Saturday, October 29, 2011

Finally, Frankenstein with no clothes

If like me, you're tired of the same old clothed Frankenstein, this diorama is for you.   I spotted it on Mego Museum.   It looks like the Boris Karloff version of Frankenstein.  Karloff played the monster in the original 1931 Universal film.   There was a lot of fan fare with this film. As a publicity stunt,  ambulances were placed out in front of select theaters - in case anyone fainted from the fright.























Friday, October 28, 2011

Cats of the Okavango, Wildlife photographs from Botswana


In my non-blogging life (yes I have one) I've had some of my wildlife photographs exhibited. These were taken in the Okavango Delta, in northwestern Botswana. I was lucky enough to see a cheetah kill, and the aftermath which included bigger cheetahs trying to steal the kill, and many, many vultures. Some of these were used in the window of Holland & Holland, a retailer of safari clothing, formerly on East 57th Street in New York.


All photos: Tom Casesa



























Friendly locals






A few of these were used in the window display at Holland & Holland, foremerly located at East 57th Street, New York. 

Thursday, October 27, 2011

I'm sorry, ventriloquist dummies are scary. End of story.



Here are a few gems from the website Doe and Hope, an online seller of antiques and curios, followed by a few pictures from the classic horror film Dead of Night.

















This guy looks like he could jump off that seat and kill you.  Am I wrong?







This one's neat.  It's a pin of one of the most famous ventriloquist dummies, Charlie McCarthy.



If you're in the market for a great, creepy film, check out Dead of Night, the 1945 classic from Ealing Studios out of Britain.  The film is a collection of horror stories (all tied together) by different directors.  One of the most well known is "The Ventriloquist Dummy", directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.   This site also has some good photos and info. 



Scenes from Dead of Night:


One of the stars was Mervyn Jones (center with tie tucked into sweater).  He also played Bob Cratchit in the 1951 version of  "A Christmas Carol" (my favorite version, where Scrooge was played by Alistair Sim).




Hugo and Frere (Michael Redgrave)







Monday, October 24, 2011

Spirit Image


Another good find.  I came across this while researching magic lantern slides









                     
  This page has "A. Conan Doyle" on top of the page.    Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an advocate of spiritualism, but I'm not sure how he is connected to this particular image. 

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Homemade antique magic lantern. Just add light.







Here's an interesting object I saw on Live From The Surface of The Moon.  It's an homemade magic lantern.  Magic lanterns were devices that projected images using light (candles at first), originally inroduced in the 1600s.  In this one you can see a cow in the center of the device.  You can then rotate the discs to add different heads or tails to the cow.  Hours of fun.



 If you want to know more about traditional magic lanters, you can visit these links:


 The Magic Lantern Castle (a museum dedicated to the device)




Couple good examples of traditional magic lantern below.  The third one looks home made.












There's a lot of charm to this one that is clearly home made.





Friday, October 21, 2011

Adolph Sutro's Cliff House in San Francisco

This fantastic building was first built in 1858, and went through several incarnations. The version shown here was constructed  in 1896, and was destroyed by fire in 1907.   I came across a nice site, The Cliff House Project, when I was doing research for a posting on magic lanterns (upcoming post).   The pictures below, except the last one, are from the Cliff House Project. 

Wikipedia has a good entry on the entire history of the SF Cliff House.




Magic lantern slides:


This one reminds me of The Woman in Black, a great ghost story written by Susan Hill.  It was a big hit in London Theaters, was made into a great TV film in 1989, and has now been remade with Daniel Radcliffe.









Model by Charlie Moran


















Dramatic image from Wikipedia





Monday, October 17, 2011

Smuggling, Hidden Chambers, Secret Passageways and all that good stuff





Here's another posting for the 'clever things' part of the blog.  I've long been interested in the concept of illusion - magic tricks, gimmicked boxes, hidden doorways and the like.  I did a lot of research on 18th century liquor smuggling, and in the process came across a few neat things I thought I'd share.

The first is an excellent book that is now in the public domain, which means you can read it on line for free.  It's called Secret Chambers and Hiding Places and is available at gutenberg.org.  This book profiles a few old houses and the hiding places that were used for activities ranging from smuggling to hiding fugitives (some hidden chambers were called 'preiest holes' as they were used to hide the clergy from persecutors.

 Here are some images from he book, followed by more images from various sources:












Here are a few random smuggling methods, hiding places, tunnels and chambers: