MonSFFA’s next meeting is scheduled to take place tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, November 8, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM! This will be our last regular meeting of 2025; next month, we celebrate the Holiday Season with our traditional dinner/party.

As for tomorrow’s meeting, we will gather at our downtown meeting locale, Le Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest (corner St-Mathieu); find us in the “Faubourg” conference room.

Out-of-towners, as always, may join our ZOOM-chat and take part in the meeting from the comfort of home! MonSFFA club members will receive an e-mail this evening (Friday, November 7) providing the information needed to join our meeting’s ZOOM-chat and take part; this information will also be included in our opening meeting post, which goes up on our Website tomorrow at 12:30PM, shortly before the start of the meeting.

On the Agenda:

The Brief Life and Lasting Legacy of Matt Baker, “Good Girl Artist” Supreme!

A primer on the career of Golden Age comic book artist Matt Baker, celebrated as a master of “Good Girl Art.” His talent for drawing beautiful women as dynamic, expressive characters made him an in-demand artist in the romance, adventure, crime/detective, “Jungle Girl,” and of course, sci-fi and superhero genres, securing his place among the comic industry’s top-ranked artists during the Golden, or any other age!

Sci-Fi Balderdash! (Game)

We always like to include a fun and challenging game in our programming of the last meeting of the year, so…given only the title of an actual SF/F story, can you come up with a brief, two-sentence fake story synopsis for that title? Convincing enough to fool your fellow players? And, can you pick out the real synopsis from among the fakes?

Report on the 2025 Super Sci-Fi Book Sale

The club’s treasurer offers a brief report on our successful 2025 Super Sci-Fi Book Sale, held last month.

Plans for Next Year!

We look forward to the coming year and kick around ideas for meeting programming and club activities in 2026! As always, club members, your input is encouraged and welcome!

Meeting Theme: What SF/F topics interest you? Have on hand a few suggestions for next year’s programming!

Please Note: While we strive to keep on schedule, we do, sometimes, fall behind a little, or find ourselves having to reshuffle the order of items on the agenda for one reason or another, or reschedule planned presentations/discussions. Therefore, please understand that all programming is subject to change!

We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our downtown meeting hall for this November 2025 meeting! Bring a friend! See you all there tomorrow, Saturday, November 8, 1:00PM-5:00PM!

MonSFFA’s next meeting is scheduled to take place this Saturday, November 8, from 1:00PM to 5:00PM! This will be our last regular meeting of 2025; next month, we celebrate the Holiday Season with our traditional dinner/party.

We will gather at our downtown meeting locale, Le Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest (corner St-Mathieu); find us in the “Faubourg” conference room.

Out-of-towners, as always, may join our ZOOM-chat and take part in the meeting from the comfort of home!

On the Agenda:

The Brief Life and Lasting Legacy of Matt Baker, “Good Girl Artist” Supreme!

A primer on the career of Golden Age comic book artist Matt Baker, celebrated as a master of “Good Girl Art.” His talent for drawing beautiful women as dynamic, expressive characters made him an in-demand artist in the romance, adventure, crime/detective, “Jungle Girl,” and of course, sci-fi and superhero genres, securing his place among the comic industry’s top-ranked artists during the Golden, or any other age!

Sci-Fi Balderdash! (Game)

We always like to include a fun and challenging game in our programming of the last meeting of the year, so…given only the title of an actual SF/F story, can you come up with a brief, two-sentence fake story synopsis for that title? Convincing enough to fool your fellow players? And, can you pick out the real synopsis from among the fakes?

Report on the 2025 Super Sci-Fi Book Sale

The club’s treasurer offers a brief report on our successful 2025 Super Sci-Fi Book Sale, held last month.

Plans for Next Year!

We look forward to the coming year and kick around ideas for meeting programming and club activities in 2026! Your input, club members, is encouraged and welcome!

Meeting Theme: What SF/F topics interest you? Have on hand a few suggestions for next year’s programming! 

Please Note: While we strive to keep on schedule, we do, sometimes, fall behind a little, or find ourselves having to reshuffle the order of items on the agenda for one reason or another, or reschedule planned presentations/discussions. Therefore, please understand that all programming is subject to change!

We’re looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at our downtown meeting hall for this November 2025 meeting! Bring a friend! See you all there on Saturday, November 8, 1:00PM-5:00PM!

