Author Description

Beginning with Steve Bissette's heartfelt homage to the recently-late Ib Melchior (as well as REPTILICUS!), Mr. Bissette also contributes "I Sing the Body Prohaska", his fact-packed personal reminiscences about those prolific 1960s monster men, the Prohaskas (Janos and his son Robert), who played assorted scary beasties on such TV shows as THE OUTER LIMITS and STAR TREK. In addition, MONSTER! #15 -- one of our most diversely variegated yet! -- is also proud to include Daniel Best's article "Frankenstein, The Australian Connection", which details the 1930s controversy and censorship in the land Down Under of Universal Pictures' first two Frankenstein franchise entries, James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN (1931) and THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935); the article includes seldom-seen ad-mats and articles reprinted from Oz newspapers of the period, as well as even reproductions of some of the censor board's actual official documents pertaining to the films in question. Meanwhile, Mr. Best's Aussie countryman, regular M! contributor John "REEL WILD CINEMA!" Harrison, contributes his nostalgic look back at monster-themed 8mm home movie digest reels in his piece entitled "Spooky Sprockets", which includes a picture gallery of 8-mill film box art and a lengthy, monster-movies-only list of titles which were formerly available in that format. In addition, we include a "mini-retrospective" of William Malone monster movies (3 in all), including Troy "SO DEADLY, SO PERVERSE" Howarth's appraisal of said director's '80s ALIEN cash-in, CREATURE (1985), starring Klaus Kinski. We're also pleased to include the first instalment of José Cruz's hopefully regular new feature, "From the Cheese Returned"; which this ish covers those two notorious 1988 creepy-crawly critter fritters, THE NEST and SLUGS: THE MOVIE.Elsewhere herein, Dawn Dabell covers a pair of moody B&W 1960 Italo-horrors in her double-bill reviews of ATOM AGE VAMPIRE and THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA. In addition, Bill Adcock tackles