Beasts of winter.

Winter.

No, it's not quite here yet; we have to wait another ten days or so for officialitititities.

But don't tell that to the upper 2/3 of the US this week.

Yyyyeeeaaahhh... uh... Winter's arrived.

In my neck o' the woods, we've been spared the ice and snow of the last storm, but if 16 years of Ozarks living has taught me anything (besides how much bacon one can feature on a single menu), it is that between November and April, ice and snow are only a matter of time.

We didn't avoid the biting cold, though. Bbbrrrrrrr! 18F with a windchill down to 9. Fun.

Now don't mistake me, I actually love snow, especially when I've got good food, drink and diversions at the ready and roads are going to be relatively safe within 24 hours or so.

Ice, however, can bite my Hallowe'en-loving behind. Ice deserves naught but our wrath and blowtorches.

But I like Winter, honestly. The darker, chillier wintry days remind me of some of my favorite creepy things... the Beasts of Winter.


The Wampa creature from the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) made such an impact on my 12-year-old brain that I spent months thinking of nothing but stories of white fur and bloody snow drifts, and drawing dark, gaping ice caves hiding glowing eyes. A great monster treat of my youth!

I used to watch The Outer Limits when I was brave enough; back then, even in the sunny afternoon that intro spooked me silly. But I remember one icy being that I could only endure for a moment before turning the channel... as luck would have it, a picture of this same frozen nightmare found its way into my hard drive recently. Still chilling.


Of course, I cannot think of ice, snow and monsters without thinking immediately of that veggie-being from the depths of the cosmos, The Thing From Another Planet (1951)!

James Arness' alien 'thing' thrilled me as a kid, and still does.

I do love the bizarre, unique and truly memorable forms that same alien 'thing' took on in John Carpenter's groundbreaking remake of The Thing in 1982.

'Spiderhead' was just amazing, as was the disgusting and delightful slimy Dog-topus creature... yuck!


Now, when you grow up in southern California, you don't really have a lot of experience with ice and snow. Really, you don't have much Winter at all. So you make due with what Winter can be manufactured... and if that fake freeziness comes with a big, hairy, roaring snowbeast in his ice caves, so so so much the better!

I was ten in 1978 when Disneyland opened a newly restored, redesigned and re-themed Matterhorn Bobsleds attraction -- this time featuring the loudest, coolest damned beast the Park had ever boasted. I loved it, and rode it as often as I could whenever we'd visit the Park.

Yeah. Come around a track going a billion miles an hour and have this thing roar at you, swiping and barely missing your head. Awesome.

If that Matterhorn Monster could walk in the snow for real, I wonder if it would leave a track like this:

Yeah, yeah, this is from a 'real' snow monster. Allegedly. Who knows?
When I was little, my Dad had a book (maybe it was Mom's, but I always recall seeing it among Dad's things) by famed cryptozoologist/explorer Ivan Sanderson, all about the Abominable Snowman. I never read it, but the painted cover of the yellowed paperback always filled me with real dread, and fixed in my mind's eye the accepted look of a real snowbeast:

(This is not the full cover; it's the picture I recall from the original cover, but someone added
this silly cave motif to frame it... the original was the beast you see here trudging among the peaks
of the Himalayas... windswept and desolate and terrifyingly cool to my little mind!)

Then again, some snowmen are more abominable than others.

Some are just plain stupid. Take this little snowhead, Jack Frost:

NOT the cute, loveable Michael Keaton Jack Frost (1998) but the very bad serial killer slasher film Jack Frost from 1996. So terrible it got a sequel. So terrible it was worth mentioning.

I can't really leave out another monstrous beast named Jack chasing down his prey in icy climes...


He gets his in the end... but he must have known it was only fair. I mean, Jack Torrance had to know, even in the depths of his alcoholic, evil spirit-driven rage of madness, that he would never match up to the greatest, most memorable Snow Monster of all time...

Oh yeah! That's right! Raise the aurora-laden roof!

How can you beat the Bumble? Claws down winner!