With our Super Sci-Fi Book Sale concluded for another year, we packed away the last of our remaining stock on Sunday. The 2025 sale was one of our most successful to date, and while the official numbers are not yet finalized, it is safe to say that we raised north of $1000, all of which will be directed towards MonSFFA’s operating budget for 2026.

Plans for next year’s book sale are already in formation, and we will let everyone know of place and date as soon as these are confirmed, likely in the early months of the New Year. Our inventory has now been shipped to MonSFFA’s Strategic Hold, Eastern Depository, where it will reside until the 2026 edition of the Super Sci-Fi Book Sale, to which we hope to again welcome all of you!

And so, we take this opportunity to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you, club members and friends of our organization, who came down to the sale to support MonSFFA by buying books. Thank you so very much!

We thank, as well, all those who contributed to the replenishing of our inventory by donating books to our sale!

And last, but certainly not least, we would like to send out gamma-ray-level waves of thanks to our many volunteers, without whose efforts the sale would simply not be possible! Thank you for helping to transport, unpack, and sort our many boxes of books and magazines, and pack the whole lot away again, post-sale. Your contributions are enormously appreciated!

Check in with us regularly, here, for information on the club’s activities: www.MonSFFA.ca

This is our closing post of the afternoon.

At this moment, the club is wrapping up its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, this overview of Aurora’s line of movie monster-themed plastic model kits, and the mania they precipitated in the 1960s, originally presented as part of our DIY October 17, 2020 Virtual MonSFFA Meeting:

Any so-called “Monster Kid” growing up in the 1960s harboured two utmost desires: the latest issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine (co-founded by pioneering sci-fi fan Forrest J Ackerman), and the latest release in Aurora’s line of classic monster model kits!

The Long Island, NY-based Aurora Plastics Corporation was founded in 1950 as a contract manufacturer of injection-molded plastics. Before too long, the company began producing and marketing its own line of “all plastic assembly kits” for young hobbyists, focusing chiefly on aircraft and automobiles.

Aurora’s first figure kits, a set of medieval knights in armour, were introduced in the mid-’50s, quickly followed by the “Guys and Gals of All Nations” series, featuring statuettes dressed in the national costumes of Holland, China, Scotland, and other countries, this in an effort to appeal to female crafters. Throughout the late-’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, other historical subjects followed the knights, from Roman gladiators to modern U.S. soldiers, sailors, and airmen, along with a variety of kits spotlighting American wildlife, sports stars, comic book superheroes, sci-fi TV characters, and the prehistoric world.

But it was a licensing agreement with Universal Studios that allowed Aurora to launch what would become its most popular and successful series of all, the Movie Monster Models collection!

Universal’s classic horror films were enjoying a revival in the late-’50s- and early-’60s, and were all the rage with youngsters, who watched them on television, where they aired frequently, or flocked to movie houses to see them. Aurora marketing director Bill Silverstein had taken note of the appeal these old pictures had with adolescents and teens, and pitched the idea of a series of kits showcasing Universal’s stable of venerable movie monsters. He was met with ridicule and disinterest but persisted and eventually convinced skeptical upper management to gauge interest by bringing to market one model.

That model was Frankenstein, released in 1961. Silverstein was soon vindicated! Frankenstein was an instant hit and calls started coming in to Aurora’s sales offices requesting other kits in the line. Dracula and The Wolf Man were rushed into production and were on store shelves in time for Christmas 1962.

The Creature (from the Black Lagoon), The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll as Mr. Hyde, non-Universal behemoths King Kong and Godzilla, and others followed. There were 13 monster kits produced in all—tagged by aficionados “The Aurora 13”—plus two customizing kits and a Gigantic Frankenstein, the finished model standing some two-feet tall.  A pair of affiliated models, the Munsters ’65 and the Addams Family Haunted House, are often considered part of the series.

Advertised in Famous Monsters of Filmland and DC Comics publications, Aurora’s monster kits skyrocketed in popularity. In 1964, a U.S.-wide Monster Customizing Contest was sponsored in cooperation with Universal Pictures and Famous Monsters, contributing to a growing “Monster Mania.”

