To celebrate their tenth anniversary in business, creative agency DBLG decided to make an experimental animation in collaboration with London-based animation studio Animade. After the usual rounds of toing-and-froing and sending ideas back-and-forth, the two companies decided on making a stop-motion animation imprinted on the naked human body called Hey Pressto!—you see what they did there?

Animade made the individual animations which were then passed onto DBLG who modeled “every frame in Cinema 4D and exported them as a physical 3D print.” Then it was a case of finding models who were willing to have the animation imprinted on their bodies. Some 270 applied, from which eight models—four men and four women—were chosen who were willing to have their butt cracks, nipples, and belly buttons filmed.

It was decided to film all the models at the same time as it took forty minutes between each shot for the mark of the imprint to disappear. But you know, no gain without pain, etc. The resulting film Hey Pressto! is certainly imaginative and quite amusing.
 

 

 

 
Watch the animation and a film on how it was made, after the jump…
 

Sean Connery as Zed (unmasked) in ‘Zardoz’
 
Gun? Check. Boots? Check. Bullet-belt diaper overalls? Check. Exterminator mask? Big red X, honking failure noise, eyes spilling tears. Looks like Halloween is cancelled this year.

As everyone knows, the mask is the hardest item to procure for your Zardoz costume. Even if you shelled out $150 for a prop replica, you wouldn’t be able to wear the thing, which is made to hang on the bedroom wall, where it can scare away prospective sex partners. Nor does the replica appear to be double-sided like the mask in the movie.
 

The paper ‘Zardoz’ mask (via miso soup of Godzilla)
 
Luckily, miso soup of Godzilla, a Japanese site devoted to paper models of sci-fi characters, has gathered all the components of an Exterminator mask on a printer-friendly template. The instructions look kind of forbidding in Japanese, but I suppose the recipe for a breakfast sandwich would also, to me. Google Translate reveals that assembling one of these is a beginner-level arts and crafts project. I suspect the tricky part will be getting ahold of the right kind of craft paper and then contouring it into two identical faces. But the materials make it look like a fuck in the park: two printed copies of the template, an X-Acto, and some glue.

Not surprisingly, Amazon still has some copies of the limited edition Blu Ray of Zardoz on hand. While you’re there, pick up a used copy of John Boorman’s novelization, which GoodReads reviewer Mandy calls “A painful read” and “Not nearly as good as I imagined it would be.” Zardoz has spoken!
 

 
I find it baffling how one can visit The Art Institute of Chicago, home to some of the most iconic paintings in the world, and somehow bypass the Thorne Miniature Rooms. The collection boasts a breathtaking display of sixty-eight realistic dioramas of home interiors from around the world, ranging from Europe of the 13th century to America in the 1930s. As you peruse the extravagant display, you can imagine the tiny people who may have once called these painstaking reproductions their homes. Suddenly, you are immersed—a life’s worth of miniature milestones flashes before your eyes. Tiny meals enjoyed on a tiny kitchen table. Tiny books studied beside a tiny fireplace. A tiny murder involving a disgruntled ex-husband, an eyedropper full of bourbon, and a crowbar the size of your pinky finger. They were times of happiness and of despair.

Miniature rooms can be appreciated as more than just a niche form of art. Atlas Obscura recently profiled Frances Glessner Lee, considered by many to be the “mother of forensic science.” Raised in a privileged household, Glessner Lee had strong ambitions in academia, which she was prohibited from pursuing by her family due to her gender. It wasn’t until her divorce and her family inheritance later in life that Glessner Lee was able to dedicate her time, wealth, and craft to her one true passion: crime scene investigation.
 

 
Forensic science of the 1930s was still a developing practice without an adequate investigation procedure. Homicide cases would often go unsolved due to insufficient evidence and the inability to interpret data. This all changed when Glessner Lee helped found Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine in 1931. It was through her involvement in the emerging world of criminology that Frances was able to develop a craft that contributed significantly to the field of forensics.

