Wednesday 10 May 2023

Who in WoH (7)


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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