Photoshop Fun With "The Devil's Nightmare"

Thought I'd share a little Photoshop fun. I did a few sample magazine covers to show to a potential client. Click on the image for a closer look. What do you think? The original photo is from 1971's The Devil's Nightmare, one of my all time favorite Euro-horror films.

I scanned from a black and white image in a book, so it was already half-toned which created a few challenges. I scanned at twice the size and resolution then reduced to the target size and applied gaussian blur to soften the image closer to an actual greyscale. The black areas consist of two bitmapped images combined with a mask. The hair was achieved using a threshold layer. I brightened the levels for the skin-tone then converted to lined half-tone. I'm especially fond of the lined effect because it reminds me of John Totleben's drawing style in the Swamp Thing and Miracleman comics of the 80s. Finally, I manually painted in color using a Wacom tablet.

Monster Fan Club Ad

Anybody else remember this? This ad ran in damn near every comic book in the U.S. in the early 1970s. This particular version ran in Eerie Publications' black and white magazines, though there was a more chromatic take on it in the color comics of the time. Click on the image for a closer look.

My brother and I fired off a dollar for this. The "life size reproduction of a Movie Monster" was actually a poster of the critter from the ad. Cool but, despite his resemblance to the beastie from Curse of the Demon this guy never actually appeared in a movie. The 4x5 glossy photos were not in the slightest bit glossy and the bonus monster masks were printed on paper. Still, it was a pretty exciting package for a young monster fan.

WARNING! Avoid "Spirits of the Fall" Like it Was a Rabid Porcupine Telemarketer

Writing a negative review of a zero budget horror flick is kind of like punching a little kid. Sure it's easy and fun, but eventually your arm gets tired. Back when I was writing Killer B's on DVD over at Cinematical.com, I reviewed some fun low budget flicks as well as some that were flat out excruciating. On a certain level you have to respect these auteurs for completing and distributing a film with next to no cash, so even with the worst of them I would strive to find something positive to say, even if I was panning the film.

I just finished reviewing Spirits of the Fall for The Phantom of the Movies Videoscope magazine, and the movie has stuck with me like a particularly tenacious intestinal parasite. Any sympathy for the small time film maker has evaporated. The film has zero interest in entertaining and consistently fails on every level both creative and technical. I won't review the movie again here, but I'm putting this out there as a warning: this movie does not deserve to exist. Please avoid at all costs.

Remember When Comics Sucked?

Kind of a loaded question really. For as long as there have been comics there have been crappy ones. The 1980s, however, saw the introduction of the direct sale market which made it financially viable for smaller publishers to get their comics out there. Spurred on by the success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which was a major success story for the small press, scads of comics which a few years earlier would have been lucky to make it into a xeroxed fanzine were popping up in comics stores.

The Stupid Comics section over at misterkitty.org has several interesting sections for lovers of dreadful sequential art, but the 80s section is particularly horrific.

• New Beginning is a particularly incompetent look at nuclear war with a disturbing wish fulfillment angle.
• Sometimes I think I'm the only one who remembers Geriatric Gangrene Ju-Jitsu Gerbils and perhaps that's for the best, but here's a page devoted to the Gerbils and other Ninja Turtle knock-offs.
• The Guardians of Justice and O-Force prove that even if you can afford color printing it isn't an acceptable substitute for a knowledge of perspective and anatomy.
• For several examples of godawful self-published 80s comics, give this a spin.

WARNING: After viewing the above links crack open your copy of Watchmen to give the 80s a sense of balance and to hopefully keep you from sandpapering out your eyes.

BLOGS THAT ROCK - Temple of Schlock

I can't believe it took me this long to realize Temple of Schlock has a blog. The Temple was the first film fanzine I remember ever seeing back in the late 80s and I discussed my fond memories of it and zines in general a few years ago. Temple of Schlock was born in Syracuse, NY in July of 1987 and was a cut and paste xeroxed affair, examining the best grindhouse swill of the period.

The blog version carries on that fine tradition with features like "Lost and Not Found" which covers exploitation flicks that have fallen off the map and "This Week on 42nd Street" gives a glimpse at what movies were playing on The Deuce thirty or so years ago. I particularly liked the piece on Twisted Nightmare, a slasher movie from 1988. Chris Pogialli reprints his original review and follows it with several paragraphs on the actual experience of going to see the film at The Harris in New York City. Great stuff.

Tales to Make You Crap Your Pants - Episode 1: Night Train to Terror

The Return of Cryptique!

Yes, the lovely Miko Macabre (who I first discussed here) and her acerbic but hilarious take on trashy horror films is back with a new episode of her show Cryptique. She's got a new look, better lighting and improved audio, though I have to say the editing still needs some tightening. Still, the show is a lot of fun and this time Miko skewers the Frank Henenlotter classic Basket Case. You can link directly to the Cryptique sight here, and check out the new episode below.

QUARANTINE: Movie Review

Quarantine has taken a lot of crap, being slammed as an unnecessary remake of the Spanish film [REC], but I think such statements are short-sighted. I would love to have seen [REC] on the big screen, but a subtitled film's chance of getting a wide theatrical release in the States are about as good as a guy in a red shirt making it back to the Enterprise in one piece. No, this doesn't say much for the attention span of the American film-going audience, but [REC] had no chance of getting big theatrical play here. Let's move past it, people.

So that leaves us with Quarantine, a film which does pretty damn well on its own. Jennifer Carpenter of the way cool Showtime series Dexter plays Angela Vidal, a TV news reporter shadowing a group of Los Angeles firefighters on the overnight shift. The entire film is seen through the eye of her camera operated by Scott Percival (Steve Harris). The evening gets off to a slow start so we see Angela sliding down the fire pole, flirting with a firefighter named Jake (Hostel's Jay Hernandez) and lamenting that the whole night might be a washout. Finally a call comes in and the paramedics are called to an apartment building to aid an elderly woman who is infected with something that is contagious via contact with bodily fluids. To borrow a phrase from Shaun of the Dead, the old girl is a bit bitey and her violent and murderous nature quickly spreads among the tenants. Before Angela and the others can flee the building has been surrounded by operatives of the Center for Disease Control, and the space suits they're wearing and their readiness to shoot anyone that tries to leave doesn't bode well for our heroes.

Like 28 Days Later this is a zombie film without zombies. No one is coming back from the dead, but victims of this infection quickly degenerate into slobbering lunatics, not unlike what you see in Walmart on the day after Thanksgiving. After a beginning that is intentionally slow to build suspense, things ramp up with the film balancing action and exposition nicely. As with any of these pseudo documentary films like The Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield the question of why are these people still filming while they're running for their lives is a valid one. Director John Erick Dowdle (who also helmed The Poughkeepsie Tapes) does a respectable job of keeping the gimmick believable. Occasional bits are inserted to provide a reason for the fact that Scott is still shooting, but it isn't overdone as it was in Diary of the Dead, in which George Romero's frequent references to the fact were just distracting. Dowdle might have further aided the illusion by casting unknowns, but recognizable faces are presumably a necessity in getting financing, even if we're not talking about huge stars.

The Spanish version will likely hit DVD around the same time or shortly after Quarantine does, and the publicity surrounding the remake will have a trickle down effect, bringing far more attention to the U.S. DVD release of [REC] than it would have gotten on its own.

BLOGS THAT ROCK - Monster Crazy

Pierre Fournier, the blogger behind Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog which I discussed here is also the guy behind Monster Crazy, a blog that knows when to keep its mouth shut. Text is kept to a minimum, with all manner of classic horror imagery being the focus. Movie posters, stills, old horror mag interiors and covers, and random works of monstrous art. This is one cool ass blog.

Miko Macabre's Cryptique

Introducing Miko Macabre. I stumbled across Miko's show Cryptique while searching for horror reviews on Youtube and frankly I'm surprised these videos have so few hits. Cryptique presents the capsule versions of trashy horror flicks with Miko adding her two cents throughout. There are two episodes currently posted covering Night of the Demons and Burial Ground: Nights of Terror, with each installment broken into three parts. As Miko points out in her first episode, the use of these copyrighted films really pushes the limits of "fair use" but the Cryptique versions of these flicks are a lot more entertaining than the originals ever were.

The resemblance to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is obvious, with the combination of innuendo, cleavage and cornball humor, but Miko has the distinct advantage of actually being funny. Elvira had camp appeal, but she never actually made me laugh. Cryptique has recently launched a new site, though there's nothing there yet. There is a pretty cool Youtube video promoting the upcoming season, but for a real taste of what the show has to offer, check out the three installments of Episode 2 embedded below. I think this project has a lot of potential and I'm anxious to see where it goes.


Cryptique Episode 2, Part 1



Cryptique Episode 2, Part 2



Cryptique Episode 2, Part 3