Phantasmagoria and Haunted Screens: Gothic Films (and more) - Eight

Such a long wait, and that's the lame title I came up with...I can only apologise.

What have I been watching?

Universal's 1941 The Black Cat was disappointing, but I suppose I should have expected it to be obscure for a reason. It's a rather lame horror comedy of the Old Dark House variety (actually, it's pretty much The Cat and the Canary despite the pretence of being based on Poe's story) . Basil Rathbone and (especially) Bela Lugosi are underused. Broderick Crawford is the hero, taking what I suppose you'd have to describe as the Bob Hope role. Well, there was a war on.

One thing in the films favour is the design. It's more sumptuous and Gothic, better at engaging the eye on a purely visual level, the the "proper" Universal horrors of the period. The print and/or restoration was also excellent. I have a R2 DVD but I gather the film is also on the series of multi-disc Universal films that Scream Factory are putting out in the US.

A Thin Ghost and others. Robert Lloyd Parry has been performing M. R. James stories, dressed as James, in suitably atmospheric locations, by the light of one candle, for several years now. I saw four of his shows, over four nights, at the Leper Chapel in Cambridge in 2013. That's him on the Mark Gatiss Documentary about James from a few years back. This DVD contains a performance of The "Residence at Whitminster" filmed at Hemmingford Grey Manor, and as a supplement the other four stories from the book in rehearsed readings "as himself". He's been unable to tour for much of this year of course, and has put a variety of material (readings of weird fiction etc.) on YouTube.

Suspiria (2018) - Luca Guadagnino's reworking or reimagining of The Dario Argento original. It's tempting to go along with the reviews I looked at after watching it: it's too long, it's not as viscerally affecting as the original (despite some nasty body-horror - body-injury, specifically) scenes. My initial thoughts were along those lines too. I think what the original has going for it is summed up in a quote I remember (but I don't recall who said it) - "it's like how you imagined an X certificate film would be like before you ever actually got to see an X certificate film" (remember under the old UK Certification "X" was an adults-only film, it wasn't specifically "X for sex"). It's headlong and lurid and relentless (even the one long outdoors, daylight scene, which I have seen criticised as a misstep, only swaps the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Dance Academy for The Parallax View-style agoraphobic paranoia). There's also the mythology of the Three Mothers, which is pretty vague but has proved to be intriguing enough to generate two sequels and this sort-of remake. At bottom there is just a primal, folkloric fear of witches.

Guadagnino isn't going for such a simple opposition. Just simply listing some of the changes in the film from the original, makes it clear that he wants to "say something" about male power, female power, actual recent European history, etc. So, The dance company (no longer a school) is relocated to Berlin, 1977. It's Hard by the Berlin Wall, and the Red Army Faction in the news, bombs are going off in the streets. The American protagonist is no longer a "blank slate" heroine but comes from a Mennonite background and has flashbacks to her mother's deathbed. The missing member of the company had been mixed up in revoultionary politics and seeing a elderly psychiatrist who lost his wife in the War. The company's signature piece, "Volk", dates from "the dark days" of the War. And so on.

It felt like a film which is more fun to mull over with a friend after the event, than to sit through - to viscerally experience - with your heart in your mouth, which was how I watched the original. Maybe I need to see Guadagnino's version again in a couple of months' time and see how it strikes me then.

I love the title. I'd love to attend re-enactments of the phantasmagoria. Screen is wonderful but there is a special magic in theatre that just isn't there on screen except for a few oddities (I was quite blown away a few nights ago by Salome's Last Dance---bit of a tangent, sorry). How much more magical (supernatural? terrifying?) must these have been when film didn't yet exist? The magic of the stage combined with terrifying new technology (not to mention the overlap with the seance). They would be the earliest ancestors of today's latest horror film, but I wonder if horror film makers have ever really re-captured that thrill (even with those old 3D glasses)?

I saw two of my French "fantastique" haul, La Poupée sanglante from 1976 and La Main enchantée from 1974... I'll leave the touchstones going to the base texts, by Gaston Leroux and Gérard de Nerval, respectively.

"The bleeding doll" (unfortunate translation, but The bloody doll is hardly better...) is a serial of six episodes and has everything plus the kitchen sink--serial murder of girls, monsters in love, vampires, vampires who bite at a distance, ghosts, revenants, mysterious Orientals (from India), Hoffmannlike automata--actually, I'd say Leroux's greatest debt is to Hoffmann's medieval/Gothic romantic horror.

ETA: DVD preview: DVD La poupée sanglante - INA EDITIONS

I liked it, but ideally you'd want to see this when twelve years old. Making captures from INA's site unfortunately results in smudgy images so these two are from stills online:

 

That's the same actor, Ludwig Gaum, in both--as the lovelorn, monstrously ugly and suspected murderer Benedict Masson, and, having been executed and secretly soul-transported into the machinery of the automaton, as "Gabriel", lovely Christine's (Yolande Folliot) beloved poupée.

"The enchanted hand", otoh, is a stone-cold masterpiece of an adaptation. It helps that it's film-length and therefore not drawn out, but everything is first class--the script, the design, the acting and costumes... The story relies on another well-known legend, that of the murderous detached hand of a criminal (a precursor to Orlac!)

ETA: DVD preview: DVD La main enchantée - INA EDITIONS

Here it all starts with a young husband's jealousy of his wife's much too adult and sexy soldier nephew. Facing a duel with this formidable opponent, the husband goes to a magician for help. His hand is enchanted to render him invincible, but the charm goes above and beyond need. He ends up killing the nephew, and being controlled by the hand which is ever more murderous. He's caught and hanged but the hand is still alive on the corpse! Finally a soldier severs it, thus creating the "hand of glory" of legend and criminals' heart's desire.

The boisterous nephew ruining the groom's wedding day:

.  

(How much I love that little leather gilet... a lot)

Rest in peace, Ms Shelley ...

... caught the coronavirus after going into hospital for a check-up ...
That's a tragedy at any age.

>4 alaudacorax:

Yes, that's awful.

The 1001 Nights has a relationship to the Gothic, as an early sign of a shift away from the strict rationalism of the Enlightenment, as as inspiration for Vathek, if for nothing else.

This version is a 1981 BBC TV movie, or "Play for Television" as it was more likely described, on a Dutch DVD (hence the subtitles). The script, based on Burtons version, is by Victor Pemberton, whose 1968 Doctor Who story I'd just watched on DVD (entirely recreated as animation, the original tapes and telecines having been junked). I'd idly looked on IMDb to see what else he's done, and found this curio.

Is it successful? No, I don't think so, not entirely but I think trying to dramatise the Nights is a doomed enterprise from the start. This version started off in fine form - shot on film, and a good old BBC quarry standing in for the Arabian Desert. Then to interior studio-shot palace scenes on videotape, for the frame narrative with Shahriar, Shahrazad (as IMDb spells the names for this production), telling a story every night (actually ending on a cliffhanger at every dawn - but you know all this).

The problem for me...apart from the (I believe) intractable one of turning a framing device and dozens of separate stories into a satisfying 2-hour drama...is the decision to stylise the stories. The intention is for them to look like Persian miniatures come to life, but the extensive blue screen, actors combined electronically with intentionally 2-D sets, paintings and models just looks cheap. Worse, it looks like something for children's (or worse, school's) television on a shoestring budget, and alienates the viewer (this one, at any rate) from the story. When the stories Shahrazad tells are supposed to be so all-engrossing that they stop Shahriar cutting her head off.

Obviously only a small number of stories can be told in the time permitted. It's five i think, with one being little more than a comedy sketch, and Aladdin getting the lion's share of screen time (after the frame story). To suggest the great number of stories being told, and the nights passing, there's that most '80s of devices, the montage sequence!

When the play comes to its end, and had to return to the frame story and Shahriar's...rehabilitation? or cure?...there's a definite sense of aiming for the ambience of Shakespeare's late Romances. Indeed, the producer, Cedric Messina, had been producer for the BBC Shakespeare just before this was broadcast.

The cast is, like the BBC Shakespeares, full of theatrical big names and familiar TV face of the time. Frank Finlay is a ferocious Shahriar (and plays it absolutely straight). That is indeed Stratford Johns as the Genie.

>6 housefulofpaper:

Sad to read it's not up to much. I remember Messina fondly as being responsible for my favourites in the BBC Shakespeare series—not a widely-held opinion, I know.

ETA - Hah! Just been looking at the Wikipedia page for the Shakespeares and I've realised the above is not saying a lot: there are actually only two of the series that I ever return to—and I own DVDs of quite a number of them.

>7 alaudacorax:

Well, as to whether the Nights is viable material for any drama (as opposed to being a source for stories), is down to personal opinion. This is by no means the only screen version (of course). It occurred to me that the same sort of criticism could be levelled at Don Quixote (what made me think of that particular work? I think it was the mention of Shakespeare's Late Romances, to the lost Cardenio, to Shakespeare apparently having access to Cervantes' novel and -maybe - not recognising it as a game changer and work of genius, but quarrying it for something "useful" - Cardenio (unless my wits have failed me, writing the wrong side of Midnight again) being based on one of the old-fashioned standalone narratives worked into Don Quixote.

Although I just realised I'm aligning myself with my imagined Shakespeare here, because I started off with the observation that I don't think the Nights as a whole can be turned into a drama, but it can be a source for them - like Shakespeare putting Cardenio on stage but declining to adapt the story of Don Quixote!

Leaving my unconscious' arrogance to one side, it really strikes me as strange that Messina and (director) Michael Hayes went for the artificially of the stories-as-miniatures.

Although they weren't alone: BBC Drama seem to have had a thing for electronic effects in the early '80s - witness The Cleopatras - without realising that it would make their work look, as I said yesterday, like the output of the BBC Children's TV and Drama, and Schools and Colleges, departments over the previous 10 years.

I've got all the BBC Shakespeares on DVD, courtesy of a deep discount in an HMV sale, but I don't suppose I've watched even a quarter of them yet.

>8 housefulofpaper: - ... but I don't suppose I've watched even a quarter of them yet.

I don't think you've missed a lot. Most of them have better performances available on disc.

Bit of a tangent: Do you remember me linking 'Overly Sarcastic's entertaining YouTube video on Lovecraft? Well she* has an equally entertaining one on Don Quixote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2C--8o3MVE.

* 'She' is Red—the male half, Blue, has equally entertaining and quite informative history videos.

> 9
Hmm. Mixed feelings about that. It might have been a deep discount, but it wasn't a negligible amount. Perhaps that an "ooff", not a "hmm".

I'll follow that link to the Don Quixote video in a moment, but I wanted to show some screenshots from one of my Christmas presents (apologies for the image quality - not only am I pointing my cameraphone at my TV screen to get them - and you can see I can't hold the phone straight-on to save my life! - there's some burned-in blobs on the screen. They're not on the original image).

This is from disc one of Short Sharp Shocks from the British Film Institute. A collection of the short supporting features that were shown alongside feature films up until the early or mid-80s (although showing a music video from The Police alongside David Lynch's Dune suggests it was game over by 1984).

It starts off with the two surviving films of Algernon Blackwood reading his own stories. This is actually an instance of cinema trying to claw back audiences from the TV, as Blackwood was an early star of British TV, reading his stories as he is here (an aside - when he passed away, John Laurie took over the role of "television's ghost story man". I'm sure the bits in Dad's Army where his character tells as spooky story (to be undermined for comic effect at the end) is referencing this episode of his career, two decades later.

"Lock Your Door" (1949)


"The Reformation of St Jules" (1949)


This is a short film, only surviving on a 16mm print, with Stanley Baker as Edgar Allan Poe. Essentially he reads/performs the story, but as Poe - composing the story, telling it and "becoming" the protagonist, all in an expressionistic-looking garret set.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" (1953)




These short films were often made by small outfits, or directors/producers just starting out. Or sometimes just colourful or eccentric figures. The next two films are from (to quote the accompanying booklet) "Theodore Zichy, Hungarian count, Bugatti racer, pilot and playboy"

"Death Was a Passenger" (1958)

A commuter (Terence Alexander) has a chance meeting on a train which takes him back to his wartime experience, as an RAF pilot trying to make his way out of Wartime France. This is the scene where his "No..er, merci" to the offer of something to eat lets everyone in his train carriage know that he is British.


"Portrait of a Matador" (1958)

Probably the weakest story on the disc. The acting is pretty stiff in this one and the story (although closer to the concerns of this group than the previous one) is an unconvincing "explained supernatural". I'd mention the "of its time" representation of hot-blooded Spaniards as a fault, but quite frankly the filmmakers spoof themselves worse as caricature straightlaced and repressed Englishmen. The portrait itself, which drives the proud and jealous (of course he is) Matador over the edge, is surprisingly effective (and in the context of the story, convincing)- perhaps because it wasn't in a style I'd expect from 1958.

>10 housefulofpaper:

Fascinating post!

I have absolutely no memory of those short supports, though I remember I went to the 'pictures' once a week or so through, roughly, second half of the sixties and first half of the seventies. I vaguely remember the average evening being one B-movie, a bunch of Pearl & Dean adverts and then the feature film; but perhaps I'm thinking of my childhood. I'm tempted on several fronts, not least because there's something quaintly '50s-British' and nostalgic about the whole idea; but I'd particularly like to see the Algernon Blackwoods and the Stanley Baker one. Gone to the top of my cinemaparadiso list.

... "television's ghost story man" ...
Really sad to read on Wikipedia that this series, Tales of Mystery, has been entirely lost. I have no memory of seeing it and I would love to see Laurie reading horror stories straight.

Blackwood's face—even when he was a lot younger than that—is an absolute gift to the pencil artist. The same goes for Hugh Laurie, of course. Sadly, Blackwood looks close to the end, there.

I've been vaguely aware of Dune, though never particularly interested; but I don't think it's ever really registered with me that it was a David Lynch film until you mentioned. So that's gone on the list next to Short Sharp Shocks (it's a real struggle to not put a comma in there).

Was there ever a British film made in the fifties and sixties that did not have Terence Alexander?

The one saving grace to the BBC Shakespeares is that most of them used the complete text (I don't think every single one, but I'm not sure about that; though I remember it was the original intention). I don't know how often that happens elsewhere, but in my personal watching it's been rare. So they have that academic interest. I don't know how much of a saving grace it is if the production is so lacklustre you can't keep your concentration through the full play ...
Annoyingly, the series doesn't have its own IMDb page. I was curious to compare the ratings of the individual plays. Probably a week's work without a dedicated IMDb page.

>11 alaudacorax:

Goddammit!!! I quite recently wrote, around here somewhere, about completely forgetting about books I'm reading on my Kindle. Just realised I've done it again with my 'complete' Algernon Blackwood. If I ever get round to putting in new bookcases I'm going to start collecting his collections. You'll know what I mean by that if you look at a Blackwood bibliography—man was so prolific I suspect he scares the crap out of anyone who looks into publishing a complete 'collected' ...

Among interesting horror novelties coming up on Eureka, this caught my eye (sadly no use my getting it):

"Bursting with startling imagery and stunning practical effects courtesy of directors Konstantin Yershov, Georgi Kropachyov, and perhaps most notably, artistic director Aleksandr Ptushko (the legendary special effects artist whose spectacular stop-motion effects and innovative colour cinematography has seen him referred to as the Soviet equivalent of Willis O’Brien, Ray Harryhausen, and even Mario Bava), VIY has influenced generations of directors for more than half a century. The Masters of Cinema series is proud to present VIY in its UK debut on Blu-ray from a HD restoration of the original film elements. The Limited-Edition release (3000 copies only) will feature a Bonus Disc containing A Holy Place (1990, dir. Djordje Kadijevic) and an exclusive O-Card Slipcase, and will be available from 22 March 2021."

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/viy-limited-edition-set-3000-copies/

Those Russian silent film fragments in the extras are especially intriguing...

A passing touch of paranoia, probably.

>13 LolaWalser:

I'd seen some pre-publicity for this release but at the time my mind and finances were focused on Christmas presents for other people - well, mostly other people :)

This was a timely reminder, and I've got my order in now.

>12 alaudacorax:

My limited and unscientific experience of collecting Blackwood is that there's an awful lot of overlap in the short story collections. Collecting first editions would no doubt be a costly business (although in fairness, beaten-up copies of minor works seem to begin at quite reasonable prices on AbeBooks).

It seems that the major current publisher of Blackwood, and they only have a handful of titles in their catalogue, is a print-on-demand company called House of Stratus.

>10 housefulofpaper:
There is a disc 2 to Short Sharp Shocks - four short films from between 1969 and 1980. The other side of the swinging 60s and a very different world from the first disc (or worlds, 1980 being very different from '69, of course).

It was more difficult to get screenshots for these but I'll try to put up some pictures and short descriptions, without spoilers.

>11 alaudacorax:
As late as 1983, the Monty Python team arranged it so that The Crimson Permanent Assurance was The Meaning of Life's supporting feature (but really the two films are an integrated whole). Star Wars fans remembered the supporting feature that went out with The Empire Strikes Back and when it was found (it is the fate of these films to be at the mercy of producers, distributors, etc and many are lost) it was shown at festivals, Star Wars conventions and is now on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L8pHKP-vv4

Here are the films on disc 2 of Short Sharp Shocks

"Twenty-Nine" (1969)

The main mover behind this one is Peter Shillingford, who had made a lot of money shooting adverts over the previous half-decade. As he tells it in the accompanying booklet, the film was made to utilise profits that would otherwise have gone to the Exchequer.

It's (intentionally) disorientating in a characteristically late-60's way, although the autobiographical central character may be self indulgent (something that could be argued for a few more late '60s films where the passage of time has revealed the film makers themselves maybe more skewered than the targets they were going after). Not gothic or horrific but related by way of the unease created by the mystery of the opening, which could have taken a fantasy or a Noir-ish direction.





"The Sex Victims" (1973)

I'm not sure who the victims are here. Are the brutish lorry driver an his made being lured to their destruction, if they are is it deserved or not, or is this revenge from beyond the grave? It's confused, maybe because the makers didn't care about the story so much as the opportunities for nudity and having a woman chased through woodland and what looks like a deserted barracks (I guess it's actually stables, given the importance of horse riding to the plot).





"The Lake" (1978)

A simple story. A man a woman, and their dog. And a presence. In the woods (or is that just the prowling camera) or in the lake...



"The Errand" (1980)

As characteristic of the early 80s as "Twenty-Nine" was a glimpse of the very end of the 60s.

It's a fable or a conte cruel following a lone soldier in a near-future militarised England, sent on a secret mission. Or is something else going on?

Okay, it is NOT me getting increasingly impatient in my old age. They just don't know how to make films like they use used to!

And I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with Rotten Tomatoes. Twenty-five minutes into Color Out of Space and I'm giving up, quite baffled as to how the RT critics have it at 86%. It didn't help that I needed subtitles to get through Cage's mumbling ...

'Setting the scene' doesn't mean what you think it does, modern-day directors. First five or ten minutes you're supposed to grab the viewers' attention by the scruff and drag it along with you thereafter. Go and have a look at any well-known film not made in the last forty years or so, then go away and make wedding videos or something ...

>19 alaudacorax:

So, I went back sixty years. I've just watched The Snake Woman.

Okay, so this wasn't a great film—two or three wooden and hammy performances and the rest merely adequate at best, a leading man with very little screen presence, and the story fairly rough and ready. But what it did do was to grab my attention from the start and hold it all the way through—a proper, fun, old-fashioned, horror film. And that was because whoever made it knew how to properly put a film together.

So now I can have dinner in a far better frame of mind than would Cage and co. have left me.

>20 alaudacorax:

Don't know there's a point to me voicing any opinions :), but for the nothing it's worth, I liked that one, thought it had great atmosphere and an effective and oddly touching monster. IIRC I read somewhere a lot of non-actorly people were involved, the villagers I presume. They give it an air of authenticity.

I subjected myself to Konga (1961), a very poor knockoff of King Kong even as such things go... It does have a vivid palette and Michael Gough as the scientific baddie:



Also saw the 1976 slasher Alice sweet Alice. More plot holes than a Swiss cheese but, well, not sure that would matter to the fans of the genre.

Curiosity--the very first victim is little Brooke Shields (and on the day of her first Communion, heavens).

>21 LolaWalser:

Oddly enough, I remember seeing Konga in the cinema and I don't think I've seen it since. Can't really remember much about it, except that the ending made me rather sad; perhaps that's what's made it stick in my mind for so long. I couldn't have been much over eleven (they used to let us in to see any rating at my local flicks, as long as they got your money).

Sorry for getting in 'grumpy old man' mode in >19 alaudacorax:.

Though I genuinely do believe that Rotten Tomatoes is going awry, somewhere. Not so many years ago I was finding its Critics Consensus a pretty reliable guide to what I would like. These days it's just not.

>22 alaudacorax:

Your memory makes great sense. After they kill him, Konga shrinks down to the little chimp snatched from the jungle. The scenes were they inject him with the plant(!) hormones are also very distressing.

>24 LolaWalser:

Yes! That first image of you cite is exactly what I'm remembering. I must hunt it up, sometime, just for a nostalgia trip ...

>26 housefulofpaper:
I've entered an off-air recording of Konga on my other account. I'm pretty sure it was off Talking Pictures TV (if not, it would have been the Horror Channel, surely). So it may come around again. The British version of Godzilla, Gorgo, was of the same vintage but made by entirely different people. Nevertheless Steve Ditko (credited as the artist, but really the creator of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange for Marvel Comics in the early '60s) produced comic book versions of both monsters for Charlton Comics (it's wonderful what the internet can find for you if you just commit to hours of aimless scrolling and browsing - oh yes, that's the other reason I'm not getting through all my book reading and DVD viewing...)

Last Gothic film watched was the Vincent Price/Roger Corman (cinematography by Nicholas Roeg) The Masque of the Red Death. The digitally remastered version has come out in the UK (from a different company to all the other Corman/Price Poe movies, so if they were shelved together it would stick out like a sore thumb).

The edits/censor cuts made for the US released and the different cuts made for the UK, have all been reinstated. It's only a matter of seconds in all, I think, but even so it gives it a just a bit more "bite" - it's that bit less likely that the Horror Channel would schedule this version for a Sunday afternoon.

Colours are vibrant, it really does look very good. Extras are an informative commentary, a piece about the restoration, Roger Corman's talk for the BFI's Gothic season in 2013, a DVD booklet and some postcards - sorry, "art cards".

>27 housefulofpaper:

That's the StudioCanal Vintage Classics blu-ray, yes? I don't have a copy of that, so I think it must be earmarked for my next spending spree.

It's odd how things often seem to cluster together. I hadn't realised Nicolas Roeg was involved. I like a lot of his stuff, though, and only last night I found myself watching a YouTube video of Jenny Agutter talking about filming Walkabout. That, in turn, reminded me that I still haven't seen Don't Look Now; checked my CinemaParadiso list, found it at 135th or something, and moved it to the top. And that in its turn had me wondering if I still haven't read the story, either. Can't remember doing so. I've got it, so I really should have by now. Perhaps I just couldn't make up my mind which to do first ...

Anyway, I've read the Poe many times and I think I've seen the film at least twice. I'm not sure if I'm remembering the film as that good or if some lustre of the story has rubbed off on it, but I definitely want that blu-ray.

>26 housefulofpaper:

I think I've watched Gorgo a couple of times in the past and enjoyed it. It came in the 'switch-your-brain-off, cheesy goodness' category, if that makes any sense. I saw the first quarter of an hour or so a couple of days ago and—and this is something I've felt previously, but just couldn't get around this time—felt there was something a little off at seeing Bill Travers as a bit of a seedy character. He just seemed intended by nature to be the heroic good guy—Charlton Heston sort of thing. Either miscasting or poor script-writing, I suppose (and, I suppose, a poor reflection on his acting abilities). I seem to remember the character came good in the end, but the film just wasn't working for me this time round.

>28 alaudacorax:
StudioCanal, that's right. All the others have been issued by Arrow Films.

>29 alaudacorax:
I haven't managed to see Gorgo yet, and I've managed to miss most of Bill Travers' screen career too. I have seen quite a few Herman Cohen films (the producer of Konga). They're a bit too... impolite? Sleazy, even, to be described as "cheesy goodness".

There's a short film I haven't seen yet but I intend to soon - it's on youTube. Picking up the thread of supporting features in UK cinema, an adaptation of Saki's "Shredni Vashtar" went out as support for Omen III: The Final Conflict in 1981.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-RI9WBpPGQ

>30 housefulofpaper:

I had lots of aunts, years ago, and there wasn't a bad 'un among them, so I have no idea why 'Sredni Vashtar' should be one of my all-time favourite short stories, but it is.

I've seen a screen version but I don't think it's that one, the Conradin I remember looked younger. Tales of the Unexpected TV series, perhaps? I'll put that one in my 'Watch later'.

Coincidentally, I posted about a Roeg film just recently, Bad timing. Looks great but I think is seriously marred by the casting of Art Garfunkel (wish he and Keitel had exchanged roles...) Walkabout is a fave although I'm not happy about the Aboriginal boy's fate in it.

Continuing the creature feature theme, I am currently putting together the original Toho Godzilla movies for a Godzilla Moviezilla extravaganza. The library has all but two... (I have the first one myself).

Hmm, Gorgo--no, does not ring a bell. *note*

>32 LolaWalser:

I saw the original Godzilla recently (bought the DVD, in fact) for the first time since my childhood. Can't remember if I wrote about it here. It was surprisingly moving and not really the schlock-horror I'd imagined.

>33 alaudacorax:

Very much my own reaction, I was quite surprised because I had very wrong preconceptions about it. In fact it seems to have been seminal in introducing a certain point of view as well as making the threat of nuclear destruction a popular theme in Japanese media.

I recorded Tale of a Vampire (1992) off-air sometime in 2007 but only got around to watching it from beginning to end this week.

This film gets a bit of a pasting from Jonathan Rigby in English Gothic but has passionate supporters online. It uses Poe's poem "Annabelle Lee" as an armature but it's really a sympathetic vampire courts reincarnated lost love story. But it's so focused on (it seems) trying to be the ultimate collection of Gothic Romantic Vampire set pieces and over-stylised '80s-style filmmaking (albeit, I think, shot on video) that the storytelling is listless. When I've looked at bits of this over the years it never seems to quite be a real film. Sad to say, after finally watching it all, that's still the impression I was left with. But as I say, it has its fans.

(I hadn't edited the commercial breaks out of this recording. The DVD release of The Mist from Woolworths. Gender-discriminatory car insurance (Sheila's Wheels) - since banned by the EU. An ad for AOL!. 2007 suddenly seems a long time ago).

The next film I watched was another one that could be described as listless but, don't ask me how, this slow and even more opaque film does work better as a piece of cinema than Tale of a Vampire. It's Jess Franco's A Virgin Among the Living Dead. Now, this has gone under many titles and has been released in versions including scenes shot by other directors years later - even the French dub to the version I own must post-date the film since it refers to "the late General (Franco)". This version doesn't include the extra scenes (even though the box art depicts one of them!) but the summary in Stephen Thrower's book Murderous Passions evidently has a couple more scenes, some explanatory dialogue that would have been useful, and some reordering of scenes that are present.

I doubt I've seen even 1% of Franco's output but I've seen enough to recognise common themes, characters or character types, as if (this is not an original observation) Franco's dreaming these films onto the celluloid. In this one, a young woman travels alone a remote location evidently somewhere in the Iberian peninsula (the film was shot in Portugal) - summoned home from a London boarding school because the father she's never met has died. This leaves her an orphan. Her stepmother passes away within minutes of her arrival. The other members of her family are odd (because they are undead) and the girl is in peril from a vague but pervasive vampiric, witchy Otherworld. I have had this DVD for ages, and hadn't watched it until now. I'm glad I waited until I could have a sense of what you're getting when you watch a Jess Franco film - by watching some others (including Count Dracula with Christopher Lee, and the more explicit films he started making with Lina Romay soon after this one (the thematic links can be picked out running through all these films, I think); by reading about Franco; and by comparing and contrasting with Jean Rollin.

>27 housefulofpaper:

I saw this for the first time only recently... Movie looks gorgeous. Excellent production. The voice of the Red Death nagged at me throughout--SO much like Christopher Lee's, and yet wasn't him. Wouldn't THAT have been something! Wished Nigel Green had more to do, but Magee and Skip Martin (the dwarf) were used well.

>35 housefulofpaper:

Another recent surprise (because I don't pay enough attention to directors): turns out Franco made several late German Krimis belonging to that universe of Edward Wallace-based movies--he used the pseud Jess Frank for those. A global director for global people... :)

>36 LolaWalser:

It was an actor named John Westbrook. He didn't get an on-screen credit even though that was apparently him in the red "death" costume, he wasn't simply dubbing his lines in post production. Curiously enough, he did a lot of dubbing of other actors. I looked at his IMDb entry - I was curious to know what he looked like - but he hasn't done much genre work (he was a stage actor, and a radio actor more than a screen actor I think, - its what I infer from IMDb) so I don't have much of his work on DVD or Blu-ray. He was in an episode of Blake's 7 many years after this film.

If it had been Christopher Lee, it would have been a nice contrast with Dracula, Prince of Darkness the next year, in which he's seen but has no lines!

>37 housefulofpaper:

Yes, I went looking for his identity, even IMDB didn't list him, but Wiki does. Shame that such a superb performance wasn't credited. Dare I say, I don't think Lee used his voice nearly that well, that subtly. It's just that he's distinctive and, well, famous.

I stumbled across another channel with archival Brit TV and am bingeing on something called "Undermind", 1965--a parade of lesser and better known faces, Rosemary Nicols, Michael Gough, Judy Parfitt, Dennis Quilley, Patrick Allen... and that's first 3 eps only... must see everything before it too gets axed!

>38 LolaWalser:

A channel with hundreds of hours of British TV I thought I'd never see again, vanished one afternoon a coulple of weeks ago. There wasn't so much genre material there but suddenly having children' TV of my own childhood, together with complete runs of Not the Nine O'Clock News and The Innes Book of Records, and early Victoria Wood, was quite a blow.

If this stuff was available on BritBox, I'd sign up like a shot.

I haven't seen Undermind yet and only became aware of it relatively recently. I sort of assume I'll know of all the UK and US small screen science fiction prior to 1980, because there was so little of it that it was all captured in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (in fact the entries run "under the sea", a thematic essay, to Unearthly Stranger (1963), which I think has turned up on Talking Pictures TV in recent months.

Talking of familiar faces in old TV shows, an episode of The Adventures of Sir Lancelot from 1957 (starring a pre-Doctor Who William Russell, and - indicating what a big deal this was - shot on colour film) was on Talking Pictures TV yesterday. Ronald Leigh-Hunt as King Arthur, and a young Robert Hardy as "Sir Rupert" (I think he's the show's equivalent of Sir Mordred) and Edward Judd in a small role as a "jobsworth" sentry. Illustrating the idea that historical dramas reflect the times they are made in, the actor playing Sir Kay wore a RAF Flying Officer's handlebar moustache.

Recent viewing has been anthology or portmanteau films - and television - and a documentary about anthology films, etc.

Firstly, I completed season two of Night Gallery and was really quite impressed. I had seen quite a lot of negative stuff about it before having the opportunity to watch it - basically that it was inferior to The Twilight Zone. The DVD extras go into the story to a degree. It became producer Jack Laird's baby and Rod Serling apparently felt frozen out, as far as making creative decisions went. Laird had a love of the pulps, evidently, and the often groan-worthy humour found in Famous Monsters of Filmland.

It seems to me that he practically treated each 60-minute Night Gallery episode as if it was an issue of Weird Tales - a mixture of stories of different length, some no more than short comedy sketches, Serling as host tying it all together. Accept that you are not always going to get the moral seriousness of a Rod Serling story every week (and in truth, sometimes they are too preachy and/or sentimental for my liking, plus you can tell he dictates his stories at this point - all too often everybody in a Rod Serling teleplay talks just like Rod Serling) and enjoy adaptations of some fine (often Weird Tales) authors, the directorial flair of early '70s US television (with the Film School brats such Steven Speilberg getting their first big breaks, and being a little bit avant garde) and a roster of actors that matches '60s and '70s UK television for its "pointing at the screen and going "look-who-it-is!" ness".

Another reason why it's remembered poorly may well be what happened to it after its initial run. Put into syndication, each individual story that made up an hour-long "issue" was cut or extended to fit a standard 25-minute slot. Cue long stories cut to disjointed highlights, and short snappy ones extended to tedium (with spare footage from Universal's vaults!). Oh, and an entirely separate show, about parapsychology investigators, went out under the Night Gallery banner.

The documentary is on a new region free (thankfully) Blu-ray from Severin films. titled Tales of the Uncanny it is all about the anthology film, from the German silents right up to the present (TV series that present one story per episode e.g. Tales From the Darkside, Black Mirror, Inside No. 9, are not strictly anthologies in the sense that stories don't follow on one after another without a break, but have sneaked in anyway). It was made last year so Covid-19 dictated the interviewees are all filmed on their computers and phones, so in that regard it's accidentally very much an artefact of the times (the filmmakers have tried to spin this as a plus - they have interviewed far more people than their budget would have stretched to using a film crew.

There are extras on the disc - two complete films! First, Eerie Tales from 1919 starring Conrad Veidt and Anita Berber. I recently got hold of this on DVD, but this version has English subtitles. in the frame story "The Devil", "The Whore" (don't blame me, that's what Google Translate says Die Dirne means) and "Death" step out of their picture frames in a second-hand book shop, terrorise the owner a bit, then sit down to read eerie tales from the shop's stock, including adaptations of Poe and RL Stevenson. Viedt, Berber, and Reinhold Schünzel take the leads in all the stories.

Next, a French/Belgian anthology from 1949 called Unusual Tales (Histoires extraordinaires à faire peur ou à faire rire...). There are four adaptations and a frame story. Everything is set in Second Empire France.

