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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 13h

Ha ha, I imagine you can quite easily stand by your reading, it's not everyone's favourite after all

Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 15h

Is it good or shameless trash? It's both. From its brutal opening to its fiery conclusion (and in-between having a former Doctor humming a tune while cutting up a corpse), it's just *desperate* to entertain. Easy to dislike, easier still to love.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 15h

Scars of Dracula (1970, dir. Roy Ward Baker) is cheap and nasty Hammer. But these are compliments. Like each of the films in the series, this tries to do something different. Here, it's a wild, unsubtle but effective pitch-black blend of Hammer tradition, European horror and comedy farce. Great fun.

Close-up of Tania, a vampire, her mouth open to reveal fangs, her eyes wide with hunger and madness

Dracula, stood in front of a large fireplace (just out of shot), holding a sword with the blade heated and glowing. He has a cruel, wrathful expression on his face.

Close-up of Dracula resting against a red cushion. He looks asleep, with eyes closed, but a red glowing eye hovers over each eye.

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Reposted by Jamie

Ray Newman @raynewman.bsky.social · 22h

I should probably read more books about the craft of writing but, honestly, there are just a few works of fiction I keep handy and dip into to remind myself what good looks like. The same copy of Robert Aickman's 'Cold Hand in Mine' has been near my desk for about 30 years, for example.

Leslie Farnsworth @lesliefarnsworth.com · 22h

Writers among you, is there a craft book you return to at least once a year?

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Reposted by Jamie

Jon Dear @accordingtojond.bsky.social · 1d

I'll be at this year's Square Eye TV, introducing an ultra rare screening of the 1975 adaptation of Poe's Imp of the Perverse, starring Michael Kitchen and Lalla Ward.

Also screening is the magnificent A View from a Hill from 2005, followed by a Q&A with writer Peter Harness.

Details:

A Birmingham Ghost Story + Q&A | Midlands Arts Centre

The BBC became well known in the 70s for producing popular anthology series Ghost Stories For Christmas, but Birmingham’s Pebble Mill had its own anthology

macbirmingham.co.uk

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

On the subject of that ending, too: it's enjoyable how brutal 60s television could be, and that note of something that is otherworldly wicked happening is unnerving and seriously unsettling. Questions go unanswered, leaving us flailing. Anyway, it's *great* television.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

What if we get the entitled DW 'fan' contingent and the entitled Hammer Horror 'fan' contingent together in a room and let them duke it out as to who is the fanniest fan of them all? Give the rest of us a break

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Director Richard C. Safarian and cinematographer Robert Pittack do a good job of keeping the central concept moving and well-paced. Savalas is great, and the script (by Charles Beaumont but actually by his pal Jerry Sohl) is clever, lean, and nasty. Not everyone loves the ending, but I do. Great tv.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

The Twilight Zone fifth season ep 'Living Doll' is one of the show's rare tips into full horror. Miserable stepdad Telly Savalas finds his kid's new talking doll doesn't take kindly to his cruel ways. The script hints the doll would hate him even if he was nice. Creepy, malevolent, one of the best.

Living Doll title card, the title overlaid on an image of Savalas' hands winding the doll.

Christie, a young girl long hair and a hairband, holds up Talky Tina, a plastic doll in a dress. Christie is smiling and happy.

Talky Tina sat on 'her' own on a shelf, looking ahead blankly. The shot is half in shadow and something about Tina appears off.

Savalas as Erich, in his workshop. He has Talky Tina's head in a vice and is attempting to light a blowtorch so he can burn the doll.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Frothy horror-lite where predecessors Dracula, Frankenstein et al were all dark-hearted gothic splendour, it has several actors doing their best with not much, a sublime few minutes of Bela Lugosi, and an agreeable abandonment of logic or coherence. Under the suds, it's also quite tragic. Good fun.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

The Wolf Man (1941, dir. Georges Waggner) stars Lon Chaney Jr as Larry Talbot, returned to his family estate after nearly two decades away. It doesn't take Larry long to fall in love or get bitten by a werewolf. Chaney really goes for it, matching the film as it gets increasingly daft, wild and fun.

Larry Talbot's new cane, with a silver wolf's head and a pentagram on its handle

Talbot's eyes, as he imagines the death of the woman he loves, Gwen. Her face is centre to the image, with a pentagram in a circle imposed over it.

Talbot's feet, newly wolf-like and hairy, with his trousers seen just above, his shoes to the right of frame

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Reposted by Jamie

P.G. Wodelouse 💀 @pgwodelouse.bsky.social · 1d

My 11yo daughter very earnestly asked me ‘Is the reason Shaggy can understand Scooby-Doo because he’s high? