31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 Movie 1

"The Invisible Man" (1933) is one of my favorite of the classic Universla horror films. Directed with a perfect dose of humor by James Whale, this movie moves along at a brisk pace. While a showcase for John Fulton's groundbreaking special effects, the effects were in service to the story and never the reverse, something that a lot of modern movies would be better off remembering.

Claude Rains gives a terrific performance as Jack Griffin, a scientist who turns himself invisible, and while trying to create an antidote slowly goes mad turning into a murdering sociopath.

This movie should not be missed.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 Riddle

Why did Godzilla eat everything but the top five floors of the hotel?










Answer to yesterday's riddle: A choker.

In Comic Book Stores Today

Following hot on the heels of its television debut last Friday night, "The Secret Saturdays" appear in comic book form in "Cartoon Network Action Pack" #30 in a story by me, with art by Scott Jeralds, and a cover by "The Secret Saturdays" creator, Jay Stephens. Appropriate to the season it takes place in spooky, death trap laden ruins, and features a monster!

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8

Of course, now that I've complained about the limitations I've been feeling working with papier-mache, I bring you the amazing work of Pumpkinrot, whose very organic looking creations are all made from papier-mache. As I told him, his creatures look like they've unearthed themselves from a peat bog. His dioramas are layered with texture and beautifully lighted like a Mario Bava movie. I don't know how many kids are bold enough to walk this gauntlet in order to collect a treat, but I sure wish I could. If you live in Pennsylvania, then perhaps you'll round a corner and find yourself face to face with these witches, reanimated corpses and scarecrows. Lucky you, I say.

You can check out lots of photos documenting Pumpkinrot's yard scenes over the past years here. You'll also find a store where you can buy hand crafted creatures, pumpkins, and Halloween cards.

Pumpkinrot also has an incredible blog which celebrates all things Halloween all year round, with several posts a day. It may be light on text, but more than makes up for it with its heavy visual amazement and links to more treats of the season. I was pleased to see many familiar faces, names, and images, but even more delighted by the revelation of all that was new to me. This is my favorite Halloween hangout, and puts me in the mood for holiday each time I drop by. You really do get a sense that you are visiting somebody who has the good fortune to live in Halloweentown.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 Movie

Apparently, "Trailer Park of Terror" (2008) has been an audience favorite at a number of horror film festivals. Granted, for a low budget horror movie it has good production values, it's directed and shot competenntly, the sound is good, the make-up effects are well done, including a superior severed head, and the cast can act. However, as entertainment, I found it lacking.

The movie sets up a slew of negative trailer park resident/redneck stereotypes which become murderous zombies then pits them against a group of stereotype troubled teens pairing both sides up so that the teens get their poetic just desserts. To be honest, I was actually going along with it, and found myself enjoying about the first third or so of the movie, but when all the killing started, I found myself getting really bored.

Part of the problem is that everyone in the movie is really unlikeable. You feel for the character of Norma in the prologue, but once she's one of the undead, she's just another piece of undead trailer trash. All of the teens are pretty detestable, except the nerd who has no role, and no character in this movie. When the teens are split up, and sent to their varied tableaus of death, the film seems to wander all over the place with no focus and no tension whatsoever. The filmmakers try to add a lot of humor to the redneck zombie characters, and some of it is funny, but it makes the characters cartoons and completely strips them of any threat they might have been.

It's not hard to make zombies scary and threatening. We've all seen other, successful zombie movies. The fear of them is pretty primordial. They're like us, but not us, and they want to eat us. Just ahving them crowd around a character is enough to create tension. Here, the zombies, which are stereotyped southern hicks, are smarter than regular zombies, but not at all scary. There's never a moment, as there is in films like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" or "The Devil's Rejects" or any other movie where agroup of people venture into someplace they shouldn't, where in the back of your head you want to warn them to get the hell out of there. As I said no tension, and no characters to root for.

