Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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Cinemas are, as we all know, dark places.
But does that make them scary places?
Perhaps September 1987 could furnish an answer.
A quick glance at the cinema listings of a newspaper that exists only in my head, tells me it was a month which saw the unfurling of such delights as A Return to Salem's Lot, Amazon Women on the Moon, Fatal Attraction, Hellraiser and Mandela.
Having studied that list, I have come to the conclusion that some of those films are noticeably less frightening than others.
As for my Film of the Month, I am, inevitably, going to go for Hellraiser because I never get tired of it.
I'm sure I'd also never get tired of Amazon Women on the Moon, had I ever seen it.
But what of the real world? The one that needs no script?
In Moscow, that month, the trial commenced of 19-year-old Mathias Rust who'd, earlier, surprised Russian authorities - and, presumably, tourists - by landing his Cessna light aircraft in Red Square. He would be sentenced to four years in a labour camp; for violation of border and air traffic regulations, as well as provoking an emergency situation. However, he would go on to serve just fourteen months before being pardoned.
Elsewhere, the world's first conference on artificial life was held at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States. I can shed no light upon just what conclusions it came to.
And what of the galaxy's greatest comic?
And it would appear that, judging by the cover of Prog 541, that Judge Dredd was encountering more trouble from that Mega-City master-fiend Stan Lee!
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10 comments:
Steve! Are you going to mention “now that’s what I call music number 10“ in your November 1987 posting? Charlie bought that in London in November 1987 so he wants to know if he should go back and listen to all the tracks again so that he has conversant and said subject.
Charlie saw so few films in the 80s because he was living in Germany but he did see “FATAL ATTRACTION! “And, he saw in the US Army barracks in Bad Toelz Germany, which were formally the barracks for training SS officers.
RUST exposed a lot of USSR shortcomings. Not long after that, we had a defector from Czechoslovakia brief us at our air base. We explicitly asked him about the check air defenses along the border, which was the type of unit he was in when he defected. He said, “There are none all the way to Prague. Every thing is unservicable.”
Russian bear was laid bare.
CH
I’m pretty sure September was the US release date for Hellraiser: I definitely went to see it in summer 1987. During the summer break after I left high school. It is a terrific movie, endlessly fascinating. It’s aged now in a way that makes it even weirder and more interesting than it was at the time.
Who is that first cover by? I sort of recognise the style. It’s one of the newcomers, for sure.
Dillon doing the bare minimum. I still wish he’d found a sympathetic inker to work with who’d flesh out his pencils, because he’d stopped bothering. Oddly, it looks like Dredd is wearing cutoffs if you glance at it too quickly.
Nice Yeowell.
The last one - Barry Kitson? - looks like a sixth form art submission.
Charlie: a friend of my was an Army brat (UK one though) and tells of attending movie screenings in the 80s with GI audiences. Apparently Rocky 4 was quite an experience.
Pretty sure that cover for prog 538 was by Liam Sharpe, Matthew.
Early days for him, but he got a lot better.
-sean
Help! Why does (presumably) Stan Lee look like Harry Osborne. CH-47
It's a different Stan Lee, Charlie.
Steve, I think 'Cannibal Hookers' - the first full length film by American cheapo horror auteur Donald Farmer - was also released in Sept '87.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132000/
Having said that, it's not a very strong contender for the Film of the Month spot, which I would also give to 'Hellraiser'.
Were you into the 'Hellraiser ' sequels at all? Or comics? I found them disappointing. Except for the Pinhead v Marshall Law crossover by Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill. That was great.
-sean
Charlie, I think Stan Lee is meant to be Chinese (?) and he's not Marvel's Stan Lee.
Steve probably won't mention NOW 10 but listen to all the songs again anyway!
Huh. It just occurred to me to check the wiki to see if there'd been another 'Hellraiser' flick after the third one, in case I needed to add a disclaimer to my comment - I wouldn't to be dismissive of a film I haven't seen - and it seems there's a total of ELEVEN 'Hellraiser' films!
So far...
-sean
I also saw Hellraiser at the movies, and very much enjoyed it. I’ve somehow never seen fatal attraction, which probably puts me in the minority. I recall the Zenith book one progs (this era) being generally ok, and didn’t mind the Stan Lee story. However, I remember Barry Kitson’s art as pretty decent, and so that cover is a bit of a shocker.
With hindsight, the whole Chernobyl melt-down was probably an indicator that USSR technology wasn’t quite as flash as the West assumed.
DW
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