Giger's Vlad Tepes: Change from Micky Mouse to Vlad The Impaler

leading from

Giger's Vlad Tepes (1978)

 

a) Change from Micky Mouse to Vlad Tepes
HR Giger started off the painting Vlad Tepes with what he referred to as a painting of Mickey Mouse, and then he found himself watching the Dracula movie on TV and decided to go with the flow of making inspired by the Dracula movies  One might ask where signs of Mickey Mouse might be found buried within the painting.

1. It's a typically macabre scene so when he says "It started out as Mickey Mouse everyone", Giger included laughs. "Then I saw a series of films about Dracula, so it changed, hammering in like a nail. The painting's title means "The Staker." (PC Power May 1994 #5)

Image taken from DARK STAR - HR GIGERS WELT

Early version of Vlad Tepes image stretched out

Vlad Tepes, before and after

b) Watch out for Pluto!
However if we look at an earlier version of the painting we can see something that resembles a cross eyed cartoon character with a long snout and perhaps it looks like a Giger-ised version of Pluto with its sharp teeth and Giger could not be bothered to be specific about which Disney Character it was. Having said that, perhaps Mickey Mouse's face was in a much earlier version and Pluto was in it as well. Pluto would disappear by the next stage of the painting but the small face of a strange animal with a puffy face remained to be seen

Biomechanised Pluto?

small animal form at the bottom of a ribbed pipe

curious small animal like face behind the biomechanic Pluto

c) Comparisons between female figures from early stage and final image
Earlier stage of the female from Vlad Tepes painting with the detail from the final image. The way her head stretched back and partly began to curl around made it seem partially like an elephant's head and trunk, her ear would have been the elephant's mouth and soon the trunk was painted over,  replaced with a long dark demonic character. In the original version, the head had ribbing along the end as if the head was like a a lightbulb. The under surface of the entity's head becomes covered in ribbed patterns

Earlier stage of the female from Vlad Tepes painting
with the detail from the final image