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Spotlight on: Forelock the Warlock & Mr. Karswell from Haunted Horror
by Ryan B
For those of you who have not been haunting your local comic book crypt for, like, the last six months and therefore are not in the know about the gloriously gruesome new horror comic title, Haunted Horror, that is currently available, allow your old pal, Ryan B, to clue you in on just what you’re missing out on, and tell you all about the two grooviest new comic book horror hosts to hit the scene.
Haunted Horror #1
From the depraved minds of Craig Yoe – publisher of the Ghastly Award winning horror comic archive book, Zombies – and Steve Banes – horror comic blogger, and front man for the Missouri based rock band, Sons of Black Mass – comes the bi-monthly horror comic, Haunted Horror, which lovingly reprints stories from such forgotten golden age titles as Weird Chills, Adventures into Darkness, Chamber of Chills, and Worlds of Fear.
“So what?” You may be asking. “Why should I care about musty old horror stories from books I’ve never even heard of?”
You’ve got a lot of attitude, ya know that?
Well, what makes Haunted Horror so great is that all the stories it reprints are from pre-code horror comics. That’s right, before Dr. Wertham came along and ruined everything, these stories were what all the best juvenile delinquents on the block were reading and now you can read them too!
But what’s a story without a storyteller? Ah ha, that’s where Haunted Horror gets original.
Forelock the Warlock
Forelock the Warlock and Mr. Karswell are the masters of scaremonies in this book. Two brand new creepy characters created specifically for Haunted Horror, and in what I’m sure can only be an amazing coincidence they happen to look just like editors Yoe and Banes themselves. *cough, cough, wink, wink*
Speaking of Steve Banes, I recently got a chance to throw some questions his way via Facebook and here’s what he threw back:
RB: How did you and Mr. Yoe meet and decide to collaborate on Haunted Horror?
SB: We met through my blogs, primarily THE HORRORS OF IT ALL, I had been assisting with promotion of his books along with a handful of other great bloggers like Pappy and Mykal Banta… when he went into development of the Bob Powell Terrors collection I actually began donating stories, which led to Craig making me co-editor of the Chilling Horror ZOMBIES book and HAUNTED HORRORS series, with lots more horror projects on the way.
RB: How do you select the stories that appear in Haunted Horror?
SB: We have a huge pile of scans from my collection, Craig’s, and a handful of other contributors… we just try to keep each issue on the varied side with contrasting story plots and an interesting range of art styles, although issue #5 coming later this summer has a fun “sports horror” theme running through half the stories.
RB: What horror comics did you read growing up and were you inspired by them?
SB: My introduction to horror comics was the cool 70′s stuff that Marvel published featuring mostly reprints of their pre-code horror Atlas stories. I was more drawn to the style of the 50′s stuff illustrated by guys like Bill Everett and Joe Maneely… this forever sealed my obsession with Golden Age horror comics. And though I had been reading MAD ever since I was in 2nd grade, I didn’t discover the EC horror stuff until later.
RB: Who is your favorite comic book horror host?
SB: Mr. Karswell of course! haha
Mr. Karswell
RB: Could you tell me a little about Mr. Karswell’s artist, Art Fuentes, and also how you guys got the legendary Angelo Torres to draw Forelock?
SB: I met Art Fuentes at San Diego Comic Con last summer (2012), he was a friend of Craig’s and already helping out with various artistic elements for the Yoe Books on titles and other stuff. He’s a great guy and incredible freelance artist with a huge range of styles. I know he worked at Spumco for a while– he makes these totally rad paper toys you have to see to believe: http://www.uncleghastly.blogspot.com
Craig knows everyone in the comic/entertainment industry, though I believe Angelo Torres‘ involvement with Haunted Horror first came up last year at SDCC too. His illustration of Forelock is mind blowing.
There ya have it, folks. Straight from the horrors mouth, as it were.
Now I encourage each and every one of you creeps reading this to drag yourself out of your coffin every other month and pick up this awesome book. Let Forelock the Warlock and Mr. Karswell be the friends you know you don’t have and never really wanted. They‘ll introduce you to all the best horror that the golden age had to offer. And remember, there’s no sghoul like the old sghoul!
Mad Max Renegade is a post-apocalyptic fan film that had it’s internet premiere last year. It stars Liam Fountain and the famed Pursuit Special, otherwise known as the Last of the V-8 Interceptors. The story chronicles the further adventures of Main Force Patrol Officer Max Rockatansky days after stealing the Pursuit Special. We here at Horror Hosts and Creature Features are die hard Mad Max fans and we feel this is one of the best Mad Max fan films that we’ve ever seen. What do you think?
Join Horror Hosts and Creature Features May 3rd, 4th, and 5th at the Annual National Halloween, Horror, Haunted House and Hearse Convention located in The Greater Philadelphia Expo Center at Oaks, PA. It is a professional Halloween & Haunters Tradeshow & Convention built and run by professionals for professionals but also open to the public. 100+ Horror/Halloween vendors set up booths with products for your Haunted House, Hayride, Dark Ride, Garage Haunt, Home Haunt, Yard Haunt or just to decorate your spooky abode! National Halloween, Horror, Haunted House and Hearse Convention can be considered a Costume Show or even a Party Show and they even have featured professional custom costume vendors such as Castle Blood. The Trick or Treat type of show will allow you to purchase wholesale Halloween products, plus learn many new tricks and skills by attending The Halloween University.
If you are a members of Haunted Houses, Hayrides, Dark Rides, a Theme Park, Amusement Center, the NJ Boardwalk, Atlantic City, Ren Faire, Monster Collectors, Halloween Antiques, Horror Authors, or if you are a huge fan of Halloween then you do not want to miss this convention! You will not be disappointed. The Stage features amazing side show acts, gothic entertainment, and food concessions. They boast, “Adults Costume, new, innovative and creative Halloween Costumes including even costumes for kids can be found” — we’re not sure what that means but it sounds like fun. Pack your shopping bags with animatronics, how-to-DVD’s, robotics, airbrushing, makeup,mold making, props and prosethics, and much more! We hope to see you there!
I know that in a world full of stupid internet memes it’s hard to believe that these are a couple of the stupidest and least thought out memes that I’ve ever seen…
I want to start out by saying The Lost Boys is one of my favorite movies.
But lets take a minute to think about this film in depth.
Michael Emerson (yeah, the guy from Solarbabies) and his younger brother, Sam (The late Teen-Idol, Corey Haim), move with their recently divorced mother, Lucy, to a beach community in California. Sam decorates his room like a 12 year old girl complete with a sexy poster of Rob Lowe. The brothers begin hanging out on the Boardwalk, which is inhabited by punks and mysterious smooth young boys with Aqua Net encrusted hair and excessively long eyelashes — Not to mention the concerts featuring oiled down muscle men with silky hair playing saxophones like rugged manly men. We’re introduced to David (The super dreamy Kiefer Sutherland). David is the almost angelic and statuesque leader of a local gang. Meanwhile, Sam buddies up brothers Edgar and Alan Frog, a pair of self-proclaimed vampire hunters, who give him horror comics to teach him about young romance… er I mean vampires.
Michael is approached by David, who uses his bedroom eyes to convince him to follow them by motorcycle down the beach until they reach a dangerous cliff. At the gang’s cushy clubhouse David initiates Michael into the group, having him drink from a bottle of wine. The next day, Michael develops a thirst for blood and Mascara.
This initiates some zany vampire slaying antics including steaking Ted from “Bill and Ted” who explodes with glistening glittery blood. Everyone leaves the clubhouse covered in glitter. Sparkly blood. Once more, when the vampires die, they bleed glitter. Um…. need I go on?
I’ve never seen Twilight but attacking it using The Lost Boys is about as effective as using, say, the 80′s boy band New Kids on the Block to attack the newest flavor of the month One Direction… IT’S THE SAME THING.In our case it’s a bunch of sexy, effeminate, romantic vampires being marketed at teenaged girls while ignoring traditional vampire tropes and creating new ones. If you’re not interested in a romantic vampire movie made for young women, don’t watch Twilight, but you’re no better for watching The Lost Boys.
In most cases we’re dealing with is people not so much arguing about quality of movies but jumping on a bandwagon and having these imaginary arguments about apples and oranges, and in this case it’s apples and slightly older apples.
What we all must try and remember that it’s just as pretentious to hate something because it’s popular as it is to like it because it’s popular. Goodnight Ladies and Gentlemen and even gentler men… er… vampires?
“Family Friendly Fun.”
The Lobo’s were treated to a day at the movies by ‘Ma and Pop. This put us in a somewhat unusual position because they prefer to go to the early show — we’re talking 11am — which gives them plenty of time to make it home for their 5pm bed time.
