Psychedelic visions, imaginary album art, and dark memories of dungeons. Necklaces, too.

A big update is underway in my main Etsy shop this July, and one of the big things to know is that I've reduced the cost of prints, at least through the end of the summer, to $6 for 5 x 7 prints and $10 for 8 x 10 prints. I also tried to make sure that first class shipping is available for all prints. If you see it coming up as only priority mail shipping please let me know and I can adjust it down to first class. As always, international quotes are available on request, but require some extra time to pin down the exact cost.

I finally listed an oil painting that I completed late last year, with a gothic/alchemical theme. It's one of my favorites, and I'll be happy to offer prints on request but haven't made them just yet.

I also have a number of 8 x 10 and 11 x 15 paintings on stretched canvas that were done for art shows or just my own amusement...and pendants are now available! I have made 12 designs in total and have four more in my shop. Contact me if you're curious about the others and don't want to wait, but I will list the rest very soon.

Original oil painting

"Black Swan Ritual"

9 x 12 inches

Original acrylic painting

"The Golden Dragon and the Unicorn"

11 x 14 inches

This painting was inspired by a scene in a D&D module that I love, X2 Chateau D'Amberville. In the encounter, there is a woman with golden hair asleep in a grove with a unicorn, guarding a box. She is actually a gold dragon that has shapeshifted. You'd never know this is from a D&D module if you weren't looking for the reference, but just between you and me...that's where the idea came from!

Original acrylic painting

"Subterranean Summoning"

11 x 14 inches

Original acrylic painting

"Beyond the Sea of Cosmic Memory"

8 x 10 inches

These two psychedelic paintings (above and below) were in a recent psychedelic art show at Insomnia Gallery in Houston. They have an art show every month on a variety of themes: gothic, gaming, horror, and plenty of other pop culture and art themes. We've participated in at least a half dozen of them so far, including their annual monster art show, cartoons, video games and other topics. The gallery also houses an incredible record store!

Original acrylic painting

"The Source of the Mushroom Vision"

8 x 10 inches

One other thing about these psychedelic paintings: I did them to resemble album covers I'd love to see. The first one in particular is a bit of a nod to the kind of album art that The Fool did in the 1960s for projects like the Incredible String Band's 5000 Spirits of Layers of the Onion album. Just as colorful as possible, with vague overtures toward cosmic and spiritual themes.

Original acrylic painting

"Luna Crystals"

5 x 7 inches

Original acrylic painting

"Octo Crystals"

5 x 7 inches

Original acrylic painting

"Accidents in the Alchemist's Workshop"

5 x 7 inches

Now available as a photo print

"The Unicorn Constellation"

5 x 7 or 8 x 10 photographic print

"The Crone's Secret"

Glass tile pendant

1-inch square print beneath glass on a chain

I have wanted to make little glass tile necklaces for close to 20 years and finally broke down and did some. It is quite easy to do and they are very charming! Each pendant is made of a nice, sturdy, heavy metal and houses a teeny tiny 1-inch photo print sealed in place with a glass tile. I include a basic 24-inch gunmetal chain so you can wear it right away, but feel free to use your own instead.

"The Owl and the Pussycat Went to Tea"

Glass tile pendant

1-inch square print beneath glass on a chain

"Le Coeur et le Serpent"

Glass tile pendant

1-inch square print beneath glass on a chain

"Song of the Witch Girl"

Glass tile pendant

1-inch square print beneath glass on a chain

 In March, I participated in the Thorn and Moon Magickal Market at Avant Garden in Houston, an event that grows every month, and is held the first Friday of each month. I hope to attend again. Prints and pendants were extremely popular there, and I have all of them available in my shop all the time. If you ever see that I am out of stock of something you want let me know and I'll make sure to make a new one for you!

I have lots more art on the way, it's just a matter of sitting down at a laptop and listing it, but who actually sits down at a computer anymore, right?

Before Crimson Peak: candles, dresses and haunted mansions in gothic horror

A print of my painting "The Ghost of Skull Manor"

The gothic horror genre has had few new entries in recent years, so I felt very encouraged when images from Guillermo del Toro's new film "Crimson Peak" began to circulate earlier this year.  The era of gothic romance in the 1960s and early 1970s was a short one, as the well-established clichés began to wear out their welcome, and people started to demand gore, shocks and real-world horrors, instead of the subtle, atmospheric shudders produced by these earlier films. Films like "Crimson Peak," or "The Woman in Black" (2012) revisit and celebrate this style, staying pretty faithful to the traditions of the genre while infusing it with new energy and opening it up to a new audience.