I gather this might allow some swipes at the recent Occupation? I confess to being shamefully clueless about 19th century French history the Napoleonic Wars, and had to go to Wikipedia to check the period the films set in, where it says "Historians in the 1930s and 1940s often disparaged the Second Empire as a precursor of fascism". Be that as it may, the frame story has Parisian policeman telling stories to educate or put the wind up a new recruit. The first one is a sort of proto-slasher movie spun out of De Quincey's essay "On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts". The remaining three stories adapt Poe - "The Tell-Tale Heart, "The Cask of Amontillado" (filmed in the actual Paris catacombs, maybe?), and "'Thou Art the Man'" (the online resources that say there are two De Quincey and only two Poe adaptations evidently aren't familiar with 'Thou Art the Man'!). I thought this was really quite impressive, very well-shot and atmospheric.

Because I ordered early there's a bonus disc in my copy of the documentary, with a third film. not as good as the others, to be honest but interesting. Yet another Poe adaptation, Titled Master of Horror (1965) it's actually a cut-down and dubbed version of a Spanish/Argentinian Poe anthology from 1960. The original had three stories, the US version only has "The Case of M. Valdemar" and "The Cask of Amontillado". They both seem overlong to be honest, at least in their dubbed versions. The screenplay is by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador who made two well-regarded horror films in Spain in the 1970s and also worked in TV, where he created the game show Un, dos, tres... responda otra vez - which the UK had as 3-2-1 for nearly a decade from 1978 onwards. Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin, incomprehensible clues, the format tweaked every year (there are quite a few episodes up on YouTube. The earliest ones are the most unhinged.).

I defy even C. Auguste Dupin to crack a 3-2-1 clue.

>40 housefulofpaper:

Your reference to Ted Rogers had me off on a thousand-word riff about unfunny, old-time comics with creepy, beady, watchful eyes. I deleted it lest I gave you all even more doubts about whether I'm still playing with a full deck (the younger me was right about Rolf Harris, though—creepy eyes!)

>40 housefulofpaper:

No, the translation is correct. That's some very generous bonuses for a single docu!

>41 alaudacorax:
I remember now, that the New Musical Express did an interview with Rolf Harris back in the '80s (long before everything came out and he was still firmly in the "adopted national treasure" camp) and began it with a reference to the unexpectedly psychotic gleam in his eyes when he wasn't wearing his glasses. I took it to be no more than an example of the "edgy" house style at the time.

>42 LolaWalser:
Thanks for confirming that the translation isn't wrong, or too blunt. And yes, as you say the special features are very generous - films you might go some way, or spend quite a lot, to acquire.

I've just been idly channel-hopping and I came across the second half of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer—can't remember if I was aware it was on telly again.

My memory of it is as quite good—much better than a lot of people were willing to allow for fantasy/horror programmes; but I was still a little surprised at how good an and powerful it was. No wonder it keeps turning up in literary studies books and journals.

Just looked it up. I was watching Part 2 of 'Becoming'.

>44 alaudacorax: Buffy is excellent. I've been rewatching sporadic episodes on Hulu.

Yes, I noticed Buffy is back on a (UK) satellite/cable channel but I missed the opportunity to watch from the beginning. I've caught quite a few episodes over the years, of course. I have seen some severe online dissatisfaction with the remastering done for the most recent Blu-Ray releases. Maybe I will look for old DVD box sets in charity shops, once life is more or less back to normal, and get into it then.

Talking of remastered Blu-Rays, the box set for season 8 of Doctor Who arrived this week. This is the first season 8, i.e. Jon Pertwee's second season, broadcast back in 1971.

This is the first season that I have solid memories of - not complete stories (I wasn't even four years old) but definite scenes that had been lingering at the very edge of memory, and gave me a definite frisson when I saw them again in the 1980s (a brief membership of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society gave me viewing access to some tortured nth generation videotapes of old shows well in advance of their eventual commercial release).

I couldn't stay away from the last story of the season, the folk horror classic The Daemons.

This is the time in the show's history when the Doctor is exiled to Earth (there are a few nods to it being set slightly in the future) and working with UNIT (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce - in the years before the UN had copyright lawyers, it seems!), essentially part of the British Army (they've since turned up in "new Who", of course) charged with protecting Earth against alien menaces. This is also the year that introduces the Doctor's nemesis or Professor Moriarty, the bad Time Lord calling himself the Master. He is behind all the alien invasions etc. in this season's stories. Subsequently he was used more sparingly.

That's the set up (it stems from a decision taken by a previous production team to make it more of an ensemble show, to take some of the burden off the regulars).

In this one, an ancient barrow (an iron(?) age man-made hill) named the Devil's Hump is being opened live on television. It's situated near the village of Devil's End where strange things have been happening, even an unexplained death in the churchyard. The local white witch is warning against opening the barrow, especially on this date (it's Beltane!). The Doctor is Initially dismissive of his assistant Jo's New Age-y concerns. However he quickly starts putting two and two together and rushes off with Jo to stop the dig, getting there just in time to get caught in the end of episode cliffhanger (naturally).

The Master is impersonating the local vicar and secretly heads a coven of devil worshippers. His plan is to literally raise the Devil - well not quite...the Devil is a powerful alien - a Daemon - from a race that looks like the traditional horned Devil and has guided human development (and whose appearance has influenced human beliefs and superstitions along the way). The Master is using the trappings of Satanism to generate "psionic energy" to raise the Daemon, whose power he wants for himself.

Stepping back from it, you can see that Nigel Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit informs much of the story (Kneale was apparently always furious at how much, and how often, Doctor Who quarried his work for themes, story structures, plots, even the ethos of the UNIT stories (especially in season 7)). And also Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End. The denouement has more of a flavour of Star Trek, in that the Daemon is one of those God-like beings that the show regularly features, but in the end behaves more like that other Star Trek cliche, the super-computer that cannot cope with a logical paradox and has a literal meltdown. (Curiously, the short-lived Star Trek cartoon of a couple of years later also had a story with a Devil or Satyr super-powered alien).

Noting the story's borrowings isn't meant to belittle it. There's so much that's good here: Roger Delgado's silkily evil Master. How the story touches on populism and Fascism as the Master uses these - in just a couple of scenes - to whip up more "psionic energy" from the villagers. Bok the gargoyle. Miss Hawthorn the white witch teaming up with and flirting with Sergeant Benton. Katy Manning's Jo Grant as the moral heart of the story. The menacing Morris Men. The money available for chase scenes with cars, motorbikes, and a helicopter. Spotting lantern-jawed actor John Owens (one of those actors who used to pop up in everything but you never knew his name) as one of the villagers, knowing Matthew Corbett (before he took over Sooty and Sweep from his father Harry) is one of the Devil worshippers...

>46 housefulofpaper:

My favourite quote from all of Doctor Who, "Sergeant! Chappie with the wings, five rounds!" Good old Lethbridge-Stuart!

>46 housefulofpaper:

Matthew Corbett: Sooty and Sweep, hmm. Now, had he been the son of whoever was responsible for Andy Pandy, then I could believe in him as a Satanist, no problem ...

YouTube hath given! Pete Walker's House of Mortal Sin with the glorious Sheila Keith. Very enjoyable, assuming one is the sort of unspeakable wretch to enjoy watching a deranged priest (Mervyn Johns) (Anthony Sharp) on a murder spree.

>49 LolaWalser:

Just can't watch horror films at the moment; I think all the signs of approaching spring are making me overly chirpy and cheerful. I'll get over it, and I've downloaded the film in case YouTube disappears it. But ...

Are you, perhaps, confusing Mervyn Johns and Anthony Sharp?

I think I must have seen this at some point as I always think Sharp and Sheila Keith look like brother and sister and they only appeared together three times and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have watched the other two and why should I connect them if I hadn't seen them together in something? Deep breath—sort of lost control of that sentence ...

>49 LolaWalser:, >50 alaudacorax:

Ever since we discussed House of Long Shadows, I've had this kink in my brain whereby every time Sheila Keith is mentioned I just HAVE to hunt up a clip of her singing that Verdi piece. Just glorious!

>50 alaudacorax:

Ooops, so I did, so I did...! Mille pardons... and right you are, they DO look alike! It's particularly striking here, and apt too... very much "birds of a feather flock to commit murder together" :))

Sheila Keith turned up on television this evening. A brief role in the Dick Emery vehicle Ooh...You Are Awful (Exec-produced by Launder and Gilliat, which shows the state of the British film industry in the early '70s, I suppose).

She's also here. I think this was her last role, in the Amicus spoof episode of the Steve Coogan series Dr Terrible's House of Horrible (horrible picture quality as befits a 13-year old YouTube clip).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xBCKX5Q4W4

lol @ "redevelopmentalisation"... it tripped off his tongue so lightly.

More Sheila Keith chez moi too--after the House of Mortal Sin, I discovered Pete Walker's The Comeback on the same channel, don't know how I missed it (half his movies are blocked to me now).

A few scenes made me jump out of my chair...

>54 LolaWalser:

I can still see it on YouTube, but I already have it on DVD. It's got a few shocks but it's not as transgressive as his films from earlier in the 1970s. It's also a reminder that Bill Owen did a lot more than Last of the Summer Wine.

(It's a weird thing and I might be fooling myself, but this is a film that just "looks like" 1978. I knew it was released in 1978 before I'd checked. There are other films and TV that have the same aura about them - Rollins' The Grapes Death for example. A very different and a different looking film, but somehow still "1978-y".)

Talking about YouTube, Stephen Poliakoff's Hidden City is on YouTube, it seems, but "not available in your country". You might have more luck.

I'm trying to build my savings up after buying a new boiler but, well, I have poor impulse control and the internet. Just ordered some Blu-rays:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8lJ6gLn8ZY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7H749jilZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppSb01QNBRE

>56 housefulofpaper:

Envious. There's only one there, Orlac, I've definitely seen (or definitely heard of, to be honest). The Last Warning looks particularly enticing ...

>53 housefulofpaper:

You've just had me wandering off on a roundabout journey ...

Dick Emery was yet another of those old times comics I wrote about recently with creepy, evil eyes belying (for me) their comic persona.

For some reason, though, Ooh... You Are Awful (doesn't seem to be a touchstone) has always stuck in my mind, and that got me thinking about Derren Nesbitt—'Sid Sabbath' in this—who always made a strong impression in his roles, but never seemed to build the successful career I expected. Granted, he was probably always going to be in supporting roles as a baddie, but still ...

So, naturally, I checked on IMDB to see what he was doing. And found that, just last year, he starred in a horror called The Haunting of Margam Castle. This is by one Andrew Jones, who has churned out twenty-seven horror films in the last nine years, all of which rate on IMDb way down around the three stars mark (oddly, before he started his horror career, he made two quite highly-rated films about homeless youngsters).

Now, Margam Castle has a significance for yours truly. It was within walking distance of my childhood home—a day's walk there and back, to be accurate—and I often wandered round the edges of the park with my dogs. Back in those days, though, they had these really tall, deer-proof stiles which were also dog-proof, so I never went in for a good explore. I did visit the grounds on occasion to go to game fairs or country shows, but again, taken up with the shows so never explored. And I've never been inside the house.

So, it's become a bit of a sore point with me that I've never properly visited Margam Castle. Every time I drive the M4 and pass it I resolve to visit soon. And the years (decades!) pass and I still never have.

So that's why I now find I really, really have to watch a horror film that only has an IMDb rating of 2.6/10 and it's all housefulofpaper's fault ...

ETA - The Haunting of Margam Castle has a handful of faces familiar from long ago horror films, so there's that nostalgia thing ...

And getting back to what I was about to post before that digression ...

>55 housefulofpaper:

Talking about Jean Rollin, I watched Lips of Blood last night.

He's such an odd film maker. The behaviour of main characters can, really, be a bit silly and unconvincing if you think about it too hard, and the dialogue doesn't seem much better—I suspect he regarded dialogue as a tiresome necessity. The plotting often doesn't make sense, and the acting can be pretty poor—when anyone is called upon to act—again, I suspect this was a minor consideration for Rollin. Yet the whole thing somehow manages to be poetic and absorbing to watch (not to mention the really quite beautiful casual nudity).

I did not come away thinking I'd watched a rubbish film, but I'm at a loss to sum it up in any meaningful way.

>58 alaudacorax: “...but I do like you.”

Dick Emery to The Haunting of Margam Castle.

>53 housefulofpaper: has a lot to answer for.

>59 alaudacorax:

And, as every other time I've watched a Jean Rollin, I forgot to check with my bird recordings. He seems to have a thing for the calls of rare night birds. Well, rare in the UK, anyway—I don't recognise them.

>59 alaudacorax:

A proper Gothic film, by the way: the ancient ruined castle, strange family secrets, possible ghost—it ticks plenty of the boxes.

>61 alaudacorax:

Oops—wrong film. I'd forgotten I tried to watch Two Orphan Vampires afterwards. One film too many and fell asleep about ten minutes in. And, on the off-chance anyone's interested, it was a Tengmalm's Owl (which hardly ever turns up in the UK; which was why I didn't know it).

And that's a whole Sunday morning, just disappeared through my fingers ...

>54 LolaWalser:

Can't get my head around the idea of Jack Jones as leading man in a horror film, somehow (or any film, really). Seems rather incongruous. I'm not sure 'very bland' isn't a contradiction in terms, but he always struck me as very bland.

The first few minutes are tense and intriguing enough that I'll watch it at some point, though.

>64 alaudacorax:
I think I remember Jonathan Rigby having similar reservations about the casting when he wrote up the film for English Gothic.

Margam Castle (the castle) looks incredible (the film, less so).

I have just listened to the recording of a Tengmalm's Owl on Wikipedia. Scientific name Aegolius funereus. I wonder if it's that "funereus" that attracted Rollin? Funnily enough, the examples of his comic book work that I've seen online are, in contrast to his films, dense with text.

>56 housefulofpaper:

VERY nice! Would love that Leni... (A little sad that Eureka raised their prices, I still have a fairly longish wishlist of their remaining DVD combos.)

>64 alaudacorax:

I didn't know who that was so, no preconceptions. His character doesn't matter very much in that respect, I think. Just a generic "straight arrow" lead in a horror. All interest is on the side of the villains.

>65 housefulofpaper: and others ...

Okay, I've probably mentioned this before, because it plays on my mind. And now that's just got worse:

The near-naked young women in outdoor shots in Jean Rollin films are always filmed beautifully, but I always worry a little that they might have been cold. I've just found this blog post -

https://requiemforjeanrollin.blogspot.com/2020/12/a-guest-post-by-gene-willow-fr...

I quote:
One detail about working with Jean Rollin that different actresses note in their interviews is that Jean loved to shoot during cold weather. And the real problem was that the roles often demanded that the actresses be naked or semi-naked.

I knew it! I don't know how the weather can look cold to me on screen but, somehow, those scenes never looked to me like warm summer nights. I just knew it!

So now Rollin films are going to be just as problematic for me as Naomi Watts's final scenes in whichever King Kong it was! I'm never going to be able to get the cold out of my head. Damn ...

Interesting blog, by the way, if you're into Rollin.

>67 alaudacorax:

I still haven't found out why Marie-Pierre Castel (half of Rollins' famous twins) went by the forename 'Pony', though; which was why I was reading that blog in the first place.

>67 alaudacorax:
Losing teeth and bits of vertebrae is quite a bit worse though!

There are lots of similar stories in the extra features and interviews on various Doctor Who DVDs. The recent release of Fury From the Deep, which got the full panoply of extras, despite no longer existing (it's a digitally-cleaned up domestic recording from a 1960s TV set plus new animation) has tales of filming in the sea off Margate in February.

It does make you understand the attraction of southern California as somewhere to film.

I watched Viy a couple of weekends ago. I think it's come up in conversation before. Soviet Russia's only horror film, getting greenlit as a literary classic. The extra features provide some background to the production, including how it was intended to be all shot on location in Ukraine but it ended up as a mixture of location and (rather obvious) studio (which gave it a curious 1940s air at odd moments, as if it were a lost Powell and Pressberger film).

The effects nearly all practical, I think. They have a feeling of stage illusion about them. They're used sparingly until the climax pf the film. It's nicely paced in that respect.

I haven't read Gogol's original story but this is apparently a faithful adaptation. The Blu-ray extras include a note that Mario Bava's Black Sunday is a loose adaptation of the same story.

As a bonus disc, this edition includes yet another version, Sveto mesto. This is a 1990 Serbian film from what was then still Yugoslavia. There are also surviving fragments of Soviet silent Gogol adaptations. I still have to watch all these.

Also watched Nosferatu in Venice the unofficial sequel to Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre. I think I rented it on VHS many years ago and gave up on it as a poor rip-off of the original.

Watching on blu-ray and not murky tape some of the shots of Venice are beautiful. I can appreciate this is different version of the vampire - more Byronic predator than tragic shut-in (to put it crudely) - even if Kinski's vanity is driving it (apparently the producers shot a lot of footage during the Carnival, with a double for Kinski before he joined the shoot. The double was bald, Vampyre style. Kinski arrived and refused to wear the teeth and bald wig. All the footage went to waste.)

I tried to watch charitably but it's a mess, really. There's a fairly thin story with some pulled-out-of-a-hat mythology (familiar from a lot of Euro Horror, if we're honest), some gory effects that remind the viewer this is an Italian hour film from the 80s, but which don't sit well with half-hearted attempts to recapture the mood of Herzog's film, and some scenes shot by Kinski himself, of the vampire just wandering about in the dawn light, which DO capture a little of that feeling but which have nothing to do with the story.

Christopher Plummer and Donald Pleasance turn up in it too, and Maria Cumani Quasimodo as an elderly Venetian princess. she's somebody of whom I knew nothing until I looked online a moment ago but she has a great, gaunt Gothic face.

>70 housefulofpaper:

Viy has been classed as folk horror. It occurred to me that it's also a haunted house movie (or haunted church to be strictly accurate). The haunted house as a movie genre goes right back, almost to the earliest days of cinema.

>70 housefulofpaper:

Damn, again. I'm half-sure Viy is another of those films I've bought and forgotten about. Or am I thinking of November? Or both?

I really must do some sorting out in the spare bedroom ... trouble is, it's misguided attempts at sorting and tidying that get these discs buried and forgotten in the first place ...

>58 alaudacorax:

I've just watched The Haunting of Margam Castle (closed the curtains), courtesy of CinemaParadiso (yep, I'm going to keep on plugging them).

I was expecting to find it really bad, but, though it's not very good, I think IMDb's 2.6/10 is actually unfair—I think 4 or 5 would be fair judgement.

The first hour or so (it's 81 minutes) was quite good. I'm pretty sure the director was familiar with Robert Wise's The Haunting, but it also had the feel of a good, British, TV, ghost story of forty years or so back. It was very atmospheric and dark and creepy.

Around the hour mark, I think Andrew Jones (director/screenplay) lost his grip on his story—got a bit silly with it. There was one place that really marked the change: the cast is stumbling round these dark corridors and something—a particulary physical ghost, then—grabs a woman from behind and starts dragging her away; there were three or four other people there but, instead of all piling in to help her, one chaps starts forward and another holds him back with 'too late, she's gone', when she was barely out of sight round the corner and not more than ten feet away. That was the first of several sillinesses. In particular, the sudden appearance of a copy of the Necronomicon* was just crashingly anachronistic. I think it wouldn't have been a particularly difficult bit of rewriting to give it a much more satisfying and sensible ending. In fact, he wouldn't even have had to change the ending, just got rid of a couple of the sillinesses on the way there. It would still have been a quite old-fashioned horror film, but it would probably have stopped all those ca 2.6 ratings on IMDb.

Anyway, I was very impressed with the house; and now I'm even more ashamed that I've never had a look at the place.

ETA - * He might usefully have substituted some business with an ancient copy of the Mabinogion.

>74 alaudacorax:

The storyline is a bit fractured and disjointed, but that's hardly unusual in current film and telly ...

Have we discussed Blade Runner here? I know I've seen it described as Gothic in the past, though I tend to think of it as 'scifi-noir', if there is such a thing. Anyway, it's always going to be (the director's cut, I mean—not the original cinema travesty) in my list of all time favourite films.

I've always been resistant to watching Blade Runner 2049, though—I could never understand how there could possibly be a sequel with Deckard in it without violating my understanding of the original film. I can't go into more detail about that without serious spoilers.

However, I have noticed the almost universal acclaim for the sequel—8/10 on IMDb, critics' score of 88% on Rotten Tomatoes (compared to the orginal's 90%), and I recently discovered Mark Kermode's YouTube channel, where he raved about it. So I watched it last night ...

... um, I watched the first half last night ...

There's a serious problem with the film industry that I'm daily becoming more and more worried about. The last two or three generations of film critics are really crap. Perhaps their sensibilities have become seriously blunted by watching all that crap cinema ... but that goes into a vicious circle—if you've got a whole industry of critics who consistently get things wrong, it's bound to have a really negative feedback on the quality of films getting made ... which is going to shred the brains of the poor critics who have to watch them ... and so on, round and round and round in circles.

You may be getting some inkling that I'm getting really sick of watching* uninspired, plodding, seriously over-financed sludge which has been praised to the skies by the critics. Of course, it could be that I'm wrong and all the critics are right, but I don't really believe that ...

Fleetingly last night I was seriously considering washing my hands of the whole business and confining myself to books for the rest of my life ...

I need to do something about all these ellipses ...

* Well, watching the first halves of, anyway.

>76 alaudacorax: I re-watch Blade Runner fairly frequently. It has a soothing effect on me. Like yourself I was apprehensive about watching Blade Runner 2049. I was expecting it to totally destroy the story and undermine my enjoyment of the original, which is a favourite of mine, if not my all time favourite movie.

When I watched 2049 I was relieved that it did no harm to the original, either in the story or in the music*. I have re-watched it once but am not inclined to watch it regularly.

My reaction to it reminds me of a Bill Bailey comedy routine in which he compares how British people measure happiness (and I can say we Irish do the same) with the way Australians measure happiness. When a British (or Irish) person is asked how things are, the most common response is, "Not too bad." An Australian would respond, "Awesome!" Bailey concludes that we measure our happiness by comparison to how much worse it could have been. I think that is a perfect description of my reaction to Blade Runner 2049. Alternatively I may just have lower standards.

*The music is nothing compared to the original but at least it did not try to outdo the original or totally change the tone.

E.T.A. The re-make of Total Recall was the biggest load of crap. The original film was such tongue-in-cheek fun there was no way a re-make was going to work. Of course, the original short story, We Can Remember it for you Wholesale, had the most fantastic ending.

>77 pgmcc:

Love that Bill Bailey story. I'd never thought of it before. I tend to say things like 'not too bad' myself. I suspect, though, that it's good old British 'apologeticism', if there is such a word. We don't like to reply 'awesome' just in case the person asking is about to tell us of all the latest misfortunes they've been afflicted by.

>76 alaudacorax: I too absolutely love the original Blade Runner (1982), esp. the Director's cut version. I try to re-watch it annually

As to Blade Runner 2049, well, I remember it was highly anticipated in the States. Many fans were apprehensive about how it would respect the original film. I note the French-Canadienne Director Denis Villeneuve publicly had stated that he too was deeply apprehensive about even taking on the film, knowing how strong the fan base are for the original.

The choice of Ryan Gosling was the first surprise to me, but he actually exceeded my expectations. The cast was international, the movie, though very long, moved beautifully and it was clear Director Villeneuve was saying : "see this in a theater" The amount of CGI was actually low, many of the sets were incredible.

The story itself, I admit could have been stronger, though I know that Villeneuve tried, he even managed to get out of retirement the screenwriter from the original Blade Runner (1982), Hampton Fancher.

Without giving too much away, I can say for certain the original opening scene in Blade Runner 2049 was indeed supposed to be in the original Blade Runner (1982), but Ridley Scott reportedly just didn't have the budget. So it's an incredible opening scene, one I suggest you re-watch it carefully.

My beef with Blade Runner 2049 is more with what it says---sometimes less is indeed more, and I found myself thinking, "ah you could of just left out some of the superfluous talk/dialogue".

The cinematography got Roger Deakins his first Oscar after numerous nominations, but no wins----he did cinematography for nearly all the Coen Brother films.

The music, while not as unique as that in the original film, was interesting to me. Not sure if I'll buy it, listen to it on Spotify.

Blade Runner for me is Film noir. Straddling Sci- and Speculative Sci-Fi, along with Philosophy (what is it to be human?).

It can be it's own thread... I've not even discussed some of the "Christ imagery" from Blade Runner (1982), the acting (Rutger Hauer, yes please!), and it's influence on other films. There's also the story...

>79 benbrainard8:

It's actually still in my machine while I decide whether I can steel myself to watch the second half. I just wasn't up for it, the evening just gone.

I can appreciate the spectacle; my problem is that I could write down the plot's developments so far in a fairly short sentence. Then, as so often with contemporary films, I'm left wondering if it's really likely that they are going to pack in lots of interesting stuff in the second half, given that they haven't already done so.

Also, I suspect that the first half would be a lot more intriguing and interesting to someone who hadn't seen the original.

Talking about the original (director's cut), the new one is forty-seven minutes longer. I'm pretty sure that's part of the problem—and is with so many contemporary blockbusters. If the studios imposed stricter time limits I'm sure it would force directors into more gripping story-telling. In fact, now I've written that, I realise I have some vague memories of the original being criticised for being 'over-long'!

>79 benbrainard8:

I looked on IMDb to see what else Roger Deakins has shot, because I recognised the name. The Coen Brothers' films, as you said. Michael Radford's 1984, which I saw in the cinema while I was studying the book for English "A" level. And a documentary short from 1979 about London's nightlife featuring some '80s faced before they were famous, some music videos (the "videos" with some money behind them were shot on film, of course).

I've got Blade Runner 2049 on disc but haven't watched it yet. I'm not sure what's putting me off. It could be the running time feels like too much of a commitment (but then when I watch a shorter, sometimes not vert good film, I feel obliged to go through the extras on the disc, and listen to the commentary (or commentaries plural!) afterwards.

Sveto mesto, (A Holy Place), the Serbian version of Viy is very good. Close to the Russian film (and presumably the novella) in many ways, but fleshing out the character of the Witch and making her an overtly sexual threat, in flashback sequences jealous, sadistic, and using - assaulting - the domestic staff. At the climax of the film, the panoply of vampires and gnomes etc, even Viy himself, are left out of this version of the story. It's a more grubby, sordid even, resolution that feels more in tune with '70s cinema. The accompanying booklet makes a stylistic connection with the Italian director Pupi Avati. Of his work, I've only seen The House of the Laughing Windows but I can definitely see some affinities between that film and Sveto pesto.

RIP Helen McCrory—died yesterday, sadly young. A familiar screen face to Brits at least, members of this group might remember her as a medium-stroke-witch in Penny Dreadful (oddly enough, when LT was throwing up touchstones for that it also offered Peaky Blinders, in which she also starred).

I've just been looking at her Wikipedia page, though, and was quite surprised to find she once played Doctor Frankenstein, in Frankenstein (2007) (I'm not even making the attempt to find a touchstone for that title). I've no memory of that, at all. IMDb only rates it at 4.7/10, but there are only 309 votes at the time of writing so I don't know that's enough to be trusted. From what I can find online, it seems to be firmly based on inspired by previous screen versions and hardly at all by the novel.

*

I got round to watching Tomb of Ligeia last night. I firmly put Poe out of my mind, determined to judge the film as a stand-alone artefact. Mixed feelings, though:

I had no trouble at all watching all the way through—it quite gripped me. I thought it was quite atmospheric, good to look at. And it had that nostalgic, old-fashioned horror film feel that I love.

On the other hand, it's not a film that stands up to too much thinking. The internal logic of the plot was rather awry and there was a 'patchwork' feel to it as if they'd written some of the scenes while they were filming, and had started out without a definite plot layed out. It didn't make a lot of sense. To the extent that I wondered if there were scenes missing; but IMDb gives it as 81 minutes and my version was a little over 78, so I suppose not.

Some of Vincent Price's acting left a bit to be desired, especially his business with the cat at the climax.

In the end, I think I'd give it a fraction on the good side of half marks. Just.

* Edited out the links to 'previous posts' as they didn't work and I'm quite unable to figure out what I was trying to link to.

>84 alaudacorax:

Oh, one scene I forgot to mention, and I really must.

There's a scene where Verden is having a conversation in the grounds with the surplus male, while Lady Rowena, who has been left alone in the creepy old abbey, sees the black cat make off with Verden's shades and chases after it, getting deeper and deeper into the more cobwebby and dark—and dangerous—realms of the place. But as the camera stays with Lady R, we are hearing Verden's monologue out by the grave.

I had to watch the damn scene at least four times! I was getting so gripped by what I was watching that I kept missing most of what Verden was saying! It was quite difficult and I don't know how the hell people managed in cinemas back in the day ...

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (US title Who Slew Auntie Roo?) was the next Curtis Harrington film I watched after Ruby. It's hard to say much about it without spoilers, I think. The online reviews note it's a late addition to the Grande Dame Guignol genre: Shelley Winters stars as Auntie Roo, an American former actress, mourning her husband and her daughter, living alone in a big house outside London and preyed upon by the domestic staff and a phoney clairvoyant. And could easily be the put-upon heroine of the picture, if we didn't see her putting a mummified corpse to bed in the house's nursery in the opening scene.

The reviews also describe the film as a retelling of Hansel and Gretel. Well, yes, in part, but sympathy is switched between Winters and Mark Lester and Chloe Franks as brother and sister orphans who come into her orbit. In fact it often feels like an early '70s rather creepy children's film (like The Amazing Mr Blunden - the director of which, Lionel Jefferies, has a role in this) but "a bit too nasty", "a bit too cynical" for kids (not really though, I've just got old and censorious, ha ha).

Another thing I watched - I finally worked through the extras in the BFI DVD set Jan Švankmajer : The Complete Short Films which includes a short film Johanes Doktor Faust (1958), directed by Emil Radok. This was the first film Švankmajer worked on. It's a fairly straightforward record of the Faust legend as told through traditional puppet theatre. But very effective as movie spectacle and the marionettes certainly have an uncanny element to them.

Next was a short film called Bella in the Wych Elm, from 2017. Like Borley Rectory, the subject matter is a piece of 20th Century British creepiness that has inspired more than one film adaptation (ditto books, etc.). Briefly, in 1943 some boys in woodland in the West Midlands (they were actually trespassing on the grounds of an estate belonging to the local Lord, as if it as the Middle Ages) found a female human skeleton forced into the bole of a tree. The body's hand was found nearby. The victim as never identified but two years later, graffito appeared in Birmingham: "Who put Bella down the Wych Elm - Hagley Wood" which reignited the investigation and led to several theories: that "Bella" was a murdered sex worker, or a Nazi agent, or the victim of a ritual occult killing. The case was never solved, and has become a local legend, a piece of modern folklore. The graffito has reappeared from time to time in the ensuing decades, and refined into "Who put Bella in the Wych Elm".

The film is about 36 minutes long, black and white and (the director, Tom Lee Rutter, admits) made with zero budget. The footage is shot to look older than the 1940s, and treated to simulate distressed old nitrate stock often, it seems, either about to burst into flames or succumb to mould. I was reminded of Borley Rectory (despite the differences in technique - years of careful animation versus what was essentially guerrilla filmmaking). I saw an extract from a review, online, that described it as "a Midlands Haxan", and that captures something of its ambience too. Yet another review cites Wisconsin Death Trip which is probably nearer the mark, both in that Bella in the Wych Elm doesn't go full into supernaturalism, and that it stresses it's regional specificity. It's a Midlands (specifically, a Black Country) story. The voiceover narration by "Tatty" Dave Jones (a member of ska-punk band The Cracked Actors, I learned from the last-mentioned review) is pure Black Country.

The Blu-Ray I have (from the filmmakers via their Bandcamp) is apparently slightly re-edited from the original 2017 release, and remastered. The film appears three more times, re-edited as a silent movie, with three different musical soundtracks.

>88 housefulofpaper:

Oh dear. I know about this story and I can't, for the life of me, remember why. YouTube video? Book? Ah, there's a whole slew of YT videos on it—might have seen one or two of them. And there's a Wikipedia page that I've definitely previously read. So frustrating: I know all about this and I can't remember where, when or why. Have we discussed it here in the past?

This is one of the curses of the IT Age; your brain gets overwhelmed with so many scraps of random information. My brain was much more ordered back in the days of radio and TV schedules and the local library. A local antique-cum-junk shop—a brick built, corner building—got hit by a car some years back and completely collapsed. I remember passing and seeing this horrendous jumble of bricks and brasswork, twisted prints and smashed furniture, china and the gods know what else. That's what my brain is like in the IT age.

>89 alaudacorax:

Grandma's attic? The best place to rummage about. :)

Well, I don't recall hearing of this intriguing story before, if that's an indication of anything.

a female human skeleton forced into the bole of a tree.

Skeleton, huh. So many questions...

I was surfing through Madelen's "fantastique" section when I noticed the name of Claude Seignolle, which Andrew brought up somewhere here. This was a telefilm called "Roc ou la Malédiction" from 1973, and based on Seignolle's story Le diable en sabots (The devil in clogs). Unfortunately I can't figure out a way to make captures from INA's streaming (screen goes dark when paused), but you can see some photos here, same resolution as Madelen's upload:

http://php88.free.fr/bdff/image_film.php?ID=9424

The photos don't convey just how great is the (story's) titular devil, how terrifying, uncanny, ominous. Never heard of the actor before so had to look him up: Claude Titre, born in Morocco, played the lead in the TV series based on pulp adventure hero Bob Morane (way before my time but I did read the later comics as a kid). There's a vid on YT from the mid-sixties where he talks about playing Bob Morane but it's nothing like what he looks and sounds in this telefilm.

It's such a pity he doesn't seem to have been asked to do more horror!!! That face, gesticulation, delivery, irisless eyes--just a perfect evil fairy king or werewolf etc. I looked through his cinematography and only Wuthering Heights comes even close, as far as I can tell (he played Heathcliff).

It's a very modest cinematography for someone with such apparent talents--striking looks, good acting--wonder why. There's very little about him online I could quickly find; he died at mere 54 yo of cancer (but I saw a--unsourced--comment somewhere saying AIDS).

Anyway, it seems this film was or is available on MUBI so may be worth looking for on that or other streaming services if you use them. Highly recommended.

P.S. Dang! So close... He DID play in another horror--a werewolf story!!!--but not, as far as I can tell, THE werewolf. Hugues-le-loup, based on a story by Erckmann and Chatrian.

