1970's Monster Funtime

I guess Jaws had made a pretty big impression on me so it made it on the cover of my sketchbook.




What a great cover!!


When I was a wee lad back in the mid-seventies I discovered Famous Monsters of Filmland while browsing through comic books at a phamarcy in San Antonio. It was issue #100 with the face of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster gracing the cover. I was hooked! After having collected a few more I decided to draw the assorted characters found in each issue.

I drew and collected them in a manila folder and titled it "Monsters", in honor of my favorite magazine. This was the time before I they started selling Starlog magazine in my neck of the woods. Most of the images I drew were from FM but I also started collecting newspaper clippings advertising movies playing in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo which was across the river in Mexico. The clippings all seem to date back between 1975 and 1977. I'm surprised I did collect a Star Wars ad.



Above and below are pages one and two of my sketchbook.



Above are a couple of items I clipped. The first is a film I don't recall seeing but the ad looked cool enough to save. The second is a photo of Harry Houdini the legendary magician and escape artist. I was a big fan at the time. I wasn't practicing magic. It was Halloween and they would have a seance to try to contact his spirit as they had been doing since his death on October 31st 1926. That type of thing fascinated me and I was always hoping they'd succeed. I don't know if they still gather for the seance. I'll post more stuff later.