Horror Movies That Have Inspired My Art

Horror movies are my secret addiction (although not really secret, it just sounds dramatic!) I've always been into horror films of any sort ever since being a young child and my grand parents bless them, used to take us down to the video rental shop and let us buy some nice 18 rated horror movies, me and my brother would like to just peruse the videos and sometimes we would buy a sfae movie like The Goonies or Monster Squad, but more often than not we would rent out a really nasty Horror like Hellraiser or even the very friendly titled movie Child's Play.

I suppose as a child those movies have stuck with me, not affected me in any adverse way or anything, I just like the horror films for the creative creatures and the horror make up that just seems like another world entirely. And as a result of this quite memorable past time I have been able to draw some horror stuff of my own, but there are a handful of movies that I can pin down to say that's them movies that made me draw this stuff!!

First up is The Thing, a John Carpenter movie that was a remake of the 1950's Thing From Another World and this movie at first really scared me as a 7 year old as I never would eat tinned tomatoes again because of watching this film. Some of the alien creature effects at the time seemed very realistic and some of them even stand up still today in a court of law(?) I actually was in awe of this movie as time went on, as I got older I began to sketch stuff that seemed more alien and tentacle like and that really did impact my art in a big way.

Plus on a fear factor the movie did a surprisingly great job of amping up the tension because you didn't know who could be the Thing that tried to mimic one of the Antarctic Scientists. I hear they have done a remake or a prequel which I don't hold out much hope, because the original movie will always have a special place in my mind as the movie that kickstarted my horror artwork progression from the scribblings of a child to the here and now of a 31 year old artist.

Another movie that was really influential in a big way was Hellraiser, it brought darker elements to my young imagination (I was possibly around 9 years old when I saw this movie!) and the very fact of seeing someone just being born and brought back from hell in such a gross way was just amazing and the nasty Cenobite demons were a great inspiration too with their S and M clothes and their twisted prosthetic make up, just made me think of new characters and creatures and I used to sit for hours drawing some cool demons that would have half of their faces stretched or ripped off and again more tentacles flapping all over the place.

The movie was more darker than something like the Thing, because it dealt with elements of Religion and Hell, but still it was a very good movie that also helped to shape my own artistic and creative thought processes, particularly in the genre of horror.

Another horror movie that I think is worth a mention is The Evil Dead as this movie made me laugh, but also was filled with some creative stuff and had a kinetic energy about the film as a whole. Although the second Evil Dead was way funnier whilst the original was scarier if you are scared by these movies, but I've become desensitized to them now, even the most recent movies that attempt to shock you, just don't really.

The whole idea of the dead rising or people getting possessed is just a great creative idea that you can have fun with with your art, as you can have an almost human like body structure but demonic qualities appearing in the design of your creatures which makes it more fun to create this kind of stuff.

The other movie that really inspired me to draw a lot of zombie stuff was Day Of The Dead directed by the legendary George Romero back in the 80's and what set this movie apart from the two movies that cam before (Night Of The Dead and Dawn Of The Dead) was that the zombies looked even better with better make up effects that made the zombies look putrid and rotten and how zombies should look and not with green faces like in Dawn Of The Dead.

This was probably the best zombie movie I remember looking back to my childhood and it got me interested in drawing anatomy and skeletal stuff which did realy come in handy when actually drawing zombie art, because you could draw the underlying bones and rib cages and stuff and really make this art look authentic and something really creative. I look at the recent TV show The Walking Dead as a fine example of a TV show that is just fantastically creative and also a celebration of the previous era of zombie horror movies.

Inspiration comes from many different mediums, but perhaps the movies is the best example of becoming inspired by visual media.

What movies have inspired you?