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Family Album: Lurid lobby cards & promo shots for ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ in B&W and Color

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I guess there’s not much more to be said about The Texas Chain Massacre that hasn’t already been given. One of the most influential seventies American films after Star Wars and perhaps The Godfather and Jaws.  What I remember of it at the time of its release has little to do with the film but everything to do with expectation and rumor.

I first heard of the movie in the schoolyard. I was too young to go see it and living in Scotland meant if you didn’t see a movie on release then you had to make do with the semaphore of rumor, exaggeration and bullshit. Which is the part that kinda interests me because why would a junior high school kid in Scotland hear about The Texas Chain Massacre unless it was something important? There was no Internet, no Google, no streaming services, no mobile, none of that stuff. Information was read in comics, newspapers and magazines or recieved second, third or fourth hand from friends who had a relative in Canada or went for a holiday to Florida where there was a bad frost and all the oranges on the trees turned into fruit sorbet. That kind of thing.

The first story I heard about this particular movie came (I think) from a guy called John Scott, who claimed some of the actors genuinely died during the making of the movie and there was this guy called Leatherface who was a butcher and he was still out there dancing with his chainsaw in the sunlight.

I had no idea what this meant, but the name “Leatherface” implied something utterly perverse and deranged. Was it a gimp mask? Or, maybe an Ed Gein flesh mask? We all knew about Ed Gein as he was our parents’ bogeyman because of Psycho, a film one relative described to me as “the wickedest movie ever made.” Gein was a real life monster like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were real monsters. We all knew something about the horrific things they had done. But then again, what we knew of Gein was mainly through exaggeration and myth. In fact, half the stories I heard about the old cross-dressing cannibal had nothing to do with him and more to do with the speaker’s imagination, which in comparison to the actual crimes—or even those of Hindley and Brady—were utterly anemic.

The second tale I heard about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a reiteration of the first, that the film was based on a true story. As it turned out this was what the film actually claimed, true events which took place on August 18th, 1973. But as filming on this movie finished four days before the date given in the opening titles this was unlikely, if not impossible. That was director Tobe Hooper’s intention. He considered America during the Nixon years to be riddled with fake news and propaganda pumped out by the government.

The third tale was something to do with a guy who used two teen girls to source young boys to rape, kill and torture. This made the film seem far more debauched and unsavory. We were skeptical about this, which shows you how our pre-pubescent minds had some kind of warped standard where torturing, killing and eating people was okay, but raping, torturing and killing people—especially boys—was a step too far. Go figure. But as it later turned out, this was a tad closer to the truth as co-writer Kim Henkel had:

...noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne ... said, “I did these crimes, and I’m gonna stand up and take it like a man.” Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.

The final story of note was the one where someone said The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was so horrific that it had been banned. This happened to be true, well at least in certain countries, but we didn’t know where and why or how the film had been banned. It was just left to our imaginations to ferment the worst possible scenarios as to what the film was actually about.

It was more than a decade before I got to see the film and thought it well-made, clever, and entertaining. Though I guess I would have paid top dollar to have seen the movie my fevered imagination had concocted all those years ago.
 
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More snaps of the infamous cinematic cannibal family, after the jump… 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.09.2020
10:52 am
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Don’t Watch Alone: The ‘Don’ts’ rather than the ‘Do’s’ of Movie Posters
06.26.2019
08:58 am
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Don’t Look in the Basement’ (1973).
 
These movies have a clue in their title. You could say the whole fucking plot’s in the title. Don’t Go in the Attic, Don’t Look in the Basement, Don’t Answer the Phone, you know the kinda thing: Don’t Fuck Around in that Big Dark House Where There’s No One Around For Miles and There’s an Ax-wielding Psycho on the Loose. It’s a warning to the curious. Don’t do any of these things OR ELSE! You know it’s gonna end up bad. And that’s part of the attraction.

Most movies with a big ol’ Don’t in their title promise a gory flick featuring some dumb numb nuts sophomore who ignores the advice on the poster ends up kebabbed by nightfall. The idea is simple—stick to the rules or end up dead. It’s a well-worn trope: the myth of Eve and the apple, or Bluebeard’s latest squeeze snooping in the closets, or the enquiring Pandora opening that goddam box of hers. Hindsight’s great but not when you’re dead—for Pete’s sake just don’t do it.

But we all do.

