JPS PICKS SIX FLICKS FROM HIS COLLECTION OF CREEPY CHARACTERS

JPS is an artist who delights in depicting famous characters from movies in abandoned spaces. MTN World had him pick out his six most terrifying villains.
Picture the scene. It’s a crisp Autumn morning and you’ve got a day all to yourself. You decide to take a walk in the nearby woods, which you always enjoy, despite not being really familiar with the territory. Half way through the trek, your phone runs out of battery. You could swear something is following you, but you can’t see a thing.
Then it appears out of thin air. A 7 foot masked soldier with in tribal battle armor. A gun that could take down a helicopter from a mile away. And those teeth. Those disgusting teeth. You think about running, but what’s the point. You’ve just met the predator. You’re history.

The creator of this awful apparition is none other that JPS – an English artist who specializes in a line of detailed and instantly recognizable figures from the world of film.
This month at Montana Colors we’re celebrating everything that is produced when fantasy and graffiti cross over, so we asked JPS to pick out some of his most unnerving interventions.

Predator:
In a deep, dark forest you’d expect to stumble across wild animals – but in the Spessart forest in Bavaria, Germany, something else is lurking – an evil creature waiting for its next victims.
Known for being an excellent hunter, appearing out of the blue and being super fast, this 6 ft “Predator” is waiting for its next victims and has surely scared some unsuspecting people on their Sunday walk over the years.
Since 2016, I’ve painted this beast in several locations, even in an abandoned subway in New York, but the version in this photo is still my favourite, as the setting with the trees is just like in the film.

Gremlin:
Never expose it to sunlight.
Don’t let it get wet, don’t give it any water to drink or bathe it.
And no matter how much it cries, no matter how much it begs, NEVER feed it after midnight.
Who doesn’t know these rules? In the film “Gremlins”, the young owner of a cute Mogwai finds out quickly what it means to break them. He accidentally spills a glass of water on his little friend – which results in five new gremlins, each one more mischievous than the next.
I always liked “Gremlins,” and I couldn’t help painting the little critters from the classic films.

Alien:
“Alien” is a 1979 sci-fi horror film by Ridley Scott about an extraterrestrial creature that gets aboard a spacecraft, where it stalks and kills its crew. This creature is called “Xenomorph” and is designed by H.R. Giger, in my eyes a genius surrealist and artist.
Of course it was tempting for me to paint the Xenomorph, which is an endoparasitoid lifeform, on a wall. And that’s exactly what I did in an abandoned cotton mill in the UK in 2014. Since then, I’ve painted the piece several times in different countries and it’s amazing to see how stunned people are by its size and details.

Doom Sprayer:
The “Doom Sprayer” is one of my newest pieces.
He’s inspired by a character called Doom Slayer from the classic video game “Doom”, which is a very popular first-person shooter. The player battles the forces of hell, consisting of demons and other undead creatures.
I painted the Doom Sprayer in an abandoned paper factory in Lower Franconia, a place I call “The Hidden Gallery (Graff Endorsed)” as it contains 40 + pieces of mine and it attracts a lot of Urban Explorers who are fascinated by the range of works.

Freddy Krueger:
This is an image of the infamous movie villain Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street series. A child abuser in previous life, he returns to kill the children of the people who burnt him alive in their dreams.
His melted skin, striped jumper and glove make him instantly recognisable and a petrifying figure to anyone who stumbles across this portrait that I painted in Germany in 2021.

Head Turning Street Art – The Exorcist:
Inspired by ta famous scene in the film “The Exorcist”, in which young Regan McNeil shocked the audience by twisting her head 180 degrees, I painted this piece in October 2018 on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.
I’d actually had the idea for it years before, but due to the lack of images from the film it wasn’t painted until I decided to take a photo of my wife in a costume – and photoshop Regan’s head on her body. It worked and I’m sure everyone who’s into horror films will recognize the image. I hope it provokes vivid memories of the film based on the novel by William Peter Blatty.

Check out more graffiti content from the worlds of horror, fantasy and sci-fi by using the hashtag #mtnfantasymonth. Share your own creations with us using the same hashtag!