Forrest Ackerman

Forrest Ackerman, ninety-something years old, is fading away in California, body failing but alert as a cricket and taking the greatest joy in messages of affection from unofficial "nieces and nephews" around the world. It isn't too much of an exaggeration to say Mr. Ackerman is one of the people who created and sustained genre fandom, with Famous Monsters of Filmdom one of the cornerstones. I was in the third or fourth grade when I first saw a copy at Steve Noel's house, with the ads for Mole Men masks in the back-- thirty years later, when I saw the cast of Mystery Science Theater wearing those masks, it was like a secret handshake.
Forrest Ackermman must look 'round at the San Diego Comicon with a wild surmise like Balboa on that peak in Darien. He's the Mr. Chips of science fiction, comics, horror and fantasy, and if anyone asks if he has any children, tell them "hundreds and hundreds".
Cards and letters are welcome at:
FORREST J ACKERMAN
4511 Russell Avenue
Los Angeles, CA
90027

TRUST ME: Three VERY Disturbing Films for Halloween: "HAXAN", "THE DESIGNATED MOURNER", and "FIVE MILLION YEARS FROM EARTH"

HAXAN, a Danish silent film made in 1922 by Benjamin Christensen, contains images you won't be able to get out of your mind. Intended as a documentary about the witch hysteria of the Middle Ages, with tableaus modeled after old woodcuts more disturbing and archetypal than most modern horror films. It's easy for horror movies to repulse or sicken, but after the bloody roller coaster ride, how many get under your skin and start to worry you...?

FIVE MILLION YEARS FROM EARTH, also found in Britain under the title QUARTERMASS AND THE PIT, is a Hammer film made in 1967 with Andrew Keir, James Donald and Barbara Shelley. Under a London alley called Hobb's Lane, workers unearth an unexploded shell that turns out to be a lost ship from an ancient, dying Mars-- with hominid fossils on board. Human aggression, the "killer ape" impulse that took over the Earth, is a genetic inheritance from the red planet. Our primordial fear of the Devil's horns is an imprinted memory of the Martian "locusts"' antennae, our genocidal wars a reenactment of their annual Martian culling of the weaker members of their herd. And the ship isn't dead, it's only sleeping...

THE DESIGNATED MOURNER, a play by Wallace Shawn, was filmed by David Hare with Mike Nichols, Miranda Richardson, and David de Keyser in 1997. The survivor of a government purge tries to justify himself to an unseen audience after he realizes that ''everyone on earth who could read John Donne was now dead." Imagine Winston Smith as an Edgar Allen Poe character confessing the murder of his own soul, telling us how he learned to stop worrying and love Big Brother, and yes, he really is glad that Julia's dead, because after all she just expected too much of us, didn't she, and I just want to be left alone to watch my TV and not have to think all the time...

TWILIGHT TALES: DOING OUR PART FOR NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

Godson Liam, aka Bondi, aka future editor of ORMONDROYD'S ENCYCLOPEDIA ESOTERICA, is being brought up properly with this
"Chibi" style plush Godzilla-- and when he graduates from infancy to baby-boyhood, on his nursery shelf there awaits a more realistic (but still cuddly) twelve-inch high plush Godzilla kaiju to snuggle. God pity the bad dream that wanders into a bedroom guarded by the Lord of Monster Island, GODZILLA, KING OF MONSTERS!

TWILIGHT TALES author WAYNE ALLEN SALLEE taught his young niece Ashley Mavros to read by introducing her to uber-texts such as Forrest Ackerman's FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and the JOHN AGAR NEWSLETTER. MOLE PEOPLE synopsis from MST3K: "Smiling idiot John Agar takes Hugh Beaumont and Nestor Paiva beneath the surface of the Earth so that they have no place to run when he begins his windy pontificating through his muscled pie-hole. There they find Alan Napier and other thin men living out their sad existence in pleated skirts. Though aggressive at first, the pigmentless dress-wearers are cowed by Agar's mighty flashlight and shown the secret of their slaves, The Mole People. Actually, it's a matter of some controversy whether the mole creatures or their masters are the eponymous ones. Both could be considered "Mole People," as the former are indeed "moles" of a sort and the latter live among them - "Mole People." I became distracted by this and don't remember the rest of the movie, though I think Agar and friends escape. Without Nestor Paiva, no big loss. " As of this writing, there is no plush John Agar available.