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

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Another shopping trip to HMV looking for things from Network Distributing, and Animal Farm and The Man in Grey had gone from the shelves. I did find a 1991 TV adaptation of Gawain and the Green Knight, with the screenplay by David Rudkin!

I also picked up a Blu-ray from Warner Bros Archive Collection (these are appearing on the shelves as the HMV premium collection starts to wind down - they're all stickered as 2 for £15 now). A double bill of Val Lewton films, The Ghost Ship and Bedlam. Val Lewton is still poorly served on DVD/Blu-ray (in the UK at any rate). Apart from the Criterion Blu-ray of Cat People, I only had his horror films on bare bones DVDs. Actually, The Ghost Ship was only an off-air recording. The Archive Collection disc has one extra, a commentary track for Bedlam.

Death Lines: Walking London's Horror History by Lauren Jane Barnett, a recently-published book from Strange Attractor Press. There are eight main chapters, each one taking a route through (or around) a part of London (actually, six cover specific geographical areas, plus there is a chapter each for The London Underground and the Thames).

As you'd expect, various parts of the city are pointed out and their connections to various horror films (and suspense/horror films like Hitchcock's Frenzy explained. There are, unavoidably, a few spoilers. Each chapter starts with a full page hand-drawn map of the route.

There are also short thematic chapters on "hotspots": haunted-, occult-, invasion hotpsots, etc.

There's a 30-page filmography at the back of the book with plot summaries and which chapter/walk(s) each film can be found in.

I don't think I noticed any factual errors. One of the films in the filmography didn't make the final edit of the main chapter where it's claimed to appear, and (in reference to a discussion of Dracula A.D. 1972 I don't think coffee shops where in any way cool in 1972. One of the main complaints that was levelled against the film was that its idea of youth culture was at least a decade out of date.

>1 alaudacorax:

Thanks for giving us a new thread!

>2 housefulofpaper:

That sounds like a great price on the Blu-Rays (WB Archive). Especially with the extras. I have a Val Lewton DVD box which I'm loath to let go as long as the discs play. Ten films, of which one is a documentary about him, and there are extras on all the other too. Twenty or so years ago this was tops!

https://www.librarything.com/work/10714135/book/67503709

I did update my ordinary DVD of Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon with Indicator's 2-disc set; I didn't register originally that it's region-free, or maybe I too could have had that luxe edition Andrew showed us. Or was that 4K or some such?--there's just no end to it...

I made a few more Network purchases, of which more as they start showing up (here's hoping nothing gets cancelled).

On topic, I saw for the first time (on Kanopy) the 1981 serial The Day of the Triffids--hugely enjoyable with excellent triffid models, judiciously not overexposed when "on the march".

>5 housefulofpaper:
Oh no, I've done it again. Because teaching us '70's children English grammar was a threat, and not a part of the curriculum, when I was at school. I meant to say that the HMV premium collection is now knocked down to 2 for £15.

For years afterwards, those triffid props were fair game for the BBC's light entertainment department and appeared in plenty of comedy sketches - very overexposed and mishandled (often being poked at someone from "offstage" or through a doorway, like a big stick).

>2 housefulofpaper: Thanks for the tip about the Warner Archive releases being sold in HMV. Fortunately, I have a branch locally. That double Lewton looks great. It is odd that Lewton has been so badly served here in the UK.

>4 LolaWalser: I hope your plans to return to Europe go smoothly! Your problems with PAL are likely to be solved, but as you say, the spotlight will then be on your region A stuff. There are multi region players on sale. I have one for dvd, but haven't purchased one for blu ray. It would be wonderful if one day all the region coded nonsense were dropped!

I watched the restored blu ray of Joe Dante's 'The Howling' tonight. The film still stands up after 42 years. I also watched the 'Re-Animator' trilogy over the past few days. Good fun, although the first remains the best.

A new Pete Walker blu ray box has been announced for the Uk for September. The cost is around £80 (gulp). It contains: Die Screaming, Marianne (1971), The Flesh and Blood Show (1972), House of Whipcord (1974), Frightmare (1974), House of Mortal Sin (1976) Schizo (1977) and The Comeback (1978). Each title has been restored in HD, and extras include audio commentaries on each film and new documentaries/interviews with Pete Walker - 'Ask Mr Walker'; 'House of Walker'; 'Symphony of Horror'; 'Terror Tales' and 'Walker's Women' - with more extras to be announced. The main horror film missing from the box is 'House of the Long Shadows', but that has had a separate blu ray release.

I watched five episodes of the Netflix series Wednesday (doesn't seem to be a touchstone so I've linked IMDB page). If you don't know, it's based on the daughter character from The Addams Family.

I had great hopes for it at first. It was surprisingly dark and edgy—in a humorous way, of course. It had some good dialogue* and showed promise of having decent plot lines developing. By five episodes in, though, I felt it had got a little too solidly young adult soap and was getting a little too conscientiously 'wholesome family entertainment'. I got a sense of some sort of a struggle over the writing of it—though that was hard to make any sense of from the writing credits—there was the odd writer common to all plus some different writers. However that may be, I found I was losing interest by the fifth episode and I probably won't bother anymore. For me, it didn't develop as good well to be as good as the first episode or two had promised.

There were a couple of nicely Gothic buildings, the Addams family home and Wednesday's school. I don't know if they were real or CGI or what. IMDb just gives 'Romania' as the single filming location.

ETA - * The later episodes didn't keep up that standard of dialogue.

>7 alaudacorax:
I haven't seen any of this series. There's a lot of potentially good stuff I've missed because I haven't subscibed to any streaming services (and even if I did give in and subscribe, things are being taken offline). Still sad to hear that the quality falls off.

I wonder if the buildings are could be a mixture of real and CHI? - hang a green cloth over a gateway and add a couple of stories in post-production (equivalent to an old-fashioned glass shot).

I've watched the Severin films Blu-ray of Blood for Dracula. I understand that it's understated compared to Flesh for Frankenstein, which I still haven't seen. I can't really assess it in the context of Undergound cinema, but in the chronology of Dracula and vampire films it was quite an eye-opener, doing things I thought had first appeared in later films.

Things such as, equating vampirism with drug addiction; a - not sympathetic, but a vulnerable Dracula, five years before Klaus Kinski in Nosferatu; a Renfield-type bustling the Count around - otherwise seen only in comedy versions.

The story bears almost no resemblance to Stoker's novel but the way the screenplay diverges from it still feel strangely familar - as if director and screenwriter Paul Morrissey was tapping into a "Folk Dracula", a figure for whom, for example, virgin blood is all important, and the old world/new world clash puts him on the back foot.

>8 housefulofpaper:

I may have been being unfair. Last episode I watched (5, I think), they tied up the odd plot line in a rather 'wholesome', 'afternoon TV movie', and psychologically unconvincing way, and that soured me a bit. To be honest, I simply couldn't be bothered to watch anymore—too many books and good films waiting round here to be read and watched and I was feeling guilty about the time spent.

>9 housefulofpaper:

I am continually meaning to and forgetting to watch films mentioned in these threads. We briefly discussed these two films in the last thread and I vaguely remember watching a horrible copy of Flesh for Frankenstein (probably on YouTube) and I was sure I'd posted about the experience. I've just been searching and it seems I didn't post and I completely forgot all about hunting up Blood for Dracula. Always doing that! Infuriating.

>6 Rembetis:

Good to see Sheila Keith prominent on the package! I have about half of those on Blu-Ray (region free but made in North America); dragging my feet on the second set still... and yes, I too would need to get The House of Long Shadows separately.

>9 housefulofpaper:, >11 alaudacorax:

Both films are masterpieces... of a kind. And far more entertaining than most takes on the lore!

I'm glad to say that I managed to see King of the Castle after all--my laptop's internal optical drive was set to Region 2 and that apparently was recognisable to the disc. (Sadly, the issue with pixellation was still present so now I'm almost sure those discs ARE damaged somehow.)

Any fan of classic Doctor Who is bound to appreciate this series about a bullied new boy asserting himself. The concept is great, uniting a tense and drab existence in a high-rise to a colourful but scary adventure in its "mirror universe" counterpart deep below the surface. Talfryn Thomas, Milton Johns and Derek Smith undergo particularly effective transformations from their ordinary selves--and speaking of Frankenstein, there is more than a little of that story in this.

My Network haul has started to come in. I'll mention for now (apologies for the off-topic!) Callan (monochrome and colour years, and two movies), Public Eye, A Very Peculiar Practice, Mapp & Lucia (the 1980s version), Chessgame (was completely unfamiliar with this, bought only because it stars Terence Stamp) and The Edgar Wallace Mysteries set containing 54 TV films. Delighted with it all.

>12 LolaWalser: - King of the Castle

My first thoughts on looking at the IMDb page - no wonder he was bullied if he was going to school with an expensive hairdo like that in 1977. But I can't really remember—perhaps things had changed a lot since my schooldays ...

>13 alaudacorax:

The hair is prominent indeed--flaming red at that :) Didn't look particularly styled to me tho', I actually wondered if they used garden shears on the kid. He seemed a somewhat odd choice for a protagonist... or maybe it's my bias?--it occurs to me that Brit TV series for children don't fear choosing, how can I put this delicately, unpretty children for their stars. Take for instance the boy in Tightrope, with the awful piercing voice and a perpetual scowl... and he starred in at least one more well-received series (was it Timeslip?)... I just can't imagine how he floated to the top.

To be sure, it's commendable in a way, just a little surprising how unimportant charm seems to be in these cases.

>14 LolaWalser:

I had to check IMDb and you're right, Spencer Banks is the lead actor in both Timeslip and Tightrope. He also played Stephen in Penda's Fen.

Interesting queston about the child performers on '70's British TV. I could make a few wild guesses unsupported by any research:
- TV producers had to work with what was available (harsh, but how good were stage schools? The only one I remembe the name of is the Italia Conti stage school, which provided a lot of those rough London kids in Thames TV productions).
- There was a preference for "keeping it real", sort of a Joan Littlewood approach to theatre (and TV and film, by extension). Maybe a parallel appreciation for neo-realism and novelle vague on the part of film school graduates coming into TV in the '60s and '70s.
- That ever-present sense of not being able to compete with "Hollywood" (= The United States) anyway, so going a different route.
- Just reflecting British society! I haven't seen it on YouTube, but sometimes in the small hours '70s sports programming gets repeated on TV. How awkward and unpolished, almost on the verge of violence, football players in a TV studio are, compared to the assured media professionals they have to be today.

>15 housefulofpaper:

Dang, he's the one in Penda's Fen; completely missed that. I guess he's a bit older in it...

How awkward and unpolished, almost on the verge of violence, football players in a TV studio are, compared to the assured media professionals they have to be today.

I think people in general are far more conscious of their public image--of having a "public image"--today than ever in the past. Add to that the dread knowledge that once captured, nothing goes away...

A question to all, unrelated to anything but vitally important: HOW LARGE is your "unwatched" stash of BR, DVD, whathaveyou...? Yes, I do need to compare, yes, I do need reassuring that I'm not the only one... :)

>16 LolaWalser:

This is a tricky question because when I set up my secondary account for film & TV (annoyingly, not very long before the dropdown list for acceptable media was massively expanded), I decided not to enter all the discs I owned but hadn't yet watched. Probably a mistake because now I'm in danger of buying duplicates or on the other hand, missing out on something I think I already have.

An exception is the recordable DVDs with off-air recordings from as far back as the 1980s (those are copied from domestic VHS recordings). I think maybe a third of those are entered so far.

I have got 1694 items catalogued so far - there must be more discs than that, because box sets count as one item. Of which total of 1694, 370 are "to read" and 356 tagged as "off-air recording". Which would mean about 1000 DVD-R and +R in total.

The "unread" numbers do look off. Maybe I was super-strict when I catalogued the off-air stuff and counted it as unwatched if I hadn't sat and watched the new recording. Hmmm.

I can show you pictures of the unwatched pre-recorded discs:

Every box stacked against the wall, left of the keyboard.


Only one shelf, but two more layers behind the Doctor Who blu-rays.


And this sad sight. All these discs jammed between, and on top of, three stacks of unread paperbacks:

>17 housefulofpaper:

O.mi.god.

First---ooh, that BEAUTIFUL row of Doctor Who The Collection! I have the American BR releases (minus Hartnell and the latest Pertwee) but they simply don't compare to your versions.

Second--aah, so many goodies in that mixed media cabinet!--I'll need to pore over it at length-- Hammer volume 4 and Hammer volume 6 are crying to be united--and do you have the rest of them?

Third--well the first photo is the most daunting! What untold riches there may be! By the way, I presume you know, but just in case--you can use Power Edit to change Media en masse. Of course, if you entered everything scatter fashion (not grouped by DVD, BR etc.), it may still take you a while to select items, but at least after that it takes just the one click.

Whew, feeling less lonely already... :)

My "unwatched" falls into two categories: Never Seen, and Not Seen In A While. I've got hundreds in the former set (and as you say, it gets even worse when counted per disc instead of title), and together with the second set, it gets to be, well, most of my stuff.

>12 LolaWalser: What a fantastic haul of Network goodies! I hope you enjoy them.

>16 LolaWalser: On a rough count, I have about 600 unwatched dvds and blu-rays. I keep these in various places in the living room where the TV is, and do regularly pluck items out to watch. This week, that included the blu-ray of Hammer's 'The Reptile' which I purchased in 2012, and the blu ray of the 1958 BBC 'Quatermass and the Pit' purchased in 2018. The BBC have done wonders with the sound and visual quality of 'Quatermass and the Pit'.

When I watch an item from the unwatched pile in my living room, it gets moved to the shelves in my dining room. To give some context, I live in an old Victorian house (built 1885), which has tall ceilings, and I have two sets of custom made shelves in the alcoves of the dining room for the dvds and blu rays, which go from the floor to almost the ceiling. The dvds and blus are double banked. There are around 1800 titles in my 'watched' library, with the 600 or so unwatched titles in the living room on top. I do often re-watch stuff I have already watched, while the unwatched pile grows! There's no hope for me! On top of this, I have a 8 drawer wooden chest which holds all the dvd recordables I have made over the years, largely from tv, and stuff I get from friends and other collectors (mostly rare bootlegs of old films).

I have the same hoarding issue with books - with read/to be read piles, but that's another story!

>17 housefulofpaper: My goodness, you have my disease! The Indicator Dietrich box is well worth shunting to the front of the queue, it's sublime. The Hammer boxes are great too.

>19 Rembetis:

We could all be inmates in the same Asylum! (Oh no--And Now the Punning Starts...)

Even on DVD, the restored Reptile and Quatermass & the Pit look terrific.

Your house sounds wonderful. But yes, as I know from experience, ANY size of room can easily fill to the bursting point! Still, as someone posted recently in her thread--we'll never run out of things to enjoy.

The Indicator Dietrich

Fun game. As far as I can tell... I share with Andrew the Christopher Lee Eurocrypt and Eureka's Mabuse set.

(From my other account)
>18 LolaWalser: Thanks for pointing me towards Power Edit. I've been on this site a long time but my technical know-how plateaued quite early on. I sort of regret hat I'd set up two accounts & I don't think it's possible to amalgamate them; but I did use Power Edit to tidy up the collections - because I'd created a manual "video recordings" collection I missed out on ticking the box for "my library" on hundreds of entries.

I've started cataloguing my unwatched discs. I saw a third Indicator Hammer set in a yet-to-be catalogued box, but I think that's it, and most of them are out of print now. I also found a Blu-ray I'd completely forgotten about. In fact I recorded the film off-air just last night! more proof that this job needed doing.

I saw that there's a non-von Sternberg Dietrich film on Indicator's website for pre-order: The Song of Songs.

Yes, I've got the Severin Eurocrypt set (volume 1 only) and the Mabuse set.

Glad I could help! I'm following your additions with interest.

Ah yes--have some fodder for the thread--I saw Escape into night, another spooky children's series, from 1972. A temporarily bed-ridden girl discovers that her dreams seem to take her into the world of her drawings, and, inadvertently, a sick boy whom she hears about from her teacher gets caught up in them too. In dreams the children become aware of a danger that threatens to destroy them unless they escape.

The episodes are short enough that it invites bingeing, but when possible, I'd advise watching in installments, as some scenes seem to occur and re-occur more than necessary... overall very effective; I liked the boy in particular.

More from Network: The Sweeney (the Region 1 releases included the pilot, "Regan", and this does not, but oh well, I guess one really can't have it all!), The Beiderbecke Trilogy and the deliciously weird The Strange World of Gurney Slade.

I watched Howl's Moving Castle a couple of evenings ago. Definitely better than any other film I've watched recently, I thought it was very good but not quite as good as my favourite Miyazaki, Spirited Away. Its plot makes some unsatisfying twists at times, with some elements that don't get properly realised. In some ways a rather odd film, and I found it (am finding it) a bit difficult to get my head around: Lord of the Rings meets Harold and Maude meets Rebel Without a Cause meets some Walt Disney fairy tale.

I've been puzzling, though, about whether I can shoehorn it into the Gothic genre. It's Fantasy, of course, and decidedly dark Fantasy in places, and I suppose you could call it Steampunk, or Steampunk-influenced, at least. There is a generous dose of the supernatural, but not in any menacing way, barring the occasional curse. Instead, the menace comes from very real and down-to-earth things—modern warfare, growing old, characters living their lives without achieving their potential. And really those things—I'm not talking about symbolism, here.

It's a film to be watched a few times more and thought about a bit ...

Edited because I just had to add a tiny bit more while trying very hard not to write a 2,000-word essay on it ...

>23 alaudacorax: I watched Howl's Moving Castle a couple of evenings ago...Its plot makes some unsatisfying twists at times, with some elements that don't get properly realised.

Have you read the novel it's based on, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones? I wonder if the original would work better for you than the adaptation. I haven't read it or seen the movie adaptation, but I've heard good things about the book.

>17 housefulofpaper:
Your pictures make feel good. I am not alone.

>24 Julie_in_the_Library:

No ... I didn't know there was a book until I looked up the film on IMDb after watching it. I may get round to it at some point. My TBR piles are threatening to topple over and crush me!

I hope I didn't give the impression that I was less than enthusiastic about it. I gave it 8 stars on IMDb (where I gave Spirited Away 9), which is a very high rating for me. I really felt I was watching an art work rather than a purely commercial product—which so much modern cinema is, nowadays. Now I've seen that last sentence written down, it looks terribly naive; but it's a good shorthand for what I really mean ...

>17 housefulofpaper:, >25 pgmcc:

I'm just impressed that Andrew knows exactly where his unwatched stuff is. My stuff is much more chaotic. And, yes, I have bought the odd duplicate ...

>27 alaudacorax:
I feel I am amongst my own. Such bliss!

I've added another 90 or so things (mostly single discs, but some box sets) to my film & TV catalogue today.

I was happy to find a Spanish DVD of Something Wicked This Way Comes (it has the original English audio track without subtitles, so it's all good). I'd completely forgotten that I'd seen this on Amazon and ordered it a couple of years ago. It was only yesterday I'd seen some online chat about how hard it is to get hold of this fiim and I was silently agreeing with them. I have had a copy for a long time, but it's an off-air VHS recording burned to DVD, with the rather serious blemishes of a scractch through an hour of the original tape, and the picture interference caused either by a thunderstorm or weird hot-summer-night atmospherics. But no, I have a "proper" one as well. I intend to watch it soon.

The Corridor People was great. I think I'd imagined something too arch and looking down on genre fiction without really "getting" it, and rather threadbare '60s studio production and difficult-to-follow action scenes. Although it's clearly made on a budget, and with the technical limitations of '60s videotape, it all looks very crisp. The stories felt, I don't know, maybe the closest to the spirit of Michael Moorcock-era New Worlds that televison ever came? Playing with the tropes of spy thrillers and so on, and feeling so 1960s, and then making a point that felt absolutlely pertinent today. Very impressed. Not really Gothic, apart from the first scene of the second episode, whose plot encompasses both science bringing the dead back to life and forensic accountancy, and which opens in a full-on Gothic graveyard (a stylised studio set).

And I watched The Ninth Configuration. I'd seen it, or rather more than half of it, on television in the 1980s or 1990s.

I've since become aware that it's considered as the middle part of the so-called "faith trilogy", The Exorcist - Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane/The Ninth Configuration - Legion/The Exorcist III (a trilogy, however, consisting of either films or books, of which, one of the books, and one of the films, exist in two very different states).

It does, now that I can compare it with The Exoricst III, have similarities with the later film. Very good, and funny, dialogue in the early parts of both films, explosive violence and Catholic theology at the end. It comes unstuck for me because of the theology. It's not so much that I can't suspend my disbelief (as it were), for the duration of the film and let Blatty tell his story, as that I didn't understand that I was supposed to accept the main character's actions as one thing rather than another - its hard to explain without spoliers, but it's about the issue of self-sacrifice that's also in The Exorcist and the original version of Exorcist III. The bonus interviews and so forth on the disc were a help in explaining the ideas behind the story.

Although it's set in Nothern California most of the action takes place in a castle used as a mental institution by the US military. The script explains it as having being shipped over from Europe by a rich industrialist. Exteriors are of a German castle, and the interiors were shot in studios in Hungary. They are, as they match the exterior, literally Gothic. And there are shots that just focus for a few seconds on a feature like a decorative carving, which put me in mind of the single panels illustrating the same type of feature (with no dialogue or caption) that Mike Mignola would insert into the action in a page of Hellboy.

>29 housefulofpaper:

The Corridor People was great.

yea!

Nothing on topic for me yet, still going through my Network loot; latest received, Rupert Davies' Maigret (yes, I gave in) and Pardon the Expression with Arthur Lowe.

>30 housefulofpaper:

Haven't seen or read any of those links. I have seen, long ago, the first(?) film, the Linda Blair The Exorcist. A powerful film but not sure it was really my thing and I've been a bit resistant to watching anything related.

>31 LolaWalser:

I used to love the Rupert Davies Maigret when I was a kid ... and that's going back some. Actually, I watched one a few weeks ago, and a Rowan Atkinson one at around the same time. Both quite good, but I never got round to watching more. I think they must both be currently on our (UK) telly—can't figure out where else I would have found them. And while I was looking I found another one, with Michael Gambon. And there's a film with Richard Harris—wouldn't mind seeing that.

The Corridor People: I'm always puzzled when this group keeps coming up with TV series I think I've never heard of. 1966, though, was probably a time when I was never home in the evenings.

I'm reminded yet again how fine the line can be between Gothic horror and fairy tale. I watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs last night. Definite Gothic horror: evil plots; dark scenes in dungeons and dark woodlands; it even had a chained-up skeleton in a dungeon, hand reaching fruitlessly for a water jug just beyond reach.

I was going to write this bit about nostalgia and revisiting childhood, but I've just called it up on IMDb and I think I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty (I was just old enough for that one to get teased by the girls in our street because they'd spotted me in the audience at the local 'pictures' when it first came out). So now I've got this weird déjà vu—part thinking I've never seen it in my life, part thinking I've not only seen it but written about it here. Trouble is, we've all probably seen so many clips of it on other shows that it's difficult to work out if one has actually watched the whole thing. And it's had periodic rereleases.

I was a little surprised a how short it was and how straighforward a story. Having said that, it had more plot than most modern films and I suppose there were plenty of films around the ninety-minute mark back in the day, so eighty-three is not that surprising.

It's obviously of another age: Miss White makes an Ann Radcliffe heroine look an image of modern, emancipated womanhood.

There's also a problem of all the mental baggage I was bringing to it, being a member of this group. Couldn't help thinking of the various modern authors who have seen her as a vampire: white skin; red lips; death-like sleep in a coffin ...

Also, the sound-track has a surprising amount that gets a small parrot over-excited and joining in.

It was okay, though; I quite enjoyed it. Especially visually.

>33 alaudacorax: - ... I think I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty ...

I've just realised that I not only absent-mindedly ordered the wrong film from cinemaparadisodotcom but then managed to watch the whole thing without realising. I'm getting old ...

I watched Howl's Moving Castle not long ago (>23 alaudacorax:). I was remembering seeing Sleeping Beauty as a kid and I wanted to compare and contrast the artwork. Of course, by the time the disc turned up I'd forgotten that ...

>34 alaudacorax:

Stone me! My original intention was to compare and contrast Spirited Away with Sleeping Beauty ... and that was in 2018!!!

>35 alaudacorax:

... and I bought a book about Spirited Away in 2011 and I still haven't got round to reading it ... oh dear ...

>36 alaudacorax:

Ehh, you are not alone. Time to admit that Stuff has overwhelmed us--we'll never get to the end of it. But as someone noted recently, that just means we'll never run out of things to enjoy. :)

I lost track of what part of my Network loot I've yet to report. I received the Michael Gambon Maigret too, and--something that does belong--The Owl Service based on Alan Garner's book.

