Bean

If you see what Mr. Bean puts David Langley (Peter MacNicol) through and what his does to Whistler's Mother, it's clear that this is indeed a Friday Fright, albeit and hilarious one!

Art Imitates Life...In CSI World

Episode:  Art Imitates Life

H. R. Giger

Any fan of horror and sci-fi films is aware that the Alien creature that debuted in Ridley Scott's 1979 movie of the same name was the creation of Swiss surrealist H. R. Giger.  This documentary, shot entirely in Giger's own museum the H. R. Giger Museum and Bar, located in Gruyeres Switzerland.  Now this is one cool place and the bar is ever horror movie lover's dream (nightmare?) come true! [Bar furniture photo to follow).  In various areas of the museum, Giger details his views of the future, and the fears and nightmares that plagued him to such a degree that they inspired his art work.  The museum is set up by Giger's different creative periods.  It stands as a weird contradiction to gorgeous and awe-inspiring landscape on which the building stands.  Outside is all wild and beautiful, inside is all metallic and air-brushed obsession with the morbid and the mechanized.  This 19 minute documentary was chosen as Official Selection at two film festivals in 2007 (AFI Fest & Raindance).  Oh would I LOVE to visit!

Here's the bar furniture

Now that's a shoe!

For my cats!

A. Christie and the Painter

Personally I think this is Agatha Christie at her darkest.  The story is about a pained and bleak as the first Lady of mystery ever got.  The production, starring the great British actor David Suchet as the cool and calculated Belgian detective, really gets the dimness of this story of betrayal, cheating, murder and painting right.  There is nothing of the playfulness in other Poirot stories and productions that Suchet has starred in; Five Little Pigs efficiently delivers a sucker punch in oh so subtle a fashion:  one finds ones self  hit before you ever see it coming.  They have even gone out of their way (production staff) to produce a completely unique soundtrack for the film, completely abandoning the jazz like theme music at the beginning that identifies most other Poirot entries in this series.  As far as art connections go, Rachel Stirling, who stars as the condemned "murderess" here actually has a degree in art history from the University of Edinburgh (oh and she is actress Diana Rigg's daughter--Rigg has hosted the Mystery series on PBS, which airs, among other goodies, all the Suchet Poirot episodes here stateside).  Meanwhile, David Suchet also makes an appearance in A Perfect Murder (1998), in which Viggo Mortensen plays a painter that is not all that he appears to be.

Stirling as Caroline, along with Irish actor Aidan Gillen as the philandering husband artist in Pigs

Dr. Bell and Murder Rooms

Episode:  Kingdom of Bones

The art connection here is with a scene painter, who despite being a drunk, is a good enough artist to fool a museum director.  Suffice to say, this fellow can really dress up a dead body!

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Next For Art Frights

I've long thought that Oscar Wilde is a writer that is seriously underrated as a horror writer.  The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fine example of Wilde's prowess as spook master in the gothic genre.   Although, the story plays a bit of lip service to how it is that Dorian gets his wish for the painting to age, instead of himself (some slight mumbo-jumbo about an Egyptian goddess), the real horror in the story (and film of 1945) lies in the boyish whim on which Dorian makes such a simple-minded indulgent wish in the first place.  There is quite something fundamentally very wrong with him to begin with; he's simply no really there.   Leave it to Wilde to produce a work of horror fiction based on runaway hedonism.

Ivan Albright's painting produced for the 1945 film