#spookshowcinema

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Goosebumps Tooseday: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp

Well I’ll be damned. What are you doing here? It’s a Tuesday! Don’t you know you’re supposed to come over for your Tooseday fix? Well come on in, your Goosebumps is getting cold. No good letting good bumps go to waste. I swear, I can’t be bothered to pick a favorite for the life of me. We’re keeping it chronological! Today’s feature: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp

Now I think we've pretty much established that I'm not about picking favorites here. When you hopscotch across a series of work as diverse in tone and subject matter as Goosebumps, you end up front loading all the "good ones" early on. Plus you raise your chances of missing a few in the mix.

As I've also established, I've got favorites. There are some covers that are just objectively better than the rest. When they come up, I'll point em out. And for the next few weeks, I’m going to be doing a lot of pointing, as Goosebumps 13 through 16 have some fantastic covers. Today’s feature is a favorite. Here's why.

There are a handful of images floating in the cultural landscape that instantly call to mind Old School Horror. You’ve got the dilapidated castle set against the midnight lightning storm. The single decayed hand reaching out from a freshly dug grave. The coffin whose top is slowly being lifted open from the inside. These are the images that evoke the monsters of yesterday, the black and white nightmares that haunt us still. And nothing quite screams Old School Horror like the lone wolf, howling at the moon.

It’s a loaded image, one that Jacobus does well. He contrasts the simplicity of the central Wolf/Moon imagery with a rich background bursting with detail. Just look at those trees! The distant banks of the swamp! Even the moonlight is gorgeous! Compared with the simple color gradients of Piano Lessons Can Be Murder and Night of The Living Dummy, this cover’s background delivers.

You got to hand it to Tim Jacobus; when the man comes up with a color scheme he commits to it, realism be damned. We’ve seen a few staple complimentary color schemes already. Red & Blue, Teal & Orange, and Red & Green all show up regularly throughout the series run. But one color scheme that Jacobus truly nails, is Purple & Green

Whenever Jabobus breaks out the Purple and Green his paintings take on that distinctly Goosebumps aesthetic. Water becomes impossibly iridescent while the sky ditches reality all together to go light purple. Nothing in the scene reflects the world as it is, and yet it is rendered in such detail that we believe it.

That's all for this week folks. If you have a suggestion for what cover we look at next week, build a paperclip chain. Each link must be 3 clips wide for the first five links, 4 clips wide for the next five links, and so on. Once you've gotten a paperclip chain strong enough to tie down a grown man to a rolling chair for five hours, it won't matter because we're keeping it chronological baby!

[spookshowcinema-blog]

Spook Show Cinema Presents: Cult of Chucky

Welcome Cinemaniacs to Spook Show Cinema Presents, a showcase for a few of horror’s finer features. On the Chopping Block today, The Cult of Chucky,

Cult of Chucky

What’s It About?

Cult of Chucky is the 7th film in the Child’s Play franchise and takes place in an insane asylum and follows returning protagonist Nica Pierce. Convinced that she imagined a living doll killing her family as a way of coping with her own crime, Nicah is serving out her sentence in a minimum security facility. All is well in the Asylum until a certain ginger doll makes a return appearance.

What’s Good?

I got to admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of the Chucky movies. I don’t find dolls all that scary, so the prospect of an entire movie devoted to a foul mouthed cabbage patch kid never really floated my boat. I went into Curse of Chucky blind to the entire franchise, and I’m impressed

Cult of Chucky is a surprsingly accessible entry point for newcomers to the franchise. Rather than laboring over the plots of previous films, Cult cuts straight to the bone, establishing each of our main characters and their past interactions with Chucky within the first few minutes of their introduction. For the seventh film in a convoluted series, that’s not bad at all.

