Monster of the Day #166

Updated on December 29, 2010 By Ken Begg 36 Comments

The sort-of inspiration for one of Sandy Petersen’s favorite “movies” (that’s an exaggeration, however) to spring on people, as I learned to my regret one year. I’d have been better off staring at the magazine cover for an hour and a half.

UPDATE: “Getting eaten by squirrels would be a cute death.” ~ Roger H.

And now, a rebuttal from Dr. Doom:

Pin It



Related Posts

  • Ericb

    Is that a real magazine or a joke? If it’s real I guess that’s where Frank Zappa got the idea for his album.

  • I’ve seen this cover elsewhere, but only on the net so that doesn’t make it real. If it’s fake it’s well done, even down to the especially crudely-drawn weasel in the lower left corner.

    As a ferret-lover, of course, this cover is about as scary as Night of the Lepus. The idea of huge packs of weasels is entertaining though.

  • Sandy, didn’t I give you one year one of the two hardcover books featuring pulp cover reprints? Men’s Adventure Magazines or It’s a Man’s World? I thought I had. I imagine this cover is in both of them.

  • Reed

    This is possibly the greatest magazine cover ever! I don’t care if it’s “real”; as of now it is real to me. The weasels are funny enough, but it’s the side bars that I really love.

    “Can women justify their need for EXTRA-MARITAL RELATIONS?” The implications of that for the male psyche in, I presume, the mid to late 60’s are absolutely astounding. Now I will be spending the afternoon trying to decide if the target audience for a magazine with a cover about rabbid weasels wanted the answer to be “Yes” or “No”.

  • roger h

    Another ferret lover here and all I can think of being scary with a pack of weasels like this is “I am gonna have to clean up a lot of poop”

    I have seen the cover many times and wonder what was the actual story that was in the mag and if it was based on a real event. Also the weasel going for the neck, inspiration for the scene in Beastmaster when Rip gets torn?

  • Lawyer Chris

    It’s actually a courtroom sketch of the American rep meeting with his counterparts at the UN.

  • all around the bare-chested man
    swam the many, many weasels;
    The man thought Cape Cod would be lots of fun,
    Chomp! goes the weasel.

  • Tork_110

    You’re tearing me apart, weasels!

  • Ericb

    Seems to be an actual cover from a men’s magazine from 1956.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ManAgainstWeasel.jpg

  • roger h

    man, that guy just has bad luck with small mammals

    http://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads//2010/05/mensadventure_03.jpg

    insert “nuts” joke here.

  • roger h

  • Thanks for ruining my posts for the rest of the week, jerk!

    My aardvarks…ATTACK!!

  • Rock Baker

    I’m more amused by the ongoing debate on if this is real or not (since being swarmed by starving animals of any kind is the stuff of nightmares). Its not a recent painting, my eye tells me that. Hard to put into words, but the style of art is harder to duplicate by modern artists than one would think. I don’t doubt that this isn’t an actual issue of Man’s Life from the 50s.

    The way I see it, like most pulp covers of the time, I’m sad to see it wasn’t turned into a movie. The man’s resemblance to Richard Denning/Ralph Meeker paints an image of a survival epic that sadly never made it to the screen. (I did plot out something similar to this involving over-populated wolverines surrounding a small Canadian town in 1956. I’ll need to dust that one off and set it to the side…)

  • Reed

    I think that I’ll head up to Cape Cod. I hear that a lot of married women like to vacation up th… WEASELS! AAAAARGH!

  • The Rev.

    Ken: You know, considering the claws on aardvarks, that could actually be a pretty effective attack force. I mean, they rip open termite mounds; a fleshy human’d be no sweat.

  • roger h

    just keeping you original Ken :P

  • Rock Baker

    Pretty much any animal with fair mobility can become a dangerous force if moved by the right factors (usually starvation or a sickness like rabies). This is why the theme has proved such a rich vein for cinematic miners (from Old Yeller to There’s Something Out There). Rabbits, cats, dogs, birds, ants, etc, no problem. Frogs, on the other hand, I’ll grant you laughing rights to that one (but only the frogs, since snakes, spiders, lizards, and crawling moss are still legit horrors within the context of the movie).

  • roger h

    Getting eaten by squirrels would be a cute death.

