"THE LOCKED DOOR OF HARKNESS HOUSE" from PLOP! #14

 AS PROMISED TO MELISSA -- HERE IS THE STORY! 

So, I used to spend quite a few weekends at my grandparents' house in Pennsauken, NJ back in the 1970's. I've waxed nostalgic about this era before and you can find the posts probably by clicking on the labels "Um . . . just about me Sorry" or "The 1970s".  Anywho, quite often my grandfather would take me to the Pennsauken Mart on Saturday mornings and we'd spend the day walking around.  The first stop, however, was always the store that sold comic books (and paperbacks and magazines) -- usually but not always with the covers torn off -- and it was here that I picked up a coverless issue of PLOP! #14 featuring a lead story that always stuck with me.  That story is called "THE LOCKED DOOR OF HARKNESS HOUSE" and even as a child, I found it strangely ringing a deja vu bell in my brain.  PLOP!, of course, was DC Comics' humor magazine which often parodied movies or TV shows etc. in the manner of MAD and CRACKED.  The 14th issue of PLOP! is cover dated July 1975.  So, was "LOCKED DOOR" a parody of some horror movie . . . . and was it a horror movie that I caught some or all of when I was even younger?!?!?! 

It was only many years later when I caught the 1970 horror flick THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR starring Flora Robson and Beryl Reid as a pair of spinster sisters who keep their insane and bestial brother locked away in the basement . . . . until he escapes.  Hmmmm, when you read the PLOP! story, it has that same plot!  Did I actually catch THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR sometime between my fifth birthday and my 10th (when the issue of PLOP! came out)?  I like to think I did catch the movie on TV's CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE or one of Dr. Shock's programmes.  Anyhow, I never shock the sense of familiarity I got when I read issue #14 of PLOP! and here (as I promised Ms. Sharp many months ago) is the comic book story.