SIGNS

Nope not a M. Night Shyamalan posting,  but while I'm out on travels I often spot half interesting things to snap, here a trio of vaguely film related pictures.

"WHO"S LAUGHING NOW !"

Evil Dead 2 - Dead by Drawn sketch book page.

He's gonna need a bigger copy of FAREWELL to ARMS.

THE SENTINEL.

Exactly a year ago I embarked on big plans, a major project which if it all panned out correctly would reward me handsomely (not quite enough to live the life of an international playboy but handsomely nonetheless.) The only hang up being that it would be a massive draw on my resources, not just on the money side but my time as well. It was a non artistic undertaking , although my normal routine ended up disrupted to keep my drawing arm active and my eye trained on my love of horror movies I decided to do little sketches and drawings and drip feed them here on this blog.
Its been fun and I'm pleased with some of the stuff I've churned out but there's been a fair bit of dashing about for me plus some teeny stress now exactly one year to the date its nearly all done and dusted! 

 Sometimes due to pressures, and my haste, when rushing up a post or two I've made glaring errors and silly typos , I wanted to take this opportunity to apologies for them , you may have seen them dotted here and there and I hope they didn't annoy and distract too much.  

Anyway enough flapping here's a drawing of John Carradine from the 1977 Good Vs Evil movie THE SENTINEL

He's a man of the cloth with the power of the church behind him......wait... wait....
Oh no I've made another error!

MORE LEATHERFACE FAN ART

MORE SKETCH PAD FAN ART

Heres the page in close up - drawn  n inked by yours truly and signed by Gunnar Hansen.

This book was a lost case - I  lost this book down the back of my bookcase and never realised I had ,  great to suddenly come across it again after so long, it had been lost for nearly 3 years, there were drawing in there that I'd clean forgotten I'd even drawn. Finding it and seeing the various sketches, drawing and scribbles with fresh eyes I had a energetic splurge of drawing my fave monsters and madmen.

Mostly it's these newer ones are being posted here this month

ADORE LEATHERFACE

Now here's where the actual Leatherface from the amazing original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE  compliments ME on my chainsawing skills!

That  weird oblongly thing in the middle of the image behind Mr. Gunnars head is a superimposed  crop showing a close up of the sketch book page that I actually slashed through, you can see actual daylight shining through. It represent the moment in the movie when Leatherface while chasing Sally ends up with a locked door in his leathery face so he proceeds to rev up his chainsaw and nosily slice though the wooden door prompting Drayton sawyer the eldest of the brothers to utter the classic line "You damn fool you've ruined the door!"
 Gunnar used a live fully functioning chainsaw while acting in this sequence and in his vigour managed to put a cut in the door frame by accident. The owner of the property didn't want the original door to be destroyed so luckily for him a mock up door had been used. The actual house that was used during the filming was later sold and  cut into six pieces by an investor and moved to a nearby location, sadly not because of its links to the annals of horror movie history but because it was a nice building and once relocated it was carefully restored and is  currently used as a  restaurant, part of The Antler Hotel in Kingsland.

It really made my day when Gunnar congratulated me on having the chainsaw holes looking identical to the ones that he put in the door when filming, its a pleasing feeling when little touches I've thrown in get noticed.

I only wished as I took this picture of Gunnar Hansen that I could get my camera to make that scary noise made when the flashes goes off at the beginning of TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE!

I'll refrain from adding a joke here...
but I imagine you're all saying"Oh, pun the door!"  

TEXAS CHAINSAW MASTERPIECE

Tobe Hoopers TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE exists on a totally different level to all other horror movies. I must admit as a youngster it was with much trepidation that I  popped that video cassette into the VCR  such was the notoriety that preceded this movie, even the movie title sounds unethically ominous than any other . My caution was well founded - gritty, grim, atmospheric it along with the whining of the chainsaw comes nihilistic shocks and genuine terror, it's one movie I remember that long after the final credits rolled past as it  left me with a genuine deep seated unease and a dread for many many dark nights.

 Its a Texas Chainsaw Masterpiece and on a pant soiling scare scale I'd give it 9 marks...  (ergh marks!?! ... that ranking system sounds more laundry intensive than intended!) 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD JOHNNY (1990)

I did wondered whom the fantastic actor portraying the Chop-Top with such relish in TEXAS CHAINSAW 2 was -- for a long time  I even believed that the role of Otis B Driftwood in HOUSE of a 1000 CORPSES and DEVILS REJECTS was actually played by Rob Zombie,  and I was always warmed into the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by Johnny's antics in among the cemetery grave stones while he mocked his sister Barbara with those famous words "They're coming to get you Barbara"

Imagine the surprise when I discovered all these iconic roles were filled by the same person!
Somehow Bill Moseley completely losses  himself in his crazy kooky roles and in each of these performance  he had me fooled that these were three separate people I was watching!