>91 LolaWalser:
Re. Claude Seignolle - yes, he's one of the authors in that "other titles available" list in the back of my French host's 1970's paperback copy of Malpertuis. I was thinking about it just recently, because a US publisher has started bringing out Jean Ray's fantastique works in new English translations (come to think of it, there were some Erckmann-Chatrian titles in the house as well.)

Just had a look at 7 minutes of a Bob Morane episode on YouTube. Looks like fun, but my French is still a long long way from being up to the job of following the dialogue. And Claude Titre obviously nothing like the devil in it (I thought there was something vaguely familiar about his face...could I perhaps be thinking of Jean Marias? - who did, of course, play a kind of werewolf in La Belle et la Bete).

>90 LolaWalser:
Reading >88 housefulofpaper: back in light of your comment, I fear I've unintentionally mislead with some clumsy writing. "Bella" was killed in the woods, or (it's assumed) nearby, and her body hidden in the tree. When she was discovered, she had been reduced to a skeleton. The discovery was estimated to be a couple of years after her death.

>92 housefulofpaper:

Ahh, I see--of course I went for the maximum drama, picturing someone actually forcing a skeleton into the tree. :)

Poor Bella. Well, you know what the stats say--family or a family friend, most likely.

Funny you should mention Marais, one of the few bits about Titre I could find (must say his surname doesn't help googling any) was that he was enthralled as a youngster by Jean Marais. Yeah, they do have something similar about the features... that chiselled look.

Too bad I can't somehow illustrate the glowering, demonic persona of the blacksmith... maybe if I tried with my phone? Let's see if YouTube will let me upload a few seconds even...

I started my "Karloff at Columbia" Blu-Ray set with The Black Room (1935). Most of the films in this set are going to ne "mad scientist" pictures, but The Black Room is a "proper" Gothic...in the sense that it's a historical melodrama involving a family curse, a good twin and an evil one...oh, lots of Gothic tropes (or cliches). Listing too many would practically end up as a plot summary. I'd never seen this film before and if I've read about it (I assume it's covered in American Gothic) I had forgotten all about it. And I think my viewing benefited from that, so I won't give away anything here. Although when you watch it it'd not so much that you don't know how it will end, but the route it will take to get there. It's all economically set up in the first 15 minutes or less, and is all over in little more than an hour.

I will say, though, with the warning that's it's something of a, that a dog has quite a pivotal role, and those scenes seemed to me, to evoke not so much a Radcliffean Gothic, as the very early days of silent cinema (I'm not even thinking of Rin Tin Tin but even earlier, before US film production had moved to Hollywood, and Cecil Hepworth's Rescued by Rover could be "possibly the only point in film history when British cinema unquestionably led the world" (Michael Brooke, BFI Screenonline, quoted in Rescued by Rover's Wikipedia entry).

This film earned a glowing review from Graham Greene, before he was a full-time novelist and working as a film critic for, I think it was, the New Statesman. He invoked Mrs Radcliffe in his praise of the film. It was also reportedly Boris Karloff's favourite film up to that time (at last according to the studios publicity machine!) - This I learned from the commentary by Jonathan Rigby and Kevin Lyons...who also mention as a piece of trivia a little local (to me history). Apparently there used to be a cinema in Reading, next to Jackson's (one of those old fashioned "Grace Bros" department stores. In fact it managed to keep trading until just a few years ago) and the cinema manager rented a shopfront with just a small spyhole in the window through which one could see a recreation of the oubliette from the film, the Black Room itself...and a note saying "you've seen the Black Room, now go next door and see it furnished by Jacksons!"

They also point out a resemblance between Karloff and Jeremy Irons (prompted I think by Karloff playing twins in this film and Irons' similar dual role in Dead Ringers - but yes, now they've said it, I can see it).

>95 housefulofpaper:

It astonishes me that films can still show up that I know nothing about. I mean, you can't watch everything, of course, but, given my interests, you'd think I'd have seen all of Karloff by now ... and Lugosi, Cushing, Christopher Lee ...

Talking about Lee: watched the last half-hour of The Battle of the River Plate with a meal yesterday. Lee in a 'comic foreigner' role. Didn't really work—he just looked too dangerous.

you'd think I'd have seen all of Karloff by now ... and Lugosi, Cushing, Christopher Lee ...

Funny coincidence! Recently I saw a movie with Karloff I not only had never seen before, I didn't know he was in it (I had known OF it) until a chance glimpse of something online. And then I thought, "nooo, must be a mistake, what would he be doing in that story" (for I knew the story the movie's based on).

Up for a puzzle before hitting Google? :)

It's from 1946, in colour. Title in spoilerfont for the impatients: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

It's a smallish role but perfect for Karloff and made the movie for me.

>96 alaudacorax:
The other films in the set are The Man They Could Not Hang, The Man With Nine Lives, Before I Hang, The Devil Commands and The Boogie Man Will Get You. Only that last one rang a (small) bell, but I haven't seen it.

The discs, by the way, include some radio dramas from the '40s as extras, including breaks in the story to promote the sponsor's wares (this used to seem quaint, but it's exactly what YouTubers are doing right now...only it's for Liptons Tea back then, rather than for Squarespace).

>97 LolaWalser:
No, I couldn't think what it might have been, so I peeked. That film must have had showings on British television since I have been around but I don't recall it even being on in the background. I have a reason to look out for now (and maybe more chance of finding it: the success how UK satellite TV channel Talking Pictures TV has encouraged other channels to delve back into their archives. "Great! Movies Classic" - a recently-rebranded Sony movie channel - is currently showing The Deadly Affair - an adaptation of John Le Carre's Call for the Dead with James Mason as a renamed George Smiley (rights issues, of course). Of course it could be a case of the big boys trying to run the small player out of business).

>98 housefulofpaper:

I posted a pic from the film over in Silent Screen. It's worth watching--not only is Karloff delightfully menacing, it's partly set in a pulp fiction publisher's, with blown-up covers of pulp fiction--very avant-1960's-pop!

The Man With Nine Lives and The Devil Commands don't ring a bell; the rest I have between two Karloff collections (plus other). I really want to get a copy of The Man Who Changed His Mind (I think I mentioned it here before--creepy and zany).

By the way, this, The Veil, may be of interest to Karloff completists, although I'm sorry I can't say it's great:

https://www.librarything.com/work/17293002/book/185605048

It was meant to rival something like the Twilight Zone, an anthology series not only introduced by Karloff, but in which he appeared in a different role each time. Only ten episodes were made and, another possible point of interest, they do feature occasionally some interesting names--Patrick Macnee, Niall McGinnis...

Unfortunately, while they try to be supernatural and horrorish, they are rather slow and boring. But there it is.

>97 LolaWalser:

Now you've set me off on one of my wild tangents. I have fond memories of long, long ago ('60s or even earlier) really loving a TV series featuring the title character of that film. Just been on IMDb (may the gods rot their latest redesign) and I can't find any trace of it. I can even see the lead actor in mind's eye, but I'm damned if I can remember his name or anything else he starred in so I can look it up.

As I said, a wild tangent and nothing to do with the Gothic. Apologies.

ETA - My World and Welcome to It ... not quite as early as I thought. Still a tangent, though.

>98 housefulofpaper: - The other films ...

These films blur together in the memory over time. I'm sure I've seen most of them; but I'm not sure I've seen any particular one.

And thanks: I like James Mason; I like Le Carrè; don't remember I've ever heard of film or book; so I shall look into both.

Lately I'm discovering so many films I have no memory of that I'm beginning to wonder if it's just a case of my memory failing me ...

>100 alaudacorax:

Just been on IMDb (may the gods rot their latest redesign)

Awful, isn't it! Every time I think, maybe I'm just getting too old for websites changing, but this really is bad.

Never heard of that series. Thurber was a legend in his time and nowadays almost no one knows him (or reads him). To be honest, I never got what it was people saw in his drawings.

Oops, sorry for the banter from me too.

>102 LolaWalser:

Actually, you wouldn't believe the length of that tangent in >100 alaudacorax:. Sometimes I get some niggling little something in my mind and I just can't be at peace until I've figured it out, and the right way of going about it never occurs to me at the time!

After fruitlessly racking my brains for the title, and then the lead actor's name, and finally for something else I remembered seeing him in so I could look him up in that, I dredged out of the depths of my mind that I'd seen him in a clip in The Celluloid Closet. I dug that out of the spare room and watched the whole of that (well, I had to finish it, having got that far in—and this was in the daytime when I should have been doing other things) to find him in what turned out to be a Frank Sinatra vehicle called The Detective. Checked that on IMDb to find he was William Windom. Scoured his page to finally find the title of the TV show.

That was yesterday. Woke up this morning and one of the first thoughts in my mind was, "Why didn't you look up Thurber's entry on IMDb?" Must have been a bad day, yesterday ...

I've seen the first three Karloff "Mad Scientist" pictures: The man they could not hang, The man with nine lives, and Before I hang. They're short films (Before I Hang only just makes it over an hour) and the feel of the narratives is closer to the radio suspense dramas of the same vintage, I think, than the contemporary later Universal horrors.

There are similarities across the films, to the extent that they can fairly be described as variations on a theme, but the plotting in all of them is pretty clever and Karloff gives properly differentiated performances and with notably different make-ups - nothing eerie, just different wigs, body language. Very different to Lugosi's performances for Monogram. And none of the characters are simply evil, so (as one of the commentary tracks note) the viewer's sympathies are initially with Karloff and can switch back even as things are going wrong (i.e people are starting to die!).

There's an element of what we's now call techno-thriller to these films too, as they are extrapolations from things at the edge of science as it was 80 years ago, to the extent that the ethics-challenging breakthroughs of the first two films are now real-life and indeed standard medical techniques.

>103 alaudacorax:
My world and welcome to it - I don't remember it on British TV but somehow did get an interview with Windom served up to me on YouTube not so long ago. One of his favourite roles apparently. I remembered him as one of those other Star Fleet captains who would occasionally turn up on Star Trek and make Kirk look better by comparison. And he would keep turning up in various roles in other US TV shows of course.

>105 housefulofpaper: Ah, but that was a Star Trek episode that is considered by many (at least here in the US), to be amongst the top ten of all of the original series:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708461/

It was quite a frightening episode!

>105 housefulofpaper:
And here too, I don't doubt. I Although when I first saw Star Trek I was so young that I couldn't really make any critical judgement as to any particular episode's quality (unless it had to much lovey-dovey stuff, of course!). There's actually a useful online resource for BBC TV and Radio schedules (it was called BBC Genome Project but I've learned today that it's been incorporated into a newer site that links on online programmes - if they are available that way). Anyway, the point is that I found out from this site, that I could have first seem The Doomsday Machine in 1972, another chance in 1974, again in 1979 (and apparently only one showing in the '80s - the week I started work).

It took me this long to notice that Donald Pleasance appeared in the Halloween movies, so I finally worked up the courage to see them (on a bright weekend morning). The first two, that is. A strange combo of unpleasantness and tedium, mostly, although I liked Pleasance's usual rabitty performance.

>107 housefulofpaper: thank you, I've been perusing the BBC online program (programmes?). Very interesting. I was only about age 9-10 when I saw the above episode that had William Windom. It made quite an impression. It's one of the episodes I can watch even now...and still a bit of a shocker. Online fandom mention how you also see parts of the Enterprise that you wouldn't have seen prior, esp. engineering related and its shuttle port area. It must have been a rerun of course, since I was born in 1968, and watched this probably in mid-to-late 1970s.

Now I've saved this BBC link, and will explore it. It seems to call the area I'm using the BBC Programme Index.

Cheers.

>109 LolaWalser: Ok, confession time, I've never seen any of the Halloween, (1978) movie(s), so you'll have to let me know if they're worth it!

>111 benbrainard8:

Heh, so I'm not quite the last person never to have seen them! Hmm, as to worth it--depends, I guess, if you have any curiosity about them, given the pop culture status? If yes, then I'd say at least to try the first one. Carpenter's direction is noticeably better than the whoever did the second one's, and there's by now an interesting "period" feel to the picture--American suburb, long tinny cars, cozy neighbourhood in the 1970s, the ritual of Halloween munchies and marathon watching of old horror movies (I must find "The Thing")...

Curiously, the second movie takes place on the same evening of the first one (although Jamie Lee Curtis reappears as a blonde with a different hairdo--funny service to get in an ambulance on the way to the hospital :)) so there's some justification in watching them as one story. The gore is upped in the second one, but overall, not the worst I've seen. But, there really isn't much of anything else besides shocks and gore, so if that's offputting, there's not much to recommend them.

>112 LolaWalser: - ... there's not much to recommend them.

It would seem so: I have a definite memory of seeing the first one, supposedly the best; I have tiny bits of memories of Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasance in it—not much more than images, really; but I'm damned if I can remember anything of the storyline. Says it all, really.

When anyone mentions JLC, The Fog is still the first film to mind for me—in my opinion, much better work on Carpenter's part. But then I've always preferred 'proper' horrors to slashers ... perhaps I'm just biased.

ETA - And when I first saw The Fog it stayed in my mind. I'm sure I could have given you a pretty complete synopsis any time from then onwards.

But...Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The odd one out of the franchise, when John Carpenter et al thought the original story had been told and maybe "Halloween" could be an anthology series of stand-alone stories. The one with a story from Nigel Kneale (although he had his name taken off the credits before release. It does reflect his themes of deep time and cosmic horror, themes that he seems, particularly through the Quatermass teleplays, to have hit upon independently of H. P. Lovecraft. Admittedly they come out rather more Pulpy here, but better then the film's initial reception (and Kneale's disowning) would lead one to believe.

>113 alaudacorax:

Story goes, "madman escapes from asylum, goes on a murder spree".

I just remembered there was a scene of genuine humour--when he shows up to the next victim like a ghost, wearing a sheet and her (now dead) boyfriend's glasses over it.

>114 housefulofpaper:

Nigel Kneale! Got me in two words. Requested. Sad that he wasn't happy with the result, wonder why?

>114 housefulofpaper:

Oddly enough, don't think I've ever heard of that. I'll watch out for it.

ETA - Couldn't find it on CinemaParadiso. Turned out, it's '3' not 'III' in the UK ... who makes these decisions?

> 116

My recollection from the '70s and '80s, which was when I first became aware of such things, was that it was always quite fluid. Whatever the title actually was on screen, whether it was a "3" or a "III" on the marquee, or in the local paper's review, depended on what was available or (for the papers) how the typesetter felt at the time.

Halloween Three/III/3 has arrived but I'm too tired to pick it up today...

I started watching the extras in my Hammer films set (from Studiocanal, 21 films), beginning with those on Dracula Prince of Darkness. Barbara Shelley and Francis Matthews were interviewed! The gem of the bonuses is the short private film of the filming, shot by Matthews' brother Peter Shelley--whose name I knew only because I had just seen the Doctor Who story "Four to Doomsday", in which he appears as Persuasion--and get this, in 1997 they gathered Lee, Barbara Shelley, Matthews and I forget who else to comment on that film of the filming. Mostly it was the final scene, when Dracula sinks under ice. Turns out Lee's stuntman went under, not Lee himself... :)

Thanks for the tip to watch Halloween III, I quite liked it. It's basically a ripoff of The terror of the Autons, no? I didn't much care for the hero, although I suppose he's adequate; the effects and the look of the movie were, I thought, excellent.

Made a mistake of going to the IMDb to look up how they credited Kneale (they don't) and noticed the abysmal rating over there, all due to whiny manbabies apparently not being able to put up with the lack of the dull psycho from the original... God I hate them so much.

>119 LolaWalser:

If anything, Terror of the Autons "borrowed" from Nigel Kneale, and he was recycling some of his own ideas for Halloween III. In fact Doctor Who took a lot from Kneale's Quatermass scripts (especially the Jon Pertwee era exiled-to-Earth stories), something he was apparently acutely aware of and quite resented (but apparently his animus towards the show went back to its earliest days, when the sound design on the historical story Marco Polo scared his young children).

To be fair to IMDb (but not the users posting reviews on it!) Nigel Kneale asked for his name to be removed from the film's credits. He was by all accounts a bit spiky, and was increasingly so with age (I just checked the venerable age he'd reached by 1982: sixty. Hmm).

To go back to Kneale (and/or Carpenter) recycling his ideas, I think there are bits of Quatermass II (alien invaders disguised as a factory and the "company town" of Winnteron Flats providing employees, plus the mind-controlled security guards, is a fairly close analogue to Santa Mira and the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory) and Quatermass/The Quatermass Conclusion (the fictional stone circle "Ringstone Round" was Stonehenge itself in the original scripts, and the "Huffity, puffity, Ringstone Round" rhyme has its echo in the "Silver Shamrock" jingle). Quatermass never had a "Bond villain" type antagonist though, so yes, Conal Cochran = The Master. (But within the world of Doctor Who, i think Harrison Chase from The Seeds of Doom is the most Bond-villain-ish villain).

But thinking about Dan O'Herlihy, who play Cochran of course, I was looking at the list of his acting credits. He was in David Rudkin's Artemis 81 just prior to this film. I can't remember if we've ever discussed it here. Have you managed to see it? The DVD came out (in the UK) years ago, when Penda's Fen seemed destined to be forever unobtainable, but now Artemis 81 is out of print and the unobtainable one. It's avowedly Gothic, so comfortably within the scope of this group.

>120 housefulofpaper:

Never heard of Artemis 81, but the DVD cover on IMDb looks suspiciously reminiscent of The Seventh Seal.

>120 housefulofpaper:, >121 alaudacorax:

No, I don't recall Artemis 81 although I remember we mentioned Rudkin. I really want to see that now, I thought O'Herlihy's villain was excellent, way beyond the brief of the movie. I wish they didn't make these things so hard to find--a box set would be so nice, if they absolutely won't be reissuing the individual films...

Re: the Autons-H3 links; I was just thinking in terms of chronology, what came first to the public eye, should have phrased that better but I didn't know Kneale had done the story first , is it available to see?

Am I wrong in wishing this were a British production? Perhaps Halloween makes it more suitable for the American setting, and possibly the effects are so good thanks to the American money, but... while relatively well-done, I think it suffered from something present in many American films of this type--a dullness in-between "major" scenes. It's like all American films incorporate popcorn breaks and advertising slots, you're almost expected to look away. Brits are better at filling the "lulls" between pure action with interesting business. At least I think they would have been here.

Still, not a bad movie at all, pace IMDb's gremlins.

>122 LolaWalser:
Artemis 81 is on YouTube! although the uploader says there's about 4 minutes missing from somewhere in the middle. Surprisingly this isn't a DVD rip, but an off-air recording from the 1981 broadcast. A word of warning - the non-naturalistic dialogue comes over as terribly stilted in places, and it's almost three hours long.

I hadn't considered John Carpenter might have been watching Doctor Who on PBS. Yes, he could have done. I even saw some myself on my only trip to the States (Family holiday Easter 1981). It was Underworld (usually voted the worst story ever!) with a special intro & recap narrated by Howard da Silva.

I didn't mean to imply that there was an Ur-Terror of the Autons written by Kneale. Rather that he had come up with a set of original themes (at least, original in film and TV drama and, where they overlap with H. P. Lovecraft's ideas, almost certainly developed independently). And then he felt (with some justification) that Doctor Who kept going back to his scripts for ideas, dramatic set-ups, almost like remixes of an original track.

I think you had the Quatermass stories on DVD? Once you're aware of it, you can see where they have been used as "inspiration" (I've just thought of two examples from a bit later in Doctor Who history: Noah in "The Ark in Space" infected by the Wirrn, and the Antarctic scientists infected by the Krynoid in "The Seeds of Doom"; and Carroon in The Quatermass Experiment (although yes, only the first third of the original TV production still exists, so you have to supplement it with the Brian Donlevy film or the 2005 live version).

>121 alaudacorax:

Yes, but I'm not sure it's intentional. There are a lot of things in the script and the design and maybe not all fully developed or clear. Reading up on David Rudkin it seems that themes reoccur in different works, whether for stage or screen (or other media?). I wonder if you have to see it all, to get the full picture - to see it all as one work.

There's a stronger relation to Vertigo, of all things. The extra features on the DVD tell how this film was made when several of Hitchcock's films were tied up in litigation of some kind and could not be seen. The director got hold of a copy in France (I think) and made lightning sketches of important scenes for reference, while surreptitiously viewing the film on a Steenbeck film editor.

>122 LolaWalser:
Am I wrong in wishing this were a British production? Perhaps Halloween makes it more suitable for the American setting

Halloween was still a thing in the '70s/80s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uzb1l2smEhk
but I don't remember much beyond school organising apple bobbing (unsanitary, a lot of kids' drool in the water with the apples. Awful.) But Bonfire Night was definitely bigger. That's reversed now (partly I think because fireworks are available right through the year for various religious festivals, extrovert's birthday celebrations, seeing in the new year...bad news for cats and dogs).

I think I've got over that feeling of inferiority that was a given for most the the 20th century, that Hollywood will always produce a better product than the UK. Maybe a lingering after effect is not seeing a flat TV-series like exposition scene for what it is. A bit of the glamour still clings to it.

>18 housefulofpaper:

Reading through this thread (no, I can't remember why), I'm surprised I've never mentioned the 'castle' in >18 housefulofpaper:, from the short, The Errand. It's been puzzling me for a while. I can't find any information on it and an image search throws up nothing.

I put 'castle' in inverted commas because the thing is just unconvincing. It looks like a fairly modern build, perhaps some rich type's project in the vein of Castell Coch back home. But, whereas the latter looks like a fairy-tale castle, this thing looks like they got an architect who'd only ever built factories. It looks like a crematorium that got over-ambitious. Paradoxically, it looks to me like a perfect setting for a horror story. I remember we discussed here the house used for filming The Haunting. That place, in reality, looked quite beautiful, but was supposed to be weird and forbidding because it was built by an evil character. This place would have suited the film down to the ground. It is just so 'wrong', somehow.

And I just haven't been able to find out what or where it is. Anybody know?

>125 alaudacorax:

Not a full answer I'm afraid. The Short Sharp Shocks accompanying booklet has a short reminiscing essay from David McGillivray, and he describes it only as "an abandoned Victorian folly in North London".

Architecturally, it reminds me of somewhat of Brock Barracks, which fronts onto Reading's Oxford Road. Built in 1881 in "Fortress Gothic Revival style" (thanks, Wikipedia) it was still used (albeit by the Territorial Army) when I was growing up.

>124 housefulofpaper:

that Hollywood will always produce a better product than the UK.

Noooooooo, this is so untrue!! Seriously! Throwing money on effects is useless without a good story and good acting.

Which is why Doctor Who lasts as a real cultural institution, while the US sci-fi series of the same age are tiresome garbage now when not completely forgotten. What was that thing DW competed against, Buck Rogers? Unwatchable.

Thanks for the tip about Artemis, better look it up ASAP. And yes, I can easily see where Quatermass was hugely influential on many things.

Finally got round to watching Let The Right One In (2008). Very mixed feelings on this one.

I thought it was a very good film. I was absorbed by it, and held all the way through. At the same time, it wasn't really my kind of thing and I don't imagine I'll watch it again.

The thing is that it wasn't really a horror film.It seemed so very realistic. Even the supernatural element seemed matter-of-fact and almost un-supernatural. It seemed to be very much about real people in our world, and the nasty things that happened to them didn't, in essence, differ much from the car accidents or violent muggings we (and some of the characters) read about in the news.

In the end, I thought it was rather bleak, even the ending when I thought it over; because the lad, Oskar, seemed fated to become the old chap who was looking after Eli the vampire in the earlier part of the film.

ETA - '... looking after ...'? An assistant? A servant? A slave?

> 127
Somebody quoted Terrance Dicks (Doctor Who script editor all through Jon Pertwee's run, then noveliser of many of the "Classic Who" scripts) online today. "What you need is a good, strong, original idea. Of course, it doesn't have to be your good, strong, original idea..."

>128 alaudacorax:
I think you've put your finger on why I haven't watched Let The Right One In yet. Most of my viewing has been if not escapist, then tending towards the cheesy or nostalgic.

I've largely shied away from anything that demands any degree of emotional involvement. I'm not sure why, it doesn't coincide with the pandemic. Just becoming fundamentally less serious as a person, perhaps.

Plus, subtitles don't allow you to "slack off" and half-follow the story for a few minutes while you do something else (another and hopefully short-term excuse is that I've lost the remote control for my Blu-ray player. Curses!)

>127 LolaWalser: Hear, hear !

I love watching British & European movies and television series, something which is now much easier to do because of Netflix streaming services.

Only a few American television shows have ever stood the test of time, but that's primarily because they've excellent writing, story-telling them behind them: thinking Star Trek (1967-1969) and TV series, M*A*S*H* (1972-1983).

The Doctor Who shows are really interesting, and I'm talking from the earlier shows right up to the new ones. Excellent writing those and often worth a re-watch.

And movies, sigh, don't even get me started...

>128 alaudacorax: I'm in total agreement, this Let the Right One In was sad and thoughtful, but I don't think I could ever watch it again. I am glad that I finally got myself to watch it though. I'd been so scared of the few pictures I'd seen from scenes, that it took a very long time to finally view it. It was sweet in a morbid fashion, too.

>130 housefulofpaper: - ... escapist ...

I think you've put your finger on it, there. Let The Right One In seems to me to be rather out on its own, not really that near the classic horror genre, which is quite definitely escapist—supernatural elements, exotic locations, other times—not really near the slashers—though sharing the realistic, 'it could happen to you' tone—and much nearer the straight 'Drama' category; which I think can't, by definition, be escapist.

>132 benbrainard8: nailed it with 'sad and thoughtful'. That's not what I get from, say, one of the better Hammers (or a later slasher!); that's drama.

Incidentally, I was pondering the significance of the title (seems to be identical in Swedish unless there is some cultural nuance lost in translation). I didn't get anywhere. Perhaps it carries more weight in the novel?

>131 benbrainard8:

Oh, I certainly didn't mean that there isn't fabulous American TV!, I was thinking only of the type of show such as Doctor Who, cheap stuff for kids... I think one has to go back to some pre-war serials to find something as likeable as DW, and even then good writing is scarce.

>133 alaudacorax:

Interesting, I never think of horror as escapist but that's probably because I'm hard put to see something like the Hammer movies, or the classic Universals, as horror pure and simple. They don't really terrify us anymore, do they?

But something like Let the right one in, or The orphanage, for example, seem to me genuinely terrifying and therefore truly are "horror". The exorcist, Halloween (I'm running out of examples as I actually avoid "real" horror) as well.

>134 LolaWalser:

Now you've thrown all my ideas into disorder.

I think we've got a problem of terminology, wherein films that surely belong in differing genres are all classified as horror.

With Let The Right One In, the scary bits, for me, involved the 'real life' bullies, rather than the 'fantasy' vampire; therefore it is definitely not escapist; while the Hammers, because they centre on a fantasy character, such as a vampire, are escapist whether they are scary or not. So I see them as falling into two separate genres.

I see an idea, in what I regard as a 'proper' horror film, of being 'safely' scared (even if in the case of the Hammers I now have to imagine being scared). It's a passing thrill because, in reality, we know there are no vampires, werewolves or so forth. Even if it leaves us scared of the dark for a while, we know it's an irrational fear. If it leaves you uneasy to be out in the dark from fear of, for example, some random nutter with a knife—a figure we've all read about in news reports—then, for me, that is something other than horror: perhaps slasher; perhaps realist drama.

>135 alaudacorax:

It's sad how often I'll write a thing somewhere and, then, wake up the following morning painfully aware of where I've gone wrong.

I'd forgotten that lots of people believe in some aspects of the supernatural. People may not believe in vampires or werewolves; but lots believe in ghosts or poltergeists. Which rather throws my categorising back up in the air as regards the concept of being 'safely scared'. Back to the drawing board.

>133 alaudacorax: - ... 'sad and thoughtful'. That's not what I get from, say, one of the better Hammers (or a later slasher!); that's drama.

WRONG again! Don't know what I was thinking of. I can think of lots of what I'd call 'traditional horrors' with a sad and thoughtful tone in there somewhere. Something with Lon Chaney Junior, perhaps? Or Bram Stoker's Dracula?

As I said, back to the drawing board.

Oh dear. I've been going round in circles until I'm in danger of disappearing up my own déjà vu ... and missing the bleeding obvious!

With >135 alaudacorax:'s 'proper horror film', that 'safely' scares us, I should really have been using the term 'Gothic Horror'; meaning films that feature a baroquely-imagined supernatural and big, unsubtle, operatic-style emotions.

Which just leaves me to deal with all the other horror films that don't fit into that category. Should never had made that first post ...

I think all genres have fuzzy edges. And if there's a border drawn between genres, it can change over time. I'm sure a lot of post Silence of the Lambs thrillers would have been classed as horror if they'd existed 40 or 50 years ago.

Also, the more you learn about a subject, the more subdivisions and subtle distinctions you see (the recent Librarything discussions about Genre demonstrate that quite nicely, I think).

but as well as that, there's the personal response to works of art. you feel some things - films in this instance - have a kinship, "go together" because of how you respond to them. What strikes you as superficial differences might seem to be fundamental differences to someone else. If I tried to put together a "Desert Island Discs" of horror movies I think they would tend towards supernatural rather than non-supernatural, and (I think) emotionally tend towards a sad Romanticism.

If I actually sat down and made a list I don't think gore-heavy "video nasties", or '80s slashers, or psychologically gruelling dramas would make the final cut. But would the list have any coherence to an outside observer - if I ended up with (for example) The Bride of Frankenstein, The Seventh Victim, and Lips of Blood in the list?

I do feel a slight sense of guilt about focusing on film that some people wouldn't even consider Gothic - "too many ghosts", etc - and ignoring vast swathes of stuff from Dragonwyck to Sunset Boulevard to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? to I don't know what modern and non-anglophone films.

>139 housefulofpaper: - ... a "Desert Island Discs" of horror movies ...

Oo! Interesting thought! I love lists, but that one hadn't occurred to me. It would be fun to give some thought to that one.

Love lists but not very good at them. I've been working for years on a 'top ten all-time favourite movies' list ... currently, there are twenty-four in it ...

Maybe it's not so much, or only, the limits of the genre, but a question of our age too. Because I don't doubt that I'd have been just as scared by a Hammer film at some point, as by The orphanage as an adult. So something that would have definitely been "horror" at twelve might shift out of that in personal experience, with age, but still get labelled as technically belonging to the genre.

>142 LolaWalser:

Just realised that The Orphanage is NOT a Guillermo del Toro film. I'd dismissed it reading your previous post and in the past, I think, because his name is on top on the IMDb thumb (just can't get on with his films: couldn't sit through the high profile ones I've tried). So that's one, tiny instance where shady marketing/packaging backfired on them.

It's a despicable practice. I'm still sulking over a decade after buying 'Kenneth Branagh's' Twelfth Night (it was a film by a different director, based on, and not of, a Branagh stage production, and, in my opinion, pretty poor stuff).

I'm sure that, in the UK at least, it should be illegal as false advertising.

Happy to say that I've finally procured a copy of one of my favourite Cushings and Burke & Hare tale, The Flesh and the Fiends! Not sure what fancy versions you guys may have, perhaps it's worth noting that this new Kino Lorber issue (on DVD and Blu-ray) contains two cuts--the 95 minute long "Continental" one with extra nudity and debauchery, and the 74-minute American cut (title "Mania')--as well as an interesting commentary by one Tim Lucas (film historian).

>144 LolaWalser:
Congratulations! That beats my version, a bare-bones and non-saucy version in a Peter Cushing box-set with Amicus films' And Now the Screaming Starts and Asylum, and historical swashbuckler (not as naughty as it sounds) The Hellfire Club.

Although, imDB says The Hellfire Club had a Continental cut too.

Three of those films are very "Cushing-light" for a Peter Cushing themed set.

I'm not surprised Tim Lucas' commentary is good. He was the publisher and main writer for Video Watchdog magazine.

Speaking of Mr Cushing, I watched an episode of Orson Welles Great Mysteries (title sequence - Welles in cape and The Shadow slouch hat apparently stumbling around a half-demolished building, the picture going in and out of solarisation, a great John Barry opening theme. Then Welles apparently extemporising, half-cut, an intro to a half-hour story. Then the story proper. Which he never appears in). Anyway, this episode was an adaptation of a Balzac story, "La Grande Breteche" and Cushing plays the French Count with a much younger wife. One of his coldly implacable performances, his gaunt '70s-era face taut with suppressed fury. And apparently wearing his curly wig from Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (or one like it).

>145 housefulofpaper:

Interesting, I too have a 3-film Amicus Cushing set, but the third movie (besides Asylum and Screaming...) is The Beast must die. There's at least one movie with the title "The Hellfire Club" on my wishlist but I don't recall that one as a Cushing movie... would be great if it turned out to be.

https://www.librarything.com/work/24694035/book/85052624

Never heard of that Welles series, will look for it. My remaining Cushing wishes (some of them), are for Island of terror, The House of Long Shadows, and Horror Express. GOOD copies--the not-so-good are already available... preferably with extras.

Tim Lucas made all kinds of interesting comparisons and notes regarding Hammer, Amicus etc. He also brought up Jonathan Rigby's books (still too expensive for me, sigh).

>145 housefulofpaper:, >146 LolaWalser:

Just wasted five minutes trying to figure out what 'La Grande Bretèche' means. Isn't in my (quite hefty) English-French dictionary and it became an itch. Apparently, a bretèche is a balcony over a gate for dropping things on people attacking your castle. I don't remember that having any significance in the film at all—perhaps I'm wrong.

I'm beginning to think my memory is failing me in my old age: I, too, have no memory of that series (the Orson Welles bits); yet I remember that particular film—quite powerful, as I remember.

>147 alaudacorax:

Of course I had to follow where my itch took me and finally ordered the two-fer "Blood of the vampire"/"The Hellfire Club"--both were scripted by Jimmy Sangster and the latter one IS with Cushing!

>145 housefulofpaper:, >147 alaudacorax:

Would you believe a radio dramatisation is on BBC Radio 4 Extra as I write?

