Posts Tagged ‘horror’
Fright Night…
Halloween is about a week away– what’s a poor reader to wear?
Mark Rober and his company Digital Dudz offer a line of shirts and corresponding smartphone apps that create animated Halloween costumes…
This year, Mark is back with a new animation for his collection that displays a hand punching through your back and ripping your guts out. The gruesome animation is triggered by a smartphone’s internal motion sensor. When a friend pretends to punch his hand through your back and you arch your back, the gut ripping animation begins. [In the video below] Mark and his undead friend demonstrate how it works. The Digital Dudz apps (Apple and Android) and custom clothes are available to purchase online.
email readers click here for video
Via the ever-informative Laughing Squid.
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As we don our gay apparel, we might send terrifying birthday greetings to John Michael Crichton; he was born on this date in 1942. An author, physician, producer, director, and screenwriter, he’s best known as a purveyor of techno-thrillers in the science fiction, medical fiction, and occasionally political thriller genres. The creator of The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Timeline, Prey, and State off Fear, among many others, his books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, with many adapted into films. In 1994 Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at No. 1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).
Special Halloween Edition: Horror for all!…
By way of helping readers ready themselves for this evening’s frightful festivities, a stroll down memory lane…
These and other terrifying trailers (along with lots of other fascinating film fodder) at The Ebert Club; inexpensive annual membership required– and more than worth it.
And for advanced students: “The Top 10 Zombie Movies You’ve Never Seen.”
SPECIAL HORROR-GEEK UPDATE: “‘Why won’t you die?!’ The art of the jump scare.”
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As we steel ourselves against breaking prematurely into the candy, we might note that it was on this date in 2004 that the 14th Baron of Prestoungrange pardoned the 81 “East Lothian Witches” who had been put to death 400 years earlier (often, for crimes as innocuous as owning a black cat and living on their own).
The Baron acted on the authority of Scotland’s ancient baronial courts– and not a moment too soon, as the courts were abolished the following month.
A good scare…
HW: Do you find that audiences are frightened by different things now from the things that frightened them when you started, what, 30 years ago… 35 years ago, making films?
AH: No, I wouldn’t say so, because after all they were frightened as children. You have to remember this is all based on “Red Riding Hood,” you see? Nothing has changed since “Red Riding Hood.”
In 1964, Huw Weldon (later, Director General of the BBC) interviewed Alfred Hitchcock for the BBC series Monitor…
Part Two here
HW: Have you ever been tempted to make what is nowadays called a horror film, which is different from a Hitchcock film?
AH: No, because it’s too easy… I believe in putting the horror in the mind of the audience and not necessarily on the screen.
[TotH to Brain Pickings]
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As we reach for our security blankets, we might recall that, though accounts of an unusual aquatic beast living in Scotland’s Loch Ness date back 1,500 years, the modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster was born when a sighting made local news on this date in 1933. The Inverness Courier ran the account of a local couple who claimed to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.” The story of the “monster” (a label chosen by the Courier editor) became a media sensation: London papers sent correspondents to Scotland and a circus offered a 20,000 pound reward for capture of the beast.
Photo “taken” in 1934, later proved a hoax (source)
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