Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from No Smoking in the Skullcave!

Behold the Living Dead Girl!

In honor of Halloween here is the great Dr. Caligari influenced Rob Zombie video Living Dead Girl. The song is full of horror movie references like the opening music which comes from Wes Craven's horror classic last house on the left or The line, "Who is this irresistible creature who has an insatiable love for the dead?", is from the trailer of the film, Lady Frankenstein. The song also has references to Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.

Also that's Sheri Moon playing the Living Dead Girl so what are you doing still reading this, check it out!



Oh and if anyone can tell me where the samples "what are you thinking about" and "same thing you are" come from I would be eternally grateful.

Vintage Halloween Postcards

I wonder when people stopped sending each other Halloween postcards? Looking around the internet I found a ton of differant designs, here are a few of my favorites.

Witchy Girls Who Go Bump in the Night

Since I posted some of my favorite devil girls a few days ago I thought today I'd do some of my favorite witches.

A witchy Ann Miller


Little Lulu and Witch Hazel


Nan Grey


A classic witchy pin-up


Frank Cho's Brandy as a witch along with all your friends from Liberty Meadows


a witchy Dita Von Teese. She can cast her spell on me anytime.


A Dave Stevens witch

30 Days of Halloween Costumes

Day 30: Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows
God this costume is hideous! Only a soap opera from the 60's could give us a costume for children...I mean could you just imagine an Erica Kane costume? I don't think so.



And so here it is the final costume in The Skullcave's 30 Days of Halloween costumes hope you all enjoyed it!

Vintage Halloween Advertising

I love looking at these vintage ads so thought I'd post some Halloween themed ads. They seem to be pretty effective, I have never wanted a Milky Way candy bar sooooo bad.

Overlooked Movies: Nosferatu the Vampyre

"Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski." ~Werner Herzog on working with actor and longtime "friend" Klaus Kinski.

Jonathan Harker is sent away to Count Dracula's castle to sell him a house in Virna, where he lives. But Count Dracula is a vampire, an undead ghoule living of men's blood. Inspired by a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan's wife, Dracula moves to Virna, bringing with him death and plague... An unusually contemplative version of Dracula, in which the vampire bears the cross of not being able to get old and die.

Click here to watch the preview:


Click here to watch a clip from the movie:


Fun Trivia:
The scene where Nosferatu arrives in the city required thousands of grey rats. Real grey rats were unavailable and therefore white ones were painted grey and used instead.



Werner Herzog the director has a cameo as the person who sticks his foot into the coffin and gets his toe bitten by a rat.

As this movie was made long after the copyright to Bram Stoker's Dracula had expired, Herzog decided to restore the original names of the characters, while still following the movie blueprint laid out by F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922).

The coach that picks up Harker at the Borgo pass was a real hearse that was actually still in use in Bulgaria at the time of the shoot.

Klaus Kinski had to spend approximately four hours per day in make-up. Fresh latex ear pieces had to be poured for each day of shooting because they were destroyed at removal. Kinski, notorious for his violent daily temper-tantrums, had a very good relationship to Japanese make-up artist Reiko Kruk and was exceedingly patient and well-behaved during make-up.



Production designer Henning von Gierke, also an accomplished chef who enjoyed cooking for the crew, prepared the food for the breakfast shot himself.

The exceedingly difficult slow-motion shots of a bat in flight were not shot by Werner Herzog's crew but borrowed from a scientific documentary.

Fun Quotes:
Warden: The patient that came in yesterday is having a fit.
Van Helsing: Which one?
Warden: The one that bit the cow.


On Kinski
Kinski is an actor of legend, but unfortunately not for his onscreen performances. Here are some famous Kinski quotes and stories, real or not the man took those answers to the grave in 1991.

Kinski was an extremely hard worker and strove for perfection, but was frequently at odds with collaborators and directors, and rarely a team player. On one infamous occasion Kinski hurled a lit candelabra from the stage at an audience deemed insufficiently appreciative, almost burning the theatre down.

While shooting Nosferatu Kinski developed a huge boil in the back of his throat. The boil had grown to the point where breathing had become extremely difficult. Germany's health system gave the actor $5,000 to pay a doctor to treat the problem. The article claimed that Kinski merely took a knife, and took care of the problem himself. The actor was suddenly $5,000 richer.

Whilst filming Aguirre: The Wrath of God, irritated by the noise from a hut where cast and crew were playing cards, Kinski fired three shots at it, blowing the top joint off one extra's finger.

Kinski turned down the role of a German villain in Raiders of the Lost Ark, although he wanted to do a movie with Steven Spielberg, he thought "the script is as moronically shitty as so many other flicks of its ilk."

In 1977 he appeared on TV show Je später der Abend he didn't answer a single question during the interview and called the host Reinhard Münchenhagen "Herr Münchhausen".

His last stage appearances were in November 1971, part of his "Jesus Tour", a one-man show in which Kinski reinterpreted the Gospels with Jesus as a ranting psychopath.

The Quotable Klaus Kinski:
"One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real."

"I'd have been better than Adolf Hitler. I could've delivered his speeches a lot better. That's for certain."

"My daughter (Natassja Kinski also an actor) has never forgiven me. for what, I don’t know, because for years, she won’t speak to me. She blackens my name in the press and makes me think abortion is an excellent idea."

"I actually get venereal disease more often than most people catch colds."

"As soon as I fuck a girl or she's sucked me off, I want to leave her immediately. If one sucks me over for so long that I let her sleep with me and she wants to cuddle up to me, I kick her away."

"I need love! Love! Non-stop! And I want to give love because I have so much of it. No one understands the sole purpose of my whoring is to spend myself totally."


Werner Herzog on Klaus Kinski:
"People like Brando are just kindergarten compared to Kinski".

Kinski on "friend" Werner Herzog:
"Now I absolutely despise the murderer Herzog. I tell him to his face that I want to see him perish like the llama he executed. He should be thrown to the crocodiles alive! An anaconda should throttle him slowly! The sting of a deadly spider should paralyze him! His brain should burst from the bite of the most poisonous of all snakes! Panthers shouldn't slit his throat open with their claws, that would be too good for him! No. Big red ants should piss in his eyes, eat his balls, penetrate his asshole, and eat his guts! He should get the plague! Syphilis! Malaria! Yellow fever! Leprosy! In vain. The more I wish the most horrible of deaths on him and treat him like the scum of the earth that he is, the less I can get rid of him!"

Herzog recently made a documentary about his releationship to Kinski called My Best Friend click here to watch the preview:

30 Days of Halloween Costumes

Day 29: Stripe from Gremlins
So if you wear this costume does this mean you can't eat any of your Trick or Treat candy after midnight? And which midnight is that central, mountain or eastern time?

Devil Girls Who Go Bump in the Night

With halloween only a few days a way I thought I'd post some of my favorite devil girls.

Bettie Page in a cute devil costume


Dave Stevens devil girl painting


One of Coop's devil girls man it looks like she's having a good time.


The Altoids Devil Girl

30 Days of Halloween Costumes

Day 28: Sexy Cowgirl
She needs guns though, those bottles in her holsters just don't cut it.

30 Days of Halloween Costumes

Day 27: Casper the Friendly Ghost
I think Bart Simpson said it best:

Lisa: If we don't get to the convention soon, all the good comics will be gone!
Bart: Ah, what do you care about good comics? All you every buy is
Casper the Wimpy Ghost.
Lisa: I think it's sad that you equate friendliness with wimpiness, and I hope it'll keep you from ever achieving true popularity.
Bart: Well, you know what I think? I think Casper is the ghost of
Richie Rich. [shows comics of Casper and Richie Rich]
Lisa: Hey, they do look alike!
Bart: Wonder how Richie died.
Lisa: Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money really is and took his own life.
Marge: Kids, could you lighten up a little?

Thank You

Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes!

  

Masters of Horror is Back!

Yes indeed Showtime's excellent series Masters of Horror returns in it's second season this Friday and everyone should tune in.


If you've never seen the show let me tell you a little about it. Masters of Horror is a terrific anthology show produced by Mick Garris featuring stories by horror's top writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Joe Lansdale, Bruce Jones directed by the likes of Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon and Lucky McKee. The first season had 13 episodes I've seen most and can honestly say this is one of the best most interesting things to happen in the genre of horror in years.

My favorite episode so far has to be Sick Girl directed by Lucky McKee starring Angela Bettis (who is also the star of his movie May) and Misty Mundae billed with her real name Erin Brown. Angela Bettis (she's on the left there) plays Ida Teeter, a bug enthusiast, who starts a relationship with quirky Misty Falls(Misty Mundae). Their relationship, however, turns into a love-triangle when a rather aggressive bug with a taste for large mammals becomes involved.

In anycase the whole reason for this post is to let everyone know the second season is about to begin this Friday night the 27th with The Damned Thing. Based on a Richard Matheson story and directed by Tobe Hooper The Damned Thing is about an unknown monstrous force that descends upon a small Texas town, turning husband against wife, brother against sister, parent against child and it's up to the Sheriff (Sean Patrick Flannery) to fight his own tragic past to restore order. They always have a tortured tragic past don't they. It also has Ted Raimi in it which thrills me to no end. I love Ted Raimi he is the coolest.

Showtime is airing the second season of Masters of Horror every Friday night until February 2 of next year featuring the talents of Mick Garris, Sam Hamm, Peter Medak, Tom Holland, Stuart Gordon, Dario Argento and many more.

And if you don't subscribe to Showtime Anchor Bay has been releasing the episodes from Season 1 over the last year. If your a horror fan you must check this show out!

30 Days of Halloween Costumes

Day 26: Jem
You know she's truely outrageous...ooooh Jem. No one else is the same Jem is her name.

Happy 30th Birthday to Me

This may be a singular phenomena but in my experience birthdays suck. This one was no exception not only did I have to work all day but the phone at my desk broke (and I'm not going to get a new one for at least a week), I had to throw some creep out of the store for shoplifting and I had to work overtime. At least the boss bought me some really nice flowers and a cake.

Here's a picture of me celebrating my 18th birthday...


In honor of this depressing occasion I plan to cheer myself up by posting pictures of sexy women.





There I feel much better now.