It is issues like this that made me hate the Unexpected. The stories are some of the most banal and uninteresting tales you will ever read. "The Phantom of the Woodstock Festival" by George Kashdan, Dick Dillin and Vince Colletta. Given this is a DC story and there are "young people" in it, you know the dialogue is as corny as can be, full of "Crazy Man"s and "splitsville"s and all sort of things no one ever really said. Three members of a struggling rock group, "The Stone Cantaloupes," are on their way to the Woodstock Festival and looking for a place to stay, so they stop at a deserted monastery for the night. They find an old organ there and Forbush starts playing it while the others jam along, lead singer Trina leading the way.
That night a voice calling to her wakes Trina up and she finds the "owner" of the place, a hooded man rejected by society years ago for his "mad" music. The guys wake up and begin to search for Trina, only to get locked in an air-tight room. The "owner" is revealed to be not that good looking and plans on letting the boys die so he can have Trina's voice to himself.
The boys find a piece of sheet music in the room and Forbush begins to play it on the organ and as he does so the door begins to move. opening up so they can escape, which they do taking Trina out of the clutches of the "owner" and away with them to the festival. At Woodstock, Forbush, sheet music in hand, plans to go back to the monastery and retrieve the organ once the festival is over, but a gust of wind blows it from his hands and it is lost in the debris of Woodstock. The dumbass end.
The next underwhelming story is "Lady Killer" by Al Case (Murray Boltinoff) and Murphy Anderson. A guy hides out in a department store every night to spend some time with his girlfriend. Do I need to go any further? At work his friends all laugh at him, calling him "lady killer" as a joke as they all know he is alone. One night when he has to work late and can't get to the store before it closes he sees his "girlfriend" in the window in a wedding dress and goes ape shit. I guess if you are the editor you can make a few extra bucks by calling this a story.
Next we have "To Die a Dozen Deaths!" by Carl Wessler, Jerry Grandenetti and Wally Wood. Guy kills a Gypsy man and is cursed to die a dozen deaths and while awaiting his execution has 11 dreams of being hung. The twelfth time is real. Wow, what a story. Grandenetti and Wood have done some interesting work together in the past, but this is not one of those times.
We end with "Scarecrow" where editor Murray Boltinoff makes another few bucks and Jerry Grandenetti does as well in this story of a man tormented by crows who wants to get a scarecrow to get rid of them and accidentally impales himself on a pitchfork becoming his own scarecrow. I think I actually bought this pile of crap of the stands.
Edited by Murray Boltinoff.
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