Network's remaining stock is being distributed by another company and I picked up the box set of Brian Clemen's '70s anthology series Thriller in HMV.

I also picked up Johnny Mnemonic (not from Network). This release has the short film (which we discussed a couple of years ago) Tomorrow Calling, which is an adaptation of William Gibson's short story "The Gernsback Continuum".

I should have one more Network set come in, and then I'll catalogue them. I notice the prices are already climbing for their remaining stock; too bad. Biggest regrets: Ace of Wands, and a few that sold out before this, The Man in Room 17 second season, and Children of the Stones.

Just tried to watch yet another of those films where I'm really struggling to remember if I've watched it and wrote about it here previously: Vampyres. I haven't and didn't, as far as I can find. Of course, if it was any good I'd have been still absorbed in it rather than rooting arount LT to see if I'd seen it before. From something I saw on IMDb, the vague familiarity may be because this is an unsuccessful remake of José Ramón Larraz's '74 film of the same name, which has been discussed here ... and, looking further at IMDb, I see they give Larraz a credit as one of the writers on this one.

This one, as far as I can judge (I've, at least temporarily, given up on it), is just plain clunky—the acting, the dialogue, the film-making in general. It's just all-round poor. And the cast look like they found them in the queue at my local post office.

Can I just mention something that's a bit of a sore point with me? If you're going to have a sinister house hidden deep in a forest, can you at least find a decent bit of mature forest to have it in? It really sabotages the idea when the woodland clearly hasn't been there more than the odd couple of decades and all the trees look the same age—that was one of the many reasons why I found The Blair Witch Project such an unconvincing film. Oh dear—shouldn't have mentioned The BWP—now I'm really going to go to bed in grumpy old man mode. Knew I should've watched Kiki's Delivery Service ...

>40 alaudacorax:

Have you considered keeping a movie diary or a list? I do lists. The bare bones--title, plus other identifying info in case the title isn't original enough--date of production, or director, eventually actor(s), if I think I might want to see the performances again...

For this year, for example, I have 23 films so far, the latest being Gumshoe with Albert Finney.

Hi folks! The latest from Network on their webpage is the following:

"Network Distributing Limited is no longer trading. Jeremy Karr and Jamie Taylor of Begbies Traynor were appointed as Liquidators of the Company on 9 June 2023. The Liquidators are in control of the Company’s affairs and are taking steps to realise the assets of Network Distributing Limited. Any enquiries or expressions of interest in the business and assets of Network should contact the Liquidators’ agent as below:
Neal Weekes
Director
Gordon Brothers
Email: nweekes@gordonbrothers.com
t +44 (0)207 647 5131
m +44 (0)7836 226670"

I wonder if anyone will buy the business as a going concern? I've noticed many titles disappearing, and prices escalating on the Network titles still available. My local HMV has been stripped of Network content. The only title I regret not buying is the blu ray of the ITC series 'Man in a Suitcase'.

I was totally absorbed in 'The Changeling' with George C Scott tonight (the remastered blu ray I got about 5 years ago!) I haven't seen it since around 1980, and I'd forgotten how beautifully paced and how creepy the film is, and so powerfully acted. I can't recall another horror film that deals so well with the pain of grief.

>42 Rembetis:

'The Changeling' with George C Scott

I caught it on YT some time ago and I concur, it's great. That little ball bouncing on the stairs... *shiverrr*

>43 LolaWalser: The 'hidden' room at the top of the house, and that creepy cob-webbed wheelchair...!

>44 Rembetis:

eek! There we go, no bedtime for me yet :)

I saw Children of the Corn 2. Not as good as the first one, but worthwhile. I tried to memorize what the Native American character tells the journalist, something like (explaining the meaning of the word Koyanisqaatsi): "Life out of balance. My people knew man must live at one with nature. White men only know to take. And take until nothing is left. So: life out of balance. And we all fall down."

Which is exactly what is happening.

The killer corn, that whole empty landscape is such a brilliant metaphor for America.

And "we used to say we only borrow the world from our children. Maybe they want it back."

There was a great cartoon in The Guardian the other day, a couple of bourgie parents at the shrink's with the rebellious daughter, daughter holding a sign with "Save the planet", and the parents going, "Doctor, we're losing hope that she'll ever move to the right." Ha. No kidding.

>45 LolaWalser: I've seen 'Children of the Corn' 1 & 2, but none of the follow-ups. Yep, the Native American in part 2 was right! The empty landscape is also a brilliant metaphor beyond America - the wildfires; deforestation; the disgraceful sewage dumping in our rivers and seas in the UK, etc. I don't know what's more terrifying, observing what is happening, or observing leaders denying what's in front of their eyes or taking ineffective measures. Here in the UK, the Conservatives are busy criminalising protest. Peacefully sitting in the road (admittedly causing an obstruction to traffic) carried a fine of up to £1k. It's now up to 12 months in prison with an Act that passed last month. And they have have the cheek to criticise Russia and China.

Love The Guardian, and I saw that cartoon! It's the 75th Anniversary of the National Health Service today and Ben Jennings has done a cartoon with the 5 Conservative leaders from the last 13 years hovering menacingly over a patient in an NHS hospital bed, Rishi Sunak holding a pillow to administer the final blow. So accurate.

Sorry to get all political, I know we here to try and get away from it all.

>46 Rembetis:

No apologies needed as far as I'm concerned (besides, I started it!), we're in a global crisis and while I understand the need to take a break and look away now and then, I also think we should at least meet our destruction with open eyes. It's not like we haven't been witnessing it and hearing warnings for a good century now--hell, Marx and Engels wrote about the logic of capitalism inevitably destroying all natural resources back in The Communist Manifesto!

And, what's going on in the UK is appalling. (Canada, or Ontario at least, seems hell-bent on going the same way, btw.) That an elite minority can so openly oppress the majority, to the point that the country (supposedly one of the richest in the world, although I never knew what that meant since I discovered homelessness in the US) is now counting its aged poor in millions--yes, that still astounds me. I saw a news report from the UK about the pensioners not being able to afford food. How can anyone listen to that and watch damn billionaires in power?

Eh, well, that's my vent for today. I could make it more topical... Gothic literature is deeply reactionary in its origin--basically it's all about fearing the women, the foreigners, the Other however that Other may be expressed. But there is also a parallel thread to those panics, something that hints at the worst fear of all--that the monster is us.

So in the end it becomes practically realist. We have fulfilled the worst fears of anyone who ever imagined a Gothic horror. We have poisoned the world, deformed the social contract, all our houses of Usher are falling down, and to top it all, our worst freaks are envisioning to export that virus to outer space.

uh oh. Time for tea and Corridors of blood.

>48 Rembetis: You are right, we should meet our destruction with open eyes. Painful though that is.

Regarding people not affording to eat, it is a huge problem here. A House of Commons report showed that 40,000 people used a food bank in 2009/2010 (under the last Labour government), which is shocking enough. After 13 years of Conservative rule (with austerity policies), food bank use climbed to an eye watering 2.9 million people in 2022/23. That, and the widening gap between the poorest and the richest, is a terrible indictment of the past decade.

I agree with what you say about gothic literature's topicality on issues, especially us being the monster, and plans to export our poison to other planets! Additionally, there are quite a few ecological horror and science fiction books and films, and societal problems are central to many horror films (e.g. unemployment and mechanisation in 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'; consumerism and capitalism in 'Dawn of the Dead'; manipulation through mass media in 'Videodrome'). Even classic gothic literature like Ann Radcliffe's deeply reflects concerns about female identity in patriarchal society and the economic concerns that flow from that (I was horrified to read in a biography of Catherine Dickens by Lillian Nayder that, in addition to power lying largely with men, prior to 1857, a woman who divorced could not remarry, or regain her property rights under common law - which made me think of gothic plots in a new light).

'Corridors of Blood' and tea - how delicious! For me tonight, it was a double bill of the British horror 'The Legacy' (1978) and the BBC film 'Stonewall' (1995).

Ah Karl Marx! I grew up near Highgate Cemetery in the 1960s and 1970s, and often visited his impressive tomb in the East Cemetry. The West Cemetery, across the road, is far more beautiful though. A few pics attached (though I suspect there are others in other threads). It was used in many an Amicus horror film, also in Hammer's 'Taste the Blood of Dracula', Price's 'Phibes', and the excellent BBC TV 'Dracula' with Louis Jourdan.

>48 Rembetis:

Thanks so much for the pictures! I recognise the second one as background in the Amicus portmanteau with Ralph Richardson as Death (and Joan Collins as one of the "storytellers", among other...)

Hmmm, I don't recall having heard of The Legacy before, noting.

This is the second time I saw Corridors of blood; Karloff is great, but Lee gives one of his most compelling "evil" performances in it.

>48 Rembetis:

Wow ... great pics!

>49 LolaWalser: >50 alaudacorax: Oh, I love those stunning pictures of Highgate Cemetery too, but I didn't take them! I found them on line a few years ago, but I can't remember where (apologies to whoever took them). My own photos taken over the years are grimy in comparison (here's a few):







Here's how Highgate looks in 'The Abominable Dr Phibes':







And in 'Taste the Blood of Dracula':









'The Legacy' is nothing special, but a fun watch, with some effective scenes (one very memorable one featuring Roger Daltrey!) Hammer legend Jimmy Sangster is one of the screenwriters. It benefits from Charles Gray, and the great actress Margaret Tyzack, who plays a nurse, who may (or may not) be able to transform into a cat?!

'Corrdiors of Blood' is so atmospheric. I agree about Christopher Lee. He is very cold blooded and ruthless in it, makes every second of his performance count.

Can't say how long it's been since I've seen 'Corridors of Blood'; must be decades. Due for a rewatch, I think. That cemetery, though, seems almost made to be a film set—wonderful, atmospheric, old place.

Who are the two actresses, though? Their faces are so familiar but I can't bring names to mind or match them to anyone in the cast list on IMDb. Oops—my bad! Looking at the wrong films. Linda Hayden and Isla Blair, right? I've got to say that I wouldn't at all mind ending up in a place like that; and, if I did, I don't think I'd at all mind the likes Hammer and it's starlets making films above me.

ETA - Damn and blast! 'its' not 'it's', you plonker ...

Strange. Have I never seen 'Taste the Blood of Dracula' or completely forgotten it? It seems right up my street ... my time and my kind of horror film ... but the IMDb page is ringing no bells at all. I've put it on top of my CinemaParadiso list (and 'Corridors of Blood' second).

Edited in a few pronouns, etc, I've been getting so 'stream of consciousness' it's like Kerouac's been dug up and zombified.

I had an evening in front of the telly, yesterday—I just wanted to veg out, and I watched two films.

. . .

I was sure I previously posted about Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, but running searches on LT is coming up blank. Ah, hang on—it was the colon that was throwing the search ending engine. I wrote a short post on it in 2014. Oh well. Actually, I wrote then:

... (you have to imagine me typing that with a sort of embarrassed grin).
Pure big-spectacle, slash-bang modern entertainment, I'm afraid. But it was tongue-in-cheek with some funny lines - usually including language too effing ripe to quote here. And Gemma Arterton again, I think she has designs on being the new Kate Beckinsale.
I don't know what the Brothers Grimm would think about it (there's a film about the Brothers Grimm hunting monsters, too).

There's quite a baroque* look to it—great spectacle and mise-en-scène, and they actually has had someone writing a story-line—which seems rare enough, these days—but it's firmly in the box for well-crafted entertainment as opposed to high art. Well worth watching at least once. I see that back then I rated it 6/10 on IMDb and that's about right, I think.

. . .

The other I watched as From a House on Willow Street, though IMDb has it as House on Willow Street and I'm linking to that as LT's touchstone seems rather problematic. A bit of typical studio exec stupidity, I think, as House on Willow Street makes no sense in the context of the film while the original title makes perfect sense. I have a feeling I may have watched or part-watched this previously, but this time I'm certain I haven't previously written about it here.

It's nothing really special—you'll have seen practically all of the separate bits elsewhere—except that there's a rather neat 'twist in the head' (I mean as opposed to a 'twist in the tail'). It's as if the engine driving the story is one type of film running slap-bang into another. I really have to go into spoiler territory here, though I'll try to keep it as un-spoiler-ish as possible. You've got your typical 'flakey gang of semi-competents kidnaps young woman for ransom' film. They kidnap her from a prosperous-looking, semi-suburban house. Unfortunately for them, they've, quite coincidentally, picked the house and lead character from your typical 'young woman get's gets possessed by a demon' film.. All kinds of horrific mayhem ensues.

It was tense, and with a scattering of jump scares, and there were some competent actors, especially the women. It was probably done on the cheap—pick some abandoned and run-down industrial unit and shoot mostly in low light conditions. It may be my cast of mind, but, apart from being tickled by that twist, I didn't care for it much. It was too near the slasher genre for one thing, and all too grim. It did have a sort of plot and wasn't as mindless as such things often are.

Hah! I was about to say, there, that I was going to give it 5/10 on IMDb. But I see that I already did that at some point. Hmm ... just had another search and I've definitely not written about it here previously ...

Edited (yet again) to add, * When I said 'baroque' in the 'Hansel & Gretel' bit up above I didn't mean 'Baroque' with a capital 'B'—poor choice of word, really. I meant that the studio sets were quite richly and cleverly done in a really convincing blend of ornate fairy-tale and grimy mediaevalism, with touches of cyberpunk thrown in, and with some really good outdoor settings (Lower Saxony, apparently).

Oh stone me! 'get's'? 'GET'S'?

>54 alaudacorax: - ... (Lower Saxony, apparently).

Who knew there were Hartz Mountains in Tasmania? Bloody nuisance when you're looking for Lower Saxony filming locations ...

>54 alaudacorax:

If I only put 1/10 difference between my IMDb scores for House on Willow Street, which I didn't much care for, and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which I rather liked, I'm doing my scoring wrong, somehow ...

>56 alaudacorax:

Ten stars is a daft number. There's no half-way point—at least not if you can't give zero stars, which you can't. If they had nine or eleven stars it would make much more sense. A film you had no strong feelings about either way would then clearly be a five or a six, respectively. But how can you score such a film out of ten? For some reason, five feels generous, but there are actually more ratings above it than below, so logic says it actually implies disapproval.

If I knock Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters up to seven, that only leaves three ratings for the really good stuff and that's just not enough. Especially as I never use ten anyway as I'm afraid I'll one day come up against some really brilliant work of art and not have a superlative rating for it. It sort of feels ungenerous to knock From a House on Willow Street down to four, leaving only three ratings for all the depths of dross that infest the streaming services. Hang on, that doesn't make sense—I don't rate all the dross, anyway, as I rarely get past the first twenty minutes or so (except for special cases like the bafflingly successful The Blair Witch Project—gave that 1/10 if I remember right, partly because of the torture of forcing myself through it).

Okay, I'm sorry, From a House on Willow Street, you're going down to four—I promise to feel guilty about it. Oh hell's bells—now I'm going to be permanently uneasy about my seventy-seven five star ratings, my forty-seven four stars and my twenty-one three stars. My six two stars and my six one stars look alright, though—perhaps over-generous with some of the twos ...

>57 alaudacorax: - My six two stars and my six one stars ...

It's just hit me that I've not only sat through a dozen examples of right crap, but I've gone and admitted to it online. That's a bit chastening.

>52 alaudacorax: Spot on - Highgate Cemetery is exactly like being on a film set - a grand Victorian one. It is a wonderful, eerie, atmospheric place; and aside from the grandeur of the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon, there are many beautiful tombs and memorials throughout. Well worth a visit for anyone visiting North London. One of my favourite tombs is for the menagerist, George Wombwell, who was buried there in 1850. I love the sculpture of his favourite lion Nero on top of the tomb:







Yes, that's Linda Hayden and Isla Blair in 'Taste the Blood of Dracula'. It's one of my favourite Hammer films. There is a great theme about Victorian hypocrisy in it - 3 upstanding gentlemen (including Linda Hayden's and Isla Blair's fathers) pretending to visit the East End regularly to do 'charity work' while actually visiting a brothel! There is good location work in Highgate and Hampstead, and the film captures the Victorian era very well. It also has a lyrical score by James Bernard. Christopher Lee doesn't do much in it though, very few lines (he says he refused to say the lines as he didn't like the script, but that is contested).

They are still interring people in Highgate. George Michael and Malcolm McLaren are buried there. I wish I could afford it! I found this modern headstone rather witty:



>54 alaudacorax: I enjoyed 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters'. 6/10 is about right! Not seen 'From A House on Willow Street'.

>58 alaudacorax: We've all sat through alot of right crap films! It comes with the territory of watching films!

One final point about Highgate Cemetery - I've been there so many times over the years, but only on my last trip in 2019 did I get to see inside the Victorian Catacombs at the top of the Cemetery. I was on a tour, and the guide opened the catacombs with his key and led us by flashlight into this dank space. It was actually scary in there, not least because of the caskets and coffins we could see on the shelves. I wouldn't like to be locked in there overnight (shiver)!

Those are some nice, roomy catacombs, not like the claustrophobic ancient ones I'm used to!

I received my last Network set, an old but chillingly relevant series. I'll let the description speak:

Following a period of mass unemployment, hyperinflation and social disorder, democracy has been swept away amid a raft of security measures; law and order have been restored under a new regime, whose totalitarian rule is enforced by uniformed paramilitaries known as the Guardians. Behind the slogan 'England is Great Again', the outwardly benign regime suppresses all opposition, while the Guardians, taking orders from their shadowy leader, the General, have become the true holders of power. ...

The Guardians was created by Rex Firkin and Vincent Tilsley and, as far as I could find out, shown only once in 1971. I saw it recently on YouTube and jumped on the opportunity to get the DVDs when I realized what a rarity it was.

>61 LolaWalser: :-) The worst catacombs I've ever been in were in Paris. They took an hour to walk through. Millions of skeletons. I felt really ill by the time I left!

Ooh, 'The Guardians' looks very interesting. This one passed me by. Thanks for the heads up!

>62 Rembetis:

As usual, low budget and it shows, but some stellar performances (especially from Derek Smith, not an actor I knew before). Excellent scripts, if you can weather the discombobulating impression that the past is commentating on our present...

I saw the 1956 Tiger in the smoke, based on Margery Allingham's novel. I read the novel a long time ago and my memory of the plot was extremely vague, while the impression of the atmosphere--utmost creepy horror--remained strong. I would absolutely recommend to read the novel first, as the film doesn't have the same power.

That said, it's one of the most interesting British films of the period that I've seen and deserves to be considered on its own merits. There is a lot of serious, capital-D Directing by Roy Ward Baker of later Hammer and Amicus fame. The entire picture is smothered in fog (smog), which at one point even enters a house through an ominously open window: a character on its own. Many details evoke German Expressionist classics and gangster films--the crazy angles, the sublimely weird gang of military veterans-turned-buskers-and-worse, the shadows etc.

Many strange characters, of which I enjoyed the most the villainous Mrs. Cash (Beatrice Varley).

>63 LolaWalser: An excellent script often compensates for a low budget production! I love old productions that uncannily comment on our present - another example is Cronenberg's 'Dead Zone' based on the Stephen King novel, which pretty accurately predicted monsters like Trump (the mindless rallies, the crazy followers who are obsessed with Stillson to the point of committing violence, the anti-democratic values, and the 'anti-establishment' slogans Stillson uses). Chilling.

I agree with you about 'Tiger in the Smoke'. The book is more powerful than the film, but the film has much to recommend it, not least how beautifully it is filmed with Roy Ward Baker's excellent bag of tricks! And, yes, Beatrice Varley as Mrs Cash - brilliant! I remember my late mum telling me how bad the visibility often got with the smog we used to get in London in the 1950s (I believe it was a mixture of fog and coal fires that caused it). She said, at its worst, you could barely see anything and traffic came to a standstill. I also recall how most of the buildings in central London were a ghastly black from the smog, until there was a major clean up operation in the 1960s - 1970s (when most people had moved to central heating).

>61 LolaWalser:

I think I vaguely remember seeing that first time around and finding it rather disturbing and unsettling. Must have been powerful.

>63 LolaWalser:

Interesting. I've been working my way through the Albert Campion books in order of publication, but haven't got to The Tiger in the Smoke, yet. I have, though, noted that Allingham seems to be a Gothic lit or at least horror-story fan. You can see the influence in some of the stories (I'm sure I written about at least one here). I shall look forward to that. I gather it's regarded as her best. Now, of course, I'll have to track down the film as well. As you say, book first though.

>61 LolaWalser: - Those are some nice, roomy catacombs, not like the claustrophobic ancient ones I'm used to!

Grins nervously at Lola ... takes a surreptitious step backwards ... wishes he'd had the forethought to bring a crucifix ...

I'm second-guessing myself. I've been looking at all those photos thinking that it's one of the finest settings I've ever seen for a proper, old-fashioned, Gothic-horror film. However, I've now started to wonder if I'm only thinking that just because it's been used for so many films and illustrations?

I have an off-air recording of Tiger in the Smoke but I haven't watched it "properly". I've seen enough of it to agree on how atmospheric it looks. I think a lot of credit for that has to to to the cinematographer, Geoffrey Unsworth.

The last film I watched was the 1983 TV Movie version of The Sign of Four, with Ian Richardson as Holmes. This was the first of a projected six films (the producer behind them had previously made the Tarzan TV series starring Ron Ely). In the event only two were made as it clashed with the Jeremy Brett TV series.

I'd seen the film before and "marked it down" as being insufficiently faithful to the original novel (this was the period of maximum fidelity to literary detectives after all - Jeremy Brett IS Sherlock Holmes; Joan Hickson IS Miss Marple; David Suchet IS Hercule Poirot...), but with a bit of distance (and a sharp transfer on Blu-ray) I could enjoy the pulpier, even from time to time Gothic, tweaks to the story (and another (albeit radio) Holmes is in the cast: Clive Merrison as one of the Sholto brothers).

>67 alaudacorax: Never mind being a setting for a proper, old fashioned gothic horror film, visiting Highgate Cemetery is like being in one :-)!

Many of the gothic films we have seen are based on classic gothic and horror novels and short stories, or derived from them. The Western Cemetery was built in 1839, and was very popular with Victorians, who had a bizarre practice of having picnics in them, and using them on Sunday to promenade. I would think most prominent Victorians in London would have probably visited Highgate for a funeral. Certainly, Charles Dickens did, as his family have a plot there with his father and mother, his daughter Dora, and his sister, buried there. So Highgate Cemetery may very well have informed some of the descriptions in the classic works that we see depicted on film in the modern era.

There are many prominent Victorians in Highgate - George Eliot is buried there, as was Christina Rossetti (who can forget her 'Goblin Market'?) and Lizzie Siddal. A macabre story about Lizzie Siddal is that her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, buried a book of his original poems in her coffin (the sole existing copy), wrapped in her hair. Seven years later, in 1869, he wanted to retrieve the poems to publish them, so arranged for Lizzie Siddal to be exhumed. To everyone's astonishment, Lizzie Siddal was perfectly preserved and beautiful, and her hair had continued growing and filled the coffin, so much so that the tightly wrapped book had to be cut out of her locks of hair. With air introduced to the coffin, she rapidly started decomposing, and was hastily reburied.

There are stories of Bram Stoker visiting Highgate, and there is a view that Lucy Westenra's tomb in the fictional 'Kingsgate', is in fact, Highgate Cemetery. It's interesting that before going to the churchyard to Lucy's tomb, Seward and Van Helsing dine at Jack Straw's Castle in Hampstead, some 2 -3 miles from Highgate Cemetery. So it could very well be that Bram Stoker is describing the tombs of Highgate in 'Dracula'. How ironic then, that the BBC filmed Lucy's undead scenes in their 1977 'Dracula' there, and that it appeared in some of Hammer's Dracula films.

Probably an apocryphal story, but on one of the Highgate tours, a guide said that Bram Stoker was visiting the cemetery and was inspired to write 'Dracula' when he passed a corner tomb with glass in the ceiling, and, on looking down was shocked to see someone sitting by their own coffin below. The guide said it must have been a family member visiting the tomb (as tombs were considered an extension of the familiy's property). Although I have read about Highgate being an inspiration to Stoker, I haven't come across any concrete proof he ever visited or was inspired to write 'Dracula' by the cemetery.

>66 alaudacorax:

Heh, so far my catacomb-prowling was all due to playing guide in various places, multiple times.

Looking forward to your opinions on the book and possibly the film. I find Allingham very uneven but I agree she had a knack for eerie atmosphere.