And that’s all part of the thrill—waiting to see what happens when someone answers the call from Mr. Slice ‘n’ Dice or goes out into the woods one moonlit night in their scanties (as you do…) never to return. These are tales to make us aware of possible dangers no matter how bizarre. To make us feel protective, and vow never to be oh, so dumb. Yet, somehow they can seem like fears from an age when things were, shall we say, more straightforward and death wasn’t just one disgruntled shooter or suicide vest away. Horror movies can’t compete with real life horror—but that kinda takes all the fun away. Here, with the emphasis on fun and cheap thrills, is a selection of all the things you really don’t want to do…or maybe, just maybe, you do…?
 
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Don’t Go in the House’ (1979).
 
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Don’t Go in the Attic’ (2010).
 
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Don’t Open the Window’ (1974).
 
More handy tips on the ‘Dont’s’ of movie posters, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.26.2019
08:58 am
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‘The Vampire Happening’: Probably the weirdest blood-sucking fest you’ll see all day

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During these cold dark winter nights, I’ve been catching up on some those still-to-be-read literary classics like Biggles Flies Undone, Where’s Dildo? and improving my vocabulary by watching reruns of Deadwood. In between such high-brow pursuits, my time has been thinly spread like Jell-o enjoying way too many bad European horror movies. My current favorite (and by favorite I mean: “Film so bad I have to share it with people I don’t know”) is The Vampire Happening or Gebissen wird nur nachts, to give its proper title in German which translates as Bitten at Night.

This (weak) comedy-horror from 1971 was directed by the legendary director/cameraman Freddie Francis, who helmed quite a few classic horror films like The Skull, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, Tales from the Crypt, The Creeping Flesh, and Legend of the Werewolf. He also won an Oscar for his cinematography on Jack Cardiff’s Sons and Lovers and worked as a cinematographer with the likes of David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Dune) and Martin Scorsese (Cape Fear). Francis had the credentials but he didn’t always make the right choices especially if he had to make a buck. Like The Vampire Happening which Francis signed-up to direct after a deal to make a big-budget American movie fell through. It was perhaps an odd choice, as the movie was a kind of vanity project by producer Pier A. Caminnecci for his then-wife actress Pia Degermark to star in.

Degermark also had some good credentials. She was best known for her critically-acclaimed and award-winning performance in Elvira Madigan in 1967, but not much interesting work had followed, other than say, The Looking Glass War sourced from John Le Carre’s novel. In 1971, Francis was given the task of directing Degermark in a hybrid comedy-horror featuring considerable nudity, lewd innuendo, and vague allusions to classical literature—the scriptwriters freely “adapted” some plot lines from Théophile Gautier‘s short story “La Morte Amoureuse.” Yet, such lofty ambitions were quickly leveled by the quality of the script which reaches a height of wit with the following repartee:

“Human sex,” enquires Count Dracula (Ferdy Mayne), “what do you say about that?” “Well,” comes the reply from Betty Williams (Pia Degermark), “It’s a helluva lot better than blood-sucking…”

One of the reviews for The Vampire Happening described the film as something Francis produced while channeling Ken Russell—which is unfair on Russell—though it does capture some of the more wacky and surreal imagery contained in the film. The story concerns a young actress Betty Williams (Pia Degermark) who inherits an old family castle in Transylvania unaware the place is still home to her vampire ancestor Baroness Catali (also played by Degermark). It sounds like a good idea. But add in a horny monk (who makes a few some nods to Jenny Agutter eroticizing trees in Nic Roeg’s Walkabout), an incompetent beau, a confused faithful retainer, a kind of swinging sixties “happening” and some truly atrocious dubbing, then all intentions towards making something smart are left way behind.

That said, it’s still a diverting 100 minutes with a groovy soundtrack by Jerry van Rooyen. So, if you’re in the mood for eating a lot of popcorn then you can watch the whole movie (after a selection of lobby cards and the trailer to whet your appetite…).
 
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Watch ‘The Vampire Happening,’ after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.17.2018
11:53 am
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Bleeding hearts and lovesick slashers: Horror-themed ‘Vile Valentines’


A Valentine’s Day card designed by Dr. Jose of Camera Viscera based on the 1990 flick, ‘Frankenhooker.’
 
