Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 23, 2024 | 1 comment

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE to FORREST J. ACKERMAN and an issue that was special in more ways than one…

By JIM BEARD

When I dig into, or dig up in this case, something I love, I always try to start at the beginning. My beginning, that is.

I came in late to Warren’s Famous Monsters of Filmland and the wicked genius of Forrest J. Ackerman. It’s not my fault. You see, I was born too late, so blame my parents. My dad was buying me comics at an early age, around 5 years old or so, but it wasn’t until 1975, when I was almost 10, that he bought me my first Famous Monsters. That was #114, cover-dated March 1975.

Why so late? I figure it was because, let’s admit it, FM was kind of grown-up compared to most comics of the day. Or at least that’s probably how my dad saw it. Just look at the covers before #114 — some pretty gruesome stuff there, including Linda Blair with the Full Pazuzu in The Exorcist.

I sort of don’t blame him for not picking the mag up for me before ’75. I also am very certain exactly why he tossed a copy of #114 to me one fateful day.

Godzilla. King of the Monsters.

I was already watching Japanese monster movies by that time, either on afternoons after school or on Saturdays with Sir Graves Ghastly. He knew I loved the darn things and probably assumed that an issue of FM featuring “All of Japan’s Monsters!” was pretty safe.

Sir Graves Ghastly

How wrong he was. If I wasn’t addicted to giant monsters before that issue, I was most certainly hooked for life from that moment on.

Famous Monsters #114 is a mile marker in my pop culture life, and I owe it to Forry that he set it in stone at the side of the road I was traveling on. He, like Stan Lee, had created a house that I felt welcome in and wanted to explore to my heart’s content. He, and Sir Graves, of course, made me into the Monster Kid that still lives in the dungeons in my brain.

This is my birthday tribute to the Ackermonster this year, a tour of the magazine that stood out from the others, the one that felt grimy and gritty and maybe… just maybe… made me grow up just a little bit faster than nature intended.

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13 THINGS TO LOVE ABOUT FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #114:

That Cover. As a kid, I didn’t know artist Ken Kelly from the mailman, but I knew it was a sophisticated “fine art” kind of painting he provided for the issue. In a way, I guess it presaged the later “serious” look at Godzilla in the films that followed my beloved Showa era.

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Who’s That Guy? Right there, on Page One, was a smiling Japanese man looking like he’d just gone all Eddy Gein on Godzilla and was trying on his skin for size. I was fascinated by that photo. What a way to start an issue.

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Sink Your Fangs into the Mail. After looking at all the pictures, I remember coming back to read the “Fang Mail” and enjoy not only the readers’ letters but also Forry’s responses. In particular, his smackdown on a guy who tried to take Forry to task for “overenthusiasm” is classic. WANTED! More Editors Like Forrest J. Ackerman!

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Looking Forward. The first article was a rundown of genre films in my then-future and—Oh My Godzillaness!—I hung on every mention, every hint, every film title I knew nothing about. Today I wonder how many of them were actually released.

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Storybook Summary. Next up was an in-depth summary of the original 1954 Godzilla complete with a passel of photos. You may wonder why I would’ve been excited about it then, but full disclosure, at that time in 1975 I had never seen the G-Film that started it all. True story.

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How Kaiju is Your Valley? “Monsters From Japan” was labeled “A Special Famous Monsters Filmreport” and it opened my brain up to everything I had been missing at that juncture. My little head nearly exploded as Forry rattled off movie after movie from the Land of the Rising Sun, making me burn with jealousy over anyone who had seen most, if not all, of them.

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Two Heads are Better Than None. To this very day I have never seen the 1959 film The Manster (aka Sōtō no Satsujinki in Japan) but Forry made me feel like I had. And it terrified me silly.

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Going Buggy. Then there’s article about the 1972-74 Japanese TV show Kikaider and all the loony monsters its hero had to fight. Just another one that I have still never seen, but boy did it intrigue the heck out of me back then.

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In the Stills of the Night. I wasn’t sure then if this was a recurring thing in FM, but Forry included a two-page “Rare Treats” article that claimed his photo still collection had grown by 25,000 from the last time it was counted. That issue, he included a few shots of the biggest heavies in horror: Karloff, Cushing, Lugosi, etc.

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Destroy All Kids’ Brains. It was another film summary, but for a movie I was already very familiar with, Destroy All Monsters. The photos with the article alone were worth the price of admission to the mag (which of course I didn’t pay for, but I digress…).

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Back to Front Issues. Admit it, FM Fans, you loved to pore over the pages with all the covers of back issues you could order, right? I mean, I studied and studied those covers, tiny though they were, and drooled over every one of them.

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No Personal Checks! And then there were the ads, the very best ads of any magazine anywhere. If only I had my own money back then, I would have been buried in all the stuff the Ackermonster wanted me to buy. Oh, the pain, the pain…

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More Times for Monsters. Wait, what? That’s not Famous Monsters! It’s some kind of poor man’s FM, isn’t it? Here’s why I’m wrapping this up with a shot of the only issue of The Monster Times I’ve ever owned, #44 from late 1975: As funky as it was, it made me love FM #114 even more for what it lacked. And what it lacked was Dr. Acula himself, Forrest J. Ackerman.

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MORE

— 13 COVERS: A Forrest J. Ackerman Birthday Celebration — 2022. Click here.

— 13 COVERS: A Forrest J. Ackerman Birthday Celebration — 2021. Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it. His most fitting books for the season?  The Sgt. Janus: Spirit-Breaker Saga!