Monster Alphabet

I have been working on my drawing skills, and what better way to practice then to draw monsters and mythical creatures for every letter of the alphabet? 

I missed a lot of good ones, I know, partly because I couldn't draw them, and partly because there was not enough space and time to cover everything! 

Here's what I came up with, and I hope you enjoy!

This is something I may do again, and monster/mythical beasts suggestions are always welcome, even if they're tough I will try! 

Count Dracula versus Count Orlok. Who is the impostar?

When we think of the original vampire, who is it that comes to mind? Most people will tell you Count Dracula, and with good reason. While Dracula was not the first creature of the night to make it to the big screen, he was created first in Bram Stokers book "Dracula". This book was published in 1897.

Nosferatu, the black and white silent movie classic with the villain Count Orlok made it to the big screen in 1922, beating Dracula's first movie which was made in 1931 staring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula.

Does Nosferatu making to the big screen first make him the original vampire, even though he was more or less a rip-off of the vampire in Bram Stoker's book?

Let's look at some other facts.

Vampires have been a cultural myth and monster for centuries. Every culture had its creature who consumes blood myth, some called them demons, some called them evil spirits. From the West Indies Loogaroo, to the rather odd Australian Yara-ma-yha-who, there are a lot of blood thirsty monsters out there and they are nothing like the vampire we are familiar with today.

There is something that can be said for both of these classic vampires however, is that they have reinvented what was once known about the vampire.

It was Bram Stoker's Dracula that invented the myth that vampires can not see themselves in mirrors. Before the book, there was no such myth related directly to vampires. Bram Stokers book also gave vampires the power to control other animals (wolves and rats were mentioned in the book). Meanwhile, Count Orlok was the first vampire to die from the rays of the sun. (while it is often suggested that vampires had an aversion to the sun, Orlok was the first to die from it, making the ideas popular and further forming the vampire we know today).

It is my belief that both vampires combined make up the "classic" vampire, because together they make up the vampire we know today. Though, admittedly, after watching Nosferatu I have to agree, it is most definitely a rip-off of Stoker's Dracula. Harker even calls the castle "Count Dracula's castle".

Monster songs to inspire you

Whenever you're feeling a little monstrous  or maybe even just preparing dinner for a spooky Halloween party, you'll need some top notch monster songs to set the mood and make your guest wonder if they're next on the menu.

Here is a list of many of the songs I choose to listen to when I'm making preparations for my Halloween party, I hope you'll find some you haven't heard before and enjoy.

Not all of these are creepy. Some are silly, some don't quite fit the theme of "monster" but I leave that up to you.

ALIENS:

-Spaceman- The Killers

CLASSIC HORROR/ MOVIE SONGS:

-Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Beginning - 101 String Orchestra.
-Night of the living dead -Thematic Pianos
-Halloween theme song
-Beetlejuice theme song
-Ghost Busters theme song
-The Adams Family Song
-Night on Bald Mountain -Fantasia
-Jaws
-X-files theme song
-Theme song from Shaun of the Dead. (Ok, not a classic, but still great!)
-Magic Dance -David Bowie, the Labyrinth
-Munsters theme song
-The Twilight zone -The Ventures


CREEPY SONGS:

-Change (In the house of flies) -Deftones
-A little drop of poison -Tom Waits
- Secret -The Pierces
-Villan -Stephanie Mabey
-People are strange -The Doors
-Girl with one eye- Florence and the machine
-Willy Wonka tunnel song- Marilyn Manson
-Sweet Dreams- Marilyn Manson
-The horror -RJD2
-Halloween -Stephen Lynch

-Welcome to Transylvania -Young Frankenstein

-Cell block tango -Chicago

CREEPY DANCE SONGS:

- Moar Ghosts N Stuff -Deadmau5
- Moon trance -Lindsay Stirling
- Mitternacht -E. Nomine
- Thriller/Heads will roll- Glee
- Monster -Lady Gaga
- Thriller -Michael Jackson
- Dragula -Rob zombie
- Paint it Black -Rolling stones
-Very superstitious -Stevie Wonder
- Heads will roll -Yeah Yeah Yeahs
-Jump in the line -Harry Belafonte

DARK/SPOOKY MUSICALS:

-Repo! The genetic Opera
-Phantom of the Opera
-Sweeny Todd
-Rocky Horror Picture Show
-Little Shop of Horrors


HALLOWEEN SONGS:

-Anything from Nightmare Before Christmas. There are a few notable remakes of these songs sung by different musicians. These are:
            -This is Halloween -Marilyn Manson
            -This is Halloween -Panic! at the disco
            -What's this? -Fallout boy

-Monster Mash -Bobby Boris Pickett

DEVIL/SATAN SONGS:

-Lucifer -E Nomine
-My name is Satan- Stephen Lynch

KIDS SONGS:

-The Headless Horseman- Thurl Ravenscroft
-King Tut -Steve Martin
-Professional Pirate- Muppet Treasure Island
-Huffalumps and woozles -Winnie the Pooh
-The purple people eater -Sheb Wooley

MAD SCIENTIST:

-Skullcrusher Mountain -Jonathan Coultan
-Transylvanian Lullaby- Young Frankenstein

MUMMYS:

-King Tut -Steve Martin
-Let's twist again (mummy time is here) -John Zacherle

SCIFI/ROBOTS:

-The device has been modified -Victims of Science
-Dr Who theme song -Dr Who
-Journey of the Sorcerer- Joby Talbot
-Robots -Flight of the concords
-Still Alive -Portal
-Weird Science- Oingo Boingo
-She blinded me with science -Thomas Dolby

STALKER/ CRAZY:

-Somebody's watching me -Rockwell
-They're coming to take me away HA HAA -Napoleon XIV

WITCHES:

-Double Trouble -John Williams
-I put a spell on you -Screamin' Jay Hawkins
-I Put a spell on you -Marilyn Manson
-Hedwig's theme- Harry Potter
-Spooky - Classics IV

WEREWOLF SONGS:

-das Tier in mir  -E. Nomine
-Howlin for you- The Black Keys
-Werewolf Baby! -Rob Zombie
-Howl -Florence and the machine
-Lil red riding hood -Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
-Bad moon rising -Creedence Clearwater Revival
-Werewolves of London -Warren Zevon

VAMPIRE SONGS:

-Bloodletting (The Vampire song) - Concrete Blonde
-Dracula -Gorillaz
-Riboflavin-flavored non Carbonated polyunsaturated blood- Don Hinson and the Rigamorticians

ZOMBIE SONGS:

-Call of the Zombie - Rob Zombie
-If I were a zombie -Stephanie Mabey
-Living dead girl -Rob Zombie
-Re Your Brains- Jonathan Coultan
-Zombie -Family Force 5

I would also like to suggest the "Halloween Party" channel on Pandora

We can't help but love the monsters that want us for our brains...

This blog entry is of course referring to zombies. Those creepy, decaying, unthinking beings whose favorite fast food us, the living.

Pop culture has truly been taken over by a zombie outbreak, but instead of running from these flesh eating monsters on our t.v. screens, we embrace them with open arms.

There may be a few reasons for our new found love of the decaying, bitey dead. My own hypothesis reflects on the reason we have names for monsters in the first place; a fear without a name and face is undefeatable and therefor terrifying. So we name our fears and call them monsters, because monsters we can confront, defeat and destroy.

We can not confront death.

We can not defeat the pain of losing our loved ones.

We can not destroy all the diseases that weaken us and take our loved ones.

Right now, some of our biggest fears involve disease, outbreaks, pandemics. That's what scares us right now. Not long ago news of Swine flu had people running to the doctors for flu shots. Before that we dreaded the bird flu, and it seems there's always one more disease or pathogen for us to catch.

So I believe that to quiet these fears, we use zombies.

This wasn't always the case, as zombie movies started out with zombies rising from the dead because of a strange space dust that reanimated the dead. One such movie was Night of the Living Dead, a 1968  black and white American film where the dead came back to life from space dust that came off of a satellite returning from Venus. This is in line with the Space Race going on at the time between the United States and the Soviet Union, where the fears of what lies in space were lurking in the minds of people at the time.

A fun zombie history side note: Zombies get their origins from Haiti, where voodoo witch doctors used specific drugs to make a person seem dead. Their mouths were sewn shut so they could not talk, and they were burried. Then these supposedly dead people were "brought back to life" when the drug wore off. There is one movie, called White Zombie made in 1932. It stars Bela Lugosi (Famous for playing Dracula) and is one of the few movies that reflects on these true origins of zombies.

Zombie movies have evolved and changed from Haitian voodoo, to space dust, to currently having a pandemic cause.

The cause of zombie popularity aside, there are a lot of reasons to enjoy these monsters. They can be slow or fast, they can retain some of their humanity (as we see a little bit of in Shaun of the Dead) or they can become truly monstrous (like the zombies in 28 weeks later). They might be loved ones, who are painful to face and destroy, or they may be those we hated in life, and we finally have justification for giving them their "just due."

It's strangely fun to imagine how we might react in a zombie apocalypse  how would you stay alive, where would you go that's "safe" and what weapons you might carry around.

There are Zombie preparedness kits being sold on Amazon.com, websites dedicated to preparing for a zombie apocalypse, and there are even people out there with entire actions plans written out for such an event.

Some top shows and movies I recommend for zombie lovers:

-The Walking Dead (T.V. series)
This show is a little slow moving at first, and some might even say that there's more arguing than zombies. This may be especially true in the second season, but I think the show is addicting and engaging enough to watch despite that. I have also heard many rave reviews for the comic book, and though I have not yet gotten a hold of it myself, it looks like a great read.

-Shaun of the Dead 2004.
This movie takes a more humorous take on the zombie pandemic, but still holds some serious overtones. Being a fan of Simon Pegg I am more biased to like this movie, but even if you are somehow not a fan of his, the movie is still worth watching.

-Fido 2006
This movie seems to be pretty unknown, but it's one of the best zombie movie's I've seen. Despite being a newer movie it uses the old premise of why the dead came back to life; space dust. I think this makes sense because the movie takes place in the town of Willard, which is a reference to the 1968 Night of the Living Dead movie. The movie has a 50's feel, and instead of being chased by zombies, these zombies have been tamed by Zomcom.

-Night of the Living Dead 1968
This black and white movie is a classic, and might be one of the movies that really made zombies popular. The famous line "They're coming to get you, Barbara" is from this movie. Even if you don't like old movies, I still suggest watching this. Watch it with friends and make fun of it if you need to, because it can be a little slow, and the special effects just aren't what they are today...but if you like zombies, at least once in your life you should watch this classic movie.

-Zombieland 2009
This movie is like Shaun of the dead, in having both serious and comedic overtones. I don't think the cause of the dead rising is explained in this movie, but at this point we all know what zombies are and what they want. Brains. Who cares what caused them?

These movies happen to strike a special cord with me, but there are many other good zombie movies worth watching that I haven't mentioned. (I am, admittedly new to the world of zombies).

I recently came across this exceptional short film about a father and his daughter in the zombie apocalypse. It's very emotional so you may have to prepare yourself for tears.

Note: I do not own this short video, I just thought it was amazing and wanted to share!

http://io9.com/one-of-the-most-beautiful-things-was-the-balloon-for-471095083

Troll 2. A movie so awful it's good.

