Spook House Dave! – Monster Puppets with Heart (and a Werewolf)

What do you do when you’re an 11-year-old boy and the werewolf who lives with you is taking private phone calls from your Valentine crush? If you’re Dave of Spook House Dave!, you spin it into soap opera, complete with soft-focus shots and dramatic musical cues.

Spook House Dave! is a new online puppet series about Dave, an 11-year-old who lives in a haunted castle with a vampire, a witch, a werewolf, a mummy, a Frankenstein’s monster and an assortment of other ghouls and ghosts. Like Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, it’s geared towards kids, but any grown-up with a sense of humour will get a kick out of it. The dialogue is funny and genuine, the character design is creative and endearing, and everything on screen, from the puppets to the scenery, has a lovingly-handcrafted feel. The official web site, spookhousedave.com, currently features a special Valentine’s Day episode (shown above). The full site should be launching in the next month or two, and in the meantime you can visit DM Kids to watch the first two episodes. There’s also a Spook House Dave! Youtube channel, which has got some original content in the form of character confessionals. No confessional from Umberto the werewolf yet, but maybe he’s next.

Spook House Dave! is produced by Dragonfruit Studios and a team of puppeteers and improvisers in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s great to see artists and performers working together and using the web to distribute their work like this– here’s hoping Spook House Dave! takes off. I know I’ll be watching (and rooting for Umberto)!