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I've elected not to include the cover of this edition, as it features a nasty make-up shot of actress Sheila Keith from one her Peter Walker movies. I'm sure a lot of newsagents would have refused to stock it, or left it on the top shelf where only those of certain tastes might have spotted it. This might have been a contributing factor to the discontinuation of the magazine. 

You can't sell it if sellers don't stock it.

Because, sadly, issue 09 of World of Horror magazine would prove to be the last. 

A number of genre titles came and went around this time. House of Hammer ran for much longer (30 issues), but disappeared when the film company went out of business - despite having tried to brand away from heavy Hammer Studios content. There was also the Monster Mag fold-out poster publication. This lasted about 20 issues.

A similar explosion of publications off the back of Star Wars met a similar fate - Fantasy Empire, TV Sci-Fi Monthly, Fantasy Image ran to only a handful of issues each.

The Doctor Who monster picture spreads or "petrifying pin-ups" had come to an end, and the previous issue of WoH had featured instead a review of the Longleat Exhibition.

For this final edition, the editor opted for something different again - a look at one particular story.

The adventure selected was a Pertwee one (only to be expected from this publication), and it was one with highly distinctive monsters - The Claws of Axos.

Perhaps, had the magazine continued, they might have covered other stories like this - but we'll never know.

The only other Doctor Who-related content in this final issue was an advert for the Jon Pertwee Fan Club. Now that Tom Baker had taken over the role of the Doctor from him, Pertwee wanted his own club, quite separate from the Doctor Who one run by Keith Miller out of Edinburgh which had official BBC sanction. Stuart Money would go on to become a great friend of the actor, accompanying him to conventions as his personal assistant.

This might be the last of this particular series, but next week we'll take a look at another glossy publication of the mid-1970's - the first Doctor Who Poster Magazine.

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Issue No.8 of World of Horror did have mention of Doctor Who content on the cover again, but the miscellaneous monster galleries of previous issues had come to an end. (Not entirely sure where the cover image comes from. Rocky Horror possibly? Do let me know if you recognise it).

Instead, within the covers we had a feature on the Longleat Exhibition.

The accompanying photographs did not, however, come from the venue. Instead they were BBC publicity shots. What's more - most of these monsters didn't even feature in the exhibition. 

The Emperor from Evil of the Daleks never appeared at Longleat or Blackpool. Neither did a Primitive from Colony In Space, nor a Gellguard from The Three Doctors. 

The exhibition Cybermen tended to be a mix of The Wheel in Space and Revenge of the Cybermen variants - often muddled together.

Metebelis Spiders and Giant Maggots were to be seen, and so were a Mutant and an Ice Warrior. Azaxyr had been on display, but not this particular year. 

In fact, the text talks a lot about Tom Baker monsters - Wirrn, Davros and Styre with his robot - yet no Season 12 images illustrate the article. It's mostly Pertwee era again.

I wasn't complaining, however. It was just nice to get some nice glossy photographs from the show in those pre-Doctor Who Weekly days.

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The 7th issue of World of Horror magazine had a generic cowled skull photograph on the cover. Tales from the Crypt and Dr Terror's House of Horrors had both featured such an image in their publicity. (The former film was more recently released, and featured a skull with a single eyeball prominently in its poster, so probably a reference to it).

Space 1999 was the next big thing in TV sci-fi at the time - threatening to knock Doctor Who off its Saturday evening perch. The magazine had a big colour spread featuring some of the aliens that would feature in the opening season. Of course, ITV failed to network it properly, and only a couple of regions placed it against Who, and those who did watch found it a trifle dull and switched back to BBC 1. Personally, I much prefer the first season to the sub-Star Trek second.

For the second issue running, the inside front cover quiz had a Doctor Who element - First Doctor William Hartnell was the answer to "C". The only other one I knew was Peter Boyle from Young Frankenstein (B). Apparently "A" is from a film called Tomb of the Undead, which I can't trace. I suspect it's an alternative title for something like The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue. Very hard to see is "D", which is an image from the bizarre Sean Connery film Zardoz, and "E" is from Hand of Death - a mad scientist B-movie from 1962.

There was mention of the Terrance Dicks stage play Doctor Who and the Daleks in Seven Keys to Doomsday on page 43, with a photo of stage Doctor Trevor Martin with a pair of Daleks. I've seen colour images from this press call, and the Daleks were black and red. (The header to this article would make a great name for a band / album).

 

Whilst the Doctor Who Appreciation Society was still a twinkle in the milkman's eye, there was the Doctor Who Fan Club. This Edinburgh-based group was run by Keith Miller, ably assisted at times by a certain Peter Capaldi of Glasgow. For many, the advert in World of Horror was the entry point into organised fandom.

FYI, Brigadier Bambera (Angela Bruce) was one of the cast of The Rocky Horror Show, then at the King's Road Theatre, and if you've been reading my "Episodes" posts lately you'll know that one of Douglas Camfield's repertoire of actors was a co-founder of The Dracula Society, who were looking for some fresh blood...

Finally, on the last couple of pages, we got to the main Doctor Who content - more "Petrifying Pin-ups".