Though I hate to admit it, I am, in fact, a grownup. I also happen to know most adults are not in the habit of sending out Valentine’s Day cards, though you would be hard-pressed to believe this was the case after a quick trip down the greeting-card aisle of any local drugstore this time of year. I, however, like to throw a monkey wrench of sorts into events such as Valentine’s Day by breaking the rules and doing something different—and I’m always on the lookout for new ideas. Like the “Vile Valentines” I recently came across while in search of amusing anti-Valentine’s Day inspiration.

Dr. Jose, the curator and owner of website Camera Viscera started making the “Vile Valentines” featured in this post in 2015, and they were quite the hit with horror fans. Dr. Jose’s Valentines feature brightly colored images from classic horror slashers like My Bloody Valentine (1981), and campy horror flicks such as Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), and 1990’s Frankenhooker. The best thing about Dr. Jose’s cards is they have been provided to all us sick freaks for FREE. All you have to do is click here, or here, select the card you want to print and voilà! You now have your very own Vile Valentine to give to the one you love (or like just a little). I’ve posted images of Dr. Jose’s horrifying messages of love below—some are slightly NSFW.
 

A Valentine based on the 1986 film starring Jeff Goldblum, ‘The Fly.’
 

A Valentine featuring a creepy image of actor Donald Sutherland from the 1978 film ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’
 

Actress Mia Farrow on a Valentine homaging the 1968 film ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’
 
More Vile Valentines, after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.17.2018
10:59 am
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Faster, Santa! Kill! Kill!: Christmas-themed horror movie posters to get you through the holidays
12.14.2017
09:37 am
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A poster for one of the greatest horror-themed Christmas movies of all time, ‘Christmas Evil’ 1980
 
The fantastic phenomenon of Christmas-themed horror is something that helps me get through the holidays. The idea of a knife-wielding maniac who shows up unexpectedly after-hours at your house pairs perfectly with the happy fantasy of a guy with a white beard wearing a red suit who was also able to sneak into your house while you were in your bed dreaming of dancing sugar plums or some shit like that. In accordance with the rules of Santa’s ability to surreptitiously gain access to your home, everyone must also be fast asleep—OR ELSE! So really, it’s not much of a stretch to reimagine this scenario having a much more sinister tone—where instead of a sack of presents Santa Claus is armed with an ax and a naughty list with your name on it.

Regardless of the time of year, I’m always up for eyeballing a horror film. And thankfully there are more than a few excellent Christmas-themed horror films that give us the gift that just keeps on giving—movies that cater to those of us that prefer Santa serving up some good-old-fashioned blood and gore while he slashes his way into our hearts—quite literally. One film I’d like to explicitly call out here that you may not be aware of is 1995’s El día de la bestia or Day of the Beast. The Spanish film is a holiday gem that brilliantly gets laughs out of its horror storyline by teaming up the unlikely duo of a Catholic priest and a heavy metal headbanger, who join forces to stop the birth of the Antichrist. While that should be more than sufficient to sell this glorious film, there’s MORE! Here are a few words I swiped from the start of the trailer for Day of the Beast that further illuminate the film’s fantastic balls-out synopsis:

On December 25, 0000 Christ was born
On December 25, 2000, The Anti-Christ will be born.
One pious priest can stop this force of evil
But to gain admittance to the devil’s coven, he must become…
A SINNER

DAMN. I can’t recommend strongly enough that you try to track this film down (as well as pretty much every other title in this post) and own it, especially if you’re a fan of blasphemy and priests doing all kinds of stuff that only Satan would approve of. I’ve posted a large selection of holiday horror film movie posters and DVD art below as well as the bonkers trailer for Day of the Beast. Hail Santa!
 

‘Silent Night, Bloody Night’ 1972
 
Much more art depicting yuletide gore after the jump…....
 

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.14.2017
09:37 am
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These amazing hand-painted Ghanaian horror movie posters are often better than the films!
09.06.2017
10:44 am
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Perhaps there should be a warning. Maybe something like: “These Ghanaian movie posters may have no relationship to the actual film you are about to see.” But that kinda ruins what these artists are trying to achieve. Their remit was simple: Get as many people to come and see this film no matter what—so paint lots of blood and guts and monsters and big, big, huge breasts. Anything. Just so long as it gets some butts on seats and some moolah in the box office coffers.

