The infamous Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine - latterly just Famous Monsters - had featured the odd photograph of a Doctor Who monster in the past, but in July 1979 it gave us a major feature, including the front cover. This was issue 155 of a publication which had been running since 1958. Published by James Warren, it was edited by one-time actor Forrest J Ackerman. He became famous for his dreadful puns and cringeworthy "funny" photo captions. The magazine featured the Universal Horror movies prominently to start with, but quickly expanded to cover all manner of horror and science fiction film and (occasionally) television. It tended towards image over text, with the accompanying pun-filled articles kept relatively brief. However, Doctor Who merited a full 13 pages in this particular issue.
"The Four Faces of Dr Who" was designed as an introductory feature for the wider American market which might not be familiar with the series. The previous year had seen the sale of Tom Baker's first four seasons to Time-Life for screening in the States.
A few early stories were covered by a very brief synopsis (the first five of Season One), and some of the better known monsters were profiled (plus some more obscure ones like the Chameleons).
The Ice Warriors were renamed "Ice Monsters", for some reason - and never even managed to get a picture in the magazine.
It should be noted that FMoF was printed on very poor quality paper, and you will have seen that all the images were B&W only.
Aware of their regular readership, the feature ensured that references were made to horror stars such as Boris Karloff and Peter Cushing. The latter significantly, as the feature had a separate section on the Dalek movies in which he had starred. When it came to the Yeti, it mentioned that he had also met The Abominable Snowmen in the Hammer film version of the lost Nigel Kneale TV play - The Creature - in which he had also featured. Similarities of plot to horror movies were often pointed out. The Autons were likened to the android workers in Futureworld for instance (though the Mechanics from The Android Invasion would have been a better fit).
The images selected to illustrate the feature were mostly from earlier Tom Baker stories (Seasons 12 - 14), though there were a couple of Hartnell ones as well. The picture of Baker on the cover came from Image of the Fendahl, and the one on the first page of the main article came from The Sun Makers, both Season 15 stories and therefore the most recent images.
The only Troughton photo was the inclusion of some Cybermen from The Moonbase on the weirdly tinted cover, and for Pertwee it was the Axon Man on the first page of the feature and a pair of Daleks from Planet of the Daleks. A Dalek also featured on the cover. Some UK publications of the '70's we have looked at recently were Dalek-free (presumably due to additional image copyright costs).
The list stopped with Season Seven, however. If you didn't know the series, then it did provide a reasonably good introduction, giving an idea of the nature and scope of the programme - though you might have been forgiven for thinking that Tom Baker was Doctor throughout. If you wanted to delve deeper into the Doctor Who universe, there were some novelisations you could buy, which readers were pointed towards:
As mentioned, there was a separate four page section devoted to the Peter Cushing Dalek movies, which had been shown in the USA but hadn't made much of an impact there. The images all derived from the first film: Dr Who and the Daleks.
Next time - a quick look at the short-lived poster magazine TV Sci-Fi Monthly.
No comments:
Post a Comment