With the announcement
of Editor-In-Chief (and long-time contributor and all around Horror Hero)
Michael Gingold and Fangoria magazine parting ways, the future is not looking very
bright for America’s #1 Horror Magazine.
This bums me
out incredibly. How can there potentially
be no more Fangoria magazine? Has the
world really come to this?
My very first
introduction to Fango was via the special issue, Horror Video #1. Of course, I picked it out because, at the
age of 5, Freddy Krueger was my hero and he was front and center on its
cover. At that point, I’m not sure if I
could even read very well, but I could look at pictures…and there were lots of
gruesome (awesome!), gory (incredible!), and scary (cool!) photos throughout
it! I’d recognized some of the various
photos – Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Leatherface, and Dawn of the Dead – but
this magazine also served as a jumping off point for me and acted as a genre
bible during my early years!
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| Here is it, with Horror Video #2 peeking out from behind! |
I couldn’t
believe it: here was a magazine devoted
to all kinds of great stuff that, somewhere deep inside, interested me. I was a Monster Kid before I really even knew it! That magazine seemed to travel everywhere
with me to the point that the cover fell off and, eventually, it became completely
lost or destroyed. Some years later, I’d
finally get a replacement copy though!
In October of
1988, I got my first true issue of Fango, and it was #78 – Pinhead from Hellraiser II was the main cover star,
but at the top of the iconic filmstrip, there was Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street 4! Right then and there in that A & P store
in Clinton, NJ I begged my mom to buy it for me and she did . . . and, to this
day, I still have that very issue (though its cover has since fallen off and
been lost). Again, I couldn’t believe
my eyes that here was a magazine devoted to all this great stuff! The articles and photos of Hellraiser II and
Waxwork had an immediate impact on me.
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| And, with this, Fangoria got a new faithful follower! |
Later on, I’d
get future issues (or at least browse through them) from either my mom and dad
or my grandmother. In particular, there’s
a place outside of my hometown called The Corner Store, which is essentially a
general store…I mean, this place looked like some sort of country store out of
a Horror movie to begin with! These days, it's no different than your average mini-mart or 7-11, but back then I always had a sense of wonder when I climbed up its lone step to go inside! My dad
would stop there on his way home to get milk and, if I was ever with him, I’d
go inside and immediately grab an ice cream sandwich before darting right for
the magazine rack. Of course, there were
the usual Playboy, Penthouse, etc. men’s magazines up at the tippy top (I’d
usually only be able to spot the eyes of some broad staring back from behind a
cardboard cover), but the Fangoria magazines were lower and way more accessible
to my young hands.
Aside from
that, my Gram would buy me Fangoria magazines (or any other magazine or toys or
CDs or movies) at the Laneco grocery store in Whitehouse, NJ (which is now a
Walmart). She’d also buy me back issues
from the book store at Q-Mart over in Quakertown, PA. In fact, I’d wager that most of my issues
around this time were purchased here or at The Corner Store.
Another cool
Fango piece that my Gram bought for me came from the Clover department store at
the Palmer Park Mall in Easton, PA.
Around this time, she started buying me the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies as they came out and, truth be
told, I’d say most of them up until at least Nightmare 5, came from here.
Anyway, one time while we were there, I spotted the Fangoria’s Weekend
of Horrors documentary . . . had no idea what it was, but I knew Fangoria and
it had Freddy (and a fanged Elvira, along with the Sandy monster from House) on its cover, so I was
down! Not only did it serve as an
additional tome to all things Horror (probably my first introduction to
Rick Baker, Wes Craven, Tom Savini, Stan Winston, Tobe Hooper, and Dan O’Bannon
among many more), but it also introduced me to the idea that I COULD ACTUALLY
MEET THESE PEOPLE. My young mind was
blown. Never mind the fact that plenty
of Fango issues that I’d already had contained ads for the Weekend of Horrors
events in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York – I simply must have skipped past
them or didn’t realize what they were promoting! In my young mind, it seemed that these events
only happened in Los Angeles and, to put it bluntly, were way too expensive to
attend.
For whatever
reason, in the early 90s, I sort of gravitated away from Fango and Horror in
general….I think maybe because I was discovering music and had become obsessed
with Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. However,
that soon changed during a trip to the Palmer Park Mall with my Gram; I’d stopped into Waldenbooks and was perusing
Fango #145 when I saw an ad promoting that month’s Weekend of Horrors in
Manhattan….with Dawn of the Dead’s
Ken Foree (along with Wes Craven, Heather Langenkamp, Angus Scrimm, and Clive
Barker) set to attend! The plan started
to form in my pea-brain . . . I begged my parents to take me to it since it was
right after my thirteenth birthday.
Happily, they obliged and I’ve never been the same since, attending
almost every New York Weekend of Horrors through 2003 or so, along with Chiller
Theatre and Monster Mania.
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| Fango #145 |
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| Me (and my dirt-stache) and Ken Foree, 8/26/95 |
Now for a quick
funny story after that first Weekend of Horrors show . . . sometime in ’96, Tom
Savini was releasing his Grande Illusions Book II. I’d seen an ad for the book in a recent issue
and had to have it; and this being the days before I was online, this was no
easy task for a 13yr old! After trying
to fax in a completed order form to the Fangoria offices, I somehow ended up
calling them directly and actually got connected to longtime contributor and
then Editor-In-Chief Tony Timpone! One
can only imagine what was going through his head as a squeaky-voiced kid spoke
to him about trying to order a silly book!
