Review of In the Flesh Issues 1-11 from Garageland!
In the Flesh “The Magazine with Guts” only ran for eleven issues in the early ’90s. What began as an obvious labour of love fanzine, grew and became a glossy magazine which was filled with a lot of information on obscurities and forgotten hard to get classics in the horror genre.
I was a horror addicted school kid reading Gorezone and Deep Red. I had tried Fangoria, and other mags, but then chanced upon issue three of this low budget publication one afternoon whilst twagging school. Oh my God, this issue had a free Zombie poster, a huge interview with Buddy Giovinazzo, articles on Jess Franco, the original Day of the Dead script, and a ton of reviews. All for £1.25!!! I hastily returned to the bookshop and purchased issue one and two. From then on I was hooked.
Every issue was a black and white affair (later magazines had colour covers) and sometimes were badly printed. Yet, who gives a toss about quality when the quantity of valuable education per issue overcame everything else. In The Flesh regularly had an A-Z of Video Nasties, reviewed and rated, plus a semi regular couple of pages devoted to rare as hell titles called An Eye on Obscurities. Recent films, including the HK boom had their place, as did a page per issue reviewing homemade horrors. As a matter of fact, Bad Karma (see my review here) appeared in this section. What made In The Flesh cool was, aside from the humour (one review simply stated “Shit Shit Shit...” around forty times in a row), was a diverse range of articles. Aside from reviews of films, tapes, books and video games, plus interviews (some excellent ones including Jorg Buttgereit, Peter Jackson, John McNaughton, to name a few), the focus sometimes met horror conventions and shows, censorship (stated as ‘censorshit‘) in other countries, and real life killers (I briefly knew a young lady who wrote some of these essays — her living room was a shrine of serial killer books and magazines) and some excellent competitions to win limited edition tapes and posters.
Steve C., the editor, took no bullshit. First off, any mention of Freddy or Jason were banned outright from the pages, plus when one director and his girl wrote in to criticise a little mistake in his review (note, a very good review) and she was harsh, he came back, polite but very firm. If a movie sucked, it was known. For instance, Toxie 2, “This is the biggest piece of shit you’re ever likely to see….” but if a film or a director held the interest what you got was an extremely professional and in depth written page. John P. Drew takes centre stage for his well researched works on hard to find titles, or directors which were hard to find at the time (way before DVDs).
The last one, issue eleven, had a colour poster of The Beyond, costing £1.90, perhaps that idea broke the bank account. Peter Jackson had a nice interview, the nasty A-Z columns were up to ‘N’ and Hong Kong flicks now had three pages devoted to them. Plus Tim Dennison was chatting about his movie, and Jeffrey Dahmer had a fun filled section.
Thus ended In The Flesh. There had been a planned interview with Jim Van Bebber for issue twelve, but nothing ever came of it again. Steve C. and his rabble rousing gang were no more.
There were and has been other magazines such as Killing Moon, Samhain, and more, but there was something so damn in-yer-face and punk about In The Flesh that, in my mind, nothing comes close.
Book: In the Flesh | Issue: 1-11 | Edited by: Steve C. | Written by: Steve C., John P. Drew, Dave Gregory, Jo Kent, Mark Bedford | Art by: Various | Year: 1990-1992
Published by: Garageland