For gore fans, the blood and guts effects are done well, and there are deaths by Asian erotic massage, air compressor, amputation, beheading, demolition derby, flaying followed by deep frying if you're into that sort of thing, but none of it really seemed distressing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 Riddle

What kind of necklace did the mummy give his girlfriend?










Answer to yesterday's riddle: His trans-parents.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7

I discovered Tom Taggart
through the fantastic covers, interior pin-ups, and trading card images he was doing for DC Comics' Vertigo line in the mid-90s, such as "Sandman," and "Doom Patrol." I'd never seen anything like them, fully sculpted 3-dimensional creations with a sense of humor which perfectly captured the tone of the books they accompanied, and the characters they depicted.

I loved his work enough that I bought the sculpture he did for the cover of "Animal Man" #67, which proudly resides in my office. It was through this purchase that I met Tom, and he proved to be not just a great artist but a great friend as well.

He's incredibly versatile in works in several mediums, but I think his 3-d sculptures are where he really shines.


















In addition to illustration work and commissioned pieces, Tom also makes fantastic clocks featuring his own interpretations of well known monsters such as "The Fly," "Hellboy," and "Frankenberry," as well as monsters of his own invention.














He also has this great set of Halloween ornaments shown above. The ornaments are $25.00 each or 5 for $100.00 and come in two color options ; regular or patina.

The prices on the clocks range between $100.00 and $300.00, and Tom is willing to create commissioned pieces as well.
You can contact him through his website or directly by email.

Be sure to tell him I sent you.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 Movie 2

When it was first released, I must have seen "Poltergeist" (1982) a dozen times, then countless more times on video and cable over the next few years. Obviously I loved this movie. I'm guessing the last time I saw it was in the very early 1990s. I think in the years leading to now, I've been afraid to watch it because so many beloved movies of the past have let me down on later viewings, and I wanted to keep my fond memories pure. I need not have worried.

A family living in a modern, recently built, home suddenly find themselves invaded by paranormal forces who attack them and whisk their 5-year old daughter. Carol Anne into the world between ours and the afterlife. Aided by a team of paranormal investigators, the family fights to bring Carole Anne back and discovers a terrible secret about their housing development in the process.

"Poltergeist" was produced and conceived by Steven Spielberg and, according to the credits directed by Tobe Hooper. I've lost track of the back and forth arguments and documentation concerning the true director identity on this movie, but everything about it beginning with the family dog's nighttime foraging which introduces us to each family member down to nearly every composition and camera move (not to mention a scene where "A Guy Named Joe" is being shown on television. This is a movie that Spielberg later remade as "Always") screams Steven Spielberg.

It's a very well conceived movie. The actors who make up the family are very convincing in their relationships, the paranormal investigators are liekwise well conceived. The strange phenomena builds gently at first, each moment being a "wow," and then suddenly crashes in as a full on assault with hit after hit without ever getting stale. I know a lot of people who found this movie to be really scary, even though it is rated PG, and would now most likely be rated PG-13 because of one brief scene that takes place in a mirror over a sink.

All in all this movie is still a lot of fun.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 Movie 1

Not surprsingly, given today's main post, I watched "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949). Actually, I just watched the Ichabod half which is an anaimated adaptation of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," narrated and with songs performed by Bing Crosby.

I don't know that I have anything to add concerning this movie that hasn't been said before, but I still find it highly entertaining, and for me, is as essential Halloween viewing as "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." The visuals are terrific in this movie, even during the introduction to Ichabod, the rivalry between he and Brom Bones for the attention of Katrina Van Tassel, and especially during the Halloween party and the journey through the woods where Ichabod meets the headless horseman.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 Riddle

What does a little ghost call his mother and father?









Answer to yesterday's riddle: Skin diving.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6

As I mentioned during a previous Halloween countdown, for me, Halloween wouldn't be complete without at least one visit from the Headless Horseman. Around this time each year, guests at Walt Disney World's Fort Wilderness Resort and campgrounds have the good fortune to catch sight of the Headless Horseman gripping his lighted jack o'lantern while he searches for a replacement head, while taking part in the haunted hayride.