At that year’s New York Weekend of Horrors, I met Tony and got a pic
with him, me being probably a handful of photos he posed for that day while
keeping the show running smoothly. Later,
there was the Weekend of Horrors in ’98 that George A. Romero attended; while
waiting out in the freezing January cold of New York (without a jacket on, so that
I could proudly show off my Dawn of the
Dead shirt mind you), by chance, I saw Tony on the street and said hello to
him. His response? “Hey Robert!”
To this day, I have no idea how he remembered me or my name from meeting
me once almost 2 years prior!
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| Me and Tony, August 1996 |
Of course,
the biggest impact that Fangoria would have on me was soon to come . . . in
January 2002, I attended the Weekend of Horrors (which, by then, had
transitioned to only happening in New York in January) to meet Robert Englund
for the first time. While we were there
in the ballroom, we met a hilarious local dude name Steve, who said that he
moderated the Fangoria message boards.
We continued to hang and chat it up and I wrote down his info about the
boards….”Uncle Creepy” was his screenname.
Cool! Although, I didn’t
actually check out the boards myself until April or May of that year . . . In
December of 2002, Steve invited me into the city to go to a preview screening
of Don Coscarelli’s then yet to be released Bubba Ho-Tep, which Tony had organized. At that screening, I got to meet and chat
with Coscarelli himself and even William Lustig. Again, none of that would have been possible
if it weren’t for Fangoria.
Long story
short about the original Fangoria Message Boards: initially, there were only a small handful of
us on there. We talked Horror, we talked
about the movies we loved, the movies that were in the pipeline, Pop Culture,
TV, music, toys…and we were a family.
Though it may seem outdated with today’s social media and Facebook,
those of us who were there knew it was special.
At the following Brooklyn Weekend of Horrors in January 2003, we all met
up in person and spent many hours shooting the shit in the bar area of the
hotel. As a matter of fact, I met my
wife that day. And to this day, we’re still
friends with many of those same folks and we catch up to each other every once
in a while. We met up with Tony and he even set aside a
table for us in the dealer room to promote the message boards! A family photo of us ended up in Fango #221,
effectively fulfilling a life-long dream of appearing in the bloody pages I’d
read so much! Later that first night, a
bunch of us went out to dinner with Tony and his lovely wife, too.
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| Fango #221 |
Some years
later, after I graduated from college and I was trying to figure out my
eventual career path, I interviewed for an internship with Fangoria. Looking back, as I was still living at home
and had a part-time job at a video store, I really had no idea how I was going
to commute into the city every day for an internship. But I was determined and, so I came into that
interview – with Tony himself no less – as prepared as I could be. Of course he remembered me and we chatted,
but nothing ever came from it, as I was definitely not ready for something of
that magnitude. But still, to be in the
Starlog offices and be greeted by cool Fango art as I waited in the lobby
before the interview? Priceless.
In June 2009,
with issue # 284, Tony Timpone stepped down as Editor-In-Chief, with Rue Morgue’s
Chris Alexander taking over. Initially,
I liked what I saw and remained true to the brand – aside from the changes to
the classic cover layout as the familiar logo had been altered and the iconic
filmstrip had been removed. Chris took
the magazine into some great avenues with some meaty retrospective pieces akin
to what I like about HorrorHound magazine.
However, by this point, I’d say I’d more or less switched to HorrorHound
completely and all but ignored Fango, save for a few special issues and/or ones
with cool covers. Although the filmstrip
would return soon after, along with the famous Fango logo, I had all but moved
on.
At this
point, perhaps I took Fangoria for granted, as it had been around for almost 40
years now and, in my eyes, it would always be there. Like the perfect slice of New York style
pizza, Fangoria magazine invokes a wave of great memories from when I was a
kid. There’s a sense of nostalgia
attached to the early magazines and their incredible cover images – a good deal
of the covers once Chris Alexander took over seemed to yearn for those days,
but I felt they almost always JUST missed it.
Perhaps my
dismissal of the magazine these days comes from the coverage of newer genre
fare which, to be fair, has become so mainstream that the sense of danger and gross-out
shock factor is all but lost. Horror in
the 80s, 90s, and even the early 00s was different and, stuff today just isn’t
as exciting it seems. The Fango covers themselves
just haven’t been the same; looking back through recent issues, and I’d say the
majority of them featured older, fan-favorite images from classic films we all
grew up with! I’m embarrassed and
ashamed to admit that, as of this writing, I honestly can’t recall the last
issue I actually bought instead of just flipped through at the local Barnes
& Noble. (Ed: As of this writing, I've finally subscribed to Fangoria...after nearly 30yrs of reading it!)
Now, with its future
looking bleak, my heart is heavy and desperately wondering how I can help save
the magazine I’ve loved so much for so long.
Anyway, if this is truly the end....even though my heart may be heavy,
my hat is off to everyone who has contributed to an incredible magazine that pretty
much shaped who I am today. It has, no doubt, been my generation's Famous
Monsters, inciting the wrath of worried parents and teachers. Long live
Fangoria!
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| This is the "Family Photo" pic in Fango #221 |
1 comment:
Bobby! Hey! It's Tommy Luca. Remember the old days in Frenchtown and Milford, Lambertville, and Flemington? How are you? By the way, Great article and blog. Keep writing about Movie Magic and Monsters.
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