The Witching Hour #32 -- Look behind you lady! Jeez, they never listen!
I. Host Segment -- The Witches Three find that men are always just hanging around.
II. "What Evil Taunts This House?" -- An insurance agent who just sold a million dollar policy (double in case of "supernatural" causes) checks out the strange goins-on at his policy-holder's house. Things understandably take a turn for the worse when the guy turns out to be a vampire, and then the agent has to pay the double indemnity after killing him with a silver letter opener.
III. "Too Young To Die!" -- An eldery Japanese man finds the secret to restore his youth after killing the scientist who discovered it. He enjoys his newfound energy and vitality -- until the Japanese army drafts him, and he gets killed in an American ambush.
IV. "Witch-Ful Thinking" -- A collection of letters and weird news, including that crazy cat Sammy Davis Jr's run-in with Satanism.
V. "Name Your Poison" -- An aged farmer takes in a drifter to work his land; the farmer doesn't have long to live and has no money, so he offers the drifter heirship of the farm. The drifter, catching wind of the Interstate coming through, tries to kill the old man, first with rat poison, then with dynamite, then with dropping a pump on him, all to no avail. Lashing out, the drifter kills himself, only to realize that he suceeded the first time, and the old man was a ghost luring him to his own death.
Overall Weird Factor: 1 (out of 5).
Pretty mediocre all-around. The Witches don't offer much in the way of hosting duties -- they're not just a poor substitute for a GhouLunatic, but even for Cain or Abel. Nothing groundbreaking here, and the lack of anything truly unusual hurts the Weird Factor. At least all of the main features do stick to theme and use midnight, "the witching hour," as a plot point.
2 comments:
I love the weekly dose of weird. Especially the covers that either I have never seen or haven't seen in a long time. Why not send in some of the letterheads from the letters pages and become a benefactor to the Comic Book Letterhead Museum? Didn't Steel have his own series in the 70's or 80's? I could use one from then too.
Oh yes, I intend to get you some letterheads. I just got a new printer/scanner/copier combo machine, but I have not had a chance to hook it up yet. The mystery books have letterheads... not sure if Steel got one or not, but I will check.
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