  The drawing above has been signed by the wonderfully affable Bill with the words
" They're coming to get you GURCH! They're horny; they've been dead a loooong time! R. Moseley. Johnny. "
As an added bonus the bottom caption box is signed by the director of this enjoyable remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD Tom Savini , he's added the equally funny
     "I did this one...'IN COLOR' Tom Savini"


Bill loved the drawing and noted that I had even captured the chip in his front teeth perfectly, he explained the damage to his tooth was caused by his brother striking him in the face with a bat when they were little.

I had wondered if the fall might have clipped his tooth some more during the opening sequence of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 1990 , when the ghoul staggers up, grapples with Johnny and then looses his footing and thus making poor Johnny crack into the corner of a stone monument, that moment might have been responsible for some serious tooth chipping , but then again I do clearly recall that opening sequence being marred by that fall ,  it  being an all too obvious foam rubber dummy and as convincing as Bills acting skills may be I'm sure he wasn't playing that part of a shoddy falling prop.

CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD POSTER aka GATES OF HELL 1980

One of my favourites ( the poster that is rather than the movie)-- there's just so much that I love about this piece of movie advertisement, its does it job beautifully completely  reeling me in,  the lettering CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD uses a sexy crumbling font and it's brash yellowness lifts it forth off the darker hues,  as soon as that yellow lettering hooks your eye it drags you into the night fog wrapped graveyard... just at the moment the dead begin to rise.
This poster delivers, with its bold directness seems not the least bit apologetic that its nasty zombie time.
I had this hanging over my bed, the last thing I's see at night and the first when I got up.  Oh the dark mouldy tones, oh the coarse brush marks, -it all works so wonderfully  you can almost smell the damp grave soil ( oh was that just my bedroom odor?)  every inch seems as if it been designed to be functional in sharing the horror, love the mystery of those lurching  background zombies and look at the way the lurid blood flows from those yellow and orange tinged eyes. Yellow and orange eyes? Erm, maybe thats what happens to your eyes once you have seen  this planets rectum!

Which  of course brings me to that amazing tag line....

                     
                     ......  from the bowels of the earth they came....to collect the living!

"THEY"RE COMING TO GET YOU"

SHOCKIN' --- FRIGHTENING!
CLAUSTROPHOBIC --- HOPELESS!
TRAPPED & OUTNUMBERED,  THEIR SITUATION IS DIRE!
Besieged with only a gun while outside frightful ghouls lurk!
Things that are all messed up are coming to get them!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nope, that ain't a synopsis for the one night stand that features in the two NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD movies, but  an all too real situation that BEN (him with the gun)  played by Dwanye Jones in the 1968 Romero movie and HARRY COOPER (him with the telly) acted by Tom Towles in the1990 Tom Savini version  find themselves in right now... here.....in this blog....holed up in this computer!

First night and second night jitters 

BATH TIME BRINGS OUT THE INNER CHILD

Here's a cartoon I knocked out quite quickly after hearing Tom Savini explain about the ending of the very first FRIDAY THE 13TH .

After seeing a similar shock tactic used at the climax of Carrie (the hand bursting out of the grave) It was Tom himself who came up with the suggestion of having little Jason leap out of the water and grab the lady on the lake.
Friday the 13th  was one of the first ever 'modern' horror films I'd had the chance to experience since the late night Universal Monster stomped, flapped and bound across my television , now those films of old were big on atmosphere, possessed a sense of creepiness and had roles filled with fine established actors, they had an air of worthiness about them.   FRIDAY the 13 was a world apart from what I was used to -  fraught with tension and graphic kills this film frayed my nerves , it was a roller coaster and  the end with the unexpected  lunge out of the lake turned out to be a cardiac arrest worthy fright. Misters Frankenstein, Dracula or the Wolfman never repaid me for sitting through their movies with a punch in the heart like Jason Voorhees managed.

 Of course there's NO way that a drowned boy could actually live under the lake, so what actually happened?  The physiological stresses of the nights on Alice had caused the hallucination,  it was all Alice's traumatised head as bore witness by the cops who attend and found no boy.
As the Friday13 series isn't strong on a sense of continuity we were treated to the full blown Jaze stalking through the many sequels without a valid explanation for his existence....but I for one don't care about that little technicality I just enjoyed the follow up movies just as much as the first because Jason was my introduction to the new wave of slasher films and as such he holds a special place in my shaken up heart.

Proof, it's not only blood baths that Jason enjoys! 

