If you missed Plant Monsters of Amazing Stories….
For our last post on the Plant Monsters of the 1930s, we offer a potpourri of various publications, each housing some green monstrosity. Some are quite small and innocuous, while others are major players like John Collier’s “Green Thoughts” that inspired The Little Shop of Horrors and many other later plant fiends. The last portion is dominated by one magazine, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and the work of Arthur K. Barnes, who followed in the footsteps of the great Stanley G. Weinbaum, creating a whole jungle full of alien creatures.
The Science Fiction and Horror magazines weren’t the only ones using plant monsters though. “The Green Horror” (Dime Detective, June 1933) by Oscar Schisgall is the third detective story featuring his investigator Wellington Dyme. Schisgall was a prolific Pulpster who wrote some Science Fiction but mostly worked in detective magazines. The cover by William Reusswig clearly shows the bad guys have a man-eating plant to get rid of any good-looking dames who figure out too much. (I am only guessing since I haven’t read this one yet.)
1930
“The Beast Plants” by H. Thompson Rich (Argosy, July 26, 1930) has a swamp filled with intelligent plant monsters that capture the curious. Reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1940 For more on this story, go here.
1931
“The Fountain” by Frank Owen (Della-Wu, Chinese Courtezan, and Other Oriental Love Tales, 1931) Some of these stories appeared in Weird Tales‘ sister magazine, Oriental Tales.
“Outlaws of the Sun” by Victor Rousseau (Miracle Science Fiction, April-May 1931) takes place on the planet Circe, where ambulatory and carnivorous trees have tentacles to grab prey.
“Green Thoughts” by John Collier (Harper’s, May 1931) is probably the most famous of all plant stories in the 1930s. Not until The Day of the Triffids in 1951 did another plant tale supersede it in the public interest. The story inspired The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and its remake in1986. The famous line we all remember: “Feed me, Seymour!” Reprinted in Shock, May 1960.
“Fish-Men of Arctica” by John Miller Gregory (Miracle Science Fiction, June-July 1931) is a short novel of fish-men on the Moon. Our hero, Jim, has to save Lora from a carnivorous tree in a minor scene.
“Nasturtia” by Capt. S. P. Meek (Strange Tales, September 1931) has a princess who can turn into a flower. Really more of a Fantasy than Science Fiction.
1932
“The Poplar Tree” by Philip Murray (Creeps Omnibus, 1932) has a woman obsessed with a tree, so she orders it to be cut down. When this is done, she dies too.
1933
“Meshes of Doom” by Neville Kilvington (Horrors: A Collection of Uneasy Tales, 1933) has a botanist murder his wife. An Amazonian creeper he grows, sprouts blossoms that look like her face, accusing him of his crime. The vine is violent, killing the man’s dogs. In the explanation of the story, all these weird things are written off as hallucination. This scenario would become a favorite of the Horror comics.
“The White Lady” by Sophie Wenzell Ellis (Strange Tales, January 1933) is a love triangle with one of the participants a plant. It doesn’t go well for Brynhild.
1934
“The Screaming Plant” by Hal Pink (The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories, 1934) has a botanist grow a mandrake from an ancient seed. The creature uses hypnosis to take over the scientist’s cat before draining it of blood. The plant is destroyed, making its legendary scream as it goes.
“The Death Plant” by Michal Gwynn (Terror by Night, 1934) has a plant with two blossoms, a life blossom and a death blossom. A German explorer tries to become immortal by cutting his death blossom. This ultimately doesn’t work.
“Cataclysm” by W. P. Cockcroft (Scoops, April 28, 1934) when a Martian plague destroys the Earth, a group of survivors go to the red planet to start over. On Mars, they encounter Man-Eating Flowers.
“Devil-Man of the Deep” by Anonymous (Scoops, May 19, 1934) This episode features the Plant Men of the Deep. As if fish-men weren’t trouble enough! For more on Devil-Man of the Deep, go here.
