Let's Scare Jessica to Death

One of the best -- most subtle, disturbing, and high on the overall creep factor -- horror movies of the 1970s.  Something about that tagline --"Something is after Jessica ... something very cold, very wet ... and very dead" unnerves me every time.  Please no remake please no remake please no remake ...

Buffy Season 1

Somehow, while I wasn't looking, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the television series that kinda defined my every being in college, turned eighteen.  Here's li'l SMG during its first season. 

Christopher Lee's Dracula

Sinisterly Yours, the Supervillains

Today's Catwoman

Brought to you by Julie Newmar.

Death (Still) Becomes Her

"There's a hole in my stomach!  There's a hole in my stomach."

 ERNEST:  She's dead.
MADELINE:  She is?  These are the moments that make life worth living!
 

"That was totally uncalled for."

 "I just want you to know one thing ... you brought this on yourself."

"Ernest ... my ass.  I can see my ass."

King of the Vampires

Sir Christopher. 

Whatever Walked There

The most intriguing paragraph in all of literature.

Do You Remember Where You Parked the Car?

Death Becomes Her ... I need a sequel or a television series or a Broadway musical or somethin.

"You're a fraud, Helen, you're a walking lie, and I can see ... right ... through you!"

Seeing Red

This is the look I give my students sometimes.

But in all seriousness, yes, yes, a tragic, tragic episode of Buffy.  Very sad.

Still ...

... I wish my eyes would do that.

Samantha Vs. Jeannie

Thank you, Nick at Nite's Block Party Summer (In Vertivision!), circa 1994, for teaching me that Bewitched is indeed far superior to I Dream of Jeannie.  (Though I'll always love you, Jeannie.  Don't you worry.)

 This painting (by ... um ... Risko?) was published that summer in Entertainment Weekly.  At some point I'll make a poster of it.  'Til then ...

Over the Rainbow

As if The Wizard of Oz wasn't queer enough ...

Whatever this is ... I'd read it, watch it, and love it.  For the luvva Mike, someone please turn this into something I can pay money for!!!

I (Still) Dream of Jeannie

R.I.P. Lesley Gore

Along the sands
Let's walk the shores together now
Yes hand in hand
It's gonna be fair weather
Now when the stars come out
Stop
And count 'em in the sky
Warm California nights ...

She'll always be Pussycat, Catwoman's aide de camp ("That Darn Catwoman" and "Scat! Darn Catwoman") to me.

Gizmo Will Rule the World

Word.

Catwoman's Sinister Smile

A 1966 Batman trading card.  Jeez, they just don't make these anymore, do they.

The Boys of Penny Dreadful (2)

Just finished watching the first season finale of Penny Dreadful, a masterpiece of storytelling that actually dares to take its time.  (Does anyone know if that was really Dracula himself slain with Murray's sword ... why else would all those white-haired, chalk-faced vampire-harpy-women-creatures back off our manly defenders en masse?  So why didn't Mina?  And was "the master" she referred to the Count himself ... or some other, more nefarious entity?  Guess I'll just have to wait to find out ...)

I love how PD panders to the queerer of its audience; thank you again, writers and producers, for that Ethan/Dorian moment.  Now let's follow up in S2, shall we?

The Grotesqueries of Daphne DuMaurier

Few things freak me out more than creatures with the heads of animals and human bodies, which is probably why I'm so unsettled by this vintage paperback copy of Echoes from the Macabre, a selection of "tales of quiet terror" by Daphne duMaurier.

I've started reading Rebecca again for the first time since high school and I'm hankering to see Don't Look Now; perhaps that's why I have duMaurier on my mind.  (Is that a nurse's cap on the head of that serpent?  Good god!)

The Origin of the Old Witch

Conjure Wife

 
I stumbled upon Fritz Leiber's masterpiece of witchcraft vs. psychology my sophomore year of high school, deep in the bowels of a used bookstore in Williston, North Dakota, that charged by the pound.  The edition I found was published in 1968, and proclaimed that "dark shadows" of witchcraft held a woman in its thrall; obviously, this particular edition hoped to piggyback off the success of the supernatural soap bubbles of ABC's Dark Shadows. 

I finished rereading the novel the other night, and I always enjoy its take on female power and man's seemingly inherent fear that women would truly invest in this power and organize; the idea that all women are witches (to some degree) is a rather amusing conceit. 

A friend of mine and I, just the other night, were bemoaning the fact that the novel has yet to be truly, satisfyingly filmed, though three attempts have been made:  Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson came close with Night of the Eagle / Burn Witch Burn, closer than Universal's Weird Woman, which starred Lon Cheney (minus his furry Wolfman makeup) and Wolf Man co-star Evelyn Ankers, and far more successfully than Witches' Brew, an unofficial adaptation, and Lana Turner's swan song (also featuring Dark Shadows alum Kathryn Leigh Scott).  I discovered that Matheson and Beaumont's original screenplay, entitled Conjure Wife, and featuring significant differences from the translation eventually made to the screen, was published in 2009 in a tribute to Matheson entitled He Is Legend.  It arrived in the mail today and I plan to devour it this evening.

If you've never partaken of Conjure Wife in any of its manifestations, then I invite you to enjoy an excerpt from the original novel that caused me to drop it with nerveless fingers the first time I read it.  Here, skeptic professor of sociology Norman Saylor has been convinced that his wife Tansy, whom he recently discovered practicing witchcraft in order to protect him and his career, has taken upon herself a curse meant to kill Norman.  The curse has sent Tansy out into the dark waters of the bay; Norman, scrambling, has attempted a spell Tansy left behind: