MONSTERS, DEVILISH MEN’S MAGS & OCCULT SEX
After the success of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy, some tried to copy its formula and format, which gave rise in the 1950s, to the “men’s sophisticate” mags. Some of the titles only lasted a few issues, such as Man About Town and Satan, but others such as Nugget are still on the stands today. Nugget has recently used the cover slogan “In the Fetish Magazine Business Since 1955,” although it has changed hands more than once and has definitely mutated from the original Nugget of the 1950s.
Also in the late fifties, monster magazines started showing up on the racks around the country with James Warren’s and Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland leading the way, and its many imitators trailing behind. “Forry” Ackerman had written a few articles for various sexually related mags in the late fifties before starting FMofF and he continued writing, sporadically, articles and fiction that would appear in men’s mags such as Adam in the seventies.
The nudist and girlie mags followed the monster craze of the sixties with monster-and-maiden type layouts, i.e., men dressed in rubber monster claws and masks terrorizing naked “teens” or nudists. Layouts of the same type would also show up in the adult slicks on occasion, usually claiming to be stills from a new sexploitation flick.
By the early sixties a few of the adult slicks had picked up the satanic/devilish theme in their mags. In 1966 Anton Szander LaVey inaugurated his Church of Satan in San Francisco and not long after, he could be found all over the national media in such places as the girlie and nudist mags, as well as sleazy tabloids in which he eventually wrote an advice column called, “Letters from the Devil.”
The later ‘60s and early ‘70s saw a rise of interest in the occult, paganism and witchcraft, and publisher’s in both Britain and America released magazine series such as Man, Myth and Magic and in the UK Gresham published a monthly magazine called Witchcraft in the early ‘70s. In the US adult slicks and magazines used these same themes for many of their articles and photo layouts.
In the March 1976 (v8 #4) issue of Nymphet, a newsstand girlie mag, in a letter to “The Nymph’s Box,” i.e., the editor, titled, “Satanic Sex” that was illustrated with a picture of LaVey with a nude woman, a reader wrote the following:
“I’ve been a fan of skin mags for a long time, now and one of the things that bugs me in particular, is the absence of the occult from sexually oriented material. For a brief spurt about three or four years ago, voodoo, Satanism and the occult were getting a fair amount of play in magazines similar to your own. Now, however, there’s little––if anything, appearing on this shadier side of human sexuality.
“I find extremely arousing, the rituals and ceremonies involving the symbols of witchcraft and devil worship––especially the idea of sacrificing a virgin and the actual deflowering of the virgin by the Evil One himself. One of the most exciting aspects of that brief period was the popularity of Anton La Vea [sic], occult leader of the 5000-member Satanic Church in San Francisco, California. I thought he was very colorful and the sensual practice of nudity among his worshippers, stimulating indeed!
Other than this, I really have no complaints about your magazine. But I would like to see more kinky types of sex handled visually, as well as in the articles––subjects like necrophilia and bestiality.”
The letter was signed, “J. L. Jackson, Atlanta, Georgia.” Although Mr. Jackson seemed a bit ignorant on the subject, he made the point that these articles were a popular theme in the girlie mags––both newsstand and slicks––for a brief time.
So get out the Black Sabbath tunes and crank them up!
