Altar

Fertile and futile.

Installation by Kari, Yin and Raymond @ The Annexe Gallery, september 28th, 2009

Best photo of Barbara Steele

Carroll Borland and Barbara Steele

I rate Mark of the Vampire higher than most films of the era, it is not a great film and it is a mess but it has some nice sounds and images in it. Unfortunately a lot of the film was cut,, you can see some intriguing scenes in the trailer that were not in the film. Carroll Borland is the highlight of the movie and if only the movie studios were crazy enough to forget about the story and just devote the screen to her wandering about.
I recently watched a good Shaun Tan interview and I was glad he shared my thinking that you dont need stories shoehorned into a series of compelling images. I'll be happy when there is a group of horror film makers who dont bother with stories and just film a series of scary incidents, or a series of lovely images.
You know I've always believed that every comic artist should have their own comic where they can go crazy with any order or mixture of pinups, text, comics and sequences. Some people just dont have enough stories to go with the images, so they shouldnt have to force it out.

Great soundtracks for less than great films

When I first saw La Chiesa/The Church by Soavi/Argento, I was very disappointed, but the soundtrack mostly by Keith Emerson stuck out. But even better was a piece by Philip Glass which was one of the most incredible things I've ever heard.
The real version of "Floe" is on Glassworks, in a very different, much less gothic version. Other this this piece I dont really know anything else about Philip Glass, but this piece is enormously encouraging. It takes up the first 9 minutes of this video and it will make your mind go wild with fast moving grandeur imagery.

The band is called Libra and it had a couple of members from Goblin. I've never actually seen Schock/Shock/Beyond the Door 2,, but the trailer didnt look very good and of Mario Bava, I only really like Black Sunday, Black Sabbath and Kill Baby Kill.
The full soundtrack of this, La Chiesa and many many other of these films are on youtube.
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These are my 12 commandments, I have this sheet next to my bed and I read it before I go to sleep and when I wake up. It may sound pompous but I think they are effective and I believe in aiming high.

More Trash

Picky the Vulture. Probably a member of the "Road Vultures".


Are you there God? It's me, Tommy & Louie. Who put the snake in snake brandy? Who invented the Groucho Marx glasses? Did the Scottish make the first whoopee cushion? Why do they hate cars so much?

B&W SKETCH

It's been a while since I've drawn anything worth posting, and it's also been a while since I've posted. Life got ahead of me recently and my fantasies of controlling time have shown themselves to be empty.
This drawings is done by doing a line drawing on paper, then flipping the paper over and filling in the negative areas by hand. I could certainly do this with photoshop, but it does not make a finished piece and lacks the hand-drawn feeling I strive for.
A second NSFW image appears in this post on my blog.
Image copyright 2009 Chad Vercus

Demons, Witches Werewolves and Zombies!!!

Run for your lives, they're going to kill and eat us!!!! AGGHHH!!!!

ROM

So, I finally had the time to ink the half-finished Spacenite 2 contribution which has been lying around on my desk for weeks now. Voilà!

More old crapola...

I know there’s an Elephant Man admirer or two here so I thought I’d post this. After seeing the film on cable TV in 1981 or 82, I became obsessed with it…for whatever reason…And I went nuts making a number o grotesque Elephant Man drawings colored with crayons. This one item I made, a crude construction paper booklet called “Tomb of Tumors”, which was inspired by a D & D module called “Tomb of Horrors.” Also: This D&D book, was also one of my favorites, and had a shitload of really cool b&w Trampier art…

Cretin Greetin's

Kaiser Roll says, "Needs More Mustard Gas."
Novelty Greeting Cards featuring Mr. Sean's Monsters, Weirdos & Creeps, Gurpers & Cretins.
I've been listening to the radio shows on Garagepunk.com lately, great stuff. We watched Billy the Kid Vs. Dracula (1966) last night. The movie is conceptual gold, classic monsters in the old west! I'm starting to wonder what i want out of movies, i tend to draw while "watching" them & so i actually find movies that require lots of involvement to be obnoxious. So, these old B-movies are perfect, because they tend not to make much sense anyway & can have some inspired imagery in them & they're usually just an hour long. I like whoopee cushions & the Ramones for the same reason.