The Hitchcock Project-Arthur A. Ross Part One: Three Wives Too Many [9.12]--Our 200th episode reviewed!

by Jack Seabrook

Arthur A. Ross (1920-2008) wrote the teleplays for eight episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour during its final two seasons, in 1964 and 1965. He had begun his career writing scripts for films in 1942, and he branched out to radio in 1951 and television in 1952. He wrote the screenplays for The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Creature Walks among Us (1956) and was blacklisted for a time in the 1950s. He shared an Edgar Award for co-writing an episode of Kraft Mystery Theatre called "The Problem in Cell Block 13" (1962) and continued to write for the small and large screens until 1980. His papers are housed at the University of Iowa.

"Three Wives Too Many"
was first published here

"Three Wives Too Many" was the first episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour to feature a script by Ross and it was based on a short story of the same name by Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961). The story was published in the first issue of Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine (September 1956), an issue that included the first publication of Robert Bloch's story, "Water's Edge," which was also adapted for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Kenneth Fearing was a poet, novelist, and short story writer who helped found The Partisan Review. Though best known for his poetry, he wrote seven novels, including The Big Clock (1946), which was the basis of a film of the same title released in 1948. The Big Clock was later adapted as No Way Out in 1987. Fearing's novel, The Hospital, was adapted twice for television in the 1950s. He wrote short stories under his own name and under the pen name of Kirk Wolff from 1921 to 1960, and from 1955 to 1960 he had a number of stories published in the crime and mystery digests. "Three Wives Too Many" was adapted for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and broadcast on CBS on Friday, January 3, 1964.

Fearing's short story tells of Richard C. Brown, who shares a home in Camden, NJ, with his third wife, Marion. He has another wife, Bernice, his fourth and most recent, in Newark, NJ and keeps a careful schedule to juggle his four wives and prevent them from knowing about each other. Marion, going gray, is as old as Richard and they have been married for five years. His first wife, Lucille, lives in Hartford, CT, while his second, Helen, lives in Boston, MA. He considers matrimony his profession, "a special type of career" that has its risks and rewards.

Dan Duryea as Brown

Often away on business, Brown insists that each of his wives "make most of the household decisions" and he believes that this keeps them happy. Neither Romeo nor Bluebeard, Brown has undertaken marriage four times both for money and for love. Marion reminds him that they are overseeing an improvement in the heating system at their home, having an auxiliary fuel tank installed in the basement, and shows her husband a gaping hole that has been dug in the cellar floor. Next to the hole are a mound of loose dirt and a bag of cement. The scene makes Richard uneasy and he thinks for some reason of "the shadowy half-world of Lonely Hearts clubs." Taking his sample case, he sets out, reminding Marion that he will return in 11 days.

Three hours later, Richard switches identities in "a busy railroad checkroom in Philadelphia." He puts his sample case of knives away, takes out his sample case of cosmetic novelties, and changes his name from Richard C. Brown to Robert D. Brown. His other identities are Raymond A. Brown (in Hartford) and Raymond B. Brown (in Boston). "He looked like any respectable, married, thirty-nine-year-old businessman ..." and married his first wife, Lucille, 15 years ago; he considers betting on horses his full-time job and studies the racing forms carefully.

Teresa Wright as Marion

Brown wishes that the behavior of horses was as easy to predict as that of his four wives. In his first two years of marriage to Lucille, his gambling nearly exhausted the $27,000 "with which she had opened their joint bank account." He then wed Helen, who deposited $40,000 in another joint bank account. His third wife, Marion, deposited $18,000 and Bernice, his fourth, deposited $20,000. His success at gambling has been "moderate" and he wonders if he will need to become "Rudolf E. Brown" and take a fifth wife.

That evening, Brown arrives at the apartment house in Newark, NJ, that he shares with Bernice. He sees a police car and an ambulance parked outside and takes the elevator to the fourth floor, where he finds his apartment door open. Police lieutenant Storber tells him that his wife is dead, having taken "'a stiff dose of cyanide in a cocktail, probably a side-car,'" around noon that day. An unknown woman called the police with a tip. Brown insists that Bernice would not have killed herself. He has a solid alibi for the time of death and realizes that his rigid schedule is to his benefit in such a situation.

After Bernice is buried, Brown again switches identities and becomes Raymond A. Brown, salesman of smoking accessories. He arrives in Hartford, CT, at the home he shares with Lucille, only to find a scene similar to the one he encountered in Newark; police lieutenant Todd tells him that Lucille committed suicide. Once again, Brown insists that his wife had no reason to end her life. The lieutenant tells Brown that Lucille "drank a cocktail, an old-fashioned this time, loaded with cyanide." Three days later, Lt. Casey of the Boston police tells Brown that Helen killed herself in the same manner. Brown suspects that someone "had a profound grudge against him and his wives." He thinks that the same person visited each wife and poisoned their drinks.

Jean Hale as Bernice

On the 16th, he returns to Camden, as scheduled, and Marion meets him at the door. On the living room table he sees pamphlets from Lonely Hearts clubs. Marion, who never drank alcohol, offers to mix cocktails, explaining that she forced herself to experiment with them. She offers to make Brown an old-fashioned or a side-car. He grows suspicious and checks the basement, where the large hole remains. Back upstairs, Marion has prepared cocktails. She suggests that he looks "'haunted, like some fugitive from justice'" and tells him that he needs to stop traveling for work and settle down.

Marion insists that she will keep the books from now on and Brown realizes that he will have to give up gambling. Marion tells Richard that she had the fuel tank removed "'until you finally decided'" and trades cocktails with him. She tells Richard that the decision is up to him "'about that hole downstairs.'"

Well-written and cleverly plotted, "Three Wives Too Many" takes a man who thinks he is in control of his life and turns his world upside down. His wife out-plots him, committing three murders in three different states on a carefully worked out schedule and successfully making them look like suicides. She has outwitted her husband at every turn without him suspecting her, and she has given him a choice: either settle down with her or become her fourth victim. Fearing's story is an outstanding mystery and it served as the basis for an excellent episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Linda Lawson as Lucille

In adapting the short story for the small screen, Arthur A. Ross knew that the narrative would have to be expanded and he made an interesting choice, one that elevates the character of Marion to a level of importance at or above that of her husband. The mood is set as Lyn Murray's playful yet eerie woodwind and string score is heard over the opening title cards and we see a jet plane landing and a superimposed title telling us that the location is Newark, NJ. There is a dissolve to a shot of a taxi arriving at an apartment building and a well-dressed, middle-aged woman emerges from the vehicle.

There is a closeup of her lower legs as she walks along a hall and then a closeup of her finger as it presses the button to ring the doorbell of an apartment; a card above the button reads, "Mr. & Mrs. R. Brown." Cut to inside the apartment, and we see another closeup of the lower legs of a younger woman in pants getting up from a sofa to answer the door. The visitor, Marion, tells the resident, Bernice, that she flew in from Baltimore just to see her.

To readers of the short story, this first scene is unexpected, since all of Marion's visits to her husband's other wives were not described. During this scene, we learn of Brown's bigamy at the same time Bernice does, since Marion reveals that they are married to the same man. Bernice is upset and Marion suggests that they band together to punish their husband, yet Marion shows her own devious nature when she fixes drinks for the two of them and poisons the drink she gives to Bernice. Marion has planned this murder carefully and wipes her fingerprints from the bottle and the glass. Bernice drinks the poisoned liquor and immediately falls to the floor; we then see another plane taking off, presumably carrying Marion back home to Baltimore.

Steven Gravers as Lt. Storber

The tone of the show is set right away and it is a mix of comedy and tragedy. "'You are a beautiful woman, Bernice,'" says Marion. "'You'll have no trouble at all finding a new husband. But a woman my age, now I would have a problem.'" Therein lies the key to "Three Wives Too Many": the only way a middle-aged woman can hang on to her husband and her comfortable, secure lifestyle is to murder her rivals!

The scene then shifts to Baltimore and picks up where the short story begins, as Brown cuts a flower outside his house and enters to give it to Marion; to all appearances, they are a very happy couple. Yet their banter takes on a sinister subtext, since we and Marion know that she is aware of his other wife, whom she has already murdered. Brown knows that he is leading a life much different than that which he presents to each of his wives, yet he also does not know that Marion is well aware of his duplicity. Both husband and wife play a role, each hiding secret knowledge from the other; however, Brown only thinks he knows what is going on beneath the surface while Marion has a deeper level of understanding.

When Richard and Marion go down to the cellar to inspect the hole and the oil tank, the scene is shadowy and dangerous. Richard slips and falls into the hole, lying there like a corpse, fearing that the tank, which is suspended above the pit by a chain, will fall and crush him. Marion instinctively grabs a crank handle that could release the tank suddenly and he warns her to be careful, unaware of her knowledge of his infidelity. Richard goes back upstairs and Marion caresses the tank handle and looks up after him, thinking about her opportunity to kill him. The entire show is about her realization that he would be hard to replace and her decision to kill his other wives and give him the chance to settle down with her.

Robert Cornthwaite as Bleeker

Another plane lands and this time Brown drives to a public park where he meets Bleeker, who looks like a businessman but is really a bookie. Brown makes a large wager and Bleeker asks his advice on women; Bleeker is on his third wife and says that they fight all the time; Brown tells him cryptically that one can marry "'for love and money.'" Everything about Brown's life is a lie: he juggles four wives at the same time and spends their money on gambling, only pretending to be a successful traveling salesman. It is ironic that Brown and each of his wives seem to have been happy together while Bleeker, who married women sequentially rather than concurrently, complains that he and his spouse fight all the time.

Brown arrives at the building where Bernice lives and the scene where he finds the police investigating her apparent suicide plays out much as it does in the short story, though Dan Duryea's performance as Brown verges on comic and suggests that everything his character does is a role that he is playing for someone else's benefit. After the funeral, Bernice's shrewish sister and brother-in-law confront Brown at the now-empty apartment he shared with Bernice. The sister reveals that Bernice cried every day, a very different portrait of the marriage than the one painted by Brown. She accuses him of killing his wife by making her lonely but, as they leave, her mousy husband tells Brown: "'I envy you,'" presumably wishing his own overbearing wife would suffer the same fate as Bernice.

Lew Brown as Detective Lanning

Another male viewpoint follows, when police lieutenant Storber enters just as Bernice's sister and her husband leave; Storber comments that if Brown's late wife was anything like her sister, he would have a motive for murder. This portrait of the relationship between the sexes circa 1964 suddenly begins to resemble similar relationships on the TV series Mad Men! In "Three Wives Too Many," the men team up against the women. Brown has four wives, his bookie asks him for marriage advice, his brother in law envies him, and even the police lieutenant is understanding. On the other hand, the women battle each other, and even when Marion suggests to Bernice that they team up it is only a ruse to gain her trust before killing her.

Brown goes to a phone booth and telephones another wife in Hartford; a policeman walks toward the booth but veers off at the last minute. We think Brown is a logical murder suspect but no one else seems to think so. Another beautiful woman answers another door, and once again Marion stands outside, this time getting right to the point by asking: "'Why did you marry my husband?'" Marion pulls a gun on Lucille, in another scene added to the story, and Lucille reveals that she has been married to her husband for five years, making her a senior wife to Marion, who has only been married to Richard for three.

Marion lies and says that she has not yet decided to kill Lucille. The women discuss their husband, and Marion remarks that "'A man is what he does, not what he says.'" Marion's approach to each of the wives she has visited is a performance in which she works to build trust but ends with murder. Lucille, surprisingly, says that "'I admire any man who can get along with so many women ...'" and calls Brown a "'hero'"! We see Marion in shadow in the kitchen preparing drinks, then we see her poison the bottle ... and another plane takes off. "Three Wives Too Many" is a delicious blend of comedy and murder, with each takeoff and landing of a plane showing either husband or wife proceeding along parallel paths, though only Marion knows what is really going on.

Duane Grey as Detective Millard

We see another dead body being wheeled out of an apartment as Brown arrives, again met by a policeman and again unable to believe that his wife killed herself--"'She loved life too much!'" he cries. As before, he is not suspected by another policeman who finds it easy to believe that women kill themselves and their husbands are above suspicion.

Brown telephones Marion to tell her that he is leaving Hartford sooner than expected to go to Boston; this time, she asks to join him and he agrees. Another plane lands and this time Brown and Marion together enter a hotel room after she has had a "'wonderful day.'" Brown reveals that he has an appointment with Bleeker later that night (his real business cannot wait!) and she announces that she is going home "'tonight.'" "'I know I'm becoming more important in your life every day,'" she says, and he responds, "'More than you realize ...'" Brown still does not know that Marion is on to him and that she now controls his life. She looks out the window to see him getting into a taxi and her perspective, looking down from above, is God-like; her husband is unaware that she is the puppet-master, nearing the end of her devious plan.

Brown meets Bleeker in a bar and speaks of his wives as his businesses, telling the bookie that he cannot wager again until he takes care of his financial backers. As with so much of the dialogue in this episode, the subtext is everything.

Dee J. Thompson as
Bernice's sister

Finally, the police surround another dead woman and Brown walks in, a quizzical expression on his face. By now, the murder and its aftermath are understood by the viewer and all that matters is Brown's reaction. He arrives home to the Baltimore house he shares with Marion and sees her lying motionless on the couch. He fears that she is dead like the other three, and when she awakens and he sees that she is alive and well he is visibly relieved. Marion suggests a cocktail and, as in the story, Brown begins to grow suspicious. He sees pamphlets on the coffee table that include one titled The Widow's Guide and he checks the basement, where the grave-like hole remains but the tank suspended above it is gone. Unlike the short story, whose conclusion is more subtle, in the TV show he confronts his wife directly, saying "'You killed them!'" Marion does not blink an eye and takes a sip from each glass, explaining calmly to her husband that the police will see that he had a motive for killing each of his wives. He picks up the phone and calls the police, but she threatens him by telling him that she "'will see you executed for murder if you leave me.'" Marion tells Richard that she will cure him of his false happiness and the show ends just like the story, with her giving him a choice to live with her or be convicted of murder.

Arthur A. Ross's teleplay for "Three Wives Too Many" is a brilliant example of how to expand and deepen a short story for an hour-long television slot. While Fearing's story slowly builds suspense as Brown discovers that each of his wives is dead, the TV version eschews suspense and instead provides wry commentary on the relationship between husbands and wives in the early 1960s. In the short story, the reader does not know for certain that the women have been murdered, nor is the murderer's identity revealed until very near the end. The TV show presents the murderer right up front and, instead of concentrating on a mystery, plays out as a black comedy. By adding the scenes where Marion visits Bernice and Lucille, Ross fleshes out her character, making her plight seem sympathetic as she is a woman fast approaching middle age who decides to eliminate her competitors, three beautiful women who are much younger than she.

David Fresco as Bernice's brother-in-law

Joseph Newman (1909-2006), who directed "Three Wives Too Many," started out in Hollywood in the 1930s as an assistant director, then moved up to directing shorts, and finally became a feature director in 1942. Among the films he directed between then and 1961 was This Island Earth (1955). He directed for television from 1960 to 1965, including four episodes of The Twilight Zone and ten episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, one of which was the classic, "An Unlocked Window."

