Art Imitates...Other Art
We’ve discussed “swipes” before (notably in the re-creation of a Wings comic book cover for Captain Science), but this time we’ll credit to “coincidence” the similarities between several 1920s Weird Tales covers by C.C. Senf and scenes in films created decades later.* Probably. Maybe it was psychic powers! Usually it goes the other way, artists “borrowing” (deliberately or unconsciously) images they saw in a movie (or a magazine, or a comic book, or...wherever), which is understandable.
*[Senf was not the only Weird Tales artist whose work sometimes seems prescient. The “Tellers of Weird Tales” blog shows another eerie example of similarity between a 1938 Virgil Finlay cover and a scene from Plan 9 From Outer Space. ]
German-born Curtis Charles Senf (1873-1949) painted 45 Weird Tales covers between 1927 and 1932. Margaret Brundage (who did 66 Weird Tales covers from 1933 to 1945, the only person who did more than Senf), Hannes Bok, Virgil Finlay, J. Allen St. John, and other artists were also closely affilated with this pulp magazine in the post-Senf era (Senf returned to commercial art after 1932).
Senf’s Weird Tales covers don’t all feature monsters: some depict relatively normal looking people engaged in what appear to be non-supernatural (albeit somewhat criminal or violent) activity. Senf wasn’t a master stylist like Brundage, perhaps due to his commercial art background, and his paintings aren’t especially outré or imaginative, but they are technically competent and often interesting. Terence E. Hanley, of the aforementioned “Tellers of Weird Tales” blog, calls Senf’s work “old-fashioned” but not in a pejorative way.
The first “prescient” cover we’ll discuss is the one for Weird Tales April 1927, which illustrates a scene from “Explorers into Infinity” by Ray Cummings. An evil but seemingly jolly giant caveman has uprooted a tree and is about to drop it on a sunbathing beauty. I have to say that while the caveman is amusingly rendered (he looks so happy that he’s about to squash his victim—in the story, it’s described as “a grin, but with a leer to it—horribly sinister”), the young woman is posed in a rather awkward fashion (notice she keeps her legs demurely crossed, although the fact that she’s wearing a transparent gown makes the whole exercise rather pointless).
This cover reminds me of a scene from the cult movie Equinox, made by independent filmmakers in 1967 (released in 1970). This picture features some interesting stop-motion animated creatures but also a giant caveman represented by an optically-enlarged guy in makeup. The colour scheme of the Equinox caveman is the inverse of the Weird Tales cover: one has blue (sometimes green, depending upon the print you’re watching) skin and a brown fur costume, while the other has brown skin and a blue animal-skin costume (notice the visible animal claws on the “tail” of the caveman’s suit). Both have monstruous faces, although the Equinox caveman has a far more serious demeanour than Senf’s smiling menace. In Equinox the giant has relatively little screen time; in Cummings’ story the image of the caveman (described as looking like a “gnome” but “ten times” taller than the girl) is seen via a “myrdoscope” that gives scientists the glimpse into another dimension, but part 1 (the story was continued in the next issue) concludes without the scientists travelling to rescue the girl (contrary to what one would expect--maybe they save her from Smiley the Giant Caveman in parts 2 or 3).
Its similarity to Equinox aside, does Senf’s cover for Weird Tales April 1927 sell the magazine? “Leering monster threatens scantily-clad young woman” aside, the tone of the cover is a bit stiff and “illustrative" rather than exploitative, probably a function of the artist’s training and background, as well as the general style of magazine illustrations of the era. Within a few short years—some titles coming around sooner than others—pulp covers would set aside this sort of storybook, fairy tale style and become more modern and innovative. However, this is still a well-crafted, evocative cover that probably sold some extra issues of the magazine.
The second Senf cover is from the September 1928 issue, and represents the short story “The Devil-Plant,” by John Murray Reynolds. I had a number of choices of filmic dopplegangers to choose from, since giant, man-eating plants appear prolifically in films and other popular culture media. I picked The Angry Red Planet as an example because I’d just re-watched that picture in preparation for the upcoming issue of Screem magazine (self-promotion is the best promotion). Since the Weird Tales cover depicts a woman in danger of being eaten by a plant, you'd think The Woman-Eater (1957) would have been the best choice, but there are basically two designs for man- (and woman-) eating plants, the "giant Venus flytrap" model (for example, 1973's Please Don't Eat My Mother-- "Audrey Jr." in Little Shop of Horrors is also anthropomophised to a considerable extent, but it's Venus flytrap origins are still visible) and the "tree with multiple tentacle-arms" model.* Since Senf's painting (and the original story) specifically mention that the monster was based on a Venus flytrap, and since The Woman Eater uses the "tentacle-arms" style, I reluctantly moved on to The Angry Red Planet (although to be precise, the carnivorous plants on the pulp magazine and in this film both have a Venus flytrap-like "mouth" and tentacle-arms).
*[The "killer plants" in films such as From Hell It Came, Day of the Triffids, Navy vs. the Night Monsters, etc. tend to be mobile and more humanoid in form.]
Killer plants are, as noted, a common pop culture menace, but--excluding the rare "walking plant" exceptions mentioned above--are not really that dangerous if you are paying attention. Most victims are done in by their curiosity or by extreme carelessness. Consequently, they're not often the central "monster" in longer-form fiction like movies.
The killer plant in The Angry Red Planet is only a minor threat in the film: it's the first "monster" encountered by a crew of Earth explorers when the arrive on the red planet, and clueless scientist Iris practically crawls inside the plant before it decides to try to eat her. She's saved by machete-wielding Colonel Tom O'Bannion (promoted from "Major Tom," presumably) and then comic-relief crewman Sam blasts the plant with his freeze-gun. In contrast, the Weird Tales short story that inspired the cover is literally entitled "The Devil-Plant," so we know where the dramatic focus lies.
I suppose it goes without saying that "Venus flytrap-shaped" is convenient terminology, because otherwise we'd have to refer to this design as "vaginal-shaped" (clutches pearls in shock). Honestly, a real Venus flytrap doesn't resemble a vagina that much, but Senf's giant mutated killer plant and especially the plant-monster inThe Angry Red Planet are pretty suggestive. I won't go so far as to suggest that these plants represent a subconscious fear of female sexuality, but I wouldn't argue too strenuously against some sort of feminist reading. Or not. Go ask Georgia O'Keefe.
When compared to the April 1927 cover, Senf's painting for the cover of Weird Tales September 1928 demonstrates a definite evolution in the artist's style. The later painting is more dynamic, more exciting, and more exploitative as opposed to story-book illustrative. Instead of a "leering" cave man threatening a demure maiden in a forest glen, we get a machete-wielding explorer in a solar topee charging an over-sized vagina-plant as it's devouring a young woman in distress. The earlier cover sets up the potential for violence (although it's possible the cave man is smitten by the young woman and is bringing her the uprooted tree as a gift, like a bouquet of flowers) but the second cover plunges us into the midst of a life-and-death struggle with an inhuman creature.
Consequently, the cover for Weird Tales September 1928 is much more eye-catching and marketable than its predecessor, a significant step towards the "golden age" of pulp magazine cover art.