We all love those classic silver screen monster movies from seemingly bygone days of yore! Dracula. The Mummy. The Creature From The Black Lagoon. The Wolfman. Frankenstein.
These are the foundations that our more modern horror films (and our imaginations) of today were built upon!
And the golden age movie stars of those films are all, of course, legends: Lon Chaney and Lon Chaney Jr., Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Elsa Lanchester, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and others. These are the performers – and their performances – that we remember with such gleeful, delicious, fright.
But we live in a different age of cinematic horror now. One where shadowy gas light and the gothic dread that black and white film once conjured has been replaced by frenetic splashes of murderous scarlet and the lightning shock of violent scenes and quick film cuts. Not that it’s such a bad thing. It’s just, somehow, a less regal kind of horror today. Perhaps a century of time will prove modern horror film offerings worthy of their celluloid origins.
While we wait for that outcome, today we get the first issue of a story entirely steeped in cinematic tradition while still taking a very modern approach to comic book horror. It’s a tale presented by two masters of the medium and it’s broodingly called The Midnight Show.
Written and illustrated by the award-winning Cullen Bunn (Harrow County, Manor Black, The Sixth Gun, Blood Feud, The Damned) and Brian Hurtt (The Sixth Gun, The Damned), The Midnight Show is a four-issue monthly miniseries that features all of those golden age monsters that we love, placed in a twenty-first century telling. It’s a tale full of eerie astonishment, spooky mystery and, of course, sheer horror.
Even the sleepy town of Cedar Bluffs has its fair share of pop culture and horror enthusiasts. A film festival (much like the ones we’ve all attended at some time or another) showcases recently uncovered footage of the long-lost Basil Saxton film, the cursed God of Monsters. Saxon was as legend among horror fans and God of Monsters would have been his masterpiece. But the man vanished during an accident while filming the would-be classic, never to be seen again. His masterpiece film, lost for all time. But the recently found footage of that work of dark art, shown in Cedar Bluffs for the first time, ushers in new terrors as classic horror monsters begin to manifest, waging terror on the populace, turning the small town into a gothic setting best left to the sets and backdrops of old celluloid. A group of misfits band together to drive the creatures back to the creature feature realm of black and white nightmares – but they’re going to need seemingly fictional help in their desperate efforts!
Pop the corn kernels and make the run to your local comic book shop today and pick up the first issue of The Midnight Show! It’s perfect reading for the spooky season!
You can catch a preview of The Midnight Show #1 right here.