Cult of Chucky deftly walks the fine line between stupid and chilling. During the asylum sections of the film there’s a palpable sense of dread. There is legitimate atmosphere and tension, which plays a nice contrast to the far campier Chucky sections. The doll is still crass and cheesy, but it’s played with that perverse self aware humor that marks the horror comedy. It also has enough self awareness to let its camp be camp. When explaining to a victim how he can possess multiple bodies, Chucky casually explains going to Voodoocurses.com for magic spells. If that’s not the perfect explanation, I don’t know what is.  

Favorite Line:  “Ok, let me explain something to you. I am a vintage, mass marketed children’s toy from the ‘80s, standing right in front of you, holding a very sharp scalpel.”

The Final Word

Here’s the word. If you enjoy atmospheric psychological horror mixed liberally with a campy slasher, Cult Of Chucky is sure to please.

That’s all for now folks. Tune in again for another trip down the backroads of Horror. And As Always, Stay Spooky My Friends!

[spookshowcinema-blog]

Goosebump Tooseday: Be Careful What You Wish For

Hello. Did you know today is Tuesday? The most hallowed of days. Yes friend, Tuesday. It’s a day of fellowship. A day of freedom. A day of glad tidings. For on Tuesdays, the Bumps of Goose are delivered unto us. Lo, Goosebumps Tooseday. After our brief dalliance with non linearity on Halloween, we are back to cracking open Goosebumps covers chronologically! Today’s topic, Be Careful What You Wish For!

Be Careful What You Wish For is a bit of an outlier amongst the original 62 Goosebumps covers. It’s one of only two covers in the first run that series mainstay Tim Jacobus didn’t illustrate. We already covered the other exception way back in week 2 with Stay Out Of The Basement, (Jim Thiesen’s putrid plant hand  was a worthy addition to the Goosebumps Cover Canon Want to hear more about it? Click here!). Instead of Jacobus or Thiesen, Artist Stanislaw Fernandes takes over art duties on this one, and the result is...mixed. Let’s start with the positives, shall we?

Be Careful What You Wish For is clearly a cover of the Spooky Persuasion, checking off the key components of heavy shadow, cockeyed angles,  peculiar color schemes, eerie lighting, and mysterious subject matter.Each of these components come out in spades on this piece, which definitely dial up its memorability. Each element has that “Goosebumps vibe”, so it fits in well with the rest of Jacobus’s covers.At first glance, you might even mistake it as being one of his.

That’s only at first glance though. Take more than that, and it’s pretty clear that this cover ain’t like the others. Despite checking off every item on the spooky list, this cover just isn’t that good. Why’s that? Bad Airbrushing, Now, while I have a spattering of artistic skills and knowledge, the finer technicalities of painting has never been one of my strong suits. Some folks can look at a painting and tell you what type of brush the artist favored, or what sort of varnish they applied. Me, not so much.

But it doesn’t take an art expert to see this cover has been airbrushed to hell and back. The face is too round; all hints of a jawline vanish into neck. The girl’s facial features are so indistinct it’s impossible to make out what her expression is supposed to be. And that’s just in the face.The Fortuneteller’s hands look flat when they ought to pop off the page. The crystal ball has a crack down its center that’s presumably leaking a smoky substance. But that crack has the same consistency as the smoke, and there aren’t any visual clues on the crystal ball either.

Compared to the highly detailed covers of series regular Jacobus, this piece falls flat. That’s all for this week Goosebumpers. If you have a request for which cover we tackle next week, write it down! Then revise it a few times! Expand on it. Nail it down to a solid first draft. Then a second. Maybe even a third. When you’ve got something worth showing, put my name on it and send it to some publishers. Once it gets published and I start raking in the profits of your labors, it won’t matter because we’re keeping it chronological baby! 

[spookshowcinema-blog]

We Have Such Sprites To Show You: Etrigan

In addition to writing about monsters and madmen, I make pixel art! I’ve got a game studio over at https://www.facebook.com/halflemongamestudios/, where you can follow the dev process along with my pixel art.

Jack Kirby was the King, You know this. I know this. It's a truth universally acknowledged that a Jack Kirby creation will be loved eternally by fans but remain relatively obscure in the eyes of the main stream. So I decided to make a tribute to one of my favorite of Kirby's mad machinations, Etrigan the Demon!  

