Fangoria Censored in 1980?

I had known that Fangoria #9 was one of the best horror film magazine covers ever (along with the previous Zombie cover on Fangoria #8). I had not known, until some serendipitous googling this evening unearthed it, that #9 was censored on American newsstands.

But The Daily Beast, the pop-y news and opinion site run by the legendary Tina Brown, includes Fango #9 in a photo essay of 10 magazine covers that were censored. It says Fangoria #9 was pulled from newsstands because people were disturbed by its cover imagery.

The poor dears.

Fangoria, of course, is a horror film magazine, and it is still the leading magazine in its field. So one would expect that it would cover, well, horror movies. It is amusing to me that back in 1980, when Fango was finally hitting its stride after an uneven start, that it would have to clear the hurdle of people freaking out over a cover that frankly isn't particularly graphic. Look at it below. There's no actual violence on the cover; there's some fake blood on a chainsaw being wielded by a pig-headed human, which is not something one sees everyday on a magazine cover, not to mention the streets of Dallas.

I remember that the magazine became a coveted (and expensive) collector's edition, costing several times what any other issue of the magazine cost. I had always assumed that it had either sold out or that the print run hadn't been adequate, so remaining copies were sold at a premium. But if The Daily Beast is correct, then we know that it was all due to the never-ending American strain of hypocrisy and fear.

Still, it's a damn cool cover. Speaking as a magazine professional, of course.

From WEIMAR WORLD SERVICE