Troll 2 1990

Supposedly ripping off the 1986 Trolls movie, trolls two is not related to this movie, and doesn’t even have trolls in it. Without giving away too much of the plot, (I would hate to spoil such a terrible movie for you) the movie focuses on a small family from the city, who partake in a ‘house swap’ with a family from out in the country. However, when they head into this “middle of nowhere” town of Nilbog (Goblin spelled backwards, how original), the town folk stare at them eerily and the food is suspiciously green. They end up being more or less hunted by goblins, a vegetarian eating folk who want to eat humans badly enough they feed them some strange concoction of plant material that turns people into…plants.

So there you have the basic premise, and if you’d rather not waste your time in watching this movie, I will give a more detailed account, but beware, there will be spoilers.

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Look into the face of evil....

The family in this movie is a mom and dad Diana and Micheal Waits, a teenager daughter Holly, with atrocious acting skills, and a young son, Joshua, who talks to the ghost of his dead grandfather, grandpa Seth. The movie opens with the grandfather creepily reading the boy a story about goblins, and how they trick people into drinking their plant material goop so that they can eat them. (Again, because they’re vegetarians. Somehow this all makes sense).

I guess that's another way to have a "green thumb"....Ba-dum TSH!

The daughter in this movie is having boyfriend issues, in which everywhere the boyfriend goes, he brings his three BFF’s, even when he sneaks into her room at night, they’re outside waiting for him.

When the family drives to Nilbog to exchange houses with this other family, they arrive in daylight, but there’s no one around. The dad says “well in a farmers town everyone goes to bed by this time at night” even though by the daylight it’s closer to the after noon. Also, for a farmers town, it seems strange that there was only one farm.

They meet the family they are doing a house exchange with, to which they are creepily told “they’re late” and the Nilbog family solemnly leaves in a hurry, with the Nilbog kid throwing a baseball at Joshua which reads in what looks like green cake decorating gel “Eat, before we eat you”

They go into the house and find a suspiciously green food array waiting for them at the table, and Grandpa Seth warns Joshua that it’s the work of evil goblins, and Joshua has 30 seconds to do something about it to stop his family from eating.

So, Grandpa Seth froze time. He only does this once, and despite Grandpa Seth saying Joshua only had 30 seconds, he stands there, stares out the window, stares at the food, walks around contemplating what to do, and surely goes over his time limit. However, the plot gives him extra time, to stand on a chair, and chanting to him self “I have to, I HAVE to” he unzips his pants…and pees on all of the food.

Time unfreezes and his dad angrily takes Joshua up to his room, yelling about how you can’t “pee on hospitality.”

Meanwhile, Holly’s boyfriend followed the family to Nilbog in an old motor home, and camp out near the woods, where they start getting picked off by goblins.

One of the boys saw a frantic looking woman running through the forest. So he chases her, even though she looks terrified, and leaps on top of her. Yup, that’s how you meet girls…

She admits that the goblins made her drink some of the veggie material, and points dramatically as these poorly masked goblins walk casually over caring crude wooden weapons. Presumably showing off for the lady, the guy scolds the goblins, before one throws a spear at him, which hits him in the chests where he falls down.

A chase scene ensues, and the teens run into a suspicious looking church-house thing, where we meet the most dramatic character yet. Waving her eyebrows and squinting a lot, the actress entices them to have a drink, which of course turns out to be the goblin plant material stuff.

The girl, gasping and crying, while green pours out of her hairline, drags herself upstairs where she turns into a steaming pile of algae, which the goblins come out and eat.

The boy realizes he can’t move, (Though I think he takes this fact really well) and loudly proclaims “They’re eating her…and then they’re going to eat me…OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!”

So for the rest of the movie follows young Joshua with the help of Grandpa Seth, who is trying to convince his family to get out of Nilbog. They finally manage to succeed, convincing that Nilbog really DOES have goblins, when Joshua and his grandpa set one of them on fire. The dad sees the goblin corpse, and the other goblins become angry.

So the family traps themselves in the house. Awesome.

Meanwhile one of the goblins seduces a guy with a corn on the cob, (we never find out what really happens to him...) and eventually, somehow, the family manages to defeat the trolls/goblins/whatever, and get out of Nilbog and put the nightmare behind them. But is it reaaaaallly over?

