Creatures Were Stirring: the noir art (and Christmas nightmare) of Johnny Craig

As a seasonal equivalent to my Halloween post saluting the gruesomely talented Graham “Ghastly” Ingels, I would like to extend a Yuletide tip of the Santa hat to one of E.C’s other two wonderful “lead” horror artists (the third of course being Jack Davis), the deeply, deeply noir Johnny Craig.

Craig’s work is probably the single best comic book corollary to the film noir cycle, because he went from being an artist who perfectly captured the mid to late-1940s guys-with-guns and sexy-gals style of illustration (a style also possessed by E.C. stalwart Jack Kamen), and then, much like the noir cycle, he went crazy stylistically and storywise as the 1950s came to stay. He began working on E.C.’s “normal” comics before the “New Trend” of horror, sci-fi, and “suspenstories” came in. His work for Crime Patrol and War Against Crime is striking but often workmanlike, and although his style is eye-catching, it is the equivalent of a fairly decent but not exceptional late 1940s film noir. As soon as he became the lead artist for Crime Suspenstories and the “official” artist alter-ego for the “Vault Keeper” in The Vault of Horror in the early Fifties, he began to move in earnest from straight suspense to psychological and supernatural horror.

The much-discussed “crispness” of Craig’s work (the result of him being a painstakingly slow artist) remained throughout his tenure at E.C., but his work became really deranged as the months went along. His Crime Does Not Pay-ish artwork became skewed and pop-Expressionist, in the way that the great Fifties film noirs did — think Kiss Me Deadly as opposed to The Blue Dahlia. Craig was also one of the only E.C. artists besides Harvey Kurtzman who wrote his own stories, while the others worked from tales written by Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines. Here, too, he progressed from being a fairly procedural yarnspinner — his early Vault stories are indeed visual delights but seem to have none of the “kick” of the Feldstein-Gaines stories, until he finally let his subconscious take over and sent his characters into a noir hell. To illustrate this, I would point you to Vault 31 (actually issue #20, and given that number in the full reprint series issued in the Nineties), where he delivers an eight-page nightmare that is structured like a short story by Cornell Woolrich, but one of the later, more deranged Woolrich tales (the ones he wrote in the 1960s when he was holed up inside his apartment all day). It can be found here (thanks to the original uploader, whoever he may be — the .cbr file can be extracted in the free RAR extractor).

Craig’s covers also went from being perfectly serviceable drawings of characters in peril to really extreme illos of nasty-ass situations. Here is a full gallery of Craig’s Vault covers and another gallery of his Crime Suspenstories covers found on the great Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog (the title isn’t exactly accurate — there are many, many posts about Golden Age movies, as well as classic cartoon art and lurid paperback covers!).

My personal favorite Craig cover is one that predates Clive Barker's "Midnight Meat Train" story by several decades and also has the advantage of getting all the details right....



The three most famous Craig covers are below, and it’s pretty obvious why they raised eyebrows back in the early 1950s. The dismembered head cover is famous for being used as an exhibit of comics at their most lurid during the Kefauver hearing on juvenile deliquency, and the bullet-through-brain and meat cleaver ones — well, they're decades before their time, and indeed one full decade before H.G. Lewis’s groundbreaking gorefest Blood Feast, which played as kitsch even on its first release, while the E.C. stories still read as very pungent nightmares….







A very thorough piece by Mark Evanier on Craig's life before and after E.C. can be found here. But why am I paying tribute to Craig at this time? Well, he was the writer of, and the artist for, the single greatest E.C. Christmas tale, “… And All Through the House…” Most folks know the story through its inclusion in the 1972 movie Tales from the Crypt, where Joan Collins is the guilty Mum boarding up her house to keep out sicko psycho Santa.



Here, however, is the original Johnny Craig tale, from Vault 35, and it is a wonderfully creepy bit of work. Click here to download the issue (again, thanks to the original uploader, who put up scans of the 1950s originals!).

Mike Kuchar: The Funhouse interview

The influence of the Kuchar Brothers on “underground” and independent cinema can’t be overestimated. Their unique view of the world and unique methods of moviemaking are addictive — once you become a fan, you’re a fan for life. Thus, I was very happy to recently interview Mike Kuchar on the occasion of screenings of his new video works at the Anthology Film Archives.

Here he discusses his love of Hollywood movies, in particular lower-budgeted genre movies, which he considered more “friendly” and personal:



And here he discusses the gorgeously overwrought color in his best-known film, the cult classic Sins of the Fleshapoids:



For those who aren't familiar with Mike's work, three of his classic films are available on DVD, on the Sins of the Fleshapoids collection. Two of those three are also available on YouTube (ain't it interesting how these things work?). The first is the selfsame no-budget camp sci-fi masterwork Sins (1965):



The other available example of his work is fascinating, as it points the way to early John Waters (particularly one notable kissing sequence), The Craven Sluck (1967):

My current favorite Xmas song

I stand by what I wrote last year about the oppressivesness of Christmas music, and the coldly corporate notion that the finest (mostly long-dead) American singers can only be dredged up out of the collective unconscious once a year, and ONLY as purveyors of that dreaded canon of the same four or five dozen songs.

However, every so often a Christmas song comes along that is not offensive to the ears, and is in fact chronically catchy, and becomes something I actually enjoy humming obsessively. That tune is innocently titled “The Christmas La La song,” and can be found here. It comes to us courtesy of Sherwin Sleeves, the storytelling alter-ego of New Hampshire writer-performer Sean Hurley. I rhapsodized about Sean’s work months ago on the blog. Sean’s audio podcast Atoms, Motion and the Void remains my favorite original Web creation, a brilliant mixture of fine storytelling, old-time radio, carefully chosen (and created) music, genuine emotion (without sticky, Spielbergian sentiment), and an indelible lead characterization. Catch up with his work at the Atoms, Motion site and his blog.

Though you should hear “The Christmas La La Song” as an audio file first (and should buy it at iTunes — Sean is a truly independent artist), there is a modest computer-animated video for this very modest and catchy Yuletide tune:

Yes, Teenage Boys, There is a Santa Claus -or- Where is Robin Askwith When You Really Need Him?

Male adolescents of all ages were certainly happy to hear about the scandal at James Madison High School in Brooklyn earlier this week. It seems that two good-looking young “Romance language” teachers were having a nude get-together in an empty classroom while a student talent show was going on. Having been taught by some women that I had fantasies about (and some old horrifying nuns I would love to erase the memory of — for visuals, just take a look at some of the pics in my “Ghastly" Graham Ingels post), I have to say that I count among the millions of attentive straight males who read this story and immediately thought, “now why didn’t I go to THIS high school?” The news story, for those who missed it, is here.

The news outlets covering the story were so caught up in the nude lesbian sex aspect of the tale that they didn’t focus on the clear villain of the piece: the janitor who turned both teachers in and got them suspended (the condition they’re in now is prosaically known as “being in the rubber room” –- hmmm...). I’ve been listening of late to Bill Hicks bootlegs, so I need not voice my opinion on the allure of lesbianism (we’re going for intelligent humor on the matter, not tee-hee Howard Stern b.s. here).

But what exactly was this janitor, one Robert Colantuoni, thinking when he decided to bust the teachers? Had this noble citizen, who obviously took exception to something that most men would give their eyeteeth to walk in on, not SEEN any softcore pornography in his life? (My bet is that he was not protecting his job — I’m betting he was *religious*, because only a stooge for religion would drop a dime in that situation.) He was living out a scenario that has filled literally hours and hours of cinema — and pounds of bad Penthouse Forum letters — but he was morally above it, and finked on the ladies.

