Tag Archive for 'creepy'

Monster Alphabet: C is for Crow Robot

Now this is exactly what I’m talking about today when I say that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What these kids today lack is IMAGINATION. Somebody goes to the trouble of making a crowbot, but all it really does is talk to crows. Here are some ideas:

  1. Make a crow robot army. Preferably one whose members are capable of flight. And with cruel-looking talons.
  2. Make a crowbot that can gather and command a crow army.
  3. Build a crowbot that visits mad, doomed artists, or orphans and menaces them silently from trees, or something like a sculptured bust above a chamber door.

The person who made this does get extra points for making it cool looking. And I love the hat. I would wear a hat like that. Click here for the hat: Gizmodo.

Published on March 2, 2010 in Monster Alphabet. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

You Can’t Help That, Said The Cat, We’re All Mad Here

It’s been a while since I posted anything about the upcoming Tim Burton movie, Alice in Wonderland. Mostly because my sister site, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, has been the best place for info. BUT here are a bunch of great pictures from the coming movie. I got them in huge-o-vision, mostly because I care about you and want you to have creepy desktop wallpaper. Here is my own central repository for all things Alice 2010.

Published on February 1, 2010 in Alice in Wonderland. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Pinup of the Week: Spicy Mystery Stories February 1936

Spicy Mystery Stories February 1936

BATMAN
by Lew Merrill

darkinthedark does not claim copyright on this image. If you are the copyright holder and object to this image appearing here please contact me.

Published on January 29, 2010 in Pin-up of the Week. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Happy Darkest Day!

A Very Festive Darkest Day Staircase

As you may or may not expect, it isn’t traditional in my tribe of monsters (specifically haunters of basements and attics) to celebrate Christmas. Yes. Yes. I know it might seem shocking, but monsters can be like that.

It does turn out that we have a holiday very near Christmas that we call Darkest Day. There are even traditional songs to go with Darkest Day. Such as Oh Darkest Day, I’ll be Haunting You, and Crawling up from the Depths. The second song, I’ll be Haunting You, is traditionally screamed, as opposed to anything resembling singing. The other two require quite a bit of moaning and bumping about. Crawling up is singular in that it requires the performer to slam a door at the very end. Ah! It makes me nostalgic talking about such things.

Darkest Day commemorates a special day that happened thousands of years ago in a great monster civilization that has since disappeared. It seems that a team of astronomers had noticed that the sun seemed to be going away. The days had grown shorter and shorter. It was on this day that they noticed that the sun had seemed to stop, and they excitedly announced that it would never come back. Monsters all over the world would gain hours of creeping and haunting time, and our monster GDP would skyrocket. Little did they know that they had unwittingly marked the very day that the sun started coming back. I can only imagine that this was very embarassing.

We monsters don’t generally give gifts around Darkest Day. There are a few traditional things that we do to mark it, however. For example, monsters with hair will get a haircut. It happens that some monsters who do not have hair (or for whom a haircut would be painful, like a Medusa), can get wigs. The wigs are generally black and have very very long hair so that the wearer can have a real cutting experience. (Haha. Get it?) Of course, this is one of those items where richer monsters can show up the neighbors with more expensive wigs. Some very wealthy monsters even hire ghosts to haunt their wigs.

A traditional item we share with humans around this time is the giving of cards. Of course, we do it very differently. We give cards that are made of black paper and put in black envelopes. We do not mail them or even scrawl addresses on them. A proper Darkest Day card is delivered by sneaking up the the recipient’s domicile and sliding it under a door or in a window in such a way that the receiver will be unaware that they even got a card. Unfortunately, such cards are hard to see in the dark. I’m a big fan of paper, though, so I like getting cards and leave them all over my floor to step on during the coming year.

One last tradition that monsters share on this holiday is climbing up stairways in towers. It’s best to have a very long stairway hidden away in a haunted castle or deserted lighthouse, but a good staircase in a derelict hotel or even an apartment building will do. When done properly, a lot of moaning, clanking, and bumping around in the dark creates an especially harrowing tone, and a monster should properly imagine climbing these dark stairs all the way up into the sky, even if their staircase only goes up a few floors.

So there you have it. I hope everyone has a very happy holiday.

Published on December 23, 2009 in News. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Book Review: Hammer Glamour by Marcus Hearn

hammer_glamour_titan_booksIf you’ve seen many horror film from the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, it’s pretty likely that you’ve seen one or two Hammer films. UK-based Hammer Film Productions made a name for itself by updating 1930s-style B grade monster movies and injecting a lot more steam. While some of these movies faded into obscurity, others went on to be classics. Two examples are: Dracula (1958) with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and Curse of Frankenstein (1957) also with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. To give you a taste of how Hammer worked, they followed Dracula with eight sequels and Curse of Frankenstein with six.

The movies were low-budget, gothic, and besides Cushing, Lee, and other leading men, the movies featured a bevy of glamorous ladies, which leads us to the book, Hammer Glamour. Author Marcus Hearn has put together short biographies of 50 of the gorgeous actresses from the Hammer films. Horror movie fans will be fascinated by the intro and biographies, which provide a glimpse into the rise and fall of Hammer Film Productions. To supplement the bios, the publisher has added an amazing assortment of photos of each of the stars. The book includes hundreds of photos, including steamy pin-ups, glamorous portraits, and pictures taken on-set.

Did I mention that some of these photos are rather steamy? But obviously, we are really only interested in reading the articles, aren’t we? While I certainly expected to find Raquel Welch, who sported a sexy cave woman outfit in One Million Years B.C. (1966), I was actually surprised to find Nastassja Kinski, who starred in Hammer’s final film, To the Devil a Daughter (1976). I haven’t seen it, but apparently To the Devil a Daughter was not exactly a smash hit. Fortunately, Nastassja Kinski went on to bigger and better things, including Cat People (1982). On a side note, if you haven’t seen Nastassja Kinski’s father, Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (1979), you should go see it now. Now! Now!

OK… Now where was I? To satisfy my OCD, here’s a list of the ladies: Ursula Andress, Eva Bartok, Stephanie Beacham, Olinka Berova, Martina Beswicke, Carita, Veronica Carlson, Diane Clare, Mary and Madeline Collinson (Mmmmm – identical twins), Adrienne Corri, Hazel Court, Jennifer Daniel, Vera Day, Susan Denberg, Marie Devereux, Diana Dors, Shirley Eaton, Julie Ege, Barbara Ewing, Suzah Farmer, Shirley Anne Field, Yvonne Furneaux, Valerie Gaunt, Eunice Gayson, Judy Geeson, Jenny Hanley, Linda Hayden, Nastassj Kinski, Marla Landi, Suzanna Leigh, Valerie Leon, Jennie Linden, Joanna Lumley, Yvonne Monlaur, Rosenna Monteros, Caroline Munro, Kate O’Mara, Barbara Payton, Jaqueline Pearce, Ingrid Pitt, Stefanie Powers, Yvonne Roman, Edina Ronay, Catherina Von Schell, Janette Scott, Barbara Shelley, Madeline Smith, Yutte Stensgaard, Victoria Vetri, Raquel Welch. Mmmmm. That’s 50.

Collinson-twins

Creepy Factor: 2 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 0 out of 5 (there IS NO suspense in a coffee table book.)
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 4 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 2 out of 5

Final result: This book is very well put together. The writing is excellent. The photos are lush and plentiful. The subject matter is interesting. Everybody knows that monsters love the ladies. And how! This coffee table book will make a great gift for the monster in your life, or failing that, the monster movie lover in your life.

Hammer Glamour by Marcus Hearn – Titan Books – 2009
Get Hammer Glamour on Amazon

Many thanks to Titan Books for sending me this book to review. (See my disclosure policy.) Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!

Published on December 7, 2009 in Book Reviews. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .