Willis O’Brien’s Frankenstein!



"O'Brien came up with a proposed treatment, King Kong vs. Frankenstein, where Kong would fight against a giant version of Frankenstein's monster in San Francisco. O'Brien took the project (which consisted of some concept art and a screenplay treatment) to RKO to secure permission to use the King Kong character. During this time the story was renamed King Kong vs. the Ginko when it was believed that Universal had the rights to the Frankenstein name (they actually only had the rights to the monster's makeup design). O'Brien was introduced to producer John Beck who promised to find a studio to make the film (at this point in time RKO was no longer a production company). Beck took the story treatment and had George Worthing Yates flesh it out into a screenplay. The story was slightly altered and the title changed to King Kong vs. Prometheus, returning the name to the original Frankenstein concept (The Modern Prometheus was the alternate name of Frankenstein in the original novel). Unfortunately, the cost of stop animation discouraged potential studios from putting the film into production. After shopping the script around overseas, Beck would eventually attract the interest of the Japanese studio Toho. Toho had long wanted to make a King Kong film and decided to replace the Frankenstein creature with their own monster Godzilla. They thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate their thirtieth year in production. John Beck's dealings with Willis O'Brien's project were done behind his back, and O'Brien was never credited for his idea. " - quote source. - Image source.

On the subject of Kong, here's a fantastic conceptual sketch.

And test footage of another never to be made Willis O'Brien classic stop motion monster..



Does anyone know what Willis O'Brien film the Monster Brains logo monster is from?

Drawing by François Lunven, 1963
See another here.

- source

Gerolf Steiner - The Snouters: Form and life of the Rhinogrades, By Harald Stumpke.












"Rhinogradentia (also known as snouters or Rhinogrades or Nasobames) is a fictitious mammal order documented by the equally fictitious German naturalist Harald Stümpke. The order's most remarkable characteristic was the Nasorium, an organ derived from the ancestral species's nose, which had variously evolved to fulfill every conceivable function.

Both the animals and the scientist were allegedly creations of Gerolf Steiner, a zoology professor at the University of Karlsruhe. A mock taxidermy of a certain Snouter can be seen at the Musée zoologique in Strasbourg

The order's remarkable variety was the natural outcome of evolution acting over millions of years in the isolated Hi-yi-yi islands in the Pacific Ocean. All the 14 families and 189 known Snouter species descended from a small shrew-like animal, which gradually evolved and diversified to fill most of the ecological niches in the archipelago — from tiny worm-like beings to large herbivores and predators.

Most Rhinogrades used their nose for locomotion, like the shrew-like Hopsorrhinus aureus, whose nasorium was used for jumping.

The snouters were discovered on the main island of Hiddudify in 1941 by the Swedish explorer Einar Pettersson-Skämtkvist. Unfortunately, as a consequence of atomic bomb testing, the islands sank suddenly into the ocean in the late 1950s. Thus perished all traces of the snouters, their unique ecosystem, and all the world's specialists on that intriguing subject — who happened to be holding their congress there at the time.

Although the first scientific report on these creatures came out in 1961, an early reference to them is found in Christian Morgenstern's poem Das Nasobem (The Nasobame, 1905). The Great Morgenstern's Nasobame (Nasobema lyricum), a dog-size animal that walked on four snouts, was named in his honor." - quote source

See more snouters in this flickr collection.

The following two images are taxidermy adaptations of two snouter species located at the Haus der Natur (House of Nature), a natural history collection in Salzburg, Austria, posted by Curious Expeditions. See more interesting photos in their photo collection from the exhibit here.




The book appears to be out of print but used copies can be found on Amazon.

Monster Brains Is 3

Monster Brains turns three years old today. I can't even imagine the amount of time I've devoted to this place in all the hours researching imagery, hunting down all those bizarre monstrous pictures. But it's been worth it and the best is still to come.

And today I post my own artwork, a small fragment of a much larger image called The Battle Of Blix.

Les Edwards
The Second Wish and Other Exhalations, oils on board, 1994.

Les's Notes:

"Cover for a collection of stories by Brian Lumley and published by Hodder. Stories by Brian Lumley in Lovecraftian mode hence the Mythos references in the background." - prints available here.


