, and he not only provided me with a contact to get a private exhibition of his work at a showing in San Francisco, he also sent me an autographed copy of his art book, Language of the Heart. His life and career is an amazing story, recently documented in his autobiography Acting My Face, which I also highly recommend.

Jack: I always think of Anthony James as the creepy guy from High Plains Drifter.

Christine: I enjoyed his interview on the Kino Lorber edition. He recounts conversations he had with Bette and how wonderful he thought it was to work with her. He also appeared with her in Return from Witch Mountain. Amazing how he did so little in this film yet had such a big impact.

John: Bette Davis also deserves credit for an impressive performance in the film. She goes from being an older yet spry woman to a withering, sickly woman on her death bed. She truly sells it in the final scene as she and Oliver Reed listen as the chauffeur drags a coffin up the stairs.

Spry

Withering

Sickly

Madam, your coffin is served

Jack: I wasn't very impressed with her work in this film, though I blamed the script rather than the actress. She seems to say her lines with a bit of theatricality that doesn't fit with the rest of the performances.

Christine: I don't know how you can watch her death bed scenes and not be impressed. It's horrifying to watch as her back breaks and she collapses to the bed screaming, and disturbing to hear her moaning while her eyes roll back into her head. Any other actor may have made those scenes appear laughable. Her agonizing groans punctuate the sounds of the coffin as it bumps up the stairs and truly heighten the level of fear to a fever pitch. This is no quiet Dark Victory demise and much more harrowing than her death in Beyond the Forest. She expertly conveyed how the house was sucking the life out of her. Makeup alone would not have sufficed in making that believable. For an experienced actress with more than 80 movies under her belt, she makes it look easy. 

John: Lee Montgomery also deserves recognition for holding his own amongst the veteran cast. He would later star in the most effective segment of Dan Curtis's anthology TV movie, Dead of Night, "Bobby," scripted by Richard Matheson.

Jack: That kid was so annoying in this movie, but I found Karen Black even more annoying. I liked her in Family Plot, which came out about six months before, but not in this. Dan Curtis is no Hitchcock.

Christine: Well, Hitchcock is no Dan Curtis either. To each his own style. Bette Davis also worked with Hitchcock in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, "Out There--Darkness" (Season 4, Episode 16).

That's a photo of Dan Curtis we see next to the new additions to the collection.

Christine: Though we only saw them briefly, Burgess Meredith and Eileen Heckart are quite delightful as the quirky Allardyce siblings who give the impression that things aren't quite what they seem at the too-good-to-be-true deal of a summer house. Dub Taylor provided some toothless authenticity as the useless handyman of the shabby manse.

The house

John: Interiors and exteriors were shot on location at the Dunsmuir House in Oakland, California, which would later be used as Morningside Mortuary in Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. The production designers did an amazing job dressing the exterior of the house to look dilapidated from the outside in the beginning, so we can truly appreciate it's literal rebirth as the story progresses (and adding an additional chimney where warranted by the screenplay!). I was particularly impressed when touring the house several years ago to realize that they had in fact shot almost entirely on location, from the pool to the living room, to the upstairs bedroom where Bette Davis took her last breath in the film. And yes, I took great pleasure looking out the window to the driveway below where the hearse pulled up in the film.

Christine: All we needed was for Bette to say, "What a dump!" when the family drives up to the house. It goes through quite a transformation during the movie.  

In summary

John: I will always have a soft spot for Burnt Offerings. I enjoy the film today as much as the first time I saw it on television in the late 70s.

Jack: I don't know why I never saw this movie before now. I was 13 in 1976 and was aware of it. I had talked my parents into letting me see The Omen not long before this one came out. Seeing it today, it's not a great movie but it's not a bad movie, either. I like that there is no gore until the very end, and that's used in a way that it is very effective. Oliver Reed was a hot property in the mid-'70s but seems a little out of place here. The biggest problem is the direction by Dan Curtis, who overuses low angle shots. The film would seem like a TV movie if it weren't for the cast. Fun to watch, but I doubt I'll come back to it.