>149 alaudacorax:

Oops. Forgot to tell you about it. Got too absorbed. It was called Honore de Balzac - The Mysterious Mansion. It was quite good, too—well, it kept me listening for an hour. It will be on the iPlayer for the next 29 days.

>150 alaudacorax:
I caught most of it. The Orson Welles version is only about 25 minutes long, so plenty of plot had to be cut out. A strange coincidence that it should turn up on radio so soon after I watched the DVD.

>148 LolaWalser:
I checked my memory against imdB, and Cushing is indeed in The Beast Must Die. Playing one of the And Then There Were None-style suspects, a European with hair en brosse (another wig, of course).

>151 housefulofpaper:
Just to say a bit more on Cushing's character, and to explain when I described him as European I haven't turned my back on Continental Europe and turned into a thoroughgoing Atlanticist...I was just lazily saying he plays him with an accent.

Actually, as an academic with a side interest in lycanthropy, and with hair like Edward van Sloan's in Tod Browning's Dracula, he's a very Van Helsing kind of character...but not the way he played it for Hammer.

Arabian Adventure was mentioned in another thread. I did find my DVD in a box in the loft and I watched it this evening. I didn't see it on its release in 1979, I probably thought of myself as already too old for it, it got some indifferent reviews as far as I can remember (The Daily Express (my Mum's poison of choice) and Starburst Magazine, probably), and it was overshadowed by the likes of Superman the Movie (released right at the end of '78), Star Trek: the Motion Picture, and Moonraker (yes, the Bonds were seen as family films in the '70s).

This is the last of five family adventure films made by director Kevin Connor and producer John Dark. The first three were Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations for Amicus, followed by Warlords of Atlantis and Arabian Adventure. These were from original scripts by Brian Hayles (who had created the Ice Warriors for Doctor Who a decade earlier). Arabian Adventure is the only one not to be set in the Victorian/Edwardian age but has an Arabian Nights feel instead.

I suppose, in post-Star Wars 1979 this would have looked cheap, and old-fashioned (worse, simply out of fashion). What did I think, 42 years after its release?

I enjoyed it, and not in an ironic way. I appreciated the plot twists as kind of authentic-feeling Arabian Nights stuff, and not simply as hackneyed (I was a cynical 12 year old - aren't they all?), I enjoyed the eclectic cast, mostly (Mickey Rooney's charms escape me. He's not in it for long, though). A word on the cast. Some members billed high up, as it were, don't appear for long. Peter Cushing has only a couple of scenes. Capucine is barely there (think William Hartnell in The Three Doctors, but even less present). However, Christopher Lee gets plenty of screen time. His character is rather more Snow White's stepmother than it is Vathek, it has to be said.

There's a wobble near the climax of the film, where a dogfight on magic carpets reaches for the excitement of the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars (or "Episode IV: A New Hope", if you must) but doesn't have the budget. Still, it gets back on course for the finale. And anyway, a magic carpet dogfight. They made a film where that's a thing. Good for them.

Finally, two things. Cinematography was by Alan Hume. go on IMDb if you're not already familiar with the name. The films he was involved with! And, there's a big role for a child actor named Puneet Sira, kind of the Sabu role in Alexander Korda's The Thief of Baghdad. I looked him up too (with some trepidation, it doesn't always go well for chid actors). He's had a 30-year career as a film producer in Britain and Bollywood. So that was good to learn.

>153 housefulofpaper:

One more thing. Ken Thorne's score leans very heavily on Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherazade suite.

>153 housefulofpaper:

and of course it dawns on me now that the film's essentially a rewrite of the Korda Thief of Baghdad. I haven't seen the film but I've seen clips and have read enough about it to see that this must be the case.

And I ought to see it, not least because Conrad Veidt is in the equivalent to the Christopher Lee role.

>153 housefulofpaper:, >154 housefulofpaper:, >155 housefulofpaper:

I've seen it but can only vaguely remember it, and the only thing I can definitely remember is not liking Oliver Tobias as the hero.

Haven't seen The Thief of Bagdad for years but it's one of those films I think everyone ought to see at least once. It made a BIG impression.
My subconscious has done something odd with it, though: I suppose I must have been unimpressed with the lead man in that, too (John Justin), because my memory has quite replaced him. The weird thing is, not with Douglas Fairbanks from the first version, as you would think, but with Errol Flynn. So I can picture clearly in memory Sabu and Rex Ingram and Conrad Veidt ... and Errol Flynn? Weird.
And I've just had a delighted chuckle to find screen play and dialogue was by dear old Miles Malleson.
In fact, that's one of those rare films, these days, where I think I should have my own copy.

>155 housefulofpaper:

And I ought to see it, not least because Conrad Veidt is in the equivalent to the Christopher Lee role

Vice versa, my good sir, vice versa! :) Well your delightful report on Arabian Adventure cements my intention to see it ASAP--and copious helpings of villainous Christopher Lee make up for any other absences.

>156 alaudacorax:

I encourage this. Great fun, and sort of special for being Veidt's only colour movie. Unfortunately they browned him up some, but still. This is where the "Jafar is the hunk, HE deserves the girl!" 'ship starts. Speaking of homages, one of the many later villains modelled on Veidt's Jafar was Rathbone's wizard in The Magic Sword. My fave of such--but Mr. Lee is invited to change that preference by and by.

I have watched The Blood of the vampire and The Hellfire Club and enjoyed them both. In the former, Barbara Shelley has never been lovelier and Donald Wolfitt makes for a strangely courteous-while-gruesome villain. In the latter, Cushing plays a goodie! Nice for a change although I think they missed a trick in not having him repeat his superb utterly dark Frankenstein.

>157 LolaWalser:

The Magic Sword: I'm always surprised when one of these old films pops up which I know absolutely nothing about. Had a look at the storyline on IMDb—definitely never come across it. Rotten Tomatoes definitely doesn't like it ...

That reminds me of something I'd quite forgotten; in the early hours this morning I decided to wash my hands of Rotten Tomatoes for good. I had the misfortune to look at something like 'The 100 greatest musical films of all time', by the Rotten Tomatoes 'editorial team'. Bunch of bloody idiots ... their mothers ought to stop them using the internet. It was so badly done I wondered if they did it on purpose. Almost everything about it was so wrong: what they put in; what they left out; the list order. Sorry for the extreme tangent from the nature of this group, but I'm just remembering how angry it made me and I've nowhere else to vent. Did I mention they are a bunch of cloth-eared plonkers?

>157 LolaWalser:
I had the notion that the phrase worked irrespective of precedence in time...oh well, I'll have to fall back on my (entirely true) excuse: once again "I went to school in England in the 1970s, we didn't do grammar, we did creative writing instead".

>158 alaudacorax:
i found that I did have a DVD of The Thief of Baghdad. The boxes in the loft contain riches (or, I had riches but exchanged them for DVDs!). I started watching the film today, but real life got in the way, so I've only watched it as far as the escape from prison.

>156 alaudacorax:
I was only aware of John Justin in the role of Vanderhausen in the 1979 BBC Schalken the Painter. I think it's on one of the DVD extras where it must be the director who talks about casting him because handsome people can become very strange-looking when they age.

>158 alaudacorax:
I think I found the same list. I can't help suspecting its purpose was to promote "engagement" (annoyance) and drive traffic to the site. There's an awful lot of cinema I don't know about but even I know there should have been a strong showing from Bollywood in that list. Also classic Disney cartoons and - if it's musical films not just musicals proper - The Wicker Man should have been in with a shout.

>157 LolaWalser:
(Sorry about jumping around)...I hadn't heard of The Magic Sword either. You'd think that one of the ITV networks would shown it at least once, one 1970s morning in the school holidays would have been ideal.

>158 alaudacorax:, >159 housefulofpaper:

I recommend The Magic Sword, especially if you can muster getting in touch with your twelve-year-old. I too didn't know of it until late in adulthood but I gather it's a beloved American childhood classic. I enjoyed it a lot; for me what recommends it are superb performances by Basil Rathbone, the smoothly eeeeevil wizard, and Estelle Winwood as a quirky and very ancient witch. The lead whose name escapes me is hearty and wooden in the tradition of such roles, but, again, a good romp is available to the not-so-harsh critics. As for the effects, I recall them as modest but well done for that calibre of entertainment. Please let me know what you guys thought, should you chance on it.

>160 LolaWalser:

I had a look on Amazon last night and the film is not available on disc, apart from Region 1 imports or an expensive Spanish import (why so expensive? Brexit? *insert sad and angry emojis here*) so no immediate likelihood of seeing it. Oh, and I looked up the lead actor on IMDb. It's Gary Lockwood, the "other astronaut" in 2001: a Space Odyssey.

a big box set of Folk Horror films from Severin Films became available for pre-order yesterday. Here's the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-5UBxgiRiQ&t=66s

>162 housefulofpaper:

WOW!!! Xmas in a box. It has everything we talked about and more! Even the Czech movie I had mistaken for another. Thanks so much for the heads up. Hmmmm. I think I'll wait a little and see how it sells--I'd prefer to buy closer to the holidays so I can justify it better to my nutty mind... And too bad about the Bundle and the Book but that would be going too far in my present state. Incidentally, I saw that Norwegian film on YouTube in excellent copy as I recall, but it's been a couple years or so... might be worth looking for. It was proper spooky. Speaking of YT, The Magic Sword, being out of copyright, is also available in multiple places but the quality is much less than stellar, that I saw... not 360p-bad, but possibly unbearable for Blu-Ray enthusiasts.

>162 housefulofpaper:

Oh dear. Were money no object. The massive shipping costs, and that I already own several of the things on it, push it beyond me, I think.

Reading up on it online, though, I find I really, really want to see Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror. It's going to cost me upwards of £29 on today's exchange rates, though ($40); and I'm asking myself whether I should wait until it appears on UK websites, or worry that it might never, as being too specialised.
It's 2021; why aren't they offering stream or download?

>164 alaudacorax:
$30 for shipping looked almost reasonable compared to what I've paid for other goods from the States. When I look at the Centipede Press website (just as an example, not singling them out) I have to remember shipping will probably be more than the price of the book.

I did order this (the box set, not "the Witches' bundle", although did you see you that, although it's not officially available to overseas customers you can email and negotiate, if you have another $100 or so to spare...but I don't, and so will never own an Owl Service plate of my own).

The two discs of British material are region A so I won't be able to play them (this is undoubtedly due to rights issues and not perverseness on the part of Severin. I listened to a podcast last night and it was revealed that this set almost had no UK films at all, which would have been a glaring omission).

I have Digby Rumsey's short film The Pledge on a BFI disc but had to go onto Amazon to buy a copy of Anchoress. The frustration of having an unplayable disc would have got to me otherwise, I think. As it is I'll have to swallow not being able to play the new bonus features.

Apart from that, the only film I already have a copy of is Viy and to be honest the majority of the remaining films were completely unknown to me.

As to why they don't provide streaming or download options, well I don't really know anything about the economics or legalities of it, so anything I say hear could very well be just another know-nothing on the internet, but some bits and pieces of info on the podcast, below the line comments YouTube comments for the trailer, and so on, seem to suggest this:

Severin's business model is geared towards physical media. They spend the money on obtaining and often restoring film prints, they have new feature commentaries and extras on the discs. This all costs money and selling DVD and Blu-rays presumably has a higher profit margin than digital media.

Also, the films they put out are licenced from studios and independent producers from all over the world for a limited print run intended for North America only (yes, we can order from overseas and the disc are often region free but I have the feeling that's Severin going above and beyond for the customer base). So I assume there would have been no point in them even trying to get into digital downloads or streaming.

I know from the podcast that the documentary came about by accident, almost. It started life as an extra for their release of The Blood on Satan's Claw, but it just grew and grew. They haven't officially or intentionally gone into the business of making their own films. So (presumably) they haven't looked into changing their business model to move into streaming their own material, because they only have the one film! It's been playing film festivals prior to this disc release; I did wonder if it would have any physical or otherwise "ownable" (if that's a word) manifestation at all.

That's not to say it won't turn up somewhere. Hippocampus Press' Clark Ashton Smith documentary is on Vimeo (we've talked about that on here, haven't we?), streaming services are voracious for material. But, it costs money to subscribe to all the streaming services (this is one place I've drawn the line actually, Luddite that I am. No streaming services). And, if and when it turns up, it might not be the full three hours 10 minutes (re-edited for broadcast with a new on-screen presenter? Maybe Jeremy Clarkson, now that he's bought a farm?...)

>161 housefulofpaper:

Depending on how you feel about it, Mystery Science Theatre 3000 did The Magic Sword back in the early 90s. On the one hand, to see the film, you also have to watch their commentary and that depends on how you feel about MST3k. On the other hand, it's on YouTube and it's free:

https://youtu.be/yzhEnz2MhHI

>126 housefulofpaper:



Fortress Gothic Revival

Referring back to my previous mention of this architectural style, which was prompted by the location used in one of the short films in the Short Sharp Shocks Blu-ray set, here's what remains of Brock Barracks (I think it's the Gatehouse), which Wikipedia says is in that style.

>167 housefulofpaper:

Wow. That looks like a prison without the perimeter wall. I can definitely imagine something darkly Gothic going on somewhere behind all those secretive little windows.

>165 housefulofpaper:

I was a little harsh on them. Small concerns like this do sterling work and should be supported.

I still can't justify to myself buying the Compendium, though—not while my 'to be watched' pile is getting as big as my TBR pile. But I have ordered 'Woodlands Dark ...'; I think the poetry recitals were the final push over the edge ...

>167 housefulofpaper:

You see, this is why I should really stop buying things and concentrate on watching and reading for a while—I'd quite forgotten that I bought Short Sharp Shocks after the earlier posts. And it's right beside me, the spine showing under Wild Flowers of Britain and Ireland, a couple of notebooks and my mobile phone. Never mind watching and reading, I should put in a full eight hours just tidying up this place ...

I've now watched all six films on the Eureka! Films Karloff at Columbia Blu-Ray set. The extras (full length commentaries for all films plus a booklet) really help to put the films in their historical context.

The outlier is the historical Gothic from the mid-thirties, The Black Room. Then starting from 1939 there's four "mad doctor" films, although that doesn't quite capture it. Karloff himself, quoted in the booklet, sums them up as "the formula was successful if not original"..."the scientist would set out to save mankind. His project would sour and he with it. In the end he'd have to be destroyed regretfully, like a faithful old dog gone mad." The booklet also points out that these films are a kind of Gothic counterpart to the "scientific breakthrough" biopics of the time, films such as The Story of Louis Pasteur and Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet.

The final film in the set also rings the changes on an old idea, as it's a kind of Old Dark House horror-comedy. But here, it's not looking back to the likes of The Cat and the Canary but rather is exploiting Karloff's success on Broadway in Arsenic and Old Lace as well as spoofing his recent mad doctor roles. It's squarely in screwball comedy territory and the horror is very mild indeed.

The most intriguing film in the set may be The Devil Commands. In broad outline it looks the most traditionally supernatural of the four "straight" mad doctor films - bereaved scientist trying to contact his wife's spirit - but by accident or design there's a definite Lovecraftian feel to this one. A genuinely eerie mix of supernaturalism and super-science and (as the commentary notes) possibly the first interdimensional portal seen on film.

More on the Franken-media front!--I saw Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein (currently available on DM in two vids, quality quite good). It's... parts terrible and parts brilliant. The scenery, as in the later Blood for Dracula is breathtakingly gorgeous. Some of the visuals are the most beautiful I've ever seen in a horror. Some cast members achieve greatness (here Frankenstein's sister/wife) and the rest have so much bonkers stuff thrust on them their acting hardly matters. As an adaptation of Frankenstein it's sui generis but definitely worthy. Note that the gore is way beyond any of the old classics--where cameras in ancient times would discreetly peek and move on, Morrissey holds them steady on that gushing blood, dangling organs, or even Dr. Frankenstein copulating with the female "zombie" on the gurney. (That was some scene... I kept thinking, OK, now he's gonna cut... oh wow, oh no! OK, now... OH WOW, NO!! surely NOW... OHNOYEEEECH!)



Speaking of Blood for Dracula I noticed that Severin Films that houseful introduced us to is issuing a new restored print in October--seems pricey for one disc but probably worth it.

My latest Gothic viewing, a disc I picked up in HMV (I left the house! I went shopping like in the Before Times!) was an obscure Giallo/Gothic from 1969.

It's called La Bambola di Satana (The Doll of Satan) and, truthfully it wasn't very good.

The screenplay is by the nominal director, Ferruccio Casapinta. This is apparently his only film credit and the supporting materials on the disc tell that his assistant director did most of the actual directing.

It's a modern-day Gothic, with a young woman coming into possession of a castle on the death of her uncle (after a pre-credit sequence that is supposed to be laying some clues and some admittedly intriguing credits that look like the end credits of a 1960s television adventure series, but which might (or might also) be intended to evoke Fumetti) and then becoming subject to efforts by forces unknown to make her sell. These consist mostly of drugging her and inducing horrific/erotic hallucinations connected to the torture devices in the dungeons and the resident ghost. Both the horror and eroticism are pretty mild, even for 1969.

In fact the script seems constructed so as to dissipate tension, rather than to ratchet it up. I think because it's really a rather goofy and naive Agatha Christie, or even Edgar Wallace, mystery sort of thing, and the Gothic elements are misdirection - but as viewers we don't suddenly want to start being told a different sort of story two thirds of the way in (and on top of that, it means the heroine fades away in favour of her two-fisted journalist boyfriend).

Another odd thing is the names. The titled family's name is "Ball Janon" which I think is supposed to be English. The film's location shooting is in and around a real Italian Castle but the ghost is named "Robin". There's at least one more supposedly English character. So, was there an early draft where this was set in the UK and it was clumsily changed? (I can't quote bring myself to believe that we're expected to believe it IS set in the UK - despite the shameful later example of - was it New World films - overdubbing a couple of lines of dialogue in Hellraiser so as to pretend North London is somewhere in the New York suburbs).

What it felt like to me, after subtracting the mild nudity and violence, was a Children's Film Foundation adventure. Spies and intrigue in a castle, shot during a blazing hot summer on that distinctive 1960s film stock.

So, I've had to do stuff that's prevented me from getting on with reading Frankenstein.

But I was able to watch a DVD. And it was...Wisconsin Death Trip. The background to this is British documentary filmmaker discovering the 1973 book of the same name by Michael Lesy. This is a compilation of 1890s photographs and news stories from the town of Black River Falls. The population was it seems largely made of of recent European and Scandinavian immigrants. The 1890s was a time of economic depression. The stories - a terse unemotional paragraph in a local paper - tell of despair and sudden outbursts of violence, abandoned children, or children dying of diseases such as diphtheria. The photos, of course, are eerie and haunting, in part because of the looks on people's faces, even if it's only due to the exposure times.

The film sets out to recreate the feel of the book. These old news stories are read in voiceover (by Ian Holm) and acted out in black and white that strives to look like the still photographs in the book.

The narrative is loosely structured in four sections corresponding to the four seasons and each chapter ends with a colour section shot in the present-day (i.e. mid-late 1990s). Initially this looks wonderful compared to the harshness of a century earlier, but then we hear some modern news stories that echo some of 1890s reports and the parallels between the 1890s and 1990s are clearly there without being overstressed. More happily, a visit to an old people's home near the end of the film presents the memories of near contemporaries (and one 104-year old actual contemporary) of the people we've only known from the voiceover and "dramatic reconstructions".

Opinion is polarised over on IMDb. It's a haunting masterpiece, or it's boring and pointless. There were some views I had little sympathy with. Those that seemed to be asking for a more emotionally coercive kind of film making; or the one who felt that because terrible violent events (often involving firearms of course) still happen now, then it's trivial that it happened then, and not worth making a film about (actually this is more complicated. I think I feel bad that this person is complacent about how things are now). I do have sympathy with the reviews coming from that area who point out that the stories are culled from a much wider area than Black River Falls itself, and the impression of a uniquely deranged, death-haunted town in the middle of nowhere is...putting it too strongly, let's say.

Is it Gothic? Well, there's a "making of" feature entitled Midwestern Gothic, so somebody thinks so.

And putting that phrase into a search engine pulls up quite a lot of stuff. "Midwestern Gothic" is now, evidently a literary genre of it's own - it has a journal - and this is apparently a literary and more-or-less realist genre (like Southern Gothic but moved geographically North..or North East? West? - sorry, Americans. I've looked at the map but I don't really know). But elsewhere a writer like Thomas Ligotti is being recruited under the Midwestern Gothic banner. And it's an "Aesthetic" that originated on sites on Tumblr in the 2010s and is "characterised by common facets of the Midwestern lifestyle portrayed in a macabre light". And there's things sold on Etsy under the name. And there's a musical.

How come none of the Brits in the house ever told us of the delicious Tod-Browning's-Freaks homage that is the 1974 Freakmaker?! With Donald Pleasence AND Tom Baker!



Warning: contemporary viewers might be upset by the casual manner in which people with mutations/congenital diseases are showcased as "circus freaks".

>175 LolaWalser:

Difficult question. It's not a film with a high critical reputation, and although it's fairly obscure it's known of, at least within Who circles (Tom's pre-1974 filmography not being very extensive, and all).

I haven't even seen any recent critical reassessments of it...most of the attention I've seen online has been for Basil Kirchin's score (he also did the score for The Abominable Dr Phibes).

I was going to watch it again, for the first time in something like 15 years, but the DVD-R has corrupted. And it nearly finished off my Blu-ray player trying to read it. So now I have a French Blu-ray on order via Amazon marketplace, and am telling myself it's an upgrade not an expensive replacement (and trying not to think of how many other discs of off-air material are about to expire).

Well I can see where real-life critics might be a tad embarrassed by it, but I'm going to step up with my usual defence of the indefensible. :)

1. Pleasence does his strangely-accented villain shtick. We the fans appreciate this.

2. The Fourth Doctor--oops, not yet the Doctor, but any minute now--does a rare turn as a (not a spoiler) MONSTER. Not only that, he does it wearing a hat that can't but remind us of his future article. All of this sort of conjures a feel of an alterna-Whoniverse where the Doctor goes not just superbad but freaky.

3. The seventies everything of it--the fashions, the girls, the cars, the colours, the bralessness.

4. Last but not least, and a controversial opinion I'm sure, but Little People and other "freaks" are so rarely seen on screen that even a less-than-stellar representation is welcome... imo. And there is a sequence in the caravan where they cosy up around the tea that is truly beautiful.

5. The soundtrack is indeed interesting if a bit... bipolar, with some sudden changes of mood.

6. I think the horror is actually quite horrible. To hark to Doctor Who again, it's like the grown-up cousin of Hinchcliffe's "Gothics".

7. In conclusion, I really enjoyed it.

>176 housefulofpaper:, >177 LolaWalser:

Got to say I'm sure I've never heard of this one. And it sounds like the kind of thing which, good or bad, I would remember if I'd seen it. I'm quite intrigued. There's what looks and sounds like a poor copy on YouTube, certainly not as crisp as your image above. I might give that a watch.

>178 alaudacorax:

sent you a note

I’ve just watched Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the first time.

It is definitely Branagh’s ‘Frankenstein’ rather than Shelley’s (with nods to Hammer and James Whale) and strays a lot from the novel. In spite of that, it had a definite feel of box-ticking and ‘done by numbers’ to a lot of it—parts of the story rushed over and unconvincing. There were a few powerful bits—‘horrific’, if you like—that really worked; but there were also some gimmicky bits that had me wondering what Branagh could have been thinking—there were a couple of glaring ones in the scenes on the glacier above Geneva. There seemed to me to be a rather perfunctory and simplistic anti-science ‘message’ to it, too; as if it had just been chucked in without giving any real thought to it; but that might be because recent reading has left me still very much tuned-in to the novel.*

I thought it good enough to give it a 6/10 on IMDb; but I won’t be rewatching any time soon.

Oh, forgot to mention that it's one of the few times I've seen John Cleese doing a respectable bit of acting—rather than just playing John Cleese. I was quite impressed.

ETA - * '... to the subtleties of the novel' is what I'd intended to say, and Branagh's not subtle—ready for bed when I wrote the above.

>180 alaudacorax:

I'm planning to re-watch this one soon. I had it on VHS not long after reading the novel for the first time. I remember having a sense that the screenplay was trying to incorporate the critical discussions around the text (as I understood them from the Oxford World's Classics edition). I'll be interested to see how my views have changed.

I caught Branagh's Hercule Poirot on Sky. It made we wish he'd been playing Seabury Quinn's two-fisted Poirot knockoff Occult Detective, Jules de Grandin, instead.

In other news...

A few years ago I did God's work by letting it be known the Michael Curtiz 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum was hiding as a bonus feature on the DVD of the Vincent Price remake.

This is to let interested parties know that the film has now been restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive - colour correction, scratched etc. repaired, and some missing bits provided by a French print (dialogue recreated in English, apparently, by scouring the relevant actors' other films for the right words). I think this was realised in 2020 in the US but only now in the UK - and only on the HMV premium collection. If I hadn't seen it on display in the shop I wouldn't have known this even existed.

>181 housefulofpaper: - I remember having a sense that the screenplay was trying to incorporate the critical discussions around the text ...

I agree, but I felt it was done rather perfunctorily—crassly, even. I've read in various texts speculation on the relationships Frankenstein-Clerval or Frankenstein-Walton, and even Frankenstein-his creature, reflecting possible homosexual attractions between Percy Shelley and male members of his set. So what does Branagh do right after the creature is animated? Throws in what is pretty nearly nude oil wrestling (you won't convince me he didn't intend that as homoerotic). That was one of the 'gimmicky' bits I mentioned.

>181 housefulofpaper: - A few years ago ... was hiding as a bonus feature on the DVD ...

... and I STILL haven't got round to watching it ...

>180 alaudacorax:

I've watched Ken Branagh's Frankenstein again - after a gap of what must be at least 25 years. I agree with your comments. I'm tempted to go into detail about specific things in the screenplay, but it's difficult to talk about them without spoilers.

There are some unplanned (obviously they're unplanned) "compare-and-contrast" moments with the present day - the anti-vaxxer who kills John Cleese, and then, the crowd who attack and drive off the creature in the believe that he's spreading cholera.

Supposedly Frank Darabont's script was better before Ken (I'm going to call him Ken, it's quicker to type, and technically I went to school with him (our times at a Reading Comprehensive school overlapped by one year) got his hands on it...according to Frank Darabont, anyway. I did find an old interview online where Ken confirmed he wanted to inject some of the Shelley's dynamics into the Victor/Elizabeth relationship.

Before I read about the script issues, I had watched the film thinking it's the result of Hollywood script-doctoring: this is what Mary Shelley would have done with the benefit of 200 years of hindsight: cut this, change that, expand these scenes, drop these characters. Don't take the story off to England, Scotland, and Ireland. turn Elizabeth into the Bride and then have a love triangle at the climax of the film.

Some of the gimmicky stuff, I suspect, comes from too much respect (on Hollywood's part) for Ken's theatrical background. I get the impression it's easier to impress a theatre crowd with obvious or corny, even crass effects, than on film and especially television (after all, theatre is happening right in front of you for real, so although part of you knows it's artifice - that's way more obvious than the illusion of film or TV - another part of you is kind of fooled into believing it, because it's actual people up there. One medium is simile, the other is metaphor, as I once read).

On the other hand, I remember from first watching the edition of The South Bank Show about this film (however much it claimed to be about the novel ,and a new film version just happens to be out) that Ken was keen to also make this a proper horror film of the kind Britain is good at - a sort of idealised vision of the classic Hammer film - hence I think the mob scenes (not a feature of the novel - the slow grinding of the often unjust wheels of justice, instead), what I assume is an impressive full-body burn and fall by a stunt person/people, the (Roger Corman rather than Hammer) burning house at the end (bar the final Arctic scene).

A problem for any "faithful" adaptation is the advance in medical knowledge since 186/17/18. We know the spark of life isn't really a thing. We look at the creature and don't see a brand-new being but an adult brain housed in a new body (de Niro's creature's dialogue in the glacier cave acknowledges this).

It's still the story of a tabula rasa who is made to be bad by his treatment, but the script has to struggle to try to make it work, and to convince us that the creature is more than simply an injured man.

>184 housefulofpaper:

There were so many tiny details that kept momentarily breaking my suspension of disbelief. For example, why did both the creature and the final version of Elizabeth have the same scar diagonally across the lips? There was no rational reason (sounds like a tautology, but you know what I mean) for either one, let alone both. Gimmicky little things, as I said above.

>185 alaudacorax:

That, and things, often just little things, that either ring false or seem misjudged. Obviously that's a personal response and you could argue I'm wrong for one reason or another. But at the end of the day this viewer had these immediate responses and surely is part of the filmmaker's art not to alienate them (if that's the right word)

Examples - Victor's sledge with the pelts or whatever they were hanging off it at the start of the film, reminded me of Abdelazar disguised as a pedlar and crying "new lamps for old" in Aladdin. I didn't need to be thinking of traditional Pantomine at that point. And the creature's full-length coat - was it intentional to make it look like a long Victorian dress in medium- and long-shots? Again, I think it's an unintended resemblance - to a bonnetless The Woman in Black or Miss Jessell in the reeds, in The Innocents.

I watched The Ape, a 1940 film Boris Karloff made for Monogram, a film very much in the style of the "Mad Scientist" films he was making for Columbia around the same time.

Karloff is widower Dr Bernard Adrian, who is devotedly - single-mindedly - trying to cure a young woman's paralysis (presumably due to polio although the disease is not named). He sees her as a substitute for his dead daughter, an early no-nonsense info-dump tells us.

Despite this he is not liked in the small town where he lives, even though the inhabitants don't know he's been vivisecting their pet dogs (and years before - the dialogue is a bit vague or I didn't pay full attention - I think, stealing human spinal fluid in an attempt to cure a previous outbreak of "paralysis").

On the verge of a breakthrough he loses his remaining supplies of spinal fluid. How fortunate then, that a gorilla has escaped from a travelling circus and broken into the doctor's laboratory. Because Karloff killing it, skinning it, wearing its pelt (over his street clothes!) and pretending to be a dangerous animal on the loose is the best way to murder the town's wrong-un's for their spinal fluid.

I said it's in the style of the Columbia films, but clearly it's a lot sillier than they are, and of course much cheaper-looking.

Schalcken the painter was very enjoyable. For a relatively low budget production (I presume), they achieved the living look of Dutch paintings very well. Great casting of all the roles. John Justin as Death was particularly impressive.

The extras on the BFI edition were also interesting; must find Borowczyk's Blanche now.

What have I been watching?

The Dark Eyes of London is an Edgar Wallace adaptation, made in the UK just before WWII, and starring Bela Lugosi. I watched a restored version on Blu-ray. The commentaries explain that it's been a rather overlooked film, firstly because the available prints have been murky and hard to see for so long, and secondly because it's better known as The Human Monster, the title Monogram gave it for US distribution.

This story has been adapted for German film and TV many times and the elements of the krimi are all here in this British prototype. It's a police procedural (the "CSI" elements of police work are given more credit than they usually get in stories of this vintage) and a Gothic melodrama, complete with a murderer with distinct visual echoes of Karloff's Frankenstein monster.

Lugosi gets plenty of screen time and is very good in this. The commentators speculate that, if the war hadn't happened, Lugosi might have become a regular visitor to UK film studios where, like Paul Robeson and Anna May Wong, he could expect better treatment than he got in Hollywood.

I also bought the Blu-ray of The Monster aka I Don't Want to Be Born (also aka "Sharon's Baby". There's no one named Sharon in the film. I have a pet theory that the title "Satan's Baby" was dictated down a crackly international phone line, and the by the time the mistake had been realised it was too late to change anything). This is the Joan Collins film where she's a stripper or maybe a cabaret artist. When she rejects the advances of a dwarf fellow-performer, he curses her so that she will give birth to big, murderous baby. No explanation of the performer's ability to do this is given, unless we are supposed to hold a prejudice that people with medical conditions are actually evil supernatural beings.

As for the nature of the curse, well cynically, satanic children were box office in the '70s.

It's probably best to view this film, given where the original story and some of the funding came from (or was supposed to come from - a long story, some of it told in the disc's extras), as an Italian movie, with an outsider's view of the UK (including a weakness for long travelogue sequences of the West End, and a fascination for Drag acts - see also The Secret of Dorian Gray for more of the same).

It's not a good film by any means, but there are some good actors in it (Donald Pleasance, Eileen Atkins) and the behind-the-camera stories and, well just the passage of time, make it more interesting than it ought to be. Joan Collins is good as well, I suppose, but the character she's playing is completely unbelievable and in retrospect (unfair, I know) looks like just another post The Stud Joan Collins character.

Robert Lloyd Parry has produced another DVD of his performances of M R James stories as M R James, but with a twist this time. Last year he edited a book Ghosts of the Chit-Chat about M R James and his circle of friends who also wrote ghost stories. The DVD features two MR James stories, and a story by A C Benson, a poem by another member of the circle, and the notes to James' very first contribution to the Chit-Chat club, a talk on useless knowledge.

I also watched what I at first thought of describing as one of Doctor Who's most Gothic stories but that's not really true for several reasons. Firstly, I'd momentarily forgotten Tom Baker's mid-70's dive into full-on Hammer pastiche, secondly it is really more of a twist on the Wilkie Collins-style sensation novel. Thirdly, I arguably didn't watch it at all, as this is one of the stories that (bar one episode and all of the soundtrack, miraculously recorded by fans in the 60s, on reel-to -reel tape) no longer exists. An animated version has been released on disc.

I am talking about The Evil of the Daleks from 1967. The story where the Daleks were supposed to bow out of the programme while Terry Nation tried to launch them in their own show in the States.

for the time it's quite an epic. This was when the show was getting into a rut of "base under siege" stories because the producer felt that was a winning formula. But this one starts at Gatwick Airport (setting for the previous story), heads into London (Mod coffee bar then creepy antique shop) trying to find the TARDIS (it's been stolen!). Then sent back by Dalek time machine to a country house 100 years in the past, before ending up on the Dalek's home planet, Skaro.

It's the part of the story set in the 1860s that have a Wilkie Collins feel about them, of course. Unusually much of this was shot on location rather than in studio. And the location was Grim's Dyke, former home of W S Gilbert. And 50+ years after his death, a dangerous near-ruin. The next year it was used for The Curse of the Crimson Altar - the marble fireplace with the carved satyrs, that you see right at the beginning of the film, can be seen in the Blu-ray extras (because, even though this is an animated reconstruction, they've still shot extras features to accompany this release).

You also find them here, because the house has long since been spruced up and turned into a hotel:
https://www.bestwestern.co.uk/hotels/best-western-plus-grims-dyke-hotel-83956?ia...

(Apologies if I've linked to that before. If i haveI don't, at any rate, remember the rendition of "I am the very model of a modern Major-General", so maybe that's new!).

So much for the setting, the story and the Victorian characters also has much of a Gothic-by-way-of-Wilkie Collins feel at this point. The elements of melodrama are there - heroine held hostage, her father doing the villain's doing to ensure her safety, a sinister scientist (an alchemist, actually!), a young man controlled by Dalek hypnosis that faintly recalled an element of The Moonstone. It's a real shame that so little of this story exists but at the same time, what has survived is something of a miracle (some early Avengers episodes for example do not even survive in full script form).

>188 LolaWalser:

After we had discussed Arabian Adventure I finally got around to watching The Thief of Bagdad with a young John Justin (and a young Mary Morris - quite a shock, or a contrast at least, after her scary old lady roles in '80s television (Panna in the Doctor Who story "Kinda", for example).

>190 housefulofpaper:

I just realised I mixed up Justin with Westbrook, the latter was Red Death. Otoh, Justin too sounded very different in Schalcken to his young self--I completely missed that he was the young lead in The thief of Bagdad. Left no impression there...

>189 housefulofpaper:

Sharon's Baby sounds good, Eileen Atkins and Pleasence can always come back. Joan Collins isn't someone I often come across but as it happens I recently caught her debut (or close to it), when she was sixteen in Cosh Boy (in a Kino-issued set of British film noir).

Ha, that hotel doesn't seem to want to advertise its connection to the film... :)

>191 LolaWalser:

Oo! Just reminded me. I bought two 'Thief of Bagdad' discs last time we discussed it/them. The Conrad Veidt one and the Douglas Fairbanks one. I shall watch at least one tonight ...

>189 housefulofpaper:

I'm quite confused by I Don't Want to be Born. I remember seeing it; but my memory is that it was part of one of those portmanteau films. Just been looking at Joan's rap sheet on IMDb and my wires obviously got crossed somewhere down the years.

>193 alaudacorax:

She's in the non-Amicus portmanteau Tales That Witness Madness where she has a tree as competition for her partner's affection (yes really), and in Tales from the Crypt she's under siege from an escaped murderer dressed as Santa Claus*.

I Don't Want to be Born has been on British TV in the last 10 years so so. It was one of the films shown in BBC2's last gasp of late-night horror.

(*I would usually say "Father Christmas" but strictly speaking the "jolly elf in the red suit" is the Dutch/US Santa)

>192 alaudacorax:

Both are great!

>189 housefulofpaper:

This inspired me to watch Evil of the Daleks again (in the state in which the seven episodes can be found online); years ago I had gone through all the reconstructed DW stories but as I watched them only once in most of the cases, I don't have much memory of them. And this time too I was busy with some other tasks so was stealing glances mostly, but a few things occurred to me while listening, how much material shows up in this story that would be revisited in New Who, like the Doctor humanising Daleks, "experimenting" on them. And the sequence where they start whirling him around reminded me of that dancing Dalek in Asylum.

It truly is a huge pity that Troughton's run is so damaged. For my taste, and as far as I can tell from the surviving material, I find that his stories actually DO have a higher spooky/uncanny quotient than "Baker's Gothic". The latter is very much consciously playing with horror, whereas in Troughton's stories like this one--and I would add "Web of Fear", "The Faceless ones", "Fury from the deep", "Invasion", "The Macra Terror", "The Tomb of the Cybermen"... (off the top of my head)--the horror is, if I can say so, more realistic. Part of it, I think, is that Troughton plays scared, whereas the Fourth Doctor is utterly unflappable. Then there's the beautiful black & white vs. colour, which I think is less forgiving of cheap sets. (If that famous sequence of Cybermen awaking had been in colour... I really don't see that it would have been half as creepy and awesome.)

Troughton's stories also had great secondary characters who heightened the spookiness. From the monsters in The faceless ones and Fury, to strange, half-crazed scientists like the one in The Web, or in this one, Maxstable... I really wouldn't care to meet any of them in a darkened street.

I'll probably have to get this... Andrew, is there a version that combines the surviving live footage with the narrated recon or animation, or do they only give the live footage in separate extras? My strong preference is for such combos, as I find even a little of live footage helps me "add a dimension" to the animation. I find watching only animation in this case wearying, as I can't forget how much is left out.

>195 LolaWalser:

This is what you get on the Blu-ray:

The surviving episode two. This is presented as a stand-alone bonus feature.


Animated versions of all seven episodes, in black and white, and presented in 4:3 ratio.


The audio adaptation released on tape cassette thirty years ago. This shows just how incredible the digital restoration of the soundtrack is. On the animated versions, you rarely if ever notice anything amiss. Here, though, it sounds like what it is: an off-air recording from a 1960's domestic TV set, in other words, dialogue is often indecipherable.


All seven animated episodes, presented in colour and widescreen. This is probably the best animated reconstruction to date, which is still pretty limited - about on a par with the 1970's animated Star Trek.


Although, CGI allows some things that would have been impossible for animated Star Trek: the Daleks are beautifully rendered and of course can move realistically. The double-doored structure behind the Dalek, by the way, is the time machine built by Waterfield and Maxtible. The designer intended it to echo the TARDIS but in a high-Gothic style.


Lighting effects too:


Finally, there's a "telesnaps" reconstruction on disc three (for those who don't know, a professional photographer had a business back in the '60s, pointing a high speed camera at his television and selling the pictures to e.g. directors (so they had some physical evidence of their work) and local newspapers (for something to put on their TV listing pages) - these photos are "telesnaps").

Actually, episodes 1, and 3-7 are reconstructions. Episodes two is here for a second time, incorporated in its proper place. There are some CGI inserts here too, mostly of Daleks (and I don't think it all comes from the animated episodes on the other discs, but has a 3D render). There might even be some live action seconds shot at Grim's Dyke - if they did something sneaky when they shot the bonus feature there.

>195 LolaWalser:

I can see your point about the Troughton stories and my opinion of them must be coloured by how I first encountered them and how that differed from Tom Baker's stories.

Maybe the answer is simply that I watched the Tom Baker episodes when I was 8-10 years old, and finally got to see scraps of the Troughton stories a whole decade later.

But also, the story I picked up from things like Doctor Who magazine was that the Troughton stories where, after ditching the historical stories, looking forward into the future - and I found science fiction less scary than horror, the future optimistic but the past oppressive (unless it was dinosaurs, or at least as far back as Stonehenge. Which makes my current interests quite an about-turn). The Baker stories from when Philip Hinchcliffe was producing seemed to be harking back to the past even when set in the future: in choice of typeface for the titles, in going back to Victorian or Edwardian times, even design choices like the wooden control room.

Another thing is that the Troughton stories are still, sometimes, structured like a children's adventure series - Victoria, Zoe, sometimes even Jamie - were written as juveniles (actually, wasn't Zoe supposed to be 15 years old?). The narrow escapes are, again sometimes, not always, the cliches of children's adventure fiction. Whereas, once into the "UNIT era" the stories are, nominally at least, taking place in an adult world.

you've already made the counter-argument, essentially that the '60s TARDIS crew were more vulnerable and therefore if the viewer is at all invested in what's going on, it's scarier. Maybe it's to do with the context in which the programme is seen and thought about. it just seems that in the 1960s it has more in common with contemporary and near-comtemporay programmes like The Tomorrow People, Ace of Wands, Freewheelers.

All that said, I have to concede that if I could have watched the Troughton stories on an even footing - if I could somehow have been born 10 years earlier - I would often find them more scary, more Gothic, than the novelisations and write-ups made out (the Faceless Ones make-up, from the few seconds of footage we have left, seemed remarkably gruesome. And that's not even a stand-out "scary story").

Edited the second "the future" to "the past" in the third paragraph; it makes more sense now, I hope.

>196 housefulofpaper:

Thanks so much for the comprehensive answer! So there is no way to watch a combo of animated/telesnap/live footage episodes except by choosing them manually. I guess not too many people would choose such a presentation, but I would... Sorry, misunderstood about the third version--great to hear.

Yes, I've seen mixed reactions on the type/quality of the animation but I gather that anything more complicated would be that much more expensive and time-consuming. Maybe it's not the end, maybe we'll get to where the AI can produce convincing film from stills or more fluent animation from live footage...

>197 housefulofpaper:

Oh, right, I'm sure age makes a big difference, me being exposed to everything as an adult and you watching Baker's stories as a kid.

it just seems that in the 1960s it has more in common with contemporary and near-comtemporay programmes like The Tomorrow People, Ace of Wands, Freewheelers.

I'm not familiar with the last, but I agree; only I'd add the creepy TV for children (the name of one series in particular escapes me now), as far as that "casual" presence of truly scary monsters is concerned.

And that's not even a stand-out "scary story"

Yes, this--this is what I mean by "casual"--they had such impressively scary bits in stories that weren't made with a focus on "being scary" at all! As you say, the genre is more science fiction, but then horror just pops up.

This reminds me of some of the eps of Space: 1999.

>198 LolaWalser:
Small correction - I've got the DVD rather than the Blu-Ray. I should have noticed!

I've just watched The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire. It was a Sherlock Holmes film with a Holmes I hadn't seen before, as far as I remember, Matt Frewer. It was a Hallmark film and I'm sure I've read somewhere that Hallmarks are always rubbish; but this must have been an exception to the rule; it was quite a reasonable film.

It was a sort of cross between a detective story and Gothic horror. The action mostly took place either around the dark, candle-lit corridors of an abbey or the narrow, lamp-lit alleys of Victorian London—and I really couldn't tell what was real or what were studio sets, if any. I note from IMDb that it was filmed in Montreal; but I didn't notice any anachronistic accents.

It was quite tense—fair amount of creep factor—on the detective side there were plenty or of red herrings—the whole thing kept me absorbed to the end. And Watson was not an idiot.

>200 alaudacorax:

I've been trying to work out why I suspected it was a TV movie. Can't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it's the combination of quite well done with lesser-known faces. Anyway, it was.

>200 alaudacorax:, >201 alaudacorax:

One thing, do you ever, in real life, find nuns and monks in the same establishment? I was a little surprised, though quickly forgot about it. I've been trying to look up the question online but finding nothing.

>202 alaudacorax:

There's Kloster Einsiedeln. But I think that's pretty rare these days.

>203 LolaWalser:

This was obviously intended to be seen as a 'co-ed' establishment, rather than two side-by-side. I don't suppose it matters, given the quality of the entertainment—it was obviously not intended to be taken very seriously—not by any stretch great drama.

So, there's this innocent young maiden, hoping to find a husband; but she has a stalker. Nasty type ... a thief and a conman, and getting on for twice her age and looks a bit raddled about the face, lives in a cellar somewhere with some toothless old reprobate. He breaks into her place and creeps around her bedroom in the night, threatens to knife one of her maidservants, steals articles of her clothing. Then he and his henchman plot to drug her and abduct her ...

I've failed three times to get more than half-way into The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Just exasperated by it. Fairbanks is my problem. He's too old for the role (though, I admit, superbly fit and athletic) and the role and his performance have a boyishness that just doesn't sit well with with the obvious age in his face. Talking about his face, how did he get to be a cinema heart-throb—he looks like a shifty supporting character in one of the old black and white film noirs. And even for the silent era he overacts excruciatingly.

Edited for superfluity.

>200 alaudacorax:
I have caught bits of these Sherlock Holmes films on the Horror Channel (or maybe various satellite channels), but I am not sure how much, if any, of this one I've seen. I'll try to keep an eye out for it, although from what I've seen of it, I have to agree with the majority of IMDb reviewers in finding Matt Frewer's performance irritatingly mannered. I don't have an opinion on Hallmark's output per se, but they did have at least some prestige productions. It become a short-lived tradition that Channel 4 would have the UK premiere at the Easter holiday: a Gulliver's Travels starring Ted Danson in 1996 kicked things off, I think. There was an Alice and an Arabian Nights, probably some more.

>201 alaudacorax:
It's a bit of a smart-arse answer, but if the TV movie is American and dates before HD television was standard, it may well be mastered on videotape (NTSC standard at that) and consequently loss picture sharpness (I thought these productions were shot on video, but - according to an online conversation about Star Trek: the Next Generation that I happened to see, the live action stuff was actually shot on film).

Older TV movies would have been shot on 35mm film and visually there's nothing to distinguish them from a cheap-ish Hollywood movie. In fact, I've been genuinely impressed by some (not all!) of the cinematography in such average fare as the 1978 Doctor Strange TV Movie and Sherlock Holmes in New York when it's on a crisp Blu-ray transfer. Plus, quite a lot of US TV movies (and TV series pilots, and stitched-together TV episodes, were given UK theatrical releases).

>202 alaudacorax:
do you ever, in real life, find nuns and monks in the same establishment?
Was it in the East End? It would have to be a recent establishment (from the perspective of the late 19th Century) so I presume even more unlikely to be "co-ed". However some fortuitous Googling did turn up a Historic England booklet. I've only skimmed it, but unless I badly misread, it says that such establishments could be separate but very close together. There are various reasons why this could be - they could be set up in the same locale to service the same community (Irish immigrants, typically), or the land might have been bought by a wealthy benefactor and monasteries, convents, various charitable institutions had to fit into the site. Here's the booklet:
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-19-20-century-conve...

>205 alaudacorax:
The film seemed so old, such an artefact of another time (surely to do with the relative primitiveness of the technology; by the same token, I wonder if my sister's kids judge the 1980s by its video games?) I think I watched it with a non-judgemental "film club" mentality. Another viewing might see me agreeing with you (although, there's that accepted wisdom that people did seem to age more quickly in the past).

>206 housefulofpaper:

I don't suppose, in reality, Fairbanks was too old for the actress—from IMDb, he would have been forty-one and she twenty-four. What really grated on me was the boyishness of the role and performance for a man of his obvious age ... the phrase 'mutton dressed as ram' kept coming into my mind. Plus, when expressing this boyishness, he seemed never to undersell a gesture—acting by semaphore ...
I get daft ideas into my head—I've been really looking forward to the 1940 version and it's been annoying me that I can't get this one watched and out of the way so I can move on to it. I'm making a resolution right now that this evening I'm just going to sit down and enjoy Veidt, Sabu, et al. Perhaps I'll come back to Douglas Armflapper later ...

On the Sherlock, I've decided that the 'co-ed' thing was simply the makers' way of getting nearer a good balance of the sexes in the cast list. It was a Canadian production, by the way.
I was reading the reviews and so on, last night, and I was surprised by some of the venom directed towards it—especially Frewer/Sherlock—for a film that I considered nothing much either way—nothing really bad and nothing outstanding about it. It's really not an important film, but lots of people have very definite ideas on how the role should be played and it seems that you take on Sherlock Holmes at your peril. Perhaps I should have written that they seem very emotionally invested in the character.
One of the attractions of the film, for me, was that I thought it looked good and I was surprised to see the appearance, also, venomously condemned. I think I and the makers were coming at it from a traditional horror film, perhaps Hammer fantasy land, point of view and they were looking for something else. Why would one expect such a film to realistically portray Victorian London? I suppose that once you've offended against their vision of the Beloved Sherlock they're going to look with a jaundiced eye at everything else, too.
Anyway, it was all quite interesting reading.

>205 alaudacorax:

Aw, too bad. I've enjoyed Fairbanks in everything so far, and I feel particularly lucky in that I got to see his Thief on the big screen. The sets and the acrobatics are equally exhilarating.

In catching up with the seventies news, I finally got to see The Dunwich Horror in a good clean copy (but the streaming WOULD jam here and there). Best casting: Sam Jaffee, hands down. I'm not a Lovecraftian so no strong feelings either way on the success of the adaptation... the effects were on the simple side, probably a wise choice. I didn't care for Dean Stockwell's performance much. Can you picture Anthony Perkins instead? Would've been so much better...

>208 LolaWalser:

The Dunwich Horror

I might have to voice a dissenting opinion on the casting. I thought Sam Jaffee seemed too benign. I wanted to swap him and Ed Begley, who had played a convincing megalomaniac in Billion Dollar Brain a couple of years earlier - and physically, he had those big chomping teeth. He just looked scarier!

I thought Dean Stockwell's performance was pretty good for the way this Wilbur Whateley (nothing like Lovecraft's version) is portrayed. He's clearly supposed to be have the audience on his side for much of the film (even though he's a sexual predator - though you have to wonder if late-'60's Hollywood even realised that was an issue. On second thoughts, no you don't.).

I love the animated opening titles. Very clean, very late-'60s, and very efficiently filling in the events between the prologue and the main body of the film.

>187 housefulofpaper:

It's a trivial thing, and I might even be wrong, but I think at a climactic moment in The Ape, the musical score anticipates James Bernard's three-note motif for Christopher Lee's Dracula. You know, "DraaaaCuuuLaaa!!".

Short TV movie directed by Antonio Mercero, La Gioconda está triste (The Mona Lisa is Sad).

I only found out about this this film today. I had seen the director's earlier film, La Cabina (The Telephone Box).

Luckily the online mention of it that I stumbled upon linked to the film on YouTube. The film's in Spanish, but the general story is clear enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbkuZYtlKxw

The Cave annoyed me recently. You'll have seen it ... maybe not under the same name or with the same actors or director, but people explore a cave and find nasties down there ... you know the thing ...

What annoyed me, though, was that the beginnings foreshadowed a Gothic horror. It was set in the Carpathians; there was this hefty, abandoned, Russian Orthodox (apparently) church built over the remote, in-the-mountains-miles-from-anywhere entrance to the cave system; there were huge, vaulted cellars and such with artwork of demons and what have you; there was some business about an earlier expedition disappearing and, before them, some sort of order of medieval knights guarding the place.

And then it was all forgotten about and it turned into the ordinary sci-fi stroke action flick of the first paragraph! Absolutely no hint of the supernatural or good or evil or anything such.

That's ninety-seven minutes I'll never get back. And it was a pointless tangent to a pile of stuff I've got here waiting to be watched. And, truth be told, I probably only watched it because it had Lena Headey and Piper Perabo—probably had Imagine Me and You in my subconscious.

That was a good Gothic horror gone AWOL, there.

And I can never reconcile myself to Cole Hauser's top lip—it always annoys me—that's one antagonistic top lip ...

Oh well, that's my Sunday afternoon, demented, stream-of-consciousness rambling out of the way.

Edited to add the parentheses because the 'apparently' referred to my ignorance of church architecture not some uncertainty written into the script.
Edited AGAIN to move the '(apparently)' when I realised it appeared to refer to 'abandoned'. Oh dear. Read the bloody things before you post!

>212 alaudacorax:

Okay, feeling a bit guilty I didn't say it looked good. Some great underground filming of what looked like real cave systems. Though, come to think of it, there was one clip of someone crashing through some stalagmites that I hope to all the gods was filmed in a studio.

>213 alaudacorax:

I've just realised that whichever lecturer it was who taught us the rule about stalagmites and stalactites would probably get sacked and 'cancelled' today ('tights come down').

>214 alaudacorax:

I was taught the clean version - "tites" cling tight, "mites" might reach the roof one day. But that was courtesy of my Mum, not a university lecturer!

The king about it, this probably goes back to our first family trip to Cheddar Caves. They feature in book I just happen to have started reading, Pagan Britain. The caves contain some of the oldest recorded palaeolithic burials in Britain. And DNA testing about 20 years ago revealed some modern descendants still living in the area.

I've looped back to a "Folk Horror/ deep time" frame of mind at present.

Short Sharp Shocks Volume 2 (disc 1)

Half-way through the second BFI collection of oddball supporting features, with short films from 1943 to 1963.

First off, "Quiz-Crime No 1" presents two murder mysteries investigated by Inspector Frost of the Yard (Carol O'Connor). Can you solve the mystery before the Inspector? (hint: don't look away and assume you can follow the story: the clues are all visual). 14 minutes long.

"Quiz-crime No 2" from 1944 has the same format, but working class copper Frost has been replaced with a plummy Edgar Lustgarten type, an unnamed "Detective Inspector" played by Max Earl. 19 minutes

"The Three Children" (1946). British Public Information Films (equivalent to American PSAs) have entered into the Folk Horror/Scary '70s narrative, and given the parallels with horror movies of the time (e.g. Donald Pleasance voicing the cowled figure overseeing the drowning children in "Dark Waters") it's no surprise. This is an early example, not actually from the Government body the Central Office of Information, but put together by, or for, the Wanstead and Woodford Road Safety Committee. Nevertheless all the essential features of the genre are here in embryo. 3 minutes long.

"Escape From Broadmoor" (1948). A 39-minute short from director John Gilling, who would go on to make Mother Riley Meets the Vampire with Arthur Lucan (Mother Riley - the "Old" strangely dropped for this final film in the series) as well as several films for Hammer. Starring, curiously, John Le Mesurier as a nasty piece of work. Ghosts and premonitions get mixed up in a crime drama. It's a little bit dull, to be honest. It has a feel of stories of the supernatural in a true-life confessions magazine. Maybe that's why Hammer never did a ghost story?

"Mingoloo" (1958). 20 minutes. Volume 1 included two shorts by Theodore Zichy. Here's a third and it's essentially another crime story (a rather inconsequential one, as it turns out) with an element of the paranormal. But between the eccentric twists and turns of the story, way it's told (much of it in voiceover by the main character, as we see the events he describes on screen) and the minimalist design it's a very strange one. Presumably budgetary concerns dictated many of the directorial decisions. Nevertheless, there was money for a brief surreal dream sequence.

"Jack the Ripper with Screaming Lord Sutch" (1963) 3 minutes. This is a sort of music video, for Screaming Lord Sutch's biggest non-hit (it was banned by the BBC). It wasn't made for cinemas but for the UK equivalent of Scopitone machines - a sort of video jukebox (but using film rather than video). Against a minimalist backdrop of coloured cyclorama or backcloth, and some stepped bits of scenery, Sutch staggers around in full Jack the Ripper gear (top hat,cloak, white face make-up), murdering actresses in Victorian prostitute costumes as he mimes to the record. The booklet describes the film as tasteless, and so it is. Also misogynistic - it would be nice to be able to dismiss it as too over-the-top and silly to bother with, only I remember reading somewhere of teenage lads being obsessed with this track (must have been in a pub or club with one of these jukeboxes - they were called Cinebox machines, by the way), and playing it over and over again.

Edited: corrected spelling of "Mingaloo".

>216 housefulofpaper:

That reminds me of the excellent extras on BFI's Schalcken the Painter--The Pit, "experimental gothic short" (based on Poe), and The Pledge, three criminals want to save the soul of their hanged companion (based on Dunsany).

Yesterday I saw Scream of the Shalka, issued on DVD with some very interesting extras. First, what a great little horror story--the weird English village with scared people, mysterious evil brewing up from underneath, spooky screaming, parasitic aliens etc. Grant's Doctor was a surprise because he reminded so much of Eleven's "brooding" phase and the abrasive Twelve. Loved hearing about David Tennant fanboying himself into a bit part on the set.

The extras made me wonder about the mysterious workings of the BBC, how they apparently let one group toil on this animated project while preparing the series return... I mean, that they kept it unknown from those people--just seems strange. The comments about the fandom were also illuminating, the BBC message board they had to get rid off because of the abuse Davies received when the show came back--oh dear. I got some sense of this on Gallifrey Base (and there were still lunatics posting about how much "Rose" sucks DECADES later), but it's really eye-opening to hear of real-life measures taken against toxic chatter.

I guess maybe those are the inevitable extremes of any passion?--the fans who love the show through it all, and the peculiar sort who seem to love only their idea of what the show was, or could be according to them, but never is.

Oh, it was also fun to see what Paul Cornell looks like. Frankly he could play some, erm, character roles in sci-fi!

>217 LolaWalser:

David Mitchell (the comic writer and performer, not the author) was on a TV show a few years ago explaining the BBC isn't , as people assume, a monolithic top-down entity but rather a collection of competing fiefdoms. One small illustration of that: when John Christopher's Tripods trilogy was adapted for TV in the '80s (in the event, they only got 2/3rds of the way through) much was made of it all being shot on video and how the modelwork would fit in seamlessly with the live footage. Years later in an interview with someone from the production team, they explained how they were forever fighting with the weather forecasters (literally fighting, for all I know!) to get access to the necessary video technology (Quantel machines, perhaps).

I spoke to Paul Cornell, for a few minutes, only last month! He had a stall at the Thought Bubble Comic Convention, in Harrogate.

Although the Ghost Stories for Christmas written and directed by Mark Gatiss (up to four now, with this year's adaptation of The Tractate Middoth) have not been released on disc, quite a few things have been disinterred from the archives following the release of the original '70s Ghost Stories....

Ghost in the Water is a one-off drama made for BBC children's television in 1982 (it would be anachronistic to call it a TV Movie). It's based on a YA novel (which I haven't read) by Edward Chitham. It doesn't go all out for horror. After all, it was first broadcast 4:40 pm on New Year's Eve, 1982. (Info. from the BBC Genome website, and so I can quote the Radio Times synopsis (blurb or teaser, really): "Tess Willetts. Born 10 June 1968, Netherton, West Midlands. Abigail Parkes. Died 10 December 1860. Suicide by drowning. Gosty Hill Canal. What strange forces are drawing the two girls together?".

To expand on that a bit, two teenagers start investigating a century-old local tragedy for a school history project, and seem to have disturbed the spirit of the dead girl into seeking revenge, or perhaps justice - but in doing so she may put one of the teenagers at risk.

From the perspective of 2021 it looks like a lot of money was spent on it: all location shooting I think, and all shot on film. The leads and the other teenage actors are - well you have to make allowances. The rest of the cast is very solid.

Anchoress (1993)
In pre-ordering the All the Haunts Be Ours Folk Horror box set from Severin Films, I knew that some of the discs were going to be Region A. I'm going to miss out on some bonus features, but the only region-locked feature I didn't already own was this one.

It's arguably neither Gothic nor even Folk Horror. It's an Arthouse movie, and I don't say that to be derogatory, but because it's as recognisable a type as any genre picture. The 2009 BFI DVD release comes with a booklet, which references Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer (specifically, The Passion of Joan of Arc). I saw a kind of family resemblance to the visual styles of Andrei Tarkovsky and Sergei Parajanov, and maybe Derek Jarman too, in his more austere works.

Chris Newby's film is based on a real person, a 14th century teenaged girl named Christine Carpenter who had herself walled up in a cell attached to her church - for life - after apparently experiencing a vision of the Virgin Mary. Letters survive which show she left her cell after a couple of years, and then petitioned the Pope (successfully) to be let back in to live out the rest of her life as a religious recluse.

A story about power relations between men and women, between the church and secular powers, and between the church and "the old ways" has been created from these sparse details. The film also - I should probably say primarily - focuses on the sensual, through black and white cinematography and close ups of e.g. wheat fields, stone, fabric, flesh.

I don't think it's giving anything away to say that the patriarchy wins - but Christine gains a freedom of a sort, at the end.

It's slightly puerile, but some childish part of my brain noted that the main cast - including Christopher Eccleston, Pete Postlethwaite, Toyah Willcox, Annette Badland and Julie T. Wallace (Christine Carpenter is played by Natalie Morse, the skipping girl at the beginning of Drowning by Numbers) - could easily be the guest stars in an episode of Midsomer Murders.

I'm very happy to be able to say that the Folk Horror box set arrived on Monday. It's going to take some time to work through it!

>218 housefulofpaper:

Nice!

>219 housefulofpaper:

I'm wanting this, but I splurged on all the available (region 1) sets of the DW The Collection (not counting the animations of Troughton), so feeling a bit thin in the pocket at the mo'.

Looking forward to your reactions.

>218 housefulofpaper:
I got to know Paul when I was organising Science Fiction/Horror/Fantasy conventions. He was my Guest of Honour at The Phoenix Convention (P-Con) in Dublin in 2009. He is one of the most professional writers I have met and he is a very genuine and pleasant person. I have seen him save convention panels from chaos and end up giving impromptu masterclasses on writing topics, one of them being Writing for the Screen.

Any conversation with Paul Cornell will leave his interlocutor feeling good.

>164 alaudacorax:

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched ... arrived yesterday and I watched it last night (almost didn't open it—thought it was a Christmas present).

I was a bit overwhelmed, actually; it was rather too much to digest in one go. It can stand several rewatchings, I think. Now, of course, I can see taking shape this huge pile of new films to watch ... not to mention a few tempting books ...

I have made a start on the All Our Haunts Be Ours box set.

Disc one is the documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. I’ve watched it once, and initial thoughts are inevitably going to be fairly superficial - I can confirm that it’s very good, lots of knowledgeable interviewees offering their thoughts, lots of clips. The argument(s) of the documentary, such as trying to define Folk Horror, what it means in different countries and cultures etc., is put together from the words of the various contributors (or so it seems - of course the unseen interviewer (presumably writer/director Kier-La Janisse) was eliciting those responses through her choice of questions.

Th documentary roughly falls into three sections. The first focuses on the UK, introduces the “unholy trinity” (Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw,The Wicker Man), asks the sort of questions I’m familiar with - why was the late ‘60s/early ‘70s the historical moment for these films, what was “in the air”. Speculation on why Folk Horror seemed, at least at first, to be a specially British (maybe even English thing), and so on. Lots of clips of film and TV that I recognised. Even dear old Bagpuss got a mention (the context was an interviewee confessing to finding the mixture of dusty Edwardianism, stripped-down folksong and stop-motion toy animals deeply unsettling).

The second section looks at the USA. One observation I found interesting is that the UK “Folk” are often Pagan cultists, whereas the American equivalent tends to be presented as Christian sects.

The third section is Rest of the World and on the one hand is a little more superficial - because there is so much material to cover , and it is mostly unfamiliar to the documentary’s US/UK target audience. But at least on the first viewing, because the films etc. are unknown territory to me, this was the section from which I learned the most.

Disc two and the first feature film in the set. This is Eyes of Fire, USA 1983, directed by Avery Crounse.

It’s a 4k restoration from the original negative and a film that Severin have taken a lot of care over (like Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched it’s also been given a separate release). It probably looks better than it ever has, even on its first theatrical release. But this is only the cut theatrical version. The bonus features include a longer version, the director’s cut as it were, with the alternative title Crying Blue Sky. I haven’t watched this yet, but a quick look at the opening couple of minutes indicate two things (1) the image quality is inferior to Eyes of Fire (2) it’s probably the better version. Eyes of Fire has some opening scenes that look studio-bound and lots of voiceover, at least some of which appears to be necessary to replace missing scenes.

The story is one of Colonial times. An adulterous preacher is ejected from a British colony and takes his handful of followers downriver where he intends to set up his own colony. After an attack by Shawnee they take refuge in an abandoned settlement that the native Americans will not enter. But the reason they don’t enter it is that it is haunted by the spirits of the previous settlers and by something else (words have literally failed me - to say more without spoilers would mean writing something like the blurb on an ’80’s horror paperback, and the film is more high-minded in its intentions than that).

Crounse (so I learned from the extras on the disc) was a rather feted still photographer before making this film and there are a lot of in-camera optical effects that are on one hand not quite like anything I have seen on film before (and the execution is better than a lot of big Hollywood films of the era) but also look very much like high-end still photography of the era - cousin to a poster campaign for cigarettes, or (and this is more to the point) a coffee table book of lady who modelled nude but with body paint to merge with the background - Veruschka von Lehndorff.

A commentary track by Colin Dickey sometimes strikes a sour note (about some of the actors' performances and even about the optical effects) but does make interesting points about for example the preacher - is he supposed to hint at Joseph Smith and beyond him all the strange Sects and dangerously charismatic preachers of American Folk Horror (and Southern Gothic, come to that)? And the tropes of colonialism and the frontier, using the Native Americans as an "other" and the currents of appropriation and guilt and fear in using figures from Native American culture either as a straightforward Bogeyman, or a symbolic or metaphorical usage which is intended to be progressive but looks rather more tin-eared and awkward (to put it mildly) with the passage of time.

Most of the discs in the set hold two films. In effect this one does too, since Crying Blue Sky is included as a bonus feature. I haven't watched that version yet, I was loth to dive straight into it after Eyes of Fire but there's been a few days' gap for New Years. Maybe I'll watch it next. We'll see.

There are some short bonus features too. An interview with Avery Crounse conducted by Stephen Thrower (due to budgetary and/or Covid considerations this was evidently a Zoom call and the two are presented on screen side by side in two (what I suppose I now have to call old-fashioned) CRT television sets.

A cartoon version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from 1972, evidently intended mainly for schools. The animation style is limited - it sometimes does that thing where the camera roams around the (still) background for a while rather than animating cels in front of it. The character design is very early '70s - that moment when the Underground seemed to be going mainstream (maybe the Hanna Barbara cartoon Wait Till Your Father Gets Home would be a good comparison). The narration is by John Carradine.

Transformations is a short silent black and white film, an experimental, feminist film following a group of women performing a ceremony of some kind in the woods.

Backwoods from 2018 is, I gather from the credits, a student film shot entirely in Cornwall. Nevertheless it convinced me that it was shot in the American backwoods (if you know your trees or have a better ear for regional American accents, possibly you wouldn't be fooled!). This is an adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft story The Picture in the House and pretty good it is, too.

I forgot to say that witchcraft (maybe modishly '70s/'80s psychic powers, but much more probably witchcraft), features heavily in Eyes of Fire, so you can see the bonus features are all well chosen to complement the main film.

>224 housefulofpaper:, >225 housefulofpaper:

Now you've got me a little wistful that I didn't buy the whole set rather than just Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched ...

This is the sort of movie to get me banned from good company, but eh. Actually it's just one segment of Walerian Borowczyck's four-part Contes immoraux I want to highlight here, the third tale about Countess Báthory. Paloma Picasso is cast as the lesbian, blood-bathing countess who preys on pretty young girls. Unmissable for anyone "collecting" versions of the legend of the Blood Countess.

