Tag Archive for 'creepy'

Pinup of the Week: The Moth by Joy Carroll 1974

One of the best things about visiting small towns is venturing into the horror section and finding unknown gems like this one. Ah yes, supernatural romance novels are nothing new. What a cover!!! What an inside blurb:

IF I DIE WHEN I’M YOUNG
I VOW I’LL COME BACK TO HAWKWOOD.
I’LL BE A SPIRIT,
AND MAKE PEOPLE DO TERRIBLE THINGS.
DO YOU BELIEVE ME, KATE,
DO YOU BELIEVE?

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* Search for Shudder Pulps on eBay *

Vintage Photo Album: Here is Your Disguise

Golden Ladies 1936

This is your disguise for an adventure on The Planet of the Deadly Golden Amazons. (Auction Here – Ends 12/7)

This is your disguise for your trip to the land of vampiric velvet furniture. (Auction Here – Ends 11/26)

Here is your disguise for the Russian leg of your race around the world in eighty days, circa 1890. (Auction Here – Ends 12/2)

Here is your disguise for infiltrating the warren of the Spoon Brides. Beware! (Auction Here – Ends 12/4)

This is your disguise and only hope for survival on the island of singing bellhops. (Auction Here – Ends 12/6)

This is your disguise for living among the polar werebears of Manchuria. Don’t forget to smear your face with seal blubber before disembarking. (Auction Here – Ends 12/6)

This is Valeska Suratt. Valeska Suratt! Please examine the furniture and don’t miss the busts and figures in the background. (Auction Here – Ends 12/4)

Vintage Photo Album: Fairy Tale Edition

Wake up, Millicent.

While crossing through a forest, a hunter one day emerged into a clearing and surprised four graceful does. The two parties froze and regarded each other. Disarmed for a moment by their long, blue beauty, the hunter failed to notice a cloth bag which sat at the feet of the most dazzling sister doe. Encrusted with blood, dirt, and fallen leaves, the bag contained a human heart so fresh it was practically still pounding. – Auction Here – already ended.

Two sisters, as different as night and day, decided to read aloud from their favorite book of poetry by a long-abandoned well in a part of the forest that their parents forbade them to visit. An old witch, disguised as a kindly old man, emerged from the well and prodded one of the innocent girls with a length of willow. – Auction Here – ends when it ends.

Two girls at a party were approached by a third who acted like she knew them. Disarmed by her friendly charm, the three became fast friends, at least for the festivities of the evening. When asked for her name, she answered differently every time. The girls thought that this was a grand idea for a masquerade. Little did they know that the mask their new friend seemed to wear was actually her face, with strange, finger-like tentacles where the nose and mouth belonged. One of them would later be found, but only in the spring, after the snow drifts melted enough to uncover her legs. – Auction Here – Ends Oct 25.

The little person emerged so suddenly that they imagined there must be a door in the hall that they had overlooked. Without a spoken word, she told them what they needed to do using sign language, but her audience later remembered her having a strangely accented voice. They thought it was familiar accent, but they couldn’t quite place it. Silently she instructed them to take the flowers she held, boil them, and then pour off a layer of yellow liquid that would gather on the top when the water cooled. This liquid must then be mixed with lavender flowers to make a poultice, and be applied to their mother’s eyes before the next morning. – Auction Here – already ended, alas.

A child prodigy musician, Harriet was kidnapped by agents of the mad sultan, and was every day forced to play her violin for the boys that he kept locked in a deep, cold, dungeon. The sultan would visit these boys from time to time, but would warn Harriet away from the room where they would entertain him. One day, after months of frigid gruel and one cavernous, unending violin recital, and finally unable to contain her curiosity, she burst into the chamber during one of his visits. Weeks later, mountain climbers found Harriet feral, half-starved and clinging to a rock miles away. The strings of her violin she had wound into her disheveled hair. Sadly, although she was immediately put under the care of world famous psychologist Horrace Razorbottom, Harriet never fully recovered. Here she is pictured wearing a medal that she had won just months before her tragic misadventure. – Auction Here – Ends Nov 3.

Despite the fact that the finished photo appeared to have been composed to frame all three children that appeared in it, the photographer Manzetti, when questioned by the police, swore up and down that he took a photo of two children, and no more. Later forensic examination of the photo would not resolve the mystery of how Mrs. Wallace’s son, Wilbur, could have appeared in this photo, taken only weeks after his mysterious disappearance. Two months later, the other two Wallace children disappeared as well. Search dogs would eventually locate what was left of Wilbur Bronson Wallace in an urn behind the gardening shed, but no sign of the other two missing children would be forthcoming. – Auction Here – Ends Oct 30.

Hop twice. Hop twice as you pass the brightly painted door and vaguely oriental decorations of Melinda’s Patisserie during the day, but do not tarry or darken her stoop after dark. If they were to put their heads together, her neighbors would not be able to work out any sensible geometry that would explain which building her shop door opens into, nor which spaces her kitchen and parlor occupy. – Auction Here – Ends when it ends.

Grickle Comic: The Hidden People

I have this post category that I call “It’s Safe To Tell You Now I Ordered Mine”, and here is the latest entry. Graham Annable, the man behind Grickle, has a new “limited edition” comic available on his site via BigCartel. While you’re ordering one, don’t forget that another ten clams will get you the fabulous signed Nosferatu riding a shark print. Also available are prints of Principal Skeleton and Space Sadness, among other things.

I, the dark, hereby certify that neither Mr. Annable, nor any of his associates (who will hereafter be referred to in this document as the “hidden people”) have threatened me with any harm, nor have they menaced me by appearing as if from nowhere. I am posting this because, and only because of the possible entertainment value of his products and based on my own interests. No hidden people have visited my cellar or attic, or reminded me that they know where I live. Finally, I would not find gaping silences nor silent little men with red peaked hats unnerving at all if they did visit. Which they haven’t.

Portland H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and Cthulhucon Notes

Still from Die Farbe

Last weekend was the H.P. Lovecraft film festival in Portland Oregon, and although I didn’t manage to get it together and attend the first night, I was able to sneak in without scaring anybody on the second evening.

Here’s a list of the short films that were playing at this event:

Night One

Call of Nature by Rick Tillman
Flush with Fear by Christopher G Moore (site)
Doppelganger by Theo Stefanski (site)
The Ritual by Will Wright (director’s showreel)
Idol Worship by Theo Stefanski (site)
Dirty Silverware by Steve Daniels (trailer, stuff)
Ethereal Chrysalis by Syl Disjonk (site)
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire (site, trailer)
Apartment Eleven by Mark Player (trailer)

Night Two

Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire (site, trailer)
Window Into Time by Thomas Nicol (animated short by same director)
Haselwurm by Eugenio Villani (watch!)
Black Goat by Erik Wilson (watch!, official site)
The Island by Nathan Fisher (watch!)
Static Aeons by Gib Patterson (watch!)
Shadow of the Unnamable by Sascha Renninger (official site)

Also playing were two feature films. These were The Whisperer in Darkness an HPLHS effort directed by Sean Branney (trailer) and Die Farbe (“The Color” in English) (trailer) directed by Huan Vu.

It actually turned out that the sound was off when they tried to play The Raven on the first night, so they played it the second night. The shorts were judged by Guillermo Del Toro, who declared a tie for the winner of the festival. The winners were:

  • First Place: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’ by Christopher Saphire
  • First Place: Static Aeons by Gib Patterson
  • Runner Up: Black Goat by Erik Wilson

So the good news is that I got to see all of the shorts that Guillermo Del Toro liked the best.

In The Raven, a man is haunted by the memory of Lenore and his dread and sorrow are personified by (duh) a raven. I really liked this interpretation. Saphire did a great job on everything, especially the mood of the piece.

Window in Time follows a scientist and his shyly amorous lab assistant as they investigate an ancient chemical formula and unlock a horrible evil. This poetic and atmospheric short was my favorite. It had humor, horrible fates awaiting scientists who are investigating things they shouldn’t, and lots of juicy unheeded warnings.

A private hunt for a giant worm, (the Haselwurm) whose meat confers supernatural powers, goes horribly horribly wrong when one of the hunters is bitten and something happens that you’d rather not think about too much.

Man vs Wild meets Lovecraft in Black Goat, not a short but a trailer for a planned feature-length film. A monster hunter with a plan for avoiding certain death at the hands of a Lovecraftian monster. Short. Funny. Poetic. Six minutes!

I’m worried that I’m using the words “poetic” and “atmospheric” too much here. This is the last time, I promise! Despite being difficult to understand most of the time, atmospheric and poetic computer animated short Static Aeons successfully delivers its payload: The End of the World.

What drives the psyche of a man who would lock himself up in a well-stocked backyard bomb shelter, and who would listen to the world end outside as he tries not to go crazy on his tiny Island? Loneliness. Barbarism.

I will give a grudging “I see what you did there” to Shadow of the Unnamable for using a dialogue between two characters to Be The Story. But it didn’t work for me.

The feature that night was a German film, Die Farbe. Based on Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. The movie is faithful to the basic story, but sets the main events in World War II Germany, and I can’t help but see it now politicized. Horrible things happened to some people: Many people forget (or at least pretend). Some can’t believe something like that would ever happen. Others struggle to forget and fail. A few are driven mad. The movie itself is creepy and… and… atmospheric (sorry) but I found the long slow burn trajectory of the bulk of this film a little tedious. It has one really delicious scene where someone nudges a corpse with a broom. Best use of dust in a movie, ever.

The flying monkeys let our technician out for a minute and he snuck away into the light of day. Thanks for your patience during this difficult transition.
I ated Tinkerbell.

Fhtagn Spoken Here.

... the attic, a vast raftered length lighted only by small blinking windows in the gable ends, and filled with a massed wreckage of chests, chairs, and spinning-wheels which infinite years of deposit had shrouded and festooned into monstrous and hellish shapes.
The Shunned House
H.P. Lovecraft




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