31 Days of Halloween - Day 12

Every year I've included a Halloween appropriate comic book story that I've written. This year the story comes from Scooby-Doo #145 with an August 2009 cover date. It's also one of the very last Scooby-Doo stories, of well over 100, that I wrote. I was glad to have some of my favorite collaborators along for the ride on this one. The credits can be found on the splash page below.

Click on each page to make it larger.

This story was a tribute to both my preference for practical make-up effects and professional monster actors over CGI and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Kudos to Robert Pope for filling the prop house with an incredible array of thinly disguised Hanna-Barbera cartoon references. In addition to the Alex Toth deisned monsters, there place is jam packed with "props" such as the jet and robot spider from Jonny Quest, Dick Dastardly's car from The Wacky Races, Kablooey the flying camel from Shazzan, Wally Gator, Frankenstein, Jr. and scores more. (How many can you identify?)There's even the dinosaur and giant penny from the Batcave. 

The plot itself was actually generally borrowed from How to Make a Monster, which is actually the second time I used that movie as the basis for a Scooby-Doo mystery. Tom Burden and Tim Sevine were included in one of my earliest Scooby-Doo stories. Named after Tim Burton and make-up maestro Tom Savini, they were meant to be one shot characters, but I ended up using both of them numerous times throughout my run on Scooby-Doo. A little trivia: Robert Pope modeled Tom Burden's appearance here on innovative comic book artist, Jim Steranko. 

Jacques Pierce is legendary make-up artist, Jack Pierce, who created the Universal monsters of the 1930s-1940s. Rick Broiler is none other than Rick Baker. Rick Broiler's co-conspirator in the story, Doug Bones, is in reality, superb actor and all around nice guy, Doug Jones who has performed as some memorable movie creators in movies such as Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy movies. 

I have no idea if Rick Baker has ever seen this story, but Doug Jones was very pleased by his tribute. 

Yes, I am aware at how dorky I look in this picture, the result of my trying to stifle a laugh at something Doug said just before the photo was taken. 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Movie 2

Final Destination 2 (2003) takes place a year after the events of the first movie and essentially follows the same formula, only this time the premonition involves a spectacular highway pileup of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The people who were meant to die, but were kept from being where they should have been when the highway accident occurred band together to try and beat death before they are all killed.

The Rube Goldberg death traps this time around are often more elaborate than those in the first movie, and often turn out to be false; close calls again narrowly evaded. Other complications are introduced that keep the story feeling fresh, and the characters involved this time around all tie into the events of the first movie. The characters are just as superficially developed as in the earlier movie, but things are kept moving at a pace that keeps you involved enough that this isn't a distancing factor.

So far, I'm pleased, and pleasantly surprised at how much I'm enjoying this franchise.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Movie 1

I've never seen any of the Final Destination franchise and decided that between today and tomorrow I'm going to watch the first four of them.

I was pleasantly surprised by Final Destination (2000). I hadn't expected much, but found myself pleasantly entertained throughout. About to embark on a school trip to Paris, Alex (Devon Sawa) has a detailed premonition of the plane's in air explosion. When events from his premonition starts to come true he tries to warn everyone, but his erratic behavior gets him and some of his fellow students and one teacher removed from the flight. The plane takes off killing everyone on board. It turns out that the force of death is one of predeterminism, and if you cheat death it will hunt you down and kill you by engaging super elaborate Rube Goldberg devices to make sure that you die like you are supposed to. It also kills in the order that the people who evaded it would have died had something else not intervened.

The movie is essentially a race against death's list of who dies next, and the bulk of the fun is seeing the intricate chains of trivial events that will lead to the demise of the characters as well as seeing if the characters can manage to escape these traps and cheat death yet again.

I've never been one to revel in body count movies, such as the Friday the 13th series, which substituted garden implements for the Rube Goldberg death traps. Mainly, this is because I find it boring to watch characters whose soul point is to get killed off, and are fleshed out accordingly. For whatever reason that didn't bother me here, and the characters are pretty slim on being realized beyond simple types. I found the bulk of the death scenes to be clever, and the game of trying to cheat death enough to keep me involved.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11 - Mask of the Day

For today's print and cut out paper mask choose from a trio of cowboys. There's this giveaway mask from Eaton's restaurant, or the friendly, smiling cowboy seen below whose eyes convey an inner sadness from lonesome nights on the prairie.

