Thursday, October 13, 2011
How to Make a Movie Monster
Highlights from another great mid-70's Scholastic kid's book, this one called Movie Monsters, and written / illustrated by Alan Ormsby. Alan was a cool ghoul amateur filmmaker himself, shooting his very own 8mm movie shorts and features (starring himself and his friends) before he even became a teenager. The first half of the book contains a neat "ghoulary" of black and white photos of Karloff, Lugosi, Lee, The Chaney's etc... but the scans here in today's post come from the super superb "How to Make a Monster" tips section in the last half of the book. I especially love the drawings of the kid making the Frankenstein monster head-- oh, and extra points for the fact that the ever-underrated Blacula even gets mentioned.
This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid. My brother and I even made the Brown Bag Frankenstein. I wish we had photos of it.
ReplyDeleteWow. Had that one - hadn't thought about it in 30 years. You made my day!
ReplyDeleteDang, I remember buying that book from the Scholastic Book Club catalog in elementary school.
ReplyDeleteFinally! Like everyone else here, I had this book as a kid. It was very important to me. I attempted a lot of the things in these pages (though not the Frankenstein--I'd sure love to see pictures of other people's experiences with this bag makeup). My favorite memory related to this book was the play I put on, in the gym of my grade school, using the Jekyll-to-Hyde technique here. It's a brilliant trick and it really works! At least that is what they told me--I was too busy downing a highball full of smoking green light bulbs and convulsively destroying a lab set to see the lighting effect. Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the memories!
ReplyDelete5 out of 5 commentors had this book, I consider this post a SUCCESS-- yay!!!
ReplyDeleteWe're halfway to Halloween this month, get ready some Melvin Monster comics coming up next! Thanks for the comments!
Damn you, Karswell! I have a similar post already set up for tomorrow!
ReplyDeleteThis book is one of my most cherished possessions. Ormsby is also the man who Created the Hugo: Man of 1000 Faces doll, and the writer, star and make-up artist of "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things" and writer of the "Cat People" remake among many other things.
I wrote a brief article about this book which will appear in the next issue of Mad Scientist magazine.
I made Monster Cafe Saltillo just because of this book...
ReplyDelete