Since we’re coming up on Halloween, I thought it was about time I share one of the spookiest parts of my pop culture collection, the Crestwood House Monsters Books.

As I’ve mentioned time and time again on this blog, I wasn’t really allowed to watch horror films when I was a kid because of my overactive imagination. But, much like anything that is forbidden to us, that only made me more interested in things that were scary. I still kept them at a distance, but I would occasionally find safe spaces to explore those interests, and one of those spaces was my grade school library. For most of first and second grade, I was constantly checking out the Crestwood House Monsters Series of books to get my monster fix.

MONSTERS SERIES

The Monster books were a really unique series that focused on horror films from the 1930s to the 1950s. The books debuted in 1977 as an in-class reading program, complete with paperback copies for the students, a study guide for teachers, and cassette tapes that could be used much like a read-along record book for kids to follow along. The first six titles available in this program were The Wolf Man, King Kong, Mad Scientists, Frankenstein, Godzilla, and Dracula.

The books were a great introduction to the characters and creatures of these classic horror films. While the books mostly summarized the film, some of pages were filled with the backstory of the creatures, such as their origins in novels, history, or folklore. The books also mentioned other films in the monster’s franchise or subgenre and highlighted other places in pop culture where the monster could be found.

For example, in The Mummy, the first page talks about what mummies are, how they were made, and the rumors of a curse surrounding the deaths of people involved with the discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Most of the book is then a re-telling of The Mummy from 1932, starring Boris Karloff, but towards the end, other mummy films, like The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Tomb, and The Mummy’s Ghost are briefly recapped as well. All the way up until the last page, they’re still referencing other mummy movies, like The Mummy’s Curse, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, and even Hammer Films’ 1959 The Mummy, all get a mention. The books were like Wikipedia for Monster Kids.

The series proved popular, so, between 1981 and 1982, six more books were released: The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein Meets Wolfman, The Blob, The Deadly Mantis, and It Came From Outer Space. The Invisible Man, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Phantom of the Opera were advertised on the backs of the new books, but they wouldn’t get a release until 1986 and 1987. In all, 15 books were published in the Monsters series.

Photo courtesy of Reddit user OutpostThirtyOne

The author of most of the Monsters books is credited as Ian Thorne. However, this is a pseudonym for Julian May, a woman who wrote science fiction and non-fiction books throughout the latter half of the 20th Century. She wrote until the series was put on hold in 1982 after the publication of It Came From Outer Space, when she left to pursue other projects. The Invisible Man wound up being written by William Sanford, while Rue Morgue and Phantom of the Opera were written by Carl Green, who was also releasing a new, similar series from Crestwood called, Movie Monsters, starting in 1985.

MOVIE MONSTERS

The Movie Monsters books, while not the same series as Monsters, follow a similar concept. However, they focus on single movies, rather than the breadth of the monster’s franchise. There were 12 Movie Monsters books, including House of Fear, House of Seven Gables, Black Friday, Ghost of Frankenstein, The Revenge of the Creature, Black Cat, Tarantula, The Mole People, Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, The Raven, and Werewolf of London.

By the time the Movie Monsters books were being released, I was well past that reading level, so I didn’t even know they existed until fairly recently, let alone have any nostalgia for them. That being said, I did buy Dracula’s Daughter off Amazon for less than $8 (including shipping!) and would love to get my hands on more, especially Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature.

TALES OF TERROR

There was a third series of Crestwood House horror books called Tales of Terror that were released in 1991.

Unlike the Monsters books, the Tales of Terror were retellings of the film in censored, semi-kid-friendly form. For example, friend of the blog, Shawn Robare, posted a picture of the Halloween book online and there are some slight changes to the scene of Linda and Bob from the original film:

(In case you haven’t seen Halloween in a while, in the film, this whole scene takes place while Linda is naked in bed after she and Bob have had sex, not sitting on the couch watching TV. And he gets her a beer, not a soda.)

The series covers a handful of classic and cult movies from the 80s, including Alien, Critters, The Fly, Halloween, Jaws, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Terminator.

COLLECTING

I have fond, fond memories of the Monsters series of books from when I was a kid. I don’t believe our library had the entire series, but I remember The Deadly Mantis, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Frankenstein, King Kong, and Godzilla being on constant rotation for me for a year or so in grade school. I would check one out every week when our class went to the library, returning the one I had and getting something new that was still on the shelf. I don’t know that I ever sat down and read them cover-to-cover, but I would marvel at the photos and read snippets here and there. To be honest, the visuals were what really grabbed me, since I was already obsessed with films by that age.

Over the last few years, I’ve slowly built up my collection of Monsters books thanks to eBay and Thriftbooks. I’ve never found a book in the wild yet, but that doesn’t really surprise me, either. These books were made for schools and public libraries, so you wouldn’t have found them at your corner bookstore. In addition, these books are over 40 years old at this point, so libraries would have pulled them from their shelves years ago. Many times libraries will intentionally damage old books so they can’t be resold, and then they’re simply thrown in the trash. And even if the books were resold by the library, they’ve had to survive in a family library for all those years without being sold at a garage sale or donated to Goodwill. Long story short, they were already in limited supply when they were new, then they went through various hands over the years (if not outright destroyed), so finding them is truly like finding a needle in a haystack.

That being said, here’s what I’ve been able to collect so far:

As you can see, most of my books are the hardcover, library bound versions. However, The Wolf Man is a paperback copy from the original run of the series. Most collectors prefer the hardcover editions, maybe because they’ll hold up better over time, maybe because that’s what they checked out from the library as a kid. I don’t really care which version I get.

Current eBay prices for the series are all over the place. Sometimes a book will sell for $20 plus shipping, tomorrow it might sell for $100 plus shipping; it really is all about timing and keeping a vigilant eye on eBay. The only one that seems to consistently bring a high price – usually over $100 – is Godzilla. I’m not sure if it’s just that the big lizard is that popular or if that book only received a limited run, but it’s definitely the Holy Grail title in the series.

Now, I’m not made of money, so obviously I haven’t spent that much on any of these books. I’ve been very lucky to get everything at well below average price. As I’ve said before, I’m a very patient collector, so I’m willing to wait until a book is available on Thriftbooks or Buy It Now on eBay at a price I’m willing to pay. At these prices, I know I’ll never be able to collect all of them, so there are some, like Godzilla, that I have simply accepted will just have to live on in my memories from second grade. And I’m ok with that.

As I said before, I have no nostalgia for The Movie Monster books since they were released after I had aged out of that reading level. However, I did buy Dracula’s Daughter and would gladly add more to my collection for the right price. These are generally more affordable, usually running around $20 – $30 per book. Of course the handful of ones I want – Bride of Frankenstein and Revenge of the Creature – are typically more expensive and don’t come up for auction very often.

As for the Tales of Terror books – good luck, buddy. As of this writing, there are two copies of Critters on eBay. One is listed for $170; the other is $500. The last one that sold was a copy of Halloween for $455.30 plus $35 shipping from the UK. I’ll probably never own any of these, but I’m always keeping my eyes open at thrift stores and used bookstores just in case.

MONSTERS LEGACY

I know I’m not alone in loving these iconic orange books. A simple Google search will lead you to plenty of blog posts, Reddit posts, Tweets, and YouTube videos from fellow Gen Xers who were impacted by the Monsters series. I think it’s important that kids have a safe way to explore the things that go bump in the night and that’s exactly what these books did for so many of us.

UPDATE: 11/08/2024

Guys, I now believe in The Great Pumpkin! On Halloween last week, I won an auction for two more Monster books. Earlier in the month, I bid on an eBay auction that featured both Dracula and one of my Holy Grail books, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Both of these books regularly go for 3 digits each, so I really didn’t expect to win. The current bid was only $5, plus $6 shipping. I threw out a $40 bid, figuring that made them $20 each, which is an amazing deal. And, not surprisingly, I was outbid the same day. Knowing I wasn’t going to win, I had put the auction out of my mind until, on about October 27, I got an email from eBay saying that the high bidder had rescinded their bid and I was now the high bidder at $5. I literally laughed out loud and said, “Not for long!” However, the days ticked by, there were about 12 people watching the auction and there had been previous bidders before me, so I assumed everyone was just waiting until the day the auction ended to swoop in and outbid me.

I had to take the day off on Halloween to watch my son who didn’t have school that day, so I was lying in bed scrolling on my phone when I got the notification that the auction was ending in 10 minutes. Again, I was absolutely expecting someone to swoop in and nab them…but the minutes kept ticking away without any further bids. No way this was going to happen, was it? Sure enough. The minutes, then the seconds ticked down, and I had won both books for $11 including shipping. I almost fell out of bed.

Needless to say, I immediately paid for the auction so there was no chance it could be cancelled due to non-payment. And then I waited for the email to come through that the seller had cancelled the sale. I figured there was no way I just won this auction. There must have been a glitch. I must not have seen the final bid accurately. But, sure enough, a couple of days later I got a shipping notification and the books arrived in the mail today!

Now, I know what you might be thinking – Maybe the reason they didn’t sell for a higher price is because of the big library stickers on the covers. But, the same seller had other Monster books from the same library with the same stickers and they sold for the going rates for those books, anywhere between $25 – $75. For $11, I think most people would have picked these up just because they could easily resell these and make a profit. And yet, here we are.

Honestly, I kind of wonder if maybe I’m the only one (other than the seller) who was aware that the original high bid had been withdrawn. There has to have been some glitch on eBay’s end that didn’t make this auction show up for the other people watching it. Or, maybe The Great Pumpkin was looking out for me on Halloween. Whatever the case, I am very excited to add these two to my collection.

2 Comments

  1. Great post, thanks very much.

    I discovered these books at my local library, back in the 70’s. I’d love to collect them all, but only have one, to date (“It came from outer space”) since they are pretty expensive.

    I wonder who, if anyone, owns the rights to these books. I’d love to see them republished in omnibus volumes, similar to the Donald Glut Frankenstein series, published 8 or 10 years ago. Each volume could include the original illustrations and photos, along with reproductions of the covers. That would be a real treat! If that’s not possible, I wouldn’t mind seeing the entire collection scanned on DVD or USB.

    I think they would make a great addition to a Horror lovers library, as well as a trip back in time for some of us older readers.

  2. Thanks for stopping by, Norm! They are pretty expensive to collect, unfortunately. I’ve been very lucky to find the ones I have at places like Thriftbooks and eBay for reasonable prices, but there are some that will forever be out of reach of my pocketbook. It would be great to see a reprint collection of these! However, I have to wonder if getting the rights to all the photos from the various franchises these books covered, from different movie production companies, might be a hindrance. You know they’d all want a piece of the pie…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *