The 2024 Shocking Image Holiday Gift Guide

These are hard times for holiday catalog enthusiasts. The double whammy of Amazon and lockdowns dealt a crippling blow to brick-and-mortar stores, and ubiquitous online access has put the print catalog on life support.

Just as I was about to give up on getting a Sharper Image catalog this year, a slimmed down one magically showed up in the mailbox. It makes a nice coffee table companion to the dog-eared Hammacher Schlemmer I received a couple of months ago. Compared to the venerable Hammacher Schlemmer (which I affectionately call Hamburgler Schlepper), The Sharper Image is a Johnny-come-lately. HS claims that it’s been offering “the best, the unique and the unexpected” for over 175 years.

Back in its heyday, HS distinguished itself by listing at least one truly unexpected (and obscenely expensive) item in every catalog mailer. One year it was a lifesize, animatronic replica of Forbidden Planet’s Robby the Robot for $40K or thereabouts. Another catalog featured a personal submarine for the multi-millionaire who has everything (and guess what, it’s still there online, if you happen to have several million bucks lying around).

HS has long since dispensed with the super-luxury items for the print catalog -- it’s now almost indistinguishable from The Sharper Image, with the usual assortment of “timeless” artifacts: massagers, portable photo printers, sleep sound machines, DVD storage cabinets, holiday yard decorations, etc.

The Sharper Image and Hammacher Schlemmer catalogs may be mere shadows of their former selves, but in that alternate universe to which Films From Beyond has exclusive access, The Shocking Image catalog is a thriving holiday institution. Here’s a sampling of truly unique and unexpected gifts for lucky mad scientists in the upper income brackets (and they're all on sale!):

Captured Soul Lava Lamp

Our competitors' lamps feature the usual waxy blobs in clear fluid, and quite frankly, they get boring really fast. Using a special process exclusive to The Shocking Image (pat. pending), we capture souls at the precise moment that they leave deceased bodies, and trap them in specially designed display containers. The antics of these souls are endlessly entertaining! Also makes a great night light for the kids! (Captured souls may vary in color and appearance.) 54” H x 20” W. (120 lbs.)

Item 1313666. Special Black Friday Sale Price: $369.99 $272.49

Personal Earth-drilling Juggernaut

A Shocking Image exclusive! Humanity has explored every corner of the earth's surface and its oceans, but still very little is known about the earth beneath our feet. Be the first on your multi-millionaires' block to explore the earth's mysterious core! This one-of-a-kind Juggernaut, with a roomy cabin for 4 adults, moves 36 tons of dirt and rock per minute as you drill down to reveal lost underground worlds full of ferocious dinosaurs and the last surviving Neanderthals! (Special conditions and shipping rates apply; Launch ramp sold separately.) 74.2' L x 15' W x 12.4' H. (112,796 lbs.)

Item 1366613. $5,367,846.99 $4,620,112.99

Combo MRI Machine / Air Fryer

Creating a creature from scratch is incredibly time consuming. You constantly have to use imaging equipment to check on the internal integrity of your creation, leaving little time for meals. The innovators at The Shocking Image have solved the dilemma with a one-of-kind device that can be used to take detailed images of your creation's internal organs, then, when it's time to eat, a simple touch of a button turns it into a super spacious air fryer, capable of cooking up to a dozen large turkeys or hams at a time. Great for mollifying irate, torch-bearing villagers with a quick, lip-smacking hot banquet. 9' L x 4.5' W x 5' H. (1,765 lbs.; Call for special shipping rates.)

Item 6661313. $679,354.89 $587,287.15

Combo Surgical Laser / Tanning Ray

Let's face it: with all the cutting, dissecting and suturing you do to create artificial life, you just don't have the time to go outdoors and get some sun on that deathly pale skin of yours. Fret no more, because with the exclusive Shocking Image Surgical Laser and Tanner, you can have it all! After slicing and dicing your creation with the precise laser, adjust the setting and turn it on yourself for an indoor tan that simulates an afternoon in the sun without all the harmful UV rays. And once you've revived your creature, give it the tanning treatment to turn that corpse-grey skin into a healthy, glowing bronze color! 48” Diam. x 54” H. (87 lbs.)

Item 1666313. $2,187.99 $1,512.25

3D People Printer

It's a never-ending problem -- your work in things that are better left alone is immensely complicated and time-consuming, and it's so hard to get good help! Even when you're lucky enough to find a capable assistant, the work seems to multiply, and you end up wishing you could clone him or her. But cloning is messy and a huge investment in time and resources. Wish no more. Just put your assistant in one of the patented printer cylinders, fire up the machine, and then marvel at the exact replica that is ready right then and there to do your bidding. Your lab will become so efficient, you may find time to wreak horrible vengeance on the clueless colleagues who ridiculed you and banished you from polite society. (Human subjects not included.). 96" H x 120" W. (943 lbs.)

Item 6136136. $17,834.89 $16,901.15

Extending Halloween at the November Monster Bash Convention

Back in 2019, I attended my first Monster Bash convention in the Pittsburgh area. Bash organizer (and Creepy Classics proprietor) Ron Adams is an original monster kid, and he and his dedicated crew have been Bashing in Pennsylvania for nearly 30 years. Ron and company put on great events, and the Bash is unique in its emphasis on classic monsters.

Some familiar characters stand guard at the November Monster Bash.

The attraction in 2019 was the announcement that four Hammer horror alums would be guests of honor: Martine Beswick (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, One Million Years B.C.), Veronica Carlson (Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Horror of Frankenstein), Caroline Munro (Dracula A.D. 1972, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter) and Christopher Neame (Dracula A.D. 1972). Unfortunately, Caroline Munro had to bow out due to health issues.

Beswick, Carlson and Neame joined independent filmmaker Joshua Kennedy at the 2019 bash for the world premiere screening of House of the Gorgon, Kennedy’s homage to Hammer horror (and which featured all four Hammer alums; see my review of the convention and the film here). Sadly, Veronica Carlson passed away in 2022. (See also my review of The Horror of Frankenstein, which includes a tribute to the multi-talented Carlson.)

This year Monster Bash gave fans a big post-Halloween present by bringing in four (count ‘em!) Hammer alums: Beswick, Munro, Pauline Peart (Satanic Rites of Dracula) and Victoria Vetri (When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth). (James Bond fans take note: Beswick was in two films, From Russia with Love and Thunderball, and Munro unsuccessfully tried to kill Roger Moore’s Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me.)

Caroline and Martine provide backup for Zach Zito as he performs Edgar Allan Poe tales.

Martine Beswick

Featured Film: Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)

The Bash’s choice of the TV movie Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell might not have been most people's first choice to showcase Martine’s talents (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde anyone?), but having only known the film by reputation up until the screening, I was both bemused and entertained.

The film, directed by B horror maestro Curtis Harrington, is basically a send-up of the mega-hit from two years before, The Omen, substituting a German Shepherd puppy named Lucky for little Damien the Antichrist. Beswick, who is only in the first 15 minutes or so of the movie, seems to be having great fun vamping it up as the high priestess of a Devil worshiping cult (or make that Devil-dog worshiping cult) who secures a champion breeding dog to mate with Satan’s favorite Hellhound. The demonic breeding ritual is a cheesy sight to behold, and I’m guessing it didn’t get any seals of approval from the SPCA (I’m also guessing that no animals were harmed in the filming, but that’s not to say dog lovers’ heads weren’t aching after seeing the movie.)

Cult members then go about distributing the litter of unholy puppies to unsuspecting suburbanites, including the wholesome, all-American family headed by Mike and Betty Barry (Richard Crenna and Yvette Mimieux). As cute little Lucky grows into a big, strapping German Shepherd, strange things start happening around the house: housekeepers and neighbors start dying in freakish ways, and even Betty and her innocent teenage daughter and son begin shedding inhibitions and morals under the baleful gaze of the cursed canine.

Only Mike is immune from Lucky’s malign influence, and he slowwwly puts two and two together. Credit Richard Crenna and the rest of the cast for playing it absolutely straight (although Beswick’s performance as the high priestess is deliciously ripe, as well it should be). A German Shepherd hovering in the background as things go very south for the Barry family doesn’t generate a lot of suspense, but Mimieux takes advantage of a great opportunity to turn from a warm, loving wife and mother into a hard-bitten, amoral femme fatale under Lucky’s spell.

The Devil Dog reveals his true appearance at the climax, which again is played very straight, and will elicit either appreciative smiles or derisive guffaws, depending.

Beswick Q&A

Martine’s subsequent Q&A ranged from reminiscences about her Bond girl days, to starring in Oliver Stone’s first feature film, to being cast as Sister Hyde to Ralph Bates’ Dr. Jekyll, to working with Klaus Kinski on the set of the spaghetti Western A Bullet for the General (1967).

In her first Bond film (and second feature film), From Russia with Love, Beswick plays a gypsy girl who fights a rival for the affections of a handsome young man. Over the years, the legend has grown that there was no love lost between the two actresses, and that much of the fight captured on film was for real. Martine downplayed the legend, saying that rather than being spontaneous, the fight was rehearsed like a complicated dance routine for 3 weeks (although she did admit that some of the film crew, who were not especially enamored of the other actress, egged Martine on to give it to her for real).