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We Have Such Sprites To Show You: Klayman

In addition to writing about monsters and madmen, I make pixel art! I’ve got a game studio over at https://www.facebook.com/halflemongamestudios/, where you can follow the dev process along with my pixel art.

The Neverhood is a capital W Weird Game. A Claymation point and click adventure game with a soundtrack that'll confuse and delight ya, The Neverhood was sure to leave an impression. What would it have looked like as a non Claymation game? Welp, maybe a little something like this.

[spookshowcinema-blog]

Goosebump Tooseday Battle Royale: Be Careful What You Wish For

It's Tuesday. Dreaded Tuesday. Grim Tuesday. Forlorned Tuesday. Goosebumps Tooseday. This week, let's spice things up with another cover art battle royale.

In the Purple Corner, we have the original 1993 cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes. Spooky hands, heavy shadows, faux dutch angling, and supernatural purple lighting make this cover a contender.

In the Orange Corner, we have the 2005 reprint cover art by Tim Jacobus. Blue tendrils of light, an unnaturally detailed face, and a yellow orb of mystery make this a cover to watch out for.

Which cover is the strongest? You decide!

[spookshowcinema-blog]

We Have Such Sprites To Show You: BOTW Link

In addition to writing about monsters and madmen, I make pixel art! I’ve got a game studio over at https://www.facebook.com/halflemongamestudios/, where you can follow the dev process along with my pixel art.

The Hero of Hyrule, Link from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild

[spookshowcinema-blog]

Goosebumps Tooseday: Welcome to Camp Nightmare

Your calendars ain't lying! It's Tuesday, which means it's time for the greatest Goosebumps cover art retrospective heretofore known to man! That's right, your mind may not want to believe it, but your eyes tell you it's true! We're giving out hot takes like they were Halloween candy, and today's treat is a tasty one! Since Ol' Mateo can't be bothered to pick out favorites, we're keeping it chronological! Today’s feature is Welcome To Camp Nightmare!

Welcome to Camp Nightmare's cover has a few things in common with last week's cover, The Haunted Mask. Like Mask, this cover's complimentary colors are purple and green, and features red and blue in the background details to shift viewers eyes away from them. It also features a bright green focal point, this time in the form of a tent.

However, as anyone with functioning eyes can see, the two covers are quite different. Sure, the contents of each cover are radically different, no one will argue that. In one you've got a girl wearing a mask, the other a nightmarish hellbeast slowly drawing open a tent against a backdrop of dead trees and a demented sky. But the key difference between these covers, and the thing I'd like to talk focus on today, is the lighting.

Now in most Jacobus Goosebumps covers, Lighting is a tool to accentuate the spooky. You'll find covers where threats are draped in shadows, and monstrous beasties that almost seem to gleam from their overhead lighting. This is the case with The Haunted Mask. With Overhead lighting , the painting is brightest at the top, and quickly darkens to black by the bottom.

With Welcome to Camp Nightmare, the lighting isn't just a tool that accentuates the spooky, but the source of the spookiness itself! Sure, the dead trees, red sky, and hidden monster are all creepy in their own right. But the tent has an otherworldly glow, illuminating the scene in an impossible way. Why impossible? Because green light isn't really a thing! With the exception of old school computer monitors, the color green isn't a component of most light sources. Recognizing this, creative folks often use it when they want to nail it into the viewer that what they're looking at is alien. For a prime example of this, the poster for the movie Alien. A little green goes a long way, and this cover has plenty!

That's all for today folks! If you've got a suggestion for next week's Goosebumps Cover, close your computer or mobile device, put on your coat, step outside, and Walk. Walk until you've left your block, then Walk until you've left your neighborhood, then Walk until you've left your town. Walk until the moon fades in and out of the sky and the Sun makes its rounds. Walk until the only sounds you can hear are the wet tearing of your own ragged breath. once you've done this, it won't matter because we're keeping it chronological baby!