Zombiezilla's Funhouse of Fear

Famous Monsters Of Japanland fanzine:

Check this out! While I was digging around looking for a bunch of my fanzines and magazines, I stumbled onto this one! For those who are not aware, this is the fanzine that Stuart Galbraith IV was doing before he wrote his much beloved books on the subject of Japanese Cinema, including the phenomenal Monsters Are Attacking Tokyo.

FMoJ was a digest sized, photocopied skinny little ‘zine. This one was a whopping 14 pages and is number 2, from August – September of 1995. If you could get into your Way Back Machine and go back to 1995, seeing these dates would put a BIG smile on your face. This was a pretty exciting time in the Kaiju fandom world. Godzilla was back, Gamera was back, fandom itself seemed to be exploding with a little fanzine called G-Fan on the market, and then there was the beginning of G-Fest, back then known as G-Con. Things were all cool in the world of fandom.

This issue starts out with a news item/article on the upcoming “Godzilla Vs. Destroyer”. It’s an interesting read after all of these years just to see what exactly happened to the series after that film was finished. In the article is mentions Toho’s plans to “farm out” their creation, which we now know never happened, aside from the botched U.S. version. Plus there is mention of King Ghidorah getting his own film.

Also included is an interview with executive producer Paul Schreibman (Gigantis The Fire Monster), which was conducted by one Steve Ryfle. For those who don’t know, Mr. Ryfle’s book Japan’s Favorite Mon-star is pretty much considered by all to be THE definitive work on Godzilla in the English language. This interview comes numerous years before his book was published.

This issue also includes numerous reviews of CD’s, laserdiscs, movies, and even books.

Other contributors named in the ‘zine include Robert Biondi, Paul Wilson, Jim Cirronella and Guy Tucker. This little ‘zine packs a whole heck of a lot of great stuff into its few 14 pages, that’s for sure! Plus it is a great little “blast from the past”, to a time when the Godzilla fandom was just getting REALLY exciting.