In the 1940s, Glessner Lee began work on “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” a series of nineteen unique and highly-detailed dioramas that depicted the modern homicide. Each case involved an everyday example of death, such as hanging or stabbing, all presented in the context of a relatable setting, the home. The most eerie aspect of Frances’ work, besides the gruesome depiction of a dollhouse-sized murders, is that these were meticulously designed to replicate real cases from the Department of Legal Medicine. Great attention to detail was necessary on each model, because they would later be used to train operatives to “convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.” Analyzing each crime scene carefully reveals a real dedication to the specificity of the information, such as the position of the mini bullet holes, location of blood splatters, and the decay of its victims, who were mostly women.
 

 
Once described as “Grandma: Sleuth at Sixty-Nine,” Frances Glessner Lee became the first female police captain in United States in 1949. Not only was she a female who confronted the gender and workplace norms of American society, but also one who utilized what was considered to be a woman’s craft to become a significant figure among a male-dominated practice of police investigation.

Murder Is Her Hobby: Frances Glessner Lee and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death will be on view at the Renwick Gallery in Washington DC from October 20th, 2017 - January 28th, 2018. The exhibition brings together all nineteen dioramas for their first ever public display as a complete series.
 

 

 
More miniature murders after the jump…

“Some Like it Hot.” A painting by London-based artist Xue Wang.
 

“My take on ghosts is perhaps a little tinged with lightheartedness. These are not demons who threaten us mortals. But their merry mischief undoes our sense of everyday security. They rummage in our larders, shin their way up our drainpipes and play havoc with domestic bliss. As these spooks creep among us, we needn’t shrink from them but welcome their witty messages from the other side!”

—artist Xue Wang, September 2013

After moving from China to London while she was in her early 20s, future artist Xue Wang worked in the world of fashion. Armed with a BA in Fashion Design from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Art in Shenyang when she arrived in the UK, she would go on to complete her Masters in the same field in London. Despite her academic achievements, Wang’s original career of choice didn’t stick, and she soon found herself painting to better feed her creative instincts. Wang cites the work of many impactful artists as sources for her inspiration such as outsider hero Henry Darger, Frida Kahlo and unsurprisingly American pop surrealist Mark Ryden. If you are at all familiar with Ryden’s work over from the last three decades, I’m sure that you’ll notice his influence on her art.

It takes Wang anywhere from eighteen to twenty hours to complete a piece which she says are “reflective” of her personality. The artist also collects animal specimens, noting that she keeps a box of deceased bumblebees in her studio, which isn’t all that unusual as artists often have a penchant of incorporating aspects of nature into their work. For this post (this is Dangerous Minds after all), I’ve hand-picked some Wang’s more unsettling paintings for you to check out below. Not all of Wang’s work centers around innocent-looking, wide-eyed characters deeply entrenched in bad behavior—and the artist herself hopes that people can also see the more whimsical side of her work which has foundations in classic fairy tales and Hollywood nostalgia.
 

“Jack the Whipper.”
 

“Vampyres!”
 
More after the jump…

 
Salvador Dali once appeared as the mystery guest on a long-time-ago TV show called What’s My Line? in the 1950s. You know the show, the one that featured a panel of well-known celebrities guessing the occupations of various members of the public by asking them a series of yes/no questions like “Do you work with your hands?” or “Do you tell jokes for a living?” and so on, until the occupation was revealed.

Every week, the show also featured a mystery guest. The same yes/no rules applied but this time the panel wore a selection of dainty blindfolds to make it more fun.

When Dali appeared he insisted on answering “Yes” to nearly every question he was asked, like “Are you a performer?” “Yes.” “Are you a leading man?” “Yes.” (The show’s host John Daly disagreed with that one and marked it as a “No.”) “Are you a writer?” “Yes.” “Do you draw comic books?” “Yes.” (Again, Daly struggled to agree with this answer but Dali was having none of it.)

I am sure if one the panel had asked, “Do you paint pictures on rockfaces while juggling elephants with your knees and wearing sea otters on your hands?” Dali would have said “Yes.”