>68 housefulofpaper:

I don't remember if I saw that but Ian Richardson was also fantastic playing the "historical" Holmes, the Scottish doctor, (Bell?) who pioneered (so they say) the forensic approach. And supposedly was one of Conan Doyle's inspirations.

>69 Rembetis:

Windows on the graves (or crypts), now that's something I'd go out of my way to avoid on a nightly jaunt through a cemetery... What beautiful lush foliage, though.

Last night I caught the Uncle Silas episode of Tales of Mystery and Imagination--Andrew mentioned it here:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/327219#7912304

Amazingly creepy! Can't imagine seeing it as a kid. And then I rushed to see whether Sky was still available, but no.

>71 LolaWalser:
I was very fortunate to make an order directly from Network only a couple of months before they went under & finally “got round” to buying a copy of Sky. I haven’t watched it yet and I don’t see myself being able to sit for a long period to watch anything for a while. Looking on the positive side, it ought to mean more time for reading.

>72 housefulofpaper:

Interesting. When I have problems of concentration, I find watching easier than reading. But there's a trick I employ to get back on track... if I sketch as I watch (no specific preference, almost anything will do), it seems this recalibrates my powers of concentration.

>73 LolaWalser:
Thanks, I'll bear that tip in mind because there are times when I can't seem to settle and concentrate on one thing (my current reading bears testimony to that!). But I really had in mind the sciatica that stopped me sitting down for the past few days.

Actually I did have to sit for a couple of hours yesterday and although I suffered getting up again, I think the sciatica might be easing off, which would be brilliant as I was told a full recovery could take 6-12 weeks.

I had to sit, because there's an independent cinema in Reading and I'd already agreed to go to a showing of Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda before falling ill. Again, something that isn't Gothic, but does turn on themes of individual sickness and mortality, and global climate disaster.

I don'tgo to the cinema eniugh, especially when there's an indepedent art cinema to support. Even the adverts look good on a big screen.

>74 housefulofpaper:

Sorry to hear that. Here's hoping the recovery is much faster than that... hard to imagine functional life without sitting down!

I should make an effort to start cinema-going again. But I hate multiplexes and we're almost out of old-style theatres here.

Somewhat on topic: Criterion just announced its October releases and, in addition to a new version of Don't Look Now, they are doing a set of Tod Browning's movies!!!: Freaks, The Unknown and The Mystic.

I could have sworn we had a thread here on or including M. R. James' 'The Ash Tree'. Searched and we don't. Anyway, just spotted Nunkie's (Robert Lloyd Parry) post on this ... documentary?, part-documentary? ... in my facebook feed -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4qTLeaaxg

>76 alaudacorax:

I thought we'd discussed it too. It's note one of the stories looked at over at The Weird Tradition group, either. It seems to have avoided being discussed either in the context of folk horror, or of David Rudkin's work (he dramatised it as a BBC's "Ghost Story for Christmas" in 1975.

I didn't follow your link, I managed to exercise some patience and I waited for my copy of the DVD The Witches of M R James to arrive in the post. The documentary is inclided as a bonus feature. You also get a performance of "The Ash Tree" "as" M R James - the production I was fortunate enough to see live when Robert LLoyd Parry came to Reading, and a reading of "The Fenstanton Witch" in the Cambridgeshire locations where the story's set, and an interview with Malcolm Gaskill, billed on the DVD packaging as "historian of witchcraft".

He's included documentaries on at least the two previous Nunkie DVDs and I believe they all include original research.

>75 LolaWalser:

I don't suppose all those Criterion Collection releases will come to the UK, because of rights issues (in fact, Amazon is listing a new edition of The Others from Studiocanal for October. On the other hand, the UK limited edtion Walkabout box set from Second Sight is OOP).

Have we mentioned that Indicator Films are releasing Jean Rollin films on Blu-ray (US releases too). The Shiver of the Vampires and Two Orphan Vampires have already been released, The Rape of the Vampire and Night of the Hunted available for preorder for an August release, and Fascination and Lips of Blood due in October.

I've seen a few more interesting titles listed for pre release on Amazon. The Horrible Dr Hichcock and Messiah of Evil from Radiance films in October and Scream and Scream Again in September.

And The Wicker Man is being issued in a new UHD/Blu-ray pack for its 50th anniversary.

>75 LolaWalser: That Criterion set looks excellent! I can only hope it gets a release here in due course.

>78 housefulofpaper: Thank you for the new release information. The crazy 'Scream and Scream Again' is one of my faves.

It's a horror fan's smorgasbord out there... if only one had more money, space, time...

As luck would have it, I bought a set of Lon Chaney's movies just before seeing the Criterion announcement (The Unknown overlaps), however, I'm sure Criterion will have cleaned up their version more and, most to the point, I got this Universal set for the reconstruction of London after midnight (1927). It was Browning's and Chaney's tenth and last and highest-grossing collaboration but, go figure, for all that it's gone missing.

The whole thing lasts about 46 minutes and uses stills. I'm very glad to have seen it although it's hardly likely to satisfy the appetite for moving pictures. Nevertheless, at least some of the creepy atmosphere is conveyed, and Chaney's stunning makeup can be admired from various angles.

I watched An Angel for Satan, Barbara Steele's last Italian Gothic. The Severin films Blu-ray is region-locked so I went with an Italian DVD, with no English soundtrack or subtitles. I followed the story as best I coould (with help from IMDb). There's a kind of possession plot which means Barbara Steele plays good Barbara and bad Barbara (not for the first time).

I also rewatched The Shiver of the Vampires in the new Indicator films release. I was less overwhelmed by the psychedelic design and soundtrack this time, and appreciated Rollin's storyline. It does (with a little helpful information from the bonus features on the disc) hang together better than I'd previously realised.

Speaking of Rollin, on a whim I was looking this evening at the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade website - the French editions of classic authors (think Library of America or maybe Penguin Classics). There's a volume of British poets: "Anthologie bilingue de la poésie anglais". The blub for this volume (translated for me by Google Translate) begins "The climate across the Channel - the fact has been scientifically proven - is conducive to melancholy." although Rollins seems to me very French, he is also very melancholy, and his films very often feature scenes shot on the beach at Dieppe. Sometimes it's presented as a kind of otherwordly vampire-dimension. And when his characters head off into the sea (as they do, for example, at the end of Lips of Blood why, they must be heading for that land of melancholy. Perhaps Worthing. Or Eastbourne.

>81 housefulofpaper:

Hah! It's surprising how one can miss what's been in front of the eyes. I was checking to remind myself which of them was The Shiver of the Vampires. I've seen that poster umpteen times but I think this is the first time it's really registered what I was looking at. Perhaps that's a bit in your face for the street-front of a cinema? Or in the demon's face, at any rate. Perhaps, like me, nobody noticed? Don't know whether to chuckle or raise my eyebrows ...

>81 housefulofpaper:

lol!

And guess what--Amicus is coming back:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/16/return-of-portmanteau-horror-films-...

>82 alaudacorax:

This would be the Phillip Druillet poster reproduced on the current Blu-ray release that we're takng about? I don't think I'd quite taken in what was going on in that poster, either!

I'm not sure how widely the film was distributed on intial release. If it was only shown in France's equivalent(s) of Soho (as Soho used to be) I don't suppose it would have attracted much attention.

I watched The Shiver of the Vampires again, with a commentary track from Rollin (subtitled). Some of the little touches I was impressed with - seeding the maids' increasing subjugation by the vampire uncles from early on, showing these selfish bourgeois as the real villains - no, that wasn't intentional at all. If anything his commentary falsified that reading. It's the samr experience I had listening to Jose Larraz's commentary on Vampyres...I still feel that my interpretation hangs together better than the creator's!

>83 LolaWalser:

Lawrie Brewster has been making low budget horror films under his own Hex Productions name for about a decade. Lord of Tears was the first I knew about - I actually contributed to a Kickstarter to fund it, and received an email about this venture last Sunday. Apparently this is not simply a matter of Hex Produtions acquiring the Amicus name but they are working with the Subotsky family and with movie ideas Milton Subotsky left when he died.

>84 housefulofpaper: - If it was only shown in France's equivalent(s) of Soho ...

Quite right—I forget, sometimes, that the films we discuss can be quite ... um ... niche.

I saw a brief comment somewhere that Claude Chabrol's 1977 film Alice, or the Last Escapade (original title Alice ou la derniére fugue) is Rollin-like. Not expecting any results I looked on Amazon (UK) and found it listed. I ordered a copy and it's come from the US. It seems to be, to be honest, a sort of gray-market item. It's a DVD-R (which I think must be a good thing for me, as the title isn't region-locked) and has burnt-in English subtitles (which I had no reason to expect based on the Amazon description).

It's not really like a Jean Rollin film, once you get over the superficial resemblances of low-budget '70s French films, shot in the French countryside, with a female protagonist(s) and a fantastical plot.

Sylvia Kristel stars as "Alice Carroll" - which name points to the film's ostensible inspiration, but to my mind it's something of a red herring.

>86 housefulofpaper:

I'm finding it really hard to talk about films (and books/stories too, come to that) without spoliers.

The old books from the '70s about genre movies always cheerfully gave away the whole plot, because it was supposed unlikely that the reader would be able to see more than a handful of the films under discussion in a whole lifetime.

The big one or multi-volume guides to English literature I read 30-something years ago (as I've ruefully noted before, a few years too late to help with my school exams!) also gave away the plots of all the major works (and many minor ones). Who on Earth would care about spoilers in an academic work - and also, who would care about spoliers about literature literally hundreds of years old?

And at the same time I was reading the TLS and the LRB. These were reviewing contemporary works but again, from an academic perspective where no one is going to be so naive, so basic, as to care about the plot.

So all the models I have in my head for writing about works of fiction all rest on spoilers. In theory I know what I want to do when I post about something - sketch in the basic set up and main characters, give away as little as possible but try to suggest its (if it has one) unique feeling, its heft (as as if it could be apprended - in the "understand or perceive" meaning of the word - through the senses), it's "thing-ness".

I'm finding it difficult.

This evening I watched the second film in the Boris Karloff "Maniacal Mayhem" box set. It's a film from 1940, directed by Arthur Lubin, entitled Black Friday. In his 50s, Karloff swapped make-up heavy monster roles for mad scientist roles. In this one, he's a neuroscientist whose colleague, an English professor, gets caught in a gangland hit. Karloff saves him by transplanting the gangster's brain into hs body (What? How is that supposed to work? It wasn't the whole brain, presumably, but the procedure is never explained in any detail).

As you'd expect, the gangster's personality begins to reassert itself in a Jekyll and Hyde kind of way. Karloff's character actually causes this, because he wants to get hold of the gangster's ill-gotten gains - he can put it to a philanthropic use, of course.

The plum role is the "monster", the professor and gangster sharing one body, and apparently Karloff was going to take it, with Lugosi in the mad scientist role. But Karloff asked for the (presumably easier) scientist role, Lugosi got bumped to a secondary role as one the the gangster's former associates/murderers, and Stanley Ridges was cast as the monster. He's terrific in it.

Stylistically this feels quite different to the Columbia mad scientist movies. It feels like a 30's gangster film, with a couple of moments that actually seem to anticipate Film Noir.

>88 housefulofpaper:

Interesting ... I'm pretty sure that's a new one on me.

The third film in Eureka's "Karloff in Maniacal Mayhem" set is The Strange Door, a late Universal horror (but sort of edge-case horror, you could argue it's a swashbuckler or even a disguised Western). Again, Karloff doesn't take the main role and is, in fact, miscast here as a hulking Lon Chaney Jr type, when in fact he looks old (63 or 64) and slighter than the rest of the cast.

The film is a loose adaptation of R S Stevenson's The Sire de Maletroit's Door, to which the screenplay adds melodramatic elements probably traceable back to Poe and Dumas - or silent serials, and a motive for forcing the hero to marry his neice above Stevenson's original of "family honour".

The best thing about the film, though, is Charles Laughton as the Sire de Maletroit, a villain not quite as broad as Tod Slaughter, flirting with camp but just staying this side of it, thoroughly evil and "hissable".

I can't think of a movie where Laughton doesn't walk away with it.

Oh, I caught a huge oddity--Liquid Sky (1981) by one Slava Tsukerman. Arrow Video released it with various goodies. It's to be experienced, not talked about... OK, picture this: a fashion model with an evil male doppelganger (both played by the same actress) is stalked by aliens who feed off the energy of orgasms (Wilhelm Reich says HI!), in the process killing her lovers.

It's very low budget but captured the NYC of the period wonderfully well. The vibe, the scene, the characters...

> 91

I was aware of Liquid Sky way back in the '80s because it was classed as a science fiction film but I have never seen it. I think there was a long period when it was unavailable. Perhaps it has sexual content too strong for the time of the Video Nasty panic? And the kind of reviews I saw at the time dismissed it as"arty" and "pretentious", etc. I have just seen the trailer on Mubi but the film itself itsn't available there.

>92 housefulofpaper:

I didn't know of it until I came across it in a library search for Arrow Video. It's definitely a must-see, the lead actress is fantastic... Anne Carlisle, had to look her up. Sex scenes--I'd say they are actually fairly reserved in how they are shown, although the acts may sound shocking, especially as some are public. The atmosphere is rather like a John Waters, so there's a distancing effect of the farce.

Surprisingly it incorporates quite an astute critique of fashion, appearances, masks, false selves and the like.

The next film I've watched is Dark Places (1973). So obscure it was rumoured to have been made as a tax fiddle "until {director Don Sharp} started getting royalty cheques from Switzerland in the 1980s - it was being shown on Swiss cable TV." Actually on one of the two commentary tracks, one of the contributors says this was a staple on US cable around the same time.

It's a slightly old-fashioned film which reshuffles a hand of familiar horror and suspense tropes - old dark house, hidden treasure, faked hauntings, possible real hauntings and/or possession from beyond the grave. Surprisingly (to me) the possession is mostly shown in the form of flashbacks, which is a technique the very obscure Ghost Story used the next year.

Robert Hardy plays the lead (but doesn't get top billing); the supporting cast are bigger names and (in the opinion of Jonathan Rigby on the other commentary) they have that elusive "star quality" that, despite his talent, Robert Hardy doesn't have on the big screen (this has nothing to do, Rigby stresses, with acting ability). The "bigger names" are Christopher Lee, Herbert Lom, Jane Birkin and (in a brief but impactful "mad wife") role, Jean Marsh.

Edited to add: I forgot Joan Collins!

Edited again: - try to to make the third paragraph clearer.

>94 housefulofpaper:

No sooner posted than I had to look it up--tonight's entertainment secured. :)

...but it turns out I had seen it.

Speaking of Herbert Lom... I was lucky enough to catch (it's gone now) a 1960s series he starred in as a psychiatrist, Human Jungle. It took a few eps before I got fully engaged but in the end I thought it was most interesting. (For one thing, there's that always-fun feature of seeing known actors in earlier roles.) While the psychology and the prejudices are very much of their times (women are overall harshly treated, and Mother is guilty of every sin), a few episodes rang surprisingly fresh. Also probably the first time I saw Lom playing unequivocally a "goodie".

>96 LolaWalser:

Oh dear. Did you spot John Levene (UNIT-era Doctor Who's sergeant Benton) in an early scene?

The Human Jungle is one of those old series that Talking Pictures TV has been screening for those of us in the UK. I haven't managed to see all of them but I've appreciated those I did catch. He had quite a few psychiatrist roles after that series, I think.

>96 LolaWalser:, >97 housefulofpaper:

On the subject of old stuff, the other night I caught the last couple of episodes of 1976's I, Claudius.

Two things have stuck in my mind:
It was an odd experience seeing the then fairly young Derek Jacobi made up to look as old as he is now.
I can remember when it was first on, my brother and I both exclaiming out loud when they chopped Messalina's head off—'Woah!', sort of thing. This time round I didn't flinch—I've become quite deadened to this kind of jump scare. I must have been watching too much of the wrong kind of thing? And these days, of course, they'd probably have shown the head severed and the blood pumping; here the shot ended the instant the sword swung—yet it was seen as quite shocking at the time, if I remember correctly.

Edited to add: Of course, it would have been seen as shocking specifically for TV; perhaps the lines have become blurred these days?

>97 housefulofpaper:

Of course! Playing a doctor, no less! :)

>98 alaudacorax:

I haven't seen that, although I'm aware of the cast and some scenes... I always wanted to check it out, Sian Phillips looks so awesome.

>99 LolaWalser:

I've never got it straight in my mind whether or not you can get the BBC iPlayer over there. If you can, it's on the iPlayer at the moment.

>94 housefulofpaper: I just finished A Classical Education by the historian Richard Cobb. He attended Shrewsbury, a prestigious English public school, in the 1930s when Robert Hardy's father, Henry Harrison Hardy, was headmaster.

The author has very kind things to say about the headmaster, who helped him out of a sticky problem with a schoolfriend's mother, who was quite an awful woman. The chum, Edward Francis Ball, ended up murdering her with an ax. He blamed his classical education for his ignorance of how to properly clean said instrument, which he felt was how he got caught. (I'm not bothering to hide this as a spoiler since it's explained right at the start.)

>101 robertajl:

I've got that book, republished just recently by Slightly Foxed magazine. I've got nearly all of their "Slightly Foxed" editions but nearly all are still waiting to be read. They started coming out just as I dived into Gothic and Weird Fiction (not quite to the exclusion of all else, but 19th and 20th Century memoir are quite some distance from what had become quite an absorbing interest - the small press books certainly absorb a lot of my income...).

The "Folk Horror" label has been applied very widely, expanding from the British (maybe even more specific) Christian/Pagan/Urban/Rural juxtapostions and conflicts, to other cultures' folklore, to examinations of colonialism and so on. The same sort of oppostions can, broadly, apply so you can see a resemblance. But the Big Three, The Unholy Trinity, were filmed in Britain late '60s/early '70s, with a particular look and sound.

Sometimes it seemed as if any film of the same period, if it was shot on Eastman stock around 1968 and had a pastoral soundtrack of some kind, and juxtaposed new post-war towns with a disappearing countryside, would get called Folk Horror. My reductio ad absurdum was Kes.

All of which is preamble to a film I watched because it was included in the Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched documentary. Honestly, if I Start Counting is Folk Horror, then so is Kes.

The main character is Wyn Kinch (Jenny Agutter), who is "nearly 14" and adopted, and has moved with her family from a 18th or 19th century cottage in a row of houses about to be knocked down, to a high-rise flat in a new town. She has two brothers, one over twice her age and how has evdently stepped into the role of head of the household. The father is, presumably, dead and we gather from one scene that he was not a nice man. In a very '60's way, you get the message that there are unspoken things in this family (awkward breakfasts while a radio DJ burbles on in the background, and so on). Wyn has fallen for the older brother (this film deals with adolescent sexual feelings in again, a very '60s way. A couple of reviewers on IMDb note it made them uncomfortable. ). However, there is a serial killer operating in the area where the old house stands. Wyn is, firstly, drawn to go back to the house and secondly, suspects her brother of being the killer but will cover for him because of her feelings. So this is, as Wikipedia says, a coming-of-age thriller. Is her brother the killer? If not him, then who? Will Wyn's actions put her in danger?

This film was, in fact, made in 1968. You have the semi-rural row of cottages and the post-war New Town. The soundtrack is kind of pastoral, composer Basil Kirchin's score is...I don't know how to describe it, girly? It's the kind of orchestral sounds I can only imagine, elsewhere, in adverts aimed at teenage girls in the '60s. (the sort of music Johhny Trunk has spend the last 20 or more years rescuing from obscurity. He's also, not coincidentally, been a champion of Basil Kirchin). From time to time brash '60s pop music comes in by way of contrast - very much an aural counterpart to the contrast of the cottages with the new town.

It was shot on location in Bracknell (with some studio, according to IMDb, at Hammer's old home, Bray Studios). I think I used to walk past the tower block, 20 years later, on my way to Doctor Who Appreciation Society* meetings at South Hill Park (also briefly seen in the film).

>103 housefulofpaper:
I've watched all the extras on the I Start Counting! Blu-ray. (I think the exclamation mark is part of the official title).

There's a Children's Film Foundation feature that riffs on The Hound of the Baskervilles but it would be a stretch to call it Gothic (and, along the way, the three main child actors show just how good an actress Jenny Agutter was at age 16). It boasts some familiar British character actors: Barry Foster, Patricia Hayes, Sam Kydd, David Jackson (Gan in Blake's 7).

I'd like to think the two long interviews conducted by Zoom (low-rez, the speaker looking down at their screen rather than into the camera) were relics of the recent past, but Covid hasn't gone away (the interviewees were veteran British screenwriter Richard Harris, and Johnny Trunk, who spoke sbout Basil Kirchin).

The commentary from film historian Samm Deighan was interesting. I didn't always agree with it (for example I think she overstated how much the sheen had started to come off the postwar new towns, and sentimentalised rural life, in 1968. Although I can't really claim to have first-hand experience, I was only a baby). She says a lot about the film as a coming-of-age film and focuses on Jenny Agutter's character's infatuation with her adopted brother and slippping into fantasy, to the extent of suggesting the film is an example of a distinct genre. Annoyingly, I can't remember the name she gave it but the example that came to my mind was Valerie and her Week of Wonders. And perhaps inevitably, a toy rabbit in the character's bedroom suggests Alice in Wonderland. I have to confess to seeing that part of the film as justifying some, on the face of it, unlikely behaviour on the part of Agutter's character, and in the service of the thriller plotline.

The disc is rounded out with some tangentially-relevant short Public Information Films - optimistic post-war ones about planning new towns, and a hair-raisingly misogynistic "don't have sex before marriage" short from 1980 (possibly/probably? made for churches rather than for schools).

And then I watched Jean Rollin's Killing Car. thought this was impssible to get hold of, but a Dutch DVD was listed on Amazon. Again not really Gothic (or as Gothic as Caleb Williams, perhaps, ha ha).Very low budget, very thin linear plot with a bit of a twist at the end. Enigmatic woman shoots people in revenge for something they did a year previously. There's a surprising amount of nudity - not surprising for a Rollin film, but for a DVD with a 12 Certificate. Ah, but it's a Dutch 12...

There's a nice counterpoint between some location work shot in New York (the same trip that contributed footage for Lost in New York?) that cuts to a rain-lashed Parisian roofscape, and - this was unexpected - there's a scene where the dialogue is in English.

I think, of Rollin's oevure, this feels closest in feel and execution to Lost in New York, but trying to be an '80s thriller where the other embraces its poetry and melancholy more wholeheartedly (but admittedly, still having some rather ham-fisted action sequences).

Hate marketing professionals. They obviously named a fashion house to deliberately obstruct me when I'm running the online search, "Has the old-fashioned ghost story gone out of fashion?"

I was already in a grumpy mood when I got out of bed. I was searching the telly for a good, old-fashioned, ghost story film last night. Hallowe'en and all that. I actually did find John Carpenter's The Fog, but, beside being over forty years old, I have my own copy of that. I did think of rewatching the '63 The Haunting—the greatest of all—but I was too lazy to go upstairs and dig it out. Anyway, I wanted something new. But trying to unearth one among all the decidely non-supernatural slashers and so forth ... I gave up in the end and read till bed time.

Anyway, my question: has the old-fashioned ghost story gone out of fashion in the film world? Are there any (good) modern films that would come under that heading? Any recommendations? Modern equivalents of The Fog or The Haunting?

Perhaps I should be looking for older films I haven't seen yet ...

>105 alaudacorax:

I almost feel like deleting that post. I wrote it in a bit of a tantrum ... then tweaked my online search and quickly came upon this list, The 25 greatest ghost films, which reminds me how many quite famous films I haven't watched. Enough there to hold me for months (don't want to watch ghost stories every night!)

Edited to add ... apologies if anyone had trouble with that link. It seemed to have got hijacked between my original post and my checking back here a few minutes ago.

I've been reading this above , and remembered a few films, I'm assuming many of you have already seen them. Don't know if they count as modern

The Others (2001
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0230600/

The Sixth Sense (1999)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167404/?ref_=tt_sims_tt_i_4

Ringu (1998)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0178868/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

All are sufficiently scary, that I'd be hard-pressed to ever watch them again, especially Ringu (1998), which absolutely terrified me....I couldn't sleep for nearly a month after watching it.

These recent Netflix scare films are so-so.

I watched The Haunting (1963), thought that Julie Harris was particularly good in that movie.

>106 alaudacorax:
I can't open that link, but it's the same with every newsite hosted on MSN. I think I need to free up some memory on my Mac and try to upgrade the operating system.

I'd recommend The Others and Ringu as well.

Some more: The Devil's Backbone, and The Orphanage. One I haven't watched but has just been released on Blu-ray, is Julia (aka Full Circle) based on a Peter Straub novel.

More than a curiousity, or at least not an unqualified recommendation, Ghost Story (1974) directed by Stephen Weeks. I've got a lot of time for Ghost Story (1981) (based on another Peter Straub novel) but the script leaves out a hell of a lot, and I think there was some post-production studio interference.

(I can't work out how to get separate Touchstones for two films of the same name in the same post).

Edit - I think I meant to say something along the lines of "Not an unqualified recommendation, but at any rate, I think it's more than merely a curiousity, Ghost Story (1974)..."

>109 housefulofpaper:

Ghost Story

Touchstone for the 1974 film.

I've gone into my other account to look for some more.

Ghost Stories (2017), written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, and adapted from their play of the same name.

The Awakening (2011)

The Changeling (1980)

The Quiet Ones (2014)

Thanks for those.

Now I've got a new niggle. My facebook account is always opened in a Firefox container so facebook can't track me across the web and spy on what I'm doing. So why the hell has this turned up this morning:

It's presumably something to do with that page I linked, but how they are doing it ...

>111 alaudacorax:

Or is it simply coincidence and there because I follow 'Nunkie's' (Robert Lloyd Parry) facebook page?

>112 alaudacorax:

Bit of a stretch from M. R. James recitals to horror films. Or is it? Meanwhile, I've gone all paranoid ...

I was cheesed-off enough when facebook gave me a warning and deleted one of my posts just for saying somebody or other should be first up against the wall and shot come the revolution ... can't even remember who it was ...

I've given up on the idea that we can have anything still worth calling "privacy"...

Can't help with the ghosts (there's that Ray Milland flick too, The Uninvited, but I haven't seen it in a while). For Halloween I watched Karloff's The Ghoul--actually, listened to the commentary, by Kim Newman and another chap. Issued by the already much-missed Network Distributing (did you see the crazy prices their stuff is now fetching?)

I like The Uninvited. Have a DVD of that.

I thought the ads and page suggestions appearing on my Facebook feed were random, but the sudden appearance of pages for restaurants and butchers' shops must be linked to my having started ordering groceries online.

I'd thought of another ghost story suggestion - the 1989 tv movie version of The Woman in Black - but then remembered that the Blu-ray from Network Distributing.

>109 housefulofpaper:
Marianne Faithfull—love of my youth! I'm in!

Actually, many thanks for all your recommendations everybody. As so often, if it's any good I can't find it on Amazon Prime without paying extra or on Netflix (or the BBC iPlayer), but I've made a CinemaParadiso list (disc rental) of your recs and >106 alaudacorax:'s linked list and it currently has 31 in it. That should hold me for months and months!

And I really must get round to cancelling Prime and Netflix at the end of this month—I spend much more time fruitlessly looking for good stuff than actually watching stuff. Logical thing is to cancel and spend the money on books and music!

I've just thought of something really stupid. The rugby world cup has just finished. If I remember correctly, I only subscribed to Prime in the first place to watch the previous world cup, FOUR YEARS BEFORE. Or it may have been the last but one women's world cup. Never got round to cancelling it ....

Sorry for the stream of consciousness stuff ... displacement activity for doing some housework ...

I did a search, for whatever that's worth on LT, but it seems we didn't talk about Dickensian, the 2015 TV series? I binged it recently. I have some complaints but in the end I'm sorry it got axed. Opinions?

>119 LolaWalser:

Never heard of it. A bit of a conundrum—should I have read all of Dickens' novels beforehand? It sounds as if you'd need to. That is another of those 'meaning to for years and years' things. Since I read 'The Signalman', in fact (beginning of 2013!) As far as I remember, I've only read four, possibly five ... not including some of the more famous ones.

>120 alaudacorax:

Ahh, I suppose that's the effect of à la carte streaming--gone are the days when everyone saw the same things...

I think the series could be very enjoyable even if you haven't read the novels, but there's that extra kick in recognising characters and anticipating plot. The main story lines and situations come from The Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist, which are probably well-known from other media as well, and characters from Bleak House and Great Expectations appear in their "prequel" phase relative to the novels. Irresistible Pauline Collins plays the gin-loving Mrs. Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit; Omid Djalili is Mr. Venus (Our Mutual Friend); Little Nell and her grandpa keep The Old Curiosity Shop and so on--lots of characters just borrowed from the novels.

I'd say definitely give the first couple episodes a try and see how you like it.

I loved the design, the sets, the older actors--it's worth seeing for Stephen Rea (Inspector Bucket), Anton Lesser (Fagin), Ned Dennehy (Scrooge), Collins, Ellie Haddington, Chris Fairbanks and so on--stellar work from all. The young 'uns impressed me much less, especially the two young women playing Miss Havisham and the future Lady Dedlock. But that's connected to the main complaint I have: their storylines followed the same sinusoidal curve, with repetitive dips and heights that both wear on the viewer and box the actors into repeating the same scenes over and over.

They are both also extremely depressing--god knows Dickens could be, but he always reserved some of his characters for a happy end. I was surprised how dark the series got overall, seeing it was meant for family (presumably) Christmas viewing, although (I expect this is not a spoiler) the third main thread with the Cratchits was happier.

All in all, it's a pity it wasn't given a longer life, there was much set up that could have been developed.

>121 LolaWalser:

I do remember seeing the trailers and so forth (there would have been articles in Radio Times) but for some reason I didn't make the effort to watch it. Actually I do know what put me off. The creator, Tony Jordan had been the showrunner in all but name of Eastenders for years. This connection, and the selling of Dickensian as Dickens-as-Soap-Opera was a real disincentive.

I don't enjoy soap operas as a genre but Eastenders had carved out a particularly miserable and depressing niche for itself, in my opinion. In fact it does sound like Dickensian followed the Eastenders template.

>122 housefulofpaper:

Aw, that's unfortunate. It didn't seem soapy to me, but then, I don't really know soaps so not sure what may or may not trigger such associations. I think the main difference would be that Dickensian has a strong unifying plot (a murder mystery), and we know where the main story lines have to lead, so there isn't much room for the shocking twists typical for soaps.

Moved this post to the 'Dracula' thread ...

Nostalgia fest! I've just caught the last quarter-hour or so of The Killer Shrews. I probably last saw it in the cinema when I was a youngster, not long after it came out in '59.

The weird thing is, I've always remembered seeing those giant shrews, and I can see them now in my mind's eye. Yet, looking at it today, all I could see were big dogs wearing a bit of costuming. And probably glove puppets or the like in the close-ups. My imagination must have been much more pliable back then ... bit sad, really ...

>125 alaudacorax:

I've been trying to think of any equivalent moments from my youthful cinema-going. The closest, and it's not all that close, is NOT being disappointed by the dinosaur models in The Land That Time Forgot even though they were rathe ropey. At least they looked like dinosaurs and were not iguansa with extra frills and horns glued on.

>126 housefulofpaper:

What the brain will and will not accept is quite intriguing. I would still list the original, 1933 King Kong as one of my all-time favourite films, despite all the Jurassic Park stroke Walking With Dinosaurs CGI we're now used to. The ropiness of the creatures doesn't bother me a bit. I hardly notice it. Perhaps we'll accept stuff in a half-way decent story that we wouldn't in a poorer one.

I finally saw all of Symptoms (Larraz, 1977), a film we mentioned fairly often, but not (as far as I could tell from a quick skimming of search-found posts) in the context of folk horror. And yet, doesn't it share quite a few features of the genre? Beginning with the rustic setting, the hints to witchcraft and so on.

>128 LolaWalser:

I have to confess that it's been just long enough since I watched the film, for a lot of the story/plot points to have slipped my mind. It does, from what I can remember, have that folk horror "feel".

As I've tried to articulate before, I feel some of that "feel" comes from, quite apart from the story or themes, the fashions and technologies of early '70s small-budget film-making.

From 50 years' distance, there's a touch of folk horror to works that I don't think anyone would seriously claim as belonging to the genre (I'll mention Kes again in that regard). I hope it doesn't sound like I'm trying to lay down the law here; just thinking about these things in my usual unsystematic and muddled way.

The film's IMDb page gives a story credit to Thomas Owen (real name Gérald Bertot) who was a flemish writer and colleague of Jean Ray. I do remember reading that Owen and Larraz were friends. That might be a surprisingly non-English element being brought in, looking through Folk Horror lenses...another reason to rewatch the film, to see if a strain of Flemish fantastique is discernable.

I've been watching the more obscure films that Caroline Munro, no less, has been presenting on Talking Pictures TV. I gather that a lot of them have fallen into the public domain and to be honest I can understand why they fell into that unwanted state. They're pretty bad (I should say that they form part of double or triple bills will some really excellent films - which I've almost certainly already got on DVD or blu-ray). The best of these minor films I've seen recently was the Val Lewton wannabee Cry of the Werewolf. "As an attempt to cross-fertilise The Wolf Man and Cat People, the film is an embarrassing failure; as entertainment, it fares even worse', says Jonathan Rigby in American Gothic. Ouch. And that was the best one.

>129 housefulofpaper:

Yes, it has atmosphere galore. Can't say I noticed the small budget. Everything available seemed to serve the story to utmost satisfaction.

For today I've lined up Pupi Avati's Zeder. Not exactly my kind of horror, but ever since "discovering" Fulci I thought I needed to reconsider Italian shockers.

>130 LolaWalser:
Symptoms was made just when the British film industry had collapsed, which meant a lot of top talent was available to small budget and indepedent film makers still trying to make films. I think this is discussed on a DVD extra in relation to the stunt performers on Psychomania.

I had a look at the Wiki entry for Symptoms and it says Larraz either funded it himself, from his other careers as comic book artist and photographer, or the money came from the heir to the Smurfs fortune!

A third edition of the British Film Institute’s Short Sharp Shocks collection of “supporting programmes” has been released on Blu-ray. So far I’ve watched the first of the two discs in the set. This looks to be the more staid of the discs, as the bulk of it comes from the 1950s.

It kicks off with Return to Glennascaul, a Dublin-set ghost story topped-and-tailed by Orson Welles, and made by Hilton Edwards and Micheal MacLiammoir (of the Dublin Gate Theatre) when they were both in the cast of Welles’ Othello. I think this must be one of the least obscure works to have been collected into this series because I’ve already got it as a bonus feature on the DVD of Othello, and I also have an off-air recording from either BBC2 or C4 (from when those channels could be relied upon to broadcast stuff like this).

Next is Strange Stories, which is in fact two loose adaptations of short stories made for US television (one of the stories is Melville’s “Bartebly the Scrivener”) with linking scenes so that the stories are reworked as yarns that two chaps are telling one another.

Next are two Strange Experiences, only eight minutes long in total. These are also strange or ghost(ly) stories, but micro-budget and mostly done as voice-over over stock footage. These stray from the original brief for the series, it seems, as they were apparently always intended for television rather than for the big screen.

Culture shock hits if you watch the disc straight through, as the final item is a piece of experimental filmmaking from 1969. Maze (Director, Writer, Editor, Bob Bentley explains in the accompanying booklet) “is a puzzle with various clues - as well as dead ends - set out in a series of interlaced stories”.

Edited: to correct "related" to "relied".

>132 housefulofpaper:

All the installments of Short sharp shocks sound interesting, but Region 2 blu rays are on hold until I'm back in Europe.

Zeder turned out to be very different to what the cover led me to expect (for one thing, almost no gore), rich in atmosphere and with great settings; recommended. However, there is always the problem of dubbing--I watched the Italian version but it is nevertheless as bad as these usually are. So, one does need to be forgiving of the sound.

Caught two versions of Jekyll and Hyde new to me, one with Jack Palance and the other the celebrated Fredric March classic from the same year as Browning's Dracula and Whale's Frankenstein. I liked them both but would actually give the edge to Palance's, for sheer devil-may-care enjoyment. The commentary on the older version made an interesting note about deviation from Stevenson's original that entered the lore with a theatrical adaptation--the over-simplification of the dichotomy between good (Jekyll) and evil (Hyde), whereas Stevenson's character was murkier and strongly implied that far from being wholly "good", Jekyll deliberately sought to create an alter ego as a vent for his base desires.

Another reminder that books are always better than their adaptations.

>133 LolaWalser:

The Palance J&H is another film I've never heard of. 6.7 on IMDb, too, which is pretty good. Have to look out for that one.

I was at a loss as to how to briefly describe the contents of Sharp Sharp Shocks Volume 3, disc 2.

I guess you can say they are strongly of their era: a film from the '70s that comes from political fringe theatre, and deals with a politically charged and relevant-to-the-age topic (domestic terrorism: in this case the abduction and murder of "a public man"), and presents it in an innovative way. It's shot by the cast (in character) in a mixture of hand-held silent film, and colour, sound film (courtesy of a roped-in professional, abeit a pornographer - giving the piece its title, Skinflicker. And that makes it a very early "found footage" film.

Then two Public Information Films that I remember coming on TV before or after pre-school programming, apprently just to shake me up. There's the one with the kid running along a beach who's about the impale his foot on a broken bottle sticking up in the sand (freeze-frame!), and the one where some teenagers are fooling about with lighted fireworks in the street and a lad accidently throws one into his girlfriend's face, and presumably blinding her.

Following on from >135 housefulofpaper:

The '70s films are very realistic, both in subject matter and colour palette and feel. Was it just down to the film stock everybody was using?

The disc is rounded out with two short films from the early '80s and they also seem very of their time, in that they are much more intentionally artificial and Artistic, from a production design point of view: if one looks like Bladerunner (or to be honest, has the "Bladerunner on a budget" look of a lot of TV commercials of the era) the other brings to mind Terry Gilliam's '80s work.

The first film, the science fiction one, is about big business and computers, and has more story than it can tell in its short run time, and what we have didn't strike me as profound as it thought it was - as if The Parallax View took a sharp turn into Tron territory.

The final film is at one level a simple story of a young heroin addict's last day, living rough in London, but for the most part told through a series of fantastical and Gilliam-esque sequences which are either what the protagonist is mis-perceiving or mis-remembering, or outright hallucinating.

>135 housefulofpaper:

Interesting that that predates ('pre-dates'?) The Blair Witch Project, with which IMDb links it, by a long, long time. No doubt I've rambled on here at length on how awful I find the latter film, and it's left me with a very real aversion to found-footage films, but you've made that set sound quite tempting.

Am I putting duplicate posts up here? LibraryThing keeps telling me I am but I'm not seeing them ...

ETA - I think my mouse is ill ...

>135 housefulofpaper:

I never get round to things! As it happens, I dug the first Short, Sharp Shocks out of the spare room some weeks ago (probably should have written '... some months ...') and I've just found it in the pile of books beside me ... STILL unwatched, I'm sure. I'm making a resolution—I'm going to watch it tonight! I've put the second set on the top of my CinemaParadisodotcom list and IF I can get that watched some time this decade, I'll put up your set then.

Talking about CinemaParadisodotcom, my current pair of discs includes Symptoms—another film I've been threatening, here, to watch for decades ...

>139 alaudacorax:

Well, with one thing and another I didn't get very far with that first set, but the stand-out so far, for me, was Stanley Baker doing 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. Quite convincingly deranged and dangerous—quite gripped me.

>140 alaudacorax:

I think Algernon Blackwood, at his best, is one of the very greats of horror writing, but I wasn't overly impressed by him in live performance. Not bad, as such, but not very good. I've long held the conviction that, for oral performance, trained actors are better than the writers and poets any day of the week.

>141 alaudacorax:
I've read somewhere (it may well have been in the booklet that accompanied Short Sharp Shocks that Blackwood was not at his best in those two film shorts. He had got used to performing for the BBC television cameras in a familiar location. None of those programmes survive.

When Blackwood died, John Laurie took over as the BBC's "ghost man", which I assume means that the scenes where his character in Dad's Army tells a scary story refer back to that earlier role, and back to Algernon Blackwood himself.

>141 alaudacorax: - I've long held the conviction that, for oral performance, trained actors are better than the writers and poets any day of the week.

Except for Dylan Thomas. But then, he was from God's own country—makes a difference ...

YouTube just threw up for me this delightful short film from 1901, The Magic Sword or A Medieval Mystery. Had to share it. It has, for me at least, a little bit of the feel of 'Otranto'.

>144 alaudacorax:

I'm always fascinated to try to imagine what a wonder something like this must have been back in the days with no tradition of the moving image.

Another blast from the past... I did a search on "Being Human" in the group, which returned dozens of threads, but of the first ten I checked not one referenced the show (or even contained the phrase, as far as I could see).

So, apologies if this is a retread... Over the weekend I finished season 4 (I'm only referring to the UK series) and, while I have some negative criticisms to do with the writing, overall I'm liking it so much I'm surprised I don't hear it mentioned more often.

I had seen season 1 years ago but at the time my negative reaction to some aspects of the writing kept me from continuing. I didn't like how Annie was written (and, overall, I think there's a strong blokey tone to the writing that generally short-changes female characters--they are ALL idiots) and Russell Tovey's whiny werewolf got on my nerves. Then a while back I tried season 2 and warmed up more to the characters. It's inconsistent, but there are some episodes that really hit home on what "being human" and the quest for it mean.

Season 3 was even more wildly inconsistent as they obviously had to write Aidan Turner out, but I enjoyed in particular the series guest actors. And in Season 4 they killed the baby! That's the sort of thing that makes me daydream about what if Buffy had been an original British show.

Did anyone here watch it and what did you think?

>146 LolaWalser:

I am sure I have only watched the first two seasons. I was able to watch the original UK broadcasts on BBC3 (the BBC's cable and satellite "youth-orientated" channel. In that context the blokeishness went unnoticed). I was recording them to DVD. If you'd asked me I would have said that I stopped recording due to hardware issues with my satellite receiver or DVD recorder, BUT, I've checked my discs against IMDb and, apparently I've got the whole thing. So it seems I'm creating false memories to excuse my huge pile of unwatched DVD-Rs!

As to why the series isn't discussed, as far as the UK goes it looks as if the DVDs and Blu-rays are out of print and rising in price on Amazon, and the series isn't available on BBC iPlayer. Also, isn't 10-15 years just about the age for something to be really forgotten: out of fashion, and not yet old enough for nostalgia to come into play?

>147 housefulofpaper:

OMG I just made a remark to that effect "isn't 10-15 years just about the age for something to be really forgotten: out of fashion, and not yet old "!

If you have all five seasons, but haven't watched past the first two, you're in for a treat! I still have the last season to watch (they are available free on a local TV network, but not sure for how long), while last night i revisited a couple of eps from Season 1, including a favourite, "Ghost Town", with Alex Price as Gilbert, the mod goth. My favourite character of the whole series, even if he does show up only this one time! Soft Cell, The Smiths, Echo and the BUnnymen, Joy Division, plus Nietzsche: "Gilbert-fun" is the best fun the undead can have.

My memory is a little different to Lola's (IF we're talking about the same programme) as I seem to remember it as fun and looking promising for a season or two then running out of steam or taking a turn I didn't particularly like—can't really remember, now—only the vaguest memories.

>147 housefulofpaper:

Odd ... it seems to be available to stream on ITVX (or 'itvX') now. Why would a BBC producation be available on ITV?

ETA - 'producation'? I think I've just coined a new word!

>148 LolaWalser:
That's a strange coincidence!

>150 alaudacorax:
I have to confess that I didn't use any of the UK TV streaming sites apart from iPlayer (occassionally) because watching on my MacBook didn't feel like "real" television. I think I've mentioned that I recently had to replace my satellite disc and receiver. I can no longer, at least for the present, record off-air TV but I can watch the streaming sites on "big telly". However I still don't pay for any, and I'm currently baulking at ITV and Channel 4 requiring me to create yet more passwords etc. I feel like I've just run out of passwords.

The question of why Being Human is on ITV's streaming service sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

The Wikipedia entry for Being Human says it was made by an independent production company and pitched to BBC Three, which commissioned a pilot (and more surprising facts: the supernatural angle was a late addition - the production company only wanted a series about three people flatsharing; and my (now defunct) local newspaper, The Reading Chronicle, started an online petition for the pilot to go on to a full series).

The production company is named in the article as Touchpaper Television. Looking on the Companies House website, that name leads to a company now called Blacklight Television Limited. And a quick look online finds that it is now part of Banijay S.A. I had never heard of this company but it's a huge (French-based but international) media company that's hoovered up loads of media/creative companies in a short time, for example it acquired Endemol Shine in 2020.

Given all that, it doesn't seem so strange for the series to now be on a rival streaming service.

Of course, the consolidation of prodution companies (and their intellectual property) into a small number of mega-companies (Disney and Sony being the most prominent, I suppose) raises all sorts of issues and concerns.

Recent viewing - after a long break I was able to find the time to watch a subtitled film. It was the next film in the Severin Films Folk Horror box set "All the Haunts are Ours", and the film was Lake of the Dead (Norway, 1958).

It's a murder mystery/cabin in the woods film with the supernatural element supplied by the story of the cabin - a century-old murder, and the spirit of the murderer said to possess anybody who stays in the cabin.

It's a fairly light-hearted film but it has its spooky and suspenseful moments, and to be honest it makes a welcome change of pace after gruelling films like Witchhammer or Clearcut. It's adapted from a novel that can now be obtained in a modern translation from Valancourt books.

I also watched Casino Royale (1967). I've caught this a few times on TV in recent years but had never gone to the trouble of watching the whole thing uninterupptedly (if I was hoping it would make more sense that way - it doesn't). I mention it here because of the East Berlin segment which has explicit nods to German Expressionism (in particular The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) and (I think) Fritz Lang-style spy movies. And (twenty or so years before "Teeny Todd") another comic-grotesque character played by Ronnie Corbett.

>149 alaudacorax:

In Season 3 they were writing out Aidan Turner, who played the vampire, which may have affected the sort of story they gave him ( in particular the last-minute romance with Annie the ghost), and in Season 4 the whole cast changed. However, for me at least season 4 is the best of them all!

Did you give up after the first two or watched through to the end? Do you remember Phil Davis playing the Big Bad, Captain Hatch, in the last season?

>151 housefulofpaper:

Looking around at the forums, it seems it WAS quite beloved by the average sci-fi/fantasy fan, but lost a portion of the audience with the cast change. Season 5 has only six episodes (as did the first one), but it does end on an ambiguous note. Having now seen it, I definitely prefer the second cast to the original one. Moloney's vampire is much more interesting and multidimensional, werewolf Tom's stoic acceptance of his nature is refreshing in contrast to Tovey's constant angst, and although both ghostly women are my least-favourites because they are ghosts (another variation on invisibility, non-presence, as a "female superpower"), Alex is more forceful than the wishy-washy Annie with a penchant for horrible men.

I liked Lake of the Dead very much.

Other than Being Human, haven't been watching much new horror lately. I hope to catch Séance on a Wet Afternoon tonight (re-watch, but basically forgotten).

I finally got round to watching Symptoms tonight (>128 LolaWalser: to >131 housefulofpaper:). I don't think I've ever seen it before although the indoor and outdoor locations seemed vaguely familiar.

I must, first of all, say that I was impressed and quite absorbed by it. I thought it looked gorgeous and I've seldom seen a film that kept me so continually under tension, though I also think a lot of the film's force came from Angela Pleasance's performance and her unique screen presence. She exudes the weirdest combination of heart-rending vulnerability and downright creepy menace.

I rather thought, though, that the film was one huge red herring (or shoal of red herrings). On the question of if it was folk horror, I'd say not, but that it quite deliberately made you think that it was going to be. Following on that theme, and without going into spoilers, it piled up misdirection upon misdirection whodunnit-style. So much so that I'm now tempted to watch it again because I'm wondering how much of its force may be lost now that I know its twists and turns.

My blu-ray had extras: the interviews with Angela Pleasance Pleasence and Laura Lorna Heilbron were interesting and a little appalling on José Larraz, the director; I thought the little documentary film by(?) Larraz—something with 'vampires' in the title—fell rather flat and I gave up in boredom half-way through (or maybe I fell asleep half-way through).

>154 alaudacorax:

I was right; it did lose some of its force on a second viewing.

Something I didn't mention in the last post but that rather pleased me were the occasional, fleeting, little references. One to Hitchcock's Psycho was the most blatant, but I picked up on others so subtle and fleeting that I wondered whether or not I was imagining them. I've forgotten most, this morning, but I'm sure I saw a hint at the '63 The Haunting and I remember feeling I was seeing a few that I couldn't, offhand, place. Rushed out with the discs to catch today's post this morning, but now I'm wishing that I had my own copy so I could sit down with pause button to hand and notebook in hand.

Also, if I were ever a lottery winner, I would so put in an offer on that house and grounds ...

>154 alaudacorax:, >155 alaudacorax:

From Wikipedia: "The film was shot in Harefield Grove, a grade-II listed, early-nineteenth-century country house in the London borough of Hillingdon, where Larraz would later film Vampyres."

That's, no doubt, why I was finding it familiar.

>154 alaudacorax:

I don't find the effect of Angela Pleasence's uncanny looks wearing off. (That older DVD cover is such a spoiler, though.)

So I watched again Séance on a Wet Afternoon and it's as excellent as I remember. This time I noticed more what a great film it is for city archaeologists and underground enthusiasts, there is a long suspenseful chase in and out various stations. London 1964.

>157 LolaWalser:

I haven't seen that one yet, but your comment about "city archaeologists and underground enthusiasts" reminded me that Stephen Poliakoff's 1987 film Hidden City, is to be released on Blu-ray by the BFI this year.

>158 housefulofpaper:

A political thriller with Charles Dance and Richard E. Grant? I'm there.

A good word for The Antichrist (1974) by Alberto De Martino. Yes, it was very much conceived to capitalize on the success of Friedkin's Exorcist. Yes, it features the usual Italian aural hodgepodge of dubbed actors (I listened to the Italian soundtrack but don't suppose the English is much better). Yes, the special effects are of its time.

Nevertheless, featuring as it does crowds of real Italians really going off in religious frenzy, AND a masterful, bonkers, terrifying performance by Carla Gravina, it shouldn't be missed. It's also visually much more sumptuous than The Exorcist (well, as is usual with Italian scenery).

>160 LolaWalser:

I remember encountering De Martino's The Omen influenced film, Holocaust 2000 in a late night TV showing sometime in the late '80s. I'd missed the first half hour or so and had no way of finding out what I was watching and was struggling to work out what was going on. At the end of the film - Kirk Douglas with his bum out, a nuclear power plant (? - but it looks more like an oil rig, as far as I can remember) turning into the seven-headed beast of Revelation - things were no clearer!

>161 housefulofpaper:

Wow! Definitely something I'll keep in mind. :) I can't remember having heard of the director before, and looking at the list of his works here, nothing rings a bell. But just on the basis of The Antichrist (there IS a touchstone), he's not bad.

Another good (even excellent!) movie I saw recently: Night must fall (1964), directed by Karel Reisz and featuring a wild, unforgettable performance by Albert Finney. I knew nothing about it before, but it turns out to be based on an often-staged play by Emlyn Williams, and there is another film adaptation, from 1937, featuring Robert Montgomery in Finney's role. I've requested the earlier film from the library, although there's no way it can match the horror of the 1964 version. The plot, briefly: a psychopathic killer insinuates himself into a family headed by a wheelchair-bound matriarch and proceeds to seduce, in various ways, the women involved. But the police search for his previous victim is getting ever nearer...

The rich old lady was played by May Whitty on stage and in the 1937 version, Mona Washbourne is in the 1964 film. Her daughter was played by Rosalind Russell in 1937, Susan Hampshire in 1964. Highly recommended. Oh, and for those who have already seen it, surely the Coen Brothers echoed the mysterious box in Barton Fink? Major shudder!

ETA: Ah, so I just noticed you have The Antichrist! Of course you do. :)

>160 LolaWalser:

I don't know where Cinema Paradiso gets their synopses, but ...

"The Antichrist" is a spewing, screaming, sexed up, purposely offensive and incredibly blasphemous, seminal and rarely seen Euro-horror. A classic story of demonic possession ... her lustful needs lead to her being possessed by Satan himself, turning Ippolita into a vicious, sadistic seducer and killer. Along with unholy scenes of satanic orgies and shocking violence, 'The Antichrist' also features breathtaking cinematography and a superb, unforgettable film score by Ennio Morricone.

I don't care how low IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes rate it (or CP), I've just got to watch that! I've put it on the top of my 'My list'. Just as soon as I've got The Witch out of the way ...

>163 alaudacorax:

Talking about The Witch: I only lasted about ten minutes last night. I know I've probably previously gone on about this at boring length, but it's my contention that somewhere around twenty or thirty years ago directors just lost the art of starting a film. It's probably not unconnected to the modern habit of making ninety-minute films two hours plus long. Though, having said that, I have to admit The Witch is only ninety-two minutes; which makes things worse—they haven't time to waste.

Yes, I know there's every chance I'll come back tonight or in the morning and say it wasn't such a bad film after all. Time will tell.

A few minutes ago, I wrote on another thread about not getting so many of my books read. It doesn't help that I watched Bertrand Tavernier's A Journey Through French Cinema last night (can't make any sense of the touchstones) and now I've got a whole raft of new-to-me old French films I want to watch. I've probably repeated my favourite misquote many times, too—'Had I but world enough and time ...'

>165 alaudacorax:

And I've got 228 films on my Cinema Paradiso 'My list' ... tried a 'ruthless' weeding a couple of weeks back—ended up remembering a pile of films I wanted to add ...

>162 LolaWalser:
I'd forgotten I had a copy of The Antichrist. I had to hop over to this account in order to check. It's an off-air copy from The Horror Channel (probably). Good, that's saved me £20. Before your message I was looking at a 2023 Blu-ray listed on Amazon UK...

And on the subject of not getting through "to be read"/"to be watched" piles, the postmen delivered two more Jean Rollin Blu-rays this morning...

>163 alaudacorax:

Oh dear. I hope you won't be disappointed after such an eye-popping description! :)

>165 alaudacorax:

I know what you mean... I saw bits of that and every time I make lists and lists...

>167 housefulsfilmtv:

I don't know if it's of any use to you, but Kino Lorber is currently having a sale in the US, 8.99 USD per blu ray, or less! We get hit by import taxes in Canada so I doubt I'll be shopping but I wish.

I presume you're getting those thick babies from Indicator, they look great. Sigh, biding my time.

>168 LolaWalser:

Yes, they're from Indicator but they're Blu-ray rather than the UHD discs. I'd have to invest at least a couple of thousand £'s on a player and a new TV set to be able to play them.

I'm not an early adoptor of new technology & was slow to upgrade from VHS to DVD and from DVD to Blu-ray. Part of that is the worry that the new technology might not survive (think laserdisc or HD DVD). But the YouTube channel Cereal at Midnight had an interview with the founder of Indicator, during which he revealed that 80% of their US sales were in the UHD format and they had to seriously consider whether to continue with the Blu-ray format.

>169 housefulofpaper:

Disappointing, but that's the game of big numbers for you... I guess it's because UHD is region-free, and the US being huge, there are enough USians to make their custom important even relative to the domestic trade. I'd probably be doing the same if I had the 4K/UHD setup.

I have my suspicions on some of this technology. I can tell the difference between HD and normal channels on my telly, but I'm damned if I could tell you whether I was watching a DVD or a blu-ray most of the time. If UHD is better, I'd bet any money it's not thousands of pounds better (or hundreds, for that matter).

Sorry to sound grumpy old man mode, but I lived a long time when hi-fi was all the rage and bought all the magazines and such like and I remember it took me years, if not decades, to figure out I was being suckered.

>172 alaudacorax:

I think it's okay to be grumpy, the rush of the new is getting to be too much. Consider that the LP had a good 80-90 year run... the CD lasted about 20 years... the VHS, maybe 20 years, the DVD... about 10? Blu rays scarcely appeared before they were being called obsolete.

Plus the conspiracy to make streaming the only source.

Found online Christopher Lee's first movie, The corridor of mirrors from 1948. Lee has a small role within a mixed company of friends in a night club. One of the women present is picked up by a rich aesthete (Eric Portman) and embarks on a ever-more-sinister affair with him (he, it turns out, is convinced they are reincarnations of a 15th century couple, with him being a Borgia no less). Atmosphere galore.

>174 LolaWalser:

I managed to miss some recent showings on Talking Pictures TV even though there was some talk about it online somewhere. I think the points of interest to whoever was writing about it, were that it was co-scripted by star Edina Romney and Rudolf Cartier - who went on to work as a producer at the BBC including the Quatermass serials and adaptation of Nineteen Eighty Four with Nigel Kneale.

>174 LolaWalser:

Interesting. Absolutely no memory of ever having seen or even heard about that one even though it has 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. Never head of Edana Romney, either. I'll look out for that one.

Came across The Gorgon in the early hours yesterday morning.

What is it about the old Hammer films? A ropey old script—as many holes as a net—but give me Cushing, Lee and Barbara Shelley doing their best and put them in picturesque, almost clichéd scene settings and I'm happy as a sandbag. Even while being distracted by the rampant face furniture (on the men, that is) ...

>177 alaudacorax:

I wrote the above, then couldn't resist looking up who played the actual Gorgon ... oh damn, can't go any further without spoilers ... but (HUGE SPOILER)... it was clear that it was not Barbara playing the actual gorgon—it was Prudence Hyman—but I can't help wondering what it does to one's ego to be offered the part of the ugly, evil version of the lead actress ...

>177 alaudacorax:

A thought on the face furniture:

I wonder if it was because they had second thoughts on Richard Pasco as romantic lead. He doesn't look the part—he was a good actor but not a good fit for romantic lead in a Hammer film—his face was made for angsting in something very weighty. 'Okay ... we'll give everyone else face fungus to try to make him look youthful and fresh-faced in comparison'.

The Gorgon was spoilered (? - is that a word) for me long before I had a chance to watch it. It was the subject of a comic strip adaptation in one of a couple of issues of House of Hammer magazine I acquired sometime in the 1970s. A few years later on, the brains behind the magazine (Dez Skinn) somehow got to use the character Father Sandor (from Dracula: Prince of Darkness) as the hero of a strip in Warrior (the magazine that launched Alan Moore's comic career with Marvel- sorry Miracleman, and V for Vendetta).

That's an interesting thought about the beards and Richard Pasco's suitability as lead... I remember reading somewhere that the period and setting was slightly unusual for Hammer; the Gorgon herself nods towards Neoclassicism in the German-speaking world. The main figures of that movement (based on nothing more than a quick Google, admittedly) seem to have been clean-shaven though, which argues against the fake beards being historically accurate!

I watched Doctor X - the restored two-strip technicolor version, the black and white version (different takes shot with different cameras), listened to two full length commentaries, watched the bonus features. It takes a long time to watch a short film, these days.

Nothing I noticed wasn't said in the commentaries, naturally. I noticed that a lot of the "gags" were reused in Mystery of the Wax Museum - to the extent that Doctor X could be seen as a dry-run for the later film. That it blends 1920s-style Old Dark House effects with the most exreme horror until Hammer, plus a lot of (often rather laboured) humour and rat-tat-tat dialogue - Warners' house style (they actually tried to advertise Doctor X as a romantic comedy!).

I have the feeling that the two films are close in spirit to the "shudder pulps" of the time.

I caught The Gorgon on Nyx, or NYX, a rather odd, freeview, horror channel that's turned up in UK lately. Their onscreen guide always has the times wrong so I mostly don't watch stuff because I find myself either part-way through or having to wait for some time for stuff to start. It's finally dawned on me that they must be running on Greenwich Mean Time instead of British Summer Time. And there's mostly no demarcation between ad breaks and the film, which is rather off-putting. Weird.

Anyway, I had another look tonight. Avoided Cannibal Holocaust as much as I could, trying to catch the start of an episode of The Hunger (can't find a touchstone), the TV series with David Bowie doing the intro. I watched an episode called 'Nunc Dimittis' (S2,E5). A few minutes in and I recognised the story and was a little surprised—it was the one and only time I've ever seen a dramatised version of a Tanith Lee story. I've always been a bit puzzled that I've never seen one of her short stories on screen—now I've seen one.

ETA - Yes, I know about the Blake's Seven episodes, but—correct me if I'm wrong—I believe those were ventures into script writing, as opposed to someone adapting a couple of her stories.

>182 alaudacorax:

I probably should have written a little more, there. I meant that she had a vast and varied output that was liberally shot through with stories that would make good films or telly programmes; so it's alway been a bit of a head-scratcher to me that nobody has thought to mine it.

>182 alaudacorax:

The two Blake's Seven scripts were indeed original scripts for TV. I did a quick search online after reading >183 alaudacorax: and there had been some work for radio, but no more TV.

Another Blu-ray from the Warner archive - arriving in the UK three years after it appeared in the US, judging by some YouTube reviews I found - is Isle of the Dead (1945), directed by Mark Robson and produced, of course, by Val Lewton. There's far less in the way of extras here than on the Doctor X disc - only a commentary track and a trailer.

According to the commentary this began life as an adaptation of "Carmilla", but there's only a trace of it in the end result - even less of a trace than Cat People bears of Blackwood's "Ancient Sorceries". It's a rather moody character-led piece for much of the film (which seems very '40's Hollywood: not Noir exactly, or not only Noir - extending to "women's pictures" and even radio dramas of the time as well).

In moving away from Le Fanu the storylines draws heavily on Poe. The main characters are trapped by an outbreak of plague on a small island (modelled on Bochlin's painting) - shades of The Masque of the Red Death - then it goes to "The Fall of the House of Usher" and more generally Poe's themes of catatonia and premature burial and madness. By the last act this gives us not one but two proto-stalk 'n' slash killers to menace the heroine.

It perhaps feels disjointed - the moody, talky early part against the suspense and action of the climax. According to the commentary Lewton prefered the first part of the film. I was more - disappointed? jolted out of my willing sense of disbelief is probably closer - by a character (two, in fact) having to act foolishly to keep the wheels of the plot spinning beyond the first half-hour.

>185 housefulofpaper:

Stone me—I'm getting old. I know I've seen that, and quite recently, too; but do you think I can remember it? I'm sure I've posted about it, too ...

... nope. Did a search. Haven't.

Obvious course is to watch it again. I've put it on top of my Cinema Paradiso list.

Talking of CP: don't know why but I'm struggling to keep up but I've had >174 LolaWalser:'s Corridor of Mirrors and >160 LolaWalser:'s The Antichrist (can't find the touchstone) here for at least a week and still haven't watched them. Must be the long, sunny evenings ...

ETA - I'm getting this image of Boris Karloff with a big mop of curls ... there may be a reason why my memory has blocked out that film ...

Oh well, if I can take Chris Lee in a Laura Ashley dress in The Wicker Man I can take Boris with curls ...

>186 alaudacorax:

Yes, Karloff in a curly wig, that's the one.

Reading back, I see that I failed to complete my thought about this film having a measure of similarity with a lot of other dramas coming out of Hollywood (including radio plays) in the 1940s.

It's a very tentative idea but, as I started to write, horror and Film Noir and melodramatic "women's pictures" seem to have some common approaches to storytelling and character type and underlying morality, or amorality - the Hollywood product can often seem more mature or realistic that a lot of what followed. Perhaps the effect of a World War following the Great Depression? Pondering this a bit more, if there's any truth in it, perhaps it's not very obvious because those styles and stories migrated to television, whilst Hollywood studios and producers moved on to genre films aimed at teenagers or widescreen epics?

Edited for spelling and sense.

>187 housefulofpaper:

Interesting points.

I wonder if it wasn't because, at the time, cinema hadn't moved so far away from theatre and a good script was regarded as a matter of course, the whole thing still a branch of literature, as it were? And then we got films gradually moving more and more into being a commercial product, goods for sale sort of thing?

>188 alaudacorax:

Okay, I'm probably going into grumpy old curmudgeon mode here, but ...

I've always felt the rot set in with the first 'Star Wars' film, whatever they're calling it now. I can remember when I first saw it being quite disappointed after all the hype and thinking it a triumph of spectacle over story-telling. I think story has very much been an also-ran ever since.

>189 alaudacorax:

Actually I am probably being a grumpy old curmudgeon ... and quite wrong.

You always had spectacle over story. I'm just remembering watching She Wore a Yellow Ribbon some weeks back. It's possibly good entertainment if you don't think about it too hard. Unfortunately my brain was working at the time. I don't think there's a single step of the plot of that film that makes any sense. It's almost as if they were deliberately trying how much literal 'non-sense' they could get past the audience. But, of course, you get the spectacular Monument Valley filming ... spectacle over story. And that was 1949.

And now I've thought myself into a circle. Were there more well-scripted films back then or are we just remembering the best of them? Was there the same preponderance of shallow spectacle, most of which hasn't stood the test of time (whereas She Wore a Yellow Ribbon has IMDb at 7.2 and Rotten Tomatoes 79% audience and a wopping 92% critics)?

I probably need to think about it some more ...

Some more thoughts. The silent films and pre-code talkies went further than the Hollywood films of the '40s and '50s, of course they did; and they were mainstream: it's still a surprise seeing the lurid and grim plot outlines of films starring major stars of the time - Jonathan Rigby included Lilian Gish's 1928 film The Wind in American Gothic, for instance - , but my tentative suggestion was that the treatment of such themes, when they could use them, is more mature than those espressionistic or High Romantic films. And, maybe, the changes in society post-war, meant that those films could look quite buttoned up (an idea complicated, perhaps, by America's conservative turn in the 1950's, with the Beats and Rock 'n' Roll and teenage rebellion bubbling up from below).

On spectacle vs story, I can't comment on She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. The western is one genre I've never really been drawn to. I'm sure I've seen loads on TV growing up, but the widescreen versions would have been wretched pan-and-scan versions that I only sat through waiting for the next programme.

I've got a lot of time for visual storytelling (growing up reading comics, as I've mentioned before, that's natural). Film had to lean heavily on visual storytelling until sound came along. They had intertitles of course. But there have been films and then TV programmes, where you can turn away from the screen for long periods, and follow the story from the dialogue alone as if it were radio.

Is it possible that any incoherence in films shot on location (between the studio-bound and CGI eras) may be down to the difficulty of getting all the shots the filmmakers needed, and it had to be pieced together in the edit?

>192 housefulofpaper:

Don't know, but I could quite believe with She Wore a Yellow Ribbon that they shot all the scenes first before they even thought of cobbling together some sort of story.

This conscientiousness about all the household jobs (sorry, that was the other thread) has its drawbacks. I sat down to lunch yesterday and caught a film, starting just then, called Queen of Blood (1966). I watched it for quite a while before switching off and getting on with stuff ... and I've got up this morning still regretting I didn't watch till the end. This was on NYX I think, which I think I've mentioned previously, so I shall watch out for it coming round again.

This was directed by Curtis Harrington, whom I'm sure we've discussed here before, and had Basil Rathbone and John Saxon. I think I'd have to put it in the 'silly, but fun' bracket, but what's clicked with me since watching it is that it was basically Carmilla in space—you know, the girl rescued from the wrecked carriage/spaceship and so on. Sci-fi Gothic long before Alien.

So now I've really got to see if it pans out according to the book. It's on again Friday night. Wonder if I can remember that long.

>194 alaudacorax:

I liked Queen of blood. IIRC that's one of the American movies that used footage from cannibalized Soviet sf. (And re-used. I think the same footage is found across several of Roger Corman's cheapies.)

There's a new 4K remaster of Jess Franco's Count Dracula on Ultra HD + Blu-ray from Severin films in the US and 88 Films in the UK. The editions have overlapping but different extra features.

The old Severin DVD included the avant garde documentary Vampir-Cuadecuc by Pere Portabella (a black-and-white silent behind the scenes "making of" that it's been suggested was also obliquely commenting on General Franco's Spain). That's on neither of these new editions (Severin sell it as a separate disc) but Severin have a 2017 documentary "which chronicles the simultaneous filming of Vampir-Cuadecuc"..."and Franco’s horror classic", and a CD of the film soundtrack. Whereas 88 Films has two more full length commentaries at least one documentary not shared with the Severin edition.

>195 LolaWalser:

Yeah, I think Roger Corman is down on IMDb as a producer for it.

>196 housefulofpaper:

Now I'm confused. I've seen at least one of those documentaries but I'm damned if I can remember which one.

Um ... I find myself making a post when I really haven't much of significance to say ...

I watched a three-episode documentary series on Magellan TV last night. It was called 'We Are Legend' and dealt, in order, with the characters Dracula, Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes as cultural phenomena.

First of all, I assume it must have been made specifically for Magellan because I can't find any mention of it elsewhere. A little surprised as I'm new to Magellan and I'd assumed that all their documentaries were collected-in from other sources. It's actually French dubbed into English, but searching for Nous sommes une légende didn't have any hits, either.

Second, and this is a bit deflating as I spent the best part of an evening on it, it had nothing much to say that was unfamiliar. As far as Dracula goes, there was nothing that hasn't come up in our discussions here and I felt they left a lot out. Most glaringly, they dealt with the development of the vampire in popular culture down through the centuries and managed to completely ignore Carmilla (apart from a fleeting glimpse of the book cover). Overall, I felt it was sketchy and lightweight. There was some interesting stuff about how Tarzan was changed by the changes in US society and about the stresses between Burroughs and the film-makers, but that was probably because a lot was new to me rather than it having any real depth. To tell the truth, by the time we got to Sherlock I was flagging and I don't remember much.

So ... it was interesting, but not very ...

>199 alaudacorax:

Actually, I'm now remembering that I found bits quite interesting as a French take on US popular culture. There, I was as much interested on where they were coming from as what they had to say. Probably notable differences to anglophone academics doing the same thing.

>200 alaudacorax:

I should take notes!

I don't take notes, and it makes writing up these reviews or whatever quite difficult - added to which there's the general animus on the site against spoliers (very different to the books and magazines I grew up with, where the underlying assumption was that old media was going to be inaccessible), and just a problem I've always had with the art of précis - well, doubly or triply so.

That said, a few words about the last film I watched (on a UK DVD from Shameless), The Sect, also known as The Devil's Daughter, directed by Michele Soavi, produced by (and story by) Dario Argento. It's from 1991.

After a prologue set in the US in 1970, wherein some Mansonesque satanists slaughter a hippie commune (at the bidding of shadowy figure in an expensive car), the story moves to present-day Germany and a young schoolteacher (played by Kelly Curtis) who seems to be the focus of attention of the same satanists. I don't want to take anything away from Soavi here but the whole thing feels very Argento-esque. It has a sense of menace throughout, some very effective and tense set-pieces, a couple of gory moments (one of which, incidentally, references one of H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, which I suppose makes this film an addition to the Cthulhu Mythos). Like the school and the apartment building in Suspiria and Inferno, respectively, this film has a distinctive version of the "haunted house" - here, it's a house in the German woods built over a huge basement and cistern or well (in the bonus interview, Soavi says the inspiration was the real-life cistern under his own home!).

Unfortunately, the film also has some weaknesses I would tend to associate with Argento, namely some tin-eared dialogue (in the English dub, at least) and some ludicrous moments - including the climax of the film, which does sad to say spoil what's come before it.

Latest film watched: Revenge of the She Beast.

It's Michael Reeve's first film, followed by The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General (US title The Conqueror Worm) before his untimely death aged 25.

I'd read that it was not a very good film, and the only clips I'd seen were very low quality and degraded, so I was half-expecting a difficult and amateurish watch. But not for the first time, a low budget film given some TLC and released on Blu-ray is a treat to watch.

Storywise, it feels like a 1960s Italian Gothic (it was shot in Rome and Barbara Steele gets top billing) but there are some interesting foreshadowings of other films - Reeves' own Witchfinder General and the gore of Lucio Fulci's zombie films (there's a shot where a 200-year old witch's body is being revived, and Reeves gives us a close-up of a maggot emerging from the pupil of her eye - in 1967!). The main problem is probably the uneveness of tone. Partly this is due to the co-screenwriter and 2nd-unit director putting in jokey elements (he had recently worked on some of Roger Corman's later Poe adaptations) and worst of all, a comedy car chase as the climax of the film. Partly it's Reeves himself, whose interest in violence (and insisting on realistically showing the effects of violence) leads him to give male lead Ian Ogilvy moments of apparently psychopathic violence which is at odds with his usual presentation as an urbane "Paul Temple" type English hero.

In one of the extras on the disc, the ubiquitous Kim Newman describes Revenge of the She Beast as "almost a good film - and that's good enough".

>203 housefulofpaper:

Talking of psychopathic violence, I saw Ian Ogilvy in a recent film—can't remember the title offhand—as a retired, East End or 'Sarf-London' gangster. I don't know that I should have been surprised, but it was an excellent performance. I imagine youngsters who don't know his earlier stuff would be quite surprised at coming across some of it.

>204 alaudacorax:

We Still Kill the Old Way (2014) - can't find a touchstone. Not great art ...

Ogilvy--I think he's in The Sorcerers too? Very handsome in youth.

I haven't seen anything on topic in a while. Subbed to Britbox for a month to watch Taggart, the full set is insanely expensive to buy.

>204 alaudacorax:
I caught a big chunk of that film when it was shown one of the Sky movie channels. These films that come across as PR jobs for old villains leave me feeling a bit queasy, to be honest.