Hot Favourites, oils on board, 1980.

Les's Notes:

"Advert for Wiggins Alloys. Also used on the cover of Fantasy Tales and on a French paperback." - Prints available here.
The Necronomicon: Night Gaunts, ink on paper, 2007.

"Les's Notes:

One of several full-page interior artworks for the new Gollancz edition of the H.P. Lovecraft collection Necronomicon: The Best Weird Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Stephen Jones. I knew I wanted to do this image even before the job was finalised and it was the first one I drew." - prints available here.

Dagon's Bell and Other Discords, oils on board, 1994.

Les's Notes:

"Commissioned by Hodder Headline (New English Library) for the cover of a collection of stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, written by Brian Lumley." - prints available here.


Les is responsible for one of the most wicked interpretations of a Clive Barker story, Rawhead Rex. His version of Rawhead Rex, plain and simple, is fucking evil.

See more at Les's art site.

Aleksandra Waliszewska
atak

trudne warunki pracy

inwazja

See more at Aleksandra's flickr page and blog.

Vaccination, etching 1802
"Perhaps a pl. to a book. A monster symbolizes the new treatment. Its body, horns, hind-legs, and tail are cow-like. Its gaping jaws resemble those of a crocodile with tusks, its fore-feet are feline, its ears are serrated; its body is covered with running sores inscribed: 'Pestilence', 'Plague', 'Foetid Ulcers', 'Leprosy', 'Pandoras Box'. Three doctors (left), with horns and cows' tails are throwing the contents of baskets filled with tiny naked infants into the monster's avid jaws (left). From the pocket of the most prominent projects a document: '£10,00[0]', showing that he is Jenner, to whom (June 1802) a parliamentary grant of £10,000 was made. Other infants, who have acquired horns and tails, are being excreted; these a fourth horned doctor (right), one foot resting on a volume of 'Lectures on Botany', shovels into a dungcart." - image and quote from The British Museum.

Richard Clifton Dey - Behemoth's World
An article on the artist can be found at Wikipedia.

Heinrich Aldegrever - The Devil Leads A Soul To Hell, 1554


From series of prints titled "Die Geschichte vom Reichen und dem armen Lazarus."

update - Artist name corrected by Paul Rumsey.

Sea Monsters And Strange Whales
Philip Galle / Jan van der Straet - Ship Surrounded by Sea Monsters, engraving 1578.

Adrien Collaert (attributed) - Sea Monsters, Monster Whales, Turtles, Fish , engraving 1600. "Print made after fragments of work by Marten de Vos (1532-1603), Jan Sadeler (fl. 1550-1600), Phillip Galle, and Hans Bol."

Theodore Galle /Jodocus de Momper - Tempest with Sea Monsters, copper engraving, Late 16th or early 17th century.

Artist unknown - Whale Surrounded by Other Sea Monsters Near Volcanic Island, engraving 1701-1800.

Artist unknown - Monster whale, stranded in East Friesland, engraving 1610-1620.

Georg Keller - Warhafftigh Und Wunderbarlich Monster... , engraving 1598.

Artist unknown - Whale (represented as a giant carp) and hunters, woodblock.

Johann Teufel - Jonah Cast Forth into the Sea, woodblock 1540-1570.

Antoine Wierix - Jonah cast ashore, engraving 1575-1625.

Hans Rudolph Manuel - De la Cosmographie Universelle, livre IIII, engraving 1550-1568.

Artworks found at the New Bedford Whaling Museum Website.

Jules De Brucker - Dragons and Chimera Etchings
Dragon

Chimera (Notre Dame de Paris)

Chimera (Notre Dame de Paris)

See more at the artist's website.


Artworks emailed to me by Christian De Boeck (warning of tripod pop up), another fan of the fantastic who I've been sharing art links with since the late nineties.

Ernst Constantin - Im Zauberlande (In Charmland) 1891.

The entire book can be viewed in this menu at the Opal website, a fantastic collection of old strange books introduced to me by Paul K of BibliOdyssey. Thanks Paul!