When Tom first looked through my little Moleskine sketch pad he was really taken by some of the drawings in there and to my delight started to rummage around in his bag for a long long time desperately trying to find his camera to take some photos, but as he couldn't lay his hands on his camera he kindly wrote his email in the back pages and asked me to email him some copies of the drawings.
So the next time I saw him I gave him a copy of this newly drawn cartoon as a thanks for making me feel so flattered.

A FRIDAY the THIRTEEN FUNNY...

This here joke actually features Jason Vorhee-hee-hee-hees.    

JASON VORHEES - FRIDAY 13 PART 2

At the climax of FRIDAY THE 13 PART 2  we're treated to one of those window smashing jumps that occurs in just about each one of the Friday 13th movies, a franchise filled with horror movie tropes.
Its a slow motion window crash that always catches out the first time viewer, a more effective and cinematic scare than the initial plan which was to have Jason leap out from behind a piece of furniture.
This technique, which has become a budget horror film staple is known as the Lewton Bus, because it was first employed by Val Lewton in the 1942 CAT PEOPLE where a loud bus hissing was used to add an forceful jolt.
 Here towards the final few minutes of Friday The 13th part2 the flow slows to a idyllic calm, theres even a cute puppy padding into the room to help lower your guard, the background music eases into a quieter tone, the  stress levels drop the waters are calm...then SMASH!  Jason in all his snarly ugly glory, shattered glass showering everywhere,  intrudes with such the impact of a killer hissing bus.

 I don't know if it was intentional but Jason's look in this movie was strongly reminiscent of the burlap hooded sack killer from the TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN, unmasked when he launched himself through the glass it was the only time in any of the movies he had hair (except that is until the 2009 Michael Bay produced remake which gave his look a respecting nod to the many different Jason visages from the original Fridays)

I haven't posted any Jason art up yet, so I thought I'd start by throwing in up an old drawing of mine of the above mentioned Friday part 2 sequence.

Jason should buy a Mac , he's terrible with windows. 

This also seems as good a spot as any to jump in with a photograph of my FRIDAY THE 13th double bill poster.

 I'm not that struck by the look of this double presentation, and thats the reason that this poster never dressed my wall for long.  Compared to my other posters the artwork and design lacks lustre and action plus the overall colour palette I find a little too restricted. But in fairness the iconic hockey mask hadn't been endorsed by the killer yet so that staple item to sell the movie isn't in the poster designers toolbox.  Most wasteful indeed for some reason the design has a useless blank white band across the top section, all the space of a movie poster surface area is prime real estate to brag about your movie so a white strip amounts to nothing less than a criminal waste of good space.
 I must point out that the segment on the left hand side does give a hint to the identity of the  killer in the first Friday the 13th as the hand holding the bowie knife does look rather ladylike! (The knife in the movie used by Mrs Vorhees was a Sabre Monarch 171 Bowie Knife) again the weapon most associate with Jason nowadays , his machete,  hadn't stuck as his calling card in these first two movies. 

 I could also argue that the other half of the poster is even more ladylike in that its just an outline filled with words, giving me the impression of some kind of medical drug advertisement and judging by the fact that the bottom words are dripping with blood it might well be for some kind of menstrual product! 

Friday the 13th x 2 = Friday the 26th

TOM SAVINI

Here's an weird entry --  of the forth wall being broken by the forth wall....erm at least I think its something kinda along those lines.

If you focus in onto the very smallest drawing you'll see my  depiction of my moleskine book displaying an inked drawing of effects maestro TOM SAVINI on early slasher duties around 1981 , it's actually suppose be showing him in the days of THE PROWLER movie dealing with one of his trademark gore effect.

 In turn this page is being held up by a TOM SAVINI  in his role as the biker Sex Machine from the amazing DUSK TILL DAWN vampire flick released 1996 complete with a fabulous quote from that movie written and signed by Tom  -  it reads  " Now lets kill that F**king band!!"

Zooming out from that we find modern Tom himself echoing the same pose.

 My sketch book along with the inner drawing of the sketch book both have central fold lines down the middle of them,  now by freaky perchance if you look behind the big Tom there, look just to the side of his head and you will notice lurking paradoxically ..... a real life central fold line!!

It seems that we were actually photobombed by a fold line!

Drawing inspiration from Tom Savini

THE MIST

Another offering from the book on the blue wooden pallet.

Here we have a jokey rendering of the very creepily designed spiders which surround the supermarket in Stephen Kings excellent shopping trip movie

 At the start of the movie we find the main character an artist in his studio working on a film poster for what just happens to be another Stephen king novel The Dark Tower, also seen around his workspace are the posters for The Thing movie and various other images -- all of these including the actual poster for The Mist movie were painted by the famously super talented  DREW STUZAN , whose work  must be some of the most well known movie promoting imagery due to his perfectly designed and exactly likeness that goes into each of his movie poster renderings and for the fact that he seems to have landed jobs  for most of the major super duper studio blockbuster over the past few decades. Even if you don't know the name Drew Stuzan you'll have definitely seen and will know of  his handiwork.