I think it would be even better if the Headless Horseman rode by the campsites and restaurants at night, truly haunting the resort. How cool would it be to look out your cabin window and see this figure galloping past in the woods?

The image is a photo of a photo hanging in the horse stables at the Fort Wilderness resort".

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5 Movie

You'd be hard pressed to find many genre movies made during the 1970s that didn't look like they were made for tv. "Chosen Survivors" (1974) is no exception. A group of eleven people selected to repopulate the earth after nuclear annihilation are sequestered in a high tech bunker 0ver 17,000 feet beneath the ground. Initially, the only problem they need to overcome is loudmouth CEO Jackie Cooper, who turns out to be the only character who isn't a complete cypher, and he's pretty one dimensional.

Before their first night is through they have a bigger problem. An elecrical problem causes the lights to go out and somehow let in hordes of vampire bats which start working their way through the human population, no matter how they try to fight back.

The premise behind this movie isn't bad, and I was never bored, but the script and execution are pretty poor. Aside from the group of undeveloped characters, this movie spreads inaccurate, and negative bat propaganda, and clearly did not have the ASCPA on hand, as you can clearly see Richard Jaeckel smacking real bats out of the air with a pillow. You can argue they might only have been stunned, but hitting animals is hitting animals. I had this same problem with "Food of the Gods". Most of the bat attack scenes mix poor chroma key superimposition with rubber prop bats. It's a real hokey movie.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5 Riddle

What is Dracula's favorite sport?









Answer to yesterday's riddle: He was supposed to save his dessert for last.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 5

Need some Halloween decorations and are handy with scissors, glue and an x-acto knife? Even if you're not, you should check out Ray O'Bannon's amazing haunted paper toys. You'll be sure to want to learn those skills if you do.

There are masks, moving bats, graveyard dioramas and hearses, paper coffins and characters, and even board games that you can build yourself.

All of it's free.

How's that for a treat for your Halloween bucket?

Not enough? Here's more

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4 - Movie 2

In "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" (1957) Michael Landon plays a smart teenager with some severe anger management issues. When he reluctantly turns to a pychiatrist, played by Whit Bissell, for help, he unwittingly puts his fate into the hands of a mad scientist who uses drugs and hypnosis to revert Landon into a murderous werewolf.

For the first half this movie is really, really good. Director Gene Fowler (who would soon direct one of my favorite monster movies of all time "I Married a Monster From Outer Space") puts his background as an editor to good use. The movie is well paced, and well acted. Landon is excellent as the troubled teen whose anger is always just boiling under the surface, and Whit Bissell, who played a lot of scientists (on both side of the sanity spectrum) in the 1950s manages to make the pseudo-scientific nonsense he spouts sound like it actually means something. Even a musical number doesn't bring the movie to a halt. What does bog this movie down is all of the police procedural that follows the werewolf's claiming a second victim. Landon is absent for much of the film from this point forward which doesn't help. The look of the werewolf is a bit goofy, and its savagery isn't much of a match for the anger its human form enacts.

Overall, its a very uneven movie, but does rise above most of the b-movies of this era that were cranked out on extremely small budgets and even smaller shooting schedules. It's definitely worth viewing.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4 - Movie 1

Despite its contemprary setting, Stepehn King's novella "The Mist" was written as a throwback to horror and science fiction stories which appeared in pulp magazines in the 1930s. Frank Darabont's cinematic adaptation is similarly a throwback to monster movies made between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s.

"The Mist" (2007) has a very basic premise familiar to anyone who's watched "Night of the Living Dead," "Dawn of the Dead" or John Carpenter's "The Thing." After a powerful storm, residents of a New England town buying supplies at a supermarket find themselves isolated and locked in when a strange all encompassing mist swallows up their town. Worse, the mist contains "things"--creatures that look like they've escaped from H.P. Lovecraft's version of Skull Island. The creatures that have analogs in our normal world; insects, spiders, flying creatures, we get a pretty good look at, but there are others; huge lumbering beast that we only get to see in part or as hazy silhouettes, which makes them all the more awesome and mysterious.

