Pretty Serious Cosmetics is run by die-hard horror fans, so I was pretty darn excited to see their Halloween collection this year. As it turns out, they actually went pretty crazy with the Halloween themed polishes this year - there are actually two collections! Till Death Do Us Party is monster/zombie wedding themed, and I'll be showing you one of them later. The other collection is called The Killer Fangirls, inspired by classic slasher film villains, and that's what today's post is all about.
The clever cookies at Pretty Serious chose three images out of a series by artist Leigh Young, created polishes inspired by these awesome images, and have released them with a signed trading card of each image. Leigh drew the logo and all the incidental art for Pretty Serious, and I'm a such a fan of her work I seriously considered buying the whole collection just for the cards.
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| Image courtesy of Pretty Serious |
Haddonfield is a vibrant orange and black glitter, a fitting tribute to the original slasher villain, Michael Myers from Halloween, and comes with an adorably vicious pumpkin carver card. Elm Street is a red and green glitter, with a happy little lady off for a nap on the card. If you don't know who this one is a tribute to, I'm not even sure we can be friends. And finally there is Crystal Lake, a stunning blue glitterbomb with a very attentive camp counselor on the trading card. This one is a tribute to the slasher villain who just will not die, dwindling box office returns be damned, the late great Jason of Friday the 13th fame. While I ADORE all the designs on the cards, I just couldn't imagine ever actually wearing Haddonfield or Elm Street, so just this once I let practicality take charge of my purchases and contented myself with just Crystal Lake.
From the incredible shininess in the bottle, I went ahead and assumed that I wouldn't need anything under this, and I was spot on. These pictures are all two coats alone, with topcoat.
For such a glittertastic polish, Crystal Lake was actually surprisingly easy to work with. Usual rules of glitterbombs apply - go slow, make sure you let it dry enough between coats - but no real issues with this at all. And the finished result is just SPECTACULAR.
I'm an unashamed fan of the Jason movies - the series has varied wildly in quality (Jason Goes To Hell being the absolute low point) but overall there is something that appeals to me about how completely straightforward these movies all are. Nightmare on Elm Street was cleverer, with all it's Jungian analysis and psychosexual subtext. Arguably Halloween was scarier, because the tone was so much creepier, and there is no denying Michael Myer is one bad mutha. But the original Friday the 13th was just so...simple. Teens show up (including a very young Kevin Bacon), teens make out, teens get bumped off in delightfully gruesome ways. It's actually really interesting to watch it now, after generations of copycats have come after it, and note just how many cliches came from one movie.
A lot of the special effects really hold up too - considering the movie is actually older than me they're really quite impressive, and a testament to the genius of makeup designer Tom Savini. Not only did he put together some truly icky effects for Friday the 13th and design Jason himself, he was also responsible for makeup and effects on both Day of The Dead and Dawn of The Dead (the originals, not the remakes). These days he's a very sought after special effects teacher, and spends most of his time running the Special Makeup Effects Program at the Douglas Education Centre in Pennsylvania. The "seat jumper" twist ending of Friday the 13th was also his idea, which...well, if you haven't seen it, I won't spoil it for you!
As a little tribute to my love of the Friday the 13th movies, I decided to add a little Jason to my beautiful Crystal Lake manicure.
This was my second attempt at using acrylic paint for nail art instead of polish, and I gotta admit, with results like this I'm getting over my guilt at "cheating" pretty damn fast.
Unfortunately, nail art is a temporary thing, no matter how much you love it, so after taking this of I decided to make myself a pendant with the same design. It took a bit of tinkering, but I think it came out quite well in the end.
So who's your favourite slasher villain? Are you a Killer Fangirl for Freddy, Jason, Michael, or someone else?
The Killer Fangirl Collection (with matching trading cards) is available internationally from Pretty Serious, or from their extensive range of stockists
Savani did the effects for the Dawn of the Dead remake too.
ReplyDeleteSo he did! I should have just assumed really. I think he acted in that one too, didn't he?
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