It's Alive! The Kirk Hammett Collection comes to the Royal Ontario Museum

The Royal Ontario Museum is set to exhibit It’s Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection. The Metallica guitarist has been collecting since about the age of six years old. In a recent article for Exclaim, Hammett discussed why these pieces are so important. The collection features pieces from films as early as Nosferatu to slasher films of the ‘80s.

“The pieces that are picked are the pieces that have the most relevance. Also I have a tendency to lean toward pieces that are more illustrative and have a certain amount of visual appeal. A movie like Nosferatu is really important because it’s the very first vampire movie and there’s hardly any material that has survived from the ‘20s.”

An avid collector, he has become familiar with a network of dealers of rare pieces up for trade or auction. Finding rare and collectible movie pieces for his collection was a difficult process. Hammett says this was due to damage or lost completely because of World War II.

“The ones that survived did either because someone really enjoyed the poster, or they were used in some sort of utilitarian fashion. They were used as insulation between walls or the floor or they would be put up in a closed off room and that room would be opened up 80 years later and all of a sudden there would be all of these artifacts on the wall.”

Fans previously got a glimpse into some of Hammett’s collection at the 2013 Orion Music + More Festival in 2013. The “Kirk’s Crypt” exhibit not only featured selections from his collection. But also included panel discussion and meet and greets with many well known horror actors. The panel included P. J. Soles (Halloween), Jordan Ladd (Cabin Fever), Bill Moseley (House of 1000 Corpses), Gunnar Hansen (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Tom Savini himself (Creepshow). It’s Alive was first showcased at the Peabody Essex Musem for three months in 2017.

“There’s hardly any material that has survived from the ‘20s.”

Hammett says the importance of movie posters from the 20’s and 30s is due to the uniqueness of each piece.

“Back then the movie poster was 90 percent of promotion for the film. You didn’t have television, and you had radio but radio was its own thing. You had trailers, but you could only see trailers in the movie theatre. So the only other promotional material was movie posters. They had to design these movie posters so that when a person was walking by they would be visually striking and appealing.”

He also created the original music with his wife and says its an important part of this exhibit.

“Back in the day — you know, hundreds of years ago — whenever there was an event there would be a piece of music that was written to be played at the time of the event. That tradition has kind of gone away these days. People just throw in a DVD or whatever, but I’m actually composing a piece for this show, and it’s a companion piece to the last piece of music I wrote.”

He hopes he will be able to perform live for this exhibit at some point.

It’s Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection will be on display at the Royal Ontario Museum between July 13, 2019 and January 5, 2020. Be sure to follow ScaryNerd for more of all things horror!

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