Monster Mask Mash-Up

I'm still alive, just preparing for tomorrows "festivities."  In case you still need some ideas on what to wear for Halloween here's some monster mask ads from the 70's and 80's...

Famous Monsters 1976

Leave it to Famous Monsters to have a collection of "classic" monsters, and a nice selection of hands too.  I was curious about the adjusted for inflation price on these masks, and so I checked out the CPI Inflation Calculator. The basic cost of these masks are $40, and figures out to $159.50 in 2011 dollars!  Kids of the 70's, I guess you saved up your allowances for like 3 years if you bought of these.

With the release of Star Wars comes the Star Wars masks...

Starlog 1978

... and the Star Wars knock-off masks too.  I'm a big fan of Spacetrooper and Death Invader.

Starlog  1978

If you bought those Star Wars masks back in 1978 for $39.95 I've got some good news and bad news...

Fangoria 1981

The good news is that in this 1981 ad, Darth Vader is $49.99, and Chewbacca is $64.99.  Good move on purchasing early. Although what's with that price jump?  Did the cost of fake hair go through the roof in 3 years?  Sorry if you bought C-3PO back in 1978, you could have saved five bucks if you simply waited a few years.

Here's some interesting and original masks from Death Studios who are still in business...

Fangoria 1981

I think like the Astroroth the best.  The Hell Spawn's "bony finger-like" mouth is a unique design.

Next is a Count Fangor mask.  Count Fangor was a comic that ran in the pages of Fangoria for a short while.  I don't think he ever caught on, but I guess he was popular enough for his own mask.

Fangoria 1980

Finally here's an ad for the famous (well sorta famous) Halloween III (1982) masks...

Fangoria 1983

These masks are supposedly fetching big prices from collectors today.  I'm actually surprised that original "Silver Shamrock" versions even exist.  Every rubber mask I had when I was a kid started to rot within about 5 years.   If any mask collectors reading this who would like to leave a comment on how you preserve your old  masks I'd be interested to hear about it.

This ad also gives me a reason to post this clip...



Hmm, maybe I should have made this post 7 days ago.

The Second Scariest Film Clip in the World

Here's a follow up to the post I made last October.  This is another one of those real life Bigfoot reenactments that left a big impression on me when I was a kid...



Here's a very accurate quote left by joeyvader on YouTube...

 It says it took them a couple of hours to get back to sleep...I think it would have taken me more like a couple years to get back to sleep...

Exactly.  Who could ever go back to sleep after an experience like that?  I was a kid living in the suburbs, and I had a hard time sleeping after watching this.  I don't know what I would have done if I was supposed to go camping a day or two after seeing this.    

Yes, Virginia, there is a Goblin Shark

"My mommy always said there were no monsters - no real ones - but there are."

- Newt  Aliens (1986)

This thing has been kicking around the 'nets' for a while now, but in case you've missed it let me introduce you to the Goblin Shark.  It's a real life creature that seems to have a little bit of Alien DNA...

Cheap Costume Ideas from 1976

Here's some cheap (and I do mean cheap) Halloween costume (well more like makeup) ideas from Dynamite #20 from 1976.  If you were a elementary school kid in the 70's or 80's I'm sure you remember this magazine. 

If I was the kid who had to wear the macaroni and Honeycomb cereal glued to my face I'd be pissed (actually he doesn't look too happy).  Maybe these ideas would work as a rainy day fun activity, but it would be very embarrassing to try one as a serious Halloween costume.

Also if you read the article they call for "surgical glue" to glue all the stuff onto the kids faces.  First I don't know where you would buy surgical glue (the article says the drugstore, but really?), and secondly that sounds like a horrible idea.  From what I know surgical glue is very similar to super glue, and super glue isn't an acceptable makeup adhesive.  Spirit gum has been used for decades in theater and film to glue things like fake mustaches and beards on actors, and this seems like a much safer adhesive to use for your space alien makeup.

