Plastic Pumpkins After Dark

I saved this post for late on a Saturday night because of the slightly risque nature of its origins. Hopefully all of the little kiddies are tucked safely in bed by now because the image above comes straight to you out of a 1974 copy of Penthouse Magazine! Believe you me when I started thumbing through a skin mag that was published before I had even started to lose my baby teeth the last thing I expected to find was material for the Hallowe'en Countdown, but there it was. And what a strange little critter it is. Looking at this cartoon you'd probably think that it was an accompanying illustration to this issue's token piece of literature, but you'd be wrong. This was a full-page, full-colored cartoon sandwiched all by its lonesome between that month's centerfold (her name was Doone Buddy) and an article about the coming gas crisis. Just bizarre. I have no idea what the cartoonist was going for here. Was he trying for a macabre Charles Addams vibe? Did he forget that Charles Addams was macabre and funny? Is there something going on here that I'm missing? Had the surgical staff just gotten back from a business meeting at a sushi bar? Is this irony?

The other interesting 'thing' about this cartoon is that it predates John Carpenter's version of The Thing, and that movie's defibrillator scene, by almost a decade. I'm not saying that John Carpenter steals all his ideas from old porno mags, but he probably almost certainly does.

And yes, it was all I could do to not title this post 'Tentacle Porn,' but that kind of web traffic I don't need. Although, now I've gone and said it so there's that bell having been rung.