Now, Mr. C, there is this film Keyholes are for Peeping, made by a very incompetent but nonetheless compelling filmmaker named Doris Wishman. It’s all about a janitor who views numerous sexual encounters through keyholes. He in fact *likes* seeing sex through keyholes (no clips are online, but the film is easily available on DVD). In fact, the dominant male fantasy is to either join the ladies in an escapade, or to simpy watch what unfolds. Not to bust them, dude. But in case you need further instruction as to what one does when one walks in on attractive teachers having a “nude romp,” let me refer you to the British softcore cinema of the Seventies, when there was an ENTIRE SUB-GENRE of movies made about the situation you encountered and decided to complain about to the authorities.

The sub-genre is made up of two series of films, the Confessions of a… series starring Robin Askwith and the later Adventures of a... series. I credit film scripter/producer/critic David McGillivray for whatever knowledge I have about these films: David was the first celeb guest on the Funhouse way back in 1994 or so; he presented a discussion about British censorship and softcore, and eventually let the Funhouse have the U.S. premiere of the BBC docu based on his book about the history of British sex films, Doing Rude Things.

The Confessions series is remembered quite fondly by British gents of a certain age. In Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974), Askwith created the character of Timmy Lea, an affable bumbler who continually chances into situations where he can either watch sexy women or have sex with them. Here are the sadly sexless opening credits for the first film, but I should note that Mr. Askwith reprised the Timmy Lea characer in three more films, Confessions of a Pop Performer (1975) [you have to love the clunkiness of that title], Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976), and Confessions from a Holiday Camp (1977).

The frivolity continued in the next series of films — a few more that the moral Brooklyn janitor should be forced to watch, in a manner akin to Malcolm McDowell's indoctrination in A Clockwork Orange. The entries in that series were Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976), Adventures of a Private Eye (1977), Adventures of a Plumber's Mate (1978).

And since I can’t drive home enough that what Mr. Colantuoni did was a BAD thing, I herewith offer three samples that offer a good glimmer of what the “stumbling into sex” sub-genre was all about. The first is a scene from Confessions from a Holiday Camp:



The next is a recreation of the genre for a music video by those Scottish purveyors of pure pop for now people, Belle and Sebastian. The tune is “Step Into My Office, Baby”:



And since, as I noted last week, the skittish but devoutly corporate YouTube will only put up nudity when it is commercially sponsored, the best clip I could find to illustrate this phenomenon without toplessness is the trailer for Confessions of a Window Cleaner series:

Fuck Twilight, Paul Naschy’s dead….

I must first confess a severe deficiency of knowledge about the horror-packed career of Paul Naschy, the Spanish actor/filmmaker/screenwriter. However, what I and other film fans do know about the man was that he was a Mad Monster Party in a single person. Naschy, who was actually Señor Jacinto Molina, played at various times in his career Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and Fu Manchu. This earned him the nickname “the Lon Chaney of Spain,” but sometimes Naschy even topped ol’ Lon by playing multiple monsters in the very same film.

In this season when werewolves are being celebrated once again because of the latest Twilight installment, it should be noted that Naschy was the cinema’s greatest werewolf, having played one in twelve movies (when Lon Jr. only played the part seven times!). The fact that his werewolf character was always named “Waldemar Daninsky” is an even odder part of the phenomenon. The fans, of course, love him in his hairy alter-ego, and so you can find on YT numerous video tributes to Naschy, as with this romantic wolf-paean:



Further hirsute horror can be found in this slice of Werewolf Shadow (1970):



Check out the “overstuffed” trailers for Naschy’s films: Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (the uploader doesn’t want embeds — does that really stop anyone from finding the vid when you’ve labeled it so clearly?), and Curse of the Devil.

And how can anyone possibly pass by a movie named The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Women?



Los Monstruos del Terror



The Hunchback of the Morgue


And the film that appears in its entirety on YouTube, Vengeance of the Zombies (1972):



If you want background information on Naschy and his films, I direct you to www.naschy.com, run by Euro-horror expert (and former cable-access colleague of mine), Mirek Lipinski, whose main site is here.

Given mine own predisposition, I cannot help but conclude this tribute to the late, great werewolf with the trailer for one of his singularly best-titled movies. How many times have you felt like you’d like to live in (or did in fact live in) a House of Psychotic Women? They just don’t make ’em like this anymore….