Monthly Archives: October 2010

Halloween squick or squee week III: Lab scene

It wouldn’t be Erotic Mad Science without at least one lab scene.

Squick or squee!

Who knew there were Hitler impersonators in the mad science ranks?  (The mustache I can forgive, but the polka-dot tie?  Please, there are standards in the profession, people!) Aside from the fact that an improbable-looking transplant seems to be taking place, I’m afraid I have no idea what’s supposed to be going on here.  The young lady in the foreground looks like she should have a speech bubble in which she is providing explanatory narration, but no such luck.

Provenance is unclear, but a version of the image does appear in this gallery at awesome site io9.com.

Halloween squick or squee week II: Potgirl

Following up on yesterday’s theme of girls who are only heads, I came up with this, a girl who is only a head but who is evidently in a happier and more stable condition than Jan-in-a-pan.

Squick or Squee!

Yes, a potgirl.  This is a theme that Gamera at GammAtelier has been working on in the past year as well.  She looks cared for and well watered.

Image provenance is a bit uncertain, although this particular potgirl does show up at the Japanese-language blog B:logical nonsense.

Halloween squick or squee week I: The Brain That Would Not Die

Seeing as we’re in the week running up to Halloween (I have my mad scientist’s costume ready!) I’ll be running a series of mad-science related images, at least some of which might seem a little disturbing.  Provenance will be pretty variable.  Some I know well, and some are from dusty corners of my hard drive that I’d forgotten about until recently, and on which diligent image searching has failed to reveal much of interest.  I promise to do my best.

So let’s get Halloween Week underway, shall we?  Squick or Squee!

Yes, that really is a pair of mad scientists conferring over a woman’s head in a pan.

A living, fully-conscious head in a pan.  An expressive head in a pan.

The more radical amputation fetishists should be squeeing, at least.  The screenshots are from The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1959), a movie that’s gleefully demented and exuberantly sleazy in the same way Invasion of the Bee Girls or Humanoids from the Deep are, and thus a must-view for any thaumatophile.  It really probably deserves its own post, but the short summary of the plot is this:  Jan, the girlfriend of brilliant but ethically challenged Dr. Bill Cortner, is decapitated in a grisly automobile accident.  (Her body is burned beyond useful restoration.)  Dr. Cortner takes Jan’s severed head to the nearby country house where he is conducting his experiments, wherein he succeeds in reviving her (it?) in a pan of special fluids with the aim of keeping her alive while he goes out to troll for a new donor body.  It’s a brilliant plan except for two tiny flaws (1) Jan is very unhappy about what she’s been reduced to and (2) she’s figured out a way to communicate with the results of Dr. Cortner’s previous…experiments, which are locked in the closet of said country house.  Uh oh.

You can apparently see the whole movie at the Internet Archive (and excellent late-night viewing it is) here.  It was also the subject of one of Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s best sendups:  YouTube video appears to begin here.

Happy viewing!

Bespoke Art Gallery now added to Erotic Mad Science

Seeing as I appear to be commissioning more and more original artwork for Erotic Mad Science (there are six completed works, and others in the pipeline), I’ve decided to gather it in one place rather than just have it scattered across a sequence of presentation posts. Allow me to introduce, therefore, the Bespoke Art Gallery, which will now be its own page here.

As the screenshot indicates, you will now be able to reference art by thumbnail, and get summaries of information about the artwork.  While the gallery is still in development (and might change in the future), I do hope it will be helpful and agreeable to readers.  Enjoy!

Gearheading

A commenter on my recent post on Flatliners nobly and rightly rose to a defense of the reputation of Chicago against its depiction in that movie. Ve mentioned therein the Museum of Science and Industry as a distinguished local attraction, an assessment with which I was in entire agreement for, among other reasons, I was a frequent visitor there as a small child and I have a lot of fond memories of the place.

Now there’s lot of awesome to love at that museum, but picking through my memories there was one thing in particular   stood out in my head as retrospectively mined fetish fuel.  It was one of the simplest exhibits by far and it was…

…simple machines for turning rotary motion into reciprocating motion.  Mounted up on a wall somewhere not far from the main entrance hall, where they had (have?) the awesome model train layout.  You could (probably still can, for all I know) play with them to your heart’s content.

(“Crank and slider” mechanism [left] and “rotary cam” mechanism [right], both found at this cool site.)

Now why, you might ask, is any of this really all that significant at Erotic Mad Science?  Well, aside from the fact that they are part of such retro-techno erotic dreams as this:

That’s Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy #3006, a 4-6-4 Hudson-class locomotive (image found at railfan.net) which is of course a technology for converting reciprocating motion into rotary motion which is in turn converted into linear motion, operated by by the same railroad that put into service this amazing Art Deco-style train:

The Pioneer Zephyr, for my money one of the sexiest  trainsets ever to run on rails, which, just by coincidence happens to be preserved at the Museum of Science and Industry.

But if you really want to understand why a mechanical subject like conversion of rotary into reciprocating motion is something we should care about here at Erotic Mad Science, have a look at this post.  Or this one.  Then you’ll understand, if you didn’t already.