The Shape as portrayed by Nick Castle in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic “Halloween.”

The night HE came home!

John Carpenter’s “Halloween” is the film that kick-started my lifelong love of Horror. Sure I was into Monsters at an early age, but Halloween was the first truly horrifying film I had ever seen, where the monster was just a guy in a mask, he could be anyone, and he could be real.

And the idea of Michael Myers still scares the shit out of me to this day. I’m talking the REAL Michael Myers here, not the ancient vessel of some pagan cult, or whatever the Hell Moustapha Akkad turned him into, I’m talking about “The Shape,” “The Boogeyman.”

When I was a kid, my neighbor’s son’s fiance was killed by Ted Bundy, and I currently live in a house that is half a mile from where someone was gunned down and murdered in the street, right in front of several witnesses during a gas station robbery, but at night when I’m working and get that creepy feeling that I’m being watched, I always expect to turn and catch a glimpse of HIM disappearing behind a tree, he has been burned into my subconscious.

In my reckless youth, there was a time when a friend and I planned on smoking some “whoopee weed” and watching “Halloween” but after waiting impatiently for the tape to rewind, we hit the play button and caught a glimpse of his face, I remember hitting stop, and just being filled with a real sense of dread and just wanting to watch cartoons instead… Luckily, it was my friend who chickened out and said he didn’t really feel like watching “Halloween” after all…

My original relationship with the film was a troubled one. You see, my Mom had no problem letting me go see something like Bo Derek’s “Tarzan, the Ape Man” with all the nudity, or letting me buy the tie-in Playboy, because it had “an article” on Tarzan that I really wanted to “read.” (I can still remember the envy of my childhood friends.)

Being a child of the sixties, she would rather have me watch two people making love, then two people trying to kill each other…” Which was great for me, that is until John Carpenter’s “Halloween” hit.

It must have been when it premiered on HBO because all of a sudden everyone was talking about it, like the entire world had watched this life altering film, everyone that is but me. Even my parents and their friend had watched it, (after sending me to bed early) I can still remember hearing them scream downstairs while watching it. At school everyone was talking about it, and it felt like if you hadn’t seen it then you were just a little kid left behind playing with your Star Wars guys, among the prepubescent males at school this was what separated the men from the boys…

Hell, even the lunch lady asked me if I had seen it, and not wanting to be the only lame kid in school, I lied and said I had… I can still hear her voice “They have to make another one, they can’t just leave him hanging like that.” To which I replied “Umm, yeah, that was a big tree he was hanging in.”

Needless to say I was caught…

When I finally couldn’t take it anymore, I waited until my parents were fast asleep and I snuck downstairs and caught an extremely late night showing of it on good ole HBO, and it scared the crap out of me like no film has since. I was hooked, I still have the novelization I bought the next day at the local grocery store (I smuggled that into the house and hid it like the other kids did their Playboys! ; )

Later I would get to see the mediocre sequel on a double bill with “The Beast Within” at the drive in with my sister, its only worth mentioning because there was a guy in the audience with a Michael Myers costume and a fake knife who would sneak up on cars and scare the living shit out of people…

Anyway, sorry for this insanely long post!

I hope you all have enjoyed this flood of artwork, I wish I would have had the time to write a little something about each of them meant to me personally…

I hope you all have a fantastic Halloween!

R

Hope everyone has a great Halloween!

R

Dr. Sam Loomis as portrayed by Donald Pleasence in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic “Halloween.”

The part of Dr. Sam Loomis was originally offered to Peter Cushing and then to Christopher Lee (Lee would later say it was one of his greatest regrets that he turned down the part) both declined the role due to the low salary, and in my mind it was a blessing in disguise. As much as I love Cushing and Lee, I can’t picture anyone other then the great Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis.

Named after a character in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” Dr. Sam loomis is the ultimate modern day Van Helsing obsessed with his duty of tracking down the evil he knows will strike again…

An interesting piece of trivia:
Donald Pleasence’s daughter had watched Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13″ and liked it, thus encouraging her father to star in Halloween. Pleasence has said that this was the sole reason he took the part.

“A boy’s best friend is his mother…”

During preproduction, Hitchcock said to the press that he was considering Helen Hayes for the part of Mother. This was obviously a ruse, but several actresses wrote to Hitchcock requesting auditions.