Christine: Burnt Offerings is an underappreciated film that has a lot going for it and is really quite frightening if you're paying attention to the details. The title of the film alone implies there will be sacrifice. The looks of horror, dismay and surprise on the faces in Mrs. Allardyce's photo collection create a real sense of unease from the get-go. The subtle clues that the house is feeding off the family, the geranium that regenerates after Davey's fall, the light bulb that suddenly starts working after Ben cuts his thumb opening champagne, the antiquated, broken eyeglasses Ben finds at the bottom of the pool before turning into a raging madman, the greenhouse of decaying flowers that bloom to life after Aunt Elizabeth dies--these allow us to understand why the family remained in the house, oblivious to these connections, and work to build suspense throughout the film. One of the truly frightening moments comes when Ben decides to grab David and leave. For the viewer it creates tension, because we know the family needs to escape the evil house, but we can understand Davey's fear that Dad's gone off his nut again, as well as his anguish over leaving his mother behind, as he attempts to fight off Ben in his reluctance to leave. When the trees throw themselves down to block their path and vines wrap around Ben's legs to pull him down as he struggles to break through the foliage, we realize that escape is hopeless and the family is doomed. We are allowed a small measure of hope when Marian goes back to wearing her '70s garb and breaks a window in her beloved house to get to David to rescue him from drowning, but we know when she decides to go back into the house, as the family readies to depart, that it's all over. Burnt Offerings is unique when compared with some of the other haunted house films such as Amityville Horror, Poltergeist, and The Shining, because this is the only film where none of the family makes it out alive. That is truly macabre.

by John Scoleri

The DC War Comics 1959-1976 by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Heath

 Star Spangled War Stories 122

"The Divers of Death"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Russ Heath

"Tankers!--Where's Your Tank?"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Jack Abel

Peter: Quadruplets Jim, Jake, Jinx, and Jess join the services during World War II. Jess and Jinx become frogmen while Jim and Jake are assigned to a tank squad. The four meet up when they're all scheduled to take the same beach but obstacles from the stone age keep them from achieving their goals time and again. There's nothing new story-wise with "Divers of Death," as we learn yet again that brothers not only made up the bulk of our fighting forces but, chances are good, they'd somehow be fighting on the same beach or in the same air space. Bob seems to have put the Suicide Squad to the side for this issue (as well as the notion that the Pacific Dinosaur Region is known to the Army) to fall back on the "brothers-in-arms" boilerplate and the results are trite. What's new (and far from trite) is the artist on The War That Time Forgot this issue. Though there have been 32 installments of WTTF, only one team has been responsible for the art and that's Andru and Esposito. Russ Heath steps in and does a bang-up job, creating what looks to be a cross between a T. Rex and Godzilla and a giant underwater spider. Who cares if these things probably never existed in the stone age; we're the better for Heath's imagination. Russ will contribute to WTTF five more times before its cancellation in 1968. Next issue: a guest stint from Gene Colan. Does it get any better than this?

A tank crew can't seem to get to where they're supposed to, no matter where they start from, and the C.O.'s always blasting an infernal "Tankers!--Where's Your Tank?" over the radio. Determined to get it right this time, the squad heads inland but runs into trouble when the bridge they're crossing is bombed by a Zero and the tank ends up floating out to sea. There they drift squarely into the cross hairs of the enemy but manage to beat the odds to live another day. Now all they have to do is shut that C.O. up. Hank Chapman's stories usually get on my nerves as, usually, we're fed the same three or four plots, but "Tankers!..." is good fun with nice Jack Abel art. Yep, it's a bit far-fetched (as usual, the enemy can't seem to hit the side of a barn door) but, hey, at least the crew isn't made up of triplets!

Jack: Did you notice the banner on the cover that reads: "DC breaks all the rules!" The splash page of the main story also notes that it was told to "DC's combat reporters." The only rule that I see being broken is the one that says that the art on The War That Time Forgot has to be second-rate. I'm no fan of Andru and Esposito, but I sure do love Russ Heath. Kanigher's story is more of the same, as you say, but Heath's art makes it seem like both men have upped their game this time around. "Tankers!" is also more of the same; unfortunately, the same in this case is a boring, repetitive script from Hank Chapman and uninspired art from Jack Abel. Still, it's been so long since we've seen Heath around here that I'm happy for this issue, even if it's only two-thirds worthwhile.

Kubert

Our Army at War 158

"Iron Major--Rock Sergeant!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

Jack: A bruised and battered Sgt. Rock is alone in the Forest of Forgotten Skulls as a Nazi known as the Iron Major holds him at gunpoint and vows to drag Rock back to a POW camp by his heels like a stunned rabbit. Rock makes a successful gun jump but is laid low by a blow from the major's prosthetic right hand, which is made of iron. As he is dragged through the snow, Rock thinks back to how he got there.

