Terror in the Woods

 The Lady and the Loup Garou 14 x 18, Acrylic on Illustration Board, 2013

The Bride of Bigfoot 14 x 18, Acrylic on Illustration board, 2013


As a part of my continuing series of paintings inspired by the sci-horror B-movies of the 50's and 60's, I have done a pair of faux lobby cards of fictional films with the theme of monstrous terrors to be found in the woods.   It's not safe out there!

In the first The Lady and the Loup Garou we have a werewolf of the north woods stalking his feminine prey.  This takes place in the 1890s in some part of French-speaking Canada.  Loup Garou is French for werewolf.  Believe or not assumed werewolves were quite a menace in France particularly during the 16th Century.  They were a bigger problem than witches!  Perhaps thousands of suspected werewolves were put to death.  Thousands more were thought to be the victims of werewolves -- demented serial killers?  vicious or rabid wolves?  The loup garou tradition was brought to French Canada and then by the Cajuns to Louisiana.  Here our victim is not entirely intimidated: she has seized an ax (an old-fashioned double-bit felling ax) and intends to defend herself, we hope successfully.

In the second picture The Bride of Bigfoot bigfoot has imposed his company on some campers and is dragging away a prospective bride still encased in her sleeping bag.  Not sure how effective his rather blunt courtship techniques will be.  The bigfoot here is not intended to look like a real bigfoot (everybody these days know they really exist; they even star in TV commercials), but rather an actor dressed up as bigfoot in a cheap 1950's movie.

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