Green Horror

Green Horror is a funny scary horror comic from Fantastic Fears #8, July 1954. It’s about a man, a woman and a killer cactus. The story was supposed to be scary, but the premise is so stupid that it ends up being unintentionally hilarious. This story was actually published again with different art, so I’ll use the best pictures from both.

“What was it, this horror? Vegetable? Mineral? Animal? Or just a fiend out of the lower darkness.? It had the cunning and patience of death itself as it waited for its helpless victims. It struck and struck again and in the end, it put its thorn-spiked arms around a woman it loved in as gruesome a death scene as ever happened. For it was… THE JEALOUS CACTUS.”

The story begins with a married couple named George and Martha driving home through the desert. Martha suddenly spots a nice cactus and wants to grow one in her garden to make her neighbors jealous. George rightly thinks his wife is nuts, but he goes along with her and they stop to take a cutting.

Martha plants the cactus in their garden, but one day, George notices something strange…

He decides to smash the cactus to pieces with his garden hoe, but just as he’s about to take a swing at it, Martha rushes out and shouts “Don’t you dare destroy my cactus!”

Martha tells him he’s just jealous of the cactus and George admits he boils with rage every time he sees it.

That night, while his wife is asleep, he sneaks out of the house and goes to chop up the cactus with an axe.

However, the cactus suddenly snatches the axe from his hands. George freaks out and runs away screaming.

The cactus throws the axe at George and it hits him in the back of the skull, killing him instantly.

The force of the blow sends one of his eyeballs flying and his final words are, “UHHHHHH! GNNNNN!”

Martha find him dead the next morning with the axe embedded in his skull, but the silly woman doesn’t even suspect the cactus had something to do with it. The police assure her that her husband was probably killed by a prowler.

Martha doesn’t waste time grieving over George. Within months, she has a new boyfriend. His name is Brent and he has a cool moustache, but he doesn’t like the much cactus either. In fact, he proposes to her right in front of it.

Of course, Martha accepts and goes inside to fix them both a drink so they can toast to their marriage. While she’s way, Brent becomes suspicious of the cactus and wonders what it’s thinking.

All of a sudden, the cactus attacks!

It squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until it chokes the life out of Brent. Then, it tosses his dead body aside and rips its own roots out of the earth. Meanwhile, martha is in the kitchen, happily fixing drinks.

“The cactus pulls her into a jealous embrace, crushing her against its sharp spines and at the last moment, Martha realizes the truth… IT WANTS HER!”

The next day, when the police find her dead body, the cactus is still wrapped around her. One policeman is a genius and figures out exactly what happened, while the other wonders how they’re going to explain this to the Police Commissioner.