I would love to compile a list of all of the best films from the 60s and 70s which feature gothic horror themes, particularly the great nightgown & candelabra scenes, but there are so many, and they are all so excellent, I think the task is meant for a greater mind than mine. So instead, I present five films that contain interesting variations upon the Gothic theme – not all are ghost stories, not all are very good, but each presents a distinct facet of the gothic genre. 

For some, this means exquisite scenes of wandering around at night with a candle, possibly in a crypt, a mansion or a castle. There are ghosts in some, vampires in others; family intrigue and secrets; poisoning, illness and revenge. There are FABULOUS DRESSES, dramatic lighting, dark and sinister sets. To be sure, there are dozens or even hundreds of films that can be considered for a list like this, so I'm not trying to choose the most successful or the most representative – just a couple that come to mind, or which I have watched recently, that fall within this very specialized category.

The Ghost

"Lo Spettro" (1963) by Riccardo Freda, while not the most well-known or lauded of the genre, is a great showcase of some of the classic elements in a 1960s Italian gothic film. A séance, poison, and a mad, wheelchair-bound Dr. Hichcock immediately set the mood for the film in a suitably dark mysterious and candle-filled mansion. Barbara Steele's dark beauty is an inevitable focal point of any film she is in, and she walks through the wainscoted sets and down the skull-lined crypt passages as a living special effect. Wearing black veils of mourning and drifting through autumn leaves in a cemetery, Steele's presence is hypnotizing in the film – as are her glorious, ornate black Victorian gowns.

The film is mostly housebound, and aside from the scenes in the cemetery it mainly takes place within the walls of a particularly dark and oppressive mansion. The plot revolves around Steele's love affair with a young doctor, whom she urges to poison her hateful husband with the experimental substance they have been using to try to cure the latter's paralysis. She is then seemingly haunted by the late Dr. Hichcock, who speaks through the housekeeper – the medium at the séance – and who appears in various ghastly forms to haunt her guilty conscience. A "sort of" sequel to The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, it stands on its own and should satisfy anyone's appetite for decadent Victorian décor and evil deeds.

The Innocents

 

While it has been a few months since I last watched this film, I don't think I could make even an off-the-top-of-my-head list of gothic or ghostly films without including it. "The Haunting" (1963) would also be a good entry in this list, as that is probably my favorite ghost movie of all, but "The Innocents" (1961) is a little less widely known and shown. Based on Henry James' Turn of the Screw, it is a perfect imagining of that tale, with a gothic mansion, exquisite photography, and unusual, electronic music creating a sustained atmosphere of gloom, suspense and mystery. If you are not familiar with the plot of The Turn of the Screw, the short version is that a governess is caring for two children in a remote country mansion, and is menaced by the ghosts of a former governess and caretaker. The traditional and straightforward premise, however, is steeped in a mood of menace, foreboding and encroaching madness. Its beauty transcends the notion of a "horror" film and places it squarely with the realm of art cinema, in the tradition of Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast."

 

Lemora (A Child's Tale of the Supernatural)

 

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973) is the only film directed by Richard Blackburn, who also acts in the film as a country preacher, but it stands as a unique example of an independent horror movie. There is an eerie surreality to this film, as young Lila Lee– the debut role for exploitation starlet Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith – is drawn through a series of sinister events which seem designed to corrupt her Alice in Wonderland-like innocence. The "singin' angel" of the local church choir, Lila is the daughter of a gangster who, at the opening of the film, is on his death bed and calls for her to come to him. She obliges, dodging lascivious males at every turn, in a Southern landscape in the 1920s or 30s. Even worse than sleazy guys, though, she is soon pursued by slobbering zombie-like vampires, until the striking vampire matron Lemora comes to her "rescue."

Lemora's cadaverous presence – with skull-like features and tightly laced Victorian gown – is rendered even more surreal by the riotous gang of madly laughing children which surrounds her in several scenes. The progression of the plot is less important to relate than the somber, elegant mood that the film creates with very simple tools. The predominantly dark, blue lighting; effective, evocative costumes, carefully constructed gothic settings and subtle surreal touches all serve to make this a unique and atmospheric vampire film.