But the thing is, despite the anchor’s wearying cavils, Dali was absolutely right—he could do everything because he never lived within other people’s expectations. He was boss of what he did and how he did it and this is why he could do anything.

Though I guess I should add the caveat that there was one thing the great artist could not do—Salvador Dali could never be boring. A bit repetitive yes, but never boring.

Take for example, a simple project like that time Picture Post magazine sent over photographer Charles Hewitt to take some snaps of Dali and his wife Gala, at their home in Portlligat, Spain. The resulting pictures were imaginative works of art worthy of inclusion in the Dalit’s ouevre. The finished spread was published in Picture Post on January 8th, 1955, and it’s still utterly impressive.
 

 

 

 
Marvel at the wonder of Dali at home, after the jump…
 

 
I don’t exactly understand how Iron Man became the dominant superhero of our era, but the truth is, Spider-Man’s the greatest character that the Marvel people ever came up with, isn’t he? There’s a reason that the Tobey Maguire series of Spider-Man movies kicked off what has now become a glut of expensive movies about muscled mutants and extraterrestrials wearing colorful bodysuits battling one another for the fate of the city/world/universe/whatever.

There’s a reason we’ve had three movie versions of Spider-Man in just under two decades. Spider-Man was the first truly relatable superhero, because Peter Parker was an angsty kid growing up on the boulevards of Queens, learning to harness his phenomenal powers for good. Didn’t we all feel like our superpowers were a burden, once upon a time?

That’s what made Spider-Man the core character of the Marvel universe, and that’s the thing that drew Bono and the Edge and Julie Taymor to even consider putting together a Broadway musical about the webbed wonder (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) a decade ago, a production that was headline fodder for months for the many injuries that the cast members kept suffering.

Amazingly, that was not the first ambitious musical telling of the Spider-Man story. In 1975 Lifesong Records released Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero, which told the moderately stressed-out story of Peter Parker and his tussles with Dr. Octopus, known as “Doc Ock” to you and me.

The music is credited to a band with the bland name of Hero, which in fact was a version of Crack the Sky, a West Virginia-based prog rock band that also made a splash on Lifesong Records the same year. 

One of the best things about the album is the back cover, which explains that many of our favorite Marvel pals are actually producing the music, with a lineup as follows: Black Panther on electric guitar, the Incredible Hulk on the drums, Power Man on bass, the Silver Surfer on keyboards, Captain America on “percussion” (polite term for tambourine), Thor on the trumpet, “Conan and the Barbarians” handling strings, and the Fantastic Four doing background vocals. Oh yeah, and the Falcon doing handclaps. Can’t forget the Falcon’s handclaps.
 

 
The best and most rocking song on the album is the opener, “High Wire,” which among other things addresses Peter’s frustration that “super-strength and fame ain’t all that they’re cracked up to be/‘Cause the only one that they don’t help is me.” As is almost necessary in the rock opera idiom, there’s not a little borrowing from the musical theater and especially 1950s doowop, and much of the album has its roots in folk.

Oh, and if you have issues with Stan Lee’s palpable overexposure—at the age of 94!—be aware that the album features several narrated bits read aloud by Lee, and they’re pretty bad.

How many musical treatments of the Iron Man story have they released by now? Oh, is it “none”?

More after the jump…

A photo taken at the opening of the very first Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960.
 
The first Playboy magazine hit the shelves in 1953 and in 1960, the late Hugh Hefner opened what would be the very first Playboy Club in Chicago. Other clubs would quickly emerge in more than twenty locations including Boston, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles, as well as more elaborate Playboy Club Resorts which you could visit in Jamaica and Manila. Entrance into the various clubs would run a member $25 a year for which they would receive a special key that when presented to a designated “Door Bunny” would get them inside. The clubs were designed to emulate the “Playboy lifestyle” projected by Hefner, though that’s not what initially ignited the vast existence of Playboy Clubs. The actual inspiration for the clubs began with an article in Playboy published in 1959 that detailed the goings-on at the historic Gaslight Club in Chicago’s River North area. The club was the brainchild of Burton Browne who modeled the club around the “Gay 90s” (aka the “Naughty Nineties” or the decade beginning in 1890) a debaucherous period where creativity and libidos ran wild.

