Zombos Says: Fair After the promising opening moments of James McTiegue's The Raven are spent with anxious constables rushing to find slashed bodies in a locked room, and the entrance of Inspector Fields (Luke Evans), who approaches the conundrum like Auguste Dupin, John Cusack's Edgar Allan Poe chews the scenery with his superficial temper tantrums and clumsy …
Category: Guest Post
Sep 05 2018
The Edge of Time
The basics of aging paper are absurdly simple- use tea to stain the fibers and allow the sheet to dry. Like many others, I learned that method in grade school and have been using it with minor variations for decades. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it does a reasonably good job of reproducing the browning …
Mar 07 2018
The Art of Horror Movies: An Illustrated History
Zombos says: Very Good A natural follow up to his book, The Art of Horror, Stephen Jones once again provides eye-candy galore in The Art of Horror Movies. As an illustrated history, it is geared to the neophyte, although older horror fans will love the poster art as it claws at their nostalgia-clogged heart strings, …
Jan 17 2018
Making A Magic Potion
I wish I could think of a better title for this than “Making a Magic Potion”, since there’s blessedly little potion swilling in “Call of Cthulhu”. Putting that aside, this is a quick and easy technique for creating a swirling, iridescent liquid that looks great as a potion, bound spirit, or fuel inside the reaction …
Sep 05 2017
The House with Laughing Windows (1976) An Overlooked Giallo
Zombos Says: Very Good This review was written for the upcoming Unsung Horrors, an anthology of horror movies you should watch, written by the fiends at We Belong Dead magazine. The book should be available at the end of this month. The House with Laughing Windows (La casa dale finestre che ridono) is a …
Jul 17 2017
Glowing Fungi
Following up on last week’s post, here’s the finished (for now) version of the glowing fungus prop. Each of the stalks is a length of foam pool noodle slashed with a razor knife and then hit with a heat gun to form the twisting, organic skin. They were then bound into a group using zip …
Jul 16 2017
It Glows
Remember the heat treated pool noodle experiments from last year? I’ve been fiddling around with them again, adding a string of LED lights inside the central core of the noodle. The final prop still needs some tweaks, but the effect is pretty cool. This article originally appeared at Propnomicon. This work is licensed under a …
Jul 15 2017
Burnt Offerings
This is why you need to use a thermometer every time you bake Sculpey. Last night I finished this specimen off and put it in my dedicated polymer clay toaster oven for a final baking. Unfortunately, I relied on my previous temperature readings and didn’t check if there was a hot spot inside the oven. …
Jul 14 2017
The Reality of Things in Jars
The talented Britta Miller is no stranger to these pages. Beyond producing some choice Mythos artifacts she also happens to work in an actual museum filled with shelves of preserved biological specimens. Ms. Miller was kind enough to share some insights based on that experience. Thought I’d drop an email on the subject of Things …
Jul 13 2017
Quick and Easy Fetal Specimen
What would a mad scientist’s lab be without some creepy preserved specimens? This project recreates the look of a diaphonized exhibit using a cheap toy dinosaur skeleton and some basic craft supplies. It’s not movie quality, but from a foot away the finished specimen looks awesome. Not too shabby for something that costs around $2 …
Nov 08 2016
Movie Review: The Grapes of Death (1978) Les Raisins De La Mort
Zombos Says: Have a glass of wine instead. Seriously, have a glass or two of wine instead of seeing this movie. French directors (that would be Jean Rollin in this case) often have trouble handling the subtleties of horror and science fiction; namely that there are no subtleties. Instead of a clean and clear message …
Sep 18 2016
The Fungi From Yuggoth, Part Two
Here are the construction details of the flying Mi-Go created by Mark Jones. It’s a clever, inexpensive method for creating large-scale props using expanding foam over a PVC armature. I’ll turn things over to Mr. Jones: Body: The body parts are made from Expanding Foam used in packing. I traced a shape of the body …
Sep 17 2016
The Fungi From Yuggoth
This is what Halloween should be like. Mark Jones was kind enough to send over some pictures and background material from the Lovecraftian presentation he created for his Halloween get together. It not only featured a Mi-Go brain cylinder, but an entire swarm of the Fungi flying overhead. I host a big Halloween party every …
Jul 06 2016
Movie Review: Tower of Evil (1972)
Zombos Says: Good Normally, Tower of Evil, also known as Beyond the Fog and Horror on Snape Island, a Shepperton Studios' budget-minder with process shots (you know them as phony background scenes), get-it-done scene lighting, and enough bare buttocks and breasts to raise an eyebrow's–if nothing else–worth of attention, wouldn't be worth a critical mention. …
Apr 25 2016
More Tentacle Fun
Let us have a moment of silence for the pool noodles that sacrificed their lives for the cause. You will not be forgotten! Last week I posted some shots of the awesome textures produced when you slash a pool noodle with a razor knife and then blast it with a heat gun. I picked up …
Apr 21 2016
A Solution in Search of a Problem
When I need to relax there are few things more rewarding than melting things with a heat gun. Today I was goofing off with a spare pool noodle and tried slashing it across it’s width with a razor knife before gently melting the surface. The result was a really interesting ridged texture interspersed with bubbly …