>206 LolaWalser:
Yes. As Ogilvy tells it, they became friends when they were of school age (but didn't go to school together if I'm remembering correctly) and Ogilvy acted in Michael Reeves' first forays into film-making and then a few years later used him in all three of his professional productions.

I first became aware of him when he starred in The Return of the Saint.

Since I had to upgrade my Sky box I have (after 40 years) lost the ability to make off-air recordings. The upside - I suppose it is an upside - is that I can watch YouTube and BBC iPlayer (and other streaming services, if I cared to pay for them) on the "big telly".

Disc-wise it's been more a case of upgrading to Blu-ray than finding a lot of new stuff - on topic or not. Although there does seem to be a lot of pertinent releases schedule for around Halloween.

I'm currently working through all the extras on the Indicator release of Jean Rollin's Le Viol du Vampire.

>207 housefulofpaper: - These films that come across as PR jobs for old villains leave me feeling a bit queasy, to be honest.

Yep. Slightly uncomfortable viewing and had me pondering for quite a while without coming to any conclusions. I'm old enough to remember when the Krays and the Richardsons and so on were in the news, but I wonder if for a lot of younger people they aren't safely far enough in the past to somehow be in Jesse James or Butch and Sundance territory (or even Bonnie and Clyde)? This idea that 'we had better gangsters in the old days' sort of slips through the fingers when I try thinking about it, though. Perhaps I was overthinking it ...

>209 alaudacorax:
I don't remember when the Krays were active but I was around in the '80s when their merchandise was on sale at rock festivals and advertised in the back pages of magazines and comics.

One of the biggest problems I have is that the filmmakers glamourising East End villains seem to be upper middle class or even more posh.

>210 housefulofpaper:

Since posting some of the above, I've remembered that the Monty Python lot were satirising this kind of glamourising and, well, 'nostalgia', I suppose, in their 'Piranha Brothers' sketch fifty-something years ago. So it's been around a long time. And then again, reading the Wikipedia page on the Kray twins—the real Piranha Brothers—it seems the former had a pretty effective public relations thing going on, which must have something to do with it. And Mad Frankie Frazer (of all people) seems to have been pretty effective in later life at exploiting the media. There seem to be a number of others who've written memoirs, so there's a market for it. It's a fascinating subject quite separate from the actual activities of the gangsters.

ETA - I mean it's a fascinating subject as to why this 'nostalgic' view of them exists.

>211 alaudacorax:

I suppose that they were part of 'swinging London" through their connections with politicians and entertainers, and quickly became or made themselves part of London lore. But contemporaries had a clearer-eyed view of them - Monty Python, is one example, and the Richard Burton film Villain is another.

News!
I had an email from Severin Films yesterday announcing a second "All the Haunts Be Ours" box set of Folk Horror films from around the world. The details say all but one disc are regions A/B/C. Frustratingly the one disc that is region A (North America) only features a couple of films I can't get as either DVD or Blu-ray in the UK.

Here's the (long) trailer/YouTube announcement (warning - some of the clips are quite gruesome).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5NLJOVVmVc&t=38s

That does look interesting but as I haven't bought the first set, I'm finding it easier to reconcile myself to missing this one too. They are expensive, but even worse is that I am seriously out of space.

Catching up on some older Japanese passably Gothic horror, I watched Ju-On (Japanese The grudge) 1 and 2 and Ringu 2. I never saw American remakes, so nothing was spoiled. Those crawling, creeping Japanese ghouls with jerky movements and infinite hair are no question the scariest monsters in my experience.

Also watched The Boneyard from 1991, an odd horror comedy with a likeable couple of leads (an aged detective and an overweight psychic) and the most hideous child-sized monsters since The Brood.

I have ordered the new set from Severin Films but in fact I haven't finished watching the films in the first set - it was a bit of a shock to see it was released in 2021. It prompted me to watch Tilbury, a 1987 Icelandic TV movie which uses the coincidental near-homonyms "Tilbury" and "Tilbirri" - respectively, a British surname, and a kind of Icelandic witch's familiar that is fed from its owner's hidden extra nipple, and steals milk from her neighbours cattle then vomits up the resultant butter - in a WWII-set story in which a naive country boy tries to find out the connection between the girl who was never quite his girlfriend and the strange "Major Tilbury" whose seemingly with the British forces stationed on the island.

There's also a short student film from the same director which transposes another Icelandic folktale to early '70s Paris.

And I watched Die Monster Die! (AIP's loose adaptation of The Colour Out of Space in a Blu-ray from the BFI. The disc extras have nothing to do with Lovecraft, or horror.

A short while back, Indicator Films put out a box set of classic ('50s/'60s) Mexican horror films. I didn't buy it but the individual discs are coming out separately, and I bought a couple in HMV. I will report back when I've managed to watch them.

I have to confess that I'd never even heard of The Boneyard - and it's a long time since I've watched The Brood.

The Boneyard is currently findable on YT in 1080p resolution (on a channel that periodically goes dark for copyright infractions, but so far has for years avoided getting permanently banned), which is how I'd recommend to check it out.

I still get nightmare flashes from the critters in The Brood. It's good, but once was enough for me.

>216 LolaWalser:

I found The Boneyard on a YouTube channel that presented it with "horror host" interpolations. I thought it had some odd changes of tone. Some of the subjects touched on seemed to raw for a movie that ended with a giant monster Phylis Diller.

Currently watching a new Blu-ray release of The Curse of the Crimson Altar. The previous feature length commentary was in essence an interview of Barbara Steele, interviewer (David del Valle, I think) practically paying court. Here Kim Newman and Sean Hogan dig into the minutiae and provide trivia, and speculate on the tangled genesis of the film. For example, comes the early scene with the petrol attendent, Kim Newman points out that he's played by Ron Pember, and goes on to mention that Pember had written a Jack the Ripper musical. We're in good hands.

I got quite confused last night—to be fair, I was half asleep at the time. I was looking for a late-night film to watch and there was a lot of stuff on various streaming services that seemed to be implying that it was Halloween. Had I lost a month? Was I misremembering when Halloween was? I guess they are thinking, "Only a month away. Might as well get started."

>218 alaudacorax:

No, I didn't watch anything—fell asleep while browsing. Too much choice; not enough quality ...

>219 alaudacorax:

Actually, I'm just this moment remembering that I'd found Hammer's original 'Dracula'—the Chris Lee and Peter Cushing one. I thought I would come back to it if I didn't find anything more enticing. As I said ... fell asleep ... probably own my own copy, anyway ...

The cold weather makes Christmas suddenly seem nearer!

Wandering away from streaming services' offerings, the high street seems to be downplaying Halloween this year, with Christmas stuff already on the shelves, and Tesco (or my nearest branch, at any rate) choosing to promote Diwali over Halloween.

And talking of Dracula/Horror of Dracula (US title), I read recently that Hammer have bought a film restoration company and we can expect 4K restorations of classic Hammer titles soon.

>217 housefulofpaper:

Oh I'm sorry, that sounds sub-optimal for viewing. I thought the channel I meant would come up first, it's Kino Domain or one of his other similarly named... he uploads everything in HD and I never see any ads (I do have Adblock, though).

I like Kim Newman too.

I took in a Korean horror film, The Closet from 2020. A busy widower is losing his neglected daughter to malevolent spirits and gets an exorcist to help him retrieve her. I haven't seen very many Korean (or Asian ) horror films but so far it's interesting that they always contain layers deeper than "just" the horror. The horror is a projection of underlying drama.

>218 alaudacorax:

Lots of people seem to be doing horror film marathons in October.

Just checking something on IMDb and spotted there's a new version of Nosferatu coming out - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5040012/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

So ... quite looking forward to it, but one of my first thoughts was that I should rewatch the original. Then I couldn't remember if I've actually seen that remake with Klaus Kinski or not—I know I meant to. So that's two I should watch. Then I spotted Willem Dafoe in the cast list, so I thought I should probably rewatch that film where he played Max Schrenk—could not remember the name of it (Shadow of the Vampire). Searching for that turned up a whole slew of Nosferatu films and documentaries ... with a fair scattering of well-known names. How did I miss all those?

>224 alaudacorax:

You've reminded me that I can actually watch this film in the cinema...that can be a New Year treat then. Thanks!

The Klaus Kinski version seemed to have a big impact back in 1979: Kinski's bald head and rat teeth, just on the film poster, seemed to divert the image of Dracula away from the default Lugosi/Lee evening dress version for a while (Gary Oldman's motheaten roccoco old Dracula did the same a little over a decade later; I don't think anyone has done it since).

I didn't see the film (the 1979 Nosferatu, I mean - Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht) until it had a showing on late night TV sometime in the 1980s. I don't think hadn't seen many horror films by then, and the majority were the Universal films I'd watched over the summer of 1983 in BBC2's last series of double bills (some people apparently don't count 1983 as it featured no British TV premieres). It had quite an impact on me.

The last film I've watched is Planet of the Vampires (original Italian title Terrore nello spazio), a 1965 science fiction film directed by Mario Bava. Despite knowing it is a science fiction/horror hybrid (the English-language title's a bit of a giveaway, although not strictly accurate), I thought it might be something of a break from the horror and Gothic films I've been focusing on.

It's actually very Gothic, a point made repeatedly in the accompanying feature on the Radiance release (a pin-sharp 4K scan, incidentally; clips I've seen of the film before now have been quite murky. VHS was not kind to Bava's bold use of colour).

I've known for a while about the claims that Bava's film was borrowed from for Alien and there are definitely elements of the plot as well as a number of images that were already familar from the later film. I think there might also have been some borrowings in the 1982 Doctor Who story Earthshock, which I don't think I've seen suggested anywhere.

>226 housefulofpaper:

I watched that quite recently but the plot hasn't really stuck in my mind—vividly remember those silly collars, though. I seem to remember not really liking it very much: perhaps I was in an unreceptive mood as I don't remember making any connections to Alien and perhaps wasn't paying much attention.

I've been confusing it with a similar-era film, British or American I think, where they land on another planet and 'rescue' an alien woman and the film had obvious elements of Carmilla, and I'm having a bit of difficulty disentangling the two. The alien woman didn't speak, as I remember. Found it, Queen of Blood (Curtis Harrington). I think I watched the two around the same time, didn't make any notes on either film and now they've got a bit scrambled together in my mind (I created a private film journal a year or two back to stop just this sort of thing—a folder, really—but it seems I have to find a film pretty good stuff before I'm motivated to write a few notes, so it hasn't been much of a success—and when it's 'pretty good stuff' I remember it anyway and don't really need the notes ...)

And now I've sorted that out, I find I can't remember the ending of Queen of Blood, either. I think it turned out to be, for me, in the 'so bad it's good' category and I think I mainly watched it because of the impressive cast list: Basil Rathbone, John Saxon, Dennis Hopper. I was expecting more from that lot; didn't really get it but stayed for the daftness.

Wasn't there something really off about the 'outdoor' scenes in Planet of the Vampires? I'm sure it annoyed me for more than just the high collars.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness stuff. Haven't got time to write a shorter post ...

ETA - 'Didn't have time to ...' would have been better ...

I haven't seen Queen of Blood. I keep thinking it's a Soviet-era film that Roger Corman mucked about with, but the Wikipedia entry for it confirms that although it was constructed around special effects footage culled from a couple of Russian space films, it's a new story with US-shot footage.

The thing about the look of the outdoor scenes of Planet of the Vampires is that arguably they demonstate on of Mario Bava's great strengths. He had a deserved reputation for his technical abilities with special effects and matte paintings on glass and using forced perspective to create an illusion of great space on a small sound stage. That last is a technique used a lot in Planet of the Vampires - probably the crashed spaceship was about the size of a coffee cup, but placed close to the camera lens. The problem is, I suppose, is that if the eye isn't fooled, it's going to look a bit, as you say, off - either ridiculous or slightly nausea-inducing. I think I felt that looking at some other films - maybe Danger: Diabolik also a Bava film? But for whatever reason I wasn't put off watching this film.

>228 housefulofpaper:

I think I rather undersold Queen of Blood. I watched it again last night and 'so bad it's good' and 'daftness' was were my memory letting me down a bit—too harsh. Not great cinema, certainly, but entertaining enough and worth watching.

Couldn't find Planet of the Vampires though. I know it's here somewhere but ... I'm starting to realise the truth of the old adage about having too much choice: I bought this Roku thingee and put all these free channels on it, as well as Prime and Netflix, and now I'm rather overwhelmed; I can't remember where what is (and there are vast numbers of 'whats') and I can waste a whole evening just browsing. And a lot of these channels don't seem to have play lists where you can put stuff for later watching. So you have to remember the name of the channel and the name of the film—multiple times! And having written that, my brain is screaming, "Notebooks! Notebooks!" I have oodles of them round here—a bit of an obsession of mine. Why haven't I thought of that before now! Stone me!

>228 housefulofpaper:

I can't remember what it was about the Planet of the Vampires outside scenes that annoyed me—hence looking for it last night—but, judging by the poor quality of some of the copies of films available on the above-mentioned Roku channels, it's quite possible mine was quite inferior to the one you were writing about.

Hah! Just thought to check YouTube; you get some really lousy picture quality on there. First hit is actually a good copy (on a quick jump through). Nothing about said scenes to put my nose out of joint. Now I've had a look at them again I think I'm remembering watching a really bad copy—as if the contrast was turned up too high so that all the shadowed areas were pretty much blacked-out. I'll have a look at this one this evening with a less jaundiced eye.

>229 alaudacorax: - ... can't remember where what is ... "Notebooks!"

Last night I found a whole bunch of Gothic-looking mysteries from the '30s and '40s. Didn't note titles or channels! I need a 'slaps forehead' emoji ...

>227 alaudacorax:, >228 housefulofpaper: and so on ...

I watched Planet of the Vampires the other night, then rewatched large chunks of it last night, but I've been struggling with my thoughts on it.

I could appreciate that they achieved something special with the scenery and photography. Incidentally, I note that it was released the year before the original Star Trek series and would love to know if there was influence there.

However, I still didn't particularly like the film. One of the main problems for me was probably the multiplicity of characters, most of whom I simply couldn't keep straight in my mind. I don't think there were more than three, possibly four, who stood out as real people for me. And the main one of those was by Barry Sullivan whom I don't particularly care for. Also, I have a dislike of sci-fi where you never actually get to see the aliens—I mean the main aliens in this case, of course—we did have the remains of the 'Alien' alien.

Now I find myself in the somewhat weird position where if I were to try rating this and Queen of Blood I'd like Queen of Blood better but I'd think Planet of the Vampires the better film—the more ambitious film, certainly. Oh well ...

... and then I watched a quite interesting documentary about the dangers of insomnia and buggered-up sleep patterns and how they've reached epidemic proportions in the modern world ...

... and then woke up in front of the telly at three this morning ... yet again ...

Apparently, it's staring at these various types of screens later on in the evenings that causes the problems.

>232 alaudacorax:
True, they're not distinct individuals like the crew of the Nostromo in Alien. Partly this seems to be, for some reason, a conscious decision on the part of Bava and the writers (there are comments in the disc extras about those high-collared leather uniforms intended to have a fascistic air about them); and partly it was just how future spacemen were imagined back then.

I don't actual feel shortchanged by not seeing the aliens when it's this kind of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers/kind of demonic possession storyline. I was (I admit) scared at a young age by The Hood taking over poor old Kerano, in Sunday lunchtime repeats of Thunderbirds.

The unaired pilot episode of Star Trek was made in 1964 and a lot of the design decisions were already in place, so Planet of the Vampires couldn't have been a direct influence on the series. The two main visual influences seem to be Forbidden Planet, which is often cited as a forerunner, and the TV series The Outer Limits - I don't know if that's just because science fiction made in Hollywood in the mid-'60's will have a certain look, or if the series shared behind-the-camera personnel.

>234 housefulofpaper:

I can remember absolutely loving The Outer Limits when I was a youngster—never missed it; can't remember any of it now. I have, for some years, been meaning to rewatch Forbidden Planet though. Must get round to that soon.

In the meantime, I watched Damsel tonight. You could just about shoehorn it into the Gothic genre, somewhere on that intersection between Gothic and folk tale/fairy tale. It was entertaining enough but nothing complex or particularly original. BUT ... that opening scene where the shifty king and his guard go to destroy the dragon in its den ... I've seen it before and I absolutely cannot remember where ... and it's driving me up the wall. And there are a couple, at least, more scenes obviously borrowed from the Game of Thrones telly series.

Latest film I watched was I Vampiri which was officially directed by Riccardo Freda, but was completed by Mario Bava after Freda walked off the production.

It's a vampire film that slightly predates the start of Hammer's horror cycle, but wasn't the hit that The Curse of Frankenstein and {Horror of} Dracula were.

It's the kind of vampire where the blood and vitality is drained from young women to restore (but only temporarily!) an aged or injured person - the spectrum of which runs from Countess Dracula to any number of 1940s Bela Lugosi Mad Scientist films and The Talons of Weng Chiang.

I did already own a copy of this, it's a bonus feature on a DVD of Black Sunday, I think. But this is another restored copy on Blu-ray from a boutique label.

>235 alaudacorax:

Been looking at online reviews of Damsel and I was a bit surprised at a number of them really slagging it off. I mean, it wasn't very good, but it wasn't that bad, either.

>237 alaudacorax:

I randomly found a video essay on YouTube a few days ago.The arguement was that Netflix's business model is no longer to make good television but to make stuff just good enough to stop people switching channels or switching off, because they think people have it on as background on a second screen while doing something else on their phone. They chose Damsel as their example.

I watch You Tube (free channel) for the old movies.

>238 housefulofpaper:

Interesting. I do think that would be a good first step towards making decent films again. I remember one of the reviews I read complained Damsel was slow to get started and my reaction was, "So what? That's almost EVERY film these days!" It's my recurring impression that film-makers have lost the art of making films where the storyline keeps moving and carrying you along with it. Some hard-nosed business-man standing over them and insisting they continually concentrate on keeping fingers off remote controls might be just the thing the industry needs.

Having said that, I looked at your post again and it's the 'just good enough' (note my italics) that's the killer, isn't it? It's entertaining enough and keeps you watching, but will you remember it next week? Perhaps it's more like the grab-your-attention techniques of the adverts in the breaks than long-form, joined-up story-telling. In this case I was watching to see what would happen next WHILE thinking that there wasn't much story there. In the case of Netflix's series (serials?), there's time for my brain to catch up and realise how feeble they are and—with the honourable recent exception of Wednesday—I'm generally giving up after a couple of episodes.

Sorry, I'm thinking aloud here; this is not a rationally thought-out post and there's no real conclusions in it.

I've actually got a handful of 'stood-the-test-of-time-quality' films here to watch, so I don't know why I was watching Damsel anyway. Yes I do—Milly Bobby Brown's name seemed to keep cropping up wherever I was browsing the web, seemingly attached to a variety of different girls/young women. This was probably not the right thing to be watching her in, though she was certainly not one of the weak points of the film. She and the dragon could have a future as a double act ... they'd have given Daenerys a run for her money ... just being silly now ...

>239 mnleona:

That would certainly be cheaper than buying them on disc! The advantages of disc (as I see them) are the quality of these beautifully restored prints, and the extra features on disc and special booklets. Plus there's the knowledge that I own the discs and as long as there's a player, I should be able to watch any film in my collection whenever I want.

There used to be a point against YouTube, which was that I could only watch it on a small screen. But an upgrade to my satellite TV equipment means that now I can watch YouTube on my widescreen televison. I think I will watch Queen of Blood on YouTube.

>240 alaudacorax:

I have to confess to steering away from films that require more engagement and might take more of an emotional toll, in favour of B-movie stuff. It's lack of time as much as anything (I'm writing this at 00:50 in the morning, for Heaven's sake).

>240 alaudacorax: - ... more like the grab-your-attention techniques of the adverts in the breaks ...
On further consideration, I would have done better to say '... more like the grab-your-attention techniques of professional social media posts ...', that's where the real link is, I think.

>242 housefulofpaper:

That's sort of chiming with me, I'm becoming more and more drawn to the easy option these days. But, after all, a 90-minute, deeply thoughtful classic doesn't take any longer than 90 minutes of showy, ephemeral entertainment, so why? I'm starting to fear addiction to social media is rotting my concentration skills. I'm struggling to work out why, but I suspect that, rather than the overwhelming choice of films I mentioned up above somewhere, it has to do with watching too many short-length online videos—even quality ones (I'm aware of the irony of watching multiple YouTube videos about the negative effects of social media), all of which are becoming more and more adept at a Darwinian struggle to grab my attention. Something akin to eating a pack of biscuits full of sugar and flavour enhancers rather than sitting down to a proper meal. Or perhaps it's all down to increasing lack of willpower. And then I'm off on a loop—why have I got an increasing lack of willpower? And now I'm regretting starting this post; it's not getting anywhere. Should I delete it? I've probably posted all this before, anyway.

>244 alaudacorax:

I didn't delete it ... sorry.

Hello all, I read the above posts and on the other thread----with great interest, especially in regards to the myriad of watching options, DVD versus streaming, etc.

Well, let's start with streaming. I've only very recently begun to buy films online/streaming platforms to keep them for whenever I want to see them (using Amazon Prime). And admit that being able to access whenever I'd like to watch a film is always convenient, or when wanting to purchase a version of a movies I already own DVD or Blu-Ray. I did that when the 3-4th version of Apocalypse Now (1979) came out, and also to do 1st time purchases of Lawrence of Arabia, three Alain Delon films, the John Wick films/series, etc.

The streaming option is also probably optimal when it comes to how much space individuals have to store all the movies, albums, literature that they want to own. Not wanting to generalize, but I get it, people have less space to store. If you store, that means that you can & you've got the means to store. And many folks may not have that as an option. Is it also a generational thing ? A cultural thing ? Having lived in JP, I'd have to sell 1/2 my stuff if & when we move back there again.

But being able to purchase, say, a Criterion edition of a film, with it's extra booklets, is a joy. Except sometimes you buy a DVD, only to find out it's got a scratch, or you must remember to update your player....my PlayStation 4 may not cut it, in say another 2-3 years. Same with CDs.

As to streaming on YouTube or mirroring what you're watching on your smart phone onto your big screen T.V., um, am still learning about those. A friend sent me some Cantonese films/shows to watch on YouTube, and I'm still learning my way around it.

I was nonplussed when I spoke with my college-age son about watching options---he laughed when I told him there are just too many streaming platforms now, and I can only put up with having 3-4 (Netflix, Apple T.V., Amazon Prime), but there are 3-4 others that I could get for free/reduced prices and have just opted out.

I asked him how he can bear to watch a great movie on his smart-phone...then he tried to explain to me about using Roku (fire stick?!)....and he also described to me about "mirroring" what you're watching on your smart-phone to a T.V., etc. And watching YouTube via your gaming platform. Etc., etc.

But at least he got it when I took him to see 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) at a Cinerama movie theater....it's also about watching a great film with others, isn't it ? It was a great experience, though I admit we could only get seats that were---too close; talk about dizzying~

It's also something to consider, and I'm still waiting to see a clear answer: if you buy something via streaming, but then you discontinue the access of the streaming services (here say, Amazon Prime), how difficult is it to still view the items you've purchased electronically only ?!

Heh, well, at least it's possible to find films that are perhaps out of print/the buying sphere, and I do intend to take advantage of that, films like Soldier of Orange, etc.

Nice to have options.

Now if only I can figure out the 2-3 remotes....

>246 benbrainard8: - ... if you buy something via streaming, but then you discontinue the access of the streaming services (here say, Amazon Prime), how difficult is it to still view the items you've purchased electronically only ?!

That's a bit that sits really badly with me; I don't see why people don't regard this as, at the very least, sharp practice, if not a straight up con. I sometimes buy music on Amazon because I can transfer it to my own storage (PC or my online back-up) and it's definitely mine. So why can't you do the same with film? Instead, you pay for it—they keep it. It's as if you had to pay your local library the full price for every new book you read and then have to leave it with them only taking it out when you want to read it again and tough luck if your library falls victim to budget cuts! No way! If I really want my own copy it's a disc or nothing (who said 'piracy'!?)

Has anyone seen The Eye of the Devil, 1966? First off, great cast-- David Niven and Deborah Kerr, Donald Pleasence, Flora Robson and, as a pair of devilish siblings, David Hemmings and Sharon Tate. Gothic setting and occult goings-on in a French village, with Kerr's marquise as the lone sane person in the asylum. It reminds of The wicker man in that the vineyards need saving and for this the old, ahem, rituals are employed. Lots of striking scenes, even if the plot barely made sense to me. Great atmosphere. I'll want this in my collection.