Easy Co. was holding a machine gun position when they were attacked by a Nazi plane, but when Rock aimed the big gun at the plane it was all over for the Nazi pilot. Rock ordered his men back to base and insisted on moving forward on his own with a bazooka, only to come face to face with an enemy tank! The men of Easy Co. held the tank off with gunfire until Rock could destroy it with the bazooka. He then ordered Easy Co. back to base, telling them that he'd hold the position until relief arrived. Rock stayed put and nearly froze to death in the ice and snow until Nazi troops arrived, led by the Iron Major.

Rock is stunned by a blast from a potato masher and finds himself a prisoner in the Nazi camp. The only way out of Rock's cell is a dive through the window to a narrow river far below that winds through the Forest of Forgotten Skulls. He thinks back to his days in California when he and his younger brother Josh were in a special paratroop training unit. Rock survived a test jump off of the Golden Gate Bridge but his brother died; Rock vowed never to make another jump. When the Iron Major tells him that the Forest is booby-trapped to explode into flame when the Allied troops, led by Easy Co., march through it on their way to attack the POW camp, Rock makes the jump and finds himself in the Forest, facing down the Iron Major.

Sgt. Rock manages to get the Iron Major to blow himself up when his metallic hand comes down on a hidden mine. Rock drags himself back to Easy Co. and warns them in time, so the Forest is set ablaze in advance. The last thing we see is the soldiers marching past the Iron Major, his hand extended in death.

"Iron Major--Rock Sergeant!" is a full-length, 24-page story that succeeds on all levels. Kanigher introduces the tragic story of Rock's brother and comes up with a Nazi who is virtually a super-villain. Too bad he dies at the end!

Peter: After 76 issues as the star of Our Army at War, Rock finally gets his name in lights across the cover (12 years and 144 issues later, the transition would be complete when OAaW becomes Sgt. Rock) and Kanigher celebrates by knocking one out of the park. The cover blurb about a "giant war novel" might be over-hype but "Iron Major..." actually does feel like a novel, from the blazing battle action to the back story on Rock's brother, all wonderfully rendered by Kubert. Being nitpicky, I would question whether Rock could survive that land mine going off so close to him but wrapping myself up in such a great story (and not having to read yet another Hank Chapman "brothers-in-arms" snoozer helps as well, I'll freely admit) extinguishes any of my petty complaints this time 'round. It's a pity we won't see another full-length Rock epic for another three years.

Heath & Adler

G.I. Combat 113

"Tank Fight In Death Town!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

"Sink the Scorpio!"
Story by Hank Chapman
Art by Gene Colan

Peter: Jeb Stuart listens helplessly as one of his tank commander friends is blocked in and blown away by a plethora of Panthers in a deserted town known as Morteville ("Death Town"). Jeb's C.O. commands him to head to the village and keep the Panthers from moving on to other tank divisions; to play "mouse" to the "cats." The Jeb hits Morteville and is immediately set upon by the bigger armor but, through clever trickery, our heroes are able to wipe out the entire division and keep the Panthers from spreading death and destruction. "Tank Fight in Death Town" is an energetic, well-written white-knuckler, the best "Haunted Tank" tale since "Blind Man's Radar" back in #104. The sequence where Jeb is forced to listen as his friend Al is killed is very dramatic (almost as though we're eavesdropping on a private moment) and, later, that moment becomes even more disturbing when the Jeb must continually navigate around Al's burned out tank. Jeb (the ghost) makes one of his cameo appearances to drop one of his confounding riddles on our tank commander, which continues to raise my ire. What good is a bodyguard if his warnings are almost Sphinx-like?

Ignore Hank Chapman's cliched script for "Sink the Scorpio" (was the army of World War II made up of nothing but brothers?) and just let that beautiful Gene Colan art sink into your eyeballs. I'd never realized, until now, how similar Colan's work is to that of Neal Adams.

Jack: I'm reading The Art of Joe Kubert and Adams is quoted as saying that the grit in his work represents Kubert's influence. I'm always happy to see a story drawn by Gene Colan pop up in one of the DC War comics, especially since it distracts me from Chapman's sub-par scripts. I agree with you about the high quality of the Haunted Tank story, especially the art, which is Kubert in top form. Still, this could be any tank--the "haunted" part doesn't really seem to make much difference.

Next Week in It's an Entertaining Comic: The Debut of Crime SuspenStories!

by Jack Seabrook

"Together" is the second episode with a script by Robert C. Dennis that is based on a story by Alec Coppel, according to the screen credits. Like "The Diplomatic Corpse," there is no evidence that Coppel's story was ever published, so it is not known whether it was an actual story or just an idea or treatment. The show was broadcast on CBS on Sunday, January 12, 1958.

This episode was one of two to be directed by Robert Altman (1925-2006), whose career had begun after WWII when he started out by directing industrial films. He moved into directing episodic TV, mainly between 1953 and 1965, before embarking on a successful film career with such movies as M*A*S*H (1970), The Long Goodbye (1973), and Nashville (1975). He was given an honorary Oscar in 2006, not long before he died.

Alfred Hitchcock was said to have liked Altman's work, so he was hired to direct episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He directed only two; he was supposed to direct a third but claimed that he was fired after he criticized the screenplay. This may have been a bit of self-mythologizing on Altman's part because, after the story got around, Joan Harrison was asked about it and recalled no such incident.

Christine White as Shelley

Altman's direction of "Together" is quite good; the episode stars Joseph Cotten as Tony Gould, Christine White as Shelley, and Sam Buffington as Charlie. The show opens with a close up of an old-fashioned Christmas card with a line drawing of two drunks clinging to a lamp post and the message, "Merry Christmas Wasn't It?" The card is humorous on first view but, as the rest of "Together" will demonstrate, the Christmastime experience of the two men in this episode will be far from merry.

A glass of alcohol sits on the table next to the card; as the camera pulls back, pans over slightly to the left, and continues to pull back (an impressive opening shot), an office party in full swing is revealed: men and women are drinking, talking loudly and milling about. The camera comes to rest on a young woman who is trying to conduct a telephone call amidst the din. One man kisses her cheek, another grabs the phone from her, and it is clear that we are in 1958, when a young, pretty woman at an office has a certain, well-defined role.

She gives up on the call and we see a man in an office next to the party looking out of an inside window that gives him a view of the goings on; the window has bars over it, giving the impression that he is a prisoner. The woman enters the man's office and we see that he is John Courtney, presumably the boss. Her name is Shelley and she asks to use his phone; he is kind to her, wishing her a nice Christmas before leaving.

Gordon Wynn as John Courtney

Shelley telephones Charlie, looking for her boyfriend, Tony Gould, who is at Charlie's apartment, drinking. Tony is clearly older than Shelley (Joseph Cotten was 52 to Christine White's 31) and Charlie refers to him as "Good old, fun-loving Tony Gould." Shelley asks Tony if he has told his wife Gloria about their affair and Tony says yes; Shelley insists that she will call Tony's wife and break the news if Tony has not already done so. Tony promises to come to the office to pick her up. After Tony hangs up the phone, Charlie suggests that he make a clean break with Shelley, pointing out that divorcing Gloria would mean saying goodbye to her money. "You seem to be caught in a classic dilemma for which no remedy has yet been discovered," says Charlie.

Sam Buffington as Charlie

By the time Tony gets to the office, the party is over and everyone is gone, except Shelley and an unseen cleaning woman. Shelley greets Tony with loving enthusiasm but he closes the door to the inner office, turns out the lights and pulls the curtains over the barred window. Not wanting the cleaning woman to find them together, Tony has Shelley lock the door to the office. He explains that his wife will make divorce a long and difficult process. Shelley picks up the telephone and calls Gloria to tell her about Tony's infidelity. He slams the phone down but, when Shelley picks it up and dials again, Tony grabs a letter opener from the desk and stabs her, killing her instantly. She falls to the floor, dead, and he again hangs up the phone, hearing his wife's voice on the other end of the line. Tony dons his hat and tries to leave but finds the door locked. He rummages through Shelley's purse and removes a photo of himself and the key, but when he turns it the key breaks off in the lock.

The murder

Tony opens the curtain over the interior window and smashes the glass, but he is unable to move the bars over the window. On another wall of the office, a window opens to the outside, but the sidewalk is several stories below. A third window overlooks an alley and looks into a window in a building on the other side of the alley. Tony drags Shelley's body into the office's private bathroom (quite an executive office!) and puts her corpse in the shower, closing the glass door. His own desire for privacy has left him trapped, alone in an office on Christmas Eve with the dead body of his girlfriend!

He telephones Charlie and asks him to come and help. As Tony sits behind the desk talking on the phone, we see over his shoulder through the window across the alley as a light goes on and a woman appears.Tony does not see her. Charlies promises to come and rescue Tony, who merely says that he and Shelley are locked in the office but neglects to mention the young woman's condition. After he hangs up, Tony slides a sheet of paper under the office door and pushes the fragment of key out of the other side of the lock, but it slides off of the paper when he tries to pull it back through.

Charlie calls Tony back but is extremely drunk. (This is a Christmas episode of a very dark sort!) Tony's friend accepts an invitation from an attractive woman to go to another apartment for a drink, forgetting Tony altogether and leaving the phone off the hook.