In “Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho,” it is claimed that Hitchcock tested the scare factor of various versions of the “Mother corpse” prop, by placing them on various days in Janet Leigh’s dressing room closet and listening to how loudly she screamed when she discovered each one. The “winner” was the used in the film. After that prank, Leigh took the joke well and got on well with Hitchcock during filming, despite difficulties with the shower scene. The director later stated Leigh was one of the best actresses he’d ever worked with.

It is also said that Hitchcock was very uneasy about the morphing of Norman’s face into Mother’s at the end of the film. He sent out three different versions of the film during its initial release. The first version included the ending seen on all prints today, the second contained no morphing at all, and the third contained the trick at the end, yet also included it at an earlier point in the film. When Sam Loomis comes back to the Bates Motel to look for Arbogast, there is a zooming shot of Norman standing by the swamp, looking very sinister. The third version of the film included the subtle morphing of Norman’s face into Mother’s at this moment.

The voice of Norman Bates’ mother in “Psycho” was that of noted radio actress Virginia Gregg.

Read the Bright Lights film journal article about “Psycho.”
Take a virtual tour of the locations used in “Psycho.”

Ygor as portrayed by Bela Lugosi in Rowland V. Lee ‘s 1939 Universal Feature “Son of Frankenstein.”

The following is taken from Frankenstein Castle.

Like Frankenstein’s creation, the broken-necked Ygor, a kind of monster himself, is a society outcast because of his crimes and his ugliness. Officially declared dead after being hanged, Ygor now haunts Frankenstein castle and is feared by children. To the villagers he has become a kind of ghost when he miraculously escaped the grip of death.

For Wolf Frankenstein (portrayed by Basil Rathbone) Ygor is like a Faustian Mephistopheles. He leads him to the Monster and convinces him to continue his father’s experiments and to bring the creature back to life. But unlike Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein, Ygor is not interested in science; his only goal is to finish his bloody revenge on the villagers. This makes Ygor the true evil character in Son of Frankenstein.

And interesting piece of trivia:
Boris Karloff became a father for the first time while filming “Son of Frankenstein.” When he was told that the baby had been born, he immediately went to the hospital to see his wife and child while still in costume. When he arrived, in full Monster makeup and clothing, he created a panic throughout the hospital.

Count Dracula as portrayed by Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher’s 1958 film “Horror of Dracula”

In the late 1950s, the horror movie genre was in something of a state of decline. The genre really hadn’t been taken seriously since the early 1930s, when the classic Universal Monsters were in their heyday. However, that all changed when Hammer, a smaller English production company began a series of remakes of those classic Universal horror movies. Hammer’s first three productions were CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, HORROR OF DRACULA and THE MUMMY. The impact of these three movies was instant, and forever changed the face of the horror genre.

In the UK Hammer released the film simply as “Dracula” but In the United States the title was changed to “Horror of Dracula” to avoid confusion with the classic 1931 version. This was a real concern since the Bela Lugosi version was still being booked into theaters (through Realart) until the Shock Theatre package of classic Universal horror films was released to television.

On several occasions, Christopher Lee complained about the contact lenses he had to wear for the shock scenes. Not only they were quite painful, but he could not see a thing. While running towards the vampire woman for instance, he even ran too far past the camera on the first take.

The set that was Dracula’s castle in this movie is now a hotel in the Scottish Highlands and the internal decor is still very much the same.

Horror of Dracula was shot in just 25 days for less than £100,000. Christopher Lee was paid just £750 for his role as Dracula.

“They’re coming to get you Barbara…”

The Graveyard Ghoul as portrayed by S. William Hinzman in George A. Romero’s 1968 classic “Night Of The Living Dead.”

George Romero’s first film is one of the most influential horror films of all time, spawning and army of imitators. But none has achieved the simple effectiveness of the original. Sadly Romero and company held a copyright on the film’s working title “Night of the Flesh Eaters” and when the film was released and the title changed, the Walter Reade Organization neglected to place a copyright notice on the prints and the film fell into the public domain.

Night of the Living Dead premiered on October 1, 1968, at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh. Nationally, it was shown as a Saturday afternoon matinée—as was typical for horror films of the 1950s and 1960s—and attracted an audience consisting of pre-teens and adolescents. The MPAA film rating system was not in place until November 1968, so theater managers did not prohibit even young children from purchasing tickets. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times chided theater owners and parents who allowed children access to the film. “I don’t think the younger kids really knew what hit them,” complained Ebert. “They were used to going to movies, sure, and they’d seen some horror movies before, sure, but this was something else.” According to Ebert, the film affected the audience immediately:
The kids in the audience were stunned. There was almost complete silence. The movie had stopped being delightfully scary about halfway through, and had become unexpectedly terrifying. There was a little girl across the aisle from me, maybe nine years old, who was sitting very still in her seat and crying.

Romero produced the film on the low budget of $114,000, but after a decade of theatrical re-releases it had grossed an estimated $30 million internationally.

Night of the Living Dead constitutes the first of five Living Dead films directed by George Romero. Following the 1968 film, Romero released Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985) and Land of the Dead (2005). Diary of the Dead is expected to be released in 2007. Each film traces the evolution of the zombie epidemic in the United States and humanity’s desperate attempts to cope with it. As in Night of the Living Dead, Romero peppered the other films in the series with critiques specific to the periods they were released.

Since the film is in the public domain there are 100s of poor quality DVDs available, but if you haven’t had the opportunity to see the Millennium edition of NOTLD on DVD, do your self the favor of tracking it down, it is the only release overseen by Romero, and is the cleanest print I have ever seen.

For more Romero goodness check out these links:
Watch “Night Of The Living Dead” at the Internet Archive.
Visit The Quadrilogy Of The Dead website.
Visit The Homepage Of The Dead.
Read the eFilmCritic Interview with George A. Romero.

You can buy this and any of my Monster Art prints for a mere $25.00 buy visiting the store or by simply clicking the button below. Be sure to take advantage of the Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale going on right now! But hurry, there are only 6 days left to take advantage of the sale!

“All right, you fools. You’ve brought it on yourselves! Everything would have come right if you’d only left me alone. You’ve driven me near madness with your peering through the keyholes and gaping through the curtains. And now you’ll suffer for it! “

Jack Griffin aka The Invisible Man as portrayed by Claude Rains in James Whale’s 1933 film “The Invisible Man.”

Following the success of James Whale’s “Frankenstein” Boris Karloff was hurried back from England to star as in “The Invisible Man” but ended up in a contract dispute with Universal and bowed out. Director James Whale then offered the part to Colin Clive who had portrayed Henry Frankenstein in Whale’s “Frankenstein”, but Clive who had plans to return to his native England to see his wife opted to stick to his vacation plans. Next up was Claude Rains. Universal executives watched one of Rains’ old screen tests and were unimpressed by the look of the diminutive actor, but Whale declared, “I don’t give a hang what he looks like. That’s how I want the Invisible Man to sound–and I want him!”

The film was a huge success in part due to John Fulton’s invisibility effects. The scenes where Rains removes his glasses and bandages to reveal nothing at all where accomplished by dressing Rains in black velvet underneath the bandages and shooting the disrobing against a black velvet background. The technique remains effective to this day.

On the DVD short documentary, Claude Rains’ daughter tells of a time when the two went to see this movie in the theater years after it was made. It was bitterly cold and his face was completely covered by a hat and scarf. When he spoke to ask for the tickets, the attendant immediately recognized his voice and let them in for free.

Mr. Hyde as portrayed by Fredric March in Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 film “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” makeup by Wally Westmore.

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” featured groundbreaking effects for its day, scenes were filmed using a red filter with March already wearing makeup, but because of the filter the makeup was invisible. When the circular filter was gradually rotated from red to blue, audiences saw March change from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, right before their eyes and seemingly without camera tricks.

Fredric March won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

The Man Who Made A Monster…

Dr. Henry Frankenstein as portrayed by Colin Clive in James Whale’s 1931 classic “Frankenstein.”

Colin Clive was born January 20th 1900 in France to a British colonel, and was in the military before he became a stage actor. He first worked with Whale in the Savoy Theatre production of “Journey’s End” and subsequently joined the British community in Hollywood in the 1930s.

In 1931 Whale cast him in “Frankenstein.” Over the next four years Clive played mainly in dramas and In 1935 he reprised the role of Dr. Frankenstein in Whale’s “Bride of Frankenstein.” During most of filming he suffered from a broken leg — the result of a bad fall from a horse — and most of his scenes were shot sitting or laying down. He followed “Bride” with Karl Freund’s “Mad Love” opposite Peter Lorre.

Sadly he died June 25th 1937 at age 37, just six short years after his appearence in the original “Frankenstein.” He died of tuberculosis, aggravated by his longtime alcoholism.