You're on the web and you're looking at a spider! 

LON CHANEY - The WOLF MAN (as a quadrupedal )

This here is the month that my birthday falls in!

Happy B day to me!

As a treat I have been allowed more access to the computer, so expect more postings here than usual, however with that expectation you'll be getting more quantity and not quality.

As can be witnessed in the offering below,  rather than a finished piece its a snapshot of  my sketching pages and a rubbish background.

My sketch pad placed on a wooden blue

JURASSIC SAFE

I know there's been a few close shaves around these parts lately and me being not one to skimp on safety and the wellbeing of visitors to these pages I have managed to secure the employment of a cut price I.T. security systems operator.

Uh uh uh! You didn't say the magic word! Uh uh uh! Uh uh uh! 

 So say a big abracadabra to DENNIS  NEDRY.
Be nice to him as it's solely his responsibility to keep you all super safe from all things toothy n clawed along with any sharp edges and the odd foaming mouthed crazies.



------------------------------------------------------------

To reassure you of our measures you can try hacking the system right here

security system hack 

(Hint; type in the line "access security" three times)

--------------------------------------------------------

OMEN - pane in the neck

Once seen  it's difficult to forget the wild decapitation of David Warner in the very first OMEN movie. A offspring of the Exorcist style movie wrapped around a strong religion vs evil story it also makes effective use of that the unsettling creepy child factor.

 An indelible moment in cinema history indeed,  the character of Jennings an investigative reporter played by David Warner  rushes over to recover an important set of blades angrily discarded by Gregory Peck who is expected to use these ceremonial daggers to kill his son.
As Jennings crouches after reaching the knives , a flying sheet of glass in what can only be described as a freak accident  decides to intersect with his neck, graphically we get to witness David Warner's  height and life span being drastically reduced.

Striking in that this was the first time in a mainstream Hollywood offering that such a shockingly explicit demise of a character was shown, all masterfully played out before our eyes and exactly the sort of grisly and spectacular stunts that the FINAL DESTINATION franchise would later build its brand on.

It was shot simultaneously with a  five camera set-up so once the footage is edited  and presented in  slow motion the sequence would play out that little bit longer. The idea being that any audience members who would look away from seeing the head being sliced off would look back thinking it would be safe to do so but still find themselves subjected to seeing the scene from another viewpoint!


It's worth mentioning that although in the movie the head impressively flips over several times after its separation there is a noticeable and quite distinct lack of blood spilt , in actual fact although I mention this point the impact of this scene doesn't suffer from the lack of wound juice, however I childishly decided to attempt to capture the moment with an excessive arc of claret  and with that blood spray spelt out the words DAVID WARNER.

 You must have heard of the term graphic blood letting well this is graphics blood lettering at its most apt, incidentally in my tool box in among the hammers, saws and screwdriver I keep a bottle of fake blood and I decided to use that to add some crimson color to my drawing, however  unforeseen by me it soaked right through the pages and spoilt some of the drawings overleaf.

My cartoony OMEN drawing, and I noticed that if you spell OMEN backwards you get another cartoon character! 

THE HILLS HAVE EYES ( 2006 remake)

The HILLS HAVE EYES - the 2006 the Alexandre Aja directed remake of the Wes Craven classic is a superbly splattery horror romp through an remote abandoned nuclear  test site. A gory gory actioner its a superiorly presented modern horror, much in a similar vein to The Wrong Turn and Texas Chainsaw Massacre reworking, and a horror movie that I found utterly appealing to me , what is it about mutants, stranded prey and cannibalism  that I seem to find such appeal in?  But please approach with caution -  shocking , brutal and disturbing are words that readily spring to mind when describing this story - I would definitely regard this a film  strictly for staunch followers of horror movies!

There's gore and blood shed aplenty in this tale of a vacationing family in peril, one such sequence which really ramps up the stress levels to a fever pitch is the violent trailer invasion by two of the deformed mutant cannibals. Among numerous atrocities committed  one of them plucks the shrieking family budgie from its cage, bites off its head and squeezes blood from its headless body into his mouth and in doing so perfectly illustrating their ruthless and vicious nature. Having witness this act I suppose it make you feel real concerns when one of  them  (known as Lizard)  points a hefty handgun at the babies head.  Apparently this whole trailer sequence suffered heavy trimming in many shots and greatly shortened all to make it more palatable!

Useless trivia: At the start of the movie the family make a stop at a Gas station called GAS HAVEN
  - which rhymes with Wes Craven