by BK Munn
I recently had the pleasure of watching Blast of Silence, the brutal, existential 1961 film noir written and directed by and starring Allen Baron. Baron was born in Brooklyn and fell into making movies after a hardscrabble early life that included stints in the U.S. Navy, driving a taxi and working in the comic book industry of the 1950s. The story of the guerrilla production of Blast of Silence, shot on the streets of NYC without permits and with equipment "liberated" from Castro's Cuba, is the stuff of legend and makes for interesting reading. Baron went on to Hollywood and became a well-known tv director. Genre and comic fans may be interested in work he did on some science-fiction and fantasy themed shows like Kolchak the Night Stalker (he also directed more mundane fare like Barney Miller and The Brady Bunch), and he was nominated for a Hugo Award for the 1969 pilot episode of the short-lived The Immortal tv series. But it's his short stint as a comic book artist in the 1950s, directly preceding his first film, that I was curious about.
A scene in Blast of Silence seems semi-autobiographical: when the ruthless antisocial assassin played by Baron meets a chum from his days in an orphanage, the friend tells a story about getting out of the army, going to art school, and getting a career in commercial art. This is the same path followed by Baron in real life. It looks like he did a batch of romance comics for Lev Gleason and at least one horror story for ACG, the haunting "Bride of the Swamp Monster" in Forbidden Worlds #9 from 1952. While the writer of the story is unknown (perhaps Baron himself), the story is notable for its Hollywood film setting with scenes of a small crew shooting a movie in the swamp.
