Gorey Games (1979)

Gorey Games (1979), a collection of puzzles, mazes, cyphers and games themed to the works of Edward Gorey, designed by Larry Evans.

I was first exposed to the dreary, dreamy drawings of Gorey as a youngster thanks to my mother's fondness for the show "Mystery!" on PBS. The animated opening titles were based on Gorey's work.





The animation was so unlike anything I had seen before. It was dark, mysterious, and seemingly intended for adults, not kids! I often held out hope that when the opening sequence ended and the story proper began, we would delve right back into that animated world, instead of another live-action chapter of Miss Marple, et al.

A few years later I would notice a similar style of illustration in the occasional library book, like this edition of "The House With A Clock In Its Walls" (1973, John Bellairs), which I was turned on to by the television special "Once Upon a Midnight Scary" (covered in a previous post here.)




Or this book of poems, "You Read To Me, I'll Read To You" (1962, John Ciardi).


It was much later, in college, that I found my way to books authored by Gorey as well. Collections like Amphigorey and Amphigorey Too.

The games in "Gorey Games" range from simple time-wasters to fairly frustrating logic puzzles. Here's a small sampling of the 68 games found here. Enjoy.

Past the Edge of Nowhere

Sometimes "nowhere" is somewhere. In One Monster After Another (1974, Mercer Mayer) "Nowhere" is a mysterious other-world that borders our own, where monsters live.


You'll have no trouble finding it...just follow the signs. When you've stepped across the "Edge of Nowhere", you're there.


The story told here is not scary at all...its all about whimsy and humor. But the illustrations paint such a rich, detailed world...a world of hidden, creeping things that might reveal themselves if you only stared at the pictures long enough.

A Letter-Eating Bombanat soars over the Blue Ocean of Bubbly Goo...a dark sea teeming with threatening things.


Like these hostile fish...



And this enormous Grumley, whose crab-like claws each have their own set of eyes!


But even he is outsized by the hovering, Wild n' Windy Typhoonigator, who proceeds to suck up the entire sea and everything in it.


Less monstrous is this Stamp-Collecting Trollusk...


The Paper-Munching Yalapappus...


And this Grithix seems friendly enough, unless you're a Bombanat. He collects them.

I used to own the original oversized hardcover of One Monster After Another, which is now fetching quite the price on the collector's market...one of a handful of treasures from my childhood that got away. But I recently acquired the 1993 softcover reprint pictured here, and was finally able to explore this fantastic world all over again. It received another reprint in 2001, but even that has since gone out of print and is going for outrageous prices. Good luck finding a reasonably priced copy, readers.

Tales of Terror (1975, Ida Chittum)

Tales of Terror (1975, by Ida Chittum, illustrated by Franz Altschuler), is a collection of ghost and monster stories told and set in the mysterious backwood hills of the Ozarks.

Similar enough in design, tone, and size to be considered belonging in series with three other children's horror anthology books published by Rand McNally in the 1970s (the other titles being Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures, Horror Tales and Monster Tales), these stories definitely have their own unique flavor that sets them apart.


The beautiful, yet vaguely disturbing illustrations perfectly capture the tone of these tales of drowned children, restless ghosts, magic spells and malevolent wildlife.


The complete contents are (all stories by Ida Chittum):

By The Author (an introduction)
The House the Dovers Didn't Move Into
Vision of Roses
Uncle Ned Kunkle
The Twins
The Snipe Hunt
The Yellow Cat
Giant
The Feather Reader
The Woman Who Turned To Paper
Sod Miller's Money
Print On The Window
The Haunted Well
The Special Gift
Bring Back My Teeth
The Lovers
The Cruel Girl
The Twisting Wind
Courtland Wethers And The Pit

I'll let the illustrations below speak for themselves and won't summarize any stories here. But I will share a passage from one story, The Cruel Girl, which haunted me long after reading it for its unflinching depiction of childhood evil:

No hurt was too small for her to overlook. She mocked every word of a
first-grader who stuttered, until he quivered at the very sight of the schoolhouse door.

Any child feared showing a liking for any living thing, as Emmadean was sure to get hold of it and put an end to the creature in some unspeakable, slow way. New, helpless puppies were thrown headfirst into thorn bushes. Kittens were sunk in the creek, revived, and sunk again.

Dark stuff. As a child, that image of puppies being thrown into thorn bushes buried itself into my subconscience and stayed there long after I'd forgotten that it came from this book.

Old Witch is a Cereal Box

No, it's not a code-phrase to help you identify your secret-agent contact in the park, to be responded to with "The fat man walks alone." or "It is a cold day for skulling."


It's a declarative statement of fact... Old Witch is a cereal box! At least she is if you've followed the directions correctly for making this witch puppet.


There's instructions for several other puppets in Puppet Party (1971) (Goldie Taub Chernoff, illustrations by Margaret A. Hartelius)...


...including this Crawly Creep, based on an old glove.

Black Cats, Superstition and Witchcraft!

Below I present some creepy screencaps perfectly suited for the Halloween season. They are from an obscure Disney animated short... I'll reveal its title at the bottom of the post. If you're a Disney fan, see if you can guess.

Oh, that's a giveaway right off, eh? This spooky moonlit sky is instantly recognizable from The Adventures of Ichabod Crane, right? Yes, and no. While the shot is clearly recycled from "Ichabod..", this short uses a slightly longer, uninterrupted cut than the version that appeared in that earlier film.


At first glance this spooky graveyard, used to illustrate the devastation caused by the plague, might look vaguely similar to one in the "Night on Bald Mountain" segment of Fantasia, but it isn't.



The forboding gallows await those condemned to death for practicing witchcraft. Bedknobs and Broomsticks? No way.



This superstitious old woman fears strangers passing in the night...she believes they cause stormy weather! She looks like she could live up the block from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but she's on an entirely different continent!



The sinister stare of the black cat caused some villagers to fear it was casting a supernatural EVIL EYE upon them. One of the siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp? Ha!



A torch-bearing mob roves the village square in search of demons, which they believe can disguise themselves in the form of a common housecat! Are you getting warmer?

So were you able to identify the Disney short these screencaps came from? Scroll below for the answer.

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The short is The Great Cat Family (1953), a segment from Disney's Wonderful World of Color which depicts the history and cultural influence of the domesticated cat, from ancient Egypt to colonial America. Find it in the extras on The Aristocats Special Edition.