The Ghanaian artists who created these posters probably didn’t make much money for their efforts. They probably could earn far more painting walls or street signs or putting down road markings. Each poster could take up to three days to create depending on the subject matter and what the artist could find out about the movie. Their one big advantage was that they could paint whatever they liked so long as it created interest. This inevitably led to a few well-worn tropes: snake women, skeletons, zombies, witchcraft, and even the occasional giant fish—as seen in a few James Bond posters. Some of these efforts are far better than the films they advertised—Van Helsing, for example.

The so-called “Golden Age” of Ghanaian movie posters is cited as the 1980s—1990s, when the boom in VHS players meant films could be screened in the smallest of venues, Most of the posters from this era were painted on grain sacks or just large pieces of cloth. These now fetch around a thousand bucks a pop at the more fashionable L.A. art galleries—considerably more than the few cedis the artist originally made.
 
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More handmade Ghanaian movie posters, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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09.06.2017
10:44 am
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The blood dripped from Dracula’s fangs: The golden age of Hammer Horror movie posters

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I still wasn’t convinced, so the sales assistant upped his pitch.

“And these glow in the dark,” he smiled.

I wasn’t buying it. The guy obviously didn’t know his stuff. Dracula’s teeth weren’t supposed to glow in the dark, not even the Wolfman’s teeth did that. Now I was begrudging the fact I had pocketed my school lunch money to walk into town past the prison, abattoir, and graveyard to buy a set of vampire teeth that glowed in the dark but that didn’t drip with blood like Dracula’s.

“Or, would you prefer this set of Wolfman fangs?” he added rustling through packs of novelty teeth.

To give the man his due, I was in a joke shop among the whoopee cushions, fake dog turds, and electric shock handshake pressers. It wasn’t exactly Transylvania. It wasn’t exactly Hammer Horror either which was the very thing that had inspired me to make this little shopping expedition.

On late Friday nights, the local Scottish television network screened horror movies under the title Don’t Watch Alone. My parents were cool enough to let my brother and I sit up to watch these creepy old black and white films featuring Karloff, Lugosi, Chaney, and co. Then one Friday night, on came Dracula with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The following week, The Curse of Frankenstein with the same two stars and both films in glorious technicolor. My mind was blown. Hideous monsters and blood-red fangs. I’d found a new thrill, a new passion that superseded even my Spidey collection and my hopeless dreams of ever owning an Aurora Monster Kit.

For the next few years, horror movies and in particular Hammer horror movies ruled my life. I dug up, sought out, and tracked down every little piece of what-have-you on Hammer and the films they made. I signed-up for the Peter Cushing fan club. I asked for Denis Gifford‘s classic Horror Movies book for Christmas—which was almost a mistake as he hated Hammer horror but at least his writing on the old B&W movies was superb. I clipped all the horror movie listings in the Radio Times and the cinema ads from the local paper and stuck ‘em all in a big scrapbook which I kept for years until I lent it to some fucker who never gave it back. (Rule #1 kids: Never lend people stuff you really, really want to keep ‘coz they’ll never give you it back. But if you can lend it, then give it freely, but just don’t expect to ever get it back. Because that’s not going to happen.)

Hammer started way, way back in the early thirties when one-half of a double act “Will Hammer” of Hammer & Smith aka William Hinds, a jeweler and theatrical agent, set up Hammer Film Productions in 1934. He had an early hit with The Public Life of Henry the Ninth, a comedy spoof of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII. Then with the assistance of Enrique Carreras, the company made a series of short, moderately successful films including one starring Bela Lugosi The Mystery of the Marie Celeste.

But Hammer really didn’t take off until Anthony Hinds and James Carreras joined their fathers William and Enrique as directors. Suddenly, Hammer was branching out into sci-fi and then horror films with The Curse of Frankenstein which sealed the company’s success and then, of course, Horror of Dracula which famously had a marquee at the Haymarket, London that dripped neon blood from Christopher Lee’s vampire fangs. Over the next twenty years, a rotation of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and various vampyros lesbos made Hammer the brand name for the best in British horror movies.

So, back to the joke shop where I ultimately went for the Wolfman’s teeth, as those green glowing, non-bloody vampire fangs were pretty damned anemic and being a werewolf was the closest I ever came to having a dog in my childhood.

Now, here for your retinal pleasure is a damned fine selection of Hammer movie posters from early science-fiction to late kung-fu vampirism and devil worship. Enjoy.
 