Asked about her experiences on the set of then novice filmmaker Oliver Stone’s first feature film, Seizure (1974), Martine recalled it as being like part of a “mad family.” (In this uneven horror film, Martine plays one of three nightmarish characters who materialize out of the fertile imagination of a best-selling horror author played by Jonathan Frid, and trap and torture Frid, his family, and guests at a remote summer house.)

Beswick said that the whole cast and crew stayed at the house during the shooting. Much of the film equipment was stored in Frid’s room, which made him grumpy. To add insult to injury, the house’s plumbing was old and noisy, so no one could go to the bathroom or run water during filming, which was very inconvenient. Of her character, the Queen of Night, she smilingly confessed that she “loved to kill everyone” -- on film of course.

As for working with Klaus Kinski on A Bullet for the General, Beswick paid Kinski -- a legendarily intense and difficult actor who had epic fights with directors and fellow actors -- a compliment by saying that he went out of his way to stand up for the cast of extras, whom the director and crew mistreated.

The author with Martine Beswick.

Caroline Munro

Featured Film: Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Captain Kronos is very late Hammer horror, and represents something of a hedging of the studio’s bets, falling back on period costumes and settings after trying to update Christopher Lee’s Dracula to late 20th century London in Dracula: AD 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973).

Kronos (Horst Janson) is a dashing former soldier and master swordsman who has taken up hunting vampires. Accompanied by his assistant, the hunchbacked professor Hieronymous Grost (John Cater), and an alluring peasant girl, Carla (Munro, whom the pair rescued from humiliation in the stockades), Kronos arrives at a village where, according to resident Doctor Marcus (John Carson), local girls are mysteriously being drained of their youth.

Dr. Marcus is friends with the local wealthy family, the Durwards (Lady Durward is played by Wanda Ventham, son Paul and daughter Sara by Shane Briant and Lois Daine). Marcus had treated the family patriarch for an illness which eventually killed him. Lady Durward herself is not in such great shape, being frail and bedridden. After a visit to the Durward estate, Marcus is accosted in the woods by a mysterious hooded figure, which, he soon finds out, has turned him into a vampire.

Kronos and Grost must deal with Marcus, and they find out that this species of vampire can only be killed with iron or steel. After fashioning a sword out of an iron cross recovered from a cemetery, they’re ready to take on the vampiric plague. Beautiful Carla is enlisted to provide a diversion as Kronos investigates the Durwards. SPOILER ALERT: Lady Durward proves not to be so bedridden after all, and the Lord of the manor not so dead. Kronos has to think quickly in order to defeat the aristocratic vampires.

The ending leaves room for further Kronos adventures, which were not to be. Despite being yet another Hammer vampire horror film, there is no Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, the tone is more on the adventure side with a dash of tongue-in-cheek, and the film plays around with vampire mythology (in Kronos’ universe, there are different species of vampires, some feed on youth instead of blood, and some can only be killed with iron).

While Christopher Lee’s Dracula didn’t quite cut it in 1970s London, the retro adventurer Kronos also failed to win over many critics or fans at the time (although the film’s reputation has steadily improved over the decades). It was either too far ahead of its time, or too old fashioned (in her Q&A, Munro goes with the former).

Munro Q&A

During her Q&A, Caroline Munro related a number of stories about various hazards that can come out of nowhere during filming. On location shooting for The Spy Who Loved Me, the scene called for her to spend a portion of the time standing on a boat as it was running, then sit down as the boat neared its destination. While she was standing, she heard a strange buzzing sound that she attributed to the engine. However, when she sat down, she immediately felt a burning sensation in her “bum.” When the scene wrapped, Caroline discovered that she’d been stung by a bee, whereupon Roger Moore jokingly offered to “kiss it to make it better.” Munro said that sharp-eyed viewers can spot exactly where in the scene she was stung from her facial expression.

Hazards also lurked on the set of the sci-fi adventure film At the Earth’s Core (1976). In one scene featuring man-sized mutant telepathic birds (rulers of the lost world that the protagonists discover), stunt men wearing costumes were made to fly with an elaborate set-up of pulleys and wires. At one point the system was off by a hair, and one of the stuntmen clipped Munro as he swooped down. She said that co-star Doug McClure scarcely broke character as he came to her aid. Later, during a shoot involving pyrotechnics, the heat from the blast was so intense it singed the hair on her arms.

The author with Caroline Munro.

Pauline Peart discusses her experiences as a vampire girl in The Satanic Rites of Dracula.