Still playing catch-up this week, so I have another double feature of monster animation cels to share today. Being the 16th, we’re officially at the halfway point of the season, a time to start making those last minute costume plans and to start looking for sales on jumbo bags of candy to hand out to the kids! Also, I’ve gone though the responses to the Monster Cereal Prints Scavenger Hunt Contest, and will be sending out notices to the winners via e-mail. Thanks again to Manny Galán of Cartoon Lagoon Studios for the prize packs and remember that you still have a chance to win a set of these awesome prints (signed by Galán and the voice actors of the Monsters) by heading over to the Strange Kids Club and submitting your very own cereal monster creation!
Back to the monster animation cels though, first up today we have this fun piece from the Filmation Ghostbusters cartoon featuring the whimpering yes-man to mail baddy Prime Evil, Brat-A-Rat!
Voiced by Peter Cullen, Brat-A-Rat is a weird, alien, bat-rat-lizard creature with the ability to levitate. He’s is to Prime Evil, sort of what Salacious Crumb is like to Jabba the Hut in the Star Wars universe, and ends up tattling on the other ghosts as well as dishing out some of PE’s punishments for failure. He always reminded me of having a sort of Don Bluth-inspired character design, which is probably why I’m so fond of him…
Next up in today’s double feature we have our second evil Witch of the countdown, Kestrel, who hails from the season five Real Ghostbusters episode “If I Were a Witch Man”, circa 1989…
In the episode Kestrel, a witch imprisoned in a crystal ball by Puritans during the late 1600s, gets free and begins looking for revenge in modern day Lewison (which just happens to be the ancestral town of the Spenglers!) Kestrel possesses the body of Margaret Prandish, the headmistress of a local girl’s academy that was built upon the Elron Witchcraft Altar where Kestrel was held captive in the crystal ball for centuries. The above cel has the in-between form that is a mixture of Kestrel and Prandish, and it’s pretty freaky to boot!
So come back each day this month for a new monster animation cel, and also, for more Halloween-y fun all month long, be sure to check out the Countdown to Halloween website for the complete list of sites participating in this year’s spooky fun. John Rozum has been working hard compiling the list, and it looks like there is a lot of awesome sites already signed up.
