Well, here we are. Day 31 of 31 days of horror. The entirety of this last day has nearly passed and I keep forgetting to write about my final movie. It’s almost like my subconscious won’t even allow it. Is this possibly because I absolutely hate the movie in question? Oh, well, there is no doubt about that.
I’m not even going to use the official movie poster for the featured image today. I’m going with Jamie Lee’s tired scowl because ME TOO, JAMIE LEE. ME TOO. I have tried to watch David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills three times since it was initially released last year. On first viewing, I paid full price for it. About 15 minutes in, I thought, “fuck this, I’M OUT.” On the second watch, half a year later, I managed an extra five minutes. Last night I finished it.
This movie is terrible in every single way, and watching it until the end did not actually feel like a triumph. It felt more like a FUCK THIS THING IN PARTICULAR.
It almost feels pointless to have even opened up a draft and start typing in it because this is a garbagey pile of crap, and it’s not getting an actual review from me. It doesn’t deserve it!
Ugh with the “evil dies tonight” baloney. It won’t! It didn’t! And it probably won’t tomorrow, either. Regardless, I am done.
(Also, why did that lady in the crazed mob need an iron? Was she going to get the wrinkles out of Michael Myer’s jumpsuit? And why was the entire state of Illinois chasing that escaped mental patient through the hospital? Nope. Nope. Gotta stop this. These questions don’t need answers. This was a dumb and hateful film and I really am done!)
But I can’t end it on such a sour note, so instead, I will share my top five watches from this past month:
And finally, a reminder for you that there are just a few hours left for this Halloween Instagram giveaway of one signed copy of The Art of Darkness AND a print of Alex Eckman-Lawn’s spectacular cover art! Please note, this frame is not included (it’s too big, anyway!) So… seriously, it’s your last chance! Don’t tell me tomorrow that you didn’t hear about it! Enter to win while you still can!
Happy Halloween, friends! Feel free to comment with your favorite spooky films (or spooky stuff in general) that you’ve experienced this October and I will meet you here next year to do it all over again!
But I mean also I will be here writing about this, that, and the other thing in the interim, so I’m sure we will see each other soon.
Today we have three 31 Days of Horror entries. None of them are all that horrifying, but whatever, I had fun watching them!
I didn’t realize that the Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities series was available just yet, so I was surprised to see it all up on Netflix. The original plan had been to watch some Yvan-friendly things. He doesn’t love horror, but we can usually find a few compromises, and this time around it was Marvel’s relatively new Werewolf By Night and Disney’s The Black Cauldron, which he confessed had scared the crap out of him as a child.
Werewolf By Night was fine. I feel like I can’t really comment on it too much because I don’t really know any of the story, but as someone who typically enjoys a Marvel yarn–even though I don’t love superheroes– I found myself appreciating Werewolf By Night more than I thought I would. Probably because monsters are always more interesting than heroes, right? The story, a bunch of monster hunters gathering to claim a legendary monster-hunting artifact (but there’s a surprise amongst them!) seemed like a campy, pulpy, love letter to Universal Horror via an action-packed Marvel delivery system. I can’t help but to wonder if some folks took issue with the black & white format…you know, like the same people who complain about having to watch something with subtitles. Those people.
The Black Cauldron probably would have scared me as a kid, too! The story of a young pig-keeper, the oracular pig he is charged with protecting, and The villainous Horned King who wants to get his hands on the evil Black Cauldron to use its powers to raise an army of the dead. His motivations? Unclear. It’s just a thing that megalomaniacal hooded skull-faced overlords do, as we have seen time and again, throughout history.
Anyway, he needs to get his hands on the pig, whose visions will reveal the whereabouts of this wicked vessel of badness. There’s a ragtag group of misfit friends made along the way, including an absolutely unidentifiable little animal who sounds a lot like Smeagol, there are some fairies, some witches, and some dragons, but things work out for the best in the end, and it’s more or less your typical children’s fantasy fare. Maybe a lot darker, though. If you’re a six-year-old like Yvan (I would have been ten at the time, so there’s a thing you didn’t know about me, I’m a bit of a cradle robber) but anyway, if you were a kid and saw this, it probably would be awfully frightening. Nightmare fuel in the form of skeleton armies, brooding labyrinthine castles, and violent scenarios involving cute animals, such as when the dragons are chasing poor Henwen the pig across a field, or when one of the goons almost chops off her head.
