R.I.P. Jonathan Frid

Blacklight

The Undead

Karloff as The Monster

ArtRage Studio Pro and Photoshop

Boris Karloff's Thriller: The Cheaters

In 1960, fans of horror got their own television show with the hour-long anthology series Boris Karloff's Thriller, hosted, appropriately, by the venerable bogeyman himself and produced by classic horror empire Universal Studios. Unfortunately, the show's producers were so keen to compete with the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, featuring mostly crime stories with a dark climactic twist, that the first 14 episodes of the show were listless imitations of Hitchcock's long-running television franchise--lacking even a hint of supernatural mayhem. It soon became apparent that audiences didn't want a show hosted by Boris Karloff to be just another hour of Hitchcockian storylines, and Universal was finally pressured to retool the show to feature stories of gothic horror, starting with episode #15 The Cheaters.

A story by Psycho author Robert Bloch, The Cheaters concerns a pair of old-fashioned spectacles with very special yellow-tinted lenses that allow the wearer to see "the truth" around them, and the strange tragic circumstances that invariably ensue. The story opens as the reclusive 19-th century inventor of the titular glasses, Dirk Vann Prin (played by Thriller regular Henry Daniell) puts them on for the first time--to his immediate regret. From there, the story continues to the present-day where junk-man Joe Henshaw (Paul Newlan, another Thriller regular) finds the Cheaters while cleaning out the ancient ruins of the Vann Prin house. When he puts on the glasses he finds that they clear up his vision in more ways than one, as the grim designs of his harpy wife (Linda Watkins) and young hired hand (Ed Nelson) are laid bare. The glasses change hands three more times in The Cheaters, until finally a scoundrel intellectual (Harry Townes), thinking he's unlocked the true purpose of the Cheaters, uses the deadly specs to view his own image in the mirror. What follows is a scene regarded by some as the scariest moment in 1960's network television--a category in which the show Thriller appears prominently.

As you might have guessed, the best part of The Cheaters are the moments where it's hapless owners are gazing through it's glass. The Cheaters effect is pulled off through a simple change in lighting and a voice-over to represent the inner dialogue of the viewed subject, but this works quite effectively. The performances of all involved are excellent, as well, and the story is taut enough to sustain interest until the terrifying conclusion at the wonderfully gloomy Vann Prin house. Thriller benefitted greatly by Universal's flair for spooky sets and horror lighting, as well as the vast pool of acting and writing talent it could draw on. Few of the Thriller episodes that followed are at the level of The Cheaters in overall execution, and sadly it only ran for two seasons, but there are enough memorable episodes to testify to it's untapped potential. 9/10

Watercolor, Traditional vs Digital

I decided to tackle an old unfinished watercolor, this time in the program ArtRage, which is second perhaps only to Corel Paint for simulating traditional mediums like pencil, oil and watercolor.  Below is my original unfinished work (from Night of the Living Dead) which was rendered in watercolor and pen+ink and black pencil. I was unsatisfied with the blue-green color mixture that I had chosen to paint it with and so I elected to stop and scan the painting into Photoshop to tweak the colors and levels until I got this vivid mix of blood red and magenta. That made me want to repaint it properly in the new colors but I never got around to it until now.

Working in real watercolor can be challenging, to say the least. There are no editable layers and no undo button and less latitude to correct inevitable errors even compared to lots of other traditional media. On the other hand, this environment of unpredictability breeds a lot of happy accidents resulting in unique effects. So these very same errors are part of the allure of watercolor in the first place. Only in recent years have the tools to digitally replicate this interesting tactile randomness been available in programs like Paint and ArtRage. Okay, so here's my attempt to redo the painting in ArtRage:

Again, this is unfinished and the colors and levels were tweaked in Photoshop. Obviously there are a great many distinct differences between the two paintings. For me this was just sort of proof-of-concept tinkering, anyway. I know that if I were determined to, I could come a lot closer to replicating the traditional watercolor painting, which I only referenced toward the end of the repainting. If I go forward with this repainting, I might even choose completely different colors. But I think I'll move on....

