One of the most popular and long running children's magazines was the slim but informative and fun weekly 'Look-in' [junior TV Times] which ran from 1971 up untill 1994. The magazine covered anything from a TV series, films, pop stars, sport stars, jokes, competitions, comicstrips of popular TV series of the time, etc. I think certainly the 1970's was the best period for the magazine, because of the wonderful painted covers, quality comicstrips, and because I am biased towards that decade as I belive the programmes were better and certainly more memorable and had good storylines and good character actors, which I don't think you get so much these days; but this is of course my own opinion.
Anyway here is an issue of Look-in from the week ending 30 May 1981, which as you can see has a monster themed cover featuring Star Wars Chewbacci, Frankenstein's monster, Sweetums from the Muppet show, and Vincent Price from The Monster Club. 1981 was the year that Amicus films realeased The Monster Club, another of their popular series of films featuring 3 or 4 different short films with a wrap around story in-between. This particular film was aimed at the older children. Featuring a wonderful cast such as Vincent Price, John Carradine, Britt Eckland, Donald Pleasance, Patrick Magee, among many other classic stars. Music was provided by The Pretty Things, B.A.Robinson, UB40, etc. I am hoping to do a bigger feature on some of The Monster Club collectables sometime, so I shall tell you a little more about the contents of this issue of Look-in relevant to The Cobwebbed Room. First up there is a 4 page feature called 'Enough to make you scream' which talks about horror films in general and The Monster Club, and there was a fantastic competition to win one of the actual masks used in the nightclub scenes of The Monster Club. 6 masks were up to grabs and you just had to answer 5 monster based questions. I wonder if these are still around?
3 comments:
I've seen highlights of strips from Look-In over the years but never bought a copy. Maybe the publishers will produce a chunky annual like 'Smash Hits' did last year. The likenesses of ITV characters seemed spot on from the excerpts that have appeared in comic industry publications down the years.
There is already a chunky Look-in book out John, it came out this year. This one is all about the 1970's issues. I know its available from Amazon. You might get it cheaper from other places. Its well worth buying.
That'll be a treat to put under the tree! The back issues don't tend to appear at comic conventions but the artists seem to have been among the best.
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