Halloween in Wonderland + "The Specters!"

If you just fled over here to AEET in hopes of escaping the skull crushed gore ghost haunting your screen over at THOIA, well then prepare yourselves for a couple of peppy little Halloween humdingers instead! We have witches and goblins, and lots of jack o lanterns, as well as the scariest monster of them all-- a NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY! Yep, it's a downright dandy double feature that the whole family can enjoy featuring Danny, Kuppie, Alice, Speck, Spot, Siss, Pee Wee, Brickbatt, and oh heck, even a buncha pantywaist rich kids. So set your sights on fun now, it's time to swish away into non-stop action and 1940's silly style laughs! From the November 1942 issue of Pep Comics #33, and the May - June 1947 issue of Humdinger V2 #1.

"If I could save JAWS in a bottle..."

And now I can! We're celebrating the 50th anniversary of Steve Spielberg's unmatched, cinematic masterpiece, JAWS this year, (hard to believe, isn't it?) The timeless classic of Man vs. Great White still holds up, solid as ever even today. And boy oh boy, I was 8 years old seeing it in the theater in the summer of '75 for the first time-- and was absolutely terrified from start to finish! Like every kid from that time era, I had a JAWS shirt. I had a JAWS poster in my room. I can't even begin to tell you how many rubber shark toys I had, courtesy of the local 5 and dime. I even had the silly Mr. JAWS 45 record. One awesome thing I never had though, was the Addar "Super Scenes" JAWS hobby model kit. So it would only make sense, you know, being the 50th anniversary and all, to finally find one for only $15 on Facebook Marketplace (I do believe I got the deal of the century too) during this half century, Golden Jubilee marker! And here it is, in all of its excitingly dimensional, badly painted (thanks previous kid owner), super scene replicated in a murky old, corked bottle. As you can see, all sides of the box art design is impressive, though it seems a human attacked the lid --settle down, kid! The model kit itself is nicely sculpted as well, especially the "Matt Hooper" in black diver gear, and the rather claustrophobic, flimsy as ever shark cage. Hooper's lost his spear unfortunately, and I guess someone filled his leaky scuba tank with bright yellow urine, --or maybe it's Tall Man blood (kudos to another 70's horror classic-- PHANTASM!) JAWS itself on the other hand is sculpted a bit more cartoonish, though no less menacing, but he still manages to look a bit like the shark from Ideal's The Game of Jaws, also from 1975. Now we take all of this, glue it all together, paint it up, and put it inside a bottle! What a clever idea, only marred by the fact that the bottle is ultra cheap, clearish plastic, and just makes everything look completely out of focus (hence why I only included one hard to get picture with the bottle halves actually snapped together.) The background painting is almost my favorite part of the whole thing, a surreal wave of swishy blueish greens, plus a gurgling burst of scream-filled bubbles to line up with our panicked diver. Addar produced a number of these bottled "Super Scenes", many (according to the box side listing - see last image below), devoted to the Planet of the Apes, plus war scenes, dinosaurs, and my favorite of them all, the atmospheric, "Spirit in a Bottle" graveyard scene complete with swirling fog and a spooky haunted house background. I'm now on the hunt for that! (*insert JAWS theme here...)

Screamin' After Midnight

Spotted a cool, but wildly overpriced London After Midnight (1990) vinyl model kit at the antique mall recently, and had to snap a few pix of it for everyone. Yes sir, Screamin' did a superb sculpt job here, capturing Lon Chaney's "Man in the Beaver Hat" to petrifyin' perfection-- now if only the person who put it together and painted it could have been bothered to apply just a little more effort and life into it too. Ahhh well, this is also just another reminder that hopefully one day this "lost" film will finally surface, (even if it isn't that great), so those of us who grew up droolin' over Famous Monster mag pix of Professor / Inspector Edward C. Burke can finally see this freak in all of his snarling, ghastly, Golden Age of Cinema glory!

Rocky Horror

No, not THAT Rocky Horror, --THIS Rocky Horror! Seriously, what a weird ass wind-up tin toy abomination this thing is! I mean, it's clearly supposed to be Fred Flintstone (hence the "Rocky" name, get it?) But good lord, just the overall bonkers design and colors, and of course that dead-eyed vintage package lid illustration truly makes this one of the most monstrously deformed, wheeled caveman / propane tank toys from Japan, ever. Couldn't get it to work unfortunately, which, now that I think about it, might've been a good thing, as it would have certainly beaten my brains out, or cleaved my head in half with that stone axe! Look out Bluebeard, one, two Freddy, aka Rocky's comin' for you with battery operated, non-stop action! "Yabba Stabba Drool!"

"Spooks an' Crooks!" / Goofy Ghost

I felt like I kind of swindled you guys in the previous "Mostly Ghostly" post which actually featured absolutely not even a single, shivery ghost. So how about some ghosts in this post instead? Goofy Ghost is a funny little two-page fright filler originally presented in the Jan. '47 debut issue of Eerie #1, (published by Avon.) And despite the final panel promising more to come from GG, he actually never again ever materialized, except in reprints of this same exact two pager. But up first, let's check in with rad cad, Roger Dodger, as him and his gorgeous gal pal hep cat harpies attempt to throw a costume shindig in the 'ol haunted Brunswick manor! From the Nov. '48 issue of Exciting Comics #64, highlighted by some really great girly art by hep cap daddio, Al Hartley, himself!