These things, of course, are hungry and the people holed up in the supermarket do what they can to survive while fear, panic, suspiscion, mistrust, religious zeal, social divisions, and mob mentality chip away at their union as survivors, and humanity facing the collapse of civilization reverts to its brutal nature.

I was unable to see "The Mist" (2007) when it was released theatrically, which is too bad because this movie must have been something to see on the big screen. This movie was riveting. The tension began from pretty much the first frame and did not let up until the end credits had rolled. The cast was excellent and Darabont did a good job of, for the most part, not telegraphing which cast members were going to be bumped off. I strongly recommend this movie.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4 Riddle

Why did the mother monster scold her son for eating people?









Answer to yesterday's riddle: Frostbite.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 4

Before William Marshall tackled the role of Prince Mamuwalde, better known as the vampire "Blacula," celebrated actor Morgan Freeman impersonated author Bram Stoker's famous vampire, Dracula numerous times as a recurring role on the television series, "The Electric Company." Freeman made a pretty imposing Dracula, yet managed to keep him a bit silly while teaching kids about how he loves to take baths in a casket, and making mistakes when taking orders in his diner.

Freeman was featured in 780 episodes of "The Electric Company" in a variety of roles, including the coolest cat of them all, Easy Reader.

He is shown here with fellow cast mates, Luis Avalos, Skip Hinnant, and Jim Boyd as the Wolf Man.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 Movie 2

"The Reptile" (1966) makes up for the other three lackluster movies I watched so far. I watch this every few years and it's always like slipping on a pair of comfortable slippers. This Hammer production features many of the same sets as "Plague of Zombies" which was filmed at the same time, and stars Ray Barrett, Michael Ripper, Jennifer Daniel, Noel Willman and Jacqueline Pearce.

Unlike other monster movies that give away what the monster looks like on the poster art, even if you know what the Reptile looks like (and it looks great. The make-up was created by Roy Ashton) the movie is still very suspenseful. We may know going in what is behind the strange series of deaths plaguing a small English village, but we still don't know who, or what the Reptile is. There are many other intriguing mysteries related to the deaths as well, and odd characters and their interpersonal behaviors as well as unknown motivations driving the main mysterry forward.

The monster itself is kept off screen for most of the movie, and there are some well done red herrings involving its true identity. Even when you know who the Reptile is, the film remains suspenseful and filled with nice touches all the way to the end. It may not have either Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, but "The Reptile" is one of Hammer's better movies.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 Movie 1

In the first three days of this year's Halloween countdown I've watched three movies none of which rattled the bars of my cage. Today's movie is "Curse of the Fly" (1965) statting Brian Donlevy, George Baker and Carole Gray. This is the second sequel to "The Fly" (1958), coming seven years after "Return of the Fly" (1959). "Return of the Fly" definitely feels like it was made quickly to capitalize on the success of the original, but while not as sofisticated has a b-movie charm of its own and specific connections to the first film.

"Curse of the Fly" is another story altogether. The only real connection to either of the earlier films is that the names of the scientists is Delambre and the are working on teleportation experiments with unhealthy side effects. George Baker plays Martin Delambre, allegedly the grandson of the scientist, Andre Delambre, played by David (Al) Hedison in "The Fly" which would make Brian Donlevy's Henri Delambre the son of Andre, even though his only son was named Philippe.

But why quibble with continuity when this movie has so many more problems. Martin comes to the aid of a woman who has just escaped from a mental institution (though he doesn't know that) marries her after knowing her for about a week, then brings her home where his family is no only conducting their unethical and illegal experiments, but also housing in cells, family members and former assistants turned into disfigured an d unstable mutations. Martin's intention is to keep all of this from her. When she stumbles upon one of the groteque characters everyone conspires to make her feel that it was nothing but a nightmare, making this poor woman think she's going insane. When a police inspector and a caretaker from the mental institution come snooping around things become complicated for teh Delambres and more bad decisions are made leading to the tragic finale.