Well, in case you were wondering
horror, much like alcohol, is generally 
frowned upon before noon — and for good reason. Your bacon and eggs just don’t sit right when you’re watching some old ladies doing unpleasant witchy stuff in the buff.
You know what also doesn’t sit right?
Watching a movie with dildos in it with your parents…
Needless to say, the entire family liked the film, even Pop, who is infamous for his almost irrational intolerance for low budget movies. His only criticism was the film grain throughout the movie and a little bit of monster cheesiness. Dixie had pointed out that the film grain was a stylistic decision and probably had nothing to do with the budget. We all agreed about the cheesiness, but felt
that it wasn’t enough to ruin the creepy
vibe of the film.
We are beginning to feel a little jaded, because we’re reading a lot of hype saying “Most disturbing film ever” and we feel like saying “You haven’t seen enough movies…” or to quote the great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, “It just didn’t get weird enough”. Lords of Salem may not be the most disturbing film ever, but we feel it was Rob Zombie‘s best work to date. Beautifully shot and very visual, however at times Zombie seems to ham-fistedly homage directors David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick — which we can’t really complain about since we love them both. Also, Sheri Moon Zombie is still pretty foxy, hell, Patricia Quinn is still pretty foxy for that matter.
If you’re lucky enough to be near a city where the film is being shown, we stand by our recommendation to see The Lords of Salem.
We don’t, however, recommend taking your parents.
Today is the day. The long-awaited Lords of Salem hits a very limited amount of theaters across the country. Cities include: New York, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, DC, Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Detroit. Get your butt in gear and seek it out. We’re pretty stoked about this flick, but many Rob Zombie fans are feeling burned because they don’t have access to the film. We’re making a road trip to the nearest screening tomorrow.
The Lords of Salem stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Rocky Horror alumna Patricia Quinn, Maria Conchita Alonza, Clint Howard, Dee Wallace, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips and is about a Radio DJ in Salem, Massachusetts who begins to experience the supernatural after listening to a mysterious record.
Why are we so excited? One word: Witches. We feel that witches don’t get enough play in popular culture and we’re getting pretty tired of zombies, no offense, Rob. When we try to think of decent witchcraft related horror movies, the list we come up with is pretty small compared to other sub-genres of horror. Dario Argento contributed a lot for witches on film especially in his masterpiece Suspiria. We feel that Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is wholly underrated and highly entertaining and we also enjoyed the 2009 thriller, The House of the Devil which featured one of our favorite genre greats, Mary Woronov. And you can’t forget the unforgettable Black Sunday staring the enchanting and mysterious Barbara Steel. There are several more entries in this list but
still not enough to satisfy us.
All of that being said, we’re fans of Rob Zombie‘s original films, House of 1000 Corpses and The Devils Rejects — we even liked Werewolf Women of the SS which was featured in Grindhouse. Our editor, Dixie Dellamorto, is a hard core fan of White Zombie and has been following Rob Zombie‘s career for years. Everything Rob Zombie does is saturated in horror and camp. He uses Horror Hosts in his movies, comic books, and music video’s and even briefly enjoyed a stint as one himself. He’s supportive of his fans and he loves horror — for that we solute him and we hope to see YOU at the theater this weekend.
Meanwhile in the Wasteland, brothers Jared and Greg Butler, have teamed up with A-list FX artists, a prosthetic makeup reality show star, and a small army of post-apocalypse aficionados to launch a crowdfunded movie that will finally turn zombies into heroes.
Oscar Nominee Greg Butler (visual FX for Harry Potter) and his brother Jared Butler (screenwriter) think it’s high time that zombies had some brains. Their new Kickstarter-funded short film Undying aims to do just that. “The other classic movie monsters like werewolves and vampires eventually got their turn as the hero, and we think the zombie is long overdue” says Jared. “To do it, we’ve put a new spin on the “monster”. Why do they have to be brainless? What if they were exactly like you and me but just couldn’t die?”
Horror Hosts and Creature Features is slowly but surely integrating into the technological age.
We started out as a print magazine in an age where print was almost un-dead and we were hesitant to embrace social networking — but have finally caught up with the rest of the world.
We’re regular cyber-punks now, seriously we’re just some rainbow dreadlocks and a daft punk album away… perhaps we’re human after all.
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