This was a hard one. I pulled the slip of paper that said Witch and I couldn’t think of a damn thing… Or more accurately I couldn’t think of anything new. You see witches are one of my favorite denizens of Halloween and I have dozens of ideas and notes, everything from children’s books to illustrations of The Master and Margarita. It would be so easy to just do one of those over or scan one of those sketches… but that would be cheating.
For this week’s double feature I went with humorous vampire movies. I was trying for movies that were not outright parodies like Love at First Bite or Dracula: Dead and Loving It. What I was really going for was actual horror films with a sense of humor. Whether I succeeded or not is anyone’s guess.
The first on my list, Vamp, was one I’d been curious about for years… mainly because I had a slight thing for Grace Jones in high school. Regretibly it did dissapoint. I quickly discovered that most of what I thought it was about was actually from a Jim Carrey film called Once Bitten. (and if I’d remembered it I might have included it in this weeks material)
Vamp turned out to be a by the numbers 80s college film with cringe worthy stereotypes about a pair of students who go to the city to in search of a cheap stripper as the price of joining a fraternity. What they find is a seedy strip club full of vampire’s led by Grace Jones. The only good thing about this film was one exotic number from Jones that felt as if it was part of a completely different movie. Otherwise she and her charisma were completely wasted. She barely had fifteen minutes of screen time. The rest of the film was pretty much by the numbers and very forgettable. (Though the Albino street gang, who much to my surprise, turned out to be human were good for a laugh)
The next film on my list was Roman Polanski‘s The Fearless Vampire Killers (featuring the lovely Sharon Tate just before her brief encounter with the Manson Family.) I always enjoy Polanski’s work and he’s always on the top of my list on the endless question of how to love the art but not the artist. Fearless Vampire Hunters is no exception, it simultaneously tells us what our ideal Hammer Vampire movie should be, while shamelessly mocking them.. It tells the story of two bungling vampire hunters who travel to Transylvania and to their horror actually find that Vampires actually do exist. This film is a wonderful balance of slapstick and genuine horror. My favorite scene being our heroes being revealed in the middle of the Vampire ball they infiltrated by being the only ones visible in a very large mirror.
For today’s musical number is the soundtrack for Disney’s Skeleton Dance by Carl Stalling with direction by Ub Iwerks.
When I pulled today’s monster “Jason” I almost didn’t realize what I was talking about until thirty seconds later I realized I meant Friday the 13th and put Jason in quotes to have it mean “generic masked slasher”
Growing up I hated Slasher movies beyond making jokes about the seemingly endless sequels they scared the death out of me (It didm’t help that most of my classmates loved them) When I got older I found most of them pretty stupid with the murderer doing our species a favor by killing the dumbest teenagers.
So when it came to sit down and do the day’s sketch I just couldn’t take it seriously.
A very Happy Birthday to Mr Dizzy Gillespie! Let’s celebrate by enjoying Oro, Incienso y Mirra from his 1975 Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods album.
Sorry this one was kind of late due to my first day of house sitting in Capitol Hill which included walking and cleaning up after a geriatric and incontinent Dalmatian and then taking a car to a garage for service and then commuting from there to my apartment/office to work… You get the idea…
Anyway today the magic hat told me to draw a Mad Scientist. To keep things interesting I went with a kind of hip modern day version of Herbert West.
