Terror - Issue 2, February 1992

I finally managed to access that box of stuff stored under the model railway.  Amongst the old issues of The Dark Side, Classic American (from my days of American car ownership) and Mustang Round Up (the journal of the UK Mustang Owner's Club - I was a member and one time owner of a 1979 Mustang), I uncovered a small treasure trove of magazines and comics I'd been searching for for several years.  There was even one I have no recollection of buying and this, the February 1992 edition of Terror, a would be Dark Side rival, which I vaguely recall buying.  I can't recall buying Issue 1 and I have no idea whether there was an Issue 3 and a quick web search hasn't revealed any trace of the magazine or its publisher, Force 10 Publications, so I've absolutely no idea how successful or otherwise it was.  Based on this issue, I can say that it was very slickly produced and tried to cover a pretty wide range of horror, science fiction and fantasy subjects, much in the manner of the aforementioned (and better known) Dark Side.

The cover pretty much sums up the issue's content, a mix of features on horror stars like Peter Cushing, interviews with genre authors and movie personalities like make-up artist/director Tom Savini and retrospective on movies like The Omen series (which also covers the book series).  Its dedication to covering the full gamut of fantasy-related media is represented by a profile of noted fantasy artist Roger Dean, an overview of Hong Kong martial arts movies of the sixties and seventies and a section devoted to related computer games.  There are also the regular features you'd expect, such as a review section, readers' letters and a fanzine round up.  While the magazine is well produced with decently written and researched articles, its problem, on the basis of this issue, is that it simply doesn't stray too far from the mainstream.  It doesn't really cover anything that the average fantasy/horror fan would already be familiar with.  One of the strengths of the Dark Side was its willingness to delve a bit further into exploitation films, covering Italian genre movies, the video nasty debacle and even obscure low budget British exploitation films that, at the time, nobody else was covering.  If it ever hoped to rival that magazine, then Terror would have to have gone down those same, less travelled (in the early nineties, at least) paths and this issue, interesting though it was, didn't give any indication of being willing to do so.