Like Hefner’s future Playboy Clubs, entrance to the Gaslight required a key. Naturally, Hef was already a member of the Gaslight Club as it featured his favorite thing—half-naked women with large breasts everywhere you looked. According to Victor Lownes III, the executive of HMH Publishing Company (which would later become Playboy Enterprises in 1955) he recalled that the article received over 3,000 letters from readers of Playboy inquiring as to how they too could join this exclusive club. This set the wheels in motion for Hefner who knew how to recognize an opportunity, though at the time his vision for his Playboy-themed clubs didn’t include expansion beyond Chicago. When the doors to the fledgling club opened, it employed approximately 30 girls between the ages of 18-23 who were said to be “single, beautiful, charming, and refined.” It also somehow qualifies the old saying that people really did read Playboy articles. At least they read one in 1957. And that’s a fact. 

As you may have already assumed, and much like Hefner’s storied, celebrity-studded events at the Playboy Mansion, Playboy Clubs were frequented by Hollywood’s elite, such as Frank Sinatra. The Playboy Resorts featured entertainment from acts like Sonny & Cher, Melba Moore, and Sinatra’s pal and Playboy Club regular, Sammy Davis Jr. The first Detroit club which was located right across from a church attracted prominent members of that city’s vibrant jazz scene. Even Detroit’s mayor at the time Coleman Young (who held the position for twenty years starting in 1974), was an honorary member of the Playboy Club.

The St. Louis location regularly hosted comedy acts like George Carlin, Flip Wilson, Joan Rivers and Steve Martin. One of the more creative locations was opened on Lake Geneva in Wisconson that featured a ski slope, chairlift and according to former Bunny Pam Ellis, a DJ booth known as the “Bunny Hutch” where Bunnies would spin records while a bubble machine and disco ball set the mood. Most if not all of the girls at Lake Geneva lived in the “Bunny Dorm” which Ellis says was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. If a girl didn’t live in the dorms, a car would be sent for them to their home to bring them to work where they could also eat for free. Ellis looks back on her time at Lake Geneva’s Playboy Club with fondness—especially the fact that she met her husband while she was DJ’ing in the Bunny Hutch.
 

Frank Sinatra hanging out at the Playboy Club in Las Vegas back in the day.
 
I had been working on this post for a while and had just started to get some words committed to “paper” when Hefner passed away on September 27th at the age of 91. Given that somewhat unexpected event, I held off on finishing it until today as I wasn’t crazy about having DM readers think that capitalizing on the death of someone as well-known and controversial as Hugh Hefner is something we aspire to. However, I do, like so many people, look back with fondness to a time where girls in bunny tails and ears were as glamorous as the movie stars that cavorted around the same clubs with them. Below I’ve posted a huge collection of photos taken inside and on the grounds of various Playboy Clubs including some rarely seen images from the Lake Geneva location that were kindly provided to me by Adam Levin with the help of Christina Ward of Feral House.
 

Bunnies on top of a locally made tractor at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club in Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Adam Levin.
 

Bunnies having fun at Dunn River Falls in Ochos Rios, Jamaica in 1972.
 

New York 1960s.
 
Much more after the jump…

 
There was once a strong belief among many Iranians that if they wanted something, then they just had to go out onto the street and demand it. This idea was fostered by the role many Iranians had in deposing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and bringing back the radical Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in France in 1979. This ended 2,500 years of Persian monarchy, replacing it with an Islamic Republic.

The Shah was seen as an autocratic, brutal, and oppressive dictator, who was attempting to westernize the country against the will of the people. The opposition to the Shah and his alleged evil western ways brought together an odd mix of Marxists, socialists, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the misguided media outlet the BBC. Together this unlikely coalition succeeded by demonstrations, strikes, marches, and news propaganda in forcing the Shah (and his supporters) to flee Iran and to bring in the Ayatollah and his Islamic revolution.