Morgiana

 

While not a horror film, this Czech gothic fantasy ("Morgiana", 1972) is a crucial bit of viewing for anyone who wants to luxuriate in the most amazing costuming I think I've ever seen in a film from the era. The plot is very gothic, but not supernatural. It deals with jealousy, love, inheritance, and poison. The two main characters are played by the same actress – one dark (Viktoria), one light (Klara). It is a dark psychedelic fairytale with the kind of beautiful surrealism you see in other Czech films like "Valerie andher Week of Wonders." Morgiana is the name of a Siamese cat in the film, and – don't worry, the cat is fine -- some of the film seems to have been shot from cats'-eye view, which adds to its surreality. Although it appears to be set in Victorian times, the costumes are far more over the top than they would be in reality, and the overall tone reminds me of the Russian fantasy-fairytale films from around the same time period, like "The Snow Queen" (1967), while the subject matter and setting are very different from those films.

Blood

The most perplexing thing about Andy Milligan films, to me, has always been why he has decided to film so many period pieces. In "Blood" (1973) actually have all of the pieces of a good, old-fashioned gothic horror film here. We have a young doctor recently returned to America from Europe, planning to conduct his experiments in private in a rented house while he awaits the settling of his father's estates. To make things even more gothic, his wife has a horrible malady which causes her to become hideous and deformed if she is not regularly supplied with blood – which in turn is supplied by ghastly carnivorous plants. Add in a couple of assistants who are gradually losing their limbs to the experiments, and a female Igor limping along with a hideous grimace, and you have everything you could wish for in a horror film. He turns up the volume even further when he reveals that the doctor is a werewolf and his wife's malady is actually vampirism!

The complicating factor, as in all Milligan films, is an extremely limited budget. One of the highlights of his films is watching the creative ways in which he stretches that budget. He makes all of the costumes himself ("costumes by Raffiné"), which in some films means yards and yards of tulle and fake flowers. In this film, he does a tolerably decent job of making Victorian-era clothing, although some of the dresses are clearly created by someone with a vague idea of what a Victorian-era dress might look like. Heavy on the ruffles, and roses, roses, roses, everywhere. The fact that the Victorian house they are in,  clearly is a mid-twentieth century home, complete with light switches, further mystifies the viewer. 

Was it really necessary to put the story in a 19^th-century setting? No matter – I'm delighted that he does. I love his ingenuity and desire to get a story onto film, even when most of the movie is bickering dialogue that sounds half-improvised. Watch an Andy Milligan movie and then ask yourself – could you do any better with the same resources? I think we should all bow to his resourcefulness. I want to make a gothic horror film at least as badly as he did, and I'm nowhere near getting one done.

 Thus concludes my strange selection. The world of the gothic horror film is almost bottomless, though I like to think I've managed to uncover most of the ones currently available on DVD, over the past few years, and will continue to draw from this wonderful well for future posts as well, since I never (ever) get sick of this stuff (ever)!

Happy Halloween!

The forgotten pulp horror weirdness of Ramble House books

A few titles in our own Ramble House collection

 While you're likely to find me reading 19th- or early-20th century supernatural fiction at any time of the year, it is pretty inevitable that the ghost stories and menacing weirdness will hit their peak in early October.

The best setting in which to read them, in my experience, has always been in the autumn woods as the first wave of color sweeps across the landscape. Well, that magical autumn feeling is a little different where I'm living now, but even if the color palette is different, and long sleeves and scarves probably won't happen until Christmas, you can still tell by the angle of the setting sun that it is time to amp up the reading of ghost stories and weird fiction.

One of my favorite publishers to explore at this time of year is a glorious imprint called Ramble House. While forgotten/neglected and rare crime fiction is the main thrust of their publishing, there are also a fair number of titles that fall under the heading "weird menace" -- stories from the horror pulp magazines of the 1930s and 40s. Some rare and unusual stand-alone novels also make an appearance at Ramble House, and I am guessing most people come across them for the same reasons I did... on a search for titles on the legendary Karl Edward Wagner book lists.

A number of titles on these lists -- famed for their inclusion of fairly obscure titles and authors -- were not available for decades, until reprinted in limited quantities by Ramble House's predecessor Midnight House in the early 2000s (Midnight publisher John Pelan heads RH's horror imprint, Dancing Tuatara Press). Take a look at this list of supernatural horror titles, for instance...four of them are available at RH (and several are still in print from other publishers as well).

