(Editor's Note: Okay, Kids, we've got a frightful two-part review from "Spooky" Scott Anderson, where he not only reviews scary stories but the even scarier, and sometimes Satanic, ads. Read on, Children of the High Fructose Corn Syrup.)
Happy Halloween! Because of the holiday, it is my job to scare your pants off. Which is ironic because usually people get scared after I get their pants off, but that’s another story. The stories that I will use to scare you come from 1975’s The House of Mystery # 237, a comic that seemed specifically created to scare homosexuals!
As you can see from the cover, there’s an ER theme. Unfortunately, no George Clooney, but it does remind me of a story. An acquaintance of mine, who was extraordinarily kinky, was showing us a picture of his new boyfriend, who had turned his living room into a crude operating theater, complete with an operating table with leather straps, IV tubes, and cruel-looking surgical instruments. The boyfriend was wearing elbow-length rubber gloves and darkly stained scrubs and peered menacingly over the top of his surgical mask. “OH MY GOD!” my friend screamed when he saw the picture. “Look at that tacky lamp!” It’s true. The Big Lots lamp in the background was even more terrifying than the faux wood paneling he was standing in front of. And let me tell you, that paneling was pretty scary.
That’s just the kind of spine tingling terror these “all-new shock stories” from 1975 deliver. Our grizzled host in this book is Cain. Although Cain is a ghoulish fellow who begins and ends each horror story with a bad joke, he should not be confused with the Crypt Keeper puppet from TV. If Cain had a hand up his backside, this would be an entirely different article.
The first story concerns an assassin, known as the Chameleon, not the Spider-Man villain but a disguise-wearing bad guy just the same, who is paid to knock off a couple of witnesses before they can testify to a grand jury. The Chameleon kills the first witness on the very steps of the courthouse with an exploding microphone. He kills the second in a hospital by hanging him from…umm, something we can’t see. Do hospital rooms have rafters? I don’t know. Anyway, before he can escape the hospital, the police are on to him, so the Chameleon kills a patient and slips into the dead guy’s bed for a nap, thinking that he’ll slip out of the hospital later when the heat is off. As the ironic fate of horror comics would have it, a pair of burly orderlies come to get him to take him to surgery. Rather than risk fighting off the orderlies, the Chameleon allows them to take him to the operating room, where they strap him to the table. Once the orderlies leave, the Chameleon tries to convince the surgeons that he’s the wrong patient, but they’ll hear none of it. As it turns out, the doctors are really the ghosts of the murdered witnesses! There’s a bloodcurdling scream! “NGYAAAAAAAEEAAAAAAAAAAA.” At least, Cain tells us that’s a bloodcurdling scream, but I suspect that it’s the rousing cheer of the Korean Vowel Fan Club. Later, the real surgeons enter the room, and we all discover that the ghosts have lobotomized the Chameleon! The surgeon says, “H-He’ll be a human vegetable….” A vegetable?!? I guess the master of disguise will have to change his nickname to Mr. Potato Head.
I’ll bet that scared your pants off! Oh, all right, I’ll admit it. It wasn’t that scary, and the only reason you’d have your pants off is if you’re like me and read these articles with your pants off to start with. (You never know when some sexy Mike Grell art might pop up.) But trust me, the story really was terrifying! I just left out the perhaps unintentionally scary part. You see, at the first murder, the Chameleon disguised himself unmistakably as Gloria Steinem, and at a press conference with the first witness, she says, “Do you male chauvinists think you could let a lady though to ask a question?” To which a male reporter says, “Sure, doll, go ahead! Ask your dumb question for the woman’s page and then get outta here so us real reporters can cover the news!” The horrors of bad grammar! The chills of clichéd battle of sexes dialogue!
But the story of this assassin drag queen gets scarier still. Drag queens can be scary enough. I know their rampages can be stopped; I saw one do her horrific act while dancing on a bar until a ceiling fan knocked her senseless, but you never know when they might strike. A friend of mine was once attacked by a drag queen and he’s still trying to rub the imprint of the latch from a knockoff Chanel handbag off his face. Actually, he’s been trying to keep that double C brand because he thinks it makes him look rich, but the point is that drag queens can pack a wallop. Actually, they can pack a lot of things. But this queen takes the fright to a whole new level. After the first murder, the Chameleon is shown relaxing at home, surrounded by the most girly of wig collections (Is that a Shirley Temple, I see?), and we get a really good look at her outfit, which she lounges around in, wigless but without bothering to take out the b-cup falsies, and she’s wearing a-a-a lime green, p-paisley, bell bottomed, two piece p–p-pantsuit! NGYAAAAAAAEEAAAAAAAAAAA! Hey, how about that! It really is a bloodcurdling scream and that outfit deserves it. What kind of malevolent drag queen would wear what I can only describe as a Love Boat episode crammed through a juicer? There’s never a ceiling fan around when you need one.
As if that clothing monstrosity wasn’t enough, right in the middle of the story is a “VALUABLE COUPON” for three dollars off “a new belt and wallet course” to create your own fashions from the nationwide Tandy Leather Stores. That there were nationwide Tandy Leather Stores is probably the real reason I’ve blocked out so much of childhood, so I guess I owe Father Vincent an apology, and I swear the next time I’m out by the prison, I’ll stop by and give it to him. I have nothing against leather but the thought of straight comic geeks designing and tooling their own leather accessories is diabolically horrifying. I’ve been to the conventions. I’ve seen what they do with spandex, and they should not be encouraged to branch out to other materials with the possible exception of whatever wood barrels are made of. I’m really tempted to scour the country looking for these Satanic coupons to burn them and douse the ashes with holy water. Do you think Father Vincent would lend me some holy water? Probably shouldn’t push it.
(Editor's Note: Oooh, so spooky, I must stop this before I need to restart my heart with a defribillator. We'll continue with Part 2 next week where "Spooky" Scott Anderson revisits the terrors of the ads from CBS Saturday morning television!) 