Many Iranians thought they were taking back control of their country for themselves. It wasn’t quite so simple. Political coalitions, no matter how well-meaning, only ever work in favor of those who appear to have the most power. The Ayatollah Khomeini was a figurehead around whom the country could unite. Therefore, Khomeini appeared to have the most power. Rather than working together to curtail the Khomeini’s influence, the socialists and the Marxists and the liberals all tried to win his support. This only confirmed to the Ayatollah Khomeini (and the Muslims who supported him) that he was in control.

An estimated one million people greeted the Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrival in Iran by Air France jet, in February 1979. By the end of March, the people had voted by an overwhelming margin of 99% to make Iran an Islamic Republic.

Though women were credited by the Ayatollah Khomeini for their essential role in bringing about the Iranian revolution, in early March 1979, he paid back their actions by implementing an edict that made it compulsory for all women to wear the hijab (veil) in public. Suddenly, any promise the Ayatollah offered of a new, better, fairer Iran was revealed as nothing more than a chimera. Khomeini was a hardline fundamentalist and he had no time for individual freedom—not when he knew what his invisible friend wanted. And Allah apparently wanted women covered up.

On March 8th, 1979, 100,000 women marched on the streets of Tehran against the mandatory wearing for all women of the hijab. Photographer Hengameh Golestan was present that day and believed it was her responsibility to document the demonstration as she was witnessing “something historic.”

It was a huge demonstration with women – and men – from all professions there, students, doctors, lawyers. We were fighting for freedom: political and religious, but also individual.

~Snip~

“They were demanding the freedom of choice. It wasn’t a protest against religion or beliefs, in fact many religious women joined the protest, this was strictly about women’s rights, it was all about having the option.”

~Snip~

I was walking beside this group of women, who were talking and joking. Everyone was happy for me to take their picture. You can see in their faces they felt joyful and powerful. The Iranian revolution had taught us that if we wanted something, we should go out into the street and demand it. People were so happy – I remember a group of nurses stopping some men in a car and telling them: “We want equality, so put on some scarves, too!” Everyone laughed.

I wanted to join in all the protests during the revolution, but I knew I had to go as a photographer. My first thought was: “It’s my responsibility to document this.” I’m rather small, so I was ducking in and out of the crowd, constantly taking photos. I took about 20 rolls of film. When the day was over, I ran home to develop them in my darkroom. I knew I had witnessed something historic. I was so proud of all the women. I wanted to show the best of us.

This turned out to be the last day women walked the streets of Tehran uncovered. It was our first disappointment with the new post-revolution rulers of Iran. We didn’t get the effect we had wanted. But when I look at this photo, I don’t just see the hijab looming over it. I see the women, the solidarity, the joy – and the strength we felt.

The women lost. The demonstration ended with the women being attacked and some even stabbed on the streets of Tehran. The men and their sexist, superstitious beliefs won. It’s a way of having power over women that continues to this day in many different forms.

Pioneering photographer Hengameh Golestan has been documenting life in Iran for 28 years, see more of her work here.
 

 

 
See more photos, after the jump…
 

One of the images from H.R. Giger’s ‘Necronomicon.’

H.R. Giger’s 1977 book Necronomicon showcased his chilling, futuristic images of a world beyond our own would become the basis and inspiration for director Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien.

Giger’s profile was raised in 1973 when his sci-fi art was showcased by prog-rockers Emerson Lake & Palmer on the elaborate cover of their 1973 album Brain Salad Surgery. Swiss publishing house Sphinx-Verlag would publish a German-language portfolio full of Giger’s work about the mythical “Necronomicon” in 1977, as well as a French edition that same year. As you may be aware, Giger’s Necronomicon was inspired by the make-believe textbook of magic nightmared up by H.P. Lovecraft which the author first referenced in his 1924 short story, The Hound. When it comes to Giger’s dangerous, dark, and often somewhat R-rated take on the evil grimoire, the author and artist put his own unique spin on the book, undeniably his most vital and influential piece of work. In 1985 Giger would put out another edition of the material, Necronomicon 2 expanded to include 184 more images of his terrifying biomechanical creations and grim futuristic visions. 