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The Quatermass Xperiment’ (1955).
 
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‘The Creeping Unknown’ (aka ‘The Quatermass Xperiment’) (1955).
 
More marvellous montser posters, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.26.2017
10:00 am
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Scary Monsters & Super Cheap Thrills: The awesome movie poster art of Reynold Brown

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House on Haunted Hill’ (1959).
 
If I had the money, I guess I’d buy an old abandoned cinema somewhere downtown or maybe one of those big ole drive-ins that’s been long left for dead some place out in the desert. I’d refurbish it then screen double-feature monster movies each and every day. Double-bill after double-bill on continuous performance. Choice picks from the whole back catalog of Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, dear old Peter Cushing, and “King of the Bs” Roger Corman. Yeah, I know, I would probably go bust within six months—but hell, it would have been worth it just to see these classic horror movies and glorious science-fiction films on the big screen where they belong and not on flickering cathode-ray tube of childhood memory.

The walls of this fantasy cinema would be covered with the finest movie posters and artwork by the likes of Albert Kallis, Frank McCarthy, and Reynold Brown—“the man who drew bug-eyed monsters.”

Brown has probably impacted on everyone’s memory one way or another as he produced a phenomenal array of movie posters. Brown supplied artwork for B-movie features like Creature from the Black Lagoon and Attack of the 50ft. Woman, mainstream movies like Spartacus and Mutiny on the Bounty, to those classic Corman horror films House of Usher and The Masque of Red Death. I know I can hang large parts of my childhood and teenage years by just one look at a Reynold Brown poster. Straight away I can tell you when and where I saw the movie and give a very good idea of what I thought and felt at that time. Now that’s the very thing many a great artist tries to make an aduience feel when they look at a work of art. While artists can spend a lifetime trying to achieve this, Reynold Brown was doing it as his day job.
 
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The Thing That Couldn’t Die’ (1958).
 
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Tarantula!’ (1955).
 
More of Reynold Brown’s classic sci-fi and hooror movie posters, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.28.2017
01:18 pm
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Homemade Monsters: DIY horror movie makeup from 1965

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Martian #1.
 
In 1965, Forrest J. Ackerman hired legendary movie make-up artist Dick Smith to produce a Famous Monsters of Filmland Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook. Smith (1922-2014) was the guy who did the award-winning make-up for movies like The Exorcist, Little Big Man, The Godfather, Taxi Driver and Ken Russell’s Altered States. Smith’s special edition illustrated magazine presented a 100-page step-by-step guide on how to get the look for some of cinema’s best-known movie monsters. Using a range of everyday objects—from crepe paper and breadcrumbs to ping pong balls—Smith shared some of his best-kept secrets of the trade.

In his introduction to the handbook, Smith wrote:

Make-up is an exciting hobby, but it has been enjoyed by only a few young people because learning how to do it was very difficult. It was my hobby when I was a teenager, so I know both the difficulties and the excitement. I enjoyed make-up so much that I became a professional make-up artist, and after twenty years, I still love it.

What I want to do with this book is to provide you young amateurs with the information you’ll need to make it easy for you to understand and enjoy this art. The book begins with very simple make-ups and ends with some complicated ones.

Any kid who grew up on black & white Universal and RKO monster movies would have dug Smith’s book. Nearly every kid loves the thrill of making themselves into monsters and scaring the bejesus out of grown-ups. It’s all the fun of growing up. And Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook certainly offered the young and those old enough to know better that chance.

Dick Smith’s Do-It-Yourself Monster Make-Up Handbook is still available to buy as a paperback. But here’s a taste of how it looked when first published in Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1965.
 
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Martian #2.
 
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Werewolf #1.
 
See more of Smith’s scary monster make-up tips, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.21.2017
11:48 am
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Master of Mischief: The brutal horror and cheesy sexploitation movies of Pete Walker

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“For Men Only” (1968) and “School for Sex” (1969).
 
Let’s talk about Pete Walker—the sexploitation and horror movie director whose grand body of work includes such cult classics as House of Whipcord, Frightmare and The House of Mortal Sin.

Walker had a highly successful and equally controversial twenty-year film career as producer and director with his company Peter Walker (Heritage) Ltd. He started out in the early sixties making 8mm stag loops of busty models and finished his career on a high in the early eighties when he directed his last movie the big-budget all-star cast horror film House of Long Shadows (1983).

Walker describes his film career as “making mischief.” His movies (in particular those written by David McGillivray) take a well-aimed boot to the flabby rump of the British establishment. Walker has said he was interested in exposing the established order’s hypocrisy and “abuse of authority.” This he highlighted in films like House of Whipcord which exposed the depraved brutality at a correctional facility and House of Mortal Sin where a psychotic priest carries out his kind of final judgment on a few parishioners. Walker was inspired by what he saw going on all around him as he said in an interview from 2005:

“At any given time at my school, 50% of the masters had their hands down boys’ trousers,” he claims. “Prison wardens must have an in-built sadism, otherwise why would they do that job? Judges do a holier-than-thou act every day. How dare these people pontificate to the rest of us? They’re getting off on it!”

Walker made films quickly and cheaply. The son of the actor and music hall performer Syd Walker, the young Pete Walker raised enough cash from making stag loops to help finance his first feature I Like Birds in 1968. Shot over eight days on a tiny budget, I Like Birds was a minor hit and made a profit. It set the template for all of Walker’s future films—the “kick, bollock and scramble” school of filmmaking.

At a time when the British film industry was on life support, Walker was single-handedly making independent movies in guerilla fashion. He eschewed traditional narratives with their preachy moral undertones, instead opting for evil characters defeating the heroes and heroines or debauched couples have their “degenerate” behavior bring them happiness and reward—as can be seen in Cool It Carol!. Walker had a “fuck it” attitude and was shooting British cinema the bird.

He could have continued making soft core movies, but Walker decided in the early seventies to move into horror films with his first low-budget thriller Die Screaming, Marianne (1971). This starred Susan George, Barry Evans, and veteran actor Leo Genn. It’s an okay movie but doesn’t hint at what was to come.

The Flesh and Blood Show (1972) was his first proper horror movie in which a brutal psychopath terrorizes a group of young actors in an old abandoned seaside pier. It’s a thrilling tale well constructed and the kind of story writers like Richard Laymon would make a career out of penning in the 1990s.

Ignoring the rather poor comic strip sex romp Tiffany Jones (1973), it is the next three horror films that are his best work and define Walker’s career.

First up was House of Whipcord (1974) which was written by McGillivray and starred the greatest British horror actress ever Sheila Keith as an evil and sadistic prison governess. This was devilishly good entertainment that subverted the genre’s expectations. The film was heavily criticized and damned by many who saw it as some kind of far-right moral finger wagging. This was mainly because of Walker’s ironically subversive opening dedication “to those who are disturbed by today’s lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment.”

Then came Walker’s greatest film Frightmare (1974) which once again starred Sheila Keith this time as a seemingly ordinary neighborhood cannibal. Famed for its brutal splatter scenes—in particular one with an electric drill—long before Abel Ferrara made The Driller Killer—has led Frightmare to be described as:

A depraved, shameless and morally bankrupt depiction of the modern British family….

Frightmare is one enjoyable hell of a ride which benefits from Keith’s stunning performance and some well-judged acting from the supporting cast which included veteran actor Rupert Davies—who was best known as TV’s Maigret.

The final of this grand mid-seventies triumvirate was House of Mortal Sin (aka The Confessional) which starred Susan Penhaligon, Dynasty‘s Stephanie Beacham, Sheila Keith and Anthony Sharp as seriously deranged priest Father Xavier Meldrum.

Walker was raised a Catholic and gleefully uses the church’s sacraments in blasphemous fashion to kill people. The film was reviled by critics, though proved to be another box-office hit. However, Walker wasn’t completely pleased with the response:

“I was really hoping to get into trouble on that one. I mean, he kills people with a communion wafer, which is meant to be the body of Christ in Catholicism. I made that film because I went to a Catholic school where hellfire and damnation were rammed down my throat. I was waiting for a blasphemy charge from the Vatican. But it never came.”

Walker continued to make movies but the returns weren’t so good. Apart from House of Long Shadows, the best of his later work was slasher movie The Comeback (1978) starring singer Jack Jones. Walker retired from movies in his early forties and moved into the construction industry.

You’d think after making some of the best British horror films ever made, Pete Walker might have received a few prizes or honors or maybe a couple of initials after his name. But all the dear man ever got from working in movies was hemorrhoids.