    Hello Kitty approved =^-^=

  • sandra

    I decided some time ago that if I ever saw a pack of meerkats bouncing towards me, I’d run. They made be only a few inches tall, but they could gnaw your ankles to the bone.

  • Grumpy

    “Its not a recent painting, my eye tells me that.”

    The other clue that it’s not recent: the Frank Zappa album it inspired was released in 1970.

  • Pfffft. If you want to scare me, there’s only one animal you could use: “Those who hunt by night will tell you that the wildest and most vicious of all animals is the tiny shrew. The shrew feeds by the dark of the moon. He must eat his own body weight every few hours – or starve! And the shrew devours everything – bones, flesh, marrow, everything!“

  • fish eye no miko

    Grumpy said: “The other clue that it’s not recent: the Frank Zappa album it inspired was released in 1970.”

    It could be a reference to the album, though.

  • Rock Baker

    I got the idea that the impression was that this was a modern piece made up to look like an older one, a gag making reference to the 1970 album.

    This style of art seems to’ve pretty much died out by ’70. (I think that’s a shame, as I’ve always loved this kind of artwork.)

  • The Rev.

    Holy shit, Ken knows about Squirrel Girl!

    Maybe you missed your calling, and should be doing comic reviews. Your knowledge of them seems as encyclopaedic as your knowledge of movies.

  • Well, like movies, my knowledge of comics mostly ends circa 1985. And basically encompasses old school Marvel stuff, with but a smattering of DC. I did do a couple of short “It Came from the Longbox” pieces, but I lost track of the idea. I also covered some comic book stuff in my Captain America TV movie reviews.

  • Ericb

    According to wiki Zappa got the idea for the album title and cover from the men’s magazine not the other way around.

    ‘Frank Zappa recruited artist Neon Park to create a subversive image based on a cover story from the September 1956 issue of Man’s Life, a men’s adventure magazine. After showing Neon a copy of the magazine, Zappa inquired, “This is it. What can you do that’s worse than this?”[1] Neon’s answer was to craft a parody of an advertisement for Schick brand electric razor based on the “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” theme.’

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasels_Ripped_My_Flesh

  • roger h

    OK, I admit in some cases it would be only a “cutish” death.

    (that artist needs to get a refresher course in squirrel, I know people call them rats with bushy tails but, they are cuter than that).

  • Gamera

    Thanks Roger, snapping turtles are badass!

    Next week on Scifi- Dean Cain runs afoul of a the latest Pentagon bio-weapon in ‘SNAPPER’!

  • Ericb

    Take them out of the sewer and rats are cute. In fact except for vultures and some bats with bizarre facial or ear structure most mammals and birds are cute in some way.

  • Marsden

    I like how in all three pictures with the weasals, turtles, and flying rodents it appears to be the same guy. He get’s into a lot of bad situations.

    I hear that’s the real reason Marlin Perkins always sent Jim out to the field while he stayed safe in the studio.

  • roger h

    I would say rats can be handsome, squirrels are cute, I think it is a defense mechanism.

    Vultures are beautiful in flight.

  • The part of the picture that pretty much makes it totally impossible as a real-life situation is the gigantic horde of weasels. If weasels are anything like ferrets (and all personal accounts of weasel owners I’ve read indicate that they are – after all, they’re congenerics), if you had more than 5-6 weasels in one area they would be doing 5-6 different things. Two of them would be wrestling each other. One would be biting the guy’s neck. One would have forogotten what’s going on and just be playing in the water. And the last two would have already wandered off, bored.

  • Also, knowing he was entering ferret territory, he should have brought some brown paper lunch bags. No ferret can escape from even a lightly-crimped bag.

  • Rock Baker

    I haven’t read the story, but I’m assuming they’re supposed to be starving. In such a case it would make sense for them to be doing the same thing if that thing were attacking the only source of fresh meat. True, rats are more prone to this behavior, but I’d wager the story is ‘based’ on some real event. I’m not saying I couldn’t be wrong, but I wouldn’t be shocked if I were right on this one.

  • Kirk

    This reminds me of the ending of “Kindergarten Cop”.

  • The Rev.

    Ken: I forgot about those “Long Box” things.

    I knew you had some comics knowledge, but Squirrel Girl…that’s pretty damn obscure, to my mind. We’re talking Ten-Eyed Man and Turner D. Century territory here (who are probably a lot better known thanks to Seanbaby’s page).