A British horror fanzine made in Iowa has compelled Hammer heads around the world for 54 years

Before the internet, fanzines were the lifeblood of genre fandom. Produced by enthusiasts rather than professional publishers, these homemade magazines connected horror, science fiction and fantasy fans who often felt isolated in their own communities. Created on typewriters, assembled with scissors, glue and photocopiers, and distributed through conventions, specialty bookstores and the mail, fanzines became places where fans exchanged research, opinions, interviews and personal stories.

In a small house in the Beaverdale neighborhood of Des Moines, Dick Klemensen typed away at his final editorial to his fans. Since 1972, Dick has published a magazine dedicated to the world of Hammer Films and British horror. It’s called Little Shoppe of Horrors.

Dick’s interest in monster and horror magazines appears to have started in the late 1950s and early 1960s, during his childhood in Mason City. As he became fascinated with horror films on television and in local theaters, he began reading magazines such as Famous Monsters of Filmland and Castle of Frankenstein. When his family moved to Waterloo in 1963, he still had copies of those magazines, although his interest temporarily faded during his teenage years when he discovered muscle cars and girls.

In September 1969, while recovering from mono, Dick attended a triple feature that included Hammer’s Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. He described the ending with Dracula impaled on a cross atop his castle, accompanied by James Bernard’s score, as a completely transformative experience. He returned to the theater the next night with a tape recorder to capture the soundtrack, and was henceforth obsessed with Hammer films.

Founded in 1934, Hammer Film Productions became one of the most influential studios in horror cinema by reinventing classic monsters for a new generation. Beginning with The Curse of Frankenstein followed by Horror of Dracula, Hammer transformed familiar Gothic stories with vivid color cinematography, graphic violence, sensuality and charismatic performances from actors like Peter Cushing, Oliver Reed and Christopher Lee. 

Klemensen remembers initially seeing Vietnam through the lens of Cold War patriotism. With only network news, newspapers and the dominant “America: love it or leave it” mentality shaping his worldview, he believed the U.S. had a duty to stop communism in Southeast Asia. But the more he learned about Vietnam’s history of colonial rule and imperial occupation, the more he came to see the war as a mistake.

After struggling to finish college, Klemensen received his draft notice. He was sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and assumed, like many men his age, that he would eventually be shipped to Vietnam. However, he tested well on a manual typewriter during processing, so they sent him to clerk school. He quickly completed the course, and was assigned to an Armed Forces Entrance and Examining Station in Richmond, Virginia, where he became an induction clerk, also called a Remmington Ranger.

“If you got drafted, I saw your ass,” he recalled.

That assignment kept Klemensen out of combat, but not away from the war. He spent nearly two years in Richmond while many of his friends were overseas. He said he has felt guilty his whole life that he was not sent to Vietnam, even while acknowledging he was grateful not to have been wounded or killed.

His friend Mike survived a mine explosion in Vietnam. He later moved to California and passed the bar exam, but the war followed him. Klemensen said Mike had been exposed to Agent Orange and later died of cancer. 

“I walked up to my wife and said, ‘Mike’s dead.’ And I collapsed on the floor crying.”

In January 1972, Klemensen returned to Iowa from Richmond, Virginia. Like many veterans of the Vietnam era, he was navigating a country exhausted by war and political turmoil. 

Back in Waterloo, Klemensen threw himself into work. He took a job at Esco Auto Supply, and got involved in drag racing. He was hired by Northeast Iowa Timing Association in Cedar Falls to serve as drag editor for the National Hawkeye Racing News. Race weekends became a family affair, with his father and brother helping sell newspapers while Klemensen worked in the timing tower covering the action.  

While stationed in Richmond, he had discovered a growing network of horror and science-fiction fanzines. Publications such as Photon, Gore Creatures and Cinefantastique convinced him that ordinary fans could create magazines of their own. Unlike professional magazines, these publications felt personal. The editors talked about their lives, their friendships and their passions alongside horror film analysis.