Having never seen it before, I can’t say if the movie holds up, but it does seem like it might have been a little ahead of its time for Disney, and the animated backgrounds–the forest, the castle, even some scenes of the cauldron itself, were absolutely beautiful. The Black Cauldron is part of a larger storyverse–The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander, and apparently one of my brothers-in-law has the entire collection on his shelf. I’ll have to look into borrowing it.
Finally, in “Lot 36,” the first installment of Cabinet of Curiosities, we follow a miserable, down-on-his-luck Nick, who buys abandoned storage spaces and sells the contents within to make a profit. Nick owes some money to some shady people and is hopeful that some of the rare old things in the space he just purchased will lead to a major bit of money. Things get occulty and nasty!
Though not a particularly scary episode, there were elements of the story that did draw me in regardless and showcased some really pretty antique items. Well, things that looked like antiques, anyway. There was a massive piece of gorgeous Victorian hair work that, were it real, I’m sure I know a handful of friends who would go absolutely nuts for it.
Amazon had the first episode of Interview with the Vampire for free, so of course, I had to see what they’ve done with it (but to be honest, there’s probably very little they could do with it that I wouldn’t love.)
Grey Worm of the Unsullied makes for such an extraordinary Louis de Pointe du Lac, and this adaptation reframes his story in a wonderfully rich and interesting way. I am not sure who is playing Lestat, but the role is so gorgeously violent –he punches right through a man’s head!– that I keep imagining that it’s Henry Cavill, coming straight off The Witcher set, switching out wigs, donning a dapper facade and a fancy befanged French accent. Seriously, in one scene he looked so very Geralt of Rivera that now I cannot unsee it, and I don’t care who the actor actually is, in my headcanon it is now and forever Henry Cavill.
I’m only just one episode in, but I was so captivated by what I saw that I will probably have to do a free month’s trial for whatever platform this is airing on, just so I can keep up with it and see where they take the story. I’m invested.
Bonus Halloween and Horror-related stuff seen recently on the web!
I have to say right off the bat, lest you think me a knee-jerk naysayer: I am HERE for the reimaginings, remakes, reboots, revisionings. My way of thinking is that if I loved something the first time around, I want to see more, More, MORE of it. However…
I hated this Hellraiser reimagining so much that I didn’t even double-check to make certain that I grabbed the correct movie poster art for this blog post. Not that any of my reviews are all that nuanced or insightful, but this one is going to be a million times less so.
I don’t even know what to say about it, so here’s something I told a friend over on Twitter just now: “Oh, it’s so stupid. I hate all these babies. It’s like a long boring episode of 90210. Don’t do drugs. Don’t make deals with rich guys or demons. Whatever. We get it.” There was something so…young people mtv apartment soap opera – bordering on reality tv show cenobite mansion about this Hellraiser story. To which I say: nope.
There was a big TW for me in this version of Hellraiser (which, I will only say this once, but there was no earthly reason for this Hellraiser movie to exist.) There’s a character who is dealing with addiction and substance abuse issues. And anything I can say on this topic is ugly and unkind, and that’s because I have a lot of unresolved issues with addicts, and so I am just going to keep my mouth shut.
Also, the costumes/prosthetics/effects or whatever they might be referred to in this instance…just really made me sad. There was something so plastic-armor about the cenobite’s overall looks, like vintage Kenner Star Wars toys and Halloween costumes from the late 1970s-early 1980s. Just flat, dull afterthoughts, void of detail. The viscera didn’t even glisten!
Anyway, I hated this stupid pile of garbage. You can find it on Hulu if you want, but I suggest that you do not want.
Thank you, Elizah Leigh for your fabulous questions tuned to “the key of melancholy”, to get to the “shuddering heart” of things– this was such a treat! (And man, Eliza just GETS IT.)
Folks and friends who have been curious about *either* of my books, whether The Art of Darkness, published this month, or The Art of the Occult, published in 2020–this spectacular interview is teeming with images from BOTH books!
“So pour yourself a cup of something deliriously depressive to balance out the macabre yippie-kai-yayyy endorphins that this interview will surely flood the pleasure center of your brain with.”
When I initially discovered the captivating knitting patterns of Vancouver-based textile artist and knitwear designer Caitlin Ffrench, a glorious thrill vibrated throughout my soul, and my fingers itched madly for needles, yarn, and an immediate opportunity to try my own hand at her stitchy, witchy designs. While I like to think that up until that point I had knit up some lovely things (is it weird to compliment your own work? I mean, they did turn out rather nicely!) I had never before seen knitting patterns reflecting my own beliefs and imaginative fancies–those of myth, magic, and the beauty found in the wind and tides and the light of the moon.
