Vampifan's Views 50 - Monthly Musings 30

Winged Vampirella by Joseph Michael Linsner

This has been a very busy month for me. First of all, I'd like to mention that my blog was nominated twice for a Leibster award. Thanks to Inso and Bandit86 for the nominations but I'm afraid I have no desire to take part in something that is just a glorified chain letter with no real meaning. However, I am planning on running a Q and A session similar to a one run by Johnny/Lord Siwoc on his blog not so long ago. See here. I'll give you a lot more details in my next Monthly Musings post.

Let's move onto books now, something I haven't mentioned for a while. I finished re-reading Mira Grant's Feed trilogy and it simply reaffirmed my opinion that this is one of the best zombie series ever written. I also re-read one of my favourite vampire novels - Vampyres by Tim Greaves. It is only a short novel, running to 128 pages and is the novelisation of the cult 1974 film - Vampyres - Daughters of Dracula. This was a low-budget film about a pair of bisexual vampires, Fran and Miriam, (played by Marianne Morris and Anulka Dzubinska) who lure passing motorists to their creepy mansion where sex and death awaits them. It was quite gory and featured a lot of nudity but nothing too revealing. The novel goes much further than what is shown on screen and is far more graphic in its gore and far more explicit in its eroticism. I was going to do a full review of the film and the novel but instead I'll just give them a passing mention here. Reading the novel made me dig out the DVD but watching it again just reminded me of all the scenes that were added to the novel. I would have loved to have seen them included in the film. As is usually the case, the book is far better than the film, although the film isn't too bad. I am currently reading Juggernaut by Adam Baker, thanks to such a good review by ZombieBob. See here. Cheers, Dude!

Now that my mum is well on the mend, I have a lot more time on my hands for hobby pursuits and I have been catching up on my painting. I finished painting 12 Gripping Beast 28mm scale civilians and I'll be reviewing them soon. I am well on the way to finishing my 8 Atomico Press Kickstarter figures (7 zombies and a US soldier). Once they get done I plan on catching up on my mountain of Zombicide figures that need painting. There are simply far too many and I don't want to ignore them any longer.

"That's another fine mess you've gotten me into!"

Speaking of Zombicide figures I thought you'd like to see some work in progress shots of two figures I have just converted. One is a Walker from the Prison Outbreak expansion set and the other is a Fatty from the original Zombicide boxed set. These are zombie versions of the classic comedy duo, Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel required very little work to get right but Oliver Hardy was a major conversion with a lot of plastic cut away and Milliput added. I rarely post WIP shots but I wanted you to see just how much work went into creating them, especially the Oliver Hardy figure. I just finished painting them this morning, so expect to see a review of them on Sunday.