Today I received a surprise gift that took me back to a favorite part of my childhood,
"Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazines! I first encountered Famous Monsters or "FMs" as me and my friends called it, one summer when I was staying with my Aunt and Uncle in Woodruff, Wisconsin. I picked-up a copy of issue #114 at a drug store and my life was never the same. I read that magazine until the covers fell off. When I returned home to Eau Claire, I went to buy the latest issue but could not find it any where in town! Horrors! I worked hard and saved my money and got a subscription. After that, I never missed an issue until they stopped publishing it in 1983. "Famous Monsters" was the bible for monster movie geeks through the 1960s and 1970s. The beloved Forry Ackerman, a.k.a. "The Forrymonster" was the editor and driving personality behind the magazines amazing photos, articles and legendarily bad puns. I fondly recall flipping through the pages and obsessing over the images of movies I wished to one day see. This was long before Netflix or DVDs or even VHS tapes! If there was a movie you wanted to catch, you had to hope it showed up in the TV guide and was on a channel that came in clear or clear enough. I watched many a late night movie through the flickering curtain of static, squinting desperately to make out the monster. That usually made a mediocre movie great since my over-active imagination would fill-in the blanks.
Will I be reading these mags? You're damn right I will!
Thank you Larry Merrill,
OK HW
