Today’s prompt “Cornfield Capers” only yielded two things in my mind, Children of the Corn and Corn Mazes. Since the only image I could think of for Children of the Corn was people crucified in the middle of fields, I went with the maze.
I think a lot of the prompts have been making lean towards the whimsical here. But my other idea was having something nasty sneaking up on the couple… And I think there’s a fine line between horror and victim porn.
After groaning at the pun, “Owl Be Back”. (A stinker even by this list’s standards… For some reason, I had remembered it as “Owls Well That Ends Well”.) I was a little bit stumped. While an owl is a great thing to draw, I wanted something spooky. The problem is as a long time nature lover and occasional bird watcher, I’m not particularly afraid of Owls. (Beyond not wanting to be anywhere near their nests when they’re raising their young, of course.) In fact, I think they’re pretty cool.
Most of the Halloween or horror imagery I see of them usually has them somewhere in the background, almost as a decoration. Finally, I based my image on two Shakespeare quotes.
When I saw that Friday the Thirteenth the first thing I could think of was, “anything but freaking Jason!” Of course, I really couldn’t think of anything else, so this was a time-consuming challenge.
Ultimately I decided to go with superstitions such as black cats, ladders, and mirrors. I still I had two false starts in the process, and the one downside of blue pencils is they’re hard to erase.
I’m mostly okay with this one, though it might be the weakest of the batch so far. Regrettably, it feels more comical than halloweeny.
I’m pretty sure the lame pun “Reel Monsters” means doing any movie monster I feel like. (Unless they really want me to do my own versions of the characters from the Klasky Csupo show.)
Anyway, this is too much like “do whatever you want” instructions which always gives me a bad case of “Baskin Robins Syndrome”. (the mental shutdown you get when offered a choice of 31 flavors and you end up getting chocolate because you can’t think of anything else.)
Today’s prompt, “swamp citizens” seemed designed to steer the artist towards some knock-off of DC’s Swamp Thing. I tried to avoid that by trying to think of other bits of Louisiana folklore, but all I was aware of was the Loup Garou and zombies (and I cant do that because the voodoo sketch comes up on the 25th) I eventually came up with this one about frog hunters. I think It came out okay… though part of me feels like I’m ripping off this Farside cartoon… and I have slight misgivings since there’s going to be a prompt about toads next week… But I’ll cross that bridge when I find it.
For this week’s Halloween selection I returned to the Hammer Horror films and watched the first two sequels to Christopher Lee’sHorror of Dracula.
In the Brides of Dracula, we have Mariane Dannielle traveling to her new job teaching at a girls’ finishing school in the heart of Transylvania. She’s abandoned by her driver at a small inn. There she is taken in by the Baroness Meinster (played by Yvonne Monlaur) who takes her to her castle. At the castle, she meets the baroness’s son, who the Baroness keeps imprisoned. Mariane falls in love with him immediately and frees him.
However, we discover he is a vampire and disciple of Dracula who quickly begins a reign of terror turning beautiful women into vampires. It’s a good thing Professor Van Helming (Peter Cushing ) is on the scene to save the day.
This was… okay. I especially liked the presence of Moniaur as the Baroness and of course one can’t get enough of Peter Cushing. But Baron Meinster comes off as a cheap knock-off of Dracula.
And while the villain it defeated both of the brides escape.
It’s been seven years since Van Helming killed Dracula. We meet some Brattish tourists who are touring the Carpathian mountains. They are abandoned by their driver before the sun sets (see a pattern here?} and take shelter in the Castle Dracula where food and rooms have been prepared for them by Dracula’s servant Clovis.
This turns out to be a trap and Clovis uses one of them in a blood sacrifice to raise Dracula and once Dracula rises he turns another into a vampire.
I liked this one better than the last one. Christopher Lee as Dracula has great screen presence though since two-thirds of the film are dedicated to bringing Dracula back the amount of screen time feels anticlimactic. Especially since he’s dispatched easily in the end by being drowned in a moat.