As I wrote earlier, I love snow and hate ice, but generally enjoy Winter. It can be dreadfully cold, but with monsters added, Winter can also be very, very cool.


By the way... Bumbles bounce.

Olde Tyme Familye Scare.

I was getting ready to do a post on vintage costumes and photos, and realized it's been done so many times; just do an image search for vintage hallowe'en photos and you'll have more than you can handle.

I came to the whole blog thing pretty late, I guess.

But in scouring through my collection of vintage photos from books, magazines, the 'Net, and so on, I did find a few that are just... scary.

Not in a 'it's-Hallowe'en-so-it's-supposed-to-be-scary' scary, but in a 'dear-Lord-my-heart!' kinda scary.

I don't think this is actually a vintage photo, but a promotional still from
the hideous mannequin movie Tourist Trap, or possibly one of the
Texas Chainsaw films. Chills.


"What's scary about this?" you ask. Simple. POPEYE.
Popeye is a mumbling, skedaddling, perpetual nightmare and terrifying in any form,
but this deformed version tops them all. The only possible way to make this any more
frightening is if it was actually a girl under there. Don't ask me why, it would just
be scarier. Adding to the scariness, the mask on the Uncle Sam costume makes the
kid look like Jack Soo from Barney Miller.

Oh dear God my eyes... is it a cat or a skunk? More importantly, is it
a man or woman? The hips say 'woman', everything else says 'man',
except for the COSTUME ITSELF! What guy would DO this?
Or am I too hung up on gender role reversal, and not seeing that the real terror
here comes from the creepy masks behind him/her? Lordy LOOK at that pose!
"I didn't know cats could, y'know... do that!"

I'm not sure of the age of this one, but it must be one of the oldest I have found.
It's not overly scary, no, and quite awesome in its vintage feel... until you get
a close-up shot from the same moment:

This is scary. Stunningly, ethereally, mind-bendingly scary.


The only thing scarier has to be this incredible couples costume:

Man! They look just like a youthful Donny and Marie on Hallowe'en night!
Oh wait... never mind.


Seriously, the scariest costume picture in my collection:

Run screaming into the night!

Anyone have any pictures of their own costumes, good or bad, they'd like to share?


Dumdumflashbulb!

"Well the frost is on the pumpkin..."

The Scariest Vampire Ever.

Who knew that the world's most horrifying vampire mask also happens to be the world's only Paul Benedict mask?

"I bid you velcome, Mister J.!"

Sparkling Stills.

No, this isn't a post about the least-loved member of CSN becoming a glitter queen.

Nor is it about the types of bottled water you can find in the UK.

I have a friend who has been a journalist on radio and television in the Midwest for a long time. He's one of those rare types who knows much about many different subjects, but has no real ego and only imparts knowledge if asked.

Though I am 31 years his junior, we have in common various social, political and philosophical beliefs, and enjoy discussing such things over drinks once in a while.

We also have in common a love for the great character actors of days gone by, and a profound respect and love for the great (and not-so-great!) films and serials from long ago.

He loves Westerns. I love the Monsters.

Recently he told me that in 1968 he was involved in converting an old UHF TV station in Dallas TX to a radio station, and while clearing out the detritus of the old station, came across a big box of promotional stills and materials from that older TV programming. He said he was told to just throw it away, but being the film lover he is, he took it home and figured it was treasure that couldn't be replaced, and one day he'd go through it all.

Well, the other day he began to go through it. And yesterday evening he brought the first batch of stills he thought would interest me. For me. For free.

These stills are on stiffening, sometimes cracking paper and are at least as old as 1967; KMEC-TV only aired for about 10 months in '67-'68, but it's conceivable that the promotional materials are older, some possibly by a decade. Many of them are in station folders with a typewritten synopsis of the film they represent (standard procedure for promotional and programming types in TV in those days).

Here are some of the real standouts!

There's no real need to identify these two fellas above, but the movie is

A-Haunting We Will Go (1942). Look at those iconic faces!

Nancy Davis (Reagan), Lew Ayres and Gene Evans study Donovan's Brain (1953).

