Murder in Wax "Starring: A Corpse"

It's Midweek Murder-thon time again, so lets crack open another perfect pair-up of crime horror mystery cases guaranteed to knock your nylons off and well into next week! Hollywood dick, Dan Turner has himself a heckuva of handful trying to straighten out a murderous screwy angle or two while on a macabre movie set in, "Murder in Wax", from the July 1953 issue of Crime Mysteries #8. But first, Hollywood glamor girl, Queenie Starr starrs in the new Sam Wilde horror picture over at Paragram Studios, (via the July 1952 issue of Crime Mysteries #2), and if she's not careful, she too could find herself playing the lead corpse! Heater bangs, head bops, horror chops, and heavenly babes a'plenty-- what more could you ask for in a THOIA Double Feature, anyway?

Feast of the Dead!

When the Spirit Halloween stores start poppin' up around your area, you know it's finally time to get serious about what you too are going to be wearing this All Hallow's Eve! You still have 50+ days to get your act together, but just once I'd love to see someone get as serious about their horror presentation as the corpse mutilatin' madmen depicted in today's atmospheric beast of a feast terror tale from the Sept. '54 issue of Crime Mysteries #15. Good lord this one is insanely inspired, and hysterically gruesome, --even by 'ol Mr. Karswell standards! And not to be a spoiler sport here or anything, but fyi Shaggy and Scoob never encountered cemetery cosplay quite on the same level as this! These goons really go for the gold. Oh, while we're at it, don't bother checking Spirit for gas-filled balloons, radium glow cloth, and steel knives 'n grippers, they don't carry any of that stuff...

The Madhouse Murder Mystery

A few of you seemed on the fence about the hot pink horrors of our previous post, so I thought maybe we'd take another stab at it with a fun, old-time oddity from the March 1939 issue of Amazing Mystery Funnies V2 #3. Of the 7 pages, 3 of them are overlayed with a variety of perplexing pink hues, while the other 4 pages are in black and white. Not sure why they did it like this exactly, but I think it adds a screaming surrealness to the sinister setting, as well as to the masked murderer and their spooky dungeon of brain swappin', scientific madcappery. GCD notes that artist/writer, E.F. Webster was actually Ethel Felder Webster, and she was rockin' the Richard Sala-esque murder mystery style tale a few decades before he was even born. Man I miss that guy...

The House of Fear!

As promised, here comes another DC Movie Comic adaptation of a creaky, old Universal fright film classic (see our previous post for Son of Frankenstein in case you missed it!) And this time it's a spooky detective mystery set in a haunted theatre --where murder hath taken the stage! From the August 1939 issue of Movie Comics #5, "The House of Fear" '39 film (not to be confused with the great Sherlock Holmes movie of the same name from 1945) was actually a silver scream remake of Paul Leni's "The Last Warning" from 1928, which was, in turn, an apparent follow-up to Leni's superb 1927 old dark horror house hit, "The Cat and the Canary" --whew! Fun stuff, and just like the Movie Comics version of Son of Frankenstein, hot pink House of Fear here contains the same condensed, cut 'n paste process of colorized, cropped film stills, combined with added artistic elements to keep things as comic book cartoony as possible.

"Ghostly Killer" / "Death on Display"

Gale forces are still blowin' strong here at THOIA, as we re-enter Earth's atmosphere, leaving behind Gale Allen and her space-age Girl Squadron (see our previous post HERE), thus, landing once more back on solid, blood-soaked soil to find not one, but TWO great, horror-tinged, Gail Ford murder mysteries awaiting us! Yep, someone's dumped a dead dame amongst the dummies in a department store window display. Now it's up to Gail (and her Bettie Page bangs 'n legs) to bring the baddie to justice! From the October 1950 debut issue of Crime Smashers #1, plus fun art and fast paced script from Gene Leslie! But first, Gail gasps it up in a graveyard at midnight as someone has once again turned a gal into a ghost! Gene Leslie delivers another daring, detective doozy, this time via the December 1950 issue of Crime Smashers #2! And just because it's been awhile, it's casting call time again: Starring Broderick Crawford as Inspector Madson, and Jean Brooks as beautiful, bad ass-- Gail "Girl Friday" Ford!