Thursday, October 02, 2008

STILL MORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!


OK, I gotta stop this and post about something else for a change...starting next time (I hope).



Even decay looks good when colored like this (above)!




Ah...the evil child (above), a staple of the horror genre.




I'll bet these masks (above) look better when they're all together, and not separate. 




I think the blonde hair (above) is a wig sitting on top of the net.




A mask (above) sculpts a human face?




The village dude (above) becomes a zombie.




Wow! I wish I had a mask like this (above)!




A ghost threatens a child (above).  Contrary to the common PC wisdom, kids love to see other kids threatened by supernatural creatures. It all depends how it's handled.





Maybe the world's next Napoleon (above) is attending a grammar school near you.







Thailand has some sort of ghost ceremony which requires kids to wear beautiful, colorful costumes. Boy, I'd love to see this!




A little minimalist for my taste (above), but I'd buy it!



Making the Minotaur (above) crazy is a nice addition to the old legend.



Dog ghosts (above)! Why not?



An Elvgren witch. (Sigh!)





Wednesday, October 01, 2008

EVEN MORE HALLOWEEN!!!!!


Pete Emslie just wrote in to remind me that there's a  book out on Basil Gogos, the cover artist for "Famous Monsters of Filmland." magazine.  Mike F reminded me that he showed it to me a while back.  The offset reproduction is only OK, but it's handy to have all those cool pictures in one place.  If you're not familiar with Gogos then check out these samples (above and below). Click to enlarge.













This one (above) isn't by Gogos, but I couldn't resist throwing it in.  Ackerman (the editor of Famous Monsters) had good taste in his choice of artists and designers.




That's all I have to say about Gogos for now, but just for the heck of it, I think I'll add some vintage horror posters, artists unknown. Check these (below) out! Isn't Halloween a great holiday!?













Tuesday, September 30, 2008

MORE HALLOWEEN!


I'm in Halloween Heaven after seeing the monster site that Steven Finch linked to in the comments. Check it out, it's terrific:

http://monstercrazy.tumblr.com/

The guy who put it up is Pierre Fournier, surely a contender for the position of this generation's Forest Ackerman. He has another interesting site all about Frankenstein:

http://frankensteinia.blogspot.com/

And here's one by another worthy blogger, Karswell:

http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/


'Never saw this film (above), but the poster's great...generic, but great nevertheless!




Fifties and sixties horror letterers were brilliant.



Is this (above) the famous Feldstein Frankenstein redrawn by someone else?




Nice, very nice!




Every cartoonist should know how to draw good runs (above).





Late 50s and early 60s were a great time for horror lettering. The styles manage to be modern and classically horrific at the same time.



Letters (above) leak their otherworldly plasma into the ether.





A forehead made for under lighting!




Doctor X (above) had some great moments, but it was uneven. They should have let the poster artists modify the script.




Harryhausen's absolutely brilliant design for a cyclops!





Nonga-nonga-nonga (gibberish to accompany me biting my knuckles)!





Be sure to click to enlarge this (above). When seen at the right size, this is one of the all-time great horror covers.






Nonga-nonga-nonga-nonga-nonga-nonga-nonga!!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe it's worth getting bitten sometimes.....



Monday, September 29, 2008

HALLOWEEN'S ONLY A MONTH AWAY!!!!!!!


Halloween is only a month away!!!!!!! I'd intended to do a review of what's on display in the Halloween stores this year, only they're still putting things up, so I guess I'll have to wait. In the meantime, here's a few pictures.

Here's (above) my favorite,  an astonishingly beautiful, die-cut cardboard Moon and cat, probably from Germany in the 10s or 20s. Man, the Germans were good at this sort of thing! The piece is a work of art, yet you could buy it for the change in a kid's pocket! Is Halloween celebrated in Germany?



A vintage, paper-mache pumpkin (above), possibly also German.



This picture of a skeleton sitting on an old porch (above) reminds me of a job I had selling door-to-door in small, Sleepy Hollow-type towns in Pennsylvania at Halloween time. The towns were nestled in the hollows of hills and from a distance all you could see were old, wooden church steeples rising above mounds of  October-colored Maples and Chestnut trees. All the Halloween decorations on porches and windows were home-made.



A terrific pumpkin design!




Plastic and day-glow paint (above) made into an art form.



Soon we'll all have robotic Igors (above) to do our bidding. Maybe they'll rebel and turn nasty.



It's great to see designers turn their attention to the holiday.



What part of the body is this (above) ?




A mask (above) that looks like a zombie version of the lead singer in the band "Sha-na-na."




Siamese pumpkins (above)!



This (above) is only slightly more exaggerated than what you see on the street. Robert Crumb would love this girl!




Painterly paper-mache masks with oddball fabrics (above)...a delight for the eye.




Nice, very nice!



It's hard to believe that God isn't a cartoonist.




This (above) is the reason you don't see Wonder Woman on the street anymore, catching bad guys. She had an almost fatal attraction to Twinkies, and now leads a quiet life in a small town, eating Jenny Craig and watching daytime TV.



No comment!



Aaaaargh! Where's the eyewash!?