It's not unwatchable. The performances range from phoned in to rather good. For a monster movie, the disfigured humans barely figure into this, and their make-ups are pretty minimal. One of them looked like a man with a putty covered stocking pulled over his head. There also isn't much in the way of horror, or suspense. The movie does move along at a pretty decent pace, but there are too many similarities in its structure (as well as specific plot points and even scenes) to the far superior The Alligator People which in turn was based on the formula of the original "The Fly." I'd rather watch either of those movies than "Curse of the Fly."

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 Riddle

What would you get if you crossed a werewolf and a snowball?






Answer to yesterday's riddle: Incomplete!

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3 Spooky Bonus

Cryptozoological creatures? Weird tv horror hosts? Robots? Jonny Quest-styled adventure? Cool technology? Buff scientist? Babe arcane cultural expert? Kid you'd wish you were if you were eleven? Mysterious artifact?

For all this and more check out "The Secret Saturdays" which debuts tonight at 8:00 PM (e/p) on Cartoon Network. Then hit your comic book store next Wednesday for more "Secret Saturdays" in "Cartoon Network Action Pack" #30.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 3

Here are a couple of pumpkins featured in Mickey Mouse's garden in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. Stay tuned for more Disney related tricks and treats throughout the month.

In the meantime scroll through Jeff Pepper's excellent Disney blog for more Disney related treats and history including beautiful photos of the gravestones surrounding the Haunted Mansion, and images and information about some of Walt Disney's creepy cartoons including the one where Mickey Mouse met the Universal Monsters.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2 Movie

Today I took advantage of the gloomy, cold, Fall weather and watched an appropriate movie. I also wanted to be sure I still got in a movie today while leaving time to watch the VP debate tonight.

Today's movie stars another VP; Vincent Price. "Twice Told Tales" (1963) loosely adapts three stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The movie came out in the middle of Roger Corman's popular Edgar Allan Poe movies, which also starred Vincent Price, and while it seems to be trying to emulate the style of Corman's pictures, it's hard to say with certainty what level of influence they had on this movie getting made, or its actual production values.

The three stories are "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" (from the story of the same name which appeared in Hawthorne's short story collection "Twice Told Tales.") also starring Sebastian Cabot. This story centers around two old friends a possible fountain of youth and an attempt to resurrect one of the men's dead wife. Except for the youth serum, this adaptation has very little to do with the source story. The presentation is very stagey and doesn't really get moving until about 3/4 of the way in. You can see the ending coming, but it is still effective when it arrives.

The next story is "Rappaccini's Daughter" (from the story of the same name which appeared in Hawthorne's short story collection "Mosses from an Old Manse"). Of the three, this adaptation sticks closest to its source material. Here a student falls in love with the daughter of a mad scientist, who to keep her from sinning (like his departed wife) has altered her blood chemistry so that she kills anything she touches. Also leaning on the stagey side, this one is engaging, though the ending is a bit hokey.

The final segment is "The House of the Seven Gables" (adapted from Hawthorne's novel of the same name). This is more like a garish E.C. Comics adaptation than anything resembling the novel which spawned it. Even so, this segment, which also stars Beverly Garland and Richard Denning is very enjoyable and fits closest with the feel and look of the Corman Poe movies. Vincent Price starred in a superior and more faithful adaptation of "The House of the Seven Gables" in 1940. I recommend that anyone watch these two versions back to back, starting with the earlier one. It will prove to be an entertaining and highly amusing experience.

This movie, as I said, felt very stagey, and the sets looked like sets, especially in "Rappaccini's Daughter." The sets were also pretty bare bones, but not in a way that was stylized or creatively filmed to create the illusion of more. Overall the performances were good, and I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. It was a perfect match for the weather.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2 Riddle

What kind of grades did the Headless Horseman get?










Answer to yesterday's riddle: It dampens their spirits.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 2

I'm constantly amazed by some of the elaborate yard hauntings that people put together for Halloween. I try to go all out each year, and feel I do a pretty decent job considering that all of my creations are constructed out of papier-mache or plastic wrap and packing tape and that the only motion and sound they emit is it the wind blows them against the tree trunk. Still, it's better than taping a smiling cardboard scarecrow to my door and calling it quits.

Folks like animator, James Lopez are in a completely different league, and to be honest, I'm completely envious of their abilities and resources. Inspired by two of Disney's most popular attractions, James has continued to develop his own personal yard hauntings into elaborate spectacles evoking the Haunted Mansion one year, and last year, he erected a crashed pirate ship on his front lawn equipped with fully animatronic skeleton pirate and crow figures who exchange a well written, funny banter accompanied by computer controlled thunder and lightning effects. James has used the two characters (and previously, just the skeleton) in a variety of routines that are highly comical, and must amaze the trick or treaters who pass through his Glendale neighborhood. The sekeleton and the crow should be tv horror hosts.













I wish someone would teach me how to create my own audio animatronic characters as well as provided the software to run them.

James also builds all of his props and characters himself, and they all look amazing. It's not too surprising since his home office looks like this...





He has a website which features numerous photos and great videos of his creations in action,and a blog
I acn't wait to see what he does this year, and wish I were in Southern California so I could go check it out in person.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 Movie

I wanted to start with something from the 1930s that I hadn't seen in a while. I chose "The Ghoul" (1933) starring Boris Karloff, Ernest Thesiger, Cedric Hardwicke, and Ralph Richardson. I wish I'd chosen something else.

"The Ghoul" concerns a dying Egyptologist (Karloff with some seriously disfigured makeup) who insists on being buried under certain conditions which include a valuable jewel, all of which he claims will bring him back to life at an appointed time. However, if the jewel is not buried with him, he will return as a murderous walking corpse.

Of course the jewel is removed from his body before burial and Karloff comes back from the grave to get it back from a houseful of unlikeable schemers.

The film is beautifully shot with great sets, and it's nice to see Karloff and Thesiger together two years before "Bride of Frankenstein," but this movie is unsuspenseful with an uneven mix of humor and intrigue in the typical old dark house formula it follows. If any of the characters had been remotely likeable, it might have been more enjoyable, and Karloff seems to stumble through it in a role that's almost reduced to a cameo appearance.

There are far worse movies than this, and if you're a fan of Karloff, or classic horror, it's worth checking out, but otherwise you can live without it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 Riddle

Why don't ghosts go out in the rain?









Remember to post your guess in the comments section and to check back tomorrow for the answer.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 Spooky Bonus 2

Like any good night of trick or treating, mine is not the only house to stop at. Here is a list of all the (confirmed) neighbors participating in this year's Halloween Countdown. Please don't soap their windows, or toilet paper their trees. Stop by, take a treat from them, and leave them one in their comments bucket as well.

If you are missing from this list, please let me know and I will add you. Likewise, if you'd like to be removed, I'll do the same, but then I won't have any control over whether or not your windows get soaped. Please feel free to swipe this list of links for your own sites as well. Just remember to add me to it.

I have to say, I'm really impressed by how much this list expands each year. I can't wait to see what everyone has to offer this year.


All Eyes and Ears

Armagideon Time

The Armchair Chef

Art by Bubba Shelby

Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng

Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng:The Dungeon

Branded in the 80s

Cavalcade of Awesome

Comic Coverage

Cool-Mo-Dee

Creepy Los Angeles

Dave Lowe Design!

Digital Meltdown

Digital Meltdown Music Blogroll

Distinctly Jamaican Sounds

Diversions of the Groovy Kind

Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular

Dr. Squid's Smorgasbord of Terror!

Drunken Severed Head

Frankensteinia

Franklin Mint

Geek Orthodox

Geektarded

Gothtober

Halloween Addict

Halloween in the Time of Cholera

The Hallowe'en Tree

Harvey's Midnight Hour

The Holiday Queen

Horror Host Graveyard

The Horrors of it All

House of Wax

Idle Minds Inc.

Magic Carpet Burn

Mark Harvey's World

Mike Segretto

Monsterama

Monster Crazy

Monster Memories

Monster Rally

Monsters and More

Moongem Comics

Mostly Ghostly

Mother Firefly's Faster Pussycats

Music from the Monster Movies 1950-1969

Musty TV

Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anywhere Else

Neato Coolville

Negative Pleasure

Nostalgia Factory

A Nostalgic Halloween

Oh the Horror

Orange and Black

Para Abnormal

Plaid Stallions

Plastic Pumpkins

Pumpkin Hollow

Pumpkinrot

Random Acts of Geekery

Sailormoms

Secret Mountain Laboratory

The Sexy Armpit

Skull a Day

Sweet Skulls

Tales to Astonish

13 Visions

Tikiranch

Trixie's Treats

Universal Horror Sounds

Valhella

Vinnie Ratolle's Records

Weird Hollow

Wonderful Wonderblog

X Entertainment

Many of you will be wondering what? Where's Secret Funspot? Sadly, Kirk will not be joining us this year. His computer lost an argument with an electrical storm, so he was unable to do any prep work, and says he's looking forward to merely being an observer this year. I suspect though that he won't be able to stay out of it for long, so stop by his place and ring the doorbell anyway.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1 Spooky Bonus 1

I chose Jeff Preston to lead off with because his painting "The Costume" (shown in the previous post) really exemplifies so much of what Halloween is like when you are a kid. You truly believe that that vinyl bib and thin plastic mask is going to transform you into a nearly exact incarnation of the character you are impersonating. Of course now, kids costumes have evolved to point where they really do come close with padded muscles and accessories, vs the bib with the illustration, which also had to declare in large print just what character you were supposed to be, I'm guessing to help avaoid the embarassment for adults opening their doors and having no idea what Saturday morning animated character you were. I'd love to have a print of this. I wonder if Jeff would barter artwork. Hmmm.

Jeff is incredibly versatile. You can see more of his art here and here. The range of subject matter is impressive and a bit startling when juxtaposed with one another, but it's his monster renderings which truly resonate with me.

More amazing to me is that Jeff's artwork is done with markers. Or as Jeff elaborated:

"Well not "magic marker" but rather prismacolor, tria and copic markers all alcohol based. I do the small detail work with small brush pen markers then the markers and finally some color pencil and acrylic highlights. But it's all about 90% marker."


Jeff also says to stay tuned to the "Darkhorse Presents" myspace online comics page, "I just finished the first "Creepy" story done in a quarter of a century! I had a blast doing it and it was the assignment I've been waiting for since I was a kid."

Sounds like a dream job to me. I can't wait to see it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

Welcome to my third annual month-long Halloween countdown. For each day of October I will post a variety of tricks and treats for your enjoyment. If you are a returning visitor, then welcome back. If you're new to these parts and would like to see what you are in for, you can take a look at last year's countdown here and the countdown for 2006 here.

This year's format will be somewhat similar with my daily movie viewing for the season as well as a daily riddle with the answer provided on the following day. I'm also hoping to find time to put together another DIY project and another contest. Some new features this year:

Beginning tomorrow, look for a number of posts about incredible yard haunters, people who go to extra lengths to make their lawns and homes a seasonal beacon in neighborhoods across the country.

Beginning with the above image by Tennessee illustrator, and fellow Classic Horror Film Board member, Jeff Preston. I'm also planning to bring attention to a number of artists whose love of the season and love of monsters inspires their work. You can found out more about Jeff's work in the post that follows.

Unlike real world trick or treaters, repeat visitors are welcome her, and encouraged. Costume is required, and please feel free to drop tricks, or treats into the comments section.