The natural world is a huge inspiration to Caitlin, and “slow fashion” and “wildcrafting” aren’t just buzz words with which to pepper her Instagram and fascinate followers. Her connectedness to the world in which she lives is the unbreakable thread that runs throughout the rich, earthy fabric of her craft, and her dedication to this connection is undeniably apparent in her passions and practices. See for yourself in our interview to follow, in which we discuss the origins of her art, her relationship with the land, and the deep magics found in both wearing handmade adornments and laying one’s self bare.
Unquiet Things: I understand that you initially attempted learning to knit at your Oma’s knee when you were a child (and she told you that you were really bad at it!) You picked it up again in your late teens on the way to a punk show, and then again, when you were thrown into the thick of it with a new job at a yarn store? You’re obviously very persistent! What is it about this craft of sticks and strings that appealed so much to your persistence and will to learn? What advice do you have for those who wish to begin wielding the needles, themselves?
Caitlin Ffrench: My Oma was a very sweet lady, but took knitting very seriously. Looking back i’m glad she didn’t get me hooked as a child- I was too busy ripping around the mountainside and riding my bike to stay still. Trying knitting again on the way to the punk show was alright. I got the hang of it a little more, but almost instantly put my needles down and forgot about it.
It was when a friend opened a yarn store and gave me a job that it really stuck. After the first day of work I figured that I was way over my head and decided to start taking on newer and harder projects every chance I could. When customers would come in with questions about their patterns I was able to help them ‘see’ the pattern by drawing and breaking down the patterns for them- I have a Fine Arts degree in sculpture and my brain likes to work three dimensionally. That’s when I started writing my own patterns. I put them out on Ravelry for free and they were simple–but they worked! When I decided to learn how to write triangle shawls with lace, I knit 4 patterns that other people wrote in 5 days. To the non-knitters please note: that is a hell of a lot of knitting in 5 days. But I learned the inner working of lace!
I think my persistence in sticking with knitting came from the slow meditation it gave me. It isn’t easy at first, but if you’ve got a willingness to keep going (and to rip back your mistakes) you’ll be fine. It was the perfect thing to take up for me because it is portable and I’ve been able to knit without looking at my hands for years now, so I can knit at shows and on transit.
A few nights ago I was at a Propagandhi concert working on a shawl and I got a lot of funny looks from the ‘dude’ guys at the show. But that’s part of the magic of knitting in public–breaking down people’s ideas of who the knitters are. I’m not a little old lady. I’m 6 feet tall with blue hair and a lot of tattoos.
You are very passionate about the “Slow Fashion” movement; designing, creating, and buying garments to encourage slow production schedules, fair wages, lower carbon footprints, and (ideally) zero waste. With regard to slow fashion and making the least possible amount of impact on the land as designer, you have previously spoken to the difference between “landscape” and “landbase”; the former, relegating yourself to the role of a passive viewer, and the latter wherein you are an active human being, where you live. Can you speak to how this viewpoint informs your practices?
The idea of Slow Fashion was first introduced to me as a child. My mother made most of our clothing and the rest were hand-me-downs from my cousins and sister. I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and ‘Slow Fashion’ wasn’t a hip thing in the 80’s, it was just what you did on the farm. My Oma survived WW2 and from then on always used everything to it’s full potential and didn’t waste anything. She passed that onto my Mother and myself.
I went to textile school for a year in the middle of getting my degree where I learned the art of making cloth, dyeing, spinning, weaving, and clothing construction. My professors were amazing women who took great care in teaching the magic of cloth, and this was the first place I connected my magic with cloth. Standing around cauldrons of plants boiling to extract color and learning the history of how these methods came to us was what I took away with me with the most passion. That is where I started my natural dye journey.
It was in natural dyes that I connected my political beliefs in defending the land with my fine art practice. This is where I honed my thoughts on landscape vs. landbase. In a landscape we are observing the world around us, but with a sense of disconnect. In recognizing the landbase around us we are acknowledging that we are only one small part of this world, and that we are connected with the water supply, animals and plants in our area, and that the land is something we need to protect.