Tony wakes up in the morning, having slept on the couch. He checks the door and finds it is still locked; he checks the bathroom and finds that Shelley's corpse is still on the shower floor; we see it in silhouette through the glass shower door. His nightmare is real in the cold light of Christmas morning. Tony sees across the alley, where the woman stands, brushing her hair in front of a mirror. She pulls the shade when he calls to her, so he throws a heavy object from the desk through her window and asks her to call a locksmith. She makes a telephone call--of course, the entire interaction between Tony and the woman in the window recalls the setting of Hitchcock's own classic, Rear Window.

Tony assumes that the woman called a locksmith and gathers his things to leave, tidying up the desk. Soon, however, the police arrive at her apartment and she shows them the broken window. As they head down and over to the office building, Tony has to do some quick thinking. On a side table, he sees a photo of John Courtney, the rightful occupant of the office, and realizes that he and Courtney resemble each other. Donning a pair of glasses he finds in the desk drawer, Tony prepares to impersonate Courtney.

Tony calls out across the alley

When the police arrive, he gets them to break open the door. They believe his story and he says that the phone in the office is out of order, or he would have called a friend for help the night before. All seems to be going according to plan for Tony until Charlie blunders in, looking for Shelley. Tony can only stand by in horror as Charlie and one of the policemen find her corpse. Tony removes Courtney's glasses, ready to give up his masquerade and resigned to his fate.

"Together"is an outstanding short film, where a strong, tight script, clever direction and fine acing combine to present a story of suspense. Joseph Cotten (1905-1994) stars as Tony and gives an excellent performance. Cotten met Orson Welles in 1934 and later because an inaugural member of the Mercury Theatre, appearing on stage and on radio in Welles's productions. He began his film career in 1937 but his first great role was in Citizen Kane (1941). Many other great roles followed, including Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The Third Man (1949). He began appearing on TV in 1954 and his career onscreen continued until 1981. This is one of three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in which he appeared.

Charlie finds Shelley's corpse

Tony's girlfriend Shelley is played by Christine White (1926-2013), whose career on screen consisted mostly of appearances on episodic TV from 1952 to 1963. Her most memorable role was as William Shatner's wife and seat-mate on the classic Twilight Zone episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." This was her only appearance on the Hitchcock series.

Sam Buffington (1931-1960) plays Charlie, Tony's drunken friend. Buffington made many TV appearances between 1957 and 1960 before his career was cut short by his suicide at age 28. He was on Alfred Hitchcock Presents three times, including "A Night With the Boys" and, as usual, he looks older than his real age.

Finally, Gordon Wynn (1914-1966) plays John Courtney, in whose office Tony is trapped. Wynn was on screen from the early forties to the mid-sixties and appeared in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

"Together" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read the GenreSnaps take on this episode here.

Sources:
"Alec Coppel."Alec Coppel. Austlit. Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

In two weeks: "The Equalizer," starring Leif Erickson and Martin Balsam!

Johnny Craig

Tales from the Crypt #20

"The Thing from the Sea!"★★
Story by Art by Al Feldstein

"A Fatal Caper!"★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Jack Kamen

"Rx . . . Death!"★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Graham Ingels

"Impending Doom!"★★★
Story by Al Feldstein
Art by Johnny Craig

One lovely spring day, an artist named Ted Warren draws the face of a frightened man with an oval around it. Why? He has no idea! He goes for a long walk and happens upon the home of Alex Kordova, a stone cutter who is carving Ted’s name on a new tombstone with the date of death as that very day! Why? He has no idea! Coincidentally, the frightened man drawn by Ted happens to be Kordova! Neither man thinks that these events signal “Impending Doom!” but when Ted realizes that Kordova’s wife is none other than Ted's old flame Ellen, it’s not long before the two are back in each other’s arms. Kordova beats Ted to death for kissing his wife and both prophecies come true—Ted dies that day and Kordova meets the hangman, demonstrating that the oval around his face in Ted’s drawing represented a noose.

The DC War Comics 1959-1976 by Corporals Enfantino and Seabrook

Kubert

Showcase 58

Enemy Ace in
"The Hunters--and the Hunted!"
Story by Robert Kanigher
Art by Joe Kubert

Peter: Rittmeister Hans von Hammer, the Enemy Ace, continues to fly the unfriendly skies of World War II, dropping the French and German pilots expertly but he's not above having his troubles. Thanks to his finely-honed skills, the Ace manages to get himself out of several scrapes and rule the sky, the enemy of all fighter pilots.

