R.I.P. Basil Gogos

I was saddened to hear of the death of painter/illustrator Basil Gogos last week, who died at the age of seventy eight.

His name may not be familiar to you, but if you're a fan of old school monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolfman, you'll definitely recognize his work. His amazing and garishly colored illustrations graced many a cover of Famous Monsters Of Filmland magazine during the 1960s and 1970s.

Gogos was born in Egypt (even though he was Greek) in 1939. His family moved to America when he was sixteen, and he attended several New York City art schools.

In the early 1960s Gogos began illustrating lurid covers for various men's magazines, which usually featured scenes of WWII battles and Nazis menacing scantily-clad women.

Eventually Gogos began working for Warren Publishing, and that's when his career really took off. Warren was the publisher of Famous Monsters magazine, and Gogos painted over fifty covers for them over the years.

Gogos' illustrations of classic monsters were quite striking, often utilizing bizarre and unnatural colors. The results were bizarre and gaudy, but somehow it worked!

Gogos left Warren in the late 1970s, devoting his time to fine art (yawn), photo retouching (bigger yawn) and advertising (huge yawn). 

In the meantime, his original iconic monster portraits became highly sought after, prompting him to return to the world of illustrating (yay!). In the 1990s he began painting new monster images for magazines, cards and CD covers.

In 2006 his work was collected in a highly recommended coffee table book called Famous Monster Movie Art Of Basil Gogos. I'd urge you to run over to Amazon and buy a copy, but it's apparently out of print and currently selling for hundreds of dollars. Hopefully with the advent of his death they'll put out another printing soon.

Enjoy this sampling of Basil Gogos monster art!

The Horror... The Horror...

Today Warner Bros. released this new poster for their upcoming Kong: Skull Island movie.

In an unusual twist, it appears to be an illustration rather than the typical Photoshopped collage posters that litter the cineplex these days. So kudos for that.

It's a nicely done poster, but I dunno... something about it seems familiar somehow. I get the nagging feeling I've seen it somewhere before. But where could I have seen it?

Oh yeah. NOW I remember. Get it? "NOW?"

Surely the Kong poster is an homage to Apocalypse Now, right? It has to be, as there's no way in hell any jury in the land would believe this happened accidentally.

So, can you really do this? Can anyone just decide to copy the exact layout of an existing design and call it their own, and get away with it? I thought we had copyright and trademark laws in this country? Apparently not. I guess these days if you copy someone's design and they call you on it, all you have to do is say, "Oh, this isn't theft, it's an homage," and everything's cool.

Legalities aside, I'm honestly not sure why the Kong producers decided to ape the Apocalypse poster (see what I did there?). I don't quite get what one has to do with the other.

Both movies are set during the Vietnam War, so maybe that's the connection. Apocalypse Now is about a group of soldiers who journey up a river to confront a gigantic Marlon Brando, an army officer who's gone nuts and set himself up as a god in a local village. Not much is known yet about the plot of Kong: Skull Island, but I think it's about a group of soldiers who journey up a river to confront a gigantic ape who's worshiped as a god by the locals. Giant Marlon Brando, giant gorilla— it's all the same.

Seems to me the Kong producers are just asking for trouble by stealing the Apocalypse poster design. Apocalypse Now is widely considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time. It seems unlikely that a film about a giant ape who swats helicopters out of the sky could top it. It's never a good idea to remind the audience of a much better movie while they're watching yours.