A Little Storm Damage

We had a few nasty storms roll in last night. The next morning I looked around the yard to see if there was any damage. Fortunately all our trees and rooftops were intact. I glanced over at the garden and the scarecrow was down! Upon closer inspection I noticed that the wooden cross he is fastened to snapped off where it goes into the ground. He fell face down right between the garden rows. His head had gotten squished from the fall so I reshaped it with some more straw. That was the only thing that needed fixing, the rest of him was fine. He's been in the garden since last summer and other than this, I haven't had to do any maintenance to him...which is nice.
























Here he is fixed up. For now I tied him to the corner of the fence until I decide if I want to move him to a different spot.

Friday the 13th Surprise

So Jim, my UPS driver delivered a hideous but most welcome sight today. The #1 master copy of Mr. Grimm 2 showed up on my doorstep and I can't say enough good things about it. Talk about a large mask and the teeth on this guy are just INSANE! This monstrosity is made and signed by Pete Infelise, the man behind The Devil's Workshop. Pete puts out some fantastic masks and if you haven't been to his site, you can check it out here. His blog.

Thanks again Pete...you sure out did yourself on this one!
























I can see this guy being used as a possible corn creature prop. Hmmm....

Look at the scale of this guy compared to an average sized mask. Wow.

Coming soon to a cornfield near you...

These beauties just arrived from my good friend Paul at Darkside Studio. The Darkside Scarecrow and Halloween Jack were some of the first masks Paul ever sculpted. These two pieces are redesigned versions to celebrate Darkside Studio's 15th year in mask making. I'm excited to add these to my collection and can't wait to see what else he has in store for 2010.

These are how the originals looked and have long been discontinued. I think the redesigned versions look much creepier.

Fear

One of the best costumes of Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow I have ever seen. The lighting is wonderful.

Here is an interesting video I found of the performance. Skip ahead to 2:18.

It's been a long time...

since I bought a new mask....and it feels good! This scarecrow mask is made by Brian Dunn from Alter-Ego-Dezines. The unusual design of this one caught my attention. It almost looks like a goblin creature under that burlap and that eye is sick. I haven't made a stand yet for this guy so I'm using Brian's picture of it. You can find more of Brian's work at alter-ego-dezines.com.

A "Supernatural" Scarecrow

Ever since I saw this creepy scarecrow in season one of Supernatural, I wanted to get my hands on a mask of him. I could not find a record of this mask ever being made by anyone. If I wanted it I would have to have this commissioned, but by I wasn't sure who to go to.

After some pondering Eric Lusk from The Creature Cabin came to mind. Eric makes high quality masks, props, does special fx for the film industry and also does commission work. I have purchased several scarecrow masks from him and have been very impressed by his sculpting, paintwork and ease to deal with. Eric has some serious talent, enjoys what he does and likes scarecrows, which is a plus. He seemed to be the ideal choice for making this scarecrow for me.

When I told Eric I'd like a scarecrow mask commissioned, he seemed genuinely excited. I shared some reference pictures of this scarecrow but few were very good. Eric did some digging and agreed the project would be difficult based on how few decent reference pictures he found, but he remained confident he could pull it off. I told Eric to go for it and let's just say the end result was phenomenal. I could not be happier with how it turned out. It is a one of a kind foam filled latex piece and yes, the hat was sculpted too. This is the first time I had a mask commissioned for me and Eric put me at complete ease throughout the entire process, doing everything one would hope and expect. He promptly answered any questions or concerns I had and always kept me informed of what stage he was at in the project. We stay in touch and share the ongoings of the horror/halloween/mask industry. I am happy to call Eric a friend and look forward to seeing what other creatures and monsters he will bring to life.
Click here to visit The Creature Cabin website.

Here is my custom mask made by The Creature Cabin. Yep, same pic as my current avatar.

Here are a few screen caps of the scarecrow featured in the Supernatural episode.

Halloween III...The Night No One Comes Home

In my opinion Halloween III: Season of the Witch is one of those horror movies that will always be underrated and misunderstood. It ranks high in my all time favorite 5 horror movies. I know Pumpkinrot, fellow blogger and prop maker extrordinaire, makes no bones about his love of Halloween III. I myself fall into the same category of being a huge fan of this movie and I go to great lengths to defend my adoration of it. There are so many aspects about Halloween 3 that I appreciate, not only as a lover of Halloween but also horror movies. Just to name a few: it has a well written story, amazing soundtrack and score, features some classic Halloween masks, there are human looking killer robots, creative death scenes and a scheming villain. Conal Cochran, the villainous toy maker gone bad, is truly a monster and a madman. Using his misguided practices of witchcraft and adapting them in order to carry out a worldwide mass killing is truly sinister. One thing I noticed in this movie is the writers were not afraid to make children the target. One of the things that does not occur in most horror films is harming children. I said children, not teenagers. I believe the reason for this is that most writers, directors and film studios believe it is taboo and "won't go there". Now I certainly do not advocate the killing of children, but anyone that has a problem with this knows that it is just a movie.

I happen to favor horror movies that do not have the cliche happy endings and this one appears to not. I say appears because it is not spelled out for you and just leaves you hanging. It's an ending you love to hate. Although this can be debated, I believe that many children and families were unable to be saved by Dr. Challis's best efforts that night.

Upon it's release this movie left a bad taste in people's mouths. It's understandable as there is no Michael Myers storyline in it and many people assumed that it would continue where Halloween 2 left off. After writing the first two Halloween movies, John Carpenter wanted to abandon the Michael Myers storyline and its characters to come up with something different. His plan was that each year they would make a completely different Halloween based movie that would be all to its own. Each movie then on would be completely separate than the one that preceded it. The first of these to be was Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Unfortunately upon its release it did not do well and John Carpenter has never had anything to do with another Halloween movie. Take away the Halloween title and I believe this film would have been much more enjoyed by the audience at the time. If you have never seen Halloween III then don't you think it's about time you did?