Midnight Marquee
Entry updated 4 April 2017. Tagged: Publication.
US letter-size saddle-stapled Media Magazine. Publisher: Gary J Svehla and Susan Svehla as Midnight Marquee Press, Incorporated. Editors: Gary J Svehla and Susan Svehla. 1963-current. The publication schedule, nominally three times per year, is highly irregular.
Driven by his great enthusiasm for Famous Monsters of Filmland, the then very young Gary Svehla (1950- ) launched this magazine in 1963 as a hand-drawn, carbon-copied Fanzine titled Gore Creatures. This became Midnight Marquee with issue #27 in September 1978 (the new title had already appeared on the cover of #26), and gradually evolved into a respectable Semiprozine by the 1980s; it has published much important material. While concentrating mainly on Horror, the magazine has covered many sf films such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Invisible Man (1933) along with articles on such performers as Evelyn Ankers, Lon Chaney Senior, Bela Lugosi, Barbara Shelley and Christopher Lee. One of the more useful features for some years was the column "Forgotten Faces of Fantastic Cinema", examining the careers of Brandon Hurst, Halliwell Hobbes, Gene Roth and many others. The publishing company Midnight Marquee Press was incorporated in 1995 and began publishing books on film, not confined to the horror and sf genres. Contributors over the years have included the film scholars David J Hogan, Gregory Mank and Tom Weaver. Covers are generally paintings, often by lesser-known artists. In more recent years, the company has also produced occasional short films. A companion magazine which also focuses on films in various other genres is Mad About Movies, founded in 2000. Midnight Marquee is believed to be the longest continually-published Cinema semiprozine in the US. Back issues are available from the publisher, including some scarce copies of Gore Creatures. [GSt/DRL]
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