Movie and TV tie-in paperbacks are what ignited the passion in me at age 10 or 11.
We were already addicted to THE TWILIGHT ZONE (mainly me, but my parents certainly enjoyed it) when my dad spotted "More Stories From..." at a drugstore and brought it home to me. I just about peed my pants with surprise and delight. A year or so later, we saw PREMATURE BURIAL on its opening Friday night at the Warnor in Fort Lauderdale. The movie blew me away in its own right, but what really clinched it was being at a small market the next morning and finding the Lancer tie-in on the revolving paperback rack. That started an obsession that probably had my folks wanting to kill me at various times over the next several years. I'd missed the first two Corman films but as they played the drive-ins, etc., I and the family quickly caught up with them, and thanks to me, we all stayed caught up as subsequent ones were released.
I would read these things over and over and over, I'd read passages out loud to them, I'd talk about the films endlessly. In addition to the racks at drugstores, etc., we had one large downtown "news store" that stocked a lot of paperbacks, and I soon learned that if they didn't have something, they could order it, and I was probably one of the few kids to hang out there frequently and for long periods of time, just awed by all of it. This was long before I discovered "real" book stores, and for years, paperbacks were it for me. I later learned I could put my fifty cents into the mail and order direct from the publisher, and that's how I got PIT AND THE PENDULUM which I devoured the afternoon it arrived, and which I also dragged the family to the drive-in to see for our second or third time that night. (Did we really put cash into the mail? I can't say, but I know I ordered a few things that way.)
Horror and thrillers and the like were my number one obsession, but I soon grew to embrace paperback movie tie-ins for musicals, romantic comedies, and whatever else tickled my fancy at the time. I scanned a few favorite horror/thriller ones which I'll post shortly. In a few cases, it's obvious (due to the damned address label!) that these are my original copies from the early 1960s. As soon as I discovered eBay in 1998, I began seeking out replacements, and one of my very first purchases was a near mint set of the Corman/Poe novelizations.
