Oh dear, you may think we have chosen a Horror Fancy dress theme today as we have a premonition regarding the Royal Wedding, but that is not the case at all! In fact, we are all hoping for some good weather and a jolly good time being had by all. However, because these blogs apparently have a readership beyond the shores of Britain and not everybody may be enamoured of the Wedding, we can mention that it’s a sad day for fans of horror and suspense as we note that on this date in 1980 Alfred Hitchcock died.
Despite the fact that several of his films are regarded as masterpieces, he never won an Oscar and when it came to getting possibly his most famous film ‘Psycho’ made and into the cinemas, he virtually had to fund the project on his own as the major studios rejected it. That said, he enjoyed making his audiences play by his rules – not allowing them to be admitted to cinemas once a film had started and forbidding them from revealing twists and endings (as if he’d be able to get away with that nowadays!). He was also famous for his cameo appearances in his movies, even in seemingly impossible scenarios. In ‘Lifeboat’, (1944), a film set almost entirely aboard the boat in question, he was in a slimming corset advert in a newspaper being read by one of the boat’s occupants. In the same film he questioned the use of ‘background music’ in a film set in the open sea – ‘Where does the orchestra come from?’ to which he received the reply ‘The same place as your camera, Mr Hitchcock’.
Costumes derived from Hitchcock specific movies are a little thin on the ground so why not broaden out the theme to include all Horror films? Now we have discussed the theme of horror many times in this blog, so we don’t want to be accused of repeating ourselves, so why not take a look at our previous blogs full of horror costume ideas.
Props n Frocks has huge stocks of Horror costumes, in a great range of sizes, all in stock & available for next working day delivery if you require your items very quickly.
As regular readers of our blog will know, we try & give you a fancy dress theme based on past history for today’s date.Today gives us 2 possibilities, but we think that a Gothic fancy dress theme is far easier to put on.
Well it’s Sunday 27th. The two events of note we are focusing on today are that in 1794 on this date the US Navy was apparently founded. We assume this involves inviting a few close States and their ships round to a meeting port for a social and voila, you’ve got the makings of a naval fleet. Aside from a South Pacific evening, we are not sure how you could do justice to this anniversary. Meanwhile around this date in 1840, a Dr James Blundell successfully transfused blood from one human to another, although it took a few more years of trial and (unfortunately) error before the process was perfected. Even so Bram Stoker, author of ‘Dracula’, took an interest in the developments and considered them within the book itself, which was published in 1896. Given the current interest in all things vampire, we thought today might be a good time to have a Gothic Horror night.
We love the idea of a goth themed costume party, especially with the success of The Twilight series, vampires are the ‘in’ thing. We stock a huge selection of vampire fangs, eyelashes, wigs, in fact everything you could possibly need to look dark and mysterious. Take a look at our range of horror costumes. Or, if you just need an accessory of two take a look at our huge range of horror accessories to help you to complete your outfit.
Horror is today’s fancy dress theme aswe look at another type of movie genre (although we’re not too sure whether the animals theme is a genre as such – any comments or thoughts welcome!). Today we’re looking at Horror films. Now you might think that Horror should be confined to Halloween, but you probably would be very surprised to find we have requests for this theme throughout the year. February 4th marks the birth-date of film director George Romero, who was born 1939 or 1940 (depending upon source). Nicknamed Grandfather of the Zombie, his classic horror films include Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The Zombie sub-genre has certainly taken off in the last year or so, we have a large range of Zombie costumes in stock. At Props n Frocks you’ll always find costumes to die for, so to speak.
As you can see from today’s theme title of ‘Horror’ we are not restricting this theme to film only, but why not broaden it out to include other horrors, including real life horrors such as Jack The Ripper, or bloody doctor costumes?
‘The Dark Side’ is our fancy dress suggestion for today & this will really get your brain cells working. We have choosen this costume theme today as several events in history on January 16th show major turning points and upsets.
For instance in 550, during the final days of the Gothic Wars, the Ostragoths succeeded in penetrating Rome’s defences and undermine the whole basis of the hitherto great Roman Empire.
In 1770, the Scottish Parliament ratified the Act of Union, which would lead to the eventual creation of Great Britain, and thus the basis of the British Empire. In 1945 Adolf Hitler began to realise that the tide of the Second World War was now turned against him and, entering his Führerbunker shelter, started issuing increasingly desperate orders, including a scorched earth policy to destroy Germany’s infrastructure because ‘if it could not win, it did not deserve to survive’.
If all that’s a little too heavy, but you still want to celebrate the Darkside, there’s the fact that today in 1948 the American director John Carpenter was born. His work spans everything from the quirky ‘Dark Star’ (the crew of a space-ship get bored blowing up planets) to the horror-flicks ‘Halloween’ and ‘The Fog’ and the dystopian (it means ‘dismal future’) ‘Escape from New York’. Go Goth, go Dark, go down to Props n Frocks – we have a scarily amazing array of costumes to kit out your darkest desires.
So what Dark Side costumes can we offer you today?
hoping for some good weather and a jolly good time being had by all. However, because these blogs apparently have a readership beyond the shores of Britain and not everybody may be enamoured of the Wedding, we can mention that it’s a sad day for fans of horror and suspense as we note that on this date in 1980 Alfred Hitchcock died.
