31 Days of HELL-O-Ween 2020
Mad Monster Party? (1967)
Whew! Done with a couple hours to spare! Just in time to start the next one...
Things may have gotten a little grim and gory of late (don't worry, there's more to come!). So, let's lighten the mood with a truly terrifying movie from my childhood: "Mad Monster Party?" In this case, it's a portrait of Baron Boris von Frankenstein, as voiced by Boris Karloff.
OK, it's actually stop-motion, animated comedy, but there is just something about Rankin-Bass animation which I find... off putting and unsettling. Maybe it is a sort of "Uncanny Valley" with the way they move which bothers me--the animation style. I watched plenty of Rankin-Bass movies--mostly because I would watch almost anything animated, or which had monsters/aliens/robots/all-of-the-above. But, they were also a bit unnerving to me. Which adds to the creep-factor of this movie for me.
The jokes are all old vaudeville; one of the writers on the screenplay was Harvey Kurtzman of "Mad Magazine" fame; and it had voice talents from Boris Karloff to Phyllis Diller. It's mildly amusing. However, the ending did blow my 8-year-old mind (SPOILERS for a 53-year-old movie):
Francesca: I'm just a machine with hundreds of parts that will eventually wear out.
Felix Flanken: Well, Francesca, none of us are perfect. [Click] Are perfect... [Click] Are perfect... [Click] Are perfect... [Click] Are perfect...
Hey, I was 8 at the time... cut me some slack! Of course, much, much later I realized that was a tip-o-the-hat to the ending of "Some Like it Hot" (1959).
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STEP ONE: These are the digital pencils, done in Clip Studio Paint on a 1,500px x 2,250px canvas at 300dpi.
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STEP TWO: And here is about the halfway point.
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STEP THREE: The finished picture. Mostly, it was done on a single layer, using various brushes and such. As always, lots of noodling around and such until I decided "Good enough" and posted it.
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Done digitally in Clip Studio Paint.
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