Mutilated Mohawk Media is BACK with an exclusive interview with one of the scariest artists in our neck of the woods. You may have seen his artwork outside the notorious East Frank’s, or in an art walk around Monroe. He is an absolute local legend in the horror scene and he just needed a spot with our collection of freakish interviews. Our field agent Adam was great enough to score an interview with this legend, and boy do we have a good one for you guys. Now, little horrors, enjoy our latest interview with the notorious Ben Martin.
Drawing Horrors With Ben Martin
Where are you from?
I grew up in the wilds of Pennsylvania, way up north not near any city: Saint Marys.
How long have you lived in Monroe?
Since 2007. So a while, I feel like a veteran almost, you know? I’m a real native by this time. I’ve been here just long enough to see growth, arts, and a wild variety of things creeping into the local culture. It’s kind of a fun time to be here.
So tell me a little bit about yourself.
I’m the youngest of five kids. The first time I ever saw a monster I knew that is what I was going to love. It’s a passion and mostly it was a fun time to be growing up in the sixties. There was a monster renaissance. I had a great childhood. My father’s favorite actor was Lon Chaney who was a makeup artist in the silent era. He bought me a makeup kit so I could do my own makeup and I started writing little plays. Any monster movie I saw was a huge influence on me. I guess I thought everybody would love it and they don’t. It really formed me though, like I said it was a great era. I bought monster models, I made little dioramas. My big brothers and sisters were cool and would say, ‘oh that’s nice, oh look what he’s doing.’ They also said that I could draw pretty well. If I couldn’t be near a monster then I would just draw a monster.
What were some of your inspirations growing up that made you want to be an artist?
The first movie I was ever taken to at the theater was King Kong Versus Godzilla and I thought, “oh, that’s what a movie is, I think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.” And it’s funny to watch now, but it was the giant things that came out of somebody’s imagination that just rocked my world. My father was so supportive he’d let me stay up late, even as a little kid. It was a great era to see monster films. I like the old classic universals. He would buy me Famous Monsters of Filmland. I would stare at the covers of those and the great Basil Gogos artwork on those. Those were my biggest influences growing up, but it was also nice that I felt like we made our own monsters at home too.
How do you stay motivated for your art nowadays?
I feel like if you have a creative gene, it’s gotta come out somehow. I didn’t pursue any of my interests in art, theater, or film professionally. I went into corporate marketing, which has afforded me world travel and a lot of great things but it would suck me dry creatively. I always said, “well, I’m always gonna make my little monster movies,” which I would do with my eight millimeter camera growing up, and I’m still making movies today. Little movies here and there. I’ll tell you, when you don’t choose it as a profession you can get sapped dry. If I’m not overly creative at work, maybe I come home with some creative energy at home. What’s nice is I feel like there is stuff I just need to do and I don’t know if I need a lot of inspiration. It’s interesting that you say that because I like film, I like modern horror but it doesn’t necessarily inspire me.
Have you ever dabbled in other mediums such as film or theater?
Films and movies are just my favorite things, and it’s not just horror movies. I like films from 1895 when it was invented. I have a passionate love of films, nobody can beat me in film trivia when it comes to classic. It gets to about 1995 when I start Petering out. I also write books. I don’t know if you know this but Union County Playmakers came to me and I directed a little play for them. It was a children’s play and we had a lot of fun with it. They said, “Hey, would you ever write a play,” and I said, “I have.” They said, “Would you consider writing a play?” So, just in May, a play I wrote, cast, and produced was performed. It was fantastic and I wrote the music, lyrics, and choreography for it. If it’s artistic I tend to do it and I like it a lot. I do a lot of music.
What was the name of the play?
It was called Belling the Cat. All it was was they said they wanted to do a fable but can you make it funny. The fable is like this long and we need a play that is that long. I said I don’t know if I could do that and by the weekend I had an outline, the next weekend I had a draft, and six weeks later I had six drafts. I think I’m selling it and the songs, which is nice.
Do you find it hard to express yourself through art here in Monroe? I know recently, artistically, Monroe is starting to explode, but back a few years ago you couldn’t even dream of really hanging paintings up at East Frank’s or getting your plays made for the Union County Playmakers.
That’s a great great question and I think it gets to the real crux of my curse, which is I’ve never needed anything outside to get me to do it. I didn’t know this town was going to have a creative renaissance. I just happen to be here, and if it didn’t, I would still be painting. If I couldn’t have hung them in there, I would have just leaned them against the wall. Again, that’s kind of a curse, I’ve never, and it’s ironic because I’m a guy in marketing, but I’ve never marketed myself. I did post a woman who saw some stuff hanging here and she’s a local judge. She said “Oh my gosh, during COVID I wrote a children’s book, would you illustrate it?” So I was like, “ahh I guess.” I’ve never done that and I like a challenge so I did. Everyone who comes to me seems to be something for kids. So I illustrated it and posted it on Facebook. Then another woman who was writing a book contacted me. These were paying gigs. So I’ve done a lot of illustrating and they find you thanks to social media. So I am getting it out there but generally speaking I don’t need a community to inspire me, it’s just a coincidence that Monroe is kind of kicking in and people like the ones at East Frank’s like my stuff and want me to do stuff for them.
It’s funny because you have one of the biggest places that have contributed to the creative scene here like East Frank’s and still have people commenting on Facebook giving hate and protesting against things like the drag bingo night. It always will happen and you know it does piss us off. I guess my artistic sensibility has said, you know, c’mon lighten up. What’s going on here? Don’t stifle anyone, particularly because it’s not hurting anyone. That’s crappy and its too bad, but I will say that’s probably anywhere and everywhere. I’m sure if you grew up around this area you’d think “oh Monroe is the most backwards place,” but there has always been an LGBT community here and now is a great time. They’ve always been here but now they feel much more comfortable and I like that. There are always haters and that sucks.
What movies have played into inspiring your work?
So I sent you a sampling of some of my work and you’ll see that I’m a huge fan of the Universal Horror films. I actually did a lecture and thesis on the movie Freaks that Todd Browning made. It’s a fascinating film. Did it inspire me for these paintings at East Frank’s, sure. I definitely think so. What was always interesting to me, the paints that you were referring to are just my own versions of a classic sideshow advertisement. So I made up the freaks that you see there. It is interesting when I would go to a carnival, which I loved, and I would go into a side show and I was afraid. There was one I went to and there was an ad similar to those paintings at East Frank’s. It was cartoony and said ‘See the Three Faced Man’. So then I went in, I was eight and this guy took off his hood. This poor man was not this cartoon thing, it was terrifying. I think a lot about that. What is palpable for people to see. The only painting I regret is you have this really nice inviting painting on the outside but what if he was peeking around and the real look would be fascinating to me. That said, I find the movie Freaks to be fascinating and I have strong opinions about it. The Universal Horrors were coming out and its interesting that the man who made Freaks was able to make it because he had a monstrously huge hit before that with Dracula with Bella Lugosi. It made a huge amount of money and he could have done anything he wanted but he said ‘oh, I have a pet project.’ Which ended up being a disaster for him, for the studio, and for everything. And those things do inspire me.
Then I did a series of paintings. You asked what inspired me, as I was growing up and watching horror. Eventually you are going to see some things that are going to creep you the hell out. So I watched this cheap movie called Cyclops which is a Bert Gordon film from the 50s. It was really cheap, people made fun of it all the time. I was sick of them making fun of it. I decided that that face on that creature scared me and so I did a series of faces on film that scare me the most. That, the zombie, Plague of the Zombies, was the scariest zombie I ever saw. That inspired me. The other thing that I think looking for inspiration is Basil Gogos.He’s the only artist I’ve said, and I’ve said his name multiple times now. I would look at his cover for the monster magazine and say ‘oh, I wish I could do that.’ A lot of us my age, like Rob Zombie, actually commissioned the Zombie painting and it was fantastic because he loved those covers too. So I would stare and stare and stare. So they inspired me and when I was doing these I was like ‘oh I wish these were magazine covers,’ and they aren’t. I never have done one. The faces of certain creatures even if the film wasn’t particularly interesting. It was somebody developing what they thought would be scary and by god it was and by god I painted it later.
You mention an inspiration based in carnival and sideshow entertainment. Do you think that these shows are better now, where the sideshow scene allows these people to be proud of their differences, as opposed to when you were growing up and it was more ‘oh look at these freaks’?
Yeah, and to clarify when I saw the three faced man when I was eight years old it terrified me, and then he started talking. He had a huge hair lip. I was thinking, and this is 1970 or something like that, and I’m looking around and everybody had the idea that ‘hey, they are working, and we are paying them’ and everyone felt good about that. As I grew older I heard people say, “hey we have to shut down these freak shows,” and I was just thinking that they were making a living. I love these people. What I love about the movie Freaks is that it says ‘hey, don’t judge, they may not look like you but they are people.’ You say have things changed? It’s so interesting because even though the attitudes might have changed we still look at the bizarre as it is bizarre and it gets down to the individual of how are you going to accept that? How are you going to react to it? Do you have a place in your heart or some level of compassion that says “that’s okay.” And ‘right minded’ people say “shut down the freakshow” and I say “Let them make a living and look at them, they are creative.
Is there anything about the horror genre specifically that inspires you as opposed to other genres?
