I’ve really scraped the bottom of the tupperware and and none of the remaining items on my list seemed worthy for this Halloween Finale. So I kind of cheated and decide to do something based on Modest Mussorgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain. One thing I didn’t want this to be when I did this was (despite of being a huge Bill Tytla fan) do it as a piece of Fantasia Fan art.
So rather than making Chernobog as merely another name for the devil as he is in the Disney Cartoon, but as the Slavic god of the night.
Since there really isn’t much information left on the subject I only had guesswork to go with… So I kind of went with some sort of brooding bogatyr lord.
Today’s Inktober entry is ridiculously late because I had a very long day that started at six. Anyway the Tupperware said to do the wild hunt. I was kind inspired by Matt Wagner’s take of doing it as a motorcycle gang in Mage to do it as an urban fantasy. I might have made it slightly political because I was being annoyed by a couple of articles about militias, hence doing it as off-road racers other than bikes… anything to avoid drawing horses.
I did the Kappa two years ago, so as always the case the challenge is to try and do things different. This time I tried to make the kappa more as a natural predetor.
Today the magic Tupperware said I had to draw a Cenobite. I’ve only ever seen the first Hellraiser film. At the time I wasn’t particularly impressed. I was probably too young for it only paying attention to the chains, hooks and people being flayed alive. From what I hear about it these days I’m sure I’d appreciate it a lot more, though considering the subject matter I’m not sure I’d want to risk it.
Having said that despite not being the biggest fan of Clive Barker i’ve always enjoyed his prose style and his world building and the general concept of Hellraiser is quite interesting. (once you get past the messy bits) For the most part what I know about the setting comes from the comic books and overheard conversations from friends who are diehard Barker fans. Having said that and tried my best at designing a brand new cenobite in the time allowed (everybody does Pinhead.)
Well once again the magic tupperware told me to embrace the double edged sword of the classics with Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde! The problem with the classics as always is everyone’s done them every way you can think of. Besides that It’s hard to think of good ways to show the two of them together. So I went with the mirror schtick. It works most of the time. Besides having the scene in the Bathroom is a good place for the doctor to drink his “medicine”.
After, yet again, not spending quite enough time deciding what this weeks theme would be and I fell back on an old favorite and went with watching a few more H.P.Lovecraft adaptations. The one’s I ended up going with were obscure and quirky but not at all bad. Another point of interest is these are two of Lovecraft’s works that don’t appear to fit in the Mythos setting.
The first on my list was the nearly direct to video film, The Resurrected. A modern day adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, It tells the story of a detective hired by a client to investigate the strange behavior of her husband, Charles Dexter Ward. It turns out that Mr. Ward’s behavior is very strange indeed, Involving wild animals, strange smells, copious demand for fresh meat and the resurrection of dead ancestors.
This is an interesting film that mostly does a good job of updating the material as best they can. I confess I like it because of it’s portrait of the backroads of Rhode Island in fall. (What can I say, I’m a sucker for films that open up with establishing shots of my home town.) And there were pretty good performances from everybody, especially Chris Sarandon as Charles Dexter Ward and his ancestor. The film had pretty good creature effects.
In the end what dragged the film down for me was how it was dependent on people being idiots (possibly a side effect of avoiding correcting for period) I mean, not getting into the question of why didn’t they investigate the catacombs bellow Ward’s house after the police raided, but when they finally did would it kill them to make sure the batteries in their flashlight (yes they only had the one and a lantern that was easily extinguished for the near dark monster scene) was fresh and have backups?
An adaptation of Lovecraft’s short story of the same name, it’s the story of a writer, played by Moore (unnamed in the story but for the movie is made into one of Lovecraft’s regular protagonists, Randolph Carter) who after moving into a boarding house meets and befriends the mysterious Doctor Muñoz played by Jack Donner who’s health is dependent on a strange refrigeration unit. It inevitably breaks down and the Muñoz melts to death and that’s mostly it…. Okay, that was bit curt it’s actually a nice little character piece and parable of human will, that could easily be done as a play. Donner’s Performance as the doctor is excellent. My biggest problem with it was my tendency to get distracted by how dependent on being a period piece a film is. If this story took place today there would be nothing magical about a good air conditioning or refrigeration units or for that matter it’s easy to get large quantities of ice on short notice… In fact you’d think that the doctor would have some suppliers on speed dial in case of such emergencies, and we know that because in a modern setting the doctor would have a phone!
I’ve really scraped the bottom of the tupperware and and none of the remaining items on my list seemed worthy for this Halloween Finale. So I kind of cheated and decide to do something based on Modest Mussorgsky‘s Night on Bald Mountain. One thing I didn’t want this to be when I did this was (despite of being a huge Bill Tytla fan) do it as a piece of Fantasia Fan art.
