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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

More phantoms from my dad's workbench. These three guys will be available in his shop tomorrow. Have a gander at the individual coming soon listings for details... 👁️ wellswoodcarving.bigcartel.com

Closer view of a ghost holding a pumpkin.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Film Time! Revisited the strange, whimsical folkloric Czech anthology flick PRAGUE NIGHTS (1969). The cracking Golem tale of the opening segment is the highlight. Striking macabre imagery peppered throughout, bolstered by a typically haunting score by the great Zdeněk Liška...

golstly brothers in a spooky masquerade dance

two skeletons in a bed and a third slumped beside.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Hi there! I'm a guy who does 👁️Spooky album covers 👁️Spooky Blu ray covers 👁️Spooky posters and things 👁️Spooky lino prints You can buy prints here if you want..! 👉 slipperyjack.bigcartel.com

Album covers for Green Lung's Necropolitan and Hawksmoor's Yclept Thorn.

Blu ray cover designs for Incubus and The Brotherhood of Satan

Green Lung tour poster and fan poster for The Wicker Man

Two haunted lino prints featuring a demonic mask seller and Nosferatu carrying his own coffin.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

Looking again through my pics from the medieval art collection at Prague's Convent of St Agatha. I'm aware that saints are often depicted holding an item that represents their method of execution/martyrdom. Spare a thought for this poor guy who was apparently made into a turkey twizzler...

A panel from a wood carved medieval altarpiece. Three robed figures. The guy on the right has his hands on his head. The guy in the middle is holding some kind of large spiral sausage looking thing.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Biggest scare was the serial killer protagonist sucking down a runny egg direct from the shell whilst sporting this distressing jumpsuit with one leg on the breakfast table...

It's a picture of the serial killer protagonist sucking down a runny egg direct from the shell whilst sporting a distressing jumpsuit with one leg on the breakfast table.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Tonight's Bava was Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970). I thought I remembered enjoying it back in the day, but it's a limp and repetitive Psycho riff, set in the world of bridal high fashion. Some of Bava's visual flourishes are present, but it all feels very half-hearted...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Worth pointing out the quality of the massive fresco encountered by Lisa in the opening scene. Convincingly medieval, but also an immediately recognisable depiction of Telly Savalas, bravo, art department! That would be another thread: quality old art fabricated in da moviez...

A huge wall fresco from the opening scene of Lisa and the Devil. The Devil carries a dead soul on his back, a modern echo of the image appears in the real world soon after...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Back on Bava-geddon, I revisited the dream logic strangeness of Lisa and the Devil (1973). Might be my favourite Bava flick, I love the Lewis Carol rabbit hole plotting, and Telly Savalas is clearly having a ball. Elke Sommar lost in the labyrinthine deserted backstreets of Toledo: perfezione 👌...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Despite all the gorgeous Gothic gloom, I think my favourite imagery comes during the film's early daylit scenes - the shrouded pallbearers scuttling through the old town with their coffin, rushing to the burial site before sunset, that uncanny shot of them silhouetted against the sky, stunning..!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Kicking off the spooky season viewing revisiting Mario Bava’s magnificent KILL, BABY...KILL! (1966). A big cobwebby Gothic comfort blanket: ghosts, witches, small town superstition and family curses, mmm. Some lovely visual trickery, including the doppelgänger chase scene pilfered by David Lynch.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Upon my most recent viewing of Jan Švankmajer's Lekce Faust, I clocked it had been reproduced as the document that Mephisto presents for Faust to sign. Nice detail..!

Scene from Lecke Faust where Mephisto presents the diabolical pact.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Ahead of the new Full Naughty Edition of Ken Russel's The Devils finally appearing at the end of the month, I've been revisiting Huxley's The Devils of Loudun. Features a reprint of the supposed diabolical pact made in 1634 between Urbain Grandier and Satan, signed by a further seven demons...

Urbain Grandier's alleged diabolical pact produced as primary evidence during the Loudun possessions witchcraft trial in France in 1634. The purported contract was written in reverse Latin and signed backward or in coded script. It stated that Grandier traded his soul for earthly pleasures, power, and the love of women for 20 years.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Some more camera roll bits n' bobs from the medieval collection housed at the Convent of St. Agnes branch of the Prague National Gallery. I'm all about the impish demons, nonplussed martyrs and weird babies...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The shop relocated to this building with ugly gold signage further down hill. Give me the rustic hand painted charm of the original site any day...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The sad demise of a Prague puppet shop. I took the first picture in 2019. It's now a locked up empty husk of a building on the main Nerudova Street tourist route to Prague Castle. I propose The Czech Marionette Museum...

Czech puppet shop with painted panel doors.