This scene is really, really weird. 

Dancing zombies to a rockin' tune

For the last three years my friends and I have celebrated Zombie Easter. This holiday is not meant to be offensive, as our group of friends have a mix of people who are christian, agnostic and atheists.

This year using some new found fake blood recipes, 6 of us put together a (very) short zombie movie. While that is still in the works of being edited for sound and such, I made a music video to the tune of Family Force 5, Zombie.

I hope you enjoy.

Zombie Music Video

Fake blood recipes

My friends and I are big on making and using fake blood; for props, for photos, and for videos.

After having a mini rendition of the Hunger Games this fall, we decided we needed something new as opposed to our usual fake blood.

Normally we use corn syrup and red food dye. It's simple, easy to make (so simple you can even make it right in the corn syrup bottle) and relatively cheap. But the downsides include it being sticky, the color is a little difficult to wash off, and if you have a scene with blood in your mouth...well..it tastes awful. It's 100% edible, but still pretty gross.

Red Corn Syrup Mix: 

  How it looks on:

Pros:
-Simple formula, red dye (maybe a drop or two of blue) and corn syrup.
-Good color
-Drips well, but can also stay pooled in one location
-Cheap
-Edible

Cons:
-Sticky
-Tastes bad
-Hands might be stained pink for a day or two

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The next blood mix I tried was a simple mix as well, with the addition of only a few more ingredients.
This recipe calls for:
-Corn syrup
-Red dye (plus maybe a few crops of blue or green)
-Cocoa powder
-Flour

I got a great red with this color, and it was fluid enough to even put in a spray bottle, to get a blood spatter effect. On the downside, it was harder to get the right ingredient ratio. I didn't think to write down the amounts used to get my results, which I will amend the next time I make this mix. I added corn syrup and red dye first, a small amount of cocoa powder, and several spoonfuls of flour to thicken the mix.

* I remade this mix, and the ingredient ratio I used was: 1 cup of corn syrup 2/3 cup water 1/2 cup flour 1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Pros:
-Good red color
-Edible
-Great for dripping blood, and you are in control of how thick you want to make it by simply adding more flour.
-Washes off reasonably well
-Not as sticky as straight corn syrup

Cons:
-Still doesn't really taste great. Maybe adding sugar will fix this, but I'm not sure how that would look
-More expensive, you have to buy flour and cocoa powder
-You still might have pink hands a few days after using, but it's not as bad

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This next recipe was a complete experiment. Mio water enhancer liquids seem to be everywhere, and I was curious if you used them in place of food coloring, if they would be easier to wash off.

I found this a difficult concoction to put together, it was very very runny, and adding flour ruined the dark red color, changing it to a weird bright red. After dumping in the entire Fruit punch Mio and adding corn syrup to fix the runniness, I came out with something that worked as fake blood, but wasn't great. I would say don't bother trying this recipe unless you really want to experiment.

Pros:
-Consists of few ingredients
-Cheap
-Smells and tastes delicious (if you like fruit punch)
-Washes off hands well

Cons:
-Difficult to make
-VERY runny
-Still a chance of having pink on your hands after washing off
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The last fake blood I made was the easiest, and my favorite. I simply used red velvet cake mix and water. This stuff is great, because with less water you get a thick, chunky look, and with more water you get a runny fresh blood mix. The shade of red was pretty good too, and the taste was great if you like cake.

Pros:
-Cheap
-Easy
-Diverse, can be runny or thick
-Tastes good
-What's better than just adding water?

Cons:
-Might have pink on your hands after washing. (I didn't have this issue, but my roommate did. I think it depends on your skin chemistry etc. It's not very noticeable though, even if it had been on her face.)
-A little on the light side as far as color, and it may be difficult to change the color red if you don't like the shade that the cake mix is.

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I hope this helped people! Happy horror movie making!!