Starring as Marion is Teresa Wright (1918-2005), who began on stage in Life with Father (1939) and whose long career on film and television spanned the years from 1941 to 1997. She won an Academy Award for her role in Mrs. Miniver (1942) and starred in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). "Three Wives Too Many" was one of two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in which she appeared. Donald Spoto published a biography of Wright in 2016 called A Girl's Got to Breathe. Spoto describes "Three Wives Too Many" as "a flippant, funny satire on murder as a fine art" and describes Ross's script as "a darkly witty teleplay worthy of Saki."

The role of her husband, Richard Brown, is played by Dan Duryea (1907-1968), who also started out on Broadway in the 1930s before moving to film in 1941. Among the many classic films in which he appeared are Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945); he was also seen on the Twilight Zone. This was his only appearance on the Hitchcock show.

In supporting roles:

• Linda Lawson (1936- ) as Lucille, the second wife Marion visits; born Linda Gloria Spaziani, she was on screen from 1958 to 2005, mainly in television roles. She was in the film Night Tide (1961) and she was seen on the Hitchcock show three times.
• Jean Hale (1938- ) as Bernice, the first wife Marion visits; she was on screen from 1960 to 1991 and she was also seen on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in "Starring the Defense." Hale also appeared on Batman and in Roger Corman's film, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
• Steven Gravers (1922-1978) as Lt. Storber, who investigates Bernice's death; trained at the Actors Studio, he was on screen from 1950 to 1978, mostly on television, and he appeared in four episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Thirty-First of February."
• Robert Cornthwaite (1917-2006) as Bleeker, Brown's bookie; he was on screen from 1950 to 2005 and made numerous appearances on television, including roles on Thriller, The Twilight Zone, Batman, The Night Stalker, and two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. He was also seen in The Thing from Another World (1951).
• Lew Brown (1925-2014) as Detective Lanning, who investigates Lucille's death; he was on screen from 1959 to 1992 and he was seen on The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and The Night Stalker. He was in Hitchcock's Topaz (1969) and he played roles in seven episodes of the Hitchcock series, including "Run for Doom."
• Dee J. Thompson as Bernice's sister; she was on screen from 1949 to 1967 and appeared in six episodes of the Hitchcock series.
• Duane Grey (1921-2001) as Detective Millard, who investigates the third murder; he was on screen from 1952 to 1991 and he was seen in House of Numbers (1957), as well as episodes of The Twilight Zone and Thriller. This was his only role on the Hitchcock show.
• David Fresco (1909-1997) as the husband of Bernice's sister in law; he was on screen from 1946 to 1997 and had roles in many television shows, including The Twilight Zone, Batman, Night Gallery, and The Odd Couple; he was seen in no less than 12 episodes of the Hitchcock show, including "The Gloating Place."

Finally, Lyn Murray (1909-1989), who wrote the entertaining score or "Three Wives Too Many," was born Lionel Breeze in London. He worked extensively in radio from 1931 to 1947 as a conductor, arranger, and composer. He worked in film from 1947 to 1987 and on television from 1956 to 1986. In addition to composing the scores for 34 episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Murray wrote scores for a musically-themed episode of The Twilight Zone ("A Passage for Trumpet") and for Hitchcock's 1955 film, To Catch a Thief.

"Three Wives too Many" is not available on US DVD but may be viewed online here.

Sources:

Fearing, Kenneth. “Three Wives Too Many.” Best of the Best Detective Stories, Dutton, 1960, pp. 215–238.

Galactic Central, philsp.com/.

IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/.

Spoto, Donald. A Girl's Got to Breathe: the Life of Teresa Wright. University Press of Mississippi, 2016.

The FictionMags Index, www.philsp.com/homeville/FMI/0start.htm.

“Three Wives Too Many.” The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, season 9, episode 12, CBS, 3 Jan. 1964.

Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, www.wikipedia.org/.

In two weeks: The Evil of Adelaide Winters, starring Kim Hunter!

* * *

Listen to two great podcasts on Alfred Hitchcock Presents:

Presenting Alfred Hitchcock Presents (website here)

Good Evening: An Alfred Hitchcock Presents Podcast (website here)

Both are highly recommended!

The Warren Report Issue 10: January/February 1967

The Critical Guide to 

the Warren Illustrated Magazines

1964-1983

by Uncle Jack

& Cousin Peter

Frazetta

Eerie #7 (January)

"Witches' Tide"★★1/2
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Gene Colan

"It That Lurks!"★★★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Dan Adkins

"Hitchhike Horror"★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Hector Castellon

"The Defense Rests!"★★★★
Story and Art by Johnny Craig

"Fly!"★★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Steve Ditko

"The Quest!"★★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Norman Nodel

"Cry Fear, Cry Phantom"★★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Jerry Grandenetti


As the citizens of Grey Cove watch a woman's body burn, they recall recent events that led up to the fire. Miles Curtis thinks back to when he found three fisherman torn to pieces and then saw Sarah Magnus standing nearby, observing. Newspaper editor Avery Summers recalls making a connection with similar events that happened twenty years before; at that time, Sarah's mother was found to be a witch and killed, but villagers stopped short of burning her corpse. Viola Whitby, in whose home Sarah now lives and for whom the young woman acts as housekeeper, recalls hearing strange sounds coming from Sarah's room and sending her husband Clem to investigate. She then found Clem being attacked by fishlike monsters!

"Witches' Tide"

Doc Hasbrook recalls running into Sarah on the edge of town, where her words and a look had him frozen in place as she ran toward the sea. Deputy Lew Hoad recalls leading a pack of torch-carrying villagers to the edge of the sea, where they witnessed Sarah seemingly summoning demonic fish-monsters from the water. A trigger-happy villager shot and killed Sarah, and the villagers then made sure to burn her body, presuming that they had made a mistake two decades ago in failing to burn that of her mother. When the fish monsters approach and eat them up anyway, the villagers realize that Sarah, instead of being a witch summoning them, was the only thing keeping them at bay.

"Witches' Tide" is a fairly evocative tale with art by Colan that is a bit more loose in the line work than we're used to. The fine use of blacks and the inventive panel designs are here, as usual, but the whole thing seems a bit washed out and, as a result, some of the panels that are supposed to shock don't quite do the trick.

I have no complaints about Frazetta's stunning cover, though, which looks like nothing that had come before, as if he's ushering in a new style of cover design.

"It That Lurks!"

Dr. Sernas has discovered a giant dinosaur in a jungle pool and he is determined to capture the monster and gain fame for his discovery. He brings a hunter, Ramsey, along to shoot the beast with a tranquilizer, but when the shot is successfully accomplished the beast sinks into the pool, out of sight. Dr. Sernas leaps into the pool and is sucked down along with the creature. Ramsey then sees a vision of his beautiful wife and is drawn to her. At the last moment he realizes that neither dinosaur nor woman was really there; the pool is a sentient thing that shows men that which they most desire and then draws them in to their deaths.

"It That Lurks!" is even better than the story that preceded it. The art by Dan Adkins is superb, alternately reminding me of Al Williamson's work (the dinosaur closeups) and Wally Wood's (everything else). Goodwin's script is entertaining but the best part is the ending, which I did not see coming. Even Cousin Eerie gets off a good line!

Jack's third-grade scribbling
"Hitchhike Horror!"

Driving alone on a highway at night in the rain, a man picks up a hitchhiker. A radio news report says that someone named Arthur Whitlow escaped from an insane asylum that morning, stabbing two guards on his way out. The driver gets tired, so the passenger takes the wheel and steers the car to a graveyard, where the driver first tries to escape, then turns to reveal himself as the lunatic murderer. The hitchhiker turns out to be the ghost (?) of one of his victims and the nut job ends up in a grave. Or at least I think that's what happens. The art in this story is truly wretched--some of the worst I've seen in a legitimate comic. It reminds me of when I tried to draw comics as a youth. "Hitchhike Horror!" is an automatic entry in the "worst of the year" sweepstakes, and it's only January! Hector Castellon would go on to do a lot of work for Charlton, so maybe he drew this story with his toes.

In the German town of Brudenheim, a pretty singer named Lydia Albritton attracts the attention of the wealthy and powerful mayor, who invites her to a ball being thrown in her honor. The mayor is also forced to invite handsome Andrew Prescott, an old friend of the singer's. At the party, Lydia only has eyes for Andrew, but they are being watched from outside a window by Molok-the-Brute. Later that night, Molok breaks in to Lydia's room and kills her. Andrew rushes to the scene but is knocked out by the brute. When Andrew awakens, he is found by the mayor and accused of murder. A kangaroo court is held and the verdict is never in doubt: Andrew is sentenced to die.

"The Defense Rests!"

The young man escapes and returns several nights later, quickly figuring out what really happened. He kidnaps the mayor and brings him to the courtroom, where the mayor joins the members of the jury, all bound and gagged. It turns out that Molok was wronged years before by the mayor and lives for revenge; Andrew locks Molok in with the judge and jury and leaves them to be destroyed by the brute.

Now THIS is more like it! "The Defense Rests" is a lost EC classic. The first few pages look like something Craig would have drawn for the Picto-Fiction line, but the last several pages are done in the classic Craig style and lead to a conclusion based on the sort of revenge narrative we haven't seen since the '50s. Too bad we don't get a panel of carnage to wrap it all up.

Two decades after the end of WWII, the
Unknown Soldier has fallen on hard times. ("Fly!")

After murdering a key witness, a killer hides out in a ratty apartment, his face wrapped in bandages, an annoying "Fly!" buzzing around his head. A doctor comes to check his face but, after the doc leaves, the buzzing of the fly grows so bad that the man leaps out a window to his death. Someone peels back the bandages and finds that the fly was trapped inside his ear.

Ditko's talents are wasted on this paper-thin story, where six pages fly by and next to nothing happens. At one point, the killer seems to hallucinate that he is the size of a fly and that he is being chased by a giant hand that tries to swat him. It all comes to naught, though.

Things were tough in 15th century Europe, where Baron von Strom was determined to find the secret to eternal life. "The Quest!" for this end consumed him to the point that he ignored the suffering of his people, who fell victim to famine and disease. A witch brews a potion for him, but the baron makes her taste it first and she falls dead. Years pass, and an old man named Fredor begs the baron to help the villagers. The baron promises to do so if Fredor can find a way to grant him eternal life. When Fredor's daughter dies, the old man has had enough. He exacts a promise from the baron to help his people in exchange for the secret he craves. That night, Fredor leads the baron to the graveyard, where he is beset by vampires, thus achieving his goal in a way he never expected.

"The Quest!"

Vampires again? Come on Archie, how many times are you going to use this "surprise" ending? And how is the baron going to help fix the villagers' ails if he's a vampire? Norman Nodel's art is not bad and the story is enjoyable enough till it all comes crashing down at the end.

On a dark and stormy night, Jim brings his girlfriend Edith back to creepy Holloway House, where he lives with his old Uncle Ben. Ben warns Edith to make like a tree and leave, but Jim convinces her to stay. At evening's end, Edith heads up the stairs but is frightened to see the phantom of a blonde woman, horribly mutilated, holding an ax.

Jim tells her to calm down and she goes to bed, but later that night she has to "Cry Fear, Cry Phantom" when the apparition appears again. Edith looks out the window and sees that Ben has dug up the grave of a corpse that looks suspiciously like the phantom Edith has seen twice. Edith races to find her boyfriend, but Jim suddenly appears holding an ax himself! Ben shows up in the nick of time to shoot and kill Jim who, it turns out, had murdered his blonde former girlfriend and was on the verge of repeating the crime.

Jerry Grandenetti lets his hair down in this tepid tale, and I guess you either love or hate his very stylized approach to the art. It's not bad, but I prefer more realistic styles.-Jack

"Cry Fear, Cry Phantom"

Peter-"Witches' Tide" is a nicely atmospheric, superbly-illustrated little chiller despite the obligatory cheats (why doesn't Sarah simply tell someone that she's using her magic to keep the monsters at bay?) and last page explanation that seems to come right out of the blue to all four characters at the same time. "It That Lurks!" could have been pulled whole from an issue of Weird Tales; the twist is original and the set-up flawless. The reveal is nicely handled, subtly rather than the sledgehammer we get sometimes with these short horror tales. Not one aspect of "Hitchhike Horror!" is handled nicely; not its inane plot, nor its utterly baffling reveal, but especially not its crude, amateurish art. This is just gawdawful.  "The Defense Rests!," with its historical setting and fabulous Craig pencils, brings to mind the dialogue-free panels of the EC Picto-Fiction line. "Fly!" comes off as silly but at least it gives Ditko a chance to do a story that doesn't involve wizards or fifth-dimensional lizards.

It would seem, if you'd read most of my past comments regarding his art, that I'm standing firmly in the Grandenetti-detractors' camp. You'd be absolutely correct. It's an obvious observation to say that JG's art is a lot like that of Frank Robbins: exaggerated, squiggly and, for the most part, ugly as hell. And yet I'm softening a bit lately when it comes to Jerry's stuff, especially his work on "Cry Fear, Cry Phantom." The script isn't much, an ode to Poe and Gothic horror, but it allows Grandenetti to really open his (admittedly limited) bag of tricks and unleash some wonders here and there. The Eisner-influenced splash, the weird angles of Holloway House (above), the gorgeous shadows, even the melty-faced characters (an aspect I've found negatively distracting in JG's other work). Perhaps it's just that JG found the perfect home for his eccentric visions or maybe I'm just seeing something in his art I've never taken the time to appreciate. Probably the former (see below).

Morrow

Creepy #13 

"The Squaw!"  ★★1/2
Story by Bram Stoker
Adaptation by Archie Goodwin
Art by Reed Crandall

"Early Warning!" ★1/2
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Jerry Grandenetti

"Scream Test!" ★★
Story by John Benson and Bhob Stewart
Art by Angelo Torres

"Madness in the Method!" ★
Story by Carl Wessler
Art by Rocco Mastroserio

"Fear in Stone" ★★
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Gene Colan

"Adam Link, Gangbuster!" ★
Story by Otto Binder
Art by Joe Orlando

"Second Chance!" ★★1/2
Story by Archie Goodwin
Art by Steve Ditko

"The Squaw!"

While vacationing in Nurnberg, a young British couple meet up with the "exuberant" American, Elias P. Hutcheson, at an ancient castle. The trio spark up a quick friendship and decide to tour the torture chambers together. While strolling outside the dungeon walls, they happen upon a cat and its kitten playing in the grass below them. Hutcheson, thinking it would be a fun bit of silliness to startle the felines, drops a rock but misses his mark. The stone crushes the kitten and its mother looks up at the American with hateful eyes. The trio brush off the incident and head into the castle tower housing the torture chamber. The cat follows them in. The chamber is filled with several diabolical weapons of torture but none so enticing to Hutcheson as the Iron Maiden. The arrogant American bullies the tour guide into allowing him to try the evil casket on for size and, as he lies helpless within the Maiden, the avenging cat hurls itself at the guide and the lid slams shut on Hutcheson.