It was back to the Pertwee era again this month. A lovely full page shot of Bellal from Death to the Daleks faced smaller images of his fellow Exxilons, Ogrons, Linx and a pair of Ambassadors (of Death!). Two of the pictures were B&W, and pretty much just silhouettes.

Did you know that the photographs of Pertwee posing with Ogrons (and Daleks) were actually taken during the Ealing filming of The Curse of Peladon, and not on location for Day of the Daleks? Note Pertwee's outfit.

This was the last of the monster-focussed photo spreads, but the series would feature in different ways in next two issues...

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Vincent Price in the guise of The Abominable Dr Phibes was the cover star of issue 006 of World of Horror. For a horror / sci-fi / monster magazine, The Towering Inferno was an odd inclusion.

The picture quiz on the inside front cover had a Doctor Who element. I'm sure you all know what "A" is above, and which story the image originates from. 

(Should you be wondering, B is the original Captain Marvel / Shazam; C is from Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires; D is from Vampira, in which David Niven played Dracula; and E was Donald Pleasence from a recent horror movie which had featured Tom Baker - The Mutations.

The letters pages also had a Doctor Who element - a letter with a photograph of Metebelis spiders scuttling across the road to set up home at Blackpool's Doctor Who Exhibition.

We see that The Land That Time Forgot had just opened. It featured Anthony Ainley as a German U-Boat officer, whilst its commander, played by John McEnery, had his voice overdubbed by Anton Differing (Silver Nemesis). Other cast included Keith Barron (Enlightenment), Susan Penhaligon (The Time Monster) and Declan Mulholland (The Sea Devils & Androids of Tara).

The actual Doctor Who feature this month was a monochrome one, specifically titled "Petrifying Pin Ups", as would the following issue's.

Much more of a mixed bag, era-wise this time. From the Hartnell years we get a Mechonoid from The Chase, and from the Troughton years we get Fish Workers from The Underwater Menace, and a Cyberman from The Moonbase. 

Humanoid Axons and Sea Devils had featured in earlier features, as had Linx the Sontaran. (What? No Colony in Space this month?). 

Finally there were a couple of images from The Monster of Peladon - including a rare one of Queen's Champion Blor. He would be included in the second range of Weetabix figures, giving this character a much higher profile than he deserved (as did Vega Nexos, who also got a Weetabix card and a large colour photograph in the second Doctor Who poster magazine).

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The newly released Battle for the Planet of the Apes was the main feature of World of Horror Issue 005, bagging the main cover image. Again, no mention of Doctor Who content but within was another monster-focussed feature.

Previous issues had given us almost exclusively photographs from the Pertwee stories, but Tom Baker was now starting to make his presence felt. The image of him above derives from one of his horror films - the Amicus portmanteau feature Vault of Horror. The K1 Robot also gets a look-in. The Curse of Peladon image is a rehearsal shot, as you can see that Sonny Caldinez (Ssorg) isn't wearing his full costume, and Katy Manning has her curlers in.

It was back to Pertwee for the second page of the feature - Colony in Space proving to be the most popular story for whoever selected the photographs for these articles. We've had images from the story in all three parts so far. Oddly this horror-focussed magazine opted for a photo of a humanoid version of an Axon, rather than the more horrific tentacled version - but not to worry, they'll make up for it in a later issue...

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No mention of Doctor Who on the cover of World of Horror issue 004, but immediately on opening the magazine you were presented with a double page spread:

Apart from a pink-tinted Varga the Ice Warrior, all of the images derive from the Pertwee era once again - ranging from Colony in Space to The Monster of Peladon. And a horror-focussed magazine was never going to pass up the chance to feature Azal the Daemon.

The magazine began a series of features on Star Trek this issue, and there was also a piece on the Loch Ness Monster - real life sightings rather than appearances in film or TV. 

In case you're wondering, "Ringo Starr's Monster" was a life-size sculpture of a T-Rex which the former Beatle drummer had installed in the grounds of his country home.

Who in WoH (1)

Back in 1974 there was no Doctor Who Weekly / Monthly / Magazine. Other than the Radio Times and the occasional Countdown or TV Action Summer Special, there were very few places where you could find articles and - more importantly for many of us - images from the series.

One place where you could see Doctor Who material was the short-lived horror movie magazine World of Horror. It ran for only 9 issues, yet all but the second issue had a feature of some sort on the programme, with some great photographs.

Issue 003 even had the series on the cover (above), with an Ogron portrait and a smaller image of Pertwee with a Sea Devil. Issue 001 only had an isolated picture of Malpha, from Mission to the Unknown, as part of a generic monsters photo-spread.

Within Issue 003 was a feature on some of the monsters:

The feature proved very popular, according to the letters page in issue 004, but the magazine had already committed to bringing more Doctor Who monster-related features - as shown by the "Part One" on Page 36 above.

All the images this issue derived from the Pertwee era, which was just coming to an end - ranging from an Inferno Primord (played by Dave Carter) to Bellal from Death to the Daleks. The Ogrons were obviously very popular with the mag's editor, as we get another two images of them from the Southbank Centre filming on Frontier in Space.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll bring you some other features from this much missed publication.

The odd copy can be found on internet auction sites - but they'll cost you a lot more than 30p!