1969 Outer Limits Makeup article

From "Famous Monsters" issue #54, published in March of 1969, comes an article on John Chambers, make-up man for movies and TV. The article presents a special make-up session in which the artist recreates the application of the makeup he did for David McCallum in the episode "The Sixth Finger."
I distinctly remember the fright that monster gave me as a six year-old kid!

First, the awesome and memorable cover painting of the alien from "Invasion of the Saucer Men, by none other than Ron Cobb!

(Click on images to enlarge; once open you may have to click on it again to view full-size.)

Bonus: from the same issue, the scary giant from "Lost In Space." Since Chambers did the makeup effects for this show, it's likely he had a hand in making this creature also. Here's an earlier post I did on the model of this monster.

Bonus: from the back cover, a full-page ad for the "Forgotten Prisoner of Castlemare." You can see a whole post I did on this model here.

Curse of the Werewolf article

I've seen trailers that gave away the climax of the film, but a poster?

Hammer's one and only werewolf movie does for the genre what their Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy movies did; revitalized it with energy and more horror. A terrific score highlights the action and character pathos as we see an innocent man doomed by cruel fate to become a wolf under the light of a full moon.

Some screen captures from the DVD:

The credits are superimposed over one of the most striking visuals in any Hammer film... the werewolf's eyes in close up, shifting back and forth, and never blinking the entire time. My own eyes were watering as bad as the wolfman's, from watching what must have been a very difficult thing to do.

The makeup is a departure from the traditional Universal monster, with only enhanced eyesbrows and fangs, with the hair beginning at the edges of the face. It seems more like a man with wolf-like elements, than a fully-changed beast. The film also departs from the traditional "wolf bites man" method of receiving the curse; here, he's a victim of a cursed birth, resulting from the rape of a madman, and being born on Christmas Day. One would think that a child born on that day would be blessed rather then cursed; it seems a bit unfair to punish a child who had no choice in the matter. But, that's the superstition in the story and even his baptism shows he is under an evil influence.

Upon being killed by a silver bullet by one who loves him, in this case his adoptive father, he doesn't even change back to a man when killed; another departure from the expected. One of the most unusual werewolf movies made, and one of the best.

The cover of Issue #1 of the short-lived "Movie Monsters" magazine, which came out in the winter of 1974. The article below is from the inside.

Below are some of the marvelous promotional shots for the movie with the hirsute wolfman and the lovely Yvonne Romain. Strangely, the two never encounter one another in the movie; for Yvonne plays the unfortunate mother of wolfman-to-be who dies giving him birth. So in these shots he is attacking his mother! I suppose they wanted to show the wolfman with the most attractive female in the cast, but the images are misleading.

A nice painting of the werewolf below which I found online, but was unable to trace the source.

Godzilla 85 Monster Land article

Click on images to view Kaiju-sized scans.

From the June 1985 issue of Forry's "Monster Land" magazine, comes this eight-page photo spread from the (then) new Godzilla movie.

Part 2: Drac Has Risen...

My Monster Memories today are of:
Issue #6 of the "Dracula Lives" magazine
(Click on images to view full size.)

I bought the above "Dracula Lives" magazine at a corner convenience store in Macon, GA on the way to school in 1974. I bought every issue of this awesome magazine I could find, and was glad to see that this one covered my favorite Hammer Drac movie, "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave." Since I my past entry was on this very subject, I thought I'd post this article for your enjoyment before moving on to the next.

The Making of: Dracula Has Risen From The Grave

My Monster Memory today is of:
"Dracula Has Risen From The Grave"
(Click on images to view full size)

From issue #10 of Fantastic Films, published in September of 1979, comes this behind-the-scenes article on the making of "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave," the third in the Hammer series of films starring Christopher Lee as the Count. Sink your teeth into this!

My own personal monster memories of this film began about 1971. We lived in Parkersburg, WV at the time, and I was in the 6th grade. Every Friday at school they showed a movie in the gym, with admission being a quarter. The one I remember most vividly was "Dracula Has Risen From The Grave," especially the scenes of the woman's body being discovered in the church bell, Dracula under the ice, and his destruction on the cross at the end. It would be over 35 years before I would see it again, when it finally came out on DVD. It has always been my favorite out of the Hammer Dracula films, due to this nostalgic memory; although not the best movie of them all, certainly very entertaining and better than the Drac sequels that came after.

In this piece of artwork for one of the posters, the artist himself posed for the reference photo of Dracula, which accounts for the fact it resembles Lee not in the slightest. Alos Drac seems a bit petulant and frustrated... more an upset child than a threatening figure.

Below are some screen captures from the DVD of the scenes I mentioned as being particularly memorable to me.

Although technically, he rose from a frozen stream, but that just didn't click as a catchy title.

This buxom belle is found stuffed up in a church bell. Why and how Drac did it is unclear, but perhaps he got tired of hearing the clanging every time he settled in for a morning nap.

As the burdened Monsignor makes the long tiresome climb, he wonders why they ever thought the castle would make a good tourist attraction.

Nothing says "rise and shine" like the taste of fresh blood on your lips.

"You! I command you, come and pull my finger!"

"Now, slave... go forth and do my bidding!
Oh, and pick me up some Visine from Rite-Aid while you're out!"

Impaled on the cross, the Count struggles helplessly while the gawking onlookers don't lift a finger to help.

Poor persecuted Dracula, who only wishes to live and let die, is abandoned by his faithless servant, whom he always treated with dignity and respect.

Even watching Frank Miller's "The Spirit" movie last week wasn't this eye-bleedingly painful.

Presumably dissolving into blood off-camera, Drac disappears after a painful and lingering death. It could have been worse, though; he could very easily have landed on the cross in a sitting position, in which case it would have been a real pain in the posterior.

It's interesting how times have changed; if a teacher showed this movie in his class, much less to a gym full of teens, they would probably end up on the 6 o'clock news, be fired, and the kids all trotted to the school shrink for counseling. Meanwhile the kids go home and play violent video games and watch TV shows and movies that would have given me nightmares for years at that age. Hypocrisy.