 The Thirteen Best Supernatural Horror Novels:

1.            Hell! Said the Duchess by Michael Arlen
2.            The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr
3.            Alraune by Hanns Heinz Ewers
4.            Dark Sanctuary by H.B. Gregory
5.            Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg
6.            Maker of Shadows by Jack Mann
7.            The Yellow Mistletoe by Walter S. Masterman
8.            Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin
9.            Burn Witch Burn by A. Merritt
10.            Fingers of Fear by J.U. Nicolson
11.            Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven
12.            Echo of a Curse by R.R. Ryan
13.            Medusa by E.H. Visiak


I'm not going to attempt to give book reviews in this short space, or attempt to relate an unofficial history of the company cribbed from their website, but I am going to just give my wholehearted endorsement to weird old book lovers.

There are several different "presses" under the Ramble House umbrella, and you can also view by title, author, series and recent releases. If you have trouble choosing where to start, here are a few quick recommendations. Also, I always order straight from the source, as they offer free shipping, and often will discount titles if you email them your order. Most importantly though it directly supports this wonderful publisher.

All artwork below is copyright the artist, Gavin O'Keefe, and used with permission; the introductions are courtesy of the Ramble House website.

"The Shadow on the House" was one of the first titles I read from RH -- the Introduction is available online.  It would fall under the category of supernatural thriller or psychological horror most likely, but this moody piece from 1934 is full of gothic atmosphere, hints of madness and family curses/ghosts, and a series of strange deaths. The hints of an inheritance of evil and unexplained phenomena were very exciting to me while reading it, and it fits in perfectly with my early 20th century mystery and ghost reading.

This 1937 book is another excellent example of something that straddles the line between gothic mystery, suspense, psychological thriller and supernatural/weird horror. From the Ramble House site: "Very strange things are going on at Cold Stairs, the country manor home of the Harman family. BBC correspondent Jack Hartley has been there to report on the findings of the 'Committee of Three,' a delegation of researchers from Psychical Research Society. All signs point to a most bizarre haunting, and Sir John Harman is concerned for his household, comprising niece Sybil, governess Mrs. James and her disabled son Eric, and the servants." The cover gives enticing hints of some of the content of this book (as many of O'Keefe's wonderful cover illustrations do) -- as you read the book, the meaning of some of these images starts to unfold. A picture of a skeleton? A girl clutching a strange box? Sounds pretty exciting to me!

You can read the Introduction  here. I have not yet read all of these stories, but the titles should be enough to get you interested: in addition to the title story, we have "Satan Sends a Woman," "Song of the Dead," "Hours of the Vanished Boarder," "Satan's Thirsty Ones," "Village of the Dead," and Models for Madness." The title story is particularly lurid, and the themes are unapologetically supernatural, including grotesque imagery, generous use of evocative adjectives, and themes such as swamp-women luring men to their death (note the cover picture)...sound good? It is!

 

The opening line of this Introduction should whet the appetites of anyone whose taste in fiction runs along the same course as mine: "Among all the writers of weird fiction in the 1930s two authors shared the rather unique background of being accomplished poets with solid reputations established in the little magazines and limited editions of the time. The two men were Clark Ashton Smith and John H. Knox."

That, along with story titles like "The Thing That Dined on Death," should excite the adventurous reader. If you are already a fan of the "weirds," here's a whole new cavern for literary spelunking.

Here is the Introduction to this fine volume. "Dark Sanctuary" is one of those Wagner list books, and quite an excellent one indeed. I read this one in a Midnight House edition, so I am delighted that it is still available from Ramble House. Published in 1940, this novel is dripping with occult atmosphere. Family curses and madness, an abbey on an island, a ghastly crypt -- it's all here. The RH site gives a good summary of some points to look forward to in this one: "The story opens with Anthony Lovell, Sr., master of the ancient abbey of Kestrel and its like-named island off the Cornish coast, raving in madness and fear over the ancient family curse that 'dwells in the bowels of the abbey rock.' What has caused his madness is unclear, but it is obviously linked to something seen or experienced in Kestrel's ancient crypts." This book made the strongest impression on me of all of the Midnight/Ramble House books I have read.

There is quite a lot to say about R. R. Ryan so I suggest reading the Introduction for more information, but suffice to say here that Ryan wrote a small number of truly excellent books that were all but forgotten until the Wagner lists resurrected three of the titles in collector circles.  The identity of the writer has been up for debate for some time, and although I've read several definitive answers to who he/she is, I've honestly lost track of whether a final determination has been reached. Either way...it's great stuff. Ramble House is working on making all of Ryan's titles available again. "Echo of a Curse" is up there with "Dark Sanctuary" as my two favorites from these lists that I have read so far, with an engaging and fast-moving plot, involving everyone's favorite gothic plot point: the family curse. We have possible lycanthropy, a sideshow attraction, occultism in the family, babies switched at birth, and some very brutal behavior from a character you really come to despise.

There are many more titles that I still need to explore that may prove excellent fodder for your Halloween season reading, particularly in the short story department. Here's a tiny sampling. But I strongly advise just getting anything that ignites your fancy. The rest of the titles in my picture at the top of the post are also of excellent quality.

Tales of Terror & Torment: Stories from the Pulps
The Corpse Factory and Other Weird Stories (the weird tales of Arthur Leo Zagat)
Hostesses in Hell and Other Stories (the selected stories of Russell Gray)
Food for the Fungus Lady (see below...I mean seriously, that title. I can't live without it).

Since these titles are printed on demand, chances are that you won't find a lot of them in secondhand shops. The people buying them know what they want and know what they like and probably won't ever let them go! Get your copies now and cherish them as we enter that time of the year that is best for reading spooky stuff. Order now and by Halloween you can be knee-deep in 1930s pulp weird fiction that relatively few people living today have explored in depth.

A glimpse at what's new for Halloween -- cats, tentacles, ghosts and vampires

The skulls are on the shelves in the craft stores, so it must be time to get a few more Halloween-friendly items out there into the world. This post is just a chance for me to round up a few new items I have on Etsy this month!

I started a few little (3 x 5 inch) canvas panels with black cats on them a long time ago and only just now finished them up for the season. It might be a little bit obvious who my models are, at this point.

 

"The Door to Autumn"

 

This is Angelique, who turned 3 this year and is the most wide-eyed, excitable cat I've ever met. Her eyes are always ROUND and every object is a potential toy or prey. I'm not sure what she was looking at in this picture...oh no wait I do, she was listening to a Keiji Heino record, actually. So I guess she was trying to figure out what to do with those fascinating dissonant sounds...

  

"Playful Pair"

And here we see Shinobi -- age unknown but he's probably at least 8 by now. He's on a diet these days, since hitting about 24 pounds, so there's a lot of cat going on here...but stoic and bulky as he is, he's a real sweetheart. When we play with them with the laser pointer, Angelique (and the other cats...unpictured) zoom around the room, limbs scampering and paws flailing. Shinobi waits for it to come close and he just steps on it with his paw and sniffs it. He's a pretty cool customer.

I've also added one to my revolving collection of "ghosts in bottles" -- the first ones I've done in color, so that's fun, right? Yay!

"Ghost Gallery"

And I've added one to my "traumatized pumpkin" collection as well - this time it's blue tentacles making everything weird and alarming.

"Entangled"

Finally, for now, there is an 8 x 8 painting I did for some album art, but I am offering it up for sale on its own now. Inspired by images in films, along the lines of Hammer from the early 1970s, the long red cloak trails off in a surreal and symbolic gesture of a river of blood.

"Ascent to the Haunted Peak"

 Thanks for looking, if you are looking...more Halloween and haunted art coming soon!

A few colorful horror movie picks for Halloween

This week the Internet is knee-deep in Halloween horror movie lists, and TCM is running its annual marathon of classic horror, so the world is very much where I like it to be right now. I feel compelled to join in the list-making, but I don't have a definitive favorites list, really. If I was asked, I'd say my favorite horror film visually is "Shiver of the Vampires" by Jean Rollin and my favorite "serious" horror film is "The Shining," but any attempts to make a top ten list just fragments into endless sub-lists by genre.

What do I like? In a sentence: visually compelling 1960s and 1970s gothic horror with lots of color and psychedelic flourishes, and a great soundtrack. To be clear: things like plot and acting are not important to me. I don't need things to make sense. I just like the progression of haunting imagery from certain times and places, and the atmosphere these films create. Decrepit mansions, haunted castles, ruins, lush decadent interiors, gorgeous gowns, statuary and portraits, forbidden rituals. I do not think these films are "funny" or "cheesy." I love them deeply as moving works of psychedelic gothic art and I love the dream logic present in many of them.

Here is a random handful of a few colorful favorites of mine. I'm not going to try to write a plot synopsis or a review...not this moment, anyway. For me, just seeing a still image from one of these was enough to make me want to see it, so that is mostly what I'd like to share right now.

Curse of the Crimson Altar (The Crimson Cult) - 1968 

 This image right here is pretty much all I need to know, to want to see this. Barbara Steele is blue, and has a rams-head headdress? Why yes, I'd be interested in that.

And things just keep getting better. Christopher Lee is a reason to see any film, but the promise of occult rituals and masks in a film from the 1960s is irresistible. Not pictured, incidentally, Boris Karloff also appears in the film...his last film appearance, if I'm not mistaken.

Once you have people in animal masks, I am pretty much there. This film is supposedly based on HP Lovecraft's "Dreams in the Witch House," as it involves dreams of a witch cult, but the connection is pretty tenuous. Tigon released it, so if you enjoy British horror, this might be one you haven't seen before. It is on Youtube as "The Crimson Cult," which was how I initially saw it on late night cable, some years ago.

Vengeance of the Zombies / La rebelión de las muertas - 1973

One of the many fantastic Paul Naschy/León Klimovsky films. I'll just go ahead and append the imdb summary, as it gets the job done: "An Indian mystic uses magical chants to raise women from the dead, then sends them out to perform revenge killings for him." The main thing that I retain from my viewing of the film are Paul Naschy's bizarre roles here. First we have, well, the devil. And he plays the Indian mystic, of course, because...for whatever reason, movies did things like that in the early 1970s. It's worth suspending your disbelief, in this instance.

You also get these lovely ladies.

The film also had a jazzy score that seemed out of place, but added to the charm, if I recall. While "The Werewolf Vs. the Vampire Women" (aka Werewolf Shadow) is probably my favorite Paul Naschy film, this one made quite an impact on me as well and I need to go back and view it again.

Fascination - 1979

 My favorite director, Jean Rollin. It might be his best, although it's not my tippy-top favorite of his films (Shiver of the Vampires gets that distinction) or the most visually out of control (La Vampire Nue might be that one), this image, among many others, has made a lasting impression. It has one of the most fantastic movie posters of all time as well.

Set just after the turn of the last century, a group of women lure men into a fog-shrouded chateau and drink their blood, amidst lush, decadent and surreal surroundings. Trying to write one or two sentences about the complete aesthetic experience that is a Jean Rollin film, may be beyond my abilities, but Halloween would not be complete without a re-viewing of one of his films.

Murderous, bloodthirsty Victorian women in white, in a foggy chateau, or waltzing on a stone bridge to the tune of an old phonograph...Rollin is simply the master of atmosphere.

Messiah of Evil -1973

Another dreamlike film, this one American -- and for some reason it took me forever to get a DVD copy that didn't have a flaw that caused the film to stop a little over halfway through. Remembered perhaps most for its scene of zombies in an eerily empty supermarket, gnawing on meat, or filling in all of the rows in a movie theatre around a single living patron, one of my personal favorite things about the film is actually the weird setting in an artist's house full of pop art murals on the walls.

I called them zombies but they're not zombies the way we normally think of them. They are denizens of this strange town, under the malevolent influence of the Blood Moon.

Above, one of the interesting murals, this one on the bathroom wall. Whenever a horror movie has an artist as a part of the plot, it is extra interesting, because you have a chance to see some really interesting artwork. See also: Juan López Moctezuma's "Mary Mary Bloody Mary" which contains artwork by the surreal artist Rosa Rosenberg. Here is an example of her work....very grateful to that film for making me aware of her!

The Blood Rose - 1970

Let's make this a five-movie list and come back another day for some more. I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this film, but "La Rose écorchée" by Claude Mulot is as stunning and decadent as they come. Just look at this picture.

This scene is at a costume ball, but once you paint someone gold, you have my interest. The film is one of the genre wherein a mad doctor's wife is disfigured, and others have to die to restore her beauty. The madman in this case is a botanist/artist which is even better for my purposes, because that means we get: lots of plants and flowers, and a very arty environment.

 Oh yes, and you get these two guys...

And candelabras...

Oh so many nightgowns and candelabras.

This concludes my small attempt to capture a few images that inspire me from 1960s and 1970s horror films, though I would like to write a more proper summary and discussion of them other than "Oh my god there are so many candelabras in this movie, you HAVE to see it!"

But for a sampling of a few that probably aren't going to make the rounds on cable this year...look for these on Youtube, and some may still be available on DVD in some form or another.