Castle of Frankenstein: Cult Movie Magazine

Back in the 60s the most popular movie monster magazine was Forrest J Ackerman’s FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. It was a fine, good-looking magazine but the problem was that the writing tended to be a little juvenile. Filled with a lot of corny jokes and bad puns, it seemed geared more towards twelve-year-olds than to an adult readership. For a brief time the newsstands actually had an alternative… a mature, well-written contemporary monster movie magazine geared towards thinking adults (though you’d never know it from the title): CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

The first sign that this magazine might be a bit more cerebral than the other monster magazines was to be found on each issue’s masthead. The editor or publisher was always listed as “Charles Foster Kane” the monomaniacal publisher/editor portrayed in Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane”. (“Baron Victor Frankenstein III” was also listed as the “consulting editor”… okay, so it wasn’t ALL cerebral.)

The magazine was the brainchild of Calvin T. Beck who, in 1959, put one a one-shot magazine entitled “The Journal of Frankenstein”. This was followed by “Castle of Frankenstein” some months later. At first the magazines were mainly devoted to the old classic horror movie monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy etc. and each issue was crammed full of the most amazing old stills and artwork. As the magazine matured coverage extended to the full spectrum of fantasy cinema: superheroes, science fiction and suspense/horror films from all over the world… not just the old, almost-forgotten movies but new releases as well.  A talented stable of writers and reviewers (including future film director Joe Dante) provided fresh and vital criticism that would not have seemed out of place in the more scholarly film journals of the time.