Face Your Fears

"It's not a fad, mom and dad, it's a lifestyle!" And thus began the story of Punk Booooster, the scariest punk rocker this side of the afterlife. Countless women were dazzled by not only his musical but also sexual prowess, and he very quickly shot up to the top of the charts of Hell's Hot 100. You know, horror and rock and rock are very closely entwined. In the 80s, there was a plethora of horror movies literally built around heavy metal music and or certain bands. And even in all the films that weren't, the soundtracks often featured rock music. Imagery in rock and roll is often tied closely to that of the occult. Skeletons, satan, etc. So it really comes as no surprise to me that when it came to designing Halloween masks, someone eventually stumbled onto the "I'll do both at once!" model. Frankly, if anything, I'm actually more surprised it hasn't been done more often. And this mask is a great example of doing it right. It's not re

Read #1 / Read #2 / Read #3 / Read #4 / Read #5 / Read #6 It's that time once again where we take a break from looking at masks to look at slightly older, weirder masks! That's right, it's the ongoing Vintage Mask Roundup, back for it's 7th thrilling installment! And what a start we have, seeing as the first photo we're looking at this time around appears to be Satan's daughter on school picture day. She appears to be wearing a dress from the fashionable Blackbeard line, and honestly looks happy as hell to be there. Satan's daughter always look forward to school picture day. Ya know, this mask design is honestly kinda genuinely unnerving, because you can't see just about anything resembling the head its being worn on. A little bit of the scalp at the top, but that's about it. It almost looks as though it was made with a curvature to it to be wrapped perfectly around her head the way an automobile wraps around a lamp post. But why the pirate fashi

Man, isn't it just, like, so totally bogus how parents just don't understand? They don't get our fashion, they don't get our music, and they sure as heck don't get the pressure put on us to fit in! It's like, no, it's not a phase, it's who I am! You do one little thing, like grow an ugly beard and put the skull of a smurf in it and they fly off the handle. They just don't understand. And god forbid you try and execute people in your personal space, it's like MOM GET OUT OF MY ROOM. Seriously though, this is the definition of edgelord in the mask world, as far as I'm concerned. But even edgelords have their worth, we can't deny that, and even in the case of this edgy as hell mask, there's a lot to admire here, like, for example, how goddamned ridiculous the whole thing is. Even with a concept as visually over the top as this one is, I can't deny that it's certainly got attitude and style and originality. This is like if a fanta

I have to admit something, and that is that I don't think I've ever seen - in the history of people putting faces on crescent moons - a skull instead of a face on one. Why has that never been done before now? Hell, it seems like a fairly obvious idea, and yet I can't think of a single instance in which it's ever been done before this mask. Maybe it has and I'm simply uninformed. I've been wrong about stuff before, so it's a possibility, but even still, why isn't this concept more prominent within the horror community as a whole? Makes no sense. Well, here's to you mask sculptor, you've made one hell of an iconic design here. Sadly, however, the concept only lets you go so far with it. You're still stuck within a very strict visual perimeter that you must adhere to. An interesting visual is only as good as its dimensions allow it to be, and when you're stuck working with something that's based on a crescent moon, something really only

Read #1 / Read #2 / Read #3 / Read #4 Well folks, it's been a wild year hasn't it? Here we are, ending our years at post #49, and we're going out with yet another edition of Vintage Mask Roundup. And what better way to kick things off than with our good friend here, Wicker Man Reject? That mask is so shoddy, so very poorly carved, that you can't help but feel somewhat unnerved by it. It looks like something a cult who worships animals and sacrifices people in the woods to their animal god would wear. So, you know, The Wicker Man. But when put together with the rest of the costume, it's pretty great as a whole, honestly. I try to shy away from entire costumes, but this one had such a beautifully eerie mask, and the fact its shot in black and white doesn't hurt the spook factor certainly, that I couldn't resist to include it in this post. Honestly though, even with its inherent creepiness, this is likely the most tame photo of the bunch, so, you know, p

Really kinda slept on this way this Halloween, didn't I? Missed the train, I did. Ah well. Here we are now, so put your skinless hands together for good ol' Mr. Gerald Bojangles & His Boneyard Jamboree! This is a Ben Cooper style mask (I don't think it's made by Cooper himself, but don't quote me on that), and, honestly, it makes me so happy. Gerald Bojangles just looks so goddamned happy doesn't he? So utterly thrilled to be here with you, in pure skeletal format, so he can play you the organ without his organs. He just looks so very jovial, doesn't he? I mean, he's got a big grin on his face, and an absolutely adorable tiny bowler cap, which just screams "I'm fun!" He looks like the leader of a big swing band in a jazz club, and I'm all for it. I also like the thick black outline that encompasses his entirety, almost like he's ripped straight out of the pages of a comic book. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the c