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Post by Knygathin on Apr 13, 2012 0:55:45 GMT
The only one I know for sure I had was the guillotine. The obvious reason it sticks in my mind is that you could do things with it. Hours of innocent fun! In retrospect my parents do not strike me as the kind of people who would buy such a toy for their child, but it often occurs to me that the entire zeitgeist was exceedingly different back then . . . The Guillotine actually met with protests, and was rejected by sponsors on account of its "poor taste" and functional violent nature, before it was finally produced.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 12, 2012 23:31:52 GMT
The prisoner on The Phantom of The Opera kit was standing in a dungeon shaft, and only his head and hands holding the bars were visible by the Phantoms feet. The rest of his body was in an imaginary dimension underneath the model.
This may have been my first Aurora kit, I was very young and don't remember putting it together myself. I got help with that, and only saw it as finished (unaware of the separate parts). I tried to look down into the dungeon shaft, and poke my fingers, but the bars were in the way. And it was too dark and murky inside to truly see what was going on. That was really strange. The rest of the man must have been underneath the table on which the kit stood, or somewhere else!
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 12, 2012 19:10:19 GMT
Did you know that the classic box/ad art was done by none other than James "Doc Savage" Bama? No, I just read about it yesterday. Before that I had some dreamy idea of a superhuman talent, without named identity, birth date, or earthly living quarters. Those boxes were independent, living on their own. James Bama is a very talented naturalist painter, still active. I understand that when he did those boxes he was completely unaware of other famous fantasy/horror artists of the time. So the paintings stand on their own, uninfluenced by the stylized manners seen in so much fantasy-art. He lived up in the mountains when he did them.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 11, 2012 16:33:37 GMT
Don't forget Frankenstein! He was somehow the centerpiece among the Aurora models. Always near me on the shelf, one of my best social buddies as a kid. Solid. Never failing, never letting down. The other models were perhaps more spectacular though, with more varied details on the set. The one that disturbed me the most was Phantom of the Opera. It was a nightmare. My father having painted it in expertly murky oil-colors contributed to that, because it came alive. I remember pondering much over the prisoner behind the bars, thinking it awful that he was there, and that he must be freed somehow. I even worriedly asked my parents why he was there. It really messed me up. A true conte cruel piece! The covers on the Aurora boxes were absolutely wonderful, and set very high standards for a little kid at that time. And while the contents may not quite have lived up to the spectacular covers, the models were still really well made, and nothing topped the enjoyment of sorting among the pieces and gluing them together! And then the grande finale with brush and paints! There was one Aurora kit I always dreamed about: The cyclops from Lost in Space, throwing a big rock at tiny humans. But either it was too hard to get, only having seen ads in monster mags, or it was too expensive. I never got it, and it still has a very magic aura for me.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 10, 2012 6:55:55 GMT
I don’t think it was books that started me off. I was a Christmas gift off an uncle and it was the Aurora monster kit of The Mummy. . . - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Forgotten Prisoner, Hunchback, Wolfman and I even got the working Guillotine! The Aurora monster kits covered the tops of every book-shelf in my room. My dad couldn't resist painting The Mummy and The Phantom of the Opera with his old oil-paints. I was duly impressed - they became alive! I painted with Humbrol paints. I used to enjoy placing the man standing by the far end of the Guillotine, then tipping the board over so he was lying down, and shoving him in under the blade. He had such fine dignity in his pose, and accepted this treatment every time! The blade was rigged up with real hemp-colored string, and there was grass and painted blood in the basket. His head was carefully attached, so it would fall clean off every time the blade dropped. Ah, those were the days! All the Aurora models are gone now. Broke and disappeared one by one with the ravages of time. Difficult to collect since they took up much space, and were fragile. Replaced now with supernatural fiction!
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 7, 2012 18:34:55 GMT
I don't know, it looks kind of old to me. And too "sick" and "ugly" to be a J K Potter.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 6, 2012 21:54:22 GMT
I am not all dead sure that photo is manipulated. This could also be a case of an exceedingly deformed freak. It's not impossible . . . I have worked in a hospital and seen some very strange cases, but those unfortunate individuals are hidden away from the public.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 6, 2012 21:06:32 GMT
Published in 1964. I wonder what tools they used back then to manipulate a photo in that way? Bulging projecting-lenses, or mirrors perhaps.
