Monday, October 12, 2009

Monster PSA: Gloria Holden

sg
This week's "Monster PSA" poster is the first (and hopefully only) one that I completely redid between the time I worked on it and the time I posted it here.

Originally, I had a close up shot of actress Gloria Holden (playing the title character in 1936's Dracula's Daughter) and the message was something along the lines of being able to run your life as you see it, sort of a reference to the idea that she, as Dracula's daughter, would maybe want to lead her own life and not be limited by her famous parentage.

But as I moved on to other Monster PSA posters, this one kept nagging at me, like it didn't quite work--conceptually, it was too dull. Plus, Holden, by herself, didn't have the visual punch of Bela Lugosi as Dracula, so it didn't really work in any respect.

So last week I started all over, and went for this shot of Holden, in her spooky black robe, which I thought was much more visually arresting.

Then I redid the message. Since Dracula's Daughter, as a film, has some lesbian overtones (she feasts on women as well as men, somewhat seducing them, just as Lugosi did) I thought I'd go for a modern day message, this time about marriage rights for everyone.

But since I don't like any of these to be too strident or serious, I thought I'd add the "or suck the blood of" bit to lighten things up a bit, since equal rights for vampires would obviously be paramount in the mind of Dracula's daughter.