Not a bad adaptation as these things go (for some reason or another, Archie seems to have had a yen for selecting tame "classics" for the Warrens--possibly because these were public domain stories?); the final panel, of the fearful feline lapping up Hutcheson's blood, is pretty grim. Reed Crandall's line work, as usual, is exquisite; every brick and stone at the tower looks as though Crandall spent hours getting them just right. If there's a complaint, it's that Reed's characters suffer an almost Kamen-esque fate in that they all pretty much look alike. The title of "The Squaw!" refers to a story Hutcheson tells of a war-time experience he had involving a half-breed Indian and the fate that befell him.

"Early Warning!"

A businessman stops overnight in a desolate European town and finds himself without a place to stay. Working his way through the alleyways, he stumbles over the dead body of a woman, blood drained and two suspicious marks on her neck. Just then, a mad crowd assembles behind the man, with the leader pulling out a wooden stake and accusing the astounded traveler of vampirism. As the stake is pounded into his chest, the man awakens on the bus just as it gets to the same town he dreamed of. Sure enough, once he disembarks, his reality follows the dream right up until he finds the dead woman and then the crazed mob assembles. But this time they're the vampires, looking for food. "Early Warning!" is another really dopey, cliched horror story. Even Uncle Creepy, at story's end, wonders why this entire horde of vampires would remain in a deserted town. I heaped cautious praise on Jerry Grandenetti's art above, but here he's in full-JG mode, with lots of grotesque, exaggerated faces and indiscernible lines that prevent you from figuring out just what the hell is happening on these pages. Yeccccccch!

"Scream Test!"

Journalist Susan Street smells a great story in the reports of ghostly organ music rising from the depths of the old Alhambra Theater, once renowned for its beauty but now closed for decades and rotting away. Street nabs an audience with the Alhambra's owner and organist, Ivan Kire, who pooh-poohs the idea of a ghost and explains it's only his nighttime meanderings to blame. Kire paints a picture of the Alhambra as the place to view a silent movie and his musicianship as the finest in the country until the advent of talkies doomed the format. Kire offers to open the Alhambra and play for Street and the reporter quickly agrees. Once there, Kire pops Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera into the projector and leans in to deliver an eerie soundtrack. Just then, Street remembers there had been a fire in the Alhambra and, as the unmasking scene spills onto the screen behind her, she reaches out and pulls the mask from Tire's face.

Here's a case of the set-up being very intriguing with the reveal a complete letdown. That final panel makes no sense whatsoever and seems to come right out of the blue, leaving me with a sense of having been cheated. All the atmosphere is simply an excuse for a shock ending. It only occurs to Street right at that moment that Kire is wearing a mask? And what kind of journalist forgets the most important hook of the story? Angelo Torres's mash-up of art and movie stills works very well here (as opposed to the times when Angelo swipes images for his doodles). Benson and Stewart are names familiar to those who followed our EC coverage, as the two were fans who later became leading historians of the company.

"Madness in the Method!"

Henry Belmond murders his wife and then pleads insanity. He's committed to the Hanneford Asylum but then finds he can't adjust to his surroundings as everyone around him seems to be loony. Belmond complains to the sanitarium officials and is placed in different cells but each one is progressively worse. Finally, at wit's end, Belmond admits he's not really insane but the doctors are skeptical until they remove his brain and find Henry was telling the truth. Huh? Obviously, Archie must have forgotten to send that all-important penultimate page to Rocco; y'know, the one that explains why a group of doctors would crack open Belmond's head. "Madness in the Method!" is just the latest in a long series of Wessler scripts I've had my problems with (scripts written for Warren, as well as for EC and Atlas); Wessler seems to have come from the school of writers who threw everything at the wall to see what stuck and then used the plots and hooks that didn't stick regardless. I had a feeling the reveal would be that the inmates were running the asylum (and perhaps that was what Wessler had in mind), but the published twist is befuddling.

"Fear in Stone"

Sculptor Frederick Holbert has had it up to here with critics who claim his work is secondary to the genius of Stavros Dimitrios, another artist who excels at visions of horror. So Holbert goes to see Dimitrios at his studio, hoping the artists will let him in on the secret behind his mastery. Dimitrios claims only that the blood of Greece flows through him and then shuts the door on his competitor's dream. But the frustrated Holbert follows Dimitrios to a deserted warehouse, where the truth comes out at last: Stavros has the head of Medusa in a box! But didn't the Gorgon lose its power when beheaded? I guess not, but I must say the reveal was no surprise the second Dimitrios mentioned Greece. "Fear in Stone" has a lackluster script  and, truth be told, below-par artwork from Colan; it sure looks rushed to me.

That bumbling bag of bolts, Adam Link, is still trying to get the goods on bad guy Harvey Brigg, a really nasty chap who's pinned two violent murders on Adam's gleaming gal-pal, Eve, who's rotting away in a Federal pen, on a steady diet of three squirts of oil a day, but Adam can't seem to find the smoking gun to save his silvery bum. But, ho-ho, salvation arrives in the form of Adam's latest invention, a bugging device that will transmit messages from Briggs's den to a recorder in Jack's apartment. But... the best laid plans of mice and robots and all... the messages are received with tons of static and deemed unplayable for the D.A. More importantly, Adam is tipped off to the fact that Briggs's hoods will be murdering a woman at five PM sharp. He puts the kibosh on the murder and traps Briggs in his study, forcing the evil genius to pen a confession. Just as Briggs is about to sign the document, one of his hoods interrupts and chops Adam into a zillion pieces (well, actually only five or six) and commences to burning his chrome dome to melted tin. Adam sends one more "radio-telepathy call" to Eve but resigns himself to an afterlife spent as the roof of a shed. To Be Continued...

"Adam Link, Gangbuster!"

If you're expecting me to tell you that this installment of Adam Link is enjoyable and well-illustrated, you've come to the wrong guy. Optimism is more Jack's forte. "Adam Link, Gangbuster!" is like a really bad episode of a really bad 1960s TV show (in fact, Adam Link was the star of a really bad episode of Outer Limits!), perhaps starring Sheldon Leonard as Briggs. By this time, Joe Orlando was blessed to be able to sell what are essentially ink blots as art to Warren, who must have been looking the other way while, at the same time, touting his artists as the best in the business. The most amazing thing, to me, is that Binder was able to stretch one lousy pulp story ("Adam Link, Robot Detective" from Amazing, May 1940) into an equally lousy three-part funny book story.

Edward Nugent (call him Ted for short) makes a deal with the devil for life after death but, as usual, Beelzebub gets a hand up on us mere mortals. After Eddie dies, he pleads with Satan to send him back to Earth and the devil obliges, sending Nugent back into his grave. Fortunately, for our protagonist, a grave robber just happens to be pilfering Nugent's grave but, unfortunately, the grave robber is quickly scared out of his wits and beats Nugent to death in his own grave.

"Second Chance!"

