Ok, another guilty pleasure – I was a big fan of Monster Mag back in the 70s.  

Monster Mag was a UK publication for horror fans, which revelled in showing ‘full gloss gore’ images from the movies – hence the tag-line “open it out if you dare!” (It was designed to fold out into a large poster.) I still have an (almost) full collection (issue #2 got banned by Her Majesty’s Customs and all English language copies were recalled and destroyed). The standard of writing was in all honesty pretty lousy, but it was all about the images, which were difficult to find elsewhere. They tended to prominently feature Hammer and/or vampire films especially.

It was something of a precursor to magazines like Fangoria and other publications for gore hounds, and because it was billed as “for sale to adults only” it often ended up on the top shelf in the newsagents, alongside the porn mags of the day. I would have been about 10 when it first launched, so I often had my heart in my mouth as I grabbed my copy and sheepishly crept up to the counter to pay for it. I remember I got refused a few times so had to trawl newsagents until I found one who did not care about corrupting the young and impressionable… 

These are all relatively early issues – over the years the magazine went through a few different publishers and gradually reduced down in size, no doubt for reasons of economy, which rather diluted the whole poster-format effect. These early originals are very collectible and rather hard to find and expensive these days, but the entire run was reprinted a few years ago so copies can be found easily online.