Yeah I do, and here’s what I’m finding in modern horror, it’s so much. Remember, when these were coming out, the classics, these were oddballs. They were not mainstream. Now these horror films are getting huge budgets and I can’t keep up with all of them. That kind of bugs me. So back then it was like these were so obscure. It would be a monster that would appear in some very normal world and I was always fascinated with forms beyond mine. So, what is this Frankenstein monster played by Boris Karloff? Where does he fit in? Why do I have compassion for him? Why is he ostracized because his form is different? I became fascinated with that. I say that but I also grew up with giant monsters like Ray Harryhausen would do. I don’t know if there is a bigger fan of Ray Harryhausen films. He would do three dimensional animation. Now we are beyond a sympathetic monster like Frankenstein, now we are up to a creature that has one horn, one eye, and cloven hoofs and is trying to eat these guys alive. That form fascinates me. I always liked the adventure of it and there they actually get to fight them. I liked the visceral ‘us against them’. I would play the hero a lot when I wasn’t dressing up like the monsters. I guess the bottom line and the quickest answer is yes, if it’s a form out there, even some of the lesser films that are not very good and they don’t hold up well, if it has the form and it’s out there and it’s created well, I’m excited.
How do you feel about the modern horror scene? Do you feel it’s grown stale and if so what would need to happen to inspire a new golden age of horror?
Well everything old is new again. You know they’ve tried to launch more Universal films sometimes with good success, sometimes not so much. I do see they are working a lot of, I just mentioned, monster or creature movies. I think they are trying to take old monster films and turn them into adventure films. Tom Cruise had a misguided mummy movie a few years ago. That’s fine, whatever, it wasn’t good. What do you do to get it exciting again? I can’t – I’m almost intimidated by the sheer amount of horror films coming out now. I remember several years ago, now it’s been a while, with Paranormal Activity and I thought that was clever. It was found footage which was creeping in more and more and more and then there were a bunch of those and it got stale almost immediately. Then there were the Insidious movies that I was admiring very much and that got stale almost immediately. It’s very very difficult to do fresh things. Being old enough to see the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I was so impressed with that movie. I guess, since it didn’t worry about suspense, it was just BOOM there he is or BOOM this happens. I remember thinking, well that’s new. Several years later I went to see Halloween, which didn’t do as much for me, but I’m old enough to have seen these originals. So I’m just like, ‘oh, let me see the new ones.” Like, for example, I couldn’t wait to see the 2003 Texas Chainsaw. Well, I say I couldn’t wait, but it took me about ten years to see it. I was very curious. I liked it. I liked that they took something and did something else with it. I very much enjoyed it. If you do a good job I think something could be remade a bajillion times, I don’t care. I may not want to go, I may be getting bored, I don’t want to sit around and watch this. What I find is if I’m sitting around watching stuff too much then I’m not creating myself. That you have to watch. You have to look out for that I think.
What do you think of B movie level horror movies that are supposed to be funny but are also creepy in some regards? (Example: Killer Klowns From Outer Space) Do you think modern horror directors are trying too hard and they are missing some of the fun that horror is supposed to be?
I do think so. I do think what was good was when people started to ease humor in, it was phenomenal. When you go way out there and do something like Killer Klowns From Outer Space I think bravo! Go for it. The 70s were a good era for that. Early 80s I went to see a movie called Alligator and it was a giant monster movie. I said, “ Look at all this humor, it’s fantastic.” But even then there were still thrills. That balance is great. I’ll tell you, one of my all time favorite horror films, and I am a huge fan of Night of The Living Dead, but I went to the theater as a kid. It was filmed about an hour from where I grew up. I’ve been to the set. I just liked it that much. I was just so impressed with that film. We’ve all seen it. However, in the 80s someone made Return of The Living Dead and that is so good. I was blown away then and I’m still blown away now. It’s funny, it’s deliberately funny, it’s so exciting, it’s poignant, and it’s freaking scary. You have a zombie wanting more brains. I’m telling you that is like the pinnacle of comedy horror right there. It had everything and it did it so well without trying too hard. I will say I felt the same way about Shaun of the Dead. Humor and horror is damn near perfect.
Do you like the old style films where you really only get to see the monster for seven minutes? Does it make it scarier when you don’t get to see the monster?
That’s a great great question. I think people have debated this. Let me just throw back to the Universal horrors. They showed The Mummy, The Wolfman, they showed them clearly lit and everything. Then in the 40s they were like ‘why are they showing all of that stuff? Let’s show the shadows.’ I’ll take Universal horrors over this stuff any day. I did notice the shadows were a little scarier because you showed a little less or you waited longer for the horror. There is a phenomenal movie from the late 50s called Curse of the Demon. In England it’s called Night of the Demon. It’s brilliant, it’s perfect, and the age old question is ‘why did you have to show the demon? It was so good you didn’t have to show the demon.’ I’m gonna side with I’m glad they showed the demon. I bet if you saw the movie poster you’d recognize it. But, they showed the demon in the first 10 minutes and I loved it because then it permeates through the whole thing. Then they show it again at the end. So do you show, do you not show? I lean towards showing, but do you want to be scared, do you want to be thrilled? What are you really after?
Where can people find your artwork if they want to know more about you?
I had a website and I don’t know what happened, whether it crashed and burned, I don’t know but I got to figure that out. It was fbenmartin.com and I don’t know what happened to it, so nobody can see it I guess. I’m working on it. But, I do the art walks in Monroe, I do have a poster up next to my artwork at East Frank’s, but I do have to find a place to put it all. I’m not good at it but I need to do it.
