Yes, the “Armageddon Creeped Out” story will soon be started up once again! But in the meantime, here’s a real old item I found: it’s a page of early sketches of Fission Chicken (circa 1986)… and of his pal Skip Squirrelhard, before he changed his name! (The “Squirrelheart” name is left over from an embarrassing old job that he prefers not to discuss.) The “C-6″ tags refer to the size of an old Speedball pen-point I was trying out.

For the Video Goodie this week, here’s a classic Corman double feature! House of Usher (1960) and The Haunted Palace (1963), both starring Vincent Price. They’re down below the banners.

Great editorial alert: Are you weary of the unending flood of brainless movies and TV shows? Are you tired of certain defenders of such stuff who maintain that you could enjoy it by… “turning your brain off”? If it distresses you to see people giving up their basic humanity like that, why not look at this editorial at I-Mockery… about Turning Your Brain Off.

He might be a scary-lookin’ guy, but Spook there sure has excellent taste in t-shirts! The above panel is from Adam Black’s LOCUS webcomic (which features the title character and her struggles in long-standing feuds of demons and vampires)… turns out that Mr. Black is a Fission Chicken fan from way back, and took this opportunity to give Spook a snazzy FC shirt! Fans of horror, rock, demons, vampires… everybody should go read LOCUS now!! AND NOW YOU CAN GET A SHIRT LIKE SPOOK’S! Wow! It’s available in the FC Shirt Shop! Scroll down for the banner!

Wouldn’t you like to see the above design made as an actual maquette? (Fancy word for “figure”.) Sure ya would! This design is up for votes at PatchTogether now… so if all you Chicken-of-Wrath fans reading this would indicate interest by voting… the FC maquette can be made a reality! Hotcha!

How to vote? Visit the FC maquette page… it’s necessary to sign up on the PatchTogether site (it’s cool, you won’t get spam and it does not obligate you to buy), and then click the “Vote” button. That’s it!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a Fission Chicken animated feature? You can see a short ‘teaser’ for such by clicking the left thumbnail below! The right thumbnail will display the earlier “Squash” bit:

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Roger Corman had quite a successful run of movies based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe. He began it with House of Usher in 1960, starring the great Vincent Price as Roderick Usher. In it, young Philip Winthrop comes to the house to take Roderick’s sister Madeline away for marriage, but Roderick tries to dissuade him, warning him of a terrible strain of evil and madness that runs through the Usher family line. The house itself, meanwhile, threatens to collapse at any minute. On YouTube in eight parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8.

But even though the later film The Haunted Palace (1963) uses the name of Poe’s poem, it has little to do with Poe; instead, the film is based upon the H.P. Lovecraft story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Here, Price plays Charles Dexter Ward, who has brought his wife Anne (Debra Paget) to the New England town of Arkham to claim the property left to him by his distant ancestor, the evil Joseph Curwen… who had, 110 years before, been burned alive for being a warlock. Ward and his wife have to deal with the surly and suspicious townsfolk, but they soon have more serious problems—because Curwen had indeed been a real stinker, trying to play with Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth! Lon Chaney Jr. plays the mysterious housekeeper. On YouTube in nine parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9.

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