Or, you could put on this half-mask of Clint Eastwood if you want to be sure that no big kids will try and steal your bucket of treats.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 11

If you read Tuesday's post, it's clear that I have a fondness for really old Halloween costumes. These are the costumes that existed before the mass produced vinyl bib and plastic masks with the rubberbands that proliferated in the 1950s-1970s from companies such as ben Cooper and Collegeville.

Halloween costumes from the 1920s - 1940s had a look about them that was almost like some weird tribal ceremonial costumes. The materials used as well as the crudeness of craftmanship lends these costumes a lot of power, and photographs of children wearing these costumes radiate an unsettling creepiness that almost erases the human element completely and lend the images a quality that truly seems to capture that mysterious fluid nature of Halloween where the realms of the living and the otherworldly have overlapped.

If, like me, you are drawn to images such as those shown in this post you should purchase Ossian Brown's book Haunted Air which collects dozens of images like these and presents them beautifully. Haunted Air is a photo album without labels which further lends the images strange air of mystery as if they are relics that slipped into our world from somewhere else and have been meticulously collected over time.  Bookended by an introduction by David Lynch and an afterward by Geoff Cox, Haunted Air should be part of the collection of anyone passionate about Halloween and its history.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Movie 2

For one month each year, the town of Barrow, Alaska experiences a month of darkness. Just as the sun sets beginning this cycle, Barrow finds itself cut off more than usual. Cell phones are stolen and destroyed, computer and land lines fail, and so does the power. This is all preparation for the main event; a group of vampires come to town to take advantage of the isolation and the extended night to feast on the entire town.

30 Days of Night (2007) is a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic book series by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith (Niles was also one of the writers who worked on the film's screenplay). The build up to the attack is handled nicely. The cast is strong, the characters sympathetic, and the vampires fierce and visually tweaked just enough in the eyes to separate them from their human prey.

I rather enjoyed this movie, but afterwards felt that there was something missing from the core of the movie. It needed more suspense. Everything seemed to be presented in such a matter of fact manner that I never worried about any of the human survivors getting caught by the vampires, nor did I find the vampires terribly threatening, even though they are able to wipe out a whole town. The movie needed more tension, or more depth to the characters who were given just enough dimension to suggest they were real people. They were all likable, but I didn't find myself too invested in any of them. Maybe it's because we didn't spend enough time with them before things go to hell. Maybe it was just that the direction and editing able to deliver the goods, though the movie is certainly polished looking.

At any rate, I liked it enough that I'm sure I'll revisit it in the future.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Movie 1

Connecting werewolves to the physical and hormonal changes brought on by puberty is nothing new, but Ginger Snaps (2000) goes more specific, binding it to menstruation and troubled social issues and the search for a personal identity that adolescent girls go through.

Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) are two tightly bonded sisters a year apart in age, obsessed with death, dismissive of everyone who isn't them, suffering the trials of high school. One night Ginger is attacked by a werewolf, and unlike other movies, her change is gradual and seemingly permanent, both physically and emotionally. The more monstrous she becomes, the more radiant and confident in her own skin she becomes, and the more she grows apart from the devoted sister she starts to leave behind.

This movie feels as fresh now as it did when I first saw it around eight years ago. The characters feel true and the actors all deliver convincing and sympathetic performances. Some of the make-up effects are a little too apparent as make-up effects, such as Ginger's final look before she becomes completely wolf-like, and the wolf version itself, but since the story itself is so compelling, I found myself willing to forgive.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10 - Mask of the Day

Show the tween and teen girls in your neighborhood what a vampire is supposed to look like with this print and cut out paper mask.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10

Anyone who has set foot in a Michaels store looking for Halloween items is familiar with the Lemax Spooky Town collection. Taking up an entire side of one the aisles, these garishly colored and painted miniature buildings, characters and set pieces must be a pretty big hit as they seem to sell well, and they continue to issue new collections each year.

I look through them, too, but every year find that they really aren't to my taste. There's something cheap and kitschy about them in the sloppy painting they exhibit that just doesn't trigger any seasonal affection for them. I have picked up a few of the trick or treaters in costume and a few cemetery items, but overall, don't find much about these that appeal to me.

Be that as it may, I'm sure there are those of you out there who feel otherwise, and my own disinterest is not meant as a condemnation of your enjoyment. For you, here is the flyer for the 2008 collection -- not too old to be sure, but I came across it while organizing my office and thought it could benefit someone out there.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 9 - Movie

In Viy (1967) Khoma, a student at a monastery is summoned by a rich cossack's beautiful daughter whose dying wish is for his to read prayers over her corpse for three nights. Khoma, reluctant to do so, is afraid, and rightly so since the dead girl is actually a witch who terrorizes him each of the nights, putting his faith to the test.

An adaptation of the short story of the same title by Nikolai Gogol, this Russian film captures the feeling of a folk tale, both in its succinct storytelling and running time, and in its imagery. The film is beautiful to look at and delivers some memorable inventive visuals including Khoma being ridden by an old witch early in the movie and the strange monochromatic demons that the witch summons against Khoma in the film's stunning climax.

Viy was a real, and welcome, treat this season when so many of the movies I've watched over this year's countdown have been adequate at best. It's going to be hard for anything else I watch this month to beat it.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 9 - Mask of the Day

Today's print and cut out paper mask is the android Kikaida who battles the evil robotic animal men of Dark, and in his human form of Jiro plays a red guitar.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 9

This is the shameless self-promotion part of my Halloween Countdown. Those of you who visit this blog throughout the year can feel free to go look at something else right now as this will no doubt be familiar to you.

For those of you who only drop by during the month of October, this may be of interest to you. If you're looking for something to read that mixes horror with humor and adventure, weirdness, more monsters than you can shake a stick at, super-powered nuns, golems wearing jet packs, gorgeous artwork, and a dark, murderous, Halloween tie-in such as this:

...then you may want to pick up my graphic novel, Xombi.

If you want to learn more about it here's a batch of posts I did about Xombi, that should fill you in. You can also read the reviews on Amazon via the link below.


 

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 - Movie 2

Messiah of Evil (1973) is an eerie, dream-like movie from frequent George Lucas collaborators Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. My favorite Star Trek babe, Marianna Hill, travels to the coastal town of Point Dune in search of her father. He's missing and there's something very odd about this town which is populated by characters that would be right at home in a David Lynch movie. Eventually she learns that the town is cursed and the population is turning into soulless cannibals who hunt in packs, and that just by being in town she risks turning into one of them.

Messiah of Evil is definitely worth watching even though it is wildly uneven with some serious flaws in editing and narrative which make it sometimes hard to follow what's happening, and some less bothersome flaws in logic. These problems actually support the dream-like quality of the movie. There are some real stand-out haunting imagery in the film; brief glimpses into the strange behavior of the zombie-like residents, particularly where they gather to feed at the meat department at the super market. The out right horror scenes that take place in the same super market and inside a movie theater are well staged and very effective.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 - Movie 1

The rest of my family wanted to watch Beetlejuice (1988), so we did. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play a couple of recently deceased ghosts who find their cozy home being moved into by a family that they don't want living there. Unable to scare them way on their own, in desperation they turn to an unstable bio-exorcist for help.

Like many Tim Burton movies, there is so much in this movie that connects with me that I feel that I should love the movie as a whole far more than I do. It's a fun movie, with a great cast of actors and characters, fantastic visuals and darkly amusing ideas, but as a film that's clearly meant to be a comedy, it's not all that funny. For me, the element that seems to keep this movie from really shining is Beetlejuice himself. He has a couple of good moments, and is visually interesting, but his character is obnoxious and crude, but not in a way that makes him endearing or amusing. I don't know how much of this is the fault of the screenplay and how much of it is Michael Keaton's performance. I found that whenever he came on screen that the movie became far less enjoyable than in the scenes without him.

As it is, Beetlejuice is an okay movie that had the potential to be something really good.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8 - Mask of the Day

Some sort of Frankenstein's monster? An imposing henchman or other underworld figure? An accident victim? Someone suffering from severe eczema whose excessive scratching led to heavy scarring? Today's startling print and cut out paper mask is sure to be a conversation starter as the speculation continues.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 8

The Halloween season requires at least one visit by the headless horseman. Here are three:

"The Headless Horseman Pursuing Ichabod Crane" (1858) by John Quidor

Illustration by David Levine

Art by 4gottenlore

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 2

Duel (1971) a made for tv movie, which really launched Steven Spielberg's career as a director, has the simplest plot. A businessman (Dennis Weaver) is on his way to a meeting is chased and terrorized by the unseen driver of a malevolent looking oil truck. That's it for the full 90 minute running length.

The attacks from the truck run from nuisance danger such as not letting Weaver pass him on the highway and tailgating him at 90 miles per hour, to more direct attacks such as trying to push Weaver's car into a passing train, or trying to run him over while he tries to phone for help from a pay phone.

Other than his arm, and in one case, his boots, we never see the driver of the truck except as a suggestion behind the dirty windshield, making the truck itself seem like some sort of supernatural menace. We also have no idea why he's after Weaver's character, or if he's done this sort of thing with randomly chosen drivers in the past.

Spielberg successfully manages to continuously ratchet up the suspense and provides a variety of shots to keep things interesting in this mostly dialogue free movie which spends most of its time with Weaver behind the wheel of his car as he races for his life through the California desert.

This is well worth watching if you've never seen it before. If you've only ever seen it on tv with commercial interruptions, as I had before today, then it's worth revisiting on DVD where the movie is allowed to build without tension breaking interruptions for furniture polish.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 1

The Giant Gila Monster (1959) is one of my guilty pleasures. The movie which mixes rock n roll, hot rods, and a giant lizard may be cheap, but it's actually it's fairly entertaining and has the town sheriff actually being very respectful towards the town teenagers, especially superteen, Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan who would go on to invent hair conditioner) who works hard, supports his mother and sister, is polite, helpful, honest, can write and sing his own songs, keeps the town's cars running and the local kids out of trouble, and even defeats the giant lizard.

I watched this with my son today and we both noticed that the score was reminiscent, alternately of the spooky episodes of Jonny Quest and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The no frills dvd I have is from one of those enormous Mill Creek sets and has worse picture quality than my old vhs copy which I recorded off tv, which allowed you to see Director, Ray Kellogg reflected in the windshield of a truck  giving instructions to one of the victims. That bit is not visible on my dvd.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Mask of the Day

What could be creepier than the face of Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman? Not much, which is why he's today's print and cut out paper mask.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 7

These three photos are of my mother, at age nine, wearing her home made bat costume. The year is 1954.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 2

The Crater Lake Monster (1977) is almost hypnotically bad. Concerning a plesiosaur-type lake monster feeding off the cattle and humans who live along the lake the movie is just a mess of subpar acting, writing, directing and editing in particular. There is no way whatsoever to tell what time of day any scene is occurring at. Scenes filmed in bright daylight contain owl hoots and comments about how many stars can be seen in the sky. Other scenes seem to occur in all lighting and weather conditions which change between cuts. The one good thing about the movie is the cool Dave Allen stop-motion creature which in no way resembles to immobile and lifeless full size monster head prop used for close-ups.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Movie 1

I've grown a bit weary of the whole "found footage" type of movie. Yes, it's a great way to make a movie  for very little movie, but it also allows the filmmakers to present something that thin on story development and lacking an ending. Having said that, Trollhunter (2010), a found footage movie,  completely won me over.

College students out to film a story about dead bears and a possible poacher, instead find themselves in the company of Norway's officially sanctioned troll hunter, sent to kill them whenever they stray out of their territory and start causing problems in the human world. The movie is clever, playing against fairy tale expectations and providing scientific explanations for troll behavior, while being playful, particularly when setting bait for a troll that lurks under a bridge.

The cast is good, and the trolls, of which we are shown four varieties, look really cool. Overall, the movie feels really fresh, and gives a sense of what it would be like if all those tv shows like In Search of... and Monster Quest actually found the monsters they were looking for. This was a really fun monster movie.

31 Days of Halloween - Day 6 - Mask of the Day

For today's print and cut-out paper masks, I present two kings...

...and one Queen.