Young model-makers were tasked with creating a macabre diorama using any combination of Aurora monster kits and customizing materials. Two customizing kits were issued, providing modellers with an assortment of skulls, spiders, rats, and such with which to enhance their miniature tableaus. Each entrant received a “Master Monster Maker” certificate. Hundreds of prizes were handed out with the national winner awarded a paid trip to Hollywood and the opportunity to appear in a horror movie!

Sculptor Bill Lemon was responsible for designing and producing the patterns for most of the monster models, with Ray Meyers and Adam “Larry” Ehling taking over when Lemon left to pursue other commissions. The Forgotten Prisoner of Castel-Mare was the last kit in the line, becoming available in 1967-’68 and sporting box art by renowned pulp illustrator Mort Künstler.

It was the box art produced by James Bama, however, that indelibly marked Aurora’s Movie Monster Models. At the time, Bama was working as a commercial artist for a major New York advertising firm. He was known as a prolific paperback and magazine cover artist, as well as for dramatic interior illustrations featured in men’s adventure magazines. Genre fans would soon come to know him for his extraordinarily striking monochromatic Doc Savage covers for Bantam Books’ paperback reprints of the original novels.

The accomplished illustrator applied his signature realism to what was fantastical subject matter in rendering melodramatically lit, vividly colourful box art for the monster kits. Save for Künstler’s single contribution, Bama produced all of the original box art for the series, as well as a few pieces for spin-offs like the Monstermobiles line, which put our favourite monsters in crazily-exaggerated hot-rods, a concept that did not fly with either monster or hot-rod enthusiasts.

Beginning in 1969, the original monster models were modified to include luminescent parts and reissued through the early-’70s with reworked packaging that included some new art by artist Harry Schaare, who essentially copied Bama’s originals while highlighting with bright acrylics the glow-in-the-dark components of the model. In some instances, Bama’s original gouache paintings were actually painted over with acrylics—no one present back in the day seems to know who might have been responsible for that sin, or perhaps nobody wants to say!

In 1971, Aurora launched its controversial Monster Scenes line, featuring four character kits: Frankenstein, sexy comic book pin-up Vampirella, the sadistic Doctor Deadly, and a scantily-clad young woman dubbed simply “The Victim.” At about 1/13 scale, these simple, snap-together, toy-like figures were smaller and lacked the detail of their movie monster cousins. The concept, here, was to enable children to easily assemble and then play with the models. Each figure came with extra sets of movable arms and legs so that they could be assembled in different poses.

In addition to the character kits, four “grisly equipment” kits with names like Gruesome Goodies and The Pain Parlour were available, together serving as a torture-chamber playset into which the figures could be placed. Aurora played up the lurid horror, violence, and sex, promoting its new line with the slogan “Rated ‘X’ for excitement!”

It wasn’t long before concerned parents were petitioning Nabisco, owners of Aurora at the time, outraged at these “sick toys” that make for a “sick society!” Women’s groups, too, admonished the company for promoting misogynistic cruelty, noting that the helpless “Victim” didn’t even rate her own name!

Nervous Nabisco quickly ordered a halt to the tooling on two new kits, a dungeon and an animal pit into which The Victim could be lowered, and announced that the Monster Scenes line was to be discontinued. Preliminary development on models of a second victim, an executioner, and more torture devices ceased. All remaining inventory, including three as yet unreleased kits—Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Giant Insect—were shipped to Canada, where The Victim was recast as Dr. Deadly’s Daughter.

The following year, Aurora recovered from this costly debacle, premiering its well-received Prehistoric Scenes line, which incorporated the same models-as-toys idea that had underpinned the short-lived Monster Scenes series.

Aurora’s swansong monster series was the 1/12-scale Monsters of the Movies line. But by now the monster craze had passed and the last kit in this series was shipped in 1977. The company shut down its molding machines that same year.

In a span of just 27 years, Aurora had progressed from humble beginnings to become one of the foremost and most innovative producers of scale-model kits in the industry, only to fall victim to a number of questionable marketing moves and product choices, as well as generally waning public interest in the hobby.

Bill Silverstein remained focused on the business of marketing toys. His stint at Aurora led him to join comic actors Don “Maxwell Smart” Adams and Bill “José Jiménez” Dana in forming a small advertising agency, securing Aurora as a client, of course! In the early-’70s, he became a partner at Helfgott & Partners (later Helfgott, Towne & Silverstein), a high-profile New York agency that represented the Ideal Toy Company.

After leaving Aurora, Bill Lemon went on to sculpt for major toy manufacturers like Remco and Marx and produced, over his decades-long career, everything from anatomical models for medical schools to Pez dispensers to a circa-1980s Michael Jackson doll.

James Bama left New York in 1968 and moved to Wyoming, where he established himself as a painter specializing in Western themes. In recognition of his Aurora box art, he was inducted into the Monster Kid Hall of Fame in 2006.

Rival model manufacturer Monogram (later merged with another rival, Revell) initially acquired many of Aurora’s molds from parent company Nabisco and reissued a number of the kits under its own banner beginning in the late-’70s. In the mid-’90s and more recently, modern scale-model manufacturers like Polar Lights and Moebius Models have retooled, updated, and rereleased many of Aurora’s most popular kits, occasioning a revival of Monster Mania for both aging Monster Kids and a new generation.

ANSWERS TO…

And finally, here are the answers to the quiz we posted here earlier this afternoon:

1) Halloween is the day before which holiday? – All Saints (Hallows) Day

2) The tradition of making Jack-o-Lanterns to ward off evil spirits is thousands of years old. Which vegetable were they originally made out of? – Turnips

3) According to superstition, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, what will you see? – Your future husband or wife.

4) From which region in the world do pumpkins originate? – Central America

5) Who wrote the novel Frankenstein? – Mary Shelley

6) Transylvania is a region in which country? – Romania

7) Halloween has its origins in which ancient Celtic festival? – Samhain

8) Which actor played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? – Tim Curry

9) Is a pumpkin a fruit or vegetable? – Fruit

10) What is the significance of seeing a spider on Halloween? – It is thought to be the spirit of a loved one watching over the person who finds the spider.

11) Which country celebrates the Day of the Dead starting at midnight on October 31? – Mexico

12) According to superstition, a person born on Halloween has what particular ability? – The ability to see and talk to spirits.

13) Who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas? – Henry Selick

14) Which vampire said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”? – Lestat (Interview with the Vampire)

15) How many people were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials?    – 19

16) Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for what character to appear? – The Great Pumpkin

17) What do people “bob” for on Halloween? – Apples

18) Who is said to haunt the White House Rose Garden? – First Lady Dolly Madison

19) Pumpkins can be orange, white, green, or what other colour?        – Blue

20) In the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how many people are killed with a chainsaw? – One

21) What’s the body-count in the film Halloween? – Five people, one dog.

22) In which year was the movie Freaks made? – 1932

23) In the original Alien film, how many alien eggs were made for the egg chamber inside the downed spacecraft? – 130

24) How many Oscar nominations did Psycho receive? – Four, including Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock) and Best Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh); the film did not win in any of the categories for which it was nominated.

THANK YOU!

We hope you have enjoyed this afternoon’s Halloween-themed posts. SF/F fans are welcome and encouraged to join the fun, and join MonSFFA! If you have questions about the club, allow us to take you to our leader: president@monsffa.ca

The club meets next on Saturday, November 8, 2025 from 1:00PM to 5:00PM at the Nouvel Hotel, 1740 René-Lévesque Ouest, downtown.

Until then, farewell, save some of those Halloween treats for the kids, and thrill to all the horror movies airing and streaming this month!

This is Post 3 of 4.

At this moment, the club is holding its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, the following is an expanded version of an article that originally ran in Warp 57 (Spring 2004), inspired by a panel discussion the club had earlier convened at one of its meetings. This topic was also explored as part of our October 15, 2022 Halloween-themed e-Meeting.

The Vampire Myth: Folklore and Fact

In March 2004, MonSFFA welcomed as a special guest speaker locally-based writer/editor Nancy Kilpatrick (1946-2025), lauded by Fangoria magazine as “Canada’s answer to Anne Rice.” An award-winning author of numerous vampire-themed novels and short stories, Ms. Kilpatrick was joined on the dais by club members Cathy Palmer-Lister and Keith Braithwaite for a panel discussion/Q&A on the topic of vampires, perhaps the most iconic terrors of horror fiction and film.

Keith’s notes on the panel capsulize that which the panel imparted to audience members:

The Vampire, an Ancient and Global Legend

Vampires, and supernatural entities that predate the term, are part of the folklore of almost every culture on Earth. While the word “vampire” is of relatively modern origin, revenants, spirits, and demons of vampiric attribute can be found in the mythologies of the ancient Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and other civilizations, and undoubtedly influenced the folklore of ensuing societies. Generally human-like in appearance, these evil, undead creatures feasted on a diet of human blood, and sometimes flesh.

Descriptions of vampires vary from region to region, country to country.

Certain European vampires are distinguished by red hair and a characteristic cleft lip, or harelip. The Bavarian variety sleeps with its left eye open and its thumbs linked. Purple-faced are Russian vampires, according to legend, while the Bulgarian type is distinguished by its single nostril.

Some Chinese vampires are said to draw their strength from the light of the moon, others come to be by way of magic, these drawing “qi,” or life-force from their victims. A hopping gait and fuzzy, greenish skin are unique characteristics.

Several female vampires are to be found in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Appearing as beautiful women by day, they transform by night into winged freaks with a taste for entrails, blood, or human foetuses! These fiends sport an elongated, hollow tongue with which to feed. Some are capable of severing their upper torsos in order that they may fly off into the night to prey upon sleeping pregnant women.

The Mexican vampire is readily recognized as a ghastly chimera, its horrific face a fleshless skull. Further north, reportedly dwelling in the Rocky Mountains, is a vampire that feeds through its nose, sucking blood from its victims’ ears!

The Western Vampire

Stemming almost entirely from the Balkans in Eastern Europe, the Western archetype of the vampire, that of a preternaturally strong, virtually immortal, blood-feasting creature of the night, is but one of many variations when considering vampire mythology, worldwide. The Western vampire, however, is arguably the world’s best known and most popular, no doubt due, at least in modern times, to the widespread exporting of Western culture.

Travellers visiting the remote regions of 16th century Transylvania returned home with strange and terrifying tales of ungodly devils, monstrosities neither living nor dead, which feasted on human blood under darkness of night. These abominations were called, variously, “vurculac,” “wampyr,” and “vampire.”

Transylvanian and other Eastern European vampires shared common characteristics. The legends tell of hellions gaunt in appearance, pale of complexion, having full, red lips, pointed canine teeth, and long, sharp fingernails. They exuded a foul stench, likened to that of a rotting corpse. They possessed superhuman strength, supposedly derived from their diet of blood, and cast a hypnotic gaze upon their prey from behind demonically gleaming eyes. They also possessed an uncanny shape-shifting ability and were able to assume the forms of a variety of animals, and further, to command the nocturnal faunae of the forest.

Superstition and Reality

Fear and superstition fed the vampire myth during the late Middle Ages, the prevalent conjecture being that these nightmarish monsters were evil spirits capable of inhabiting and animating corpses for malevolent purposes. Alternately, persons viewed as sinful or wicked for one reason or another—suicides, those excommunicated from the church, or buried without appropriate rites—might return from the grave, some believed, “reborn” as vampires. Barred from the afterlife, the souls of these vile individuals continued to utilize their lifeless bodies.

But vampire lore did not grow exclusively from superstitious fantasy. Circumstances very real contributed, as well, to the making of the myth.

Unsolved mass murders and cattle mutilations by wild animals are among the kinds of incidents in those days that provided ample fodder for tales of vampirism. The surreptitious removal of corpses from graves by, for example, sexual deviants like necrophiliacs, left behind indisputable “proof” that the dead could leave the grave to any predisposed to such beliefs. And one can easily imagine that the rare, crazed person driven by a pathological or physiological thirst for human blood would quickly be deemed a vampire by his or her frightened neighbours.

Commonly believed to be a source of vampire legend was premature burial. Several centuries ago, it was not unusual for comatose individuals, or even falling-down drunks, to be mistaken for dead, and so buried alive. It is theorized that when subsequent exhumations found that their bodies had not decomposed as a dead body normally would, rumours that these poor unfortunates were vampires soon spread.

One episode in Serbia prompted the government to send a detachment of soldiers, including a few army surgeons, to investigate a village whose panicked inhabitants were suffering an apparent epidemic of vampirism. Thirteen graves were opened and only three bodies were deemed to be undergoing the normal process of decomposition. The others, some longer underground than those three, were reportedly rosy-cheeked, firm of flesh, and when dissected, found to have within them fresh blood. They were promptly decapitated and burned to ashes.

Such anecdotes, inevitably enhanced with each recounting, were picked up by travellers and spread throughout Europe, fuelling the vampire myth.

Also contributing to the myth were the noble Slavs of the 1400s, whose interbreeding resulted in a number of genetic disorders, including a rare disease, erythropoietic protoporphyria, which was not diagnosed until the 19th century. This disease is a pigment disorder which causes the body to produce an excess of protoporphyin, basic to red blood cells. Symptoms include unbearable itching, redness and edema, and bleeding cracks in the skin after brief exposure to sunlight. The physical appearance of those who suffered from this affliction, and their necessary avoidance of daylight, fed right into the belief in vampires.

The Vampire in Art

For centuries, artists have depicted vampires, from great works of fine art to commercial illustrations for books, comics, films and other forms of pop culture. Here is a sampling:

The Vampire (1897), by Sir Philip William Burne-Jones. This painting was exhibited at The New Gallery in London just a few months prior to the first publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The artist, son of British pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, never achieved his father’s level of recognition and fame, and is known largely for this single work of art, and the story behind it.

Sir Philip was, briefly, involved romantically with beautiful actress Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner, better known by her stage name, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. But his infatuation with her was rather more than hers for him, and she soon left him heartbroken. Painting from memory, he modelled his vampire after her.

Inspired by the image, Sir Philip’s cousin, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem about a foolish man destroyed by a heartless woman, which helped to drum up publicity for the painting prior to its exhibition. Sir Philip displayed a copy of the poem alongside his artwork.

Shown here is a printed reproduction of The Vampire from an illustrated period publication of Kipling’s poem. The actual painting’s whereabouts are currently unknown; Sir Philip may have sold the work, or destroyed it.

Love and Pain (1895), by Edvard Munch. The esteemed Norwegian artist painted six different versions of this scene between 1893 and 1895, and later in his career, returned yet again to his depiction of a woman kissing a man on the neck. The kiss, the man’s submissive pose, and the woman’s flaming red hair led some to interpret the painting to be of a vampire embracing her victim. Though sometimes called Vampire, Munch never referred to as, or so named his work. Yet today, this painting is liberally interpreted as vampire-themed by enthusiasts.

Another work so interpreted is Une semaine de bonté (1934), a collage novel and artist’s book by Max Ernst. Created by clipping images from Victorian novels and encyclopaedias, and combining and arranging these to create new pictures, Ernst was inspired by the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He divided his work into seven sections, each named for one of the days of the week, with each having a theme, one of which was “Blood.” The work consists of five volumes, for which the artist created 182 dark, bizarre, dreamlike images. One in particular has been widely taken to be that of a vampire, here reproduced.

Creatures of the Night (1969), by Frank Frazetta. The venerated “Godfather of Fantasy Art” celebrated two classic monsters with this canvas, perhaps the two most famous of all. And one of them is a vampire!

Vampirella is a comic book superheroine and, for all intents and purposes, vampire pin-up girl! She was co-created in 1969 by noted science fiction fan/literary agent/magazine publisher Forrest J Ackerman and pioneering underground comix artist Trina Robbins—it was Robbins who came up with the lovely lady’s revealing costume. Frank Frazetta painted Vampirella for the first edition of her self-titled comic book series, but the artist most associated with the character is José Gonzáles, whose iconic rendering was made into a popular poster (left) in 1972.

Right: in 2010, Joe Jusko employed Vampirella to pay homage to Ackerman, who had died two years earlier.

Zora la Vampira (1972-1985) was an erotic/horror comic book series about a female vampire’s sexually-charged adventures as she sought to satisfy her taste for both blood and sex! She was one of many such supernatural characters in the fumetti tradition of sex, violence, and horror. Fumetti are, simply, Italian comic books. This cover illustration was painted by one of the most talented artists of the genre, Alessandro Biffignandi.

Commercial Art: A British merchandise and jewellery designer, and contemporary fantasy illustrator, Anne Stokes has produced artwork for books, record albums, and games, including Dungeons & Dragons. Her art has also been licenced for posters, T-shirts, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, tarot and greeting cards, coffee mugs, and jewellery. This piece (left), entitled Await the Night, is from her Gothic Collection and was adapted, too, as a collectible figurine. See: www.annestokes.com

On the right is cover art produced for a paperback vampire novel, circa 1960; the artist is unidentified and likely one of the many unsung in-house commercial illustrators hired to turn out such artwork.

The best Vampire Movie Posters featured dynamic designs and gloriously garish artwork rendered in a variety of styles.

The Vampire on Page and Screen

History’s poets and writers have showcased the vampire over the centuries, some adding to the mythology an erotic element. Among the most influential works of the early 19th century was “The Vampyre” (1819), a short story written by John William Polidori (1795-1821), personal physician to Romantic poet Lord Byron.

During the summer of 1816—the so-called Year Without a Summer, a recent volcanic eruption having caused unusually cool temperatures and heavy rain over Europe—Byron welcomed guests to his rented villa near Lake Geneva, Switzerland. In the evenings, the group amused themselves telling ghost stories by the fire, until their host proposed that they each write a horror story of their own. Polidori’s “The Vampyre” came of this challenge, which also, famously, begat Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus (1818).

Victorian vampire tales often featured an alluring, elegant neck-biter, seductively preying on young, virtuous women who find themselves at the same time repelled by and attracted to the gentleman. Gothic horror virtuoso Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s (1814-1873) novella, Carmilla (1872), offered readers a Sapphic angle, his titular character the template for many a lesbian vampire to come.

Byron, Goethe, Tolstoy, Théophile Gautier, and Alexandre Dumas, pére are among the literary greats who were inspired by the vampire. Contemporary novelists Anne Rice, Chelsey Quinn Yarbro, Laurel Hamilton, Montreal-based Nancy Kilpatrick, Stephanie Meyer, Richard Matheson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, and countless others, followed in their footsteps.

Advancing the genre on screen were films like F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), Tod Browning’s definitive Dracula (1931), and the numerous vampire pictures of the Hammer Horror oeuvre (1958-1974) starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, and others.

More recent fare has included The Hunger (1983), Fright Night (1985; remade 2011), The Lost Boys (1987), the Francis Ford Coppola-directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), 30 Days of Night (2007), the Swedish Let the Right One In (2008; remade in English as Let Me In, 2010), as well as television series like the Canadian-made, Toronto-set Forever Knight (1992-1996), Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and its spin-off, Angel (1999-2004), True Blood (2008-2014), and The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017).

Thomas Peckett Prest (1810-1859), a hack writer and prolific author of penny dreadfuls, co-wrote with James Malcolm Rymer (1814-1884) perhaps the first vampire best-seller, Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood (serialized 1845-1847; book, 1847).

The gory tale predated by 50 years that undisputed masterwork of vampire fiction, penned by a relatively unknown Irish writer who, early in his career, had served as an unpaid theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, a newspaper co-owned at the time by the aforementioned Le Fanu.

Abraham “Bram” Stoker’s (1847-1912) Dracula was first published in 1897 and his Transylvanian count has come to epitomize the vampire.

Stoker’s research of Eastern Europe’s vampire legends, while preparing to write his novel, led him to the grisly stories surrounding one of history’s most savage figures, Vlad Basarab.

Vlad the Impaler

Stoker based his fictional blood-thirsty count in part on this very real and equally blood-thirsty late-1400s ruler of Wallachia, now part of southern Romania. Vlad III, also known as Vlad Tepes or Vlad the Impaler, was a son of the notoriously cold-blooded Prince Vlad Dracul (translates as “dragon”). Vlad the younger thus became Draculaea, or Dracula, son of the dragon.

Vlad Dracula was a formidable warrior but it his sadistic brutality that earned him his inhuman reputation. According to various historical accounts, he would have his victims flayed, dismembered, and roasted or boiled over flame, among other torments. But his favourite means of execution was to impale his victims on long wooden stakes, which brought about a slow and excruciatingly painful death. Men, women, even children, noble or peasant, were not spared his unusual malice. The crossroads and fields surrounding his castle were a hellish display of impaled corpses. In one rampage, some 30,000 met their end on the stake! While reports of his barbarity differ as to details, there are sufficient affidavits from various sources to conclude that Vlad Dracula was, indeed, one of history’s most diabolical personages.

