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Oops. This has been another busy week, so Great Old Movies will be back next week -- if not before -- with a new crop of movie, book, and TV reviews. Thanks for reading!

THE HORROR COMICS: Fiends, Freaks and Fantastic Creatures, 1940s - 1980s. William Schoell. McFarland publishing; 2014.

Another shameless plug for my latest book, which covers about forty-five years of horror stories told in comic books. Many of these were influenced by films and radio, and sometimes the stories in horror comic books were turned into movies -- without crediting the comic book. Fans of the controversial and vivid EC horror comics will enjoy reading about the stories that were adapted for such series as Tales from the Crypt as well as for the theatrical films Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. Then there were long-running comics based on The Twilight Zone and Boris Karloff's Thriller. Giant bugs, bloodsucking vampires, flesh-eating fiends, giant voracious man-eating crabs, psychotic wives with axes, deals with the devil, adulterous husbands with murder on their minds, flesh-tearing werewolves, giant spiders with human heads and fangs, dinosaurs out-of-time and on the rampage, Frankenstein and Dracula -- The Horror Comics has it all. You'll read about such stories as "Airboy vs the Rats;" gory classics like "Foul Play;" weird ones like Simon and Kirby's "Head of the Family;" chilling heart-breakers like "Mr. Reilly, the Derelict" and "The Kid's Night Out;" adaptations of Poe, Lovecraft, Stevenson and Ray Bradbury -- and much more, such as the classic terror tale from Dell's Ghost Stories: "The Horror of Dread End," which gave many a kid nightmares back in the day. You can order direct from the publisher's website or from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

GREAT OLD MOVIES will be back to its regular schedule next week. This week I'm proofreading my latest, rather long, book.

See you next week with another selection of reviews and more!

William

Well, as you can see, GREAT OLD MOVIES has a new look -- finally. Believe me I know there's still room for improvement, but I think overall this looks better than the old format. However, if you disagree, let me know. I am happy to read any and all suggestions and advice. Part of the problem is that I am somewhat limited as to what I can do because some templates would do away with the slide show of my books, and while that isn't the main reason I do this blog, a little publicity never hurt anyone, eh? None of the colors I used for the description seemed to work satisfactorily -- there's no way to even center the main title -- so I put it below the photo, and I went through dozens of stills before I found one that was the right size and resolution and seemed to work with the title words. That's Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, of course. 

Anyway, I welcome constructive criticism.

Oh, for the two or three of you out there who are interested in reading my opinions of the rest of Twentieth Century-Fox's Jones Family series, more reviews are on the way -- bet you can't wait, LOL!