ETA: aaaand of course Andrew has a copy... :)

>248 LolaWalser:

How have I never heard of that? That sounds right up my street. I shall watch out for that. Thanks Lola.

To me EotD is much more a foundational folk horror film than Witchfinder General - great stuff. (and yep, I got the bluray, even though it's pretty barebones)

The Eye of the Devil still seems to fly under the radar. I think I found out about it from English Gothic although Jonathan Rigby is lukewarm about the film. I recorded it from a showing on the TCM channel (which we don't have in the UK any more, although it couldn't hold a candle to the US version - it showed Westerns during the day, and the evening schedule could be relied upon to include The Glimmer Man at least once a week!).

It's been a while since I watched the film but perhaps part of the "problem" is that the film isn't consciously folk horror and (if I'm remembering correctly) goes down the "paranoid thriller" route with everybody apparently gaslighting Deborah Kerr's character.

I suppose the set up here and in The Wicker Man are quite similar, but tonally they feel different, I think because of the differences between Deborah Kerr's and Edward Woodward's characters, or rather their positions in the little societies in their respective films - outsider in a gothic mansion as against an investigating policeman. I think maybe contemporary audiences would have been inclined to categorise The Eye of the Devil with films like Rebecca or Dragonwyck (Gothics aimed primarily at a female audience) and The Wicker Man as a detective/mystery

Merry Christmas, Mithrasmas and all the other Mases!

>249 alaudacorax:

Should you be in a hurry... it's findable on YT in a subpar (720p) resolution, but good enough to give you an idea.

>250 JanPospisilCZ:

I'd agree! Blu-ray, you say... I'll have to satisfy myself with the Warner Archive POD DVD, I think...

>251 housefulofpaper:

Not sure about being folk horror consciously, was that the case with any of the earlier films? (I think the label came "after") But it's interesting that you think Kerr is the "Woodward" character, I rather think that would be, literally, her husband (Niven)! He and the men in his lineage are the sacrificial lambs. And the whole gang around them is there to ensure that the sacrifice happens.

It's true there's more castle than village in the story; however, I don't think it makes much of a difference to the nature of the story. It's still for the sake of the land that the events must unfold.

Kerr's casting brought up resonances with The innocents too. All in all, a very interesting and untypical film.

Hemmings and Tate bring so much glam. Pleasence is searingly weird as usual (WHAT sort of priestly attire was that...?)

>252 LolaWalser:
Well, no, the "Unholy Trinity" were not made as Folk Horror, but they have accidental similarities which are as much to do with when and where they were made as their subject matter - the cinematography and film stock (naturalistic or "muddy" (in English light levels) Eastmancoclor, I presume), their musical scores (small forces, jazz- and folk- influenced), a generally downbeat, '70s cynicism, Britishness, but arguably really Englishness, even in the case of The Wicker Man, given that it takes place on a fictional Scottish island (and if Doctor Who and The Loch Ness Monster can be trusted, nobody is more English than an upper-class Scotsman!)

The Eye of the Devil has that lovely crisp '60s black and white photography, is set in France rather than Britain, and I think looks back to older ways of telling its story. This is based on how I remember feeling when I watched the film, and, as I wrote earlier, that was some time ago.

The Blu-ray is listed by Amazon UK but is region-free, so presumably the same disc is available worldwide.

Now I'm confused... I wouldn't say the cinematography of The wicker man isn't crisp... or the Witchfinder General (although it's been a while since I saw that one). I also don't see what Englishness or Britishness have to do with it, or if they do, how a film chock-full of British actors behaving most Britishly somehow doesn't apply? :)

So the script says we're in France and there is talk of "vineyards", but substitute that appropriately and the same story could be set anywhere, even India or Mexico.

>250 JanPospisilCZ:

Jan, you're in Czechia? Tell us about scary Czech movies, if you please! We talked some about Valerie and her week of wonders, and Jan Svankmajer, and I loved this Czech silent film, The arrival from darkness (unfortunately not available anymore):

https://www.librarything.com/topic/320697#7200155

>254 LolaWalser:

I found a discussion on a 19-year old forum comparing Eastmancolor with Technicolor:

"{the superiority of Technicolor} is purley down to the colour spectrum that can be recorded by the 2 film system/types. We refer to this as the Colour Gamut of a film or basically the range (spectrum) of colour a film can record.

"With Technicolour the Gamut is far wider than say Eastman or most other colour films because the basic range is controlled by the pure Black and White emulsions with the colour filters in front of the camera. The std colour films have the dyes and filters built into the film and because of this they have a restrictive/interactive effect on each other during exposure which results in a smaller Gamut of colours. The manufacturers of these type of films do a pretty good job however, but there are these trade offs. Some manufacturers err towards the warmer colours giving better reds etc while others go towards the cooler side of things which gives better greens and blues.

"The whole business of colour reproduction in photgraphic film is a real science and really too complicated to go into here on the forum.

"Basically any system that has the dyes/filter layers built in (Ektachrome, Eastman, Agfa, Fuji etc) will be less faithfull than the systems where the dyes are added afterwards such as Technicolour and Kodachrome." (user Kevin Faulkner on 8mmForum.Film-tech.com).

I should have said the colours in Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man were subdued or earthy, in comparison to Technicolor stock. I wasn't really saying it as a criticism but arguing for a kind of family relationship that they don't share with The Eye of the Devil - but Mr Faulkner says Easmancolor is, technically, an inferior medium.

Possibly it's down to the degraded prints that used to be used for TV transmissions and VHS tapes, but it does seem to me that 1960s black and white films could be astonishingly sharp - almost as if shot on the type of film that can go into the ultra violet.

So all I was saying is that the black and white film looks different from the colour films. A trivial point, but it's one of the things apart from the story that tied the three films together in critical hindsight.

Britishness...well. Maybe you've just exposed a naivety in my film viewing: if a British production states that it takes place overseas and the characters are non-Brits, I'll go along with it (IMDb says David Niven's mother was French, though).

Frazer's The Golden Bough is at the back of the story this film tells, isn't it, as it is at the back of The Wicker Man. I understand that the idea that it's scapegoat/dying god idea having universal application has been disproved, so does that make it a modern British myth?

Alright, these excuses are getting a bit desparate. I would say that intially Folk Horror was seen as a British thing, based on the three films, but has had a much looser set of identifying traits and a much wider application subsequently. Even to what looks to me to be a 180 degree turn - from typically a modern but indigenous person experiencing a traumatic encounter with the repressed past (e.g. English city-dweller comes to grief courtesy of pagan survivals in the countryside) - estrangement being the key; to a coloniser's fear of what may be surviving in the land they've taken over, and maybe guilt about how the land was obtained (e.g. "the house is built on a native American burial ground"). Oh, and a third type - a straightforward telling of a folktale - no estrangement, no invader.

>255 LolaWalser: Yes, I'm from Czechia. We're not much for horror films, I'm afraid. I think Valerie is the most commonly discussed in the west and there are only a few others as well known.

One that I've seen called "gothic" would be 1978's "Panna a Netvor", which is a Czechoslovak adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. I've not seen it for a long time, all I remember is that the Beast is birdlike and actually quite scary looking.
https://letterboxd.com/film/beauty-and-the-beast-1978/


From the same director, Juraj Herz and a year later comes another fairytale (I feel like a lot of horror made in these parts was disguised as fairytales - which is topical right now, it's traditional to watch reruns of many fairytales on TV during Christmas) - "The Ninth Heart":
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-ninth-heart/


Both have been released on bluray, first by Second Run and the latter on Severin's folk horror box set n.2, quite recently.
(Herz is otherwise, I think, most famous for "The Cremator" and perhaps "Morgiana", neither of which I've seen unfortunately.)

While I try to think of more scary films, I'll leave you with a third (very cautious) possible recommendation - "Vandronik" a Czech/German/Italian coproduction from 1990. (in Czech it's "Jan's Mysterious Friend")
https://letterboxd.com/film/o-janovi-a-podivuhodnem-priteli/

Unsurprisingly it's a fairytale made for TV, but darker than usual. I've not rewatched it since I was little, so I'm sure its budget shows and the acting isn't amazing. But at the time I found it pretty scary.
I remember quite amazing set and costume design, good music and a chilling ending - if I were to paraphrase it: Imagine if the Lord of the Rings ended with evil defeated and Frodo decides to give Gandalf the One Ring. Gandalf takes it, puts it on and is revealed to be one of the Nazgul. It's a bit like that.
Also it was shot at a castle near where I live, that's always nice.
(as for availability - it's on Youtube and Opensubtitles.org has English subs that should fit.)



Which actually reminds me - since we're also talking witches and witch-hunting - a film to consider might be 1970's "Witch Hammer".
https://letterboxd.com/film/witchhammer/
Funnily enough, it's about witch trials that really took place in the area where I live and I remember it being quite historically accurate according to the trial documents I've read. Quite horrific actually, not the more pulpy direction of Witchfinder General.

>258 JanPospisilCZ: - I think Valerie is the most commonly discussed in the west ...

Hi Jan. I wonder if you can answer a question that's been niggling at me for years. Is there any significance to the lyrics of the choral piece that keeps getting sung in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders? My copy's subtitles don't extend to the singing and I've wondered about it every time I've watched it.

>259 alaudacorax: I'm going to have to rewatch for that, I can't remember.

post Merry Christmas to you all, and Happy New Year's coming up.

I'm going to see if I can rent and stream The Eye of the Devil and The Innocents (1961).

Watched a few movies recently:

John Carpenter's, The Fog (1980), a jump scare movie that has its moments,
a Hammer film called Demons of the Mind, which I can honestly say...I just didn't really get,
a very uncomfortable movie to watch night before Christmas, Alien Romulus which is just so-so----go back and watch the original films if you wanna be genuinely frightened.

I've made it through page 165+ of Uncle Silas and so far am enjoying it.

>256 housefulofpaper:

I guess I'm so used to watching b & w movies, I don't really perceive them as different in the sense that I'd exclude them from the company of colour films when it comes to genre. Like, Whistle and I'll come to you, or Robin Redbreast are seen as "folk horror", no? Anyway, I'm not a great stickler for labels. Something about The eye of the devil just resonates in that direction for me.

>258 JanPospisilCZ:

Thank you very much! I have Second Run's edition of Morgiana (haven't watched it yet) and Panna a netvor, as well as Witchhammer are on my wishlist. I'm noting The ninth heart and Vandronik, which sounds great. I know Czech fairy tale movies were very popular in Germany (East but also West). As a kid I loved the Czech cartoon about two bumbling guys who'd turn the simplest task into a nightmare. In Britain it was called "Pat and Mike". Speaking of cartoons--or animation--I can't resist linking again to Karel Zeman's gorgeous Inspiration:

https://youtu.be/R_E6Sr84AA4?si=0GpUA_2j3aHRmR3o

I hope the marvellous Czech tradition of visual arts is going strong!

>261 benbrainard8:

Hi, Ben, if you can put up with less than optimal versions, both films are on YT--The innocents actually in a good quality, IIRC.

>262 LolaWalser: I watched Eye of the Devil on Amazon and The Innocents (1961), on YT, last night and enjoyed both films. I don't find them being B & W much different than being in color. Was really surprised at the actors I knew in Eye of the Devil, like David Niven, Sharon Tate, and Deborah Kerr. Both movies are fairly cleverly written, too.

Am finding Uncle Silas to read faster than I thought it would. Portions of remind me of other books, too , Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, perhaps ?

>258 JanPospisilCZ:
I have Witch Hammer on Severin Films' first Folk Horror box set. It's a very good film, but serious; most of my viewing has been light if not downright trashy. I suppose it's a truism that a good historical film contains universal truths that transcend the specific events it portrays. It does seem very uncomfortably relevant to current world events.

>261 benbrainard8:
I have Demons of the Mind in a Hammer Films Box Set, but I haven't seen it yet.

>262 LolaWalser:
I don't know if I can explain what I was trying to say any more coherently - if I can, I will probably at the weekend. Or, I might just have to give it up as a bad job.

Changing the subject, I had never heard of Pat and Mat. Wikipedia suggests that it wouldn't have been possible until 2003 when it was bought by Fox Kids Europe.

I remember The Mole being on British TV in the 1970s, and the work of animators who fled to the UK after the events of 1968, from animated inserts for Vision On (a programme for deaf children that also launched the people behind Ardman Animation, and had early roles for Sylvester McCoy too (when he was Sylveste McCoy), to Ludwig (a faceted metal or crystal egg that extruded mechanical arms, etc, Inspector Gadget-style), to Pigeon Street, a kind of pre-school soap (Coronation Street, not Dynasty!).

>263 benbrainard8:
I think I read a theory in one of the publications from Swan River Press, that the Brontë sisters (whose father was an Irish Anglican minister) probably read the magazine (The Dublin University Magazine?) that printed Le Fanu's stories - stories that include some plot points later seen in the Brontës' novels, and some that Le Fanu himself re-used in Uncle Silas.

I managed to watch a couple of films over Christmas.

I got hold of Indicator Films' box set of "Columbia Horror" just before Christmas and so far have watched Behind the Mask (1932 - although the commentary suggests we have a sanitised post-Production Code reissue). Not remotely a horror film, it's about a BOF man (an FBI man before the organization became the FBI, apparently) trying to track down drug smugglers with the apparent reach and ingenuity of a Mabuse or Fu Manchu. Pulpy two-fisted action. Boris Karloff has a role as a gangster (this was made before Frankenstein but released afterwards, and Karloff gets deceptively high billing and his face looming over the actual stars on the poster). These "horror" films may prove to be a mixed bag, as Columbia never really had a reputation for horror films per se.

I also watched I Walked With a Zombie on the recent Criterion Blu-ray. Strange that the script is by Robert Siodmak, who cranked out an awful lot of horror scripts for Universal in the '40s and for smaller studos into the '50s, given Val Lewton's reputation for restraint and a literary air about his fims. The explicitly Christian closing voiceover really hurts the film, given its careful handling of the subject of voodoo - explaining its apparent efficacy in naturalistic terms early on in the film, then slowly bringing in an increasing element of doubt up to the apparently supernatural climax.

I cant link to the discussions on the forum i stopped visting, but it was Brits who shared their childhood memories of Czech and Polish cartoons, including the two bumbling chaps. This article confirms Czech presence ( as a STAPLE no less) in British children's programming in the 1970s:

Where to begin with Czech animation (July 2024)

>265 LolaWalser:
I'd have to go through all the Radio Times listings (still) up on the BBC Genome website to confirm my suspicion, but based on my own memories I think that BFI article is overstating the case somewhat.

What a look at the listings for the first couple of weeks shows is that the BBC bought in a lot of European and Soviet children's programming. I spotted an East German (based on a credit for an actor with a Wikipedia entry) version of Fenimoore Cooper, a Russian film (English narration by explorer Duncan Carse), and Hector's House (La Maison de Toutou).

As the BBC didn't carry adverts, US program(me)s left gaps in the schedule which tended to be filled with a Tom and Jerry cartoon - not in the children's television slot, but after the evening news magazine programme).

Moving into the late '70s/early '80s, European cartoons were either scheduled as filler (e.g. mornings in the school holidays - because both BBC and ITV would show programmes for schools for chunks of the morning and afternoon during term time and I guess that programming was subsidised, so school holidays hurt their budgets); or where shown on BBC2 or C4 in the evening or later with suitably intellectual credentials (along with stuff from the National Film Board of Canada and a bit of a Tex Avery cult).

I went to see Robert Eggers 'new version of Nosferatu this afternoon.

I don't know what to say about it though - the basic story is familiar from the 1922 and 1979 versions, and Dracula of course, so just discussing what Eggers retained from the previous fillms, if anything was brought back into the story from the novel, did he bring anything new to the story - would constitute the spoilers.

Most of the online speculation before the film's release was concerned with the look of Bill Skarsgård's version of Count Orlock. I think the cat's out of the bag with that one, he looks like an animated, but still rotting, corpse with the big moustache familiar from the portrait of Vlad Tepes.

I think Werner Herzog's version is still the one with its hooks deepest in me, despite Max Schreck's make-up design and perfornance being the original and genuinely iconic. As well as seeing it at a more impressionable age (and it was also one of my first horror films), the Herzog version has an almost documentrary feel for much of the time (a function of its low budget or of Herzog's method of filming the thing for real? - e.g. Fitzcarraldo: a film about dragging a steam ship over a mountain, made by dragging a steamship over a mountain).

I'm seeing a lot more discussion on Nosferatu online. I suppose a lot of people had to wait until the weekend to see it. It's got a mixed reception.

There has indeed been a lot more online discussion of the film. Without wanting to sound superior, the criticisms of the film strike me as not taking account of the source material being Stoker's novel and Murnau's film - funnily enough this means some people think it's not romantic enough (I think I've mentioned before how the Dracula story and the Phanton of the Opera story both seem to be morphing over time into versions of Beauty and the Beast...a Dracula attraction in Whitby proudly used "Love Never Dies" to advertise it. Love Never Dies of course is the title of the sequel to the Phantom musical).

Others (ignoring the Ellen/Nosferatu psychic link that's so important to this version of the story) complain about the romance plot always illegitimately being brought into this story.

There was also initial complaints about the design of Count Orlok deviating from the bald, rat-toothed Max Shreck template but once people had a chance to actually see the film, the responses have been positive.

The 1922 film has a dark fairy-tale atmosphere which is in part because it's set in 1830s Germany and the plague element, for me at least, can't help but bring the story of the Pied Piper to mind; but in fact this is owed to the film maker's deep interest in the Occult.

Egger's film pays due respect to this strand and seems to me to provide the best explanation of why the Count takes an interest in Helen (the Mina substitute in this version of the story). It's that sense that there's a danger of somehow attracting the attention of Dark Forces. The whole macguffin (to use Hitchcock's term) of the Count buying a property abroad is given a novel justification.

Some things I didn't spot on watching the film, but various commentaries of promotional pieces have made me aware of - the use of and meaning of lilacs in the film (although the person who explained this, also complained that lilacs would not be in bloom at the time of year in which the film is set); Orlok is - as is Dracula in the novel - a sorcerer, and some of his dialogue is magical spells spoken in reconstructed Dacian.

Apparently I've made a lucky purchase. I watched an upload by The Outlaw Bookseller (Stephen E. Andrews) on YouTube today and he talked about Nigel Kneale, at one point producing his DVD of The Stone Tape. He then said that there's a new Blu-ray release but there are only 500 copies, and it's been sold out months in advance, so he had no chance of getting a copy.

I picked a copy up off the shelves in HMV last week.

>270 housefulofpaper:

It's on Amazon (UK) for £49!

>270 housefulofpaper:

Actually, my first thought was, "I thought HMV went bust years ago." Looking them up online I find that not only are they still around but there's one in town that I must have walked past hundreds of times. Absolutely no memory of it!

>267 housefulofpaper: I've been reading above with great interest, and though I've not yet seen the new version "Nosferatu" yet, perhaps it's a reaction against the "safe Vampire" trend.

You know, Twilight versus Nosferatu. heh.

Vampires are supposed to be...scary, yeh ?!?!

>271 alaudacorax:
If there are any more out in the wild they're priced at £24.99!

>274 housefulofpaper:

Yeah ... always someone trying to make a quick profit on limited editions.

I'm always slightly puzzled as to whether Rider Haggard's stuff is Gothic or not. She seems to be regarded as such, among other things, so anyway ... I watched the 1935 She last night (can't work out how to put two touchstones with identical titles in one post so I've linked to the IMDb page). As far as I can remember, this is a new discovery for me—I'm sure I didn't know it existed until a couple of evenings ago.

I always think that calling something 'interesting' or, worse, 'very interesting', is 'damning with faint praise'; but 'very interesting' is the most accurate I can say for this one at the moment. 'Bemused' is another good word. It's probably not a very good film, but there are so many fascinating things about it:

Once they've got to Her (I refuse to write 'She's') palace there is so much that has you wondering where you've seen it before, where they may have taken it from or what they may have influenced. You wouldn't need Wikipedia to tell you that the wicked queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a straight steal from this film. I've got to watch it again to think about the architecture alone. There's art deco stuff that could be in a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie, but with other stuff stuck on and weirdly unbalanced, visually. I've got to mention the dance scene—sorry, I meant the human sacrifice ceremony. Coincidentally, I'd watched the Baryshnikov, '77, television film of The Nutcracker the previous night. I could clearly see touches of the choreography from that. From what I can make out of Wikipedia, a lot of the familiar Nutcracker choreography was first shown in the west in '35 when this film was being made. The two things couldn't be more different but someone took dance moves from 'The Nutcracker' and put them in a human sacrifice scene! Anyway, the whole thing was jaw-dropping and whether it fit well into the film or not I really can't say at the moment.

You could puzzle all day over why they set it in the Arctic. According to Wikipedia, this was to facilitate changing the novel's African Ustane to a white Tanya to avoid falling fout foul of the Hays Code's rules against miscegenation, but I don't buy it. They could as easily have had Leo and Holly find Tanya and her father in Africa. But it's one more interesting story around the film. And it was made produced by Merian C. Cooper who did the original King Kong, and that shows a little.

Anyway, I don't know if I can recommend it as a good film or not, but I certainly recommend it as a fascinating curiosity.

Oh, one last thing: I'm pretty sure whoever did the music for the '65 Hammer version based it on Max Steiner's music for this. In fact, I'd really like to watch the two films in tandem.

>276 alaudacorax:

Forgot to say that I watched the version colourised by Ray Harryhausen. I suspect the original black and white would have less impact, but I don't really know.

Also, because of cost cuts Cooper had to abandon a scene where the expedition was attacked by mammoths. I reckon that's a tragic loss—I'd love to have seen that ...

>277 alaudacorax:

Perhaps the mammoths were why they set it in the Arctic ...

>276 alaudacorax:

And then there was Nigel Bruce almost in Dr. Watson mode as Holly. That's a puzzler because if you can swallow Peter Cushing as Holly in the '65 version you can't complain about Nigel Bruce. It's probably better if you haven't read the novel ...

>279 alaudacorax:

Does anyone still smoke a pipe? Haven't seen it in the flesh for years and years.

My daughter bought something and we had to go to the man's house. He was outside waiting as he knew we were coming.The man had a white beard, white hair, and was smoking a pipe. He is Santa during the Holidays. I told him I liked Santa with a pipe and he said there were very few left. I do not really care about smoking but he made the picture. He was also a very pleasant man.

>281 mnleona:

Watson—sorry, Holly—was over and over again either lighting up or puffing.

>280 alaudacorax:
I've been thinking about this and no, I haven't seen anyone smoking a pipe for a long time. Maybe it was even last century. I haven't seen any cigar smokers either.

There is a tobacconist's in a shopping arcade we have in Reading, but much of their window display is expensive gin and whisky.

>276 alaudacorax: and so on ...

Curse of the Kindle strikes yet again. Bought a Complete Works of H. Rider Haggard 'not long ago' but hadn't got round to reading anything until a few nights ago. Turns out 'not long ago' was November 2012!

Anyway, loved Rider Haggard when I was kid but I was braced to be disappointed reading She over the last few evenings. Youthful favourites have a way of turning out not as you remember them. It was actually pretty good stuff, excellent entertainment rather than great literature, but a genuine page-turner. Wikipedia says it's never been out of print and I can see why. I'm surprised there have not been more film versions (though there are three or four silent versions I mean to hunt for).

So far the only Rider Haggard I've read is King Solomon's Mines. It's a Puffin (Penguin's children's imprint) so it has some scratchy mid-20th Century ink illustrations.

I finished watching the British Film Institute Blu-ray of Vincent Price's 1971 cookery series Cooking Price-Wise. A very basic and cheaply-made series, three recipes done more-or-less "as live" in a tiny studio kitchen set (as you can see in the clip below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Tsk4fNh_dg

Lots of extras including commentaries, new interviews/documentaries, and short films from the BFI's archive - some wartime films extolling porrige, potatoes, and so on (the star here being a surreal piece on vegetable pie directed by Len Lye) and one from the 1970s promoting Travellers' Fare (the then-nationalised catering service on the then-nationalised British Rail, promoted with a York to London King's Cross trip in pre-British Rail luxury dining cars).

Watched The Autopsy of Jane Doe last night.

An old-fashioned, straightforward horror film with lots of tension and scares and no clumsy self-reference or irony, and that moved along at a decent pace; and it had quite a fresh storyline for a fairly modern film—2016—at least I personally can't think of anything along quite the same lines. Though, on the last point, it might have borrowed a slight detail from 2014's Penny Dreadful (or they both may have got it from somewhere else that I'm unaware of).

I was impressed and gave it seven stars on IMDb.

Afterthought: dinner on a tray in front of the film may not have been my best idea ever; but I managed to get through both. Probably helps if you're not vegetarian or vegan.

I also watched Unknown: Cave of Bones (no touchstone so I've linked the IMDb page).

Okay, this one is a bit off-topic, I know, but it was one of those things that often has me thinking it might prove the basis of a good horror or weird tale. To be honest, I thought it absolutely fascinating subject matter but not a very good documentary; I only gave it five stars on IMDb. I suspect a lot has to do with the producers or directors or whoever being more interested in making an exciting documentary than telling you the meat and bones of the story.

Anyway, the documentary's narrative is that you have these creatures (homo naledi) who are markedly different to homo sapiens, walking upright like us but better adapted for climbing in trees and rocks, carrying their dead deep underground through a quite tortuous cave system for burial 300,000 years ago. One part of the journey was a narrow, eighteen-metre (if I remember correctly), vertical shaft. They must have used fire in some shape or form for light. They seem to have used primitive hand axes and one child was buried with one in his hand. So, highly intelligent creatures but not very closely related to us and not, if I understood correctly, in our ancestry.

I'm fascinated in the subject for its own sake, but, of course, part of my mind is wondering about the age of our stories of dwarfs and elves and goblins and so forth and another part is wandering off to some of Machin's stories and wondering what he might have made of it. Lovecraft is another name that crops up.

>287 alaudacorax:, >288 alaudacorax:

With hindsight, I should have watched the documentary first with my dinner and then the film. The clue was there in the title—'autopsy'—after all ...

>288 alaudacorax:

Looking over that post, I'm getting an unsettling attack of déjà vu. Apologies if I written that or something similar in the past.

>288 alaudacorax: - ... and not, if I understood correctly, in our ancestry.

May have misunderstood, there. Don't quote me.

>291 alaudacorax:

That's my understanding as well. I think the majority (most?) of the hominid fossil finds are of "cousins" of homo sapiens rather than of direct ancestors.

Although I haven't seen Cave of Bones I had been aware of the homo naledi findings from the - what to call it? The "anti-anti science" part of YouTube, perhaps. You reminded me that I'd watched this a few months ago. I get the impression that it's a lot more rigorous than the documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7QLLJuxup4&t=688s

>292 housefulofpaper: - The "anti-anti science" part ...

It's facebook that drives me up the wall. I have facebook and YouTube in separate, Firefox containers—they should be completely isolated from each other. Yet my feed on facebook, first of all, seems to closely reflect what I've been watching on YouTube and, secondly, seems to be out of all proportion infested with Creationists, moon landing deniers, flat earthers and general anti-science dickheads ... I mean, I suspect a lot of them are trolls, but, then again, a lot of them seem to be trolling to such an extent as to suggest mental instability.

I should have the will-power to stick to friends and family posts, of course ...

The latest couple of things flooding in are idiots obsessing that everything they don't understand is AI (and the amount of AI-generated crap I actually do get doesn't help) and—in the last few weeks and for reasons I'm completely at a loss to work out—hunt saboteurs' videos.

Sorry about that but I have to vent somewhere and the friends and family are probably sick of hearing me ...

>293 alaudacorax:

Obviously, if at least 50% of all archaeology, history or whatever postings on facebook are rubbish (and 50% is almost certainly a conservative estimate), it makes sense to cut your losses and never click on such stuff on that particular website. I suppose I'm just a sucker for clickbait.

Honestly, I DO try to be 'Last of the Summer Wine' rather than 'Grumpy Old Men', but the last couple of posts reminded me that I hadn't checked-in on facebook this morning, so I nipped over and ...

... first up was a bigfoot post ...

>295 alaudacorax:

... and, okay, it was very blurry, but the 'creature' was clearly wearing a tee-shirt ... I did NOT click on it ..

Wasn't sure where to post this, but there's a video involved, so ...

Over the last couple of days I've come across this by YouTuber 'Outlaw Bookseller' - The Greatest Gothic Horror Writer You've Never Heard Of

Charles Brockden Brown was the first new-to-me author brought to my attention when I first joined the 'Gothic Literature' group all those years ago. And he has a page in Punter and Byron's The Gothic, a book I've used as a 'bible' for years, and that mentions his influence on Mary Shelley when she was writing Frankenstein; so I really should have remembered him if only for that alone. Yet I'd completely forgotten about him and completely failed to take on board his influence on so many other writers.

Now, I'm not currently qualified to judge 'Outlaw Bookseller''s post—never read Brockden Brown and I'm fairly sure I've never read anything about him other than the P&B page mentioned—but his implication seems to me that Brockden Brown is, or should be regarded as, one of the towering figures in the history of Gothic literature. Any thoughts on this? Also, I'm starting to ponder whether literary studies in general—including by US academics—don't show a little unconscious anti-American bias (as regards earlier authors, I mean, rather than contemporaries or near-contemporaries).

>297 alaudacorax:

I've read one short story by Charles Brockden Brown. Editor Peter Straub kicks off American Fantastic Tales with "Somnambulism: A Fragment" but that was well over 10 years ago and I can't recall anything about it.

I've got the Oxford World's Classics edition of Wieland; or the Transformation and Memoirs of Carwin, The Biloquist but it's yet another book in the TPR pile.

I have been aware of Brockden Brown for a long time. He gets some mentions in The New Pelican Guide to English Literature (Touchstone to volume 9 - American Literature).

"Once the overriding pressure towards unity which characterizes the political documents of the Revolution subsided, other voices surfaced, not in dialogue or debate, but dangerously, as repressed opposition"...

..."The most important novelist of the immediate post-Revolutionary period, Charles Brockden Brown, embodied these contradictions in powerful, inconclusive fictions which had a strong effect on the imagination of Hawthorne, Melville and Poe."...

..."Early American fiction discovers that it cannot get away with recognizing only some truths about human nature. It is a short step from here to the terrified fascinations of Poe's narrators with the power of the senses to invade and control reason, and his piling up of 'facts' which 'on horror's head horrors accumulate'; or to Melville's Ahab, in who the rational mind tussles with the lurid imaginings which lie just beneath and which threaten always to pierce its surface; or Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, whose mind, when deprived of society, ventures too far into the forest and flirts with the sprctres of the wilderness."

-From chapter "Literature and Society in Colonial America" by Susan Manning.

Also, I'm starting to ponder whether literary studies in general—including by US academics—don't show a little unconscious anti-American bias (as regards earlier authors, I mean, rather than contemporaries or near-contemporaries)..

There was that feeling even among some American writers, wasn't there? There's the Henry James story, for one, where the narrator (a stand-in for James) encounters a strange kind of phantom: the vigorous but coarsened man he would have been if he had never left the States for the Old World.

I've possibly been suffering from FOMO lately. Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' films and the Harry Potter films: I so often come across references to them, quotes from, not to mention clips on my facebook and YouTube feeds, that they seem to have become an integral part of the zeitgeist. I've been feeling there's something missing in my make-up in never having seen either (though I have in the past read The Lord of the Rings a number of times). So I put the first film of each on top of my CinemaParadiso wish list.

Umm ... a bit of a rueful aside, here: I'll admit that part of my motivation for the Harry Potter films was me thinking that if I watched them I could at least hold my end up in conversations without having to read the books (I suspect that's what a lot of people do). Then when I hunted up the films I found there were eight of them! I could have another go at The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in that length of time!

Anyway, and I'm not hundred percent sure it counts as Gothic screen, but that preamble is how I came to be watching the first 'Lord of the Rings' film this evening.

I made it through one and a half discs. Oh ye gods! It was so portentous and, in a lot of places, so reverential of the book. It was almost as if they were handing down some sacred text. Had me thinking of The Greatest Story Ever Told. 'Heavy-handed' kept popping into my mind. In spite of the admittedly impressive spectacle and special effects I simply didn't have the patience for any more.

Oh well, I gave it a shot—at least I have read the book. Now, what the hell am I to do about Harry Potter? Rhetorical question. My niece tells me I would probably find them 'too young' for me. Don't know whether to take that as a challenge or an excuse ...

The best thing that can be said about the Potter films is that they feature many of the fine British actors. So if one enjoys just recognising those people, more or less regardless of the pap they might be spouting, I'd say go for it. Off the top of my head, there can't be too many titles bringing together Fiona Shaw, Richard Griffiths, Richard Harris, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane etc. But the movies were otherwise a chore for me (I was the designated chaperone for a friend's kids through much of the series).

We enjoy watching the Potter films 1-4 (sometime pop in the 5th one) every Christmas time. It's still our favorite holiday film, though our son is now off on his own at university.

And on June, yr. 2019 trip, we greatly enjoyed visiting Oxford and getting a private tour from one of my fellow co-workers who was studying at the time for his MS/PhD in surgical research. It was a lot of fun to see some of the areas where they'd filmed.

The acting in those first films, is a joy to watch. I'd never heard of some of the actors prior to seeing the films, e.g. Robbie Coltrane.

Being the reader I am, the The Bodleian Libraries are what really blew my mind... wow. What a wonderous place the entire locale is.

I watched The Fellowship of the Ring in the cinema, so it was inevitably a better viewing experience than even on a decent set-up at home. Even so I didn't bother with the rest of the trilogy. I suppose I have to confess to being fairly lukewarm about Tolkien - I enjoyed the Radio 4 adaptation back in 1981 and read the book around the same time (I actually had it in the three Ballantine paperbacks, bought on my one-and-only trip to the States. Finished the novel on the day of Charles and Di's wedding, there being not much of interest on TV to distract me...).

Bits of the Harry Potter films have popped up on my TV over the years but I've never set through a whole one and I've never read the books. Even though at least one niece is or was a massive fan, I don't feel that I've missed out or I need to have a grasp of the Potter universe to hold a conversation with her. Actually I get the impression that the books are perfectly fine for what they are, but not actually anything special. There was a very Potterish character in a spin-off from The Sandman comic book. Terrance Dicks, who had script-edited Doctor Who for the first half of the 1970s and via novelisations and created a second career for himself as a children's author, had a series about a school for magical children and (half in jest, not doubt) wondered why his series hadn't taken off when J K Rowling's had gone off like a rocket. Not just sour grapes...I remember a piece in the TLS looking at the books and, again, really asking what the fuss is about. One thing they noted was that there was nothing like Tolkien's care about the language. There were two invented words that were very similar. Surely this signals some deep connection between the things signified that will play out in a subtle and clever way as the saga progresses...no. There's nothing to connect them.

I might, with a little trepidation, offer the BBC miniseries of Gormenghast, from 2000, as another film series with an impressive cast. The design choices were not universally applauded (the fact that Peake spent some time - in childhood, I think? in China was used to justify a much brighter, more colourful, Gormenghast than is usually imagined. But you've got Christopher Lee, Richard Griffiths (again), Fiona Shaw, etc. in the cast.

Talking of adaptations of classic children's fantasy literature, but sadly an unmade one, I learned recently - I think it was an old thing uploaded to YouTube that I'd stumbled across, about a year Michael Powell spent teaching at an American University - that in the 1970s he had attempted to film Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy.

Have we really never discussed Frankenstein: The True Story here or is it some current quirk of LibraryThing that I can find no mention of it at all in 'Talk'.

>304 alaudacorax:

It seems to have been a TV movie but it has such a noteworthy cast list (not to mention Christopher Isherwood in the writing credits) you'd think it would be bound to attract attention here. And I'm sure I have vague stirrings deep in the back of my memory—well, 'sure' is the wrong word but ... and I'm sure you can't be 'vaguely sure' ... at least I'm vaguely sure you can't ...

Anyway, I'm going to watch it tonight. I shall report back. Or go to sleep ...

>304 alaudacorax:
>305 alaudacorax:

BBC Genome gives 1975 as the first time it was shown on BBC television, but wouldn't have been able to see it. then. Nevertheless I think TV listings and previews of "what's on BBC1 this evening" must have been enough to make me aware of it. And the title sowed the seed of a fearful doubt - was Frankenstein real? (this was also around the time when the book identifying Count Dracula with Vlad the Impaler was published, leading to media stories making me wonder was Dracula real? And the Nationwide report on the Hexham heads making me think werewolves were real...)

Later on I made an off-air VHS recording of a '90s showing but I never got around to watching it. Your post has prompted me to finally watch the Blu-ray that come out in 2023. I won't be able to watch it all in one sitting, but after fifty years I've made a start. Already there are some striking divergences from Mary Shelley's book.

>306 housefulofpaper:

Yup ... fell asleep. The drugs are playing hell with me at the moment (well, that sounds way cooler than saying the medications' side-effects are currently keeping me out of bed at nights). Didn't even get to put the DVD in the player: one minute I'm sitting there wondering whether I should eat an evening meal or not, the next it's four-o-clock in the morning.

Actually, until reading your post I'd quite failed to take on board that it lasts for over three hours. Unless it's neatly divided into episodes, I shall have to remember to start watching early..

I watched Jess Franco's She Killed in Ecstacy tonight.

First of all, I take issue with Amazon Prime depicting it as his follow-up to Vampyros Lesbos. Only to the extent that it was the next film he made—there's really no connection as far as plot or characters go.

I was a little confused about the language. IMDb has it as a Spanish-German production and the version I watched was in German and IMDb has the original title as being in German. The opening scenes hinted a little at the Frankenstein films and when the medical establishment was persecuting and disbarring the Frankenstein figure, the chap doing the bulk of the haranguing seemed to be an allusion to Hitler in full rant. I'm not sure this would have been apparent if the film was originally released with Spanish dialogue, though, and the German dialogue was clearly dubbed, so it probably wasn't intentional. I did half-hope, though, that this possible Hitler allusion was a hint that the film was going somewhere and Franco had something to say. This did not materialise—there was really no depth and nothing much to it: some nudity, as you'd expect from a Franco film; some quite intriguing filming locations—both architecture and scenery; and that was about it. In fact, the little blurb given on IMDb and Amazon covers the whole of the plot, what there was of it. Even the nudity wasn't particularly exciting: nothing to compare with Lina Romay appearing out of the mist in whatever film that was.

>308 alaudacorax:

I haven't seen this one yet although I'm sure I've got a copy on DVD.

I looked at the film's write up by Stephen Thrower in the massive Murderous Passions. His opinion is that star Soledad Miranda "does more than compensate for the film's flaws; she renders then irrelevant. It's such a driven, passionate performance that you really can't take your eyes off her."

The location, by the way, is a modernist housing complex called La Manzanera.

Weird thing ... I could have sworn I'd seen Errementari discussed here, but searches are throwing up nothing. So now I don't know where I heard of it. Anyway, just finished watching it.

Difficult to categorise this one: somewhere between Gothic Horror and Folk Horror and Fantasy with what I can best describe, though not very accurately, as a very darkly comic tone to it—not so much trying to scare the wotsits off the viewer as to regularly give them a grimly knowing dig in the ribs.

Set in a nineteenth-century Basque country ground down by civil wars the whole thing looked grubby and impoverished, so it's a bit paradoxical of me to say the film looked really great, but I thought it did—tremendously atmospheric. Talking of paradoxical, there is this odd set-up where you feel the menace of too much superstition and fundamentalist religion but quickly realise that, in the world of the film, they are actually true. I'm left unsure whether I'm supposed to suspend disbelief and take the plot at face value or see it as mocking certain religious beliefs.

Anyway, I thought it one of the most interesting and unusual films I've seen in recent months and—more paradox—a really dark story that was really good fun. I liked it enough to give it seven out of ten stars on IMDb.

ETA - the proper English title should be Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil but that doesn't trigger a touchstone.

>310 alaudacorax:

I actually had a sentence in there about the film echoing the knowingness of some horror films of a hundred years or more ago. I was thinking of Haxan and some films I've seen recently on the Faust legend and Dante's Inferno. Then, though, I began to wonder if they were actually quite scary to the innocent eye of the viewer of the time and the knowingness coming from our modern-day cynicism; so I took the line out. I do think, though, that the film-maker was giving the occasional nod back to those old films.

>310 alaudacorax:
This was new to me. It sounds interesting. I looked on Amazon but became distracted by a nasty completist urge regarding versions of Dracula. I got them cheaper in HMV earlier today actually, and hope to report "in due course".

>311 alaudacorax:
Maybe not so much innocent as allowing themselves to be caught up in the story? A mixture of willing suspension of disbelief and being part of a communal activity (i.e. as a member of an audience) - I think this holds definitely true for comedies (casting my mind back decades to a showing of The Blues Brothers in a London cinema, and of one of the Top Gun movies). I read a book about the Dracula stage play and the Bela Lugosi film version, and there was certainly a degree of knowingness, if not outright tired cynicism, in some of the contemporary media coverage.

I also came across an observation by William St Clair, quoted by John Bowen (presumably not the writer of Robin Redbreast) in his chapter on "Charles Dickens and the Gothic" in The Cambridge History of the Gothic: "In his writing, as in the popular theatrical culture in which he was saturated, there was"..."'a general muddling of gothic, of horror, and of laughs'". I think that could easily be projected back to the 18th Century - it certainly would apply to Beckford and "Monk" Lewis - as easily as to the popular cinema of the early years of the 20th Century.

>312 housefulofpaper:

Okay, I don't regard myself as a particularly 'woke' person, but if you put 'Errementari' in IMDb's search box the second hit that comes up is 'Elementary' and that strikes me as a bit racist ...

>312 housefulofpaper: - ... a degree of knowingness, if not outright tired cynicism, in some of the contemporary media coverage.

You have to factor-in a degree of classism, too; I can't speak with certainty on the '30s, when Dracula came out, but in the '50s, in my childhood, as far as the intelligentsia was concerned horror (and sci-fi and probably fantasy) was beyond the pale ... entertainment for the 'unwashed masses' and not to be taken seriously. That was the impression I got from teachers, clerics and so forth, anyway.

I saw a Facebook comment a few days ago that made me smile. It was along the lines of "Dracula is like Pride and Prejudice for dudes: there's always another adaptation in progress".

I've finished watching the 2013 TV version starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, which was cancelled after one season. The basic plot is retained, and the action still takes place in London at the end of the 19th century, but a lot of new elements have been added. The Order of the Dragon is still going, and is a secret society along the lines of the Freemasons (or perhaps the conspiracy theories about the Freemasons). They are, from what we see, identical with the British upper classes. They also have cornered the oil markets and look forward to becoming obscenely wealthy in the new century. Dracula's assault on the British Empire and on the Order (who, in this telling of his story, betrayed Vlad III and used sorcery to vampirise him) takes the form of masquerading as an American inventor named Alexander Grayson who has revolutionary Nikolai Tesla-style "geoelectric" technology which will financially ruin the Order. He's also going to kill them.

Dracula/Grayson is very much the anti-hero in this version. There are hardly any uncomplicatedly good characters. There's much in the way of shifting alliances based on love, lust, revenge, or military or political strategy. Somebody interviewed in one on the bonus features on the DVD described the series as a cross between Dracula and Dangerous Liaisons.

Mina is, once again, the reincarnation of Dracula's lost love.

Is it worth watching? Not if you need all the plotlines tied up and the story to have a conclusion of course. The closest comparison would be with Penny Dreadful, I suppose. This probably doesn't quite reach the same heights, but it's pretty good.

Argento's Dracula (or Dracula 3D or Dario Argento's Dracula) next. I avoided this one for a long time because of its poor reputation, but I picked up the DVD (not in 3D) for £3.99.

I had seen some clips online, including the scene where Dracula manifests as a man-sized CGI grasshopper. Worryingly, this doesn't seem to be especially picked out for criticism or mockery.

And the truth is, this plays out as a listless and pretty much pointless rehash of elements from previous film versions (there's no reason to think, from the evidence of what's on screen, that any of the writers have read the book.

There is, I suppose, what might be read as a Marxist critique of class. The nearby town's worthies - the setting is more Hammer (the castle apparently overlooks an attempt at a Mitteleuropa town) than Coppola's Dracula, or any version of Nosferatu- have colluded with the Count: he preys on them but in return he's somehow generated some economic growth and technological advance. But it just feels like a half-baked plot idea. As does Mina being the reincarnation of...you guessed it.

I'd guess most of the story was unconsciously or otherwise assembled from Hammer's Dracula/Horror of Dracula and Scars of Dracula, with the reincarnated lost love taken from Bram Stoker's Dracula (actually, Dan Curtis' or Copolla's versions - take your pick). Rutger Hauer's van Helsing leans on Anthony Hopkins version, as does his costume (to be fair so did Hugh Jackman's). The score reminded me at points of John Williams' main theme for the 1979 film.

Most of the effects are CGI and are not really up to snuff for the 21st century.

Funnily enough the Dracula actor, Thomas Kretschmann, played Van Helsing in the Jonathan Rhys Meyers series a year later.

>316 housefulofpaper:

I may be wrong, but I think I can be confident that Rotten Tomatoes' 'Critics Consensus' is still written by a real person, as opposed to AI:

Schlocky and gross but far from bad enough to be good, Argento's Dracula 3D bites and sucks in all the wrong ways.

Ouch ...

>315 housefulofpaper:

Never heard of this. 'Never heard of this', but ... I can't imagine a Dracual telly series could have come out without my being aware of it ... oh well ...

I suspect Dracula has the edge on Pride and Prejudice; I'm failing to keep up with the sheer numbers. It doesn't help that I read half your post imagining John Rhys-Davies as Dracula or Van Helsing. Always doing that—somehow, Jonathan Rhys Meyers doesn't have a memorable screen presence for me ... natural supporting actor rather than lead.

Is it my imagination or does IMDb give TV shows an easier ride than films? It seems to me that they start from a base line of, say, 2, so that the televisual (is that a word?) equivalent of a 5.0 film automatically gets 7:0. I generally believe any film with a 7.0 or above rating is going to be worth watching whereas television with a 7.3 rating, like this one, I tend to think not worth the bother. No doubt I'm quite wrong.

I dropped by Eureka's website for the first time in ages and was delighted to see more of this forum's old chat getting reflected -- here's a box of five German Edgar Wallace Krimis:

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/terror-in-the-fog-the-wallace-krimi-at-ccc/

I got their 1960's Mabuse set recently so no splurges at this time, but I must note they have also issued/will issue some fantastic DEFA fare (apologies for off topic...), for example this fab postwar collection:

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/wrack-and-ruin-the-rubble-film-at-defa/

a set of science fiction:

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/strange-new-worlds-science-fiction-at-defa/

(I have them all except Signals; beautiful stuff)

and even one (maybe more are coming?) of the East German Westerns with the Serbian actor Gojko Mitic as the usual "Native Indian" lead!

https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/the-sons-of-great-bear/

(I've seen a German documentary about Mitic on Youtube. He was a student of phys. ed. in Belgrade when he took on a job as an extra for some movie the Germans were making. He lied about knowing how to ride a horse, figuring he'd get some practice eventually... and the rest was history.)

>319 LolaWalser:
I actually saw these (apart from the Western) on Facebook a while ago (I've somehow managed to stay in a relatively benign corner where in the main people merely post old paperback and comic covers). But I did miss that the publication date for the Krimis has been and gone - I've just ordered it.

>320 housefulofpaper:

It's interesting that they chose almost all from the Bryan Edgar Wallace (the son) range - I suppose it must have something to do with the rights to the CCC vs. Rialto films. Also, you get a bonus not mentioned on the box, The Phantom of Soho. Nice commentaries too - Kim Newman is becoming a fave of mine. I got the "Cruel Britannia" set from Vinegar Syndrome (Craze, Penny Gold, The Crucible of Terror) and he adds a lot of interest to this objectively mediocre fare.

>321 LolaWalser:
Crucible of Terror is the most well-known of the three films in the Cruel Britannia set but it's the only one I haven't seen, despite it's being regularly programmed in the late Friday night spot by the BBC, back when they showed old films (I have just looked on the BBC Genome site and yes, I had multiple opportunities to see this film in the '90s and '00s).

I've only seen Mike Raven take a major horror role in Lust for a Vampire, where his voice was dubbed by Valentine Dyall (and he was doubled by Christopher Lee's eyes in close-up).

>322 housefulofpaper:

I know I have seen Lust for a vampire so it follows that I must have seen Raven, but I confess only now he really registered, the whole performance is uncannily like Christopher Lee - particularly the voice!

Btw, although I said "mediocre", I didn't mean that the movies aren't very enjoyable for what they are! Vinegar Syndrome (who, btw, miraculously have a brick & mortar shop in Toronto) dabble mostly in the mid - to no-brow cinema so in comparison to arthouse stuff...

However, they do partner with a couple dozen other boutique labels, so there is a lot besides weird striptease and cannibal schoolgirls etc. The next 50% off sale is Black Friday.

I also got The Terrornauts, forever in my heart for taking a Cockney tea lady into space, and a set of Piotr Szulkin's "apocalypse" movies.