I wildcraft natural dyes from my landbase and use them to make color on cloth, but also paints and inks. I am mindful in my wildcrafting practice, and know that without respect for my landbase I am doing harm to it. Some rules I hold myself to while wildcrafting are:
– I never take the first of a plant that I find. It may be the last in that area, so I walk past it and look for more. (If you take the first, it may be the last!)
– Before I do more than a very small harvest of an area I spend a season going to visit it and watching how it progresses. If the next year it looks healthier than the last, I know I can harvest a little more. I have some spots i’ve been wildcrafting from for 7 or 8 years and they are flourishing.
– I remember to give thanks to the plant and to the area I take it from. Either bringing water to the plants in the hot summer months, or removing garbage from the area. These are acts of service that give great thanks.
There’s a witching thread that runs through all of your patterns, tying everything together on both an aesthetic and thematic level–altar cloths, shawls, hoods, and cowls, referencing time and tides, cycles of life and death, divinity, and the magic of the natural world–can share how your beliefs have shaped and inspired your work?
I started integrating my pagan beliefs into my knitting practice a few years after I started designing. It seemed strange that I had divorced my beliefs from my handwork, and when I actively connected them my work became much more real to me. I started working with my friend Amanda of Brutally Beautiful Photography around the same time, and her amazing photo work speaks to my beliefs perfectly. Amanda encourages my practice to push farther into the world of magic.
She is also game for adventuring in the forest at all hours to find the perfect light. We have integrated ourselves into each others work in a symbiotic way, where she takes the stunning photographs that accompany my patterns and I model for her in her photographic practice. I’m willing to stand naked in the rain for her to get the perfect shot anytime.
Your newest book of knitting patterns, Wheel, and its pictorial companion, Sabbat, are dedicated to “those who find beauty in change” and takes inspiration from the changing seasons, and the Wheel of the Year. I’d love to hear how how this concept developed and how you incorporated seasonal elements, motifs, and traditions into the individual patterns.
These books were a hard project for me. They incorporate my knitted work, my magic practice, my writing, and my own film photography together and this scared the hell out of me. It was a way of really laying myself bare to the world. The four knitted works are for the four seasons- Ostara, Litha, Mabon, and Yule. Each of these giant lace works reflects it’s own season, and for each work I wrote a companion work about my own traditions to mark the seasons changing. This project started small in the way that I thought it was going to be a single book that was just the patterns- but incorporating my writing and photos was a good move. It feels real.
All of the photographs for Sabat were shot on film in the California Redwoods; the deeply profound beauty of this location is astonishing– can you share how these patterns called out for the singular backdrop of these woods? And why the decision to shoot on film (some of it expired or no longer in production), as opposed to digital?
The California Redwoods are a place of worship. This project had so much to do with my traditions that it made sense to go to a place that holds my heart so deeply. I had visited these stands of trees a number of times before- but they give something new every time. This trip started with me attending the Northwest Magic Conference in Portland. I had driven to Portland with my Partner (Arlin) and he continued on to Redding California on the train with his bicycle. After the conference I headed out to the coast and spent a few nights camping alone while making my way to the Avenue of the Giants in California. During this time Arlin rode his bike though the mountains and met up with me. We’ve been partners for over 12 years and we hadn’t done solo camping trips since then, so we took this chance to adventure alone.
To shoot the work on film seemed second nature. Arlin and I both shoot film in our artistic practices already, and film holds a deep magic.
We shot my second knitting book on film in Iceland in 2016 (The Darkness Fell) so we had an idea of what we were getting ourselves into.
As a fellow knitter, I sometimes lose myself, trance-like, watching the rhythmic slip and slide of stitches from one needle to the other; from the initial cast-on, to the completion of each row to the next, I work my worries and frets, or my passions and adorations into the emerging pattern, and it becomes a spell of sorts, thoughtful magics building upon themselves as the piece grows and changes. Other times though, I sit with my knitting and binge an entire season of Hannibal, hardly paying attention at all to the knits and purls as I create them. I’d love to hear your thoughts as to the virtues of both–knitting with mindfulness and intent, as well as, the mindless stitchery that occurs when we’re say, engrossed in our murder husbands.
HA! Yes- you’ve struck it exactly. My direction of working depends on how open I am to putting myself and my magic into the work. Designing new work is when I do knitting spellwork, making sure to put good intentions into what I’m creating. Every stitch is an act of love.
But again- I do knit just to occupy my hands, and I do this a lot. Large swaths of stockinette mean that I’m binge-watching something or out at a show. These are times to let my mind wander and to have my hands work.
