great museums for fans of bad movies

[Moreau]

the other day i went to the hunterian museum in london. it's the collection kept by the royal college of surgeons. it's only a couple of rooms, but it is chock full of weird/gross/brilliant things, like pickled foetuses, the skull of a one-eyed baby, a giant skeleton, half a syphilictic face floating in a jar, a 200-year-old preserved penis. that kind of thing. i loved it, and i think a few perusers of this website might too. if you're in london, go. it's free.

http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums

does anybody else have any recommendations for obscure and grostesque mueseums that might appeal to fans of obscure and grostesque films?

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Maybe the Henry Ford Museuem in Dearborn.  But its not free.
http://philip.greenspun.com/travel/summer94/ford-museum

Note the captured last breath of Thomas Edison. 
Heres the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Henry_Ford
-Ed

[Paquita]

I've always kind of wanted to go to the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, but I don't really want to have to go to Philadelphia.

I watched a show about it on the Discovery Channel (or maybe TLC) a while ago.  It's supposed to have a huge collection of medical oddities, like things removed from peoples bodies and a plaster cast of Cheng and Eng.

http://www.collphyphil.org/mutter.asp

The Murder City Devils even wrote a song about it! fun stuff!

[Rev. Powell]

Not exactly a museum of medical curiosities, but the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA is probably one of the weirder museums you'll ever come across.  Includes exhibits, some fake and some real, on creatures like the echo bat and the stink ant of the Cameroon, and items like a statue of a pope carved from a single human hair (you look at it through a microscope).  Here's the website: http://www.mjt.org/main2.html.  The curator is a strange and frighetning old man.

[the ghoul]

About 5 years ago, I went to this cool exhibit of actual medieval torture devices at Balboa Park in San Diego.  I don't know whether this is a traveling exhibit that is somewhere else now, or if it was just a one time thing.  Maybe someone else on the forum knows of it and can tell us.

[Moreau]

stink ant? jeez lou-eez! are they not annoying enough already?

here's another one i heard about; the bury st edmunds museum. they have a book telling the tale of the totally spooky murder in the red barn, bound in the skin of the executed killer.
http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/visit/exhibits.cfm
has anybody seen the film with tod slaughter?

[RCMerchant]

stink ant? jeez lou-eez! are they not annoying enough already?

here's another one i heard about; the bury st edmunds museum. they have a book telling the tale of the totally spooky murder in the red barn, bound in the skin of the executed killer.
http://www.stedmundsbury.gov.uk/sebc/visit/exhibits.cfm
has anybody seen the film with tod slaughter?

I've heard of MARIA MARTEN or the MURDER in the RED BARN....it had a number of versions,-One in 1902,in 1913,1928...and the Tod Slaughter version in 1935. I havent't seen any of them,(sigh) 

Way back when in the 70's,I read an articale in FAMOUS MONSTERS where Forry Ackerman visted Henri Langlois's film museum Cinmatheque Francaise in Paris. I had forgotton all about it untill I seen a short on IFC about it. Lotsa very,very old silent stuff...but a little bit of a lot of film history.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzrcdUtxF1k

[Jim H]

Maybe the Henry Ford Museuem in Dearborn.  But its not free.
http://philip.greenspun.com/travel/summer94/ford-museum

Note the captured last breath of Thomas Edison. 
Heres the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Henry_Ford
-Ed

And also Greenfield Village, which is right next to it.  Both are really good.  Been to both several times, seeing as I grew up in Michigan. 

I've been to a couple of the Ripley's museums.  They're a bit pricy for how much stuff they have, but there are quite a few cool things in them.

[lester1/2jr]

in the next town over from me in the basment of the local indy film theater there is a museum of bad art.  It's is awesome as is the catalog

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Oh man I forgot, the Museum in Rothenburg Germany.  Thi splace was a cornerstone of my childhood:
http://www.kriminalmuseum.rothenburg.de/Englisch/page1.html

Go to the "What we offer" page. 
-Ed

[Moreau]

what is it about devices of torture that we love? who else will go to the guantanamo museum when they inevitably open it?

this is another london recommendation, so sorry...

(if anybody wants any alternative london tourist suggestions, just ask, i got a few)

...anyway, in the british museum , they have a million brilliant things, but one of the least visited and most intriguing is dr john dee's magic mirror. it's a lump of obsidian taken from the aztecs by cortes, and given to dee by the king of spain in payment for his occult advice. dee used it for talking to angels.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/d/dr_dees_mirror.aspx
i mean, the british museum is full of stuff that, on the occasion of a casual incantation or ectoplasmic outburst, could come alive and attack unsuspecting b-movie types, or summon head-hungry winged serpents with unpronounceable names, but that mirror is one of my favourites.

[Trevor]

When I was a teenager, there was an extensive article in a magazine called Scope ~ any South Africans reading this will go  when they see that name ~ which dealt with a mysterious guy named Arne and his horrific torture instruments museum in Hawaii.

I have tried to find out if this museum still exists (this was 1980 I think) and if Arne himself is still around. Nothing on Google at all: He said that he had cancer but had "made a deal with the devil" to keep himself from dying. 

[AndyC]

There's the Fragonard museum in Paris, which was discussed in a book I read a while ago. Honore Fragonard was a professor of anatomy in the 1700s, at least until he was labelled a crackpot and fired from the national veterinary school. This was due to his many skillfully-preserved anatomical exhibits, which were forerunners of the plastinated people on tour today but using old-school preserving techniques. The flayed people and animals themselves might not have been as much of a problem if not for Fragonard's artistic flair in posing them.

The surviving specimens are still on display today. The collection remains in the possession of the same school that sacked Fragonard over two centuries ago.

http://musee.vet-alfort.fr/Site_GB/index2.htm

[WingedSerpent]

I would say that almost ANY musuem is great for fans of bad movies. Its good to get out and see some interesting stuff, and learn some new things. 

A couple years ago the Natural History Museum here in Cleveland held a promotion that featured the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.  The Highlight of the tour was a life size staute of a T-Rex that looked like the one from the movie.

We also had the Vatican Splendors exihibit here last year.  Real interesting to see some of the artwork and reliics, some that had neverleft the Vatican before.

An art musuem should have Gothic art and Surrealistc art.  Plenty of scary and strange imagery there.

[lester1/2jr]

Andy-  I studied art history in college and as I'm sure you are well aware Fragonard is known for his roccoco stylings which are anything but gorey crazy animal preservation stuff!  They are quite fancy and silly