Ultimately let's face the cold hard truth people. These makeups are simply not very good.  Now some might say, "Oh but it's fun for kids!" and "This was good for the 1970's."  I say no. No it's not.  I've seen much better makeups for kids in books from the 70's (maybe I'll do a post on them).  Kids would much prefer to learn makeup techniques that look like they come from film or TV.  Even if it's something extremely challenging for children to accomplish it would have been better to try something more advanced than this lame "face odyssey."   

Alfred Hitchcock's Ghost Stories for Young People

Here's the cool cover art for the Alfred Hitchcock's Ghost Stories for Young People vinyl LP...

OK I know, that's an easy one to find online, but how about the back...

That's not so easy to find.  Now future internet generations (or as long as this blog exists) can see the B&W illustration of a child terrified by a huge ethereal letter from Alfred Hitchcock.
              
If you would like to listen to this recording you can thank YouTuber, VintageHorrorSounds,  for uploading the entire album...


Also the album is available on CD or download at Amazon.

Trick or Treat or Tease

It's October, and that means it's time for a month long celebration of Halloween stuff.

If you know this blog, you know not to expect a new post every day or anything extreme like that. I'll certainly be more active this month than in the past, and I'm hoping to have a few posts each week.

The finale for the this month will be a new Halloween animation. I don't want to state explicitly what I'm doing, but if you remember those Disney Haunted Mansion concept art animations I did in 2009, I made a little comment in a post that might give you an idea of what I'm doing. You can hunt for that post if you like a challenge, or simply look at the picture above.

So when finished will this animation be a trick or a treat?  Heck I don't even know yet, but for now you get a tease...

 

It's Educational!

I wanted to do some sort of back to school themed posts for September.  So I looked at a few elementary school text books from the 1940's thru 1970's, but couldn't find anything very interesting or original.

I did think this 1955 cover for a Random House "Allabout" book was kinda fun...

It's about famous scientific expeditions, and the mysterious illustrations make it look like it could be about dinosaurs, mummy's curses, and monstrous creatures of the deep. 

Next is a 1970's brochure for the American Museum of Atomic Energy (now called the American Museum of Science and Energy.  I blame the name change on Homer Simpson.) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Hmm, I wonder if this means Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist TV was nuclear powered.

Lastly I found this book...

I'll try to get around to reading it sometime.  God knows the writing on this blog can use improvement.

Tombstone Junction

I have one last western themed brochure to share, it's Tombstone Junction in Cumberland Falls, Kentucky.  This park was notable for having a full-size operating steam train that ran on a 2½ mile track.

I was a little skeptical of the "See the World's Top Country & Western Stars Perform" claim (see the yellow circle above), but after checking out the Wikipedia entry it seems this was totally true.

When other small parks fold up they usually just quietly go bankrupt, but it sounds like Tombstone Junction went out in a blaze of glory.  The place caught fire twice - once in 1989 which caused serious damage, and again sometime around 1991 which was the final coup de grâce for the park. Then according to the wiki entry even the wooden train cars were intentionally burnt to salvage the scrap metal in 1992. Although it's reported the burning cars rolled away uncontrolled and crashed in a flaming heap.  I think I might have bought tickets to see that.

Ghost Town in the Sky

Continuing with the western theme for this month here's a brochure from 1979 for Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. This park has been in bankruptcy for the last few years, and if you care about such matters you can read about the whole mess here.




If you want to see what Ghost Town in the Sky looked like in 2007 (which I think was the last year the park was open) here's a link to a pictorial "TPS Report."

Animated Concept Art from Western River Expedition: The Last Roundup

Here we go folks with the last of the Western River Expedition concept art animations. I took last week off because I needed to attend to other things which took priority, but it also gave me extra time to think about how to present this final animation.

What we have this time is a collection of Marc Davis's art arranged in a sequence that's basically in order of how they could have been presented if they were in the actual attraction. Let me make it clear, they would not have appeared back-to-back like this. This is simply a progression of selected show scenes.

Since I always like to present Marc's unadulterated art, here's what I've animated...


The "singing" cactus would have appeared early on in the ride...


... and so would the singing cowboy and longhorns.



The drunken Indian and jail escape above would appear somewhere in the middle of the ride in the town of Dry Gulch.


And lastly the masked "banditos" are the final show scene before attraction drops you down a waterfall.

Now let's watch the animation...




The D23 Expo 2011 (a convention hosted by Disney for fans) was last week (August 19 to 21 ), and coincidentally featured a short presentation on Western River Expedition by long time Disney Imagineer Tony Baxter. Tony had just started working at Imagineering when the WRE was being designed, and he is the man responsible for the Big Thunder Mountain Railway. So who better than Tony to give a kind of virtual ride- thru...




Final Comments

Until I saw the Tony Baxter video a couple of days ago I was planing to use this for the primary music...



Do singing cactus sound like chipmunks? I thought it's possible. Although now I don't know if the cactus would have been animated. In the model which Tony showed there's an awful lot of cactus, and that makes me wonder if the cactus were planed to be static figures. There were cactus that looked like humans on Disneyland's Rainbow Caverns Mine Train (later called Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland), and they didn't move. Then again, WRE was supposed to have a animatronic cartoon talking owl named Hoot Gibson (which Tony didn't mention) who was going to be a sorta host/guide - so maybe moving singing cactus would be a part of the ride. Does anyone out there have a solid answer on this?

The big thing that sunk Western River Expedition was it's huge cost, but some un-PC elements didn't help things either. The dunk Indian "talking" to the wooden Indian is a funny gag, but I don't think it would ever had made the cut into the final ride. Although one could make the argument that most of the pirates in POTC are drunk, and certainly many of the cowboys in WRE are drunk too - so the Indian isn't being singled out. Also it looks like some of the art in the D23 had been changed to remove the sombreros from the "banditos" and thus making them simply "bandits" which avoids any more potential un-PC elements.

While Marc Davis is a master of staging, I don't know how the jail escape would work. It's a funny gag on paper or for an animated cartoon, but I don't know if it would "read" in the actual attraction. From the drawing it looks like dirt is flying into the air, and I don't think that would be possible to do. Never the less, I still animated it as I thought it was intended - although the burrowing looks like the way Bugs Bunny sometimes travels. If I was working on WRE I'd suggest the way to stage this gag is to have the mound of dirt already created, and just have the escaping criminal pop his head out of the ground at the end of the burrow. He'd quickly look around, and then go back down.

I got a little artsy/cheesy at the end to illustrate the intended waterfall finale of WRE. I hope you liked it, and I didn't embarrass myself too much.

Stagecoach Stop USA

Hope this isn't too much of a disappointment for anyone, but I'm taking a little break from the Western River Expedition animation this week.

But in keeping with the western theme this month here's a brochure from the now defunct Stagecoach Stop USA in Irish Hills Michigan...




It's sad that this roadside attraction closed back in 2009. It was a fun place for a family to visit on a quick day trip. Along with the Prehistoric Forest this is another Irish Hills attraction that's a victim of the recent "economic downturn."

Animated Concept Art from Western River Expedition: Horse on the Roof

Last time I animated a Western River Expedition saloon singer, and this time I'm animating a horse on the saloon porch roof.

There's two variants of the "Horse on the Roof" art I've seen. Here's one that looks like it's at night and has three saloon girls in the foreground.

Mary Blair's interpretation of Marc Davis's "Horse on the Roof"

This version is reportedly done by Mary Blair who was valued by Walt Disney himself for her expert color styling.

Then there's the "daylight" version by Marc Davis, and instead of the saloon girls there's a drunk cowboy and dog.

Marc Davis's "Horse on the Roof" 1968

This above picture is from Jason Surrell's The Disney Mountains, and that is a book I happen own. This means I was able to get good scan of the art for once, and this makes animation a lot easier.

Now let's look at the animation...




Closing Comments...

It's been reported that the lighting in load area for Western River Expedition would make it appear as is if the sun was just setting, and so therefore the ride would take place at "night." This makes the coloring of Mary Blair's art much more appropriate. Although if it's night, what are the kid, "Ma" and "Grandma" doing still walking around town? Shouldn't they be getting ready for bed? Aren't there cows to be milked at dawn or something? Am I overthinking this?

