“Gift” is another prompt I spent too much time overthinking. Or at least trying to think trying to think of a Halloween twist to it.
I spent way to much time going with either a red pill/blue pill or do not open the box trope but couldn’t think of a good way to execute it in one image. Finally, I thought of doing a monster receiving a gift. After that, it was a matter of choosing which monster.
I hadn’t done vampires yet this year.
I broke a few of my usual rules on this one. Since I thought any background would distract on this one I didn’t use my usual border and since I wanted a solid black for Count Orlok’s robes I didn’t do any hatching.
For today’s prompt, thunder, I went with a faithful Igor setting up the lightning rod for their master.
It occurred to me after the fact why we instinctively dress the cliche image of Igor in medieval clothing even though the setting takes place in the thirties. It probably has something to do with the way a lot of popular media well into the seventies treated eastern Europe like a primitive third world nation no matter what the facts said.
I couldn’t think of a non-torture version of this one, but I think if I go with an over the top cartoony medieval dungeon I’ll be able to circumvent my principals.
It occurred to me after I scanned it that I could have had one of the torturers wear a twelfth man t-shirt.
For today’s prompt, prickly, I had trouble thinking of anything besides cactuses. I’m glad I finally thought of something more Halloweeny because I think this one of a couple of witches gushing over a hedgehog has greeting card possibilities.
“Chop” was another prompt that I initially thought of something far more gruesome. Since I really didn’t want this sketch challenge to be an ode to serial killers I chose my second idea.
This consisted of having fun with lumberjacks and fearsome critters.
For this week of my Halloween double feature marathon, having watched many a movie with the modern charismatic witch, I decided to go back to the older stories. The kind where “witchcraft” meant deals with the Devil and witches were the stuff of nightmares.
The first film on my list was a Nietzchka Keene’s The Juniper Tree.
After their mother is stoned to death on suspicion of witchcraft. Two sisters leave town as quickly as possible. The older sister, Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) enchants a young widower Jóhann (Valdimar Örn Flygenring), to love her and marry her. But the problem is but his young son, Jónas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar), becomes suspicious about her and something has to be done. Meanwhile, the younger sister, Margit (Björk Guðmundsdóttir) is seeing visions, of her mother as well as befriending Jónas and finds herself torn between her loyalty to her sister and her new family.
Loosely based on the Brother’s Grimm story, this film is slow and quiet, but still quitelyrical doing a wonderful job of showing the isolation of a family in the gorgeous but desolate Norwegian countryside
Next film on my list, Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New England Folktale, tells the story of a family in 1600s Puritan New England who are ostracized from their community for religious extremism. The set up a farm in the deep woods of Massachusetts, but things begin to go wrong almost immediately and there is something out in the woods who begins to eat away at them literally and figuratively.
This is another one of those films that I heard really good things about back when it first came out but I never got around to seeing it. Since it’s definitely part of my Yankee heritage I’d always been interested in this period of history, and Eggers does a wonderful job of recreating it, worts and all. Solid performances from everybody makes the immersion in this alien world nearly complete.