“The Garden of Fear” by Robert E. Howard (Marvel Tales #2, July-August 1934) is a tale of a time before the Hyborian age of Conan when migrations brought people into contact with monsters. This monster is a winged man who guards the base of his tower with blood-sucking plants. Hunwulf destroys them by stampeding mammoths over the vines. Reprinted in Fantastic, May 1961. Roy Thomas adapted this story as a Conan tale for Conan the Barbarian #9 (September 1971).
1935
“The Kosso” by William F. Temple (Thrills: A Collection of Uneasy Tales, 1935) begins in Abyssinia, when an amateur botanist stimulates a eucalyptus called a “Kosso”. The plant becomes a terror, walking around and attacking people. Fortunately, lightning destroys it.
1937
“Seeds From Space” by John Russell Fearn (Tales of Wonder #1, 1937) has a seed from Mars become a gigantic plant that covers the world. Which might actually be a good thing.
“Mr. Sycamore” by Robert Ayre (Story, April 1937) was made into a Broadway play and later a film. A mild-mannered milkman becomes convinced he must plant himself and become a tree. Fantasy in the James Thurber’s Walter Mitty style.
“Green Hell” by Arthur K. Barnes (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1937) features the main inhabitants of Venus, the Chloro-Men. The Earthmen call them Greenies and enslave them. The old veteran feels bad about this trade and ultimately joins the new guy, who is an undercover agent, to stop it.
“The Hothouse Planet” by Arthur K. Barnes (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1937) also features the Greenies though they are called Venusians now. This is the first of the Gerry Carlyle “Bring-Em-Back-Alive” stories set on Venus inspired by Frank Buck.
1938
“The Dual World” by Arthur K. Barnes (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1938) features two Venusian plants, the Electric Plant or “Circe Plant” and the deadly Slingshot Tree. Barnes had fun making up these jungle terrors.
1939
“Changeling” by Manly Wade Wellman (Strange Stories, February 1939) has a young girl exchanged for a plant creature that kills men with poisonous flowers. When boiling water is poured on her, she is replaced by the original child. Based on the legends about changelings, which aren’t usually plant faeries.
“The Singing Shadows” by Vincent Cornier (Strange Stories, February 1939) revolves around the Paradise Orchid and its poisonous deadly spores…
“War of the Weeds” by Carl Jacobi (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1939) has seeds come from space, this time inside a spaceship. When planted, the seeds produce tall stalks that play an enchanted song in the wind. This music is lethal to humans. A foreign country takes the plants and plans to use them in their invasion. The original owners from space also thought to do this. The music is neutralized and peace in the world is maintained. (The Nazis would invade Poland in September of that year. War in Europe was on people’s minds.)
“Tomorrow” by John Taine (Marvel Science Stories, April-May 1939) offers another lengthy SF novel, this time with killer fungus.
“Flowers From the Moon” (Strange Stories, August 1939) by Robert Bloch (as Tarlteton Fiske) features white flowers taken from the Moon. These blossoms have a hypnotic smell that turns one into a werewolf.
Conclusion
Plant Monsters in the 1930s range from background elements (like the ever hungry vegetation of Venus) to the star of the show, with perambulating vines and killer fungi. In the 1940s, the killer plant becomes less frequent, being a quaint idea of the previous decades. Thrilling Wonder Stories would feature plants again but not as villains. Frank Belknap Long wrote the John Carstairs series beginning with “Plants Must Grow” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1941). Carstairs is a detective/scientist who uses plants to help him in his cases. Writers like Edmond Hamilton would write serious looks at plant life in “Alien Earth” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949).
By the 1950s, the legacy of the killer plant moved to the comic books. (At least until John Wyndham wrote the ultimate plant monster novel, The Day of the Triffids (1951). In the 1960s, we got plant monster movies with Day of the Triffids and The Little Shop of Horrors from Roger Corman. The plant as classic man-eater could found in children’s cartoons and as spore-sprayers on Star Trek. A hundred years after the original plant monsters of South America, the killer vegetable had found its place.