Elizabeth Báthory

Another historical figure whose supposed cruelty contributed to the vampire myth was the comely Hungarian countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed, who began a bloody spree about 100 years after Vlad Dracula died.

Initiated into the black arts by her manservant and her nurse, she is believed to have engaged in macabre pleasures which involved the drinking of human blood. With her husband often away at war, and later, following his death by undetermined causes, Báthory and her minions would lure young, chaste girls to her castle with promises of employment as servants. But once there, these innocents would be hung on chains, their veins opened, and their blood drained so that the countess, obsessed with her own beauty, might bathe in their virgin blood, which she apparently believed would preserve her youthfulness. This and other devilish tortures awaited any maiden who found herself within the walls of the countess’ Castle Csejthe!

Having grown careless disposing of her victims’ bodies, she was eventually found out, arrested, and brought to trial. As a noblewoman, she was spared the execution meted out to her accomplices. Instead, she was walled up in her bedchamber, with only a narrow slit in the masonry permitted, through which she received food and water. She died after four years of this imprisonment.

Báthory’s depraved excesses may well have been exaggerated with repeated tellings, and some historians argue that her crimes might also have been purposely embellished to politically benefit her aristocratic rivals. Others speculate that she was almost certainly that rarity, a female sexual sadist and serial killer.

Often cited as an inspiration, it must be noted that Stoker’s research for Dracula may, or may not have extended to Báthory’s blood-soaked story.

The Vampire Endures

Today, the vampire is a fixture of popular culture and, arguably, the most preeminent monster of horror literature and film, with tabletop RPGs and video games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Castlevania extending the mythos further still.

The unquestionable appeal of the vampire has been tied by some to blood, coursing through our bodies, the life-sustaining essence of our very lives, and additionally has been posited as our means of metaphorically coping with a supressed desire for sexual abandon, as well as the dread of our own mortality. So beguiling are Dracula and his cohorts that within the Goth subculture, for example, adherents of “sanguine vampirism” actually drink each other’s blood, motivated by a potent fascination with the fiction, the established aesthetic and lifestyle, an occult belief, or for some, a cult-like devotion to the long and terrible legacy of the vampire throughout human history.

Next Post: 3:00PM

This is Post 2 of 4.

At this moment, the club is holding its annual Super Sci-Fi Book Sale at our downtown meeting locale. As such, there is no interactive ZOOM-chat component included with this month’s MonSFFA event.

But for our out-of-town club members and friends, we do offer today, here online, a few Halloween-themed items of interest, culled from our meeting archives.

The Horror, The Horror…

For your perusal, then, this Halloween quiz originally ran as part of our October 15, 2022 Halloween-themed e-Meeting. Good luck! We’ll run the answers in our closing post, today, at 3:00PM.

1) Halloween is the day before which holiday?

2) The tradition of making Jack-o-Lanterns to ward off evil spirits is thousands of years old. Which vegetable were they originally made out of?

3) According to superstition, if you stare into a mirror at midnight on Halloween, what will you see?

4) From which region in the world do pumpkins originate?

5) Who wrote the novel Frankenstein?

6) Transylvania is a region in which country?

7) Halloween has its origins in which ancient Celtic festival?

8) Which actor played Dr. Frank-n-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show?

9) Is a pumpkin a fruit or vegetable?

10) What is the significance of seeing a spider on Halloween?

11) Which country celebrates the Day of the Dead starting at midnight on October 31?

12) According to superstition, a person born on Halloween has what particular ability?

13) Who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas?

14) Which vampire said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m going to give you the choice I never had.”?

15) How many people were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials?

16) Every Halloween, Charlie Brown helps his friend Linus wait for which character to appear?

17) What do people “bob” for on Halloween?

18) Who is said to haunt the White House Rose Garden?

19) Pumpkins can be orange, white, green, or what other colour?

20) In the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, how many people are killed with a chainsaw?

21) What’s the body-count in the film Halloween?

22) In which year was the movie Freaks made?

23) In the original Alien film, how many alien eggs were made for the egg chamber inside the downed spacecraft?

24) How many Oscar nominations did Psycho receive?

Next Post: 2:00PM