Welcome to the end of the third week of the Countdown to Halloween. There are only 10 days left until Samhain, and I’m really pumped to be in the home stretch. Today I have one of the last Don Post mask ads in my collection (if not the last) which hails from issue #94 of Fangoria, first published in 1990…
Still the kings of licensed masks, it came as no surprise to me that Don Post Studios would pick up the rights to make Dick Tracy merchandise in the wake of the Warren Beatty flick. At the time I wasn’t that big of a fan of the film, and I think a lot of that had to do with the uber cartoon-y style Beatty and company chose for the look in the wake of flicks like the Tim Burton Batman and TMNT. I understand they were trying to stick ultra close to the original comic strip, and I definitely give them credit for trying, but for a thirteen year-old kid it just fell flat and felt silly. It’s very rare that this sort of idea works. Sin City springs to mind, though honestly as time goes by I’m becoming less and less of a fan of the film. Cartooning invites exaggeration, especially caricature, but in film it just comes off as trying too hard. What film something in the real world, with real actors, if you’re going to painstakingly try to turn the actors into living cartoons? Why not just make an animated feature?
I digress. The main reason I posted this ad is to share the masks for Gremlins 2 to book end the post from the 13th which featured masks from the first film…
Anyway, come back tomorrow for more mask tomfoolery, and if you’re looking for a ton of Halloween content all through the month of October, make sure to stop on by the official Countdown to Halloween site and check out the list of participating blogs for 2011. You’ll be glad you did!