If I have to tell you who this is, you aren't really Skull & Pumpkin
material! I was thrilled to find it, but with no folder or markings of
any kind, I can't say how old it is, or even why the station had it.

Tom Conway holding Frances Dee in
I Walked With A Zombie (1943).

Another still I was thrilled to find! Bruce Cabot, Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong
pose for the publicity camera for King Kong (1933). Stunning!

Christopher Lee's Count Dracula comes to a crispy end in Hammer's
Horror of Dracula (1958). Originally titled 'Dracula' in its U.K. home,
the name was changed in the U.S. to avoid confusion with Lugosi's
iconic 1931 film.

Another stunner for me! Vincent Price holding Patricia Owens' hand in
The Fly (1958). When I was a child, this and King Kong were my favorites!

These are only a few of the dozens I received yesterday, and he tells me it's just the tip of the iceberg... that big box of stills has been in his keeping for over 40 years and he is ready to see what's really there!

The best of them will be framed and hung on the walls of this little old Skull & Pumpkin, in tribute to the men and women who created the films that started me on this ridiculous and happy road to monstrous ruin!


DDSP!

It's that time of year.

Time to clean the basement.

If I'm not back by tomorrow, tell V I love her then burn the house down,
salt the earth, and pray for your immortal soul...

Music of December.

Yep.

Although I tend to think of Thanksgiving and Christmas as the Nightmares After Hallowe'en, there is no doubt that Christmas is a big part of any well-heeled Monsterkid's young life; I would imagine most of you who frequent this establishment have many well-worn and beloved memories of Christmases when the greatest gifts (materially, at any rate) were decidedly wicked, monsterish and dark.

I will be trying to feature some dark and cool Hallowe'en for this Christmas.

But for the moment, I think it's okay that our little pub has some new, mildly Christmasey music added to the jukey.

First up, what seems to have become a Skull & Pumpkin jukebox tradition -- another Vince Guaraldi waltz, this time The Heartburn Waltz from 1975's Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (weren't expecting a Valentine's song, were you? Yes it'll be on the jukebox through February so deal with it!). I figured with all the eating, drinking and gastronomic experimentation that take place around the holidays, a song about heartburn was fitting.

Next up, I have egotistically decided to add a little ditty I arranged and performed myself (like Grim Grinning Groove, which remains on the playlist). Ten years ago I recorded a CD of Christmas songs for family and friends, and the fifth cut is Johnny Marks' The Island of Misfit Toys ( actually titled 'The Most Wonderful Day of the Year') from the classic Rankin-Bass special Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer (1964). I chose to turn Maury Laws' three-quarter treatment into a bossa/jazz thing, trading out the vocals for my chromatic harmonica. The percussion and children's toy sounds were performed by my friend Matt. I play everything else.

In 1970, song genius Leslie Bricusse and his usual gang of suspects created the incredible musical Scrooge. It's been a family favorite and a personal inspiration my entire life. One of the songs I most love is essentially the darkest (no surprise there)... You is the song Scrooge (Albert Finney) sings to the only love of his life, Isabel, as he and his younger ghost watch her walk out of his life forever. It's beautiful, heartbreaking, dark and perfect for a pub.

And then... and then I remembered I love Hallowe'en way more than any other holiday and knew that Louis Armstrong's The Skeleton In The Closet (1936) needed to be added to the mix. Originally featured in that year's Bing Crosby film Pennies From Heaven, this was recorded for the Decca label in August of '36. It's Pops at his finest, the satchel-mouthed storyteller blowing and mugging and kicking our collective ass back into our seat. A spooky, vintage classic.

And I know it reads 'Skeleton In Closet' in the player, as if spoken by an Injun Chief... the full thing wouldn't fit.

I'll add and subtract again, as always.

But for now, it's finally...

December.

Winter begins to lull the world into a cold sleep, and we are driven into warm, welcoming and homely nooks to shake off the chill by sharing the season.

This is why we're here.

8,000+ visits can't be wrong.