Tracking down a copy of Giger’s Necronomicon isn’t difficult as long as you’re not coveting an original which can run you a few thousand bucks, while reprints usually sell for $200-$250. I’ve posted some of Giger’s work from the Necronomicon below—most which are emphatically NSFW.
 

 

 
More Giger after the jump…

Behold the “She Mask” a female version of the “Michael Myers” slasher mask created by Don Post Studios.
 
My enthusiasm for all things horror knows no bounds. I honestly can’t get enough of the genre and still look forward to Halloween with the zeal of a kid armed with a grinning, giant plastic pumpkin overloaded with enough candy to bring on diabetes overnight. One of my annual Halloween traditions is to watch the first three Halloween films during October—and it never gets old. For me at least. So, here’s the thing—even though I’d say I know my horror, I had no idea that the famous mask donned by “Michael Myers” in the film was made from a life cast of actor William Shatner’s face during the filming of 1975’s The Devil’s Rain.

But before we get to that, let me give you a quick history lesson on Don Post Studios who made the original William Shatner mask that would later become the face of evil incarnate thanks to Carpenter’s vision of a killer with a “pale face” and “human features.” 

Known as the “Godfather of Halloween” Don Post founded Don Post Studios in 1938, the first company to create the rubber masks we all know and love today, including a line of masks based on the classic movie monsters of Universal Pictures such as Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman. In the 1970s DPS put out masks based on the characters from the television series Star Trek including one in the image of Captain Kirk and another of “Mr. Spock” as played by Leonard Nimoy. Though kids were digging dressing up like both actors, the sale of these rubber masks was dismal. This didn’t surprise the folks at Don Post Studios as they had originally wanted to put out a collection of masks based on the aliens and far-out monsters featured on Star Trek but were told by Paramount to stick with Kirk and Spock.

Both masks were sculpted by William Malone, a long time artist, sculptor, and mask maker who worked extensively with Don Post Studios. According to Malone (noted in the book Voices in the Dark: Interviews with Horror Writers, Directors and Actors), director John Carpenter once visited him while he was at work and made the suggestion that the Shatner/Kirk mask would be cooler if it was painted white—though Malone couldn’t understand why anyone, much less Carpenter, would be even remotely interested in such a mask. Of course, the release of Carpenter’s first Halloween film showcasing actor Tony Moran wearing the Shatner mask painted white in 1978 changed all that once the film gained popularity. Sadly for DPS, their licensing with Paramount for the Captain Kirk mask had expired and their backlog of masks were gone—making it impossible for them to cash in on the Michael Myers mask craze. They would later engage the services of sculptor Neil Surges to create a generic “Everyman” mask in 1986 which would become a huge seller for the company until they closed up shop in 2012.

So what about the “She Mask” version of Michael Myers? Well, that’s where this story takes a bit of a weird, left turn.

In 2001 Don Post Studios decided that a female version of their best-selling Michael Myers/“Everyman” mask should be a real thing. So they came up with the “She Mask” (which was also sometimes called the “Michelle Myers mask”) that came with long hair, pink lipstick, blue eyeshadow and a fierce eyebrow game. According to folklore about the mask, DPS only produced a small number of the deeply creepy monster mashup making it quite the covetable collector’s item. The mask did end up in a film in 2009 called The Poughkeepsie Tapes, but that’s all I’m going to say about that. I’ve posted a few pictures of the “Michelle Myers” mask below. If you need me, I most definitely won’t be hiding under the bed or in a closet.
 

The ultra-rare “She Mask” (also known as the “Michelle Myers mask” by Don Post Studios.
 

A still of the “She Mask” in action from the 2007 film ‘The Poughkeepsie Tapes.’
 
More after the jump…