Now having had the intro, here’s a quick taste of the posters (and some movie stills) from Pete Walker’s movie career.
 
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“School for Sex” (1969).
 
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Italian poster for “School for Sex” (1969).
 
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Combo poster for “Cool It Carol!” (1970) and “Man of Violence” (1969).
 
More posters from Pete Walker’s back catalog, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.17.2017
12:40 pm
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Hoaxes of Death: Secrets of the infamous death documentary REVEALED!
02.20.2017
10:05 am
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One of the many pointless rites of passage for dopey teenage boys in the 80s (present company included) was watching Faces of Death on VHS. Originally released to theaters in 1978, the infamous “mondo” movie—a collection of “real death” scenes collected from various supposed “real” news sources and hosted by a death-obsessed world-traveling “pathologist” named Dr. Francis B. Gross (geddit?)—was a box office smash in the kind of greasy grindhouses and drive-in movie theaters where murder and mayhem reigned, eventually gobbling up a reported $35 million in box office receipts. But that was only the beginning…

Faces of Death really became a phenomenon in 1983, when the infamous Gorgon Video company released it on a garish, big-box VHS with its crude drawing of a grinning skull on a pitch-black background with the impossible to resist tagline: “Banned! In 46 countries!”  As soon as you saw it, you just knew you had to watch it. Faces was, arguably,  the first real “viral video.” It spread largely by word of mouth, each giddy viewer embellishing its beastly atrocities in a far-flung game of VCR telephone. By the mid-80s the film’s reputation had grown so fierce that even the title could send a nervous kid into a pile of trembling sweat and goo.
 

Don’t worry, this guy is gonna be fine.

So did it live up to the hype? Sorta. Everyone has their “favorite” moments—the “bloody” dog fight, the brutal electric chair execution, American tourists gorging on the brains of a live monkey, the guy getting eaten by an alligator, the Satanic cult cannibal feast, the dumb camper who tries to feed a bear a sandwich and becomes the real lunch—but even the least discerning sixteen year old was left with more questions than answers. Why would a camping couple bring multiple cameras with them to film a spontaneous inter-species act? Do you really bleed from the eyeballs when you get electrocuted? Why does the chimp suddenly turn into a monkey halfway through the “feast”? But here’s the thing: it was the 80s. We had no Internet. The true story of Faces of Death was not in the latest edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. We suspected some amount of fraud, but how much and how it was created was unknown. It should also be noted that although a lot of the film seemed fishy, most of it was definitely authentic. The dramatizations in Faces of Death are littered with actual slaughterhouse and morgue footage. It’s a grim view no matter what.
 

This monkey has some serious concerns about the ‘Faces of Death’ script.

The beans were finally spilled thirty years later…

Keep reading after the jump…

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Posted by Ken McIntyre
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02.20.2017
10:05 am
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Creepy horror Valentine cards for your best ghoul
02.10.2017
09:54 am
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Here’s some last minute Valentine shopping suggestions for you spooky folk out there, hand-selected for your best ghoul or boo-friend.

All of these creepy cards are available through Etsy. Links are provided below the photos.
 

Lobsterboy “I love you this much” Valentine. $3.92 via Etsy.
 

“The serial killer sweethearts collection.” $12 for set of 5, via Etsy.

 

Horror icon cards. Set of three for $5, via Etsy.
 

Chucky and his bride Valentine card. $3.87, via Etsy.
 

More after the jump…

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Posted by Christopher Bickel
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02.10.2017
09:54 am
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Classic horror movie posters reimagined as 8-bit NES video screens
10.31.2016
09:13 am
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L.A.-via Detroit video director/photographer/poster artist Jesus Rivera wears a lot of creative hats, and he wears them all under the pseudonym “Demonbabies.” His range of styles is as diverse as his range of media, as a perusal of his web site will confirm, but what concerns us on this fine Halloween is his wonderful ongoing series of classic horror flick posters, redesigned as vintage 8-bit Nintendo video game startup screens. He’s been doing these for a few years, and sharing them, and other warped goodies, on his Instagram and on his “Shitty Halloween” Tumblr page. We love how these lean so heavily toward cult horror like House, Cannibal Holocaust, Possession, and I Spit on Your Grave, largely eschewing more mainstream offerings. He’s also done some in video form, complete with glitchy 8-bit music, and those are at the end of this post.
 

