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"It occured to me that someone browsing the internet and coming upon this website might wonder how it all came about. There are also people who have never seen a movie serial or live-action children's TV series like Space Patrol, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, Johnny Jupiter, Captain Midnight and other pre-Star Wars 'space shows' that kids in the 1950's enjoyed on their 13" TV sets in glorious black and white. If you were a teenager during the era of 'slasher' movies like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Freddy Krueger in Nightmare On Elm Street, you probably think the classic Universal Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Mummy movies are too tame.
"However, for those of us who grew up during the 1950's and early 1960's, those days will always be fondly remembered for drive-in movies, hula hoops, the Twist dance craze, gas-guzzling big cars with large 'fins' (gas cost 39 cents a gallon back then) and Elvis Presley was the biggest name in rock music. Looking at microfilm copies of the newspaper movie sections of that era at the library, a new American International, Hammer Films Ltd. of England, Paramount, Universal, etc. horror or juvenile delinquent film would be released almost every week. Shock Theater movie packages, featuring the classic Universal horror films of the 1930's and 1940's, were telecast on late night TV with horror hosts like Zacherle and The Ghoul.
"Then, while browsing the comic book and magazine racks at the local drugstore one fateful day in 1958, I noticed a new magazine with the title Famous Monsters of Filmland, written and edited by Forrest J Ackerman. This magazine also had photos of every kind of monster you could imagine: Frankenstein Monsters, vampires, werewolves, mummys, lagoon creatures, prehistoric dinosaurs and 'things' from outer space to feast your eyes on.
"It was while reading one of these monster magazines that I first became aware of pictures featuring scenes from the amateur movies of Don Glut of Chicago, Illinois. Here was someone doing what I always wished I could do, make my own 'teenage' horror movies! I was a fan of the American International movies I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Invasion of the Saucer Men and How To Make a Monster. I would also stay up late on Friday nights to watch the classic Universal horror films that I had heard so much about. Hammer Films' remakes from England, giant monsters like King Kong and Godzilla, Harryhausen's Dynamation stop-motion films, animated Disney features like Peter Pan and similar genre films became favorites also.
"Let me backtrack for a moment. My own experience with horror and science fiction movies began with a June 14, 1953 trip to the Boro Drive-in in nearby Massachusetts with my family to see the double feature of Invaders From Mars and the western The Raiders. After seeing Invaders, I had nightmares for a week (I was the same age as Jimmy Hunt's character in the movie). My parents tried to stop me from seeing scary movies after that, and it wasn't until July, 1956, that I saw Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers and The Werewolf with Steven Ritch. After seeing these films, I made it a point to attend whichever theater (downtown or at one of several drive-ins nearby) was showing the latest horror or science fiction movie that came to town. I also saw various chapters of movie serials like The New Adventures Of Batman and Robin and The Shadow plus 'cartoons' like the classic Fleischer Superman animated shorts at second-run theaters. Films like 20 Million Miles to Earth and Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3-D made quite an impression on me. But unlike Don Glut, who made original versions of the movies he had seen, I would make my own home-made comic book versions of these films (see covers above). I would also get together with friends and we would act out the films we had just seen. Instead of masks or make-up, I took plain grocery store paper bags (which didn't have the store logos on them like they do now) and with a magic marker, draw the face of whatever monster I would 'play'. Naturally holes were cut out for the eyes and mouth so I could see and breathe. When my parents bought an 8mm movie camera, I started to make my own films like House of Fear, Teenage Sadist, Teenage Jekyll and Hyde, Superman's Greatest Adventure and a lost film called Son of Al Capone. Some like House of Fear were never completed. I played both Frankenstein's monster (wearing the $3.99 rubber version of the Don Post mask seen on the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland issue number one) and Count Dracula. Another activity I enjoyed was going to science fiction conventions and Spooky World in October where I met and got autographs of celebrities like Elvira, Linnea Quigley, Monique Gabrielle. Previously, at a convention in Pittsburgh in 1976, I met Kirk Alyn, Caroline Munro and Buster Crabbe. So as you can see, Don Glut and I had quite a bit in common, though we did not know about each other until many years later.
Covers of a few of my "home-made" horror movie comics and my adaptation of SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN.
William Armstrong as Superman; costume
based on Wayne Boring's art, worn in amateur film SUPERMAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE."A few years ago, I decided to create a website about the AIP teenage monster movies. While choosing which pictures to scan and put on the site, I remembered a photo of Don as a teenage werewolf in one of the old monster magazines I collected and uploaded it to the website. Unknown to me, Don was browsing the internet one day and came upon my site and saw that photo of him as the werewolf. Don emailed me and after we compared notes, Don said he would send me more photos from his teenage horror movies (and Superman since I have always been a big Superman fans) to put on my AIP website and the Superman site I had also created. I had always wanted to see his movies (which Don says are not very good) and here was an opportunity to check out more pictures from his productions and put together a few pages about his amateur films.
"Recently, web hosting sites have cut back on the amount of space you are allowed to have for websites. I had to remove some pages from my sites and I decided it was better to create a new website to showcase all of Don's amateur movies. Not just the teenage horror and classic monster films but also his dinosaur 'epics', super-hero serials and miscellaneous movies. So, finally, here we are with "Don Glut: I Was A Teenage Movie Maker!"
William Armstrong
2002