Spoiled by the insanely high quality of the first four Enemy Ace sagas, I was naturally looking forward to yet another well-written and finely-illustrated classic but what I got was "more of the same.""The Hunters--and the Hunted!" isn't crafted like the other EA adventures; it's more like a series of vignettes tenuously tied together by well-worn rope. Hans does daring somersaults in mid-air and takes out all pretenders; Hans listens patiently as his servant trumpets his master's kills; Hans overhears his comrades simultaneously diss and admire him for being a cold-blooded "hammer from hell," etc. etc. etc. It's all here--a catalog of greatest hits drawn from a quartet of the best DC war stories ever written. As Mark notes below, the skid was inevitable. Whether it will carry over to the next EA installment (not until May 1968!), only time will tell. Having said all that, there are still some bits here that shine through the haze:

- The Hammer plays possum while, all around him, bullets fly, and his thought is, "I waited for the blow which would split the back of my head open . . ."

- A bizarre 6-panel encounter with a woman in the woods, who recognizes the Ace and wonders what it would be like to be kissed by "the angel of death" and gets her wish. Her verdict? "(Hans's) lips-- are as cold--as death!"

- Fighting a British F.E. 2B Pusher Bi (yep, I knew all about that plane before I read this funny book), a two-seater manned by a pilot and an "observer" (picture an exposed tail-gunner), the Ace first kills the pilot then turns his attention to the second man. When his shots find their mark, von Hammer watches as the man falls from his seat and into thin air "like a high diver." A very powerful image.

So, a weak EA adventure but, by no means, a bad read.

Mark Barsotti: If last issue's installment came close to being a "perfect" war story, "The Hunters and the Hunted," takes a large step backward. This regression is perhaps inevitable, because it involves creators Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert simply doing their job, i.e. creating comic books, and here embracing--rather than struggling against--the expected tropes of the genre.

And K&K jump in the deep end right from the, er, splash page. Pre-zzeennting! An amazing, astonishing, logic-defying escape from death and dismemberment!

by Jack Seabrook

After a close study of the first twenty-one episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with teleplays by Robert C. Dennis, I have determined that a particular strength of his was his ability to take a short story and tighten its structure, adding or consolidating scenes as needed to reinforce key themes and strengthening the plot. A good example of this is "The Equalizer."

The story upon which this episode is based is also titled "The Equalizer," written by C.B. Gilford and published under the pen name Roy Carroll (a house pseudonym used by other authors as well) in the October 1957 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. Gilford has another short story in the same issue, which is surely why this one was published under a pseudonym.

"The Equalizer" was first published here

In bed on a Saturday night after a party, Eldon Marsh accuses his wife Louise of having paid too much attention to Wayne Major, a salesman who works with Eldon at the Kay Corporation. Though Louise denies liking Major, Eldon is concerned. On Monday morning, Major visits Eldon at the office and asks about Louise. Eldon is a small man, an accountant and the assistant treasurer at the company, while Wayne is a big, graceful bachelor. Eldon accuses Wayne of finding Louise attractive and Wayne taunts Eldon about his lack of trust in his colleague. Wayne calls Eldon "the damnedest fool I've ever met" and Eldon warns Wayne not to speak to Louise again.

On Thursday afternoon, Wayne does not show up for an office meeting and Eldon feels sick, certain that the man is with Louise. Eldon telephones home but gets no answer. He leaves work early and visits a bar, then goes home at the usual time; Louise claims to have been at home all day.

On Saturday night, Eldon and Louise attend the weekly party at the country club. Eldon watches from the bar as Louise slips outside and Wayne follows soon after. When Major returns, Eldon throws a drink in his face and challenges him to a fight. Major refuses and Eldon is fired. An attempt at a punch ends in Eldon being knocked out. At home, Louise chastises her husband and admits to an affair with Wayne; she is upset that Eldon has ruined things between her and her lover and she walks out.

Martin Balsam as Eldon

Two weeks later, Eldon returns to the country club and confronts Wayne. He insists on a fight, saying that a duel with weapons is the only way to even the odds. Eldon is ejected from the club but later badgers Wayne until he agrees to a duel, with the weapon and place left to Major to choose. One night, Eldon goes to a hotel roof, where Wayne suddenly shoots from a hiding place. Two bullets hit Eldon: "he knew he was dying, and he wanted to die. He'd lost his job. He'd lost Louise. So dying was easy. But Major had so much yet to lose . . ." As Eldon is dying, he hears the police arrive. Major tells them that he fired in self defense but the police angrily reply that Eldon "wasn't even carrying a gun."