 

 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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10.31.2016
09:13 am
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These gruesome horror movie posters from Thailand really know how to sell their shit
10.17.2016
09:26 am
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Zombie Holocaust’ (1982)
 
You could say the best kind of movie posters make their pitch—entice an audience—without giving too much of their story away.

On the other hand, these kickass movie posters from Thailand don’t bother with such niceties—they go straight for the choice cuts, chop ‘em up and serve ‘em fresh on a lurid day-glo platter. The end result often means the posters are better than the films they’re selling.

In among this lurid gallery of grisly delights are some fine movies—To the Devil a Daughter, The Changeling, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, George A. Romero’s Martin and (a personal fave) John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. Of course, there are quite a few bombs too—including George Clooney’s film debut Return to Horror High, Subspecies II and Manhattan Baby.

In the end—it doesn’t really matter as long as these posters succeeded in making each of these films look like two thumbs up.
 
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The Beyond’ (1981)
 
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The Changeling’ (1980)
 
More lurid Thai horror movie posters, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.17.2016
09:26 am
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Hell on Earth: Behind the scenes of ‘Hellraiser’ and its sequels
08.09.2016
09:48 am
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Author and director Clive Barker with Doug Bradley as the Cenobite nicknamed ‘Pinhead’.
 
Clive Barker didn’t know much about directing when he made his debut feature Hellraiser. He thought it best to clue-in on the subject. He decided to borrow a book on filmmaking from his local library. Unfortunately both copies were out on loan. Barker worried that his cinematic career was over before it had even started.

When he pitched the idea for the movie to Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, Barker avoided too much emphasis on his lack of experience. He presented a brief synopsis of his novel Hellbound Heart, a few storyboard sketches and some catchy taglines. It got him the gig.

Barker wanted direct movies because of the abortion made of his last screenplay Rawhead Rex in 1985. He didn’t want the same thing to happen to Hellbound Heart. He also hoped the film would be his calling card to Hollywood.

But he didn’t have a copy of Directing for Dummies or whatever it was called and New World were quibbling over the title Hellbound Heart. They said it sounded like a bad romance.

Thankfully, Barker’s cast and crew were professional and very patient. Together they helped him realize his dark and gory vision on screen.

The film was shot over ten weeks. It cost around a million dollars.

As for Hellbound Heart.—Barker gave his movie the working title Sadomasochists From Beyond The Grave. One female crew member suggested it should be called What A Woman Will Do For A Good Fuck. Hellraiser was chosen as the title—and a legendary franchise was born.

According to writer Neil Gaiman the infamous Cenobites—those dark, mutilated figures from another dimension—were loosely inspired by a group of likeminded writers (called the Peace and Love Corporation) who gathered one night in a rooming house during a party being held in the building. As Gaiman recounts in an introduction to Kim Newman‘s short stories:

The Peace and Love Corporation, which was never a corporation, although it was a bank account, and had not really to do with either Peace or Love, although I think on the whole we were pretty much in favour of both of them, formed, more or less, during a party. We weren’t at the party—it was being held in Kim [Newman}‘s Crouch End flat by his landlord. But we—Kim, Stefan Jaworzyn, Eugene Byrne and myself—were on sleeping bags in Kim’s room, listening to the party going on down the hall. Kim had the bed.

The party was long and loud and the partygoers (old hippies to a man) were playing old hippy music.

We started talking about hippies, lying in the darkness. And we began to rant about commune life and going to San Francisco and putting flour in our hair. It was a kind of free-form improvised stand-up routine, only we were lying on the floor.

The next day we wrote down what we could remember of the rant, added a plot of sorts, called it ‘Peace and Love and All That Stuff’ and sent it off to a magazine, and became the Peace and Love Corporation.

Clive Barker was fascinated by the Peace and Love Corporation. At one point he announced that he was going to write a story called ‘Threshold’, in which Kim, Stefan and I would be creatures from a far-future world beyond the boundaries of pleasure and pain, come to the here and now to hunt down a fugitive. When he finally wrote it it was called The Hellbound Heart, and was later filmed as Hellraiser. Which may mean that Kim Newman was the original inspiration for Pinhead. They are, after all, both snappy dressers.

A new film Hellraiser: Judgment will be released next year.
 
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More images of Hell on earth, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.09.2016
09:48 am
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