I would love to have been in the Warren cafeteria while Archie and Steve were sharing the same grass and cooking up "Fly!" and this wacky, wild, incoherent, interesting jumble. While not entirely successful, "Second Chance" is a perfect marriage of script with its art or vice versa. Just exactly how much detail Archie gave to the nightmare landscapes of hell and its occupants in the pages he handed over to Ditko is known only to those who have seen the actual script. The prelude, of two cops coming across the white-haired grave digger post-grave opening, segues into a scene of Nugent in hell and, for several pages to come, the reader is excused for not having the foggiest notion what the two scenes have in common. But, eventually, it all makes sense. It's not hyperbole when I state that only Steve Ditko could successfully map out these twisted images (and on page two the images are literally twisted) without the scene coming off as laughable.-Peter

Jack-I think this is a fair to middling issue of Creepy. I like Crandall's work on "The Squaw!," a story I enjoyed when I read it in an anthology, but Goodwin overdoes it with one character's American speech patterns. "Scream Test!" is also fun, mainly due to the felicitous mix of sharp art by Torres and beloved stills from silent films. I thought Colan's work on "Fear in Stone" was nicely shadowy and Ditko goes full "Dr. Strange" in the wacked-out pages of "Second Chance!," despite a so-so story by Goodwin. Grandenetti is back to his usual poor work in "Early Warning!" and the team of Wessler and Mastroserio don't do much to elevate "Madness in the Method!" Worst of all, of course, is "Adam Link, Gangbuster!" I can't tell any more what is and what is not real art by Joe Orlando, though he did sign the first page--I'd swear Grandenetti was ghosting here and trying to tone down his more surreal impulses.

Next Week...
George Evans
Whether we like it or not!

From Creepy 13

Journey Into Strange Tales! Atlas/ Marvel Horror Issue 36

The Marvel/Atlas 
Horror Comics

Part 21

June 1952 Part I

Heath

 Journey Into Mystery #1

"One Foot in the Grave" (a: Tony DiPreta) ★
(r: Monsters Unleashed #1)
"The Clutching Hands" (a: Cal Massey) ★★★
(r: Where Monsters Dwell #21)
"Haunted!" (a: Vic Carrabotta) ★
(r: Where Monsters Dwell #21)
"It Can't Miss" (a: Jay Scott Pike) ★
(r: Chamber of Chills #5)
"Iron-Head" (a: Dick Ayers) ★★★1/2
(r: Tales of the Zombie #1)

Journey Into Mystery is most famous, of course, for being the birthplace of the Mighty Thor (who will arrive from Asgard in exactly 82 issues), but before that it was also one of the only survivors of the "Atlas Implosion" of 1957 (well, if you want to get technical, the title did go on a 15-month hiatus before being relaunched in 1958) and one of Marvel's longest-running horror/sf titles. Take a look to your right and see if you can spot the difference between the cover for JIM #1 and those on any of the other Atlas titles. (I'll give you a few seconds) Yep, good spot. For some reason, Stan decided to forego the mountains of text and "Also in This Issue" banners he loved to stream across otherwise-gorgeous covers and let Russ Heath's illustration sell the zine on its own merits.

In "One Foot in the Grave," a heartless florist pays hoboes to steal floral arrangements from graves and then sells them at a premium. One night, the dead come back for their flowers. A very elementary story idea, the plot of which has been used before, but the art by DiPreta (again, very Colan-esque) is nicely done. Much better is "The Clutching Hands," about Ted Wayne, a hack novelist, who murders a rival writer and steals his unfinished manuscript, hoping to land a best-seller. That night, he awakens to find the dead man's hands at the typewriter, finishing the novel. Not one to look a gift hand in the palm, Wayne takes the now-finished book to his editor but is low-balled on the advance money. Just then, the hands appear and strangle the editor and his secretary enters in time to see Wayne flee. The writer is arrested and sentenced to death by hanging, but is granted a last-second stay while he stands on the gallows, noose around his neck. As the Governor's message is read, the clutching hands pull the lever and Wayne falls to his death. Russ Heath's brilliant artwork on "The Clutching Hands" is about as close as you're going to get to the look of EC Comics. The splash is brutal, but gorgeous.

"Haunted"

The next two tales are pretty bad. "Haunted" is about a ghost who tries his best to dissuade buyers from purchasing his haunted house. Some of Carrabotta's work here is nice (his spectre is pretty creepy) but the story has almost as much dust on it as the haunted house. Worse is "It Can't Miss," which can't even work up much enthusiasm for its art (Jay Scott Pike almost seems to be going for an Eisner vibe with his doodlings). Murderer and general tough guy Frankie Arno is on the lam and is mistaken for a respectable businessman who looks just like him. Unfortunately, the guy’s been committed to an asylum. Why? Who knows?

The last story of the issue is very definitely the best. Bronson, a really really bad guy steals an undersea treasure while in a diver’s suit and blows up the ship and its crew to prevent any witnesses. He surfaces on a nearby island of natives who worship him as the god "Iron-Head." As long as he doesn’t remove his helmet, he’s okay. Obviously he can’t eat, so he starves. The final panel, of a native saying “Him no God! Axe make-em Iron-Head come off... just like chicken head!” and hefting a bloody hatchet, is a gem of dark humor! Dick Ayers comes through with a fabulous set of visuals, very reminiscent of fellow Atlas artist, Bill Everett.

"Iron-Head"

Everett & Burgos

 Adventures Into Terror #10

"When the Vampire Calls!" (a: Joe Maneely) ★★★
(r: Dracula Lives #4)
"The Dark Passage" (a: Ogden Whitney) ★★
(r: Monsters Unleashed #5)
"What Walter Saw" (a: Ed Goldfarb) ★
"The Snake!" (a: George Roussos) ★
"The Old Hag" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★

The superstitious villagers believe the beautiful Lyra is a vampire, draining all the locals of their life blood, but Pierce is so in love with Lyra that he can't believe the stories. He follows the girl to her castle and discovers that she lures the young men to her home so that her vampire brother can sup. The finale sees the villagers, in grand old Universal style, burning the castle and its occupants to ashes. Not terribly original, but something about the whole package ticked al the right boxes for me. Joe Maneely's art here is the best we've seen in the Atlas horror titles so far (and the closest to the detailed magic he performed on The Black Knight). "When the Vampire Calls" could have fit into the Universal chronology somewhere between Dracula's Daughter and Ghost of Frankenstein (brother vamp actually looks more like "the Monster" and Lyra is the prototypical Gale Sondergaard eerie beauty).

"The Dark Passage"

Nick Raftis waits on death row but his nights are filled with torturous nightmares of hooded demons. Convinced he'll be rid of the night spirits if he breaks out, Nick steals an ambulance and smashes through the gate but doesn't get far before he runs out of gas. Fearful he'll be caught, he enters a house filled with hooded figures. Too late, he learns he's already dead and the figures lead him into "The Dark Passage." Nice ghoulies courtesy of Ogden Whitney, but the finish is a bit too cloudy (did Nick die in the chair or in his cell during the escape?) and reeks of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." "What Walter Saw" is a really silly short-short about a boardwalk telescope operator who can't make money with his weak lenses, so he steals a batch of powerful glasses and ends up seeing an invasion of aliens. Worse is "The Snake!," about a sailor who boasts of having a snakeskin in his knapsack and then has to sneak off to a deserted island in the night to search for one in order to save face.

"The Old Hag"

The issue ends on a high note with "The Old Hag." Tired of being homely and poor, a man asks an old hag to make him different. She does, by making his entire body elastic. TV shows and personal appearances make him rich and he pays the old witch every month, but he forgets to visit her one month and she dies of starvation. His powers of "normalcy" wear off and his body becomes a rubbery mess. He's forced to get a carnival job. Creepy art and a nasty bite in the tail elevate this one to "keeper" status. That final panel, of the hopelessly rubberized dope, is pretty freaky.

Everett

 Journey Into Unknown Worlds #11

"Frankie Was Afraid!" (a: Bil Everett) ★★
"Kiss of Death" (a: Bernie Krigstein)  ★★
"Once Upon a Corpse" (a: Marty Elkin & Gil Kane) ★
"I Can't Stop Screaming" (a: Dick Ayers) ★1/2
"The Neat Trick" (a: Harry Lazarus & George Klein) ★★1/2

Dr. Le Doux specializes in treating patients of their fears -- doesn't matter what kind of fears, he's your man at fifty dollars a session. So when Frankie shows up to the Doc's office and claims he's afraid of midnight, Le Dous sees dollar signs and tells the poor schmoe it will take thirty sessions to cure midnightaphobia. After the 29th visit, Frankie approaches the head-shrinker and reminds him he only has one session left, and he's still terrifies of the witching hour. Le Doux grabs his patient and drags him out to a graveyard, thinking that will do the trick. Unfortunately for the dim-witted therapist, Frankie reveals why he's afraid of midnight... by sprouting fangs and wings. Any surprise in the climax of "Frankie Was Afraid!" is muted by the fact that the exact scene plays itself out on the cover! Bill Everett's LeDoux is a dead ringer for the joker and his winged vampire is a delight but there are way too many crowded panels for my tastes.

"Frankie Was Afraid!"

Dede, the heroine of "Kiss of Death" falls in love with a statue in the park, much to the dismay of her boyfriend. The legend goes that, two thousand years before, Hemus and Xanthia were lovers in Greece but Hemus had a wandering eye, and when he stepped out one too many time, Xanthia buried a blade in his back and then killed herself as well. Now, Dede can't seem to take her mind off the stone Adonis and heads out to the park late at night for another look. Hemus, having bottled up two thousand years of libido, drops a line or two on the bewildered young lady and then follows it up with a smooch. Xanthia, still the jealous woman, dispatches Dede with her blade and the two statues return to their perch, none the wiser. A decent enough fantasy, but the Krigstein art is low-grade Bernie, one of his sketchier jobs. There's also a bit of 1950s risqué cheesecake, when Dede hops out of bed in lingerie to go on her midnight walk.

In "Once Upon a Corpse," Monk Bennett tries to kidnap a little boy outside a cemetery but it turns out the kid is from the other side, looking for some fun. The climax is murky (we're not really sure what the kid's motives and powers are), but not nearly as murky as the truly awful art (Gil Kane inked over Marty Elkin but there's not a trace of Kane to these untrained eyes). Mr. Green, importer of rare silks and cloth has a meeting with a strange hunchbacked chap who shows Green the most beautiful material he's ever seen. The two strike a bargain and Green promises to pay the oddball upon delivery. When Green opts to stiff his new partner, the hunchback pays a visit to Green's office and spins a web around the shyster. You guessed it! The fabulous material is silk spun from the man's bulbous abdomen. He's a giant spider! And one who can hide that enormous thorax and eight legs nicely under a trench coat! Dick Ayers' art for "I Can't Stop Screaming"... ouch!

The best, again, is saved for last with "The Neat Trick," a humorous yarn about big-mouthed heckler, Harry Bogan, and the night he decided to accuse Lokar, the Magician of being a phony. The public spectacle tarnishes the good name of Lokar and he finds himself with out a job but that's neither here nor there to Brogan, who laughs the whole thing off. Later, that night, the two men stumble into each other in the woods and Bogan is anything but apologetic. Regardless, Lokar is kind enough to show Bogan his most famous trick: making his own head disappear. Astonished, but calling it a parlor trick, Brogan asks Lokar to teach him how the stunt is performed and the magician is only too happy to oblige.

Everett

 Marvel Tales #107

"The Thing in the Sewer" (a: Fred Kida) ★
"The Man With the Whip" (a: Ogden Whitney) ★★
"Going My Way?" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★1/2
"The Glass Eye" (a: Allen Bellman) ★1/2
"Trapped By the Dead!" (a: Gene Colan) ★★★

In a dark cemetery, a robber/murderer has set his sights on his latest victim, a graveside mourner, but from nowhere his mark is set upon by another man. After forcing both men to accompany him into his subterranean lair (which comes complete with picked-clean skulls), the murderer is about to dispatch the interloper, the man sprouts wings and fangs. Didn't we just read this story in another title?

A child is kept locked in a basement, the only exposure to the outside world is his guardian, "The Man With the Whip." One day, the man forgets to lock the door and the child ascends the stairs and kills his torturer. As he heads out the front door, he wonders why the man kept him hidden from others. The final panel, of the monstrous child, is far from a surprise since the kid's face is kept in shadows throughout the story's five pages. This type of story would probably have worked better as a prose feature but it's really not that bad, and Ogden Whitney delivers some stirring visuals (though the grotesque tusks sticking out of the boy's mouth make you wonder how he couldn't notice he was different from his guardian) and a creepy atmosphere. How this tyke became so malformed is just one of those questions we best not ask.

A traveling salesman kisses his wife and hits the road in a terrible storm, promising her he'll be safe. He stops for a hitchhiker but is shocked when he sees the man is wearing a skull mask. "Going My Way?" is all the spectre says. The traveler speeds off but can't escape the ghostly apparition at every stop he makes. Running low on gas, he finds a farm house and tries to steal some petrol from a vehicle, but the farmer catches him and almost gives him both barrels until his wife talks him out of it. Explaining he's just a traveling salesman who's almost out of gas, our hero phones his wife on the farmer's telephone but receives quite the shock when a nurse answers the phone and explains that his wife is in a state of shock after receiving the news that her husband died in a road wreck. The salesman heads back out on the road, resigned to the fact that, the next time he sees his new friend, he'll give him a ride since he's going that way. A few head-scratchers here (why does the farm couple see our traveler if he's a ghost? Are they ghosts too?), but for a variation on a well-traveled road, "Going My Way" is an entertaining yarn and Bernie Krigstein's art here is about as close as we're going to come (so far, at least) to the quality he brought to EC.

Two bumbling museum guards decide think that the rubies in a priceless statue's eye sockets will be their ticket to a big payday but the idol has other ideas. Even at a mere four pages, "The Glass Eye" feels padded and its clumsy climax will leave the reader unsatisfied. Much, much better is the grand finale this issue, "Trapped By the Dead!" Fred Konry makes a cross-country trek to murder his look-alike cousin, the very rich Hollis Konry, and assume his identity and exorbitant lifestyle. The murder goes off without a hitch (Fred chops Hollis up into little pieces and buries him in several different makeshift graves alongside the highway. The plan works even better when Fred gets home to Hollis' gorgeous wife and the dame is none the wiser. He makes grand plans to tear down the old estate and build a new mansion, but those plans go awry when the builders discover the skeleton of Hollis' old partner in the walls and the cops converge on the new millionaire. Though the "assumed identity" riff has been played a gazillion times, "Trapped By the Dead!" manages to pull it off by averting your eye from the plot long enough to throw in a surprise at the climax. I'm sure it occurred to me before but it strikes me how much Gene Colan's early, noir-ish art resembles Bernie Krigstein's work at the time. Both had that similar knack of turning the cartoon into the atmospheric.

Heath

 Adventures Into Weird Worlds #7

"The Cat's Whiskers" (a: Vic Carrabotta) ★1/2
"In the Still of the Night" (a: Marty Elkin) ★1/2
"The Strange Road" (a: Ogden Whitney) ★
"The Ghost" (a: Myron Fass) ★★1/2
"The Bad Boy" (a: Jim Mooney) ★★★

We find ourselves back on the low end of the Carrabotta seesaw with the opener, "The Cat's Whiskers," about Amos White, a nightwatchman framed and executed for a murder he didn't commit. Turns out Amos rode the lightning for mob boss Rocc, and the framer is none other than renowned lawyer, George Henly. But, after the execution, the counselor can't shake the stalking Blackie, Amos' faithful feline, a creepy little vixen who manages to steal his way into George's bedroom one night and leave the terrified lawyer speechless. As noted, this is not one of Vic's better jobs but, as noted above in the review of "Haunted," even at his worst, Carrabotta could still evoke the chills now and then. Here, it comes with the final frames of the story, where Blackie gets his revenge and George is left holding his tongue... or where his tongue used to be.