In the opening paragraphs of the story, Gilford traces "the principle of the equalizer" through history, from the stone-tipped spear in the primeval jungle to the atomic bomb in WWII. The real equalizer of the story, however, turns out not to be a gun but rather Eldon's cunning, which allows him to exact revenge on his more physically powerful adversary.

Charles Bernard Gilford (1920-2010) was born in Kansas City, MO, and had early success as an author when his novelette "The Liquid Man" was published as the cover story in the September 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures (read the story here). After this auspicious beginning, Gilford's name disappears from the lists of story credits until 1953; he was graduated from college in 1942 and served in the Air Force from 1942 to 1945. He began work as a college teacher in 1947 and would continue teaching speech, English, drama, theatre, and creative writing for the rest of his career. He married and had four children.

Norma Crane as Louise

After earning an M.A. in 1947 and a Ph.D. in 1952, he became a prolific writer of short stories, with one source claiming that he wrote over 200 of them; publication dates for the short stories seem to have been concentrated in the years between 1953 and 1961. In addition to his own name, C.B. Gilford used pseudonyms such as Donald Campbell, Elizabeth Gregory and Douglass Farr. He also wrote at least 11 short plays between 1957 and 1969, and at least four novels between 1961 and 1969. A handful of his works were adapted for television, including four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and one of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His short stories often have been anthologized, though I have not been able to find a reprint source for "The Equalizer." He told Contemporary Authors that play writing was his first love and that, while he enjoyed writing short stories and novels, "they seem to be harder work, more words have to be gotten on paper. I have no great messages to communicate; just believe in a well-plotted story."

As much as Gilford may have focused on plot, Robert C. Dennis knew how to improve on his sources. His teleplay for "The Equalizer" is directed by James Neilson and features Martin Balsam as Eldon and Leif Erickson as Wayne; the episode was broadcast on CBS on Sunday, February 9, 1958.

Leif Erickson as Wayne

The first two scenes of the show are new to the story, serving to set the background for what follows and to portray events that were only mentioned in Gilford's work. Scene one takes place in the country club locker room, as Eldon boasts to a colleague of having beaten the boss, Harvey Sloan, at golf. Eldon credits his golf club, which he calls "the old equalizer"--Dennis introduces the term early in the show and shows the first of the tools that will allow a weaker man to beat a stronger one.

Scene two takes place upstairs at the country club, where we see Wayne dancing with Louise as Eldon chats with Sloan at a table. Sloan mentions that he will be playing golf with Wayne soon and Eldon assures him that Sloan will win because Wayne is a salesman, inferring that salesmen let the customer win. "You never play a customer's game, do you, Eldon," replies Sloan, foreshadowing later events. After the music stops and the dance is done, Louise flirts openly with Wayne and visibly is disappointed when he turns his attention to another attractive woman.

Scene three picks up where the short story begins, with Eldon and Louise in their bedroom after the party. Scene four takes place in the office, as Wayne visits Eldon, just as in the story, but scene five replaces the Thursday office meeting with another scene in the country club's locker room, where Wayne has failed to show up for tee time with Sloan. Eldon overhears his colleagues speculating that Wayne is with another man's wife and, as in the story, Eldon calls home.

Eldon on the roof in the last scene

Scene six is in the bar, but instead of Eldon killing time there and then going home, Louise joins her husband for a drink and claims that she was home all day. She says it is Saturday, and later that evening, Eldon remains at the bar, drunk, as Louise slips out the door. Dennis has taken scenes from the story and consolidated them, moving all of the events to the country club by making the bar a room next to the dining room. In the bar, Wayne plays bridge with Sloan and his colleagues and gets up to follow Louise out the door. Later, Wayne returns and Eldon confronts him in a scene that follows the story closely.

In the next scene, Louise leaves Eldon as they talk at home. A new scene is then added, where Eldon is at the office packing up personal items from his desk. Sloan comes in and Eldon comments that Wayne's actions affected Louise and "just made her cheap;" this is the reason Eldon believes he has to fight Wayne. Sloan tells him to stay, keep his job and forget about Wayne and Louise, but Eldon refuses and says that he has to settle with the larger man.

Wayne's gun hand appears

The scene that follows takes place once again in the bar and follows the story closely. Eldon then telephones Wayne; Dennis moves this scene to the locker room rather than having Wayne be at a party, as in the story. The teleplay the adds another aspect to this scene, as Wayne walks out to a patio and Eldon confronts him, calling him either a coward if he will not fight or a bully if he fights and beats up Eldon. "I haven't felt anything since Louise left me," says Eldon, who adds that, while Wayne is afraid to die, Eldon does not "care, so I have nothing to be afraid of. That's the equalizer."

