'I Was Chosen as a Human Sacrifice'

The trouble with a story title like 'I Was Chosen as a Human Sacrifice' is that it effectively gives away the ending. The use of first person immediately tells us that while 'they' might have been chosen, they weren't actually sacrificed, thereby removing any sense of peril.   Which is pretty ironic, as it is in a magazine called Peril.  Started back in 1956, it was mainly published on a bi-monthly schedule until it finally folded in 1967.  From June 1963 it became Man's Peril and lost the 'All Man's Magazine' strap line.  This October 1960 cover is pretty typical of the publication's original incarnation, which often featured young women in various states of undress being menaced by wild animals.  (To be fair, quite a few guys were similarly imperiled on early covers).  After acquiring the Man's prefix, the covers tended toward more stereotypical men's magazine subjects - often war themed, with girls in their underwear being menaced by Nazis/Communists.

Back in October 1960, we have the usual mixture of sex and vice scandals and exoticism.  There's the usual warning about the perils of the mysterious East in 'Hong Kong's Dope Victims' - you just can't trust those Orientals.  If they aren't selling Western women into white slavery, they are hooking unsuspecting occidentals on drugs!  'Artists and Models Run Wild' sounds like the usual sort of fake true account of sex and debauchery amongst those damned intellectual artistic types - they're al so decadent!  A favourite theme of these publications (which were squarely aimed at a working class, blue collar readership).  I'm most intrigued by 'The Poor Man's Aphrodisiac' - just what are those ten cent pills creating a sex menace?  Are they available over the counter in Boots or Superdrug?  Because I could really do with some.  The cover story, 'White Queen of the Lost Island', sounds like a throwback to a type of story popular a couple of decades earlier, featuring imperious white women ruling over lost tribes and civilisations, H. Rider Haggard's She being the prototype.  But, even if outdated in concept, it does at least provide an excuse for another of those 'wild animal menacing woman' covers.