For Halloween let's have a "Horror Double Feature" with a couple of movies by some hometown boys (well, my hometown) who made good.
Here's an article about Evil Dead (1983) by the Detroit Free Press from May 3, 1983...
Please click to enlarge if you wish to read (I probably didn't need to say that)
... now let's jump to April 10, 1987 for another Detroit Free Press article, but this time it's about Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn (1987). As an added bonus the movie review is also included...
If you were some of those lucky collectors out there maybe you picked up one of these cute, but rare Evil Dead Haunted Cabin toys back in the day...
I wanted to animate this poster for The Wasp Woman (1959) for two reasons - first, if you check out the trailer below, the actual wasp woman in the movie looks nothing like how she appears on the poster...
... and secondly, this is practically the only time a man is the "victim" in posters like these. Enjoy...
This short video from 2001 was the last "creative" production I made for local government access television...
I had super high hopes to make this into a special half-hour show, but it never got off the ground. Former Novi Police Chief Lee Begole had done a show years earlier called Scary Tales From Novi where he simply recounted various local ghost stories and mysterious tales. I thought it would be great to reenact some of those stories for a new show.
I tried to get other city production staff excited by the idea because this was too big to do on my own, but unfortunately nobody really shared my enthusiasm. Even getting this modest little short completed was a chore.
I don't know what it was, but nothing seemed to go smoothly. It's always hard to get actors together for free, and this time I also needed someone with an old car. I wanted to actually show police officers searching the weeds and finding the graves stones, but I couldn't find costumes that looked like 1950's police uniforms. When it came time to do the BW grave stone shots I couldn't property use my tripod due to a missing mounting plate. I remember feeling that this project was cursed.
In the end it turned out OK. Although I think my narration kinda sounds like Criswell from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1958). I don't remember if that was intentional or not.
Now it's time for my last scary music video post. These posts have been so exceptionally popular that Vh1 has contacted me, and I've agreed to turn them into a series of specials. Please look for Music Videos from Hell right after Lindsay Lohan's new reality show WTF Am I Doing to my Life? airing sometime in 2011.
Anyway let's look at a scary video now. In Between Days by The Cure is another one of those videos that's accidentally creepy. The song is very happy, but the trippy florescent makeup is spooky. I don't know what the stop-motion socks are all about.
Let's jump from 1985, to the present day and take a look at Kids by MGMT. This video is a depiction of a small child's nightmare. I'm sure the band has gotten some sharp criticism for apparently terrifying a toddler thru nearly the entire video. (FYI: the actual song starts about 1 minute in)
I'm pretty sure the kid is OK, and wasn't traumatized by the experience in the slightest. Although those monsters were nothing compared to the horrendous futuristic wardrobe the band wears. Silver clothing is so unflattering.
Well I've save the scariest video for last. So if your nerves can take it, brace yourself for the most frightening music video ever...
I don't blame you if you had to look away. The horror... the horror...
The Killer Shrews is a ultra super low budget horror film from 1959 that's surprisingly about giant mutated killer shrews. Let's look at the trailer...
The shrews are mostly played by dogs dressed in what looks like burlap and discarded hula skirts. There's also a puppet sometimes, but neither the puppet or dogs look much like shrews. So for my animation I've used actual shrew art...
Maybe you heard about this since it's gotten a lot of press over the years.
The town of Woodsboro was the unfortunate home of a series of horrible murders in 1996, 1997 and 2000.
I just happened to visit the tragic town this past summer. Although Woodsboro is in California - nearly 2000 miles from where I live, the trip felt as close as my own hometown or maybe the town next to mine. Weird.
Anyway, as you can see from these banners, Woodsboro has an active arts community...
... and if read the center banner, Woodsboro is "Hometown America" not "Stabbing Town America."
For some reason the Woodsboro Police Station was a popular tourist spot. Parents were taking pictures of their children in front of the station. I hope it doesn't have anything to do with the murders because that's kinda ghoulish.
Well, with last murders happening 10 years ago I think it's safe to say the town of Woodsboro can put those ugly events behind them, and look towards a bright and psychopathic murder free future.
Yes it's time for another Channel 12 holiday promo (you can check out my Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and Valentine's promos if you'd like to see more)...
I remember thinking this was an epic production way back when. I made the candelabras, the gravestones, Lover's Lane sign and a cobweb machine (which I explained how to make here). Today you can buy a fog machine at the corner drugstore for about $19.99, but back then they were a bit more rare. I borrowed mine from the local fire department. Did it all turn out perfect? No, but I was pretty satisfied with the results.
Dennis Moylan played the faux horror movie host Sir K. Daver. Looking back, I'm thinking I should have given Dennis some sort of ghoulish makeup to wear to make him look cadaverous.
Bob Hamlin, (who played the Pilgrim in my Thanksgiving promo) played the Zombie. Bob Zimmerman and Sue Duminsky play the high school lovers. Bob and Sue had never met before the shoot, and I forced them to kiss on camera. I still feel kinda dirty about it to this day.
Here's a scary poster from the June 1975 issue of Dynamite magazine...
This psychedelic image of Christopher Lee from the Horror of Dracula (1958) wasn't just something you were supposed to stare at with your black light on, nope it was part of a party game. It's a monster variation of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" called "Pin the Fangs on the Vampire."
A quick Google search has informed me that this game is still being played - particularly if you're planning a vampire themed party. Athough I think at today's parties the image of Dracula is being replaced with one of Edward Cullen.