For the second time, Dennis uses the show's title in the dialogue; first, it was the golf club; now, it is the lack of fear of dying. Wayne chooses guns for the upcoming duel and tells Eldon to meet him on the roof of the Kay Corporation building, not a hotel rooftop as in the story.

Wayne on the roof

The final scene is a little bit of noir film making by director Neilson, who uses shadows and light to demonstrate that Eldon, like so many a hero in a noir work, is doomed by the forces that surround him in the unfeeling city. Eldon emerges from a doorway onto the building's rooftop, where we see that it is night and that there are tall buildings all around, their windows alight. A roof vent in the foreground tells us right away where we are and a neon light from somewhere off screen blinks on and off, putting Eldon in light and shadow alternatively. He turns his back and leans against the waist-high wall, looking out over the city.

From the shadows, a hand emerges holding a gun. Wayne steps out of the shadows and Eldon turns, sees him, and is shot twice. Later, Wayne brings the police to the roof. Wayne's claim of self defense is belied by Eldon's lack of a gun, and in the final shot we see Eldon lying dead on the rooftop, blood on his shirt from the fatal bullet wound in his chest.

"The Equalizer" improves on its source story because Robert C. Dennis tightens up the structure, limits the number of scene changes, and compresses the time span of events. There is increased focus on "the equalizer"of the title; it is the golf club, the lack of fear, the gun, and--finally--Eldon's cunning plan and understanding of his opponent's cowardice. The final scene, especially, benefits from good direction, lighting and staging, and there are strong performances by everyone in the cast. In the end, Eldon Marsh is more concerned with honor than with material success; he defends his wife's honor and his own by sacrificing his life on a lonely rooftop.

Dudley Manlove as Harris

Director James Neilson (1909-1979) directed quite a few television shows from 1953 to 1973, as well as a number of movies in the 1960s. He directed twelve episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents; the last one reviewed in this series was "Mail Order Prophet," for which Robert C. Dennis also wrote the teleplay.

Top billing in the cast goes to Leif Erickson (1911-1986) as Wayne Phillips (Wayne Major in the story). Born William Anderson, he began his career as a singer and trombone player before trying vaudeville and ending up in Hollywood. His movie career began in 1933. He first appeared on TV in 1949 but remained busier in movies until 1957, when he began to take regular roles on TV. In addition to "The Equalizer," he was seen on two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He was on Night Gallery twice and his TV career ended in 1984.

The last shot, with Eldon

Martin Balsam (1919-1996) plays Eldon. Born in the Bronx, Balsam's early stage career was interrupted by a stint in the Air Force during WWII. He then joined the Actors Studio in 1948 and began appearing on TV in 1949. His big break came when he played Juror #1 in the film Twelve Angry Men (1957); this led Hitchcock to cast him as Arbogast in Psycho (1960), where he makes the memorable backward fall down the stairs of the Bates house before he is murdered by Norman in drag. "The Equalizer" is one of his two appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He also appeared on The Twilight Zone and many other TV shows. By the early 1970s, he was appearing mostly in movies. He later was a regular on Archie Bunker's Place, the sequel to All in the Family, and continued to make regular appearances on TV and in the movies until his death. He won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for A Thousand Clowns (1966).

Eldon's unfaithful wife is played by Norma Crane (1928-1973), who was born Norma Zuckerman in New York City. Also in the Actors Studio, her screen career began with a TV appearance in 1951. She was seen in three episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and also appeared on Thriller, as well as many other TV shows. Her most visible role was as Golde in the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof. She died of cancer at age 44.

Robert Riordan as Sloan

The unusually-named actor Dudley Manlove (1914-1996) plays Harris, one of Eldon's co-workers; Manlove started as a child actor in vaudeville and became a radio announcer after a serious car accident. His part in this show is small but his obituary is rather interesting; read it here.

Eldon's sympathetic boss, Harvey Sloan, is played by Robert Riordan (1911-1968), whose movie career began in 1947 and who started showing up on TV in 1957. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

"The Equalizer" is available on DVD here or may be viewed for free online here. Read a humorous review of the episode here. Thanks to Peter Enfantino for providing a scan of the original story.

Sources:
"C(harles) B(ernard) Gilford." Contemporary Authors Online. Gale, 2002. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.

In two weeks: "Guest for Breakfast," starring Joan Tetzel (who?)!