Today's Arts and Crafts feature is on that well known beloved food additive, Chocolate Syrup. Known the world over for making milk awesome, Chocolate syrup has been made the topping of choice for anyone with that insatiable sweet tooth. With something as sweet and wholesome as good ole fashioned american chocolate milk, what could possibly make chocolate syrup so prevalent to Horror Camp?
Unknown to most Chocolate syrup has an old history with the special effects departments of many an old time horror film. In the old days, predating CGI, Horror movies would have to create their own sickly skin-crawling version of blood. Most notably blood would be made using various food colored additives, such as red-dyed cornsyrup. But before color, movie makers had another trick, Chocolate Syrup. In the Black and White era chocolate syrup gave that rich thick blood-like consistency that was so believable in the movies back then, as long as you couldn't see the color who's to know the difference?
Blood Ice Cream! You're Sick! You're Sick!
Great Horror classics such as Hitchcock's Psycho and Romero's original Night of the Living Dead are just two of many films who capitalized on the use of chocolate sauce in their black and white masterpieces. So if the masters can use this low cost trick in their movies, whats to prevent our campers from using the same tricks to spice up their dime-store film attempts.
The following film was an experiment with chocolate sauce my friends and I undertook in order to aid my friend Jonathan Alexander (Al) Borowski for a college project at the time. On loan from The Grog (Al's website which explores local issues amongst other things) the images from the film can be seen below. The results were a bizarre (if not at times comical) undertaking that produced some real memorable effects. Although the overarching tones of murder/haunting/suicide make for a dark tone in the movie and slip-shot choreography make for a real laugh, it still remains watchable to me to this day. I still have fond memories of making it even though it made for quite the mess when it came time to clean up.
Those stains will never come out.
So to all my would-be horror directors out at horror camp. Just remember to set that camera to black and white and remember your Bosco. You too can have some of those Hollywood style special effects just by taking a trip to your local grocery store. Be sure to check in this weekend, where I revisit with my friend Al, as he lends us some of his studio space to celebrate Movie Night at the Rec Hall (& the Grog) this Saturday.
Tags: Arts and Crafts Tent, Horror Camp, Haunting, The Grog, Bosco, Black and White
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