Animated Concept Art from Western River Expedition: Saloon Singer

Western River Expedition at Walt Disney World was planned to be a kind of sequel to the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. The building designed to house WRE was named Thunder Mesa, and themed to look like rocky cliffs and bluffs. Along with WRE, Thunder Mesa was reportedly going to be home to three other attractions - a runaway mine train ride (that idea would eventually become Big Thunder Mountain Railroad), and hiking and pack mule trails winding up the side of cliffs.

Thunder Mesa Art

To ride the Western River Expedition park guests would enter inside Thunder Mesa thru a cave-like passage, and board small boats much like Pirates of the Caribbean at the Disney parks. Part of the journey would take them through a western town called Dry Gulch. It's here the guests would witness all types of rowdy cowboy activity. Like a lively scene from the front porch of a saloon...

"Saloon Singer" by Marc Davis

... so now here's this concept art animated to look like audio-animatronics with simulated show lighting...



Closing Comments...

Long time Disney composer Buddy Baker (he did the music for the Haunted Mansion) was supposedly going to write the music for WRE. To the best of my knowledge no WRE music was ever recorded. So for my animation the saloon singer is Tammy Grimes from a 1963 episode of the TV western The Virginian entitled "The Exiles." Here's Tammy's performance if you wish to check it out...



I learned it's really hard to animate a piano player. If I was in charge of programming an animatronic piano man I'd be asking (more like begging) that we use some sort of motion capture to do the job.

Lastly if you want to learn more about Western River Expedition please visit Widen Your World. This was the first place on the internet to seriously document the history of WRE.

The Western River Expedition is Coming

Howdy to all you folks out there in blog-o-land!

*chirping crickets*

Is anyone still out there?

Well if you are reading this, and you enjoyed those Haunted Mansion concept art animations I did a few years ago I've got something else brewing. I'm animating Marc Davis's art from the never built Western River Expedition.

Marc Davis and a model of a Western River Expedition show scene.

For you people not up on Disney theme park history, Western River Expedition was a epic attraction designed by legendary Disney animator and Imagineer Marc Davis that was originally supposed to be built for the opening of Walt Disney World. Due to many factors the project got pushed back, and then back again, and was eventually abandoned.

That's only brief summery, and so if you want to learn more about the history of Western River Expedition check out this Wikipedia entry which also has a few great links to further WRE content from across the vast interweb.

So anyways to spark your interest for the new animations, here's a little tease of of what's coming in August...



Please leave a comment, and let me know how interested you are in this project. Encouragement can only help in getting these animations completed.

Howe Caverns Brochure

I think this summer I'll go underground, and by underground I mean as in posting numerous cave brochures (are you out there reading this Todd?).

I've mentioned previously I've collected a lot of cave brochures, and although they don't make for very popular posts I thought I might as well use them up.

So anyway for those that are still reading let's look at Howe Caverns brochure...


If you watched the video above (thanks NetGeo) you saw what the Howe Caverns tour guides wear today (which is basically a nylon windbreaker). But did you notice what the uniform looked like in this retro brochure? Here I'll help you out...

It reminds me of a doorman at some fancy apartment. This was a classic look, and I'm sorry to see it's gone.

I love those "cave models." They make it look like they are the only people in the cave, and they are free to roam as they please (and possibly get married too).

Penn's Cave Brochure

The brochure's front and back, or vice versa

The authors of the book Roadside America (they also have a swell website too) described Penn's Cave as one of this country's "lazy-man's cave tours" since you ride in a boat throughout the tour.

So if Penn's Cave is "America's only all water cavern" that you "See it by boat" who are those people seen in some of the brochure pictures standing by the cave formations? Are they part of an exclusive unadvertised VIP tour? Or maybe that chick and dude are professional cave formation models who you actually see on the tour.

Penn's Cave has a spooky legend too (see above). If I was the owner I'd add a few special effects enhancements to capitalize on this. It's called showmanship people.



I wasn't going to bother to post this map portion of the brochure, but then I thought what the heck. Here you go all you smartphone users, if you find yourself in the vicinity of Penn's Cave maybe you'll find this map helpful.