The Beast With a Million Eyes is a movie from 1955 about an alien entity taking over the minds of earth creatures. Check out the movie clips below...
Supposedly, the alien was never going to be a shown on screen, but that changed after the movie was screened for exhibitors who demanded to see a monster. Heck, there's a monster on the movie's poster after all. So with very little money to work with the job went to the talented Paul Blaisdell. Blaisdell who designed an articulated puppet which looked nothing like the creature in the poster art.
The "Beast" from The Beast With a Million Eyes
Blaisdell went on to create some very iconic low-budget movie monsters like the She Creature and the Saucer Men. Anyways, people who went to see The Beast With a Million Eyes never saw the monster on the poster in action until now...
I took some shorts cuts with this animation. For example I don't have the time to animate each tentacle on the creature's face. Since the woman was wearing sexy lingerie suitable for the bedroom, I thought I'd start her off sleeping. She and the monster are in some sort of vague abstract environment (is that fog, sand or snow at the bottom?) so maybe she's still dreaming.
Last year I ran a series of posts about 3D glasses. Most of the 3D glasses I have were from TV promotions, and here's a flier for one such promotion - Revenge of the Creature...
Farmer Jack was a once popular, but now defunct Metro Detroit based supermarket chain. I can't find a single Farmer Jack commercial on YouTube, but someone called Skiz316 has uploaded the entire Farmer Jack jingle...
It's time for another one of my very popular "scary" music video posts that have become the talk of the Internets...
Jeopardy by the Greg Kihn Band was released March of 1983 according to Wiki. The Wiki also says Michael Jackson's Thriller video was released December 2, 1983. If this is correct it's interesting to note that Greg Kihn came out with a zombie music video 10 months before Michael. Michael went on to became a music superstar, and this was Greg Kihn's only #1 hit. Maybe if the zombies in Jeopardy had the dance skills of the Thriller zombies things might have been different.
Also Jeopardy is a true music video - it was actually shot on video...
Now here's a video that's a little more current, Back Against The Wall by Cage The Elephant isn't trying to overtly scary like Jeopardy. It's just plain creepy, but it's also one of my favorite songs released this year...
Do those ugly garden gnomes look familiar to anyone? I think they resemble the scary little creatures from the 70's TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.
Hey look it's another one of those posters from the Scholastic book order things you got back in elementary school. I blogged about a Real Fake Wacky Packages Poster a couple of years ago, now just in time for Halloween I present a "funny" Monster Bulletin Board poster from 1978...
Hmm, those "Marian Sunglasses " were ahead of their time...
For some Halloween fun, I was thinking about taking a look at some scary music videos.
Sometimes they are intentionally "scary" like Michel Jackson's Thriller directed by John Landis, but other times I think the scariness was unintentional. I'll be showcasing both kinds of music videos this month.
Okay if you've never seen it, brace yourself for some seriously messed up stuff...
Man that's unpleasant to watch, but it's also genius. Chris Cunningham is a master at creating disturbing imagery. Check out his Rubber Johnnyshort for more of his expertly crafted grotesque weirdness.
Next is a video that I don't think was intended to be scary, but it is. Can your nerves withstand Bonnie Tyler and Total Eclipse of the Heart directed by Russell Mulcahy...
Wow there's everything but the kitchen sink this this video. It's so over the top you could write a dissertation on the underlying themes and symbolism.
Anyway as the video starts it's candles, slow-mo doves, and silk fabric blowing around. You may think it's just going to be some boring video filled with artsy romanticism, but then at the 45 second mark a school boy walks though the door with glowing green eyes. What the hell?
After the guy with the glowing green eyes there's so much other crap going on by the end of the video you practically forgot about him. Then wham! You get hit with the "Boys Choir of the Damned" who not only have the scary glowing eyes, but one boy even levitates.
I'm not sure the makers of this video were aware of how scary this stuff was. I think they were going for something more stylized than scary, but they unintentionally created a nightmare. Seriously what's scarier - the glowing eyed ghost pirates from John Carpenter's The Fog, a R rated horror film that was released around the same time as the music video...
Hey it's October, and time for a month long celebration of scary stuff until we reach the big day ol' day of Halloween.
In all honesty I don't know what the hell I'm going to post this month. I really have nothing planed so I assume we'll both be surprised together. Okay let's get going because the suspense is killing me.
I guess we'll kick off the month with what might very well be the scariest film clip in the world. I watched this film on TV at a young age, and this scene kept me awake at night for weeks...
Terrifying right? I lived in a very suburban neighborhood, with only a few small wooded areas here and there, but I was certain there was a very good possibility that Bigfoot could smash his hairy arm through my bedroom window one night. I was a kid who loved watching monster movies of all kinds, and never had a problem when it was Hollywood make-believe, but this damn thing was another story - it was supposedly real!
This film is one of Sun Classic's "great" documentaries The Mysterious Monsters(1976) and it's available on DVD. If I had children I'd buy this film, and show it around Halloween time for a good scare. I'm pretty sure today's modern internet kids with their iPads, Wii's and 8-Track tape players would still freak out at this stuff.
Please click to enlarge if you wish to read (I probably didn't need to say that)
If you were some of those lucky collectors out there maybe you picked up one of these cute, but rare Evil Dead Haunted Cabin toys back in the day...