How do you occupy your hands (and heart, and mind) you’re not writing up patterns and creating new knits?
-I make paint and ink from botanical and earth pigments, and I paint. I’ll be spending January in Iceland at a painting residency in Reykjavik working with my paints and photographs to complete a body of work.
-I write poetry and stories, but have only really started putting those into the world in the past short while. My most recent written work is called Collective Grief– an 8 page book with words about being orphaned and about the loss of a child.
-I try to be in the forest as much as possible. Arlin pushes me to hike farther, canoe to new places, and to experience new wilderness. We camp a lot year round.
-I read a lot. Both in real book form and in audiobook when I’m working- Fiction and Nonfiction both. [EDIT: we asked Caitlin for a handful of titles she might currently recommend, and she obliged!] Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer- “I’ve read this one a few times in the last year. It resonates with me so deeply. Her methods of seeing the world make perfect sense.” • Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach- “I listened to this audiobook while working recently. I had no idea about the rich history of cadavers!” • On Writing by Stephen King– “My friend and editor recommended this to me. This is such an important work for any writer.” • The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar- “Hands down this is the book to read if you want to know about natural dyes. Kristine is a natural dye wizard, and so giving with her extensive knowledge.” • Teaching My Mother to Give Birth by Warsan Shire- “This poet broke something for me. She is whole and good and everything necessary to read.” • Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons- “This is a short and quiet book. Meditative.” • Cold Moons by Magnus Sigurdsson- A book of poetry that was translated from Icelandic- “This one is a heart filled work.” • We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- “A very important read. Especially in today’s political climate. ” • Anything by Kate Berwanger– “A poet from Seattle that has ripped my heart from my body so many times with her beautiful words.”
-And music- it holds a deep place in my heart. My taste in music bounces around to many genres- currently listening to Ólafur Arnalds all the time.
It seems you are always releasing new patterns! What are some of your current inspirations? What can we expect next from you?
Currently, I’m inspired by grey and cold landscapes- I’m working on a whole new collection (between 10-13 pieces) I will be shooting these in Iceland this winter. This capsule is a gathering of draped wearables that will mimic the cold and surreal place that Iceland is. It will be my third time in Iceland- and it keeps drawing me back. When I fall in love with a place it feels like I leave a large piece of myself there- that hiraeth; a longing for a place that is more homesickness and grief and longing than anything else you’ve felt.
I also have a large gathering of new patterns that I will be shooting with Amanda of Brutally Beautiful Photography where we will be pushing the boundaries of what knitting ‘should’ look like. We are going to be pushing our collaborative work into larger scale installations in the forest. Amanda and I have a hell of a lot of magic to share with the world soon.
I don’t have many perfume reviews for the month of August, as midway into the month I got sick and my sniffer stopped working. Still, I think there were definitely some fun scents that I tested, and some very pretty ones, too!
There is a lovely painting by Gaston Bussiere of a pair of frolicsome nymphs bathing in a pool of purple iris. If you could bottle that scene and its cool, playful atmosphere of ephemeral spring florals, the greenest violet leaf, and some sort of woody-musky-powdery mystical fairy soap flakes, you’d have L’Iris from Santa Maria Novella.
Ganymede by Marc-Antoine Barrois is briny saltwater and shiny leather and two craggy stones rubbing against each other in a vaguely suggestive way over the course of a thousand years; alternately, Aquaman x Tom of Finland mashup fanart interpreted as a Chuck Tingle title.
Celestial Gala by Scent Trunk. Milky gossamer wings, the effervescent glimmering frost and fizz of stardust, and the pearly aura of Glinda the Good Witch mingle gigglingly in this opalescent, sparkling Venusian fairy-spa water fragrance.
This version of BurberryHero begins with the fleeting season of apricots and musing on how easily they bruise, how you’ll never again know the childhood euphoria of that pretty smocked easter dress the color of rice powder and coconut with ruffles and lace and three pearly buttons but you will never forget the unabashed joyful flavor of a mouth crammed full of jelly beans. What Hero where and who is it that smells like the sour cream powdered sugar sweetness of picnic ambrosia salad, all pools of Cool Whip, and marshmallows soaked in the juice of tiny mandarin oranges and pineapple syrup, but not that really–rather the phantom of that atomic summer fruit confection, the faint lingering fragrance of it, at the bottom of a polished cedar bowl.
