Finnish phenom Lordi brings monster look to Bay Area
FOR YEARS, Finnish film student Tomi Putaansuu had analyzed the way good gorefests work; how Sam Raimi, for example, conjured up the cadaverous scares in his "Evil Dead" trilogy.
Putaansuu went on to make his own bloody homages to the genre — which placed high in countless European competitions — before settling into a grisly position in horror-flick storyboards, makeup and prosthetics. And he had a theory he desperately wanted to test: that nothing shocks the public, not even monsters stalking city streets in broad daylight.
So when his Scorpions' retro-rock band Lordi was doing a photo shoot for its first album four years ago, he made a bet with the photographer — that the members, dressed in their outrageous alien-zombie stage get-ups, could stroll through town at afternoon rush hour without raising any sort of ruckus. "And guess who won?" chirps the gabby ghoul, who rechristened himself Mr. Lordi, the band ringleader/vocalist who sports onstage claws, 8-foot retractable demon wings and electric blood-spewing chains.
"At 4 in the afternoon on a Friday in Helsinki, we took subways to different stations and hung around where there were a lot of people coming out of work, and nobody stared, nobody said a thing. And it was at a time when no one even knew us," he says, "but thousands of Finns at rush hour just ignored huge monsters standing in their path. So this certainly tells you something about film."
Putaansuu went on to make his own bloody homages to the genre — which placed high in countless European competitions — before settling into a grisly position in horror-flick storyboards, makeup and prosthetics. And he had a theory he desperately wanted to test: that nothing shocks the public, not even monsters stalking city streets in broad daylight.
So when his Scorpions' retro-rock band Lordi was doing a photo shoot for its first album four years ago, he made a bet with the photographer — that the members, dressed in their outrageous alien-zombie stage get-ups, could stroll through town at afternoon rush hour without raising any sort of ruckus. "And guess who won?" chirps the gabby ghoul, who rechristened himself Mr. Lordi, the band ringleader/vocalist who sports onstage claws, 8-foot retractable demon wings and electric blood-spewing chains.
"At 4 in the afternoon on a Friday in Helsinki, we took subways to different stations and hung around where there were a lot of people coming out of work, and nobody stared, nobody said a thing. And it was at a time when no one even knew us," he says, "but thousands of Finns at rush hour just ignored huge monsters standing in their path. So this certainly tells you something about film."
Today, of course, the band would mobbed. Lordi has become the hottest homeland attraction since reindeer; Finnish President read more...
source:Inside Bay Area
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