Happy Belated Birthday to Ray Harryhausen

On June 29th the amazing Mr. Harryhausen turned 90.

Topps You'll Die Laughing featuring the art of Jack Davis (1959)

Topps You'll Die Laughing featuring the art of Jack Davis (1959)

Dracula AD 1972

Hammer Glamour: Valerie Leon

Here's the beautiful Ms. Leon (surrounded by Hammer quad posters) promoting Blood From The Mummy's Tomb (1971)...

...and looking absolutely ravishing as Queen Tara in her sarcophagus.

Topps You'll Die Laughing featuring the art of Jack Davis (1959)

Happy Bloody Birthday to Herschell Gordon Lewis - The Godfather Of Gore!

The American filmmaker who created what we now know as "the splatter movie" turns 84 today.

Learn more about H.G. in this episode of The Incredibly Strange Film Show with Jonathan Ross...

Al Williamson (1931-2010)

Illustrator Al Williamson passed away on Sunday at 89. He is best remembered for his work for EC Comics titles Weird Science and Weird Fantasy often collaborating with Frank Frazetta, Roy Krenkel and Angelo Torres. 

For more than five decades Al's work covered virtually every type of comic genre for all of the major publishers. He also worked on newspaper strips including Rip Kirby, the long-running strip Secret Agent X-9, by Alex Raymond creator of Flash Gordon. Raymond's Flash was a big artistic influence on Al, in the 1980's George Lucas picked him to illustrate the Star Wars newspaper strip because of his art at EC and Al's own Flash Gordon work.

In 1994 Al contributed to a Topps Universal Monsters Illustrated. a 100 card collection using top comics professionals each doing 9 illustrations featuring their interpretations of a Universal Monster movie, Al's was 1955's This Island Earth. I'm posting those nine as a tribute to one of the finest science fiction / fantasy illustrators. He will be missed.

Hammer Glamour: Susan Denberg

Peter Cushing's Dr. Frankenstein kneels before his new creation the lovely Ms. Denberg in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

Needful Things: IT'S A HAUNTED GLOW HEAD

Looking back I think of the 1970's as the GLOW decade for monster toys. I recall having the Aurora Monsters models and Mego's Mad Monsters figures, all with the words
GLOWS IN THE DARK
emblazoned on the front of their boxes. It was horror heaven as a child to have "Plastic Dead Men"(as the astute Professor Anton Griffin likes to call them) that I could "play" with and with a little imagination have some monster mayhem. The model kits though were a little different, it was kind of like being Dr. Frankenstein. You riffled through a box (a coffin is basically a box), get some body parts (plastic of course), and assemble the pieces (alas the kitchen table was my lab, paint and glue was my electrical equipment I suppose) into a gloriously ghastly grotesque. Good times.


Now these kits that you see here I remember seeing in stores, but alas they did not come home to join me in my childish crypt. I've always remembered them because there designs were so different from the classic Universal Monsters. Just look at the Werewolf & the Vampire there smiling and it gives them a disturbing look, but at the same time their fiendishly fun. I never thought an inexpensive way to acquire them for my collection would be possible...well until August anyway.  MPC models will be unleashing these kits again at an affordable price ($12.99 each) and of course as they did back in the 70's they will GLOW.


Here's the website for MPC...
http://www.round2models.com/models/mpc


They can be purchased here...
http://www.monstersinmotion.com/cart/attack-of-the-b-movies-item-list-a-h-c-19_119/fundimensions-haunted-glow-head-werewolf-mpc-kit-p-15477


And if your curious about Professor Griffin's childhood experience with "plastic dead men"
go here...
http://gammillustrations.bizland.com/monsterkid3/html/plastic1.html

Topps You'll Die Laughing featuring the art of Jack Davis (1959)

Reynold Brown (1917-1991)

William Reynold Brown's was a prolific American artist who's career covered everything from comics, illustrations for magazines and paperback covers, fine art and inventing the concept of the "cutaway" drawing for North American Aviation. Some of his most popular work however was in Hollywood where he illustrated over 300 posters in many different genres. His most enduring work during this period were the many Sci-Fi/Horror posters he produced, some of them more memorable than the actual films themselves.

  

                     

                     

                     

                     

                      

                      

                      

                  1970's H.P.Lovecraft adaptation The Dunwich Horror  was his last poster before he retired to concentrate on fine art incorporating his love of the American west. In 1976 he suffered a severe stroke that left his left side paralyzed and ended his commercial work. But with the help of his wife Brown continued to paint landscapes until his death.

        

As a bonus here are all 5 parts from You Tube of the fine documentary
about Reynold "The Man Who Drew Bug-Eyed Monsters" ...