Closed up building with construction work outside.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Nodding along to everything the tour guide was saying like a massive Kelley & John Dee nerd whilst everyone else looked vaguely interested (yes yes I know, John Dee worked as a spy for Queen Elizabeth I and marked his documents with a symbol that looked a lot like 007) 🤘...

John Dee's 007 emblem - the two zeros were meant to represent the eyes of the intelligence gatherer (or 'For Her Majesty's Eyes Only'), whilst the number seven was a reference to the occult.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

My kind of tourist trap! Visited the Museum of Alchemists and Magicians of Old Prague (I attended the puppet theatre production of Faust in its courtyard the other night). Reputedly Edward Kelley's residence where he conducted mad alchemical experiments for the emperor in the late 16th century...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Nice to see Nosferatu receiving pride of place in the main window display of the Czech marionette shop last night...

Nosferatu marionette hanging in a shop window, Hundreds of other marionettes behind.

Marionette shop interior. Many many puppets.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Spotted *my* authentic golem on the walk back to the hotel...

Paul Wegener's golem from the 1915 film stuck high on a wall near a lamp in a Prague passage.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I passed by the Švankmajer house again this morning. Took me a while to realise I was being watched by more than the wooden heads of Jan & Eva...

The home of Jan Švankmajer and Eva Švankmajerová with an old wooden balcony on the first floor featuring wooden carved busts of them both.

Another shot of the house. A dog can be glimpsed in an upper window.

Closer on the dog watching me from the window.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Just popping to the authentic golem shop if anyone wants anything...

Shop shelves with miniature golem figurines with a hand written sign reading 'authentic golem'

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

When in Prague, visit one of the few surviving medieval bollards, made to protect buildings from careening market wagons. This guy is around 600 years old...

Stone bollard on a street corner carved with a man's face with his tongue sticking out.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Just passed a busker at Prague Castle. If you put money in the case he gives you a treat for the cat, good hustle...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Some more of his bone creatures. Not pictured but also a treasure trove of framed pieces (including original Eva Švankmajerová paintings for Little Otik) but they didn't photograph so well with the all light reflections...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Well I made it to Litomyšl for the Jan Švankmajer: Reliquaries and Fetishes exhibition at Miroslav Kubik Gallery! What a thrill, got to meet a couple of bonafide movie stars in the White Rabbit and Little Otik. Also great to see some brand new pieces for 2026 - 92 and still going strong..!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

More Death from the St. Agnes Convent. Here's the centre panel of an altarpiece made in Prague between 1521 and 1525, showing Jesus saving the donor of the artwork from Death's grasp by putting them in a wristlock. My guess is Death counters the move by clocking him with that hourglass...

Votive Altarpiece from Zlíchov

Christ the Saviour

Last Judgment

PRAGUE, 1521-1525

ORIGINS UNKNOWN, PERHAPS FROM THE ST VITUS CATHEDRAL IN PRAGUE, LATER IN THE CHURCH OF SS PHILLIP AND JAMES IN PRAGUE-ZLÍCHOV

The centre of the original altarpiece used to comprise a relief with Jesus Christ saving the donor of the altarpiece from the claws of Death after an interpellation by Virgin Mary and St Andrew. On the wings were reliefs with Christ on the Mount of Olives, Christ appearing to the Three Maries, St Jerome in repentance, Stigmatization of St Francis, St Matthew the Evangelist, St Mark the Evangelist, St Luke the Evangelist and St John the Evangelist. The extension of the altarpiece was formed by a semicircled lunette with the Last Judgment, a composition based on the print by recht Dürer.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

How about this early 17th century panel I spotted yesterday in the collection of Strahov Monastery. Poor Ezekiel having to contend with a bunch of skelly freaks...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Can I interest you in this 16th century figure of Death I spotted yesterday at the Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia, part of their incredible collection of medieval carvings and altarpieces 💀...

Wood carving of an emaciated wormy guy holding a scythe and hourglass.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Successful first day in Prague. Ended with an evening stroll, passing the Museum of Alchemy just as they were setting up a puppet theatre production of Faust in the courtyard! It was pretty great! Very much informed by Švankmajer (they did the "Padlookay! Pilookay!" routine, I grinned like heck)...

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Lock up your windows! Tomorrow I return for a little trip to the home of defenestration...

An 1890 painting by Václav Brožík depicting the Second Defenestration (chucking your enemy out of a window) of Prague, triggering the Thirty Years' War.

Woodcut from a contemporary German pamphlet depicting the 1618 defrenestration of Catholic dissenters Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Vilém Slavata of Chlum from a window at Prague Castle.

Engraving of the Second Defenestration of Prague (1618) by Matthäus Merian for the first volume of Theatrum Europaeum (1662).

Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Vilém Slavata of Chlum getting defenestrated, which triggered the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), detail of an 1889 illustration from the Finnish magazine Kyläkirjaston Kuvalehti.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Been working my way through Jan Švankmajer's short films. One that has particularly stayed with me is the quietly chilling Buñuelian allegory The Garden (1968), probably his most overtly political work. A man is invited to a country estate with a perimeter fence made of silent human 'volunteers'...

People forming a daisy chain around a grand country estate. The short is a biting Kafkaesque critique of totalitarian conformity and collectivism. It mirrors the stifling mediocrity, absolute submission, and absurd normalisation of oppression under Czechoslovakian communism.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Live from my dad's workbench, another two of his carved pumpkin ghosts. I'll make them available in his shop tomorrow from 5pm... 👻 wellswoodcarving.bigcartel.com

Two wood carved sheet ghosts holding pumpkins.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Granted, I haven't seen Blue Velvet in a while, but that's not how I would describe it... www.arrowfilms.com/p/blue-velve...

An outlandish mix of slapstick, romance, drama and high-voltage kung fu from legendary martial arts filmmaker Sammo Hung (The Prodigal Son). Pay the fare and take the ride in Pedicab Driver!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It puts me in mind of Knightmare, Alice having to work her way through a series of interlinked rooms, each one presenting a new puzzle to solve and horrific creatures to evade. "Alice, walk forward! Pick up the tiny key..!"

Still from Knightmare, the classic British children's adventure game show from the late 80s early 90s.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Revisiting Švankmajer's Alice. I'd forgotten the sequence where Alice is trapped inside an effigy of herself and dragged around feet first by two horses that are actually skeleton chickens, quality cinema...

Alice is trapped inside a papier mache effigy of herself, her eyes looking through eyeholes in the face of her effigy.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Beware his brain-sucking tongue, gaaah..!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Poster design for Little Otik by Eva Švankmajerová. Pretty funny seeing the Warner Bros logo on there..!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Film Time! Back on the Švankmajer train, I revisited his gruesome update of a Czech folk tale, Little Otik (2000). At 132 mins it's very overstretched, but who can resist a flesh-eating stump golem. The director's penchant for hyper tactile detail and squelchy sound design present and correct...

Little Otik the adopted stump baby is bathed by his mother.

Little Otik the stump baby is spoon fed.

Growing Otik captures a visiting social worker.

Illustrated folk tale book page depicting a fully grown Otik swallowing people. Painted by Eva Švankmajerová.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Happy first day of autumn from the 1950s horror anthology dust jackets painted by New Zealand-born graphic designer Felix Kelly (1914 - 1994)...

Best Horror Stories and Haunted Houses hardbacks with appropriately spooky dust jackets with castles and wraiths and whatnot.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Poster for Conspirators of Pleasure designed by the late great Eva Švankmajerová...

Poster featuring the title in Czech and the iconic chicken bird man looming over the effigy of his neighbour along with the typical Eva Švankmajerová hand written credits.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The clear influence of Max Ernst in the bird-headed winged people from his wonderful Surrealist collage series Une Semaine de Bonté (I have many framed on my wall!)...

Loplop stands on the shoulders of a man to reach the barred prison window from which a yound lady looks out. Another woman is partially visible on the ground behind.

A woman with large bat wings peeks through an open door. A big tangle of snakes slither in the foreground.

Lolop and another bird man dash along a street (is it a chase?) In the window about a giant hand reaches out, holding a blade I think?

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Film Time! Revisited Jan Švankmajer's typically bizarro celebration of private erotic rituals and outsider art, Conspirators of Pleasure (1996). The most tactile film you ever did see, Surrealist fetish ASMR. Luis Buñuel, Max Ernst, Sade and Sigmund Freud thanked in the end credits. A delight..!

The story of a man who dresses up as a bat chicken to terrorise an effigy of his neighbour.

The story of a postal worker who enjoys methodically rolling tiny balls of bread and snorting them.

The story of a woman who enacts S&M fantasises on a straw effigy of her neighbour (the chicken bat man).

The story of a man who rigs multiple movable arms to his television set in order to make love to his favourite newsreader.

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Zbyněk Brynych’s oppressive Kafkaesque nightmare The Fifth Horseman is Fear (1965). A Jewish doctor scours shadowy occupied Prague for morphine to treat the wounded resistance fighter he’s harbouring. Reminiscent of The Cremator with its flashes of strangeness. My newest Second Run favourite..!

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Richard Wells @slipperyjack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

One of the great feature film debuts, Jan Němec’s astonishing Diamonds of the Night (1964). A visceral survival thriller following two boys who jump from a Nazi transportation train and make an arduous escape through hostile terrain. Largely dialogue-free, a masterwork in visual storytelling...

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