The art direction is unbelievably beautiful--everything from photography to costumes and interior design is as superb as any in cinema. Of course the "plots" suffer from the films being vehicles for showcasing as much nude young flesh as possible but I feel like this is not a serious complaint...

>227 LolaWalser:
I picked up a Borowczyck box set (at sale price!) in HMV but I haven't managed to work through it yet. I have seen Contes Immoraux.

I think I mentioned Borowczyk's 1981 film variously titled Dr. Jekyll and His Women/ Dr Jekyll and Miss Osbourne/ Docteur Jekyll et les femmes a while back. The UK Blu-ray puts back about 25(!) minutes the censor removed - presumably the scenes featuring the priapic Mr Hyde and his fatal penis. Udo Kier plays Doctor Jekyll. Howard Vernon and Patrick Magee are also in the cast. Somewhere in the bonus features I think it's said that Borowczyck wanted Magee because of his status as a stage actor - not aware of all the low budget horror films he'd been making for the past couple of decades. And also (unless I dreamed this) that he had taken inspiration from Sir Henry at Rawlinson End in order to get his portrayal of English society right, apparently not aware that far from being an aristocratic lady diarist, Vivian Stanshall, the "ginger geezer", was the former lead singer with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Surely that can't be true? I desperately want it to be true!

I was looking at older posts in the previous "Phantasmagoria" threads and reminded myself I watched Leptirica on YouTube. It's the next film in the All the Haunts be Ours box set, so I'll be able to watch with subtitles.

Another box set that I've been slowly working through and not mentioned, but one where the films have been discussed previously, is The Fu Manchu Cycle - five films starring Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu, produced by Harry Alan Towers. The bonus materials and commentaries explain some of the things people find unsatisfactory about the films - chiefly that Towers only bought the rights to the characters and not to any of Sax Rohmer's novels, and then proceeded to write the scripts himself; and that getting funding from various international sources meant having to shoehorn more and more "stars"(but not international ones) into the stories so as to appeal to the backers' domestic markets. A bit "too many cooks". All the films have been digitally restored and the Jess Franco films in particular benefit from not being presented in grotty washed out prints (it's hilarious how Franco seems to have no interest in Fu Manchu in The Blood of Fu Manchu but is clearly besotted with Tsai Chin as Fu Manchu's daughter, Lin Tang).

Included in the extras on the Franco discs are two episodes of a silent Fu Manchu serial from the '20s.

This needs some explanation. You're aware of ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) "a tingling sensation that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia, it has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia and may overlap with frisson" (Wikipedia).

There are many videos on YouTube attempting to evoke this response (or purporting to) - from people making gentle noises to playacting as a barber or an optician, to what seems to be the resurrection of the "video girlfriend" idea that I remember being roundly mocked on an episode of Clive James on Television. i think what draws me to them - it's a weird fascination rather than the "ASMR" response - is the spectacle of grown adults playing make believe like toddlers. It's a strange world.

Anyway, this is an episode from the most narratively dense and professional/high budget ASMR series that I've seen on YouTube. It really is more like a TV drama than the other ASMR videos (but a drama that stretches its story very thinly in favour of - as the title of the channel says - "Atmosphere"). Watched as a stand-alone thing, it's a sort of concentrated Gothic experience (best listened to with headphones, as recommended for all these types of video).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCYYjm4AbVU

>227 LolaWalser:

Don't know what it says about my viewing habits, but that's a film (Set of films? Portmanteau film?) that has periodically got recommended to me by various websites over the years. I don't think I ever picked up that Paloma Picasso was in it, though. Now Ms. P and your description have me doubly intrigued. Time I watched it, I suppose—I've put it on top of my Cinema Paradiso list.

>229 housefulofpaper:

Defeated after five or ten minutes by sensory overload and my own posaicism prosaicism, I'm afraid. Distracted by the backgrounds which were too much like one of my early morning walks and had me looking for wildlife; worried by the young lady's apparent malnourishment; and I had to listen very hard—even in English—or use subtitles, which was too much.

Having moved back to the LT tab to write that, I found myself in a rather weird place—can't find any better words—because of the narrator's mouth apparently moving from side to side very close behind my head (I'm using headphones). And now there's rain falling on the leaves and I'm back on one of my walks ...

... and I went back to the tab to have a look and I'm in a graveyard with, to one side, what looks very much like the Gothic folly that appears on the front of so many textbooks ...

... and somebody's digging ...

I'll get back to you ...

>231 alaudacorax:

Sometimes you just don't know what you think about something ...

>230 alaudacorax:

Please promise still to respect us in the morning... :) I've been scratching my head wondering how to mention this without coming across as terminally creepy, but it's the scene of her bathing in the blood that puts the gore in Gothic and vice versa, I think--never have I seen movie blood looking that real. Paloma Picasso was really well cast, I thought it was a bit of stunt celeb casting, but she did a good job.

By the way, it would seem there are two similarly-titled Borowczyk movies, "Immoral tales" and "Immoral women". At least, the English titles are similar.

>229 housefulofpaper:

Interesting. I had seen the acronym around YT but didn't bother investigating. It was a little too talky for me--the sound of the rain alone affected me more--but the poetry was well-chosen.

I collected the Fu Manchu movies recently one by one (or in a two-fer in one case), but given that three of those are DVD-Rs, that set is truly desirable.

Yes, I remember we talked about Leptirica (and that I wanted to look up that older-than-Stoker vampire book but forgot to do so).

Borowczyk is something of a belated revelation. I had seen his La Bête long ago (and have it in a set), but not his earlier movies, from before he lost his "good" reputation, until recently when Madelen put up his shorts. I expect people must have been embarrassed to discuss him seriously, and maybe even more so now with this neo-Puritanism, but if Nagisa Oshima is arty enough for Criterion, I say so is this guy.

>61 alaudacorax: - ... I forgot to check with my bird recordings

Okay, this is somewhat off-topic, but ...

The call of the Great Northern Diver, or Common Loon as it's known in North America:
It's been periodically playing on my mind that it seems to turn up in films where I wouldn't expect it. So I've just wasted an hour or so—well, perhaps 'wasted' is not the right word as it's been quite instructive—looking at distribution maps and looking up filming locations. Only to find, at the end of it all, this on Wikipedia:

The wailing call of the loon is widely used in film and television to evoke wilderness and suspense ...

Deflated! Oh well ...

Edited to add that I really should have realised from the start that they were added to the soundtracks as it seems to be one particular call out of many that is used and, I suspect, one particular recording. And if anyone's interested ...

>234 alaudacorax:
Fascinating. I read not so long ago that Hollywood nearly always uses the call of one particular (Californian) frog species. That's "the frog noise" now.

Recent viewing. I went back to the Short Sharp Shocks Vol 2 Box set.

And we're into the 1970s with a long-ish short film from 1976, The Face of Darkness. The director is interviewed in a bonus feature, and his observations that the film has the faults of a young film-maker's first work (all his ideas are crammed into it), and that the story would be more effective if the political element were revealed more gradually, seem fair.

There's also some doubling of roles: characters in the past and their modern-day counterparts (priest/psychiatrist for example) which doesn't seem to have anything to do with a reincarnation theme but is rather working against the illusion of realism in order to make a sociopolitical point, or try to. Or maybe the budget simply wouldn't stretch to two more actors.

But for all that it's ambitious, and sad to say speaks to concerns that are still at least as relevant the best part of half a century later. I don't want to give too much away, so avoiding spoilers, it's about a British politician using an undead warlock as a means to political power.

I also watched a short training film warning against industrial accidents from 1985, (the video nasty-era, as the back cover of the Blu-ray box notes), full of tumbles through factory roofs and off of scaffolding, and bricks falling on passers-by, all presided over by a "Horror Host" style masked Hangman. And it's called, appropriately enough, Hangman.

The last film I watched was A Dark Song (2016), which I ordered from Amazon after a review by Dr Justin Sledge on his Esoterica YouTube Channel.

There's been a number of recent very small budget British (or in this case, Irish) films that have taken an occult theme and - as far as I can tell - take it seriously. This is essentially a two-hander set in one location. A woman has, for reasons not fully revealed at the outset, paid an occultist to stay shut up with her in a remote location for months, in order to take her through the Abremelin ritual (that's the magical procedure that Alastair Crowley started at Boleskine House but didn't see through to the end, supposedly leaving the house occupied by unbanished demons).

The first commentator under the Esoterica episode says this:
"I thought this was the most accurate depiction of hardcore ceremonial magic I've seen on screen. Grueling, dangerous, complex, horribly demanding. Not evil but reflecting the motivations of the practitioner and dependent on will. The film is both frightening and numinous"...{spoiler deleted}.

There is a very human motive behind the protagonist's decision to undergo this ordeal, and the film is as believable in its characters and their motivations and interactions as in its thoroughly-researched occultism.

This is a film I think benefits from having no spoilers, but I can say that I was impressed.

>237 housefulofpaper:

Interesting. I note that IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes' 'audience score' are 6.2 and 61%, respectively; but that Rotten Tomatoes' critics score is a whopping 90%. I have to see that if only for sheer curiosity at the varying scores. Just glancing through the reviews on IMDb it seems to really divide opinion.

The character names in cast list alone is enough to make me curious to watch—'demon', 'demon', 'demon' ...

I watched the remaining two short films in the Short Sharp Shocks Vol 2 Box set. Two very different examples of cinema.

The films are in chronological order but I managed to watch the two in >236 housefulofpaper: out of sequence, so The Dumb Waiter is from 1979, a short thriller made by Robert Bierman (who was, with this film, trying to move out of commercials and into film, following the career trajectories of the likes of Alan Parker and Hugh Hudson). It's got that feel about it somehow, assured and influenced by all the touchstones of Arthouse cinema, but somehow just a but too polished and...commercial, I suppose. As to what it's about, Geraldine James (fairly early in her career) is followed home by a stalker who tries to get into her flat. After a near-successful attempt, she secures all the doors and windows, but there's a weak spot in the flat's security - the dumb waiter used to take rubbish to a communal area outside...

This was apparently very successful (as these films go), being sold to a major studio and programmed as the support for "big" films for several years afterwards. And then sold on to Channel Four. There's a long, career-reviewing interview with Bierman as a bonus feature on the disc, which is where all this information comes from.

Speaking of Channel Four, in its early days (it started broadcasting on 2 November 1982) it had quite a lot of alternative/political/minority programming, which you just don't see any more. So, The Mark of Lilith (1986) the final film on the disc is - I guess you wouldn't say genre - is in a cinematic language I'm not familiar with any more. Speaking (in the film's associated bonus feature and in the accompanying booklet) the filmmakers talk about lesbian feminist subversion, empowering the audience by "subverting and challenging the rules of genre", breaking the fourth wall and delivering short lectures (or fragments of one long(er) lecture "to hinder the audience from identifying with underlying dominant ideologies and points of view of mainstream cinematic production". I have to confess much of the film seemed poorly-acted, with clunky transitions from lecture to narrative - but I admit this may be me being alienated from the dominant mainstream way of film storytelling, and not liking the experience. And I have to admit the film does things that a mainstream/traditional narrative would struggle to do, such as the scenes where the heroine is literally humanised into a relationship, shown in resolutely non-erotic (there is not the faintest whisper of voyuerism or exploitation, I mean) and awkwardly normal, human terms.

The story, then, concerns the vampire Lillia who lives with the Luke (also a vampire, with the sharp cheekbones of a hungry '80s Goth) but starts to have intimations of a different life, beginning to see herself in a mirror, and also entering the dreams of Zena, an academic studying monstrous women of myth, and learning how Goddesses were turned into demons by Patriarchal society. So it's themes are women refusing to follow the roles assigned to them, whether it's horror film victim, mythological demon, or heterosexual wife/partner.

They used to say (of classic Hollywood melodramas) "they don't make 'em like that anymore". Well, they don't make 'em like this anymore, either.

There's a second bonus feature connected to this film, about the Ritzy, an independent cinema in Brixton. Specifically in its '80s incarnation when it was edgy and radical, and ever on the verge of closing, and the roof was leaking.

>239 housefulofpaper:

I'm sure I've never seen The Mark of Lilith; but I've possibly heard it, or something very similar, on the radio long time back. Was it, perhaps, developed from a radio play? Or a stage play that was adapted for radio?

>239 housefulofpaper:

Appreciate reading about these sets.

Well, I'm continuing my streak of "movie-watching I couldn't talk about with my parents" with Flavia the Heretic, 1974. It came up years ago as a rec thanks to some other of my unsalubrious choices but the caption on the DVD issue "Flay Me Baby One More Time!" stayed even my hand... until I discovered María Casares (legend of French stage and cinema) was in it. Que fait-elle dans cette galère?!, I wondered as I rang up the purchase.

Turns out she had quite a juicy role as the maverick Sister Agatha, who not only proposes to teach a naive nun (Flavia, played by Florinda Bolkan) how to masturbate, but to take Rome and Peter's seat and fulfill her childhood dream of being the Pope.

The whole movie is actually surprisingly... it's a bit hard to say "good", but certainly good for spurring thought. One might debate forever whether a film can both exploit scenes of sex and torture AND convey a feminist message, and yet, for me there's no doubt that something of that sort happens--at least, for those receptive to that message.

Flavia rebels first against her father, who promptly locks her up in a convent (dedicated to the cult of St. George). There she rebels against faith itself, questioning the legitimacy of the all-male trinity and the apostles. She witnesses a rape of a servant girl and reproaches her father for punishing women for "sin" but letting men like the rapist scot-free. There are many such zingers both from Flavia and Sister Agatha, culminating in the scene when Muslims invade the region and the valiant Christian soldiers hare away while the two nuns ridicule their lack of courage.

The anticlerical message is also clear in the depiction of the Muslims as no worse than the Christians, and in the condemnation of the hypocritical puritanism which feeds the passion of faith by the denial of sensuality.

All in all, this is much better than one might expect from the label "nunsploitation". I went for the cheapest option which was that Shameless issue with the unfortunate caption and didn't realise it came only with the English-dub audio. The dubbing is better than usually found, however. The DVD says it's the first-time "uncut" for the English market, but the running time is at 96' whereas the Wikipedia says 100'.

>240 alaudacorax:
I'm almost 100% it wasn't. I suppose it shares some ideas in common with Angela Carter's work. Could you possibly have her radio play 'Vampirella' in mind? First broadcast in 1976, then rewritten as a short story 'The Lady in the House of Love' (it's one of the stories in The Bloody Chamber).

It's been rebroadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra a few times, but not currently available (there has been a crackly copy on YouTube for a few years; now joined by a clean copy, no doubt sourced from the BBC).

>242 housefulofpaper:

Not sure. But what I'm remembering did feature apples a lot, with Lilith very heavily associated with apples. Probably something quite unconnected with your film.

>243 alaudacorax:

Yes, that would be something unconnected to the film and unconnected to Angela Carter as well. Now I'm wondering what it was.

>241 LolaWalser:

I learned a new bit of French idiom, there—after a bit of online searching ...

Flavia the Heretic is another of those that periodically turn up in my recommendations. I'm fairly sure I've yet to see it; but I've got the impression that it has a bit more of a reputation than most nunsploitation. It seems approaching iconic in some circles.

And as I wrote that, the postie delivered Immoral Tales (>230 alaudacorax:, >233 LolaWalser:) and A Dark Song (>237 housefulofpaper:, >238 alaudacorax:). So a lot of dark watching over the next few evenings.

I was about to say, on Flavia the Heretic, that I think IMDb has just dropped a massive spoiler on me. Right in the blurb at the top of the page ... I don't recommend reading it ...

>241 LolaWalser:
Re. the running time, I think UK DVDs (but not Blu-Rays, and I don't know why, as both are digital media) are still sped up slightly.

This is due to the frame rate for film and the UK's domestic power supply (50Hz) having to harmonise (not the right word!) - so the frame rate is increased to (I just checked/read online) 25 fps.

>227 LolaWalser: - This is the sort of movie to get me banned from good company ...

My brain gets a bit perverse on times: I have this absolute tower of stuff here waiting to be watched; but, last night, I was just hunting for something completely mindless and escapist—I was just in that kind of mood ...

And so I ended up watching Call Girl of Cthulhu (the touchstone is uninformative so I've linked it to IMDb).

It's a riff on a familiar Lovecraft theme and the IMDb blurb says it all, really:
When a virginal artist falls in love with a call girl, she turns out to be the chosen bride of the alien god Cthulhu. To save her, he must stop an ancient cult from summoning their god and destroying mankind.

It's rated quite lowly on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes and at the garish opening credits and raucous punk-style music I was pretty sure I was in for something crass.

Well, perhaps. Thing is, it was really fun. Probably, 'totally over the top' would be a better description than 'crass'. There was lots of really explicit, bloody, gory violence; but the thing is it was all subtly tongue in cheek. Actually, I feel a bit conflicted about letting the concept of subtlety anywhere near this film—it's really incongruous, somehow—but so much about it was really finely-judged. The cast really sold the film well—in particular, the lead actor was really convincing as this excruciatingly unselfconfident, 'stuck in adolescence' virgin—I really felt for him in the opening interactions with the women in his life—and they somehow managed to balance all the violence and mutilation and body horror on a fine line right in the middle between a gratuitous, modern slasher and what I can only describe as a pre-hiatus Doctor Who vibe (the Brit TV would never have allowed all the blood and entrails, of course). And then the thing was packed full of sly little references to various Lovecraft characters and incidents, and, I think, to a lot of other horror films, too ... and I suspect I was missing a lot. In its treatment of both the genre and Lovecraft it seemed to balance right on the edge of being a micky-take.

Oddly enough—because it was a very different beast and I can't point to any real connections—it most reminded me of John Waters' Serial Mom. Also oddly, I was convinced until looking it up online a few minutes ago that it was a British film. It has a British feel, somehow. It's not, it's American, the director's American and I can't find out about the lead actors.

Edited for ambiguity.
Edited again because I put an inverted comma in the possessive, 'its'. Oh, the shame!!! The shame!!!

>247 alaudacorax:

"Lovecraft" and "virginal artist" (aka "incel") combine into a nope for me but good to know there's fun to be had if one ventures past the signposts...

>246 housefulofpaper:

That's very interesting, thanks, would explain it. Nothing noticeable when watching, as far as I was concerned.

Since my last, I saw three French TV movies dealing with ghostly ghastlies. Le noctambule, 1973, features a vampire revenant trying to live a quiet life who, to his misfortune, is noticed by a nocturnal police inspector used to getting a 6 AM espresso in a coffee bar. La gourmande, 1984, is more worthy, featuring a great performance by the female lead. She's a housewife taken for granted by the husband and the teenage son, and develops a fascination with a painting of a head with two gaping mouths. Thwarted in owning the painting, she paints her own face to resemble it and goes about her daily business like that--shopping, at home, at a wedding... amazing and hard-hitting sequences.

The best of the lot was La chose qui ricane (The sniggering thing), 1985, a take on the Burke & Hare story. A poor, ageing medical student is blackmailed into becoming the morgue attendant who receives the dodgily-acquired corpses. He puts up with it until the one person who showed him some kindness and gave hope for a better life, a waitress, turns up on the mortuary slab. He runs away and falls into alcoholism but the band of ghouls (not all of them living!) who had controlled his life pursue him still. It's evident these were made on small budgets but the locations more than make up for that.

>247 alaudacorax:
Sounds intriguing. £20 for the blu-ray though. Not sure it's quite that intriguing (I've probably bought ropier Mythos-related films before now, though!)

>248 LolaWalser:
These sound intriguing on a different level, though. Thank you for the synposes. I don't suppose there's any reference books equivalent to Jonathan Rigby's Euro Gothic (for example) where one can learn about TV movies.

I have been watching some European TV movies as well. The next disc in the Folk Horror box set is Leptirica and two more films, all from 1973 and directed by Djordje Kadijevic. They would have been Yugoslav films at that time but I gather from the bonus materials that they are all, in language and culturally, Serbian.

Leptirica is a film we've discussed before when I watched a copy (no subtitles) on YouTube. I got more plot details this time round but it is still ambiguous in its storytelling. It's the only one of the three films in colour.

(Apologies, by the way, for not hunting for the special characters to write these names properly. I'm being lazy).

Sticenik, one would have thought, had been shot in the '60s. It has that sharpness and spareness in the black and white cinematography. The film opens with a young man in 19th-century dress running across a bleak landscape from a black-clad figure following him - at walking pace but, you infer, untiring and implacable. The young man comes to an imposing building seemingly in the middle of nowhere (in reality, a palace built by an Italian noble, apparently) and begs to be allowed in. It turns out to be an asylum and against expectation the film doesn't go down a Bedlam or Kafka-esque story of wrongful incarceration. The presiding doctor tries to help the young man, and repel the attempts of the black-clad man to claim him.

Devicanska Svirka isn't entirely dissimilar. A young man breaks a journey at a remote inn (shades of Harker/Renfield - depending on the version - in Dracula) because the coachman won't go on. The man sets off on foot but an incident on the road leads him into the castle that the locals shun, and to quickly fall in love with the strange woman who inhabits it. Gothic melodrama leads into a gruesome climax (which I gather, again from the extra features, meant this wasn't actually screened until 20 years later).

You could also justifiably say about these films that the locations more than make up for their modest budgets. These last two films are not, to my mind, Folk Horror, but rather feel like Djordje Kadijevic spin on the Gothic of Hammer and Roger Corman/AIP (and the German and Italian film makers who took their cue from them).

>249 housefulofpaper:

Um ... may have oversold that a bit. A lot of my enthusiasm came because it was not the rubbish I thought it was going to be. Fun way to pass ninety minutes; but I have so many ways a spare £20 could better go.

>250 alaudacorax:

Please be reassured: if I'm silly enough to buy a blu-ray of this film, that's all on me!

>249 housefulofpaper:

Yeah, it's doubtful there are studies of this material, all the French people I ask are self-deprecatingly contemptuous of French TV, at least that from before the recent-ish spate of crime hits that travelled beyond borders (Engrenages; the Agatha Christie adaptations etc.)

Saw Deep Red, 1975. It really is a rather beautiful film, gory scenes notwithstanding. I was sure Andrew wrote about it but scrolling up it seems that wasn't in this thread. I've nothing clever to add...

>252 LolaWalser:

It seems I needed an excuse to waste an evening when I could have been reading a book or watching a film that I already own! but no.

I looked on Amazon UK to see if I could find anything from French televison along the lines you discussed. There was the 1960's Belphagor (French and German, but no English dub). An initially promising line of "Tresors du Fantastique" proved to be US/UK films, and mostly Drive-in and late-night TV old war horses, at that.

I don't think I've written about Deep Red. The only pre-Suspira Argento giallo I've seen is Four Flies on Grey Velvet. I've got them all I think, and have seen bits of them because I started the little collection by recording the films off-air (from the Horror Channel, probably) then upgraded, from VHS tape to DVD-R, to bought DVD or Blu-ray, without actually sitting down to watch them.

>253 housefulofpaper:

Dang, I must be really losing it, I probably mis-remembered the Suspiria post. I haven't been paying systematic attention to Argento but I sort of thought I might want to after seeing recently L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The bird with the crystal feathers). Elegance and an Antonioni-like tension seem to be his trademark.

Well, on French TV, if you're still studying the language, I can again highly recommend getting that 3 Euro monthly sub to Madelen. (It's not just television--they have loads of films, Varda, Resnais, Godard, Chris Marker etc.) If unsure you'd cope, you could do just the free month and see how it goes.

Incidentally, I was looking to see what sort of information, if any, would be available online about those films and came across an entry for "La chose qui ricane" on the Bfi site:

https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b700a0333

Naive question--would this mean the film was shown in the UK at some point, or is this just a general database?

>254 LolaWalser:
Thanks for reminding me about Madelen. I've taken the plunge and signed up, although the amount of text I had to paste into Google Translate suggests maybe I'm not ready yet. A 246 day Duolingo streak doesn't actually take you very far.

I think the sheer amount of material on the The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Blu-ray had been putting me off - English dub, Italian soundtrack with subtitles, commentary and bonus features. I'll get to it soon.

Good question about the nature of the BFI database. I presume it's either a general database or a database of the BFI's own archives.

The BFI's Wikipedia entry says one of its purposes is "to promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema and to establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom" and of its archive, "The majority of the collection is British material but it also features internationally significant holdings from around the world. The Archive also collects films which feature key British actors and the work of British directors."

So it's a non-answer really, but I don't think the entry necessarily means that the film was ever on general release or shown on television; but it might have been programmed at the National Film Theatre.

>255 housefulofpaper:

That's what I wondered -- seems unlikely they'd catalogue literally all the production from wherever...
Congrats on the Madelen sub, I'm so chuffed to have a viewing buddy there! Duolingo's a nifty little tool but you really need immersion for progress, and short of living in a francophone setting, this is the next best thing. However, I hope you won't be hard on yourself and don't fear to call it quits if you find yourself more often frustrated than delighted. There has to be a balance--but it really pays to be stubborn.

I hope it's OK if I link the stuff I talked about here so you can test it for yourself... just a few faves:

https://madelen.ina.fr/serie/belphegor-ou-le-fantome-du-louvre

https://madelen.ina.fr/programme/le-golem

https://madelen.ina.fr/serie/mycenes-celui-qui-vient-du-futur

https://madelen.ina.fr/programme/la-brulure-de-mille-soleils

https://madelen.ina.fr/serie/la-poupee-sanglante

https://madelen.ina.fr/programme/la-chose-qui-ricane

https://madelen.ina.fr/collection/les-classiques-de-letrange

etc.

Ha! The Metro Kinokulturhaus in Vienna is doing a retrospective of those Edgar Wallace films we talked about here--scroll for some very interesting teaser photos:

https://www.filmarchiv.at/program/retrospective/im-banne-des-unheimlichen/

Some titles repeat because they are different versions.

>256 LolaWalser:
Fantastic! Thank you- I doubt my ability to navigate the website.

>257 LolaWalser:
I put the blurb through Google Translate: "Partly with an introduction by the curators Florian Widegger and Olaf Möller, who in a lecture also deals with the influence of Wallace on television." - I wonder if they will prove an influence (as I suspect) on the British adventure series of the 1960s - The Avengers and suchlike.

>258 housefulofpaper:

Interesting thought--they do schedule at least one lecture (Vortrag) and, by my count, four English-language adaptations (The Four Just Men; Dark Eyes of London; The Return of the Frog; The Squeaker). I haven't seen any of those English-language movies.

But there's a touch of The Avengers look in the photos alone, no? The octopus on the bowler hat, the fashions...

>259 LolaWalser:
The octopus on the hat is from a 2004 parody (obviously I only found that out this evening with some Googling)(also, genuine raised eybrows when I looked on IMDb and saw one of the character names. Did they know how rude that is in English? I guess so..)

It was more specifically the surreally over the top elements of the villains and the scenarios that I had in mind. The sort of thing where most of the commentary I've read complacently and self-satisfiedly opines that it's uniquely British (read: English).

>260 housefulofpaper:

The Avengers were quite popular in Germany, no? I'd think they had an influence on the 1960s Edgar Wallace Krimis, especially visible in those of the late 1960s (The Man with the glass eye; The Blue hand; The Hound of Blackwood Castle etc.) The affinity sort of comes across even in stills.

>261 LolaWalser:

Yes it was, although I don't know when it was first sold to German television.

I've done some very quick and lazy online searching. The Rialto Edgar Wallace Krimis started in 1959.

The Avengers started in 1961 but didn't develop into what we think of as "The Avengers" until some time later. Story-wise I think they started to get more "out there" around the time Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale replaced Ian Hendry's Dr Keel (who was originally supposed to be the main character). That was as early as 1962, but I think the stories took a while to move away from standard crime/espionage.

The look of the series changed when it moved to all film, broadcast in the UK from October 1965 (admittedyly the later Cathy Gale stories did look increasingly surreal but in a videotaped-in-studio, consiously non-realistic way).

Bearingin mind that some British drectors were getting work in mainland Europe at this time, maybe the answer is that there was some cross-pollination going on?

A bit of a wild card, bearing in mind what I've been saying I intend to concentate on. The Tales of Hoffmann, Powell and Pressberger's 1951 film of the Offenbach opera, based on Hoffmann's stories and a very romanticised version of Hoffmann himself. Beautifully restored and released on Blu-ray back in 2015 (in my head, this was a recent release).

The film doesn't look Gothic but it is very stylised. And a favourite film of Martin Scorcese and George A. Romero apparently. I can imagine it as a cinematic counterpart of those precurser to Gothic Rock tracks I wrote about last week.

The look of the film, and the visual elements of the script that do not derive from the libretto (I assume, because you couldn't stage it like this live: it's as much ballet as opera, and fully exploits the artifice of cinema), seemed to me to owe something to, or hark back to, or maybe even throw some light on, the disorentating elements of the real Hoffmann's writings, where reality is as unstable and illogical as a child's game, but also has the psycholgical depth that attracted Freud nearly a century later.

>263 housefulofpaper:

Interesting. Yet another I feel I should know about but do not. I mean, I know the opera well enough that just your mention of it as has several of the pieces of music buzzing round my head; so I really should know this one. And I am, still, yet to read Hoffman himself (think I've mentioned that here once or twice) ...

>264 alaudacorax:

I can remember being very confused by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Early '90s, I was quite ignorant about an awful lot of culture. I was listening to Radio 3 a lot more, and broadening my horizons more generally, so I'd pick up nuggets of information. What I was learning about the man didn't seem to fit together at all.

It was, I think, like this: The Nutcracker, okay. Not really my cup of tea. And there's a Powell and Pressburger film but it's a filmed opera? (it's really not, and I don't feel I did it justice above.) I was digging into the more obscur black and white films, especially A Canterbury Tale. But Hoffmann is the main character? He was a real person, wasn't he? And there's a ballet about a doll? Sounds twee, to be honest. But it (the ballet's based on a short story?) was drawn on by Sigmund Freud when he wrote about The Uncanny? And part of the Powell & Pressberger film (and hence Oppenbach's Opera) uses it too? And this scary animated short that turned up on Channel 4?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hz3QB31K_c
How could one story be interpreted in some many radically different ways?

Not to mention (as I was listening to Radio 3) hearing Robert Schumann's Kreisleriana piano pieces introduced as inspired by Hoffmann's fictional alter ego. Or by his music criticism. Or by his alter ego's music criticism?

Even after actually reading quite a few of Hoffmann's stories, he's still difficult to grasp. Obviously I don't read German so there's still the interpretation and possible distortion of translation. Some texts are cut, even the Penguin Classics. The same stories appear under multiple names. And if the original German publications had any overall plan, aesthetic or philosophical, no Englsh publication to my knowledge has replicated that.

Some E. T. A. Hoffmann books have come my way recently and I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole. I'll try to put some pictures up when I'm happy with the condition of the books (I've had one, that smelt terrilbly of damp but had no visible signs of mould, fanned open in front of a dehumidifier for over a week). I did pay an academic textbook price for a print-on-demand softcover (imagine gritted teeth!) for a volume of Hoffmann's musical writings. I'm not yet halfway through the introduction, but this might be key to understanding Hoffmann a bit better, including those fairy tales that on the surface seem so day-dreamy and "random". It's going to take me away from Gothic, though, and into Romantic music theory, photo-psychology, and German Idealist philosophy. So that's somewhat daunting.

>265 housefulofpaper:

Have you read The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr? I think Hoffmann's philosophy comes across in it more strongly than in the tales. (Also explains the Kreisler figure.)

People, I've been buying stuff like there's no tomorrow (ok, so maybe not all that far-fetched)... Ironically, I still haven't plumped for that folk horror box from Severin, but I did get their set of Christopher Lee Euro movies, The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee (touchstone!) and decided to begin with the least-appealing one, Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace. I had seen it before in a cheap Lee set, so turned on the commentary, and I'm so impressed by the extras Severin offers. The commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw was excellent, informative and engaging, and it really seems this is the moment when everybody's talking about the connections between the German Krimis and Hammer, Amicus, Sherlock Holmes etc.

>266 LolaWalser:

I've owned a copy for years, but it's one of so many books I just haven't got round to yet. It's no surprise that focusing on Hoffmann has let to more book buying, and I've actually just acquired a second copy of Kater Murr (and in a different translation). I'm thinking of starting a separate Hoffmann thread on here. Partly to hold my feet to the fire and encourage me to read the books I own, partly to exhbibit them (I've got some nice/interesting editions; but also to highlight how fragmented and confusing a figure Hoffmann presents, through what's available and how it's presented in the Anglophone world. And also to try to learn more about Hoffmann's philosophy and that world he comes from.

I'm going to be learning about Kreisler (in an earlier iteration) very soon, becaude the bookmark in E.T.A. Hoffmann's Musical Writings is at the beginning of Kreiserliana: part one. This is after working through a hefty introduction that already given me a lot to think about.

I should buy that Christopher Lee box set, shouldn't I? I passed on it because one of the discs is Region A and I have some of the other films. But there's enough on it to make it worth £85.00 (that's the current Amazon UK price).

Recent viewing - not from the Folk Horror box set. It had to be English language, and quite frankly stuff I could have on, not quite in the background, but crtainly something I could turn aside from without missing too much.

The Watcher in the Woods - Disney's attempt at a scary ghost story from 1980 or 1981? I remember very bad reviews in the likes of Starburst magazine (Britain's answer to Starlog or Cinefantastique I guess, and published by Marvel's UK arm at the time).

I suppose there was so much in the way of supernatural film and television, not to mention YA novels and weekly comics, that common themes are going to be inevitable. It does make me wonder if I would have been more impressed by this if I had seen it before The Children of the Stones, Ghost Story, Ghost in the Water - just to give three examples that cover teenage heroes/protagonists set against adult antagonists and the sort of adults who are just in the way because they have authority and won't listen, etc; an old sin (literally) haunting people who want to keep their secrets decades later; the "supernatural/psychic ability is definitely a thing/ but is it space aliens really" plot resolution. Bette Davies is in it of course, I think that's all anyone remembers about it, glowering and being sinister, at least for the first half of the film. There are some nice creepy touches but they all end up being blunted and ultimately the film is too much the wholesome Disney TV movie it began life as. I'm not saying avoid it if you can see it for free on a streaming service, or pick up the DVD for under a fiver. But don't go out of your way to see it, it's definitely not an overlooked masterpiece (Oh, and some of the dialogue is awfully clunky, expositional push-the-plot-along stuff).