"In the Still of the Night," a stranger comes into town, looking for companionship, and finds himself attracted to a beautiful girl in a restaurant. She finds him attractive too, and they arrange a meeting in the park. As the sun goes down, the man turns into a werewolf and tells the girl he's in town looking for his next victim... and then the woman bares her fangs and tells the dope the same thing. How many times can these guys trot this one out? They don't even try variations anymore; just pass the same script over to another artist every six months and the reader won't remember the last time. A shame too, since the first half of the story build legitimate suspense.

"The Strange Road" is an illogical and just plain dumb story about a bus driver on a new route who picks up very pale and lifeless riders and then gets stuck behind a funeral procession. Impatient, he jumps the line and when he pulls alongside the hearse, he notices the driver is a skeleton. Losing control, the bus tumbles down the side of the mountain and the last thing the driver sees is himself... a skeleton... in the rear-view mirror. So what deep meaning does this hold? Is the driver death? Is he the bus driver to hell? You tell me.

A bit better is the other quickie this issue, "The Ghost," about a woman who's getting tired of her husband's supernatural obsession with his dead wife. He sees seers in hopes of resurrecting his old flame, but the current Mrs. is carrying on an affair with her hubby's business partner and the two of them have something planned. The crafty adulterer gives the old boy a wrench to the skull and runs his car off a cliff but, once she gets home, she realizes there might just be something to this "other world" nonsense after all. A nicely atmospheric little chiller with great art from Myron Fass, who could pull an ace from his hat now and then. Fass is better known for the Eerie Publications line of horror comics of the 1960s and 1970s; Fass would grab strips from the 1950s and have them gussied up with blood and guts and garish covers. Fass' rags would rot the minds of thousands of impressionable youngsters (this old fan included) and are widely collected and revered to this day (don't be surprised to see a blog dedicated to Tales from the Tomb and its sisters some day, right here in this space).

Stan saves the best for last this issue, with the creepy "The Bad Boy." Young Peter Hemsley is bored of living in the country without any friends to play with, so mom suggests to her son conjuring up an imaginary pal. So Peter whips up an invisible body, names him "Bad Peter," and seemingly becomes enchanted with his new BFF. But when tobacco is spilled and rugs ripped up, dad finds his patience wearing thin. When a dart goes sailing past his face one night, Mr. Hemsley decides something has to be done so he tells Peter that he's going to strangle "Bad Peter" and they'll be done-and-dusted of imaginary playmates. To Pop's surprise, Peter agrees that his evil counterpart must be done away with and gives his dad the thumbs-up sign. After a good imaginary throttling of air, Dad declares "Bad Peter" dead but his little tyke, now sporting fangs and green skin, turns and reveals that he "killed the wrong one!"

The "invisible friend who's really there" plot has been used several times before (and, of course, the king of them all would have to be Ray Bradbury's "Zero Hour," which was adapted by Al Feldstein for Weird Fantasy #18) but "The Bad Boy" gives the tired horse a kick in the ribs and a neat twist in the tail. I love Joe Sinnott's art, which is equally stylish and garish (his panel of little Peter warning his dad that "Bad Peter gets awfully mad when he's scolded" is even creepier than the final panel reveal!

Astonishing #14

"Under Glass" (a: Bernie Krigstein) ★★★
"The Man Who Jumped!" (a: Cal Massey) ★★
"The Man Who Changed Bodies!" (a: E.J. Smalls) ★
"Silence!" (a: Don Rico & Dick Ayers) ★★1/2
"The Clean-Up!" (a: Tony DiPreta) ★★1/2

Pa can't seem to keep his two sons from fighting; his aunt complains every time he tells her to make lunch; and his wife is getting some on the side from the new boarder. What's a slob to do? Well, Pa grabs a blade and sticks it to the new guy and everyone just stands around and stares... including the giant bugs who "overran Earth after the atomic war of 1993," and captured the lot of them to put on display in their human being zoo!

The first four-and-a-half pages of "Under Glass" is like some deranged variation of Streetcar Named Desire; a cringe-worthy peek into the lower depths of humanity. It's a hellish vision, and Bernie Krigstein's art is the perfect art to carry this narrative over the line of decency and good taste. And then there's the climax, one I didn't see coming and, now that I've seen it, wish I could un-see it. It smacks of going for the easy wrap-up rather than building on the events we've witnessed previously and it's also a twist been done to death. This might have been a full four-star gem had the writer (I think this is way too nasty for Stan "The Man," but what do I know?) conjured up a more grueling finish.

Chauffeur Conrad has his eyes on the boss's daughter but the old crow gets wise and fires him. Before the will can be changed, Conrad stages an accident and moneybags ends up at the bottom of a cliff. Conrad becomes Mr. Inherited Moneybags but has constant nightmares of the boss coming back for him. Unable to take the terror anymore, Conrad steps out onto a ledge and prepares to jump but gets cold feet and breathes a sigh of relief as hands reach out to pull him back in the window. But as the would-be suicide opens his eyes, he realizes the hands belong to his late father-in-law and they're pulling him downward! "The Man Who Jumped!" is no great shakes in the script department but Cal Massey's art is energetic (almost like a cross-breeding of Everett and Heath!) and keeps the attention even when the words don't.

With a title like "The Man Who Changed Bodies!," there's no real need for synopsis, is there? I'll just say that the only smile that crossed my face during this snoozer, about a millionaire who discovers a way to switch bodies with his handsome gardener, is the "eerie chant" the old guy must repeat:

"I command your mind and ego to leave your body and enter mine! And my mind and ego will inhabit your body!"

That took some thinking on the part of our intrepid funny book writer.

Depending on how you look at it, "Silence" is either an interesting experiment in (for the most part) wordless panels or the easiest assignment of the day for the Atlas horror comic writer. A man wakes up and runs through his deserted city, looking for signs of life. The subway is deserted, the streets are filled with empty cars, and all the buildings stand quiet. He finally finds a lone figure sitting behind a desk, writing in a ledger, and when the stranger raises his head, we see it is death. Not a bad little chiller and the final panels, with Mr. Death holding his reaper, provide the desired effect. We are left wondering what happened here that there aren't even bodies in the streets. All trace of humankind vanished but for this one poor soul.

The final story, "The Clean-Up!," is some nasty business about Lucy,  a little girl adopted from an orphanage and put to work cleaning the house of a chemist who manufactures disinfectants. He's got this poor little kid sponging the toilets and scraping the food off plates 24/7, while he lords over her with his whip. When the little moppet accidentally spills garbage on the tyrant, he orders her to fix him a bath and she "mistakenly" fills the tub with acid! There's a (delightfully) mean streak running through "The Clean-Up!" that you (as a horror story reader, that is) can't help but enjoy. The chemist boasts that he makes the strongest disinfectants in the land, but seemingly has nothing better to do with his day than supervise Little Orphan Lucy while she goes about her chores. The art by Tony DiPreta is primitive and rushed (Lucy's face seems to have the exact same look and the exact same angle in every panel) but then the scratchiness of the visuals seems perfectly matched with the grimy narrative.

In Two Weeks...
It's Uncanny how the Atlas horror line
continues to grow!