Titans Terrors and Toys

As holidays go, Halloween has a lot of things going for it: distinct and easily identifiable iconography, fun and colorful traditions, and plenty of opportunities to spend time with family and friends. What it does lack, particularly in comparison to Christmas, is some kind of musical tradition. Sure, Halloween has become the de facto season for theatrical showings and fan-casted floor shows of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Evil Dead: The Musical shows signs of following a similar pattern of live performance, but a list of traditional tunes doesn't really exist for this holiday season. Topless Robot recently posted a best/worst list of spooky songs that are fit for the Halloween season ; here's my brief list of creepy music that you can listen to (or watch in the case of music videos) as part of your Halloween festivities. (Also, please feel free to include as part of this list a particular Aliens vs. Predator music video from Russia , a video that I wrote about a few ...

When you hear the term "monster maker", what comes to mind? When I hear it, I either think of fictitious monster makers (such as Victor Frankenstein and Herbert West ) or the real-life monster makers who work in the entertainment industry (such as Ray Harryhausen and Rick Baker ). Yet monster makers really do come in all varieties, from garage model kit makers to amateur costume hobbyists. Sometimes, a monster maker can even make a living as a wedding decorations designer (insert Bridezilla joke here). Meet Georgette Gaynor. She runs her own wedding decorations business in the Virginia Beach, VA area, working with silk flowers, arches and glue guns to create settings of wedded bliss where her customers will tie the knot. Yet in her spare time, Gaynor makes monsters--lots and lots of monsters. Using skills that she originally picked up from her wedding business, Gaynor assembles creative combinations of rubber Halloween masks, spray foam, duct tape, wire, plastic nettin...

As any good geek worth his/her salt should know, the holiday season is the perfect time to buy and display highly-detailed ornaments of your favorite franchise(s). It's like having your own seasonally-mandated display case of your favorite geek obsessions. Unfortunately, the season in question is Christmas and not Halloween, and the franchises that are most likely to have ornaments made of their characters, vehicles and scenes are the sci-fi and fantasy varieties (Star Wars, Star Trek, Harry Potter, DC and Marvel superheroes, etc.) thus leaving horror franchises out in the cold. I think that having ornamental Halloween trees is a great idea, particularly if you own a fake tree. Besides, the shopping seasons of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas have become so mixed together that having a tree up from October to December wouldn't be too out of place anyway. Yet finding ornaments for a Halloween tree isn't easy, so here's my list of horror-oriented ornaments that...

One of the best things about living in our nation's capital is that there's never a shortage of things to see and do. Even better than that, though, is that there's never a shortage of things to see and do during major holiday seasons, such as Halloween. Here are two upcoming cinema-centric Halloween events that might be of interest to all horror hounds who happen to be in the DC area: Silver Spring Zombie Walk: This Saturday at 7:30 pm, there's going to be a zombie walk in downtown Silver Spring, MD. This event is open to all of the walking, shambling, and lurching undead who are interested in participating. The walk will conclude at the AFI Silver Theatre, with a showing of the original Dawn of the Dead --how cool is that for a zombie event? Click here for more details about the upcoming zombie walk and information about Silver Spring zombie walks from previous years. Click here for more information about AFI Silver Theatre's "Halloween on Screen"...

For those of you who like to flaunt your costuming creativity during the Halloween season, this post is for you. From my personal horror archives: Make-Up Monsters and Creature Costumes by Marcia Lynn Cox. These books were published in the mid and late 1970s, and they consist of make-up and costume instructions aimed at kids. (A third book was published, Make-Up Monsters and Creature Costumes , although that book combined just some--but not all--of the ideas and instructions from the first two books.) What's interesting to note about these books is that Cox came up with these make-up and costume instructions by using cheap, easily available and non-toxic items--flour, cotton balls, corn syrup, and so on--and that most of her ideas in the Make-Up Monsters book are creative (albeit amateur and low-budget) renditions of many of the classic Universal Studio monsters. Of the two books, Make-Up Monsters features the more impressive selection, largely because the costume ingredi...

It's the Halloween season--the perfect time to take in some creepy, crazy live entertainment, whether it's in the form of haunted house attracts or stage shows. If you live in the Washington DC area, the Molotov Theatre Group, the local masters of Grand Guignol, is ready and willing to meet your petrifying and perverse performance art needs. This weekend, Molotov will be performing Blood Sweat & Fears III: The Red Velvet Curtain at the 1409 Playbill Café in Washington DC. Like its two predecessors , Blood Sweat & Fears III is made up of three one-act plays. This year's trilogy includes the following tales: "Private Room Number Six", directed by Kevin Finkelstein: An unscrupulous general tries to have his way with a sweet young thing--who is not what she pretends to be.   "I Want to Go Home", directed by Lucas Maloney: A desperate housewife tries to put the spice back into her marriage, and gets a most unexpected surprise. "Person U...

When I was growing up, some of the toys that were commonly aimed at my age group and gender were rubber snakes, spiders, flies, and various other kinds of reptiles, arachnids and insects. The presumed explanation is that such toys were "icky" and therefore ideal for mischievous little boys who were looking to play some kind of prank on some unsuspecting little girls. (Such toys were also used--and I suppose they still are--as props for amateur haunted house events around Halloween, thus giving this post its logical seasonal tie-in.) Yet as I grew older, I began to realize just how fascinating snakes, spiders and other "icky" creatures really are, and I often am intrigued as to how they are portrayed by artists in various media (other than rubber). Along these lines is a store I found in Rehoboth Beach, DE called Scandinavian Occasion . Just blocks away from the boardwalk, Scandinavian Occasion has a wide variety of high-quality merchandise, which includes vari...

Last weekend, the Mrs. and I joined a few friends of ours for a tour of a special exhibit at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD. The exhibit is entitled "Walter Wick: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic" , and it will on display until January 2, 2011. As described by the museum's site, the exhibit "feature(s) a selection of Wick’s early photographs, which provided a foundation for the artist’s interest in illusions. It include(s) several of the handcrafted, meticulously detailed installation models accompanied by his large-format color photographs that are the illustrations in his children’s books. Together they ... provide a behind-the-scenes look at the artist’s creative process and a window into the puzzles and illusions for which he is so well known." It's an excellent exhibit, and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in photography, miniatures, optical illusions, and/or children's books. Yet what makes this exhibit worthy of ...