He corresponded with editors and studied how the magazines were assembled. In June 1972, with little more than enthusiasm, a typewriter and help from his family, Klemensen published the first issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors. 

Printed by two brothers in nearby Janesville, Iowa, the magazine was assembled by hand in Klemensen’s bedroom. Dick and his mother sat on the floor collating pages one by one. The first print run was only 200 copies, sold for 75 cents each, but it marked the beginning of a publication that would outlast its publisher’s marriages, careers and nearly every other constant in his life. 

The first three issues covered a broad mix of horror and fantasy subjects rather than focusing exclusively on specific films as they would a few years later. He wrote, edited, assembled and distributed the magazine himself while balancing a full-time job and family. What started as a hobby quickly connected Klemensen to a much larger network of horror fans across the United States.

In 1973 he attended his first World Science Fiction Convention, then another major convention in D.C. the following year. For a lifelong fan from Iowa, these gatherings were transformative. They introduced Klemensen to filmmakers, writers, collectors and historians who shared his obsession with classic horror cinema. The experience convinced him that fandom was not merely a hobby — it was a community.

One of the people he met through this growing network was a young New York monster fan named Jim Wynorski, who would later become one of the most prolific directors in independent genre cinema, directing films such as Chopping Mall, The Return of Swamp Thing and dozens of cult horror and sci-fi features. The two had already become pen pals through Little Shoppe of Horrors and the wider monster magazine scene, exchanging letters long before the internet connected fans around the world. 

When they finally met in person in the early 1970s, it cemented a friendship that would last for decades, and broaden Klemensen’s horror horizons.

“I was playing some spaghetti Western music … and he says, ‘What’s that?’” Wynorski recalled to Little Village. “And I said, ‘Oh, it’s Morricone music.’ And he fell in love with it. At any convention we were at together, Dick would ask, ‘Did you bring any new spaghetti Western music?’ And I would make a seven-inch reel and I’d just give it to him. I said, ‘Here you go, here’s some more stuff.’”

By the mid-1970s, Klemensen’s interest was increasingly gravitating toward specific film titles from Hammer and British horror more broadly. While American horror magazines often treated Hammer as just one subject among many, Klemensen found himself fascinated by the people behind the films — the directors, make-up artists, actors and craftspeople who had created the studio’s distinctive gothic style. He tracked down call sheets (the production company’s daily schedule of what was being shot), memos between studios and sometimes even the catering menus.

Before Joe Dante made a career directing films like Gremlins, The Howling and The Burbs, he wrote for a horror fanzine called Castle of Frankenstein. Throughout his career, Dante has remained one of cinema’s foremost champions of classic horror and science fiction, filling his films with affectionate references to the movies and filmmakers that shaped his childhood. He recognized early that Dick Klemensen’s Little Shoppe was doing something unique — preserving the history of British horror with a level of research and detail that few publications had ever attempted.

“I don’t think I saw the first one, but I did maybe the third or fourth one, and I can’t remember where. I might have seen it at a convention because it wasn’t like, you know, next to the Ladies’ Home Journal like Famous Monsters was,” Dante said. “Dick’s affection for British horror in general, and Hammer in particular, made it the go-to magazine to get information on this kind of stuff … He talked to all the surviving cast, talked to as many crew members as he could. He’d print call sheets… budgets… all sorts of arcane stuff that you would think would have narrowed the audience for the magazine, but it didn’t. Instead, it created a sort of underground need for more information.”

The mid-1980s marked the lowest point in Klemensen’s life. Across Iowa, the farm crisis was reshaping the state’s economy. As farms failed and banks struggled, the ripple effects reached businesses in every corner of the state. Klemensen lost his job as the economic downturn deepened, forcing him to confront an uncertain future. Then, without warning, his personal life unraveled as well. One day his wife told him she was leaving him and their sons. The marriage was over. 

In a matter of months, Dick found himself facing unemployment, divorce and the collapse of the stable life he had spent years building. Little Shoppe of Horrors, which had always been a labor of love rather than a source of income, took a back seat for four years. For the first time since its founding in 1972, the future of the magazine was in doubt.

“I had to move out of Waterloo. My wife had left. I couldn’t afford the house… So, I basically let it go back to the bank. I moved to Des Moines, got a little efficiency apartment. I finally had a good job, and this had been in December of ’87. I started over from scratch. Thank God for ramen noodles because I had like $5 a week to eat on while I fought the divorce.”

“And when that was over I decided, OK, I’d like to do a Little Shoppe again.”

The 1990s were, at last, a period of stability. Dick was employed full time at Midwest Wheel where he sold parts for 18-wheelers. He dated regularly and traveled to England repeatedly to visit friends and immerse himself in the world of Hammer films. Each issue of Little Shoppe required years of research and production. 

The legendary horror magazine Fangoria had climbed its way up the food chain, covering everything new that was hitting theaters and only rarely classic films, and usually never Hammer’s. Jim Wynorski wrote for Fangoria when he wasn’t directing low-budget films for people like Roger Corman. But he was a lifelong reader of Little Shoppe.

“You don’t learn anything from reading Fangoria. You learn a lot from reading Little Shoppe of Horrors,” Wynorski said. “Klemensen is going to give you every last fucking detail.”

At the time Klemensen was only publishing an issue every couple of years. After nearly 30 years, he was only on issue number 15, which covered The Brides of Dracula. He felt he didn’t have anything left to say. 

A bubble in the comic book market popped in the ’90s, and major distributors like Desert Moon, Ubiquity and BD More shut down without paying their invoices. This collapse forced Klemensen to shrink the magazine down from 134 pages to 96. He ate the cost of what he lost and continued to finance the magazine himself. 

Then, just as he was contemplating folding Little Shoppe of Horrors, Nancy entered his life. They met through mutual friends and lo and behold, she was into everything he was. He would have proposed on the second date, Klemensen said. “Where the hell has this woman been all my whole life?”

Dick and Nancy met in 2001 and on Sept. 11, Dick had left for a business meeting. After the planes hit the towers, then the Pentagon, Nancy tried to get ahold of Dick, but he had no cell phone. Then that afternoon he finally called home.

“A lot of nice people went to work today, and they’re never coming home,” he told her. “Life is short. Let’s get married. I love you.”

Klemensen’s wife supported Little Shoppe, and they managed to increase production to two issues a year. Nancy became far more than a supportive spouse; she proofread articles, helped evaluate photographs and layouts, assembled issues, handled countless behind-the-scenes tasks and served as Klemensen’s most trusted editor. 

“She loves these films,” he said. “We did two issues a year for, like, 15 years. It didn’t slow down.”

The pair have retired from their careers over the past decade, Klemensen from selling truck parts and Nancy from working as a third-shift nurse. Klemensen adopted his two sons from his first marriage, now in their 50s. They published a book, Witches, Bitches and Banshees: The British Films of American International Pictures, and Klemensen began contributing commentary tracks and interviews to various restorations of Hammer films, both from the newly revived company in the U.K. and U.S.-based distributors such as Severin Films. His sister Kris has supplied all of the layouts from her home in Clarion, Iowa.

After 54 years, Klemensen published the final issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors this July. He doesn’t want to pass it on; he doesn’t want to slim it down to one issue every few years. It’s over. He and Nancy are finally able to spend time together without thinking about the magazine, he said. 

“It’s my magazine. It started with me and it ends with me.”

Related event:

Refocus Film Festival: The Thing in the Coffin, Fri-Sun, Oct. 23-25, FilmScene (The Chauncey & Ped Mall locations)

All photos contributed by Dick Klemenson. A shorter version of this article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2026 issue.