Cover Story - Top 15 Basil Gogos Covers

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This weekend the world lost a titan of illustration and horror- Basil Gogos.  Gogos was one of the fundamental names in horror artwork; his style was unique and widely influential in a way that few others have ever managed.  He’s also one of a lot of artists that don't get brought up nearly enough due to how much his work was instrumental in defining a previous era.  Gogos’ greatest volume of published work with the farthest reaching impact was unquestionably his huge collection of cover art produced for Famous Monsters of Filmland.  

Famous Monsters was a horror/monster/schlock magazine that first saw print in 1958 and basically invented the horror movie subculture.  In the days before the Internet stuff like Famous Monsters was the only way horror fans could interact with other fans or even get a hint of the horror landscape beyond their own personal borders and it helped inspire a lot of fans turned creators over the years.  So, today we honor a great man and his great legacy with the top 15 Basil Gogos covers of Famous Monsters of Film Land.

Universal Announces Classic Monster Shared Universe

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As a long time fan of shared universes and continuity, there’s a big part of me that wonder show this moment of popularity for those things will look once it’s passed into history.  Obviously, that’s assuming any trend can truly pass away anymore instead of simply going into extended hibernation, but by the same token, the young adult film boom of the mid-2010s seems to have thoroughly wound down, so I guess we’ll see.  

One thing seems fairly sure, most of the shared universes of the day will probably be looked back on with awkward disinterest or surprise, and none among them will garner such a response the same way I suspect the Universal Movie Monster-Verse will. 

In case you hadn’t heard, Universal has decided to revive the brands on their classic monster movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s to act as a new shared universe, which makes sense given the original films also acted as a shared universe.  These new films will be kicked off by this summer’s The Mummy and are being managed by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman- two of the biggest hacks working in Hollywood right now behind such atrocities as Transformers, Amazing Spider-Man 2, and the worst parts of the Star Trek reboot.  

Previously Universal had done a good job keeping this whole idea out of focus but as The Mummy nears and they start worrying about getting the hype machine going they’ve produce a big publicity spread to get people like me talking about it so, yeah; let’s talk about Universal’s Dark Universe.  

Static Thoughts - Beauty and the Beast (1987)

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This Friday marks the premiere of Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.  The hotly anticipated film will be Disney’s 7^th live-action fairy tale blockbuster and is basically the company’s way of planting their flag onto the fantasy genre.  There were sporadic competitors but ultimately Disney’s brand of big-budget fable has become the defining name in post-Game of Thrones mega-fantasy.  What’s more, the film is the first major live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast in decades, certainly the first major attempt to try and realize the Beast with CGI. 

Given the occasion, I thought it’d only be fair to take a look back at the last time this particular fairy tale was given a major release.  Back before Disney’s animated adaptation became the Oscar-winning success that completely defines this story there was another Beauty and the Beast, a bizarre 1987 TV series that time has more or less rejected despite featuring Linda Hamilton, Ron Perlman, and George RR Martin, the father of modern fantasy.  With such a pedigree how is this series not more widely known; let’s find out.