Welcome to the tenth installment in
The Masks of Famous Monsters Series.
Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was an absolute treasure trove of early mask history. By combing through the 191 issues published between 1958-1983, it's possible to gain a good understanding of the decades of evolution and history of Don Post Studios and Topstone monster masks. The eventual goal of this series is to catalog and archive each monster mask appearance in the pages Famous Monsters.
As discussed in
yesterday's post, this installment temporarily takes us out of order, as we go backwards to look at an article from the September 1962 issue of FM.
The article itself features some fantastic vintage monster mask photographs which were in fact stills from an 8 minute home-made horror movie title "Monster in the Basement" released in 1962 by Robert Kraus.
The article itself is unusual in the sheer volume of pages (10 pages total) dedicated to the movie. In addition, the overall page layout is quite strange and is very unorthodox for the FM format, perhaps in an attempt to mimic the jump-cut edit of the film, but as a result, we are left with some kick ass shots of a Topstone Gorilla, Cyclops and a Bayshore Zombie!
I had no idea that you were the one who is with this wonderful Mask making Studio.... Awesome!!
ReplyDeleteBy the way I have seen your icon (the Yellow Phantom)I would often check your list of "followed" web sites....
Many years ago I worked for Morris Costumes....
your new follower.... Dr. Theda
Hi Doc, welcome aboard! Glad you're enjoying the blog. Man, I'd love to hear some stories from your Morris days!
ReplyDeleteI've never seen these pages before. I love those big images of the Topstone masks and Bayshore zombie.
ReplyDeleteI agree Ray! It's great to see these at this large size. I have scans at larger sizes than what the blog will allow me to upload if you'd like them.
ReplyDeleteNow, if only someone could dig up a copy of the movie itself!