Today anyone could theoretically do that with photoshop . . . the crux is to know, and have a taste for, what parts to manipulate and how much, so it becomes creepy. Only a person with artistic talent and feeling for the bizarre can do that. Photoshop doesn't make people into artists, even if their efforts may look superficially impressive at first sight . . . but then you realize that the majority of it is just crap, like you say demonik.
There is more to that strange photo. Is that the guy's face at the outset, or is he wearing a mask? If it is a mask, it sure isn't just a simple "paper bag" over his head. I looks organic . . . with a scar or something running above the nose.
This is the kind of picture you can keep analyzing, but you will never fully solve its mystery . . . it will continue to creep and haunt you!
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 6, 2012 1:39:37 GMT
that Ambrose Bierce Ghost & Horror Stories volume... warping the dimensions of the photograph. Well . . . this is a glimpse into non-Euclidean geometry. The face is passing out beyond the three dimensions. That evil wide mouth musing over terrible deeds... and then everything above, the angles and proportions of the nose and eyes (which no longer add up numerically!) and brow, go haywire into madness. The spiritual Abyss, where "up" and "down" has lost its meaning, blends with matter here, and bends it like clay away from normal senses. Here is a notion of what goes on in those cyclopean ruins that Cthulhu emerges from. I wish more fantastic Art was as bizarre as this.
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Post by Knygathin on Apr 4, 2012 20:03:31 GMT
The more I look at that Ambrose Bierce Ghost & Horror Stories volume, the more it creeps me out. Quite excellent artwork, disturbingly warping the dimensions of the photograph.
I used to be less enthusiastic about Dover, thinking them a too big publisher without the specialized sense for the supernatural. But they have acquired a very gifted staff of book designers, who seem to do dedicated and genuine research for each project.
Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams is another great Dover cover art.
Best Ghost Stories of J. S. Le Fanu is a favorite of mine. Top quality paperback, on acid-free paper.
The recent Dover of A Voyage to Arcturus has a conceptually interesting cover; The shadow of a smart chap spying out over an alien landscape, composed so that it is you who are holding the book who is casting that shadow! Very appealing design I would say.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 22:45:49 GMT
Unfortunately I am a slow reader. Unlike most of you, I would guess. So I am very selective and careful in deciding what to read. I must be. I can't possibly "read them all", let alone revisit my favorites. Some of you may recognize a certain frustration: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVioeJFiUoU
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 22:27:55 GMT
I don't respond well to cruelty and sadism, so I think I'll leave Charles Birkin alone.
I think my perspective on horror and ghostliness is more romantic. I want beauty, beauty tinged with creepiness. It's fantasy.
Besides, I already have a very long reading list ahead of me. Of "ghostly", subtle stories; And that's fine, it's an aesthetic pleasure leading to transcendental experiences with the best writers's work. I only wish there had been some good explicit monsters too!, of the Cthulhu variety that cosmically warps your perspective and makes your mind swim and nauseaous with horror. But I intend to reread Lovecraft, so I think it's alright. I will never have a lack of reading material anyhow.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 15:49:41 GMT
... A large part of the enjoyment is astonishment that somebody would actually write things like that. They are very elegantly written, completely unsubtle stories of pointless nastiness. I find that reading one now and then has a sort of refreshing effect on the mind. That sounds great. I am almost tempted to read him.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 13:53:20 GMT
Never heard of Charles Birkin before.
“The stories of Charles Birkin, however, are not for the squeamish. Be warned, if you are at all sensitive, leave him well alone. He deals unflinchingly with such subjects as murder, rape, concentration camps, patricide, mutilation and torture.” —Hugh Lamb
Perhaps too terrible for me. There needs to be an aesthetic vision to give pleasant chills. The above sounds like pornographic violence.
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Post by Knygathin on Mar 23, 2012 13:44:46 GMT
... (including psychological experiences of the brain) and fears. And that heightened level above "horror". . . "terror" of course.
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