And I can still record films off-air. A combination of very old Sky box and 2nd-hand DVD recorder. When they finally expire the new kit simply doesn't have SCART sockets. So no more recording. No doubt it's all done to force you to stream films and TV. Anyway, what did I use this precious resource on? The Ghost Train (1941). This must have been on British television many, many times but I'd never seen all of it (surprisingly - to me anyway - the BBC Genome lists lots of radio productions of Arnold Ridley's original play, plus some pre-War television productions). The film version must be very different animal, retooled for a WWII setting and as a vehicle for Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch as a sort of British Abbott and Costello style duo in a comedy thriller. The comments on IMDb suggest Americans are positively allergic to Arthur Askey's brand of comedy. I have to admit to quite enjoying this one. And I'm intriqued to see or hear or read the original play now, to find out how different it is.

>267 housefulofpaper:

I'm thinking of starting a separate Hoffmann thread

Yes please!

I don't want to push anyone re: Lee "Eurocrypt" but I'm on the second disc and again mind blown over the effort taken. The second disc is the Italian La sfida al diavolo (AKA Katarsis) (AKA "Challenge the devil") from 1963, when Lee was making The whip and the body with Bava and squeezed a few days in for this. The most fascinating thing about the film is its young director, Nello Vegezzi -- OK, it's also excellent for taking the measure of Lee's charisma even when the man is doing nothing more than sitting stonily -- this was Vegezzi's first and last movie, no wonder, poor guy got no breaks first from the shifty (ex-fascist) producer who basically butchered the movie, and then the starlet he fell in love with refused him and he tried to kill himself right before film's distribution. (All this I got from the bonus, interview with the film critic Roberto Curti.) It's actually good to know that the first twenty minutes were tacked on in post-production by the producer because it's all sorts of bizarre and lame and confusing and I'm guessing many abandoned watching thereabouts... but the portion that Vegezzi made is actually not just beautifully made, but touching.

Anyway, he returned to his native Piacenza, became a hardline Communist and also erotic poet (with actual obscenity trials), and an occasional? "outsider"? artist (sculptor--Curti describes his work as specifically an example of "arte povera"). In short, a strange bird I'd have loved to sit down for a glass of booze and chat.

The second extra was a wonderfully heartwarming splice of two interviews, from 2009 and 2014, of the Italian "lead", Giorgio Ardisson -- not anyone I knew before, but as with Vegezzi and I'm sure more to come, it's so wonderfully humanising to throw a spotlight for a sec on these individuals whom not only the audiences but even, say, such stars as Lee, brought in for a few quick 'n' nasty takes, could hardly pick out of a crowd.

Which of the films do you already have, Andrew? I had the Sherlock Homes (not nearly as good-looking as here), and I had seen before The torture chamber of Dr. Sadism. I haven't seen the remaining three films nor the Polish horror series. But I must say the extras so far have also surpassed my expectations.

P.S.

A couple turn-offs (I presume) regarding the Lee box: in the first movie (Sherlock Holmes) he and Thorley Walters (playing Watson) are dubbed both on the German and the English soundtrack. Lee apparently thought this was one reason the movie didn't do better in Anglodom. The English voice is at moments quite similar to Lee's but one can't help wondering why the heck the actors weren't asked to dub themselves. However, as per Newman's and Forshaw's commentary, the movie itself may be interesting to a Holmesian for reasons Holmesian. For one thing, it's the only one in which Moriarty beats Holmes (the movie was supposed to be the first of a series, or at least two.)

In the second movie (Challenge to the devil) only the Italian soundtrack is present and Lee is dubbed.

>268 LolaWalser:

Amazon Prime is a pain—I spend much more time searching for good films than actually watching them. You wouldn't believe the rubbish I've watched first quarter-hours of. Only subscribed for the rugby Autumn Internationals and buying and sending Xmas presents and I still haven't cancelled—really must before the end of this month. However ...

I've noticed The torture chamber of Dr. Sadism 'free' on there. I noticed it had Chris Lee but, to be honest, was scared off by the title. It sounds like the archetype of rubbishy sexploitation films and I'd assumed he was slumming for the money. Is it worth my time?

Euro Gothic—never remember to dig out good old Rigby. Now, where did I put it ...

>270 alaudacorax:

IMO it's not worse than the average German Krimi featuring the same actors, the goriest being the (in)famous scene of quartering. As for quality, I'd put it with the average Amicus or Hammer. All in all, it may be only for a Lee completist.

I'd love to hear what Rigby says about the movie in that book! The set I've been raving about actually comes with a booklet written by him, so I presume the positives will be highlighted.

>268 LolaWalser:

I was very wrong, as it turns out. All I have is a cut version of The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism under the title Castle of the Walking Dead, and a good recent reissue of Castle of the Living Dead (no possiblity of confusion with those two titles!).

IMDb gives these titles for The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism: Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel and The Blood Demon. Presumably the most complete print bore a rare retitling?

I think maybe I told myself that I had most of the films in the set because it would burn me up that there was a disc I couldn't play.

I really think I'm going to have to buy the set.

(Also, Amazon are selling multi-region players. It's a lot of money going to Mr Bezos though).

>273 housefulofpaper:

The idea of discs I couldn't play would drive me nuts; currently I'm just limiting myself to getting Blu-Ray/DVD combos from Region 2, but these are on the vane. Obviously a multi-region player is a must. At least you actually have a television; I'd need to buy both a TV and a player.

Oh god, the confusing titles... I've been watching the bonus disc ("Relics from the crypt") and reading Rigby's booklet and it's maddening how many preliminary/alternative/multiple titles these films were given, not to mention that they are all basically variations to begin with! I can't tell anymore what I've seen, heard of, bought or not.

No idea about The torture chamber... (it comes last of the films chronologically); in German it's indeed Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel, in this box set the time is 84 minutes. "Scanned in 4K from the original German negative" so I expect it's not cut? It comes with lots of goodies too...

omg... jaw just dropped to the floor... Lee is singing O sole mio!

>274 LolaWalser:
From memory, my copy of The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism/Castle of the Walking Dead is barely over 60 minutes long, and IMDb in fact states that Severin has the longest commercially available version.

>269 LolaWalser:
I suspect Lee was right about the dubbing for two reasons. One is, if it's not Lee's voice you're not getting the full performance, and secondly British audiences weren't acclimatised to a post-dubbed soundtrack. When the voice is only loosely synchronised to the lip movement it just seems cheap, or even a mistake (a goof, as IMDb would have it). I think most productions are dubbed in post production these days (there was a "Doctor Who Confidential" years ago that suggested as much) but no doubt digital editing allows for better matching of sound and vision.

>270 alaudacorax:
I found out that this is on Amazon Prime. I've only seen a clip of it, on the BFI's Jan Švankmajer DVD box set.

https://johnnyalucard.com/2022/01/16/film-review-adela-jeste-nevecerela-dinner-f...

It's under the title Adele Has Not Had Her Supper Yet on Amazon - yet another film with myriad titles!

>275 housefulofpaper:

Yes, I agree that dubbing diminishes the performance, especially in such a talky movie like the Holmes story. I just read in Rigby that he and Lee were discussing as late as 2011 the possibility of re-dubbing the film, but the character they had pegged as a possible financier turned out to be just a huckster looking to hang out with a star... You'd think a Kickstarter might have done it! Such a pity...

Now that I've seen the whole bonus disc, wow again. There's too much to comment on, from the two singing videos, to Lee's tribute to Karloff (from 1991, unedited and never published before). He says the only reason he accepted to play in The Curse of the Crimson Altar was so he could work with Karloff one last time--I think we commented on the "memorialish" feel of that movie! (Also there are off-stage stills of Lee, Karloff and Barbara Steele together while they didn't share any scenes in the film IIRC.) There are two period documentaries/interviews for Swiss and French TV (Lee speaking French), interviews with a couple surviving Italian screenwriter and assistant director, interviews with Lee, and also a Q and A session from 2011 in Dublin, I suppose the oldest he appears here. There's also something with one David Del Valle, a fan/film industry person (not sure of what function exactly), who befriended Lee when he lived in LA in the 1970s. It's the only bit I disliked because Del Valle seems that strange sort of "fan" who enjoys tearing down the supposed subject of admiration. He calls Lee narcissistic and humourless and insecure and makes fun of the inscriptions Lee wrote down for him in a very unpleasant way.

I'd be really curious to hear what others make of this segment.

In his own interviews Lee comes across as charming and intense, not a kidder or a shoulder-slapper to be sure, but someone actually serious about conveying knowledge about the lore and literature behind the legends. It's not his domain, but he seems both interested and respectful of history etc.

>275 housefulofpaper: - It's under the title ...

Unfortunately, I have a strong idealogical objection to that one. I absolutely refuse to pay a monthly fee for Amazon Prime and then fork out an extra £4-49 to watch the film.

That's 7.6 on IMDb. I've noticed that whether you have to pay extra on Prime correlates to the film's IMDb rating ...

Odds & ends -- Walerian Borowczyk's wordless 9-minute documentary about the work of the surrealist painter Ljuba.

L'Amour monstre de tous les temps(1977)

Happy (Gothic) Valentine's day! :)

(ugh double... will edit later)

Later: Yesterday I found Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World (1961) on Kanopy, THE earliest "Continental" film of Lee's, and a worthy fantasy film in its own right. Lee's character Lico is basically a vampire. Apparently neither the Italian nor the English dub preserve Lee's voice.

This problem is somewhat ameliorated in "Crypt of the vampire" (Italian title "La cripta e l'incubo") (1964) -- Lee insisted on doing the dub in English, but other English voices are dreadful, especially the young male lead who's for some reason American. On the other hand, the Italian dub of Lee sounds nothing like him at all, so tails or heads something is lost. This was the "Carmilla" story, and while it's atmospheric and gorgeous looking (nothing can beat Italian settings), to me it dragged on limply. Lee plays a goodie which, let's be frank, is a bore.

And seeing as there was hardly any point in going to bed, I took in also The Long Hair of Death (1964), with Barbara Steele and no other than that young Italian actor I thought I didn't know, George (Giorgio) Ardisson... I hope Steele gets a nice set treatment like this some day -- preferably while she's still alive.

Wrapping up the Lee box... Castle of the living dead was great, featuring not only Lee in an appropriately ghoulish role (with an even more terrifyingly grotesque sidekick), but also Donald Sutherland in a double role, already doing that Donald-Sutherlandian somewhat-mad-eyed, drunk-sounding, shambolic thing (one of the commentaries has an amusing description of his tricks for stealing scenes).

The Torture chamber of Dr. Sadism has been nicely refreshed in colour and there's a nifty mini feature on location then and now--basically nothing changed in sixty years, Europe is great for that. I watched the German version and haven't checked whether the English dub has Lee's own voice (the German doesn't).

I watched the first five episodes of Theatre Macabre, and this may turn out to be the one disappointing feature, because there was precious little "macabre" until the fifth story (by Alexey Tolstoy, in the West probably best known as the author of Aelita, Queen of Mars), where some duly terrifying Slavic vampires turn up. I'd have been happier if they had at least included the original soundtrack, as it's clear these are excellent actors, not to mention the talent behind the scene (Wajda, Zulawski etc.)

Lee does the costumed, specific-to-each story, intros and outros with great gusto.

Overall, I'd say this box is too expensive for what it contains -- for an ordinary fan, say someone who just wants to see the movies. But for those who enjoy commentaries and would listen to a full CD worth of soundtrack music from a horror -- go for it. (Still, maybe look out for a sale...)

And I've finished the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu Cycle Box Set from Indicator. All the films benefit from being restored in 4K. There are loads of extras - I'll take a picture of the back of the box, where they're all listed, rather than type it all up - although some of it might be...boring...even for a fan (the Children's Film Foundation serial The Ghost of Monk's Island, directed by Jeremy Summers and included with the 3rd Fu Manchu film, which he also directed; and the audio commentary for the 4th film, where the experts speculate about things the earlier commentaries have already confirmed, tested my patience a bit).

The inclusion of two episodes from the 1920s British silent serials starring Harry Agar Lyons as Fu Manchu (not looking at all Chinese, and in fact described as only taking Chinese nationality in a ret-conning inter title), and Fred Paul and Humberston Wright, a surprisingly haggard duo as Nayland Smith and Dr Petrie, provides more genuine Sax Rohmerish fiendish traps and nonsense than the feature films.

The accompanying booklet runs to 116 pages of substantial essays and reproductions of contemporary reviews and promotional material.

This set is out of date but as I bought it from Indicator I'm on a mailing list; and I've been informed that the films are all going to be released as individual blu-rays this year.

Edit: - I meant "out of print" not "out of date" - although I don't dismiss the idea that the computer decided to change what I was (correctly) typing.

<281

Nine times out of ten—more, probably—I switch on the telly, surf the channels, can't find anything to watch. Turn on for Six Nations rugby; just look at a few channels; and there's the Peter Cushing Hound of the Baskervilles on Film4 and ITV4's MIdsomer Murders has pagan rites and possible human sacrifice. Programmed against the rugby! The buggers do it on purpose! They're picking on me! Have a few more exclamation marks!!!!!!!!

Speaking of human sacrifice... I was wondering whether I felt in the mood for Threads again when I noticed in my feed The Bed Sitting Room -- been wanting to see that for a long while... So instead of a postapocalyptic tragedy, a postapocalyptic black comedy. Recommended.

>284 LolaWalser: - 'The Bed Sitting Room'

This is very weird. There seem to have been two film versions and at least two radio versions and I don't seem to have come across any of them. This is just the kind of thing that, back in the sixties, early seventies, if I'd managed to miss it myself my friends would have drawn it to my attention. Definitely something for me to watch/listen too.

On the 2016 version, first film I've seen on IMDb that doesn't have any ratings. Has nobody ever seen it or just nobody who knows about IMDb? Um ... or has someone put a radio version on IMDb by mistake?

>285 alaudacorax:
I've noticed that audio plays have started turning up on IMDb. I saw some Docotor Who plays (the non-BBC ones that have been coming out on CD and download since 1999) amongst the listed acting jobs.

I can half-see the justification I suppose: purely voice parts are listed for animated features and video games (video games is - I've just seen - an actual searchable category). But clearly the site doesn't expect radio performances to be listed and there are no users contributing lots of historical information: there are no episodes of Suspense (or the BBC series The Price of Fear) listed amongst Vincent Price's acting credits, for example.

I've been aware of The Bed Sitting Room for a long time: just around the time of the first Star Wars film, books about science fiction on screen could still aspire to include everything, from silent films to obscure television shows. So a book essentially aimed at children and adolescents (I'd say "coffee table book", but the demographic don't own coffee tables!) would dutifully talk about and have a still from finger-wagging parables and absurdist comedy, while having an air of "with a few notable exceptions, Hollywood got science fiction wrong until George Lucas came along". And I pretty much agreed with that sentiment at the time. In my defence, I was only ten years old. However I have to admit to vestiges of the old prejudice against anything other than escapist adventure or "proper" hard SF calling itself science fiction - as if it was false advertising, or flying a flag of convenience. All of which is a long-winded way of saying I haven't seen the film.

The film has an entry in The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction,which tried to cover ALL science ficition in All media, and is still going, but of course now online only (the first edition from 1979 is quite a manageable volume). The entry ends with a quote from Richard Lester: "The really awful thing is that we were able to film most of thse scenes in England without having to fake it. All that garbage is real. A lot of it was filmed behind the Steel Corporation in Wales...endless piles of acid sludge and every tree is dead. And there's a place in Stoke where they've been throwing reject plates since the war and it has become a vast landscape of broken plates..."

>285 alaudacorax:

PM'd you

>286 housefulofpaper:

The scenery is... out of this world. I don't even know the names of those geological formations. The white-slate coloured flats or whatever they are...

I'm watching again, been thinking about it all day. Frank Thornton as "the BBC", covering "the very shortest war in living memory".

>286 housefulofpaper: - A lot of it was filmed behind the Steel Corporation in Wales...endless piles of acid sludge and every tree is dead.
I came from the valleys above there. There used to be joke doing the rounds when I was a youngster. Two drunks sitting on a bench:
'Ey! Butty! Is that the sun or the moon up there?
Don't know—I'm from Port Talbot.

Psychomania is a strange little film, the fact that it includes Beryl Reid and George Sanders not being the least of it. Considering the childishness of its violence and the promise of eternal life, it really reflects more of a nostalgic wish to stave off the loss of youth than a lust for evil.

I got Nigel Kneale's Beasts set and watched Murrain, an extra on the first disc. Fantastic piece, and it's all in the "witch's" acting.

Recent viewing:

Jess Franco's version of Jack the Ripper, a DVD I've had kicking around for over a decade. This is a classy film (for Franco), with a larger budget than he usually had and a director of photography eschewing Franco's usual low budget approach (his producer, on one of the disc's extras, lauds Franco as a foreunner of the dogme 95 movement.Hmm). It's shot in Zurich, which gives some attractive locations but they're nothing like London. Not that it aims for accuracy. The Chelsea Physic Garden seems to back directly onto Kew Gardens, whilst Jack the Ripper (played by a rather subdued Klaus Kinski) turns out to be none other than Franco's recurring character Dr Orloff.

Another Franco film from around the same time, Voodoo Passion. The English title accurately reflects that this one is making no attempt to be respectable. It's essentially soft porn, but it does have a genuinely Gothic Rebecca-type storyline - or set up, rather, then a lot of sun-drenched nudity (Portugal, apparently, standing in for Haiti). The wheels of the plot get into action in the 15 minutes or so to explain/justify what's been going on.

Corruption is a 1968 film starring Peter Cushing as a surgeon who is driven to murder, to extract glandular material needed to repair burn injuries sustained by his (much younger) model girlfriend. The treatment only provides a temporary cure, of course. Apparently Cushing didn't care for this film but as ever he throws himself into it. It's the same set up as Eyes Without a Face but as Jonathan Rigby on the commentary track points out, Monogram films had pioneered this sort of thing back in the 40s. This film, though, with its array of murderous to just unpleasant characters and air of English grot, is very different.

The Mephisto Waltz was one of the first horror films I remember catching in that "iconic" late Friday night TV slot. Finally watched it again. This is the rare (or only) "Quinn Martin production" made for cinema rather than TV - it still looks like a TV movie though, just with occasional nudity. This is the one where dying concert pianist (played by Curd Jurgens) transmigrates his soul into Alan Alda for a literal new lease of life. That happens early on, the focus of the film thereafter is Alda's wife (played by Jacqueline Bisset). I suppose the influence of Rosemary's Baby is at play here.

It's not Gothic by any means, but I'll mention that I also caught Hammer's fairly obscure Hong Kong-set action movie Shatter (starring Stuart Whitman, and Peter Cushing turns up for a couple of scenes) on Talking Pictures TV. Shot back-to-back with The Lengend of the 7 Golden Vampires.

These are, admittedly, not the greatest films ever. The fact is that I couldn't always give them my undivided attention, hence no subtitled films - hence also no further progress with the Folk Horror box set (not quite true - I did watch the longer "director's cut" of Eyes of Fire, entitled Crying Blue Sky, and found it to be stronger than the theatrically released version.

>291 housefulofpaper:

Hah, a little intrigued by the idea of 'a rather subdued Klauski Kinski—not a phrase I remember coming across—not often, anyway ...

I gave in to curiosity (as when do I not?!) and procured the box set Forever Knight, an 1980s TV series about a vampire cop in Toronto. Nick Knight got vamped back in the 13th century, for reasons of lust, and now wishes to become human again so he could atone and die peacefully. After the first four-five eps my impressions tend to good-to-neutral. The actors are decent (if you can look past the eightiesosity of costumes, hair and makeup), the plots no worse than the average procedural (only with more vampires), and Nick's nemesis the vamp Lacroix is a fairly interesting villain. Cautiously looking forward to seeing whether it becomes more of its own thing...

I am getting really bad at watching films. First of all, I often don't know why I'm watching the damn things in the first place—I have plenty of unwatched discs here that I know will (probably) be good, yet I'll sit around in the evening watching random stuff off Prime Video (must get rid of that!) Second, these days I don't have the patience for anything that's not pretty good; I get half way through and I start thinking, "Am I going to remember anything of this in a couple of days time? What's the point of watching?"

I gave up in exasperation after an hour of The Devil's Rock (2011) last night (and it only lasts 82 minutes!) At IMDb's 5.7 and Rotten Tomatoes' critics' score's 56%, it didn't have very high online ratings, but not bad either; and the blurb sounded tempting, "On a small island just off the coast of Nazi-occupied Guernsey in the Channel Islands, two Kiwi commandos uncover a Nazi occult plot ..." First of all, there was the bad acting: the two main leads often mumbled their lines so that I couldn't make them out, turn it up as loud as I might (and there were no subtitles). And then, after the first half-hour or so, the story just wasn't moving at any speed at all. And what earlier plot was there was really disjointed—the writers seemed to write a bit then lose interest and move to something else, multiple times. To keep your attention the film seemed to be mainly relying on blood and guts (very literally, they must have had a contact at a slaughterhouse) and a young woman without skirt or trousers for no obvious reason.

9 Miles Down (2009) the night before that was about the same length and online ratings and I only made it about half-way through that one. I gather this is based on that modern myth about Russian scientists sinking a deep borehole and hearing the cries of the damned in hell. At least Adrian Paul and (I think) Kate Nauta, who had been the main characters up to that point, annunciated properly. Again, though, the plot just wasn't moving forward at any speed at all. I just got bored waiting for something to happen.

These films are like going out in the evening to meet someone and they keep you waiting for an hour ...

It's Sunday, a new week. I'm making a New Week's Resolution. For the next week I'm watching nothing that isn't either lying around here on disc or in my download folder.

The last film I watched was Marquis de Sade’s Justine (1968), directed by Jess Franco during the honeymoon period of his association with producer Harry Alan Towers (Towers also scripted, under his usual “Peter Welbeck” nom de plume).

I haven’t read any de Sade, but of course his reputation proceeds him. This is inevitably a bowdlerised version of the story - interspersed, I should mention, with scenes of Klaus Kinski as de Sade, visited in prison by visions of tortured, manacled women, and then by the story of Justine. The happy ending of the film is followed by a final shot of Kinski/de Sade crossing through the last lines of his manuscript. Towers presumably indicating that the happy ending is a false ending, and those “in the know” are to infer that cinematic Justine does “really” suffer an awful fate, and de Sade’s philosophy hasn’t been betrayed.

It’s another film that looks, for Franco, surprisingly expensive and major-studio glossy. Shot in Spain, a mixture of Gothic architecture and Gaudi buildings (Franco always had an eye for interesting architecture). As the bonus materials on the disc point out, the best and most eye-catching performances are by Mercedes McCambridge (the voice of the demon in The Exorcist) and Jack Palance, who delivers some astonishing line readings and, I don’t know, channeling some Mansoneque cult leader (or actually Manson? Could their paths have crossed, I wonder?)

The thing is compromised of course, and comes across rather more like an innocent abroad/18th Century romp kind of tale - the film versions of Tom Jones or Joseph Andrews come to mind.

Oh, in case you think that the casting of Romina Power in the lead role (16 at the time of filming) is an example of “that Dirty Franco” or “those dirty Europeans” - the order came from co-producers American International Pictures.

A little bit of news - Requiem for a Village is getting a US Blu-Ray release (from Indicator) later this year.

I've mentioned it before as being "in the spirit" of the '70s UK Folk Horror films, although it's not itself a horror film, but rather, I suppose, a half poetic/half sociological meditation on place and permanence and identity, in the context of post-War suburban sprawl encroaching on an isolated rural community.

I've just managed to watch at least a quarter of an hour of The Mummy, the Tom Cruise one, before it dawned on me that I'd seen it before, written about it here, and then managed to completely forget the experience—obviously not that great a film.

>299 alaudacorax: You forgetting the film is obviously an accurate attestation to the worthiness of the film.

I saw part of it on Sky Movies - a car crash, and Tom Cruise's usual strenuous acting - and decided not to bother with it.

I did enjoy a recent re-viewing of Universal's Mummy films of the '30s and '40s, despite the low budgets and lack of continuity across the series (a 30 year gap between films two and three should see the back end of the series taking place in the 1970s, the Mummy disappearing into a swamp at one end of the country only to be discovered at the other end of it in the next film, things like that). Within their narrow parameters they're not afraid to be downbeat, fatalistic even.

These statements don't apply to Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, however!

>299 alaudacorax: I remember turning this one off after about fifteen minutes. Boy, what a stinker. In US they got so desperate I remember them trying to release different "styles" of trailers for the movie.

>302 benbrainard8:

I remember when I first watched it (and wrote about it here) I'd been completely unaware of it. If I'd ever seen their promotions they must have had zero impact on me.

Have we never discussed Robert Lloyd Parry's Wits in Felixstowe* here? It seems unlikely, but a site search throws up nothing. Anyway, it was quite interesting.

He hangs the documentary on M. R. James's Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad, but he really makes a wider point about the fear of madness he sees underlying a lot of James's stories. He includes several acquaintances of James struck down, as it were, by mental ill-health and points out how clear it must have been to James that the most intellectual and capable of people could be quite randomly taken the same way.

It wasn't something that had occurred to me and will certainly give a new light on James's stories next time I read them.

* Couldn't get a touchstone.

>304 alaudacorax:

Quite irrelevantly, I was rather tickled that you could actuallly see the daylight fade away over the closing credits.

>304 alaudacorax:
I have seen the documentary. It's an extra on Robert's DVD of him performing Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to you, My Lad. I contributed to funding it, actually, because I backed the DVD through Kickstarter (I forgot to confirm my details through the site, so I didn't get a name check).

It does suggest (convincingly) the real-life inspirations for some of James' stories (something James himself would naturally be reticent about).

Now you have me wondering if I have that DVD. I have a couple of Robert’s DVDs but have never watched them. Currently on holiday in the west of Ireland (escaping the mad heat that is affecting the east coast and England) but will be digging out my Nunkie DVDs when I get home.

Recent viewing has been a mixture of fairly obscure B movies on Talking Pictures TV, and Blu-ray collectable editions, where the extras that made them more attractive to buy, can become quite wearing when dutifully ploughing through them.

The Blu-ray of Carl Th. Dreyer's Vampyr is reportedly a new restoration but it doesn't seem streets ahead of the (very good) 2008 DVD release. Most of the extras were ported over from that DVD, too.

The Return of Dracula is an American Dracula film that came out the same year as Hammer's Dracula/Horror of Dracula. In this one, Dracula has slipped into modern suburban America, masquerading as a family's East European cousin (and wearing his overcoat in a cape-like fashion, but clearly coded as a sinister Nazi figure).

The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake is pretty pulpy. I can imagine it as a run-of-the mill Weird Tales story from the 30's or 40's but stylistically (it was made in 1959) suggests late-60's television production values. The villain is played by Henry Daniell, a decade and more after playing opposite Basil Rathbone (once as Professor Moriarty) in the Universal Sherlock Holmes films.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die is even cheaper-looking and tells at least as pulpy a story. But it's harder-edged and feels sometimes more real (in the way kitchen sink drama and Nouvelle Vague felt more real that classic Hollywood) - but that's just a comes-and-goes impression between the Sci Fi nonsense. A reckless surgeon crashes his car and get his girlfriend killed, but he keeps her head alive on a tray while he goes looking for a new body. She's the villain though, because she's angry and asserting her will (for the first time in her life?). It could have a feminist or misogynistic reading.

Witchhammer is one of the films in the All The Haunts Be Ours box set. It's a very good, but gruelling Czech film from 1970. Like Witchfinder General and The Devils it's based on historical events: here, a witchhunt in 17th Century Moravia.

I skipped forward in the box to the Canadian film Clearcut. A white lawyer travels to a remote part of Northern Ontario. He has failed to prevent extensive logging on indigenous peoples' land. His arrival coincides with that of a charismatic and angry indigenous man. With this man goading the lawyer, events quickly get out of control and they end up kidnapping the owner of the logging compny and taking him deep into the forest. The folk horror comes in because the man is a trickster spirit or wendigo apparently summoned by or embodying the lawyer's frustration and anger. Perhaps also in that the film's sympathies clearly lie with the indigenous people and with nature.

I dimly recall liking The brain that wouldn't die, but my memories are somewhat confused by another brain-on-a-plate movie, featuring Michel Simon. I wonder which came first.

I still haven't shelled out for All the Haunts... and the situation is currently complicated by Severin Films having issued a SECOND Christopher Lee "Eurocrypt" box. As luck would have it, I had just a day or two before bought an expensive French copy of Dracula père et fils... which is included in this box. The first Eurocrypt box seems to be sold out so not sure if I should leave the second one waiting until Christmas (by which time I figure I'd "forget" the French DVD).

My latest relevant movie was The Mephisto Waltz from 1971. Curd Jurgens and Barbara Parkins play a father-daughter duo of Satan worshipers who target the married couple of Jacqueline Bisset and Alan Alda. Body-changing shenanigans ensue. I thought it would fit well in company with The Devil Rides Out and similar. There's a scene of New Year revelry with people wearing animal masks while the Satanists' creepy dog is wearing a human mask--William Shatner's face.

>309 LolaWalser:
Michel Simon? I know he was a major star of French cinema, but I've only seen him in Boudu Saved from Drowning and Blanche (not the only Borowczyk film to be shown on network televison in the UK, but surely the only one to go out on a Saturday afternoon!). I looked on IMDb and The Head/Die Nackte und der Satan was released in 1959, about three years before The Brain That Wouldn't Die. (A "trivia" note also explains how he came to be slumming it in a low budget horror film).

I think I'll have to pass on the second Eurocrypt box. The ratio of region A discs was just too high (added to which, I am having to pay for some work on my house, which is going to curtail my fn spendng for quite a while).

I rewatched The Mephisto Waltz recently. It's actually one of the first "modern" horror films I remember watching on late night TV, after BBC2's 1983 summer season of Universal horrors. It came back to me, I suppose because I was relatively unfamiliar with the genre, that on that first viewing I really didn't know where the story was going. This time round I had rather more issues with the way consistent characterisation was secondary to the plot.

(I'll mention that Jacqueline Bissett grew up in Reading, only because the family home was close to that - clearly occult - area where I posted a photo looking north across the Thames, and mentioned that Slade House was behind me, Mapledurham House (as seen on the Black Sabbath LP cover) over to the left (i.e. north west), and Bugs Bottom (where the ruined church from Blood on Satan's Claw can be found) about 10 miles north and east.)

>310 housefulofpaper:

That's a very nice connection to Jacqueline Bisset. I really liked her, the mix of nonchalance ("I'm not my husband's keeper") and increasingly obsessive passion. Although I agree they missed psychological verisimilitude with the way she barely seemed to notice the kid's death. In fairness, the kid herself remarks on how wrapped up they are in each other, but overall it may have been better to have excluded her character.

I hear you on the Severin box, it would really exercise my patience if I couldn't easily play all the discs, and they ARE very pricey for us poor non-Americans. Good luck with house renovations.

I found my copies of the Michel Simon and the other brain movie in the cheapo Mill Creek 50-movie collections. However, Hoopla has just put up a superior copy of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, advertising it as "the rare uncensored version". So I'll treat myself to that.

And, contrary to everything I've felt (well, still mostly do) about zombies in general, I've seen a few of Lucio Fulci's movies for the first time. It happened this way--1) I was shocked to discover that someone who worked (wrote) movies for my beloved Antonio de Curtis (Totò) became the creator of some of the goriest movies in film history 2) as it happens I had only recently seen the other two of Romero's zombie trilogy, Dawn of the dead and Day of the Dead, and I was blown away (gore notwithstanding) by how meaningful they were. Not quite the masterpieces like Night of the living dead, but definitely movies that speak to the moment.

So I thought to investigate whether Fulci's movies might have similar weight. Seen: The House by the cemetery, The New York Ripper and The Beyond. And I must say, IMO, not at all, but if there are any fans around who think differently, I'd love to hear that side. I do have one more lined up to see, presumably the most relevant, Zombie.

In The Beyond there is a scene set in a French Quarter bookshop, "Librairie Bookshop", where ten years later I'd spend innumerable hours browsing, shopping, and hanging out with Fred and Jeff. What a nostalgic thrill.

>311 LolaWalser:

I'm not a fan of gore for the sake of gore but I did buy some Fulci films because they were nicely packaged by Arrow Films (I'm a sucker for lots of extras even though, when it comes down to it, working through them can be a bit of slog); and because of their tenuous connections to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos:City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond.

I certainly wouldn't claim any great depth for them, as social commentary or allegory. The characters are two dimensional. As "auteur" works, they do have definite look and tone. Aside from the in-your-face gore (probably less intense as a pin sharp restored Blu-ray picture where the latex and paint is discernable than as a fuzzy VHS) there are some striking images and compositions but it doesn't - in my opinion - reach the poetry of quite a lot of Jean Rollin's output.

I also have The Black Cat, which is a lesser film than the three mentioned above, but has points of interest. It was filmed in the UK, including in and around the Hellfire Caves at West Wycombe, and Patrick Magee plays the villain of the piece.

And I think I have seen Zombie Flesh Eaters, which was the UK title of Zombi 2 (so titled because it was advertised as a sequel to Romero's Dawn of the Dead which was titled "Zombi" in Italy. I think that's right, anyway. Evidently it's also just titled "Zombie"!). I don't recall this film having any profundity, but does have an underwater battle between a zombie and a shark. Not something to be dismissed lightly.

>311 LolaWalser:

In The Beyond there is a scene set in a French Quarter bookshop, "Librairie Bookshop", where ten years later I'd spend innumerable hours browsing, shopping, and hanging out with Fred and Jeff. What a nostalgic thrill.
And that is very cool!

>312 housefulofpaper:

I have seen Zombie now (good note about the manifold titles) and I agree, it does have a mad poetry of its own. The shark scene is amazing although I did suffer on shark's behalf (it seems inevitable that they killed it... and it was such a small thing too.) Fulci won't dislodge Romero from my heart, but I'm looking forward to taking in his commentary on Zombie.

I caught a peculiar and probably mis-genred "giallo" written and directed by Aldo Lado, Short night of glass dolls. To me extra interesting for a significant presence of Croatian (Yugoslav, including Slovenian and Serbian) actors, with Zagreb playing the role of Prague (they didn't bother with changing the signage from Croatian to Czech, though). It has a fantastic atmosphere, the story begins like a more or less familiar cold war spy mystery and then takes a turn into occult conspiracy and whatnot. I'm rather surprised I hadn't heard of it before.

>314 LolaWalser:
I've seen relatively few gialli. This one sounds intriguing, but I don't know when or if I'll get a chance to see it (because I think the only way is to buy it on disc, and I've just committed half a year's salary on a new kitchen. Boring grown-up stuff). Interestingly, I recently saw Hitchcock's Frenzy described in print as a giallo.

Notice for UK TV viewers: Talking Pictures TV has scheduled the 1947 film version of Uncle Silas for broadcast at 9:20 in the morning on Friday 2 September. I don't know about streaming services, but this film doesn't seem to be currently available on Blu-ray or DVD (Amazon UK lists only an unobtainable Russian DVD).

>314 LolaWalser:, >315 housefulofpaper:

Got Short night of glass dolls (such a fascinating title) and Zombie Flesh Eaters (really want to see a zombie fighting a shark—childish, I know) on top of my Cinema Paradiso 'My List', so I should have one or t'other or both on Tuesday or Wednesday (now I look at the website I put them either side of Piccadilly (1929) lest I should overdose on horror). Actually, I've had them on the list since Lola posted but I got roadblocked—got part-way through a couple of discs of Babylon V, which I've been wanting to rewatch for ... decades, probably, and then I got bored with it and I've been dithering about sending them back ever since. I have a very inconvenient psychology ...

Talking about pickles, that Uncle Silas has me confused all ends up. First, some glowing reviews I've seen are quite tempting, and who doesn't like Jean Simmons? Second, I don't remember I've ever seen it. Third, if I've never seen it, how do I have a memory of Katina Paxinou as Madame de la Rougierre? Fourth, if I've seen it and almost completely forgotten it, how good could it possibly be? Fifth, I found the book fascinating and disturbing and I honestly don't know whether or not I want a film version playing around with my memories and my next reading. And now I've got to five I might as well keep going. Sixth, what the hell was wrong with Maud as the name for the heroine? I'm sure Le Fanu's girl didn't read like a Caroline to me. So that's a tick on the con side. Yes, I know I should reread it first and then watch the film, but I was enjoying a good rant and ramble.

>316 alaudacorax: - Yes, I know I should reread it ...

... and I still haven't got round to reading Swedenborg.

>315 housefulofpaper:

I would say that's a fair categorization of Frenzy. Not gonna lie, to me a "giallo" means a certain exploitative attitude toward sex and/or nudity (female of course) and violence, and Frenzy wears that on its sleeve more than any other Hitchcock. I always think how we should be grateful (for once) for the censorship in his heyday, that kept at bay his huge affinity to sleaze.

>316 alaudacorax:

really want to see a zombie fighting a shark

Who wouldn't! :)

I'm re-watching Babylon 5 too, having bought the big box with all the seasons and the movies (which I hadn't seen). But slowly. Also watching Star Trek the original series for the first time, third season.

What's the inspiration for Swedenborg?

>318 LolaWalser: - ... Swedenborg?

Maud's (Caroline in the film) father, who has to be the biggest prat of literary dads, was a great disciple of Swedenborg. Le Fanu makes a bit of a thing of it and presumably it offers some sort of explanation of his actions. Apparently the original audience, back in whenever, would have got the point; but, on a reading of Swedenborg's Wikipedia page, I did not. I'm not sure I'd even heard of Swedenborg at the time. So I determined to read up on him before reading the book again. Of course, it could be just that Le Fanu was on a bit of a Swedenborg kick at the time and wanted to share his enthusiasm with people and it really had no bearing on the plot. Whatever, these posts prompted me to order Swedenborg: An Introduction to His Life and Ideas yesterday. Another few years and I might even read it ...

I'm re-watching Babylon 5 too ...

The trouble with renting discs of series or serials: by the time they've come through the mail and I've watched a few episodes I can often be no longer in the mood. It doesn't help that my quirky brain won't let me skip the odd one; as when I unexpectedly come up against a chunk of pure soap ... like the old chestnut of the idealistic doctor, the dying kid and the ultra-religious parents ... I was having flashbacks to my youth, walking the dog on cold winter nights because my mother and older sister were drooling over Dr. Kildare ...

>316 alaudacorax:
I've got the 1989 Peter O'Toole/Beatie Edney (and Jane Laportaire as Madame de la Rougierre) TV version on DVD but it's one of the many that I haven't managed to watch yet. I have seen the adaptation for Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 1968, with Robert Eddison as Uncle Silas. At one hour 15 minutes the action moves very quickly to Silas' mansion and it's so claustrophic (at least I found it so) that the novel actually felt a bit lighter and - not more cheerful, but sort of edging towards that feeling until the screws really begin to tighten, but not until quite a way into the book.

(Looking on IMDb to check dates & spelling on names, I realised for the first time Robert Eddison scared me good and proper as a child, when he played Goodchild in the Folk Horror/Psychedelic (or perhaps Prog Rock) children's SF serial Sky (something about it has stopped me buying the DVD to this day!).

The last film I watched was X or The Man With The X-Ray Eyes - plenty of scholarly debate on the disc extras as to whether the latter is the film's true title or only a tagline. It's the Roger Corman film where Ray Milland is the medical researcher who decides to become his own test subject, and the gift of x-ray vision of course becomes a curse. A video essay by Kat Ellinger finds thematic lnks to Corman's Poe cycle and is in fact entitled "American Gothic".

>320 housefulofpaper:

Is that the one where he goes to a party and then can't bear to see through people's clothes all the time? Should have consulted Superman on how to calibrate it!

>319 alaudacorax:

Yeah, I have that problem with movies from the library... by the time they get to me I often lose the initial itch.

Swedenborg was read a lot in his time (and wrote a lot too) but I've only read one (and possibly selected) of his transcendental wanderings through dreams--it was actually less boring and more imaginative than I expected. Made me wonder what he might have done if he'd thought to write, well, fiction.

>321 LolaWalser:

Yes, that's it, although to be fair to the film that scene comes quite early on and Ray Milland's character is urbanely amused (1963 sensibilities applying, of course) rather than aghast.

>318 LolaWalser:

I used to live near the Swedenborg Chapel when I was in Cambridge, MA. It's a very pretty little building. I knew a bit about Swedenborg and always thought about attending a service to see if they subscribed to all of his beliefs but never got around to it. Anyways, their website has a very abbreviated description of his views at: https://swedenborgchapel.org/about/beliefs/.

>323 robertajl:

Well now, I wonder if this can be a coincidence then--I bought that book by Swedenborg that I read (Swedenborg's Journal of Dreams: 1743-1744), IN Cambridge, during a month's stay at a lab there! I can't swear to the identity of the bookshop after all this time, but I think it was The Coop, and I distinctly remember being astonished at the amount of Swedenborg books they carried. (I had never come across him "in the wild" before. ETA: and practically never since, either.)

>319 alaudacorax:
I first became aware of Swedenborg when reading Le Fanu's Uncle Silas a couple of years ago. It piqued my interest enough for me to do a small bit of Interweb diving; then he passed out of my mind. There was another passing encounter with Swedenborg, but I do not even recall where that one was. It was in a book, and not a Le Fanu book. When I read it, I had that smug, superior mental attitude, of, "Oh yes! Swedenborg. I know Swedenborg...ish."

Then, today, I read Swedenborg in this thread. I am likely to be prompted to repeat my Interweb diving.

>323 robertajl:

Interesting link. It does, sort of, explain (perhaps 'excuse' is a better word) the dad's actions. Not sure where I go from there; I have some fogginess about Le Fanu's attitudes. Overdue for a reread, as I said.

>316 alaudacorax:
Also known as Zombie (they got into a lawsuit with Dario Argento over that one, Zombi 2, and who knows what else. The shark is no Bruce but an actual shark. The gentleman who played the zombie and took charge of that scene is Ramón Bravo, a Mexican photographer and underwater film maker. Check out his Wikipedia page.

Found the first seven episodes of Psychoville (2009) on Kanopy. As a fan of The League of Gentlemen and Inside No. 9 of course I liked it.

Is anyone planning some special scary viewing for Halloween? We've had unusually gorgeous weather here, so for once the climate isn't helping to get in the mood.

>328 LolaWalser:

Not this year. I've fallen into the working from home = working into the evening trap.

Kanopy didn't have the Psychoville Halloween Special then? That's a pity.

I'm aiming to get one more creepy book read before the end of the month. Luckily it's a very slim volume of weird stories.

The weather's been worrisomely warm (I can't enjoy a nice day without thinking of global warming) but today became was overcast, then it rained, and it was dark before 5:00 p.m.

We had some heavy rain in the evening, and when I looked out of the window around midnight I saw the rain had stopped, and there were breaks in the scudding clouds, with the stars shining out from a night sky that's black and not the deep blue I'd been used to through the summer. The addition of witches flying across the sky with the clouds would have felt entirely in keeping.

Yes, it's funny (or tragicomic) how a shining sun in a crisp blue sky these days makes me go "so we're doomed".

Unfortunately no Halloween Psychoville special for us. I must wait to see whether they'll be adding more episodes, or maybe I'll just break down as usual and order the set.

I did get in one VERY creepy Halloween movie, Exorcist III with George C. Scott. Surprisingly, given how one generally thinks of sequels, this was quite good (I hoped it would be at least OK, based on Scott's casting. ETA: not to mention Brad Dourif.) Not sure I understood what was going on (natural and/or supernatural?), but hey. I came for the scares; scares there are a-plenty.

>331 LolaWalser:

Well, it's been seasonably horrible rain and wind since the first. I suppose I ought to be grateful!

I like Exorcist III a lot, but I don't think it's completely successful in either version - the theatrical version which had heavy rewrites and reshoots because the studio demanded a climactic exorcism (which for all the gore effects, and bouncing Nicol Williamson - and Scott - off the walls, doesn't (and to be fair probably couldn't) have anything like the power of the original) or Blatty's unscreened version, which I've seen as a recreation, pieced together from fuzzy videotape and re-edited released footage, on the recent UK Blu Ray.

Intellectually the first (unscreened) ending makes more sense but as a cinematic experience it felt rushed and anti-climactic. It does have more Brad Dourif because Blatty originally had him do all the scenes performed by Jason Miller in the reshoot Dourif playing both the Gemini Killer and Fr. Karras in the same body.

I remember you remarking once that you didn't like The X-Files, but the season one episode "Beyond the Sea" practically gives Dourif another opportunity to play the same character at length, although it seems from the episode's Wikipedia entry that this wasn't the production team's intention from the start.

Talking of The X-Files, it feels in retrospect that this film was just too soon to catch that Silence of the Lambs/ X-Files "FBI-go-up-against serial killers" wave.

>332 housefulofpaper:

Hmm, it seems I must have seen what you say is the "unscreened" version, because it was definitely THAT actor playing all those characters, in one scene at least (shifting faces). At least, it never occurred to me that it wasn't him.

I did borrow and watch the first few seasons of the X-files some time ago, but, as much as I like both lead actors and appreciate (if that's the word) its treatment of horror, I still couldn't get over its anti-scientific, anti-rational, "I want to believe", "the guvmint CoNSkPIRa!ccY" bent. It's just too close to the actual lunacy in the US (always has been); I bet Qanon love X-Files...

I admit I found so many episodes so scary, I sort of tried to forget them... the family of inbreds and their momma on a plank, oh my... the guy creeping through the ventilation shafts etc.

>333 LolaWalser: uh.....

I was a very late comer to watching the X-Files (TV Series 1993–2018). And like many viewers, I deeply enjoyed the opening seasons. The episodes were very stand-alone, and quite a few were terrifying -----yes, I remember the one where the being climbs through the shafts of buildings, attacking people to eat their organs, etc., something like that.

But at some point, the series shifted, to being the conspiracy laden gibberish. Then I stopped watching, and except for the shows with the beloved, The Lone Gunmen:

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=d73507c090e6ae77JmltdHM9MTY2NzY5MjgwMCZpZ...

And I'd like anyone who knows, to tell us when the shift went/occurred, from the stand-alone episodes to other type, 'cause I'd like to go back and rewatch some of the earlier shows.

>334 benbrainard8:

The "alien takeover/conspiracy in high places" storyline was there from the start, and every season had a mixture of stand-alone "monster of the week" stories and ones that were concerned with the takeover/conspiracy.

My personal impression, probably coloured by a certain amount of hindsight, is that the production team had two storytelling problems as the series went on. One is that the conspiracy strand (let's call it that for brevity's sake!) became increasingly pulpy and "Sci Fi" (bearing in mind the negative connotations that the term bears, that "science fiction" or "SF" don't), as more hard details had to be revealed.

The other problem was simply that a monster of the week, every week, also strains credulity and looks pulpy. The problem's intensified I think, because Dana Scully is required to remain the skeptic of the partnership despite the experiences she's gone through.

I haven't rewatched the series recently so I can't call to mind any particular episodes recommend, but (invevitably!) there's a comprehensive Wikipedia article giving details of all episodes, including whether they are a stand-alone story.

The article also confirms something I had half-remembered: that the production term had intended to to five seasons on TV and then switch to feature films. Of course Fox insisted that production for TV continue. I think the whole series lost a lot of dynamism from season six because the writers were no longer aiming for an end point.

>334 benbrainard8:

Glad to see I wasn't the only one. And yes, I did enjoy/admire a lot the first three seasons (not sure whether or how much I saw of the fourth). All this is making me want to start watching again, actually.

>335 housefulofpaper:

I think the basic big difference is that when the series was airing I was based in the US, in the Deep South (Louisiana) at that. The culture shock was enormous. I'm not sure people outside the US really grasp just how WEIRD the US is--at least outside the rich coastal regions. I mean, just google "Florida Man" stories... (Maybe lately post-Trump and all the expanded media coverage it's more obvious...) I didn't have a television but a friend was so into it she made me watch a special, about the aliens found in the Arizona desert--the whole thing was based, I gathered, on the long-standing rumours about Roswell etc. (My friend wasn't one of the crazies who thought it was all real, she just loved the show.) And I could see that it was well-made and all, and there are no two people more attractive than Gillian Anderson and Duchovny and their great chemistry, but after daily witnessing the superstition, ignorance, lack of respect for knowledge all around me, I just could not "suspend disbelief" enough to really enjoy that type of story.

I know it must sound incredibly priggish and humourless, but you have no idea (I had no idea) what it does to one to be hearing and reading day-in day-out how the government is out to get you, and every little thing that normal countries have, from public transport to sidewalks, is "communism" and so on in that vein, and all that in this second-poorest and generally lowest-ranking state in terms of education, welfare etc.

Mark Gatiss' four Christmas Ghost Stories (three M. R. James adaptations, one original) has come out on Region 2&4 DVD from the BBC. No extras apart from an 8-page booklet. It doesn't seem to have been given a Blu-ray release.

The booklet includes a two-page essay by Mark Gatiss and illustrations (I think by Richard Wells, for "Martin's Close" and "The Mezzotint"), and four stills.

Next month the older Ghost Stories for Christmas are coming out once again, but this time on Blu-ray, from the BFI.

I have those collections on my wishlist. Maybe Gatiss' will be added to the rest by the time I recover sufficiently to buy them.

Watched (again) the fabulous Häxan from 1922. I'm fascinated by that mechanical phantasmagoria of hell Christensen shows at one point, with moveable parts and the smoke. Move over, LEGO, now that would be something to put together...

Finally got to see an excellent copy of Ken Russell's 1986 film Gothic (the version Mill Creek provided in one of their budget collections is pretty much unwatchable). First, what a beautiful and talented cast--Gabriel Byrne as Byron, Julian Sands as Shelley, Natasha Richardson as Mary Shelley... The performances are a tad overheated, or shall we say operatic, and some liberties were taken with history (at least the most common version) but I thought it was all to good effect of conveying the mix of sex and horror that the Gothic is known for.

The mechanical dolls scattered around the house reminded me of course of the Cyberman in Doctor Who's version of the story and what an ingenious take that was, given the birth of Frankenstein in that spot.

Another eighties movie that passed me by unawares, Warlock. Julian Sands is an evil wizard and Richard E. Grant is the witchhunter who get transported from the 17th to the 20th century. Both play their roles with relish. Some interesting magical devices and spells are featured. I was astonished that they actually had Sands kill a child--not shown explicitly of course, but still. Not sure why it's not better than it is... maybe they didn't hit quite the right mix of comedy and horror? Something about British actors in an American setting? Kassandra with a K not being on the same level as them? Worth seeing, anyway.

>340 LolaWalser:
I haven't seen Warlock for some years but I remember it as a good, fun B movie: something that moves along quickly and doesn't insult the intelligence.

I'm sure I've got a copy on DVD but my unwatched discs are almost as out of control as my unread books.

I've just watched Witchcraft (1964).

I was quite pleased with this; what I call a proper, old-fashioned, black and white, Gothic horror. I have to admit it wasn't the best example—plot and script could both have been stronger—and Lon Chaney Jnr, billed as the star, was somewhat underused. It was well worth watching once, though.

>342 alaudacorax:
I was pleased to see it turn up on Talking Pictures TV even though I managed to get a copy on DVD a few years ago (from Germany, I think).

I've watched The Invisible Ray (1936), a Universal horror film starring Karloff and Luogosi. I hadn't seen this one before. It's more Weird Science melodrama than horror, involving the discovery of a radioactive element brought to Earth via an ancient asteroid strike, which can variously cure a range of illnesses, be turned into a ray gun, and poison anyone foolhardy enough to approach it in its unrefined state (the science doesn't make a lot of sense).

Karloff plays the Hungarian (I think) Promethean scientist and Lugosi plays his French rival. Interestingly, not as an out-and-out villain but much more nuanced. A bit unscrupulous but, almost, the hero of the film (I was reminded, quite a bit, of Tom Conway in Cat People). The commentry track (by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman) points out plot similarities to Werewolf of London and The Invisible Man, as well as (I was less convinced by this) H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space".

>342 alaudacorax:, >343 housefulofpaper:

I'm still waiting for a good release, with maybe some extras love too... Wonder why it's hard to come by.

Anyway, I'm looking for some book-about-films advice: anyone know of a tome dedicated to Hammer Studios, entire history of, or perhaps something with the emphasis on the sixties? And/or similar about Amicus?

What's on your shelves that touches on this production?

>345 LolaWalser:

I should say upfront that I'm not at home at the moment and so I can't go and flip through any of these books to get a feel for them/refresh my memory of the,.

for the history of Hammer Films, there's Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years and Hammer Films: The Elstree Studios Years. These are supposed to be the gold standard. I've got them, but I haven't read them yet. I don't know how easy they are to come by either. I was able to pick them up in Forbidden Planet quite close to their publication dates.

The Hammer Story - I gave it 5 stars but I'm not sure why. I think the author, Marcus Hearn (also currently editing Doctor Who Magazine, I believe) is a careful, don't-rock-the-boat sort of writer. And it's the Authorised history, of course.

A Thing of Unspeakable Horror is probably too lightweight and showbiz-journalist in tone to recommend.

I don't own a comparable volume about Amicus Films. There's a lot about both studios in English Gothic, of course (including Hammer's pre-war films starring Bela Lugosi). Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies is probably too wide-ranging, and misses out a lot of earlier films.

There's a small publisher/mail order outfit by the name of Hemlock Books that I've ordered a few things from - more magaines than books. The long-running Little Shoppe of Horrors has very in depth-articles. It's core interest is Hammer but it looks at other studius too (a word of caution - the reprints of the magazines are POD and everything bar the cover is reproduced in black and white).

Hemlock Books are currently listing a book called The Amicus Anthology by Bruce G Hallenbeck. The blurb makes it sound like just what you're looking for, but I have no clue about what the book's actually like.

>346 housefulofpaper:

Thanks very much; saved the post. I'm looking for something with, above all, a good filmography (so, a proper reference volume) and next, well-illustrated. I've never come across anything relevant in person so far (obvs, not counting Ian's book on Brit horror), I guess the fans snap them up fast.

>347 LolaWalser:
Ian's book on Brit horror
The British Horror Film was an unfortunate omission. A search by tags didn't pick it up.

A Thing of Unspeakable Horror does have a filmography at the back - although more of a simple list than the full details one would find on IMDb, and it doesn't extend to the studios resurgence in this century.

>345 LolaWalser: >346 housefulofpaper:

Along with the magazine 'The Little Shoppe of Horrors', I think Wayne Kinsey's books ('Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years' and 'Hammer Films: The Elstree Studios Years') are indeed the gold standard for Hammer, although they do not have filmographies at the end of each book, but do have full cast and credits (boxed off from the main text) through the book for each film. Those two books sold out years ago but are often available on the usual auction sites, but for truly ridiculous prices. Wayne Kinsey has published many other excellent Hammer books (most sold out) and he has just published volume one of 'The House that Hammer Built' (still available for now), which will be a five volume definitive history of Hammer, but that will take a few years to complete. His website is here:

https://peverilpublishing.co.uk/

For a single volume book on Hammer, I agree with housefulofpaper that you can't beat 'The Hammer Story' by Marcus Hearne. This is beautifully illustrated, and covers the whole history, with double page spreads on the major films. There is a complete filmography at the back, covering every Hammer film and short, with 'selected' credits for each film/short. The only fault (to my mind) is the filmography is in alphabetical order - I would have preferred chronological order. Here are some very bad pictures (haha) to give you an idea of the layout:







Regarding Amicus, I do not have the Bruce Hallenbeck book. There is a magazine called 'The Dark Side' which published a softback book on Amicus, "Amicus The Friendly Face of Fear' (a definitive history). I can recommend this, and it is still available for a reasonable £20 on The Dark Side website or Amazon. It is a complete 166 page history of Amicus, with copious colour and black and white illustrations. It has a brief full list of Amicus films at the back, not a filmography, but, like the Kinsey books above, has boxes throughout the publication giving the full credits for the majority of the films (see 'Tales from the Crypt' credits example below - sorry my photos are so bad):










The magazine The Little Shoppe of Horrors dedicated an entire issue - number 20 - to a full history of Amicus films (98 pages). The illustrations are great, but it is all in black and white, apart from the covers. I found this an absolutely fascinating publication, especially on the making of the films and the working relationship and eventual deep animosity between Max Rosenburg and Milton Subotsky. There is a detailed history of all of their productions and a four page chronological filmography at the back culled from the pages of the Monthly Film Bulletin. This magazine which retailed for about £9 is going for stupid money (£40+), but is available on the LSOH website as a reprint for $15, and I think it is well worth it.

https://www.littleshoppeofhorrors.com/LSoH20.htm

>349 Rembetis:

Thanks a million ! I couldn't ask for more. Well, until Taschen gets on the task. :)

Looked at Ebay and wow, them prices! The shipping costs in particular seem ridiculous. At least I know what I'm looking for...

>350 LolaWalser: You're welcome! I hope Taschen stay away, my poor bank balance!

>351 LolaWalser: The prices are ridiculous, especially on the Kinsey books. He does limited runs of 500 - 700, and when they are sold, the second hand prices go up four or five fold. The shipping costs are the daylight robbery on top!

Yes, no luck on the books front, but, patience!

I saw again, after many years, the "Mr. Nightingale" episode (starring Jeremy Brett) from the excellent "Supernatural" series. I had missed or wholly forgotten the vampiric overtones to the horror, although the very first scenes show us this decrepit figure with sharp teeth greedily gulping down what looks like a goblet of blood. The story is really well put together, hinting at so much fundamental to the lore. Mr. Nightingale is a virgin bachelor, getting on in years... drawn to but afraid of sex... he travels to a foreign land and there succumbs to his demonic twin (the homoeroticism almost blaring in the hilarious conversation about fish) and proceeds to seduce (or vampirise?) the women in the household, resulting in a total catastrophe.

I need to refresh other episodes but I think this is the most successful and unusual "vampire" one.

>353 LolaWalser:

Very oddly, I have the box set but I don't remember that one—just been looking on IMDb and I remember watching all the others, but not that one. I must dig it out ...

>354 alaudacorax:

I'd forgotten all about it too--and yet it's one of the strangest (I think for me the one with the marionettes, with Gordon Jackson, comes on top). Please share impressions if you get to it.

I've got the DVD of Supernatural and the novelisation as well (my local Oxfam bookshop really used to be a rich seam of Gothic and Weird stuff; I gather you can't even find much in Hay-on-Wye these days. Certanly not on my visit there last year).

I'll watch "Mr Nightingale" again, but for me the marionettes episode was the creepiest. I was struck by how much the puppet sequences resembled the music hall acts in the Doctor Who story "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", which I felt went some way to justifying how that story freaked me out (I was a couple of months away from my tenth birthday. Actually it was the Victorian setting I found oppresive and scary at the time, as much as the particulars of animated ventriloquist dolls and giant rats in the sewers. I didn't even read Sherlock Holmes until I was in my 20s).

>356 housefulofpaper:

It has a fantastic atmosphere, but also (as in "Mr. Nightingale" too) a very disturbing sexual undertone. I need to check but if all the stories were done by Robert Miller (not someone I otherwise know), kudos to him.

Speaking of Sherlock, I made two belated discoveries. Finally saw the Guy Ritchie film from 2009--and I enjoyed it, a lot! I have the second one lined up for tonight (I hope).

Mark Strong is excellent as the occultist--and wouldn't we want to know what his father's clique was up to at the time of his conception... prequel, anyone?

The other new-to-me piece of Sherlock television was, alas, disappointing, despite a very impressive-looking Christopher Lee as Sherlock and an intriguing casting of Patrick Macnee as his Watson. I thought we had chatted about every Sherlock adaptation under the sun, but I don't remember Macnee-as-Watson coming up...
I lasted only about twenty minutes. Strangely discombobulated production, as if everyone was improvising.

>357 LolaWalser:

These days, I go straight to IMDb. Robert Muller is credited as writer on all but one episode of Supernatural (I could only find the Touchstone for the book). The other writer, Sue Lake, apparently wrote one episode of Ladykillers (a series that dramatised famous criminal trials. The first series was all about female murderers, but presumably they ran out of cases because the second and final series featured men who killed women. The pun in the title works either way, I suppose). After that she worked on a couple of soaps.

But the sparse details of Muller's life and career given on the site are interesting. Born in Germany in 1925, he evidently wrote for both British and German television. He seems to have had a period of contributing one script to successful British series in the late '60s to early '70s (e.g. Public Eye, and Colditz) and wrote a couple of German TV movie adaptations of Nicholas Freeling's Van der Valk, starring Frank Finlay (contemporary with the British version starring Barry Foster). A 1976 TV movie adaptation of The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Warren Clarke, so that's just before Supernatural . But he seems to have focused on German TV from the late '70s onwards. He was married to Billie Whitelaw.

Again, looking on IMDb there were two TV movies starring Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee as Holmes and Watson. I think I caught a few minutes of one years ago on an obscure satellite channel, and it didn't strike me as worth my while trying to see the whole thing. Were they shot on video, I wonder (I can't remember). There was a period in the '90s when dramas that would have been shot on film were done on video, but the crews seemed unused to the technology and that under-rehearsed and just off air came through the TV screen. Or they demonstrated that even an impressive location isn't always better than a good set.

I have seen another Holmes film where Macnee plays Watson, and discussed it here. It's Sherlock Holmes in New York, with Roger Moore (improbably, but not making a terrible job of it) as Holmes. It's not the best interpretation of Watson, unfortunately. It's a weirdly raspy-voiced Nigel Bruce impersonation.

IMDb also discloses that Macnee actually played Holmes, in a 1993 Canadian TV movie based on a stage play. Unfortunately the reviews are all pretty damning (about the plot more than Macnee, who is only "miscast" - "too old" at 71.)

>358 housefulofpaper:

Thanks so much for going the extra mile, I appreciate the connections that you can make. I remember making the note to watch Moore's Sherlock but don't think I did; completely forgotten Macnee was Watson there too.

Here's a little something I hope will be new (but what are the chances!): a short film about Vam-pye-errrrrres from Blixa Bargeld et al.!

Warning: maybe check your volume's not too high, and within the 30 seconds or so there is some flashing light, not strobing, but maybe still unpleasant to the sensitive.

Bad Blood For The Vampyr (Stereo) Bela B., Blixa Bargeld, Oliver Maria Schütz 1984

Watched The Head Hunter (2018) and I have very mixed feelings about it.

Amazon tells you the whole thing, really:
On the outskirts of a kingdom, in the shadows of a castle, a quiet but fierce medieval warrior protects the realm from monsters. The gruesome collection of heads on the wall of his cabin is missing only one - the monster that killed his daughter. He travels wild expanses, driven by a thirst for revenge but when his chance for vengeance arrives, its far more horrifying than he ever imagined.

For a $30,000 budget it was really well done: bags of atmosphere and tension, lots of misdirection from vague shapes and shadows. It had the feel of some sort of European art film—or eastern European, perhaps (it was a US film).

The trouble was, for me the final denouement let it down. It was rather trite and really didn't make any kind of sense. The problem being that the film as a whole was rather better than that and didn't deserve it. 'Bathos' or 'bathetic' is probably the right word. Right to the end I was expecting something powerful and, probably, a bit philosophical (that art film look, of course). Perhaps I was expecting too much from a film of the genre.

Still, it was something a little out of the usual and well worth watching.

Damned if I can make up my mind how to star it on IMDb ...

A few tips for leading ladies in black and white films about flying saucers or monsters from the deep. If you're going to have to do a lot of running around when combating the aforesaid dangers, be sure to wear your best high heels (and a skirt too tight to run in, if you can manage it). If they cause you to fall down, always, whatever the danger, wait for the hero to come back and help you up. Do not, under any circumstances, kick off said high heels and sprint for the horizon like a bat out of hell.

Yes, I've been wasting my weekend watching old b&w sci-fi ...

>359 LolaWalser:
Bad Blood for the Vampyr was new to me. I am sure that if I'd seen it in the '80s, I would have searched for levels of profundity that I don't think are there. A summary on IMDb says "The film is a humorous, satirical portrayal of the Berlin nightlife scene." Is it? I presume some or all of the cast were drawn from that scene, but that in itself wouldn't make it satirical.

>360 alaudacorax:
The Head Hunter is another film I hadn't heard of. The write-up on Wikipedia makes it sound an unholy mish-mash: "influenced by Jean-Jacques Annaud's 1981 film Quest for Fire, as well as The X-Files, and Tales From the Crypt television series,"..."was developed" ..."with the location in mind long before the film's story was eventually developed.", so it's good to learn that it's better than that, even if the ending is disappointing. That said, I suppose this is one I will never see unless I cave in, and start paying for streaming services.

This may be of interest, a video essay by Stuart Millard on the Gothic Horror parody "The Phantom Raspberry Blower of Old London Town", the film serial (co-written by Spike Milligan and an uncredited Ronnie Barker) shown as a segment of the 1976 series of The Two Ronnnies. As Millard notes, it's one of the first things that somebody of my age would have seen that played with the imagery and themes of "proper" horror. Although I remember findind the surrealism more disturbing. I should add a warning that Milligan's use of racial stereotypes for comedy is on show in a couple of excerpted scenes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n9gRsKQs4M&t=730s

>362 housefulofpaper:

Funny thing, I'd never picked up on the Spike Milligan connection but, now it's mentioned, I'm remembering very similar stuff on the Goon Show on the radio (still being repeated on 4 Extra).

One thing I find difficult to get my head around is how my own sensitivity has changed over the years. Any possible anti-semitism in that seems to have quite passed over my head, no memory of it at all. Roll on twenty years or so and I remember frequently being a little doubtful about the Ferengi in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Couldn't follow the voice-over in some of that because I was laughing so much at the credits they were showing (so fast you could hardly catch them). Don't know how they got away with some of that lot. I just had a glorious vision of Mary Whitehouse glued to the screen ...

>362 housefulofpaper:

I think lines like the one about no more virgins etc. can be read as humorous/satirical. I wouldn't say it's a "serious" take on vampires in any case!

I saw Ghostwatch (1992) (double DVD set including The Stone Tape). There was an Inside No. 9 episode based on this, or so I heard, which made me curious. Now I know. Does anyone remember whether there was real panic around when this broadcast?

Also saw The Spider Woman strikes back, from 1946, with Gale Sondegaard reprising her role from the 1943 Sherlock Holmes movie The Spider Woman. The latter is a gem, but the under-funded sequel much less so, although Sondegaard is just as good and Rondo "Creeper" Hatton an amazing and unsettling presence, as ever.

There isn't enough plot to go around and what there is is painfully stretched--Sondegaard harvests blood from the young women who come work for her in order to maintain her collection of poisonous plants, which are then used to poison cattle and ruin farmers so that those lands may revert to her possession.

I watched the feature about the movie (there is also an audio commentary) and the point was made that this was one of Universal's last B-horrors, that they were almost literally dismantling the unit as it was being shot. I suppose they figured it was likely to attract audiences based on the previous hit, but with just a little more it could have been so much better. Hatton died in 1946. It's mentioned that, weirdly, Sondegaard apparently didn't realise that he wasn't wearing makeup, and later she regretted she hadn't talked with him when they were making the movie--another reminder of how impersonal and piecemeal is film production.

>364 LolaWalser:

I remember a lot of controversy: a lot of people thought it was genuine and were upset to find it wasn't. Having been quite scared by it.

Edited to add - I was talking about Ghostwatch—should have said. Though I vaguely remember some sort of—possibly similar—sensation around The Stone Tape.

>365 alaudacorax:

Been racking my brains ('wracking'?) and I'm sure I'm STILL yet to watch either. Been meaning to for years, of course. And I've still to dig out 'Mr. Nightingale' (>353 LolaWalser:, >354 alaudacorax:).