Marrisa Zappas Annabel’s Birthday Cake. I tell you what, for the longest time, for years, I was like no, no sweets or gourmands for me, thanks, not my thing! And now it’s weird, it’s basically all I want. And yet…I don’t actually want to smell like literal cake. Like a baked good. Yes, the smell of glaze drizzled atop freshly fried hot doughnuts is mouthwatering, but I just don’t want that to be the scent that clings to my clothes or that precedes my bod with I walk into a room. I also don’t ever want to use the word “mouthwatering,” again. I am sorry. I don’t want the smell of leavening agents or the chemistry of eggs and flour and sugar, or really even, a sweet, fluffy crumb. Simply put, I don’t want to smell like food. I want the artistic rendering of cake, a cake run through the filters of someone’s imagination, and maybe in the end it’s not really cake at all, but still, you know it when you smell it. Annabel’s Birthday Cake is a bit like this. This is the fragrance from the elusive flowering cake vine, a rare species of flora that only blooms once a year on the date of one’s birth, pearly pink petals that exude the scent of rich, fruity vanilla bean and heliotrope frosting and closes after a brief 12-hour window with a soft, powdery breath of white chocolate musk.
Libertine Sweet Grass is a scent that ticks all my boxes and tickles all my fancies and I am not trying to sound like some sort of horny perverse gremlin about it, but those are the phrases that best describe how perfect I find this particular combination of notes. It’s a dusty honey, dried tobacco, and a sort of balsamic oakmossy ambery situation that all smells very much like something glamorous trying to play it lowkey. Like Sofia Loren in a farmgirl apron napping in a hayloft in the heat of a late summer afternoon. Sure, that’s a threadbare gingham dress she’s wearing and there’s chicken feed in her hair but come on, you can’t pretend that’s not Sofia Loren. And that’s a bit how this fragrance makes me feel, both uncomplicated and easy-breezy, but utterly beguiling and drop-dead gorgeous at once. And actually…now that I think about it, shouldn’t that be the criteria we use when looking for a fragrance? Something that feels so simple to slip into and yet yields an incredible wow factor? That’s what Sweet Grass does for me.
This interview at Luna Luna Magazine with Lisa Marie Basile was such a marvelous opportunity to dive deep into my inspirations, to bring a mirror to the darkness of my metaphorical innards, and give you a peek. This was both fun & a little scary, and I got to be candid & vulnerable. I hope you all give it a read.
(I interviewed Lisa a few years ago, and now she has interviewed me! Wheeee!)
If I were to send out a semi-weekly newsletter about current favorite stuff and things and little tidbits & treasures and such…would you be interested in such a thing? If so, please subscribe below!
Noriyoshi Shin’s witch target Written by Kazumasa Hirai Kadokawa Shoten 1974
Have you ever come across a piece of art so bold and breathtaking, so heart-stopping and jaw-dropping, that you feel dizzy and faint but also wildly ecstatic and a bit crazed, all at the same time? Perhaps a soupçon of le Syndrome Stendahl?
I’m sure I must have, at some point, seen some of Noriyoshi Ohrai’s works, a prolific master illustrator of iconic film posters for movies that we all know and love–Star Wars, Mad Max, Goonies, etc. But somehow, he flew under my radar until last month I saw his Godzilla movie posters, and frankly, I lost my shit. They are freaking fantastic! So beautifully vivid and detailed, gorgeous and terrifying all at once! More than an artist of poster art approved by George Lucas, Ohrai created thousands of illustrations, usually in the genre of science fiction and special effects films like the Godzilla series, as well as numerous artworks for pulp fiction books and video games.
Elusive and somewhat mysterious, he was known to be an immensely meticulous worker who immersed himself in an incredible amount of research before working on a commissioned piece. It is said that moviegoers would comment that his illustrations of Godzilla looked even more powerful and violent than the real thing. Ohrai passed in 2015, sadly before I had even heard of him. He’s left behind a vast body of work to discover, though, and I have been having an absolute blast scouring the internet to see all of it! This post took me a while to put together because I like to be able to share both the artist and give some details about the work itself if only just a title. It took a little digging and a lot of Google Translate, but here are some favorites, below. Please forgive any errors in translation, I tried my best!
Movie poster for Godzilla vs Space Godzilla in 1994
The Empire Strikes Back
for Noriyoshi Shin’s Shingenma Taisen 6 big interlude Tokuma Shoten, published 1983
Noriyoshi Shin’s Shingenma Taisen 1 Encounter with the Superconscious Tokuma Shoten, published 1980