Ben

Dwayne Jones as Ben in Night of the Living Dead.

Abyss

Sketchbook Cryptid

Your basic failed experiment or "Nosferooster".

Hunting Girl

Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Part 7

The last handful of Night Gallery's Season 2 episodes boast some of the show's most atmospheric, and chilling, segments, the embarrassing "comedy blackouts" having at long last seemingly fallen out of favor.

In Deliveries in the Rear (2.19.1), Cornell Wilde (Gargoyles) plays an ambitious anatomist at a 19th century medical school who endeavors to have the freshest subjects for his anatomy classes, without regard for the means used to acquire them (namely, via a pair of murderous goons). This segment is well done and generally recommended but, obviously inspired by the true life horrors of the Burke and Hare murders (with all names changed), it rates low among the various incarnations of that story, particularly 1957's The Flesh and the Fiends.

Wilde's Dr. Fletcher is rather open about the probable methods employed to secure his morbid materials and seems keen to provoke the moral indignation of his peers, such that there's little pity for him when he is finally undone by his hippocratic hypocrisy. The story is seen mostly through his limited point of view and exists only to set up the climactic twist. That expediency may work for such a condensed telling of the Burke and Hare saga, but that means a lot of what makes the source material so interesting--medical ethics, class issues, angry mobs and the substance of Burke and Hare themselves--goes unexploited. (6.5/10)

I'll Never Leave You--Ever (2.20.1) is the fog-enshrouded fable of an unfaithful woman (the late lovely Lois Nettleson, who starred in one of my favorite Twilight Zones--The Midnight Sun) whose farmer husband (Royal Dano of Killer Klowns from Outer Space) is slowly wasting away from some icky mystery illness. Repelled by her husbands deathly touch, the desperate housewife consults the local bruja for a way swiftly snuff her sicko husband and free her to be with her lothario boyfriend John Saxon (A Nightmare on Elm Street). The witch carves the wife a wooden voodoo doll in the likeness of her harrowing husband for her to take home and dispose of at will. Unfortunately, the accursed totem's destruction turns out to be other than the tidy solution that she had hoped for.

This is a great, simple and atmospheric segment, reminiscent of E.C. If it has a flaw for me it's that it's rather too easy to sympathize with the supposed femme fatale and her unenviable situation, living with a croaking corpse on a barren, eternally-benighted farm. Aside from the great cast forementioned, I was delighted to see that the horrible old hag was played by Peggy Webber (still alive!) who herself did a turn as a hapless housewife in 1958's beloved MST3K-riffed schlock film The Screaming Skull. (7/10)

The Lovecraft-tinged There Aren't Any More McBanes (2.20.2) plays like a Night Stalker episode without Carl Kolchack to come to the rescue. In it, professional student of witchcraft and all-around slacker Joel Grey turns to the recently-redicovered magical tome of an infamous family warlock to prevent his rich uncle from cutting off his inheritance. Reciting the incantations from this necronomicon, he unleashes a dark force beyond his control and discovers why the book had been lost in the first place.

There's nothing too unexpected in this segment but it satisfies my fetish for funky 70's television that's set in the 70's. Even the special effects are kind of psychedelic. All I can add is that Joel Grey is not a handsome man. I'm just saying. (7/10)

The Monster

We Country Children

My mother died nine years ago in July. I recently cleared her room out and got to looking at some of the old pictures from her side of the family. They were sufficiently intriguing for me to start a new tumblr to exhibit the best of them. I chose a title for the blog from this first image, a postcard of the children (or daughter and son-in-law—I’m not exactly sure since I don’t know anything about them) of D.S Hoffman, General Physician of Lake City, Colorado at the turn of the century.

We Country Children

Virginia Merrye (redux)

Jill Banner as Virginia Merrye in Spider Baby.