Waxworks Smackdown

Werewolf vs. vampire. Tooth and claw. Dig that Barnabas-style cane, and the pretty slick Van Heusen hipster shirt on the lycanthrope. Can't remember the name of the wax museum, but it was in New Orleans and this was taken during the '94 World Fantasy Convention. Somewhere in the French Quarter, nearly Halloween, and the Cramps were playing just up the street.

A Box of Bloody Hearts...

...hit the doorstep today at Casa Partridge. I wasn't expecting it. Imagine my surprise when I knifed into a box from Penguin and encountered this marvelously gorific tableau:

Yep. There's a cover that doesn't whisper. Which is another way of saying that Penguin has done a fantastic job rebooting S. T. Joshi's American Supernatural Tales. Formerly part of the Penguin Classics imprint, now out from Penguin Horror with a new intro by Guillermo del Toro.

That means you've got great intro's times two in the new edition, as Joshi and del Toro are two of the brightest gents in the horror business. Plus tales by Poe, Hawthorne, Bierce, Lovecraft, Bloch, Bradbury, Jackson, King, etc. Nice to have made the cut here... though it does feel a little strange to be in a TOC populated by more dead writers than living.

Oh, well. Could be I'm just being morbid (who? me? really?)... but somehow it does stir visions of hitting an elevator button late one night at the World Horror Con and recognizing familiar faces as the doors slide open -- Eddie Poe with a raven perched on his shoulder, and Two-Gun Bob, and rail-thin HPL, and king-sized Karl Wagner red-eyed and red-bearded and ready to rumble one last time.

HPL says, "Room for one more, Norman."

I don't think so, guys... I'm taking the stairs.

And Speaking of John Skipp...

Writer. Filmmaker. Editor of Psychos. Horror legend. Once (and future?) Splatterpunk King. Really, really weird dead guy in a lost sequence from Clive Barker's Nightbreed. What else can one say about John Mason Skipp?

Well, for one thing, he's a helluva nice guy. And a man of boundless energy and enthusiasm. I've met John at a few conventions, and you can't help but catch a little of his lightning if you hang out with him. There's just something about the guy that pushes past the ordinary. He's like some secret creation a bunch of rogue Disney imagineers cooked up in the late fifties, one that escaped the lab and has been operating off the grid ever since.

Plus, he's one of the nicest guys in the business. I know, it's a cliche to say that, but it's true. I took the picture of Skipp that's posted above at a World Horror Convention several years ago. Came out kind of arty, and John liked it a lot. He asked me if he could use it. Every now and then it pops up around the net, and on an occasional bookjacket. That's okay by me.

The picture itself? An accident. I had a new camera. Didn't know how to work it. Inadvertently turned off the flash. Pow. Instant streamlined headlight-flowing-electric-neon artiness.

I guess I was bound to get lucky with a camera once. It's like the old saying about monkeys and typewriters. Lock a hundred of them in a room with a hundred typewriters, sooner or later one of them will write "Hamlet."

Of course, I'd be more worried about said roomful of monkeys cannibalizing those typewriters for spare parts, making weapons, and going Planet of the Apes on our asses.

But that's just me.

Live (well... almost) from the Movieland Wax Museum!

As a teenager in the mid-seventies, I made a trip with a buddy of mine to the San Diego Comic Con... which, in those days, didn't come anywhere near approaching the amazing colossal con it is today. It was friendly and fun, and small enough that you could pretty much buttonhole anyone you wanted to talk to for at least a minute or two. Mostly, we weren't that brave, though we did attend programming events featuring everyone from Jack Kirby to Ray Bradbury to Chuck Norris, which was quite a treat.

But that's a story for another day. While we were in the neighborhood, we made a side-trip to the Movieland Wax Museum, which was a Southern Cal institution. Looking around online, I see it's closed now. Anyway, I found some old photos from my visit circa 1974 or 1975, and I'll post them in the next couple of weeks. Here's Subject Number One, a gent who needs no introduction to readers of this blog: