monster-menagerie-memos

New Books!

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 01:55:45 +0100

Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this site. Being employed seems to take up a lot of my time! I’m now working in a call center –scary, huh?

I acquired a couple of books and added them to my library: I just got “Famous Monster Movie Art of Basil Gogos” by Kerry Gammill & J. David Spurlock. Very good stuff! Since I don’t own a copy of “Famous Monsters of Filmland” (had to believe) I can marvel over Gogos’ artwork without paying the price of a highly collectible magazine.

Another new book added to my bookshelf is “Universal Studios Monsters – A Legacy of Horror” by Michael Hallory. I’ve been told that there isn’t any new information that the seasoned horror collector can find in this book, but it’s perfect for a new Monster Kid. I’m there! I haven’t read a book that’s dedicated to classic horror since I was in middle school, so this book is just fine for me! The pictures are great! A very well put together book.

“Scary Monsters” magazine has published all five pages of my article on Monstrpalooza 2010! Pictures and all! Regular contributor, Johnny Scareshock also plugged my work in his column! So, check out “Scary Monsters” number 75, on sale now at Barns and Noble or Boarders!

Monsterpalooza 2010

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 05:42:37 +0100

Okay, I went to the biggest monster convention on the west coast: Monsterpalooza! April 9-11, in Burbank California. Here’s the thing: I promised to do a write up for my blog, however, I wrote a big report and submitted it to Scary Monsters magazine. Dennis Druktenis, the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, is considering printing my article! So, if I posted it all here, wouldn’t I be scooping the magazine that I want to be published in?

I can say that it was a very good show! I really enjoyed it. It was my first monster con. I’ve been to ComicCon and other comic book conventions. But this one was all monsters and it was very well done!

I’m looking forward to going to next year’s!

In writing my article I was E-mailing Johnny Scareshock constantly for encouragement and approval. Johnny is one of the best! He’ll be at Chiller this weekend and I can’t wait to read how that will go!

Here are my pictures of Monsterpalooza. Enjoy!

http://entertainment.webshots.com/album/577326617rHJkFj

3-D vs. Us!

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 01:21:06 +0100

The new 3-D movies promise audiences with an enhanced entertainment experience, but some are just finding it just annoying. There are between 2% and 12% of the population that can’t see 3-D due to blindness in one eye or mild binocular disorder. Some people will leave from screenings early because of headaches and dizziness.

Sure the 3-D effects were amazing in Avatar, but after all the pizzazz you’re left with a weak plot. 3-D didn’t help with the storytelling.

Right now, there is a battle for the 3-D space in the movie theaters. The new releases are pushing out the older releases for good or bad.

Yes, there has been giant leaps made in the 3-D process, but the studios are fooling themselves if they think they have found a new way to lure audiences. The concept of a 3-D movie is a very old gimmick. 1915 was the year of the first commercial release of a 3-D movie: Moving Picture World. A critic of the time wrote: “Images shimmered like reflections on a lake and in its present form the method couldn't be commercial because it detracts from the plot.” The same could be said of any of the new 3-D releases.

If it doesn’t improve the story telling: don’t do it!

The remake of Clash of the Titans is disappointing movie goers with its less than best 3-D effects. It was shot in 2-D and then reprocessed for 3-D, giving it a pop-up book look. There’s talk that Warner Brothers will do the same to the next Harry Potter movie!

Avatar’s first home release will be the 2-D version. The 3-D home market isn’t stable enough for a large scale home 3-D release of a movie such as Avatar.

So, like so many movies that were in 3-D in the theater, it’ll take years for Avatar to be seen again in 3-D.

Monsterpalooza NE1?

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 16:07:02 +0100

Monsterpalooza the biggest West Coast Monster Con will be held in Burbank, California on April 9^th through 11^th, 2010. For more information go to www.rubberromm101.com . This will be great! The Chaney family will be there and many other monster and horror guest. All of the vendor tables sold out months ago!

New Monster, New Animation & New Morgue Files!

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:16:06 +0100

New Exclusive Animation!

I just uploaded a new video in the Monster Tube area of this site! It’s called “Savings To Die For”. If you notice that the tutorial for the self-checkout stand at the grocery store uses CGI figures from the program called “Poser”. Since I’ve been using Poser for my animations I thought it would be funny to make my own tutorial of a person buying things to do away with an unwanted house guest! Watch carefully and listen to what she’s buying…

New Calendar Ghoul!

I also made my first completely computer generated monster for this month’s Calendar Ghoul. This is a werewolf in honor of the upcoming Universal Pictures’ The Wolf Man! I made my own werewolf by combining two Poser figures: a dog and a man. I had to do some adjustments to make it work –but I think the end result worked out well. I used an older version of Poser (3). I tried to keep the tail –but that didn’t work out!

Bela Needs a Good Home!

Be sure to check out my friend Stephen’s Etsy site store. He has a lot of his personal monster collection for sale! It’s a collection that he cares about, so it all needs a good home! He has monster films, autographed monster pictures, monster lobby cards and monster board games!

Go to: http://www.etsy.com/shop/spookcityarts

Mr. Smith Goes to the Eyeglass Shop!

Going through my copy of the book Alien Creatures (1978 by Jean-Claude Suarès and Richard Siegel) I found an autograph that I stored next to a picture of Jonathan Harris.

My wife was working in an optometrists shop in 1990 when the actor from Lost in Space walked in for a fitting. She said that he was very nice and was happy to provide the personalized autograph. I just scanned it and posted it along with a picture of Mr. Harris. You can find it in the Morgue Files section!

That’s not that last of the newspaper clippings and other artifacts that I stuck in that book! More to come…

Happy Monster-Loving New Year!

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:02:41 +0100

Welcome! I’ve been getting a lot of new visitors to this site and I want to extend a hardy hand shake! One reason that new visitors have been directed to the site is that I’ve been posting my videos to every file sharing site that I can find! The one with the most traffic (is NOT Youtube) is Metacafe. I got more hits in one hour than I did on Youtube in two months! Also I’ve been calling myself the “Proprietor of Monster Menagerie” whenever I’ve made a comment on other sites and it seems to have worked.

I had my second letter published in Scary Monsters Magazine! Okay, so there was one typo –but that may have been my fault! If you’ve never read Scary Monsters: Check it out!! You can get it at Barnes & Noble, Boarders & most newsstands (they can’t be found at comic book stores anymore) –or check them out on-line: www.scarymonstersmag.com. Tell Dennis Druktenis that I sent you (that’s Cliff Proprietor of www.monstermenagerie.com)!

Speaking of promoting my site: I’ve been handing out my business cards (it has the Mummy, Dracula and The Wolf Man on them) and I’ve been getting this reaction: I’ve seen this before!!

Okay, they might have been mistaken, but that’s what they are saying. I wanted to have that look to my site and to my business cards: the familiarity of old-school monsters and to include the cool font of Matisse (sorry Mac users you can’t see that font. You’ll see it in a default font, like Arial). So, to hear that it looks familiar is a complement!

DVR this: I found Monster Makers (2003) on the Hallmark channel. This is a Hallmark original movie. It’s a kid’s movie and it’s very low budget. The plot is weak –so why watch it? Linda Blair plays a mom; Adam Baldwin (My Bodyguard -1980) plays a sheriff & George Kennedy plays an old movie producer with a bunch of movie props in his basement (sort’a like a Forest J Ackerman). There’s something there for little, little monster kids and some parts are for the older kids, like the character Ver-Man: a hobo who turns into a Were-rat at the smell of trash; there’s a living mannequin who collects real body parts to make himself human.

Download this: (Radio on the web). NPR’s news game show Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (yeah, that’s the name) had guest star Lucy Lawless –Xena: Warrior Princess! Download the 1/09/2010 show at www.npr.org.

Lucy answers the question that bothered most of us: What was up with the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle? Radio at its finest.

And speaking of Xena, its producer (Sam Raimi) and director of Spiderman 1,2 &3: Sony and Marvel has announced that Spiderman 4 will not have its old cast of the tree films –but they will put Peter Parker back into high school! Retuning to his “roots” as they are saying. Sam Raimi will not direct it. Might as well go direct to DVD as far as I’m concerned! I’ve also read that they are looking to re-boot the Fantastic Four! Maybe when the rights to all of the films runs out for to all of the studios (Fox, Paramount & Sony) maybe Disney will bring some kind of consistency to the mix –I just hope that Disney will lower the price of a Marvel comic (four bucks??!!).

Happy Monster-Loving New Year!

Cliff

Proprietor of www.monstermenagerie.com

New Ghost Video

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:15:52 +0100

I just finished another video! This one is called “Ghost Stories” (can be seen in the Monster Tube area). The video is a collection of theme-driven clips that I made, involving ghost. There’s a recreation of the hallway scene from The Shining (come play with us Danny, forever and forever and forever). I also made one scene from Poltergeist. I’m not completely satisfied with the outcome, but some clips came out better than expected while others…

I used Poser 3 to make the clips and edited it all together (with music) in Windows Movie Maker. I have Poser Pro –but I thought I would master an older version before I get into the newer software.

My ad links are doing nothing for me!! Amazon sent me an E-mail saying that I haven’t had any referrals since I signed up. Well, rub it in!

No, people are not flocking to my site and loading up on DVD’s and book at my suggestion. The same goes for the Google ads!

When it comes to not making money on this site I have to wonder if it’s all worth it. I have made some cool monster enthusiast friends on-line. I get positive feed back from viewers. So for that reason I will keep up with the site. I’m disappointed that I can’t come close to supporting my family with all the time I spend promoting and updating the site –but whatever. I do it because I’m a Monster Kid at heart!

Halloween & Updates

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:47:59 +0100

Halloween was here! We had a good time at my house! Some 860 trick-or-treaters came to the door! I posted some pictures of our house all decked-out with Halloween decorations. Look at the page “Halloween 2009”. As always I’m too busy at the door to take pictures of the kids!

Original Monster Clips: There’s a new page here called “Monster Tube” where I will post movie clips made just for this site. Now showing: Zombies on the Prowl (an all CGI movie), Celebrity Zombies and Celebrity Zombies II. More to come!

I also added a picture of the monster models that I made when I was a teenager. Frankenstein and the Wolf Man with glow-in-the-dark faces. There’s some damage to them: The Wolf Man’s tree broke off and some sort of rubber toy left its mark of Frankenstein’s chest. You can see them in the Morgue Files area.

Monster Menagerie is on Facebook now! Facebook will not allow anyone to call themselves “Monster,” so it’s under the name “Mon Menagerie”. Drop a line there. Ron Chaney is under my friend’s list.

New Celebrity Zombies!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:22:42 +0100

New Celebrity Zombies!

I loaded new Celebrity Zombies on this site and I made another slideshow video (here and on Youtube.com. Jennifer Anistion, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mathew Brodrieck, Jennifer Garner, Keira Knightly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Zac Efron, Ben Affleck and Mathew McConaughey!

Meet the freaks!

What’s in a Name?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:58:38 +0100

So I changed the name of the “Celebrity Skinless” section to “Celebrity Zombies”. When I explained to people what the section was about they didn’t get the parody. I would have to go: you see, there’s this magazine called “Celebrity Skin” and I have “Celebrity Skinless” where the celebrities are zombies… get it?

I think that “Celebrity Zombies” says it all.

Speaking of which: I’ve added Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. More to come! Keep checking back! Bookmark, bookmark, bookmark! Come back!!

Monster Menagerie is all over the web! I’ve opened accounts to promote Monster Menagerie.

Monster Menagerie on Webshots:

http://community.webshots.com/user/MonsterMenagerie

Monster Menagerie on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/MonsterMenager

Monster Menagerie on Myspace:

http://www.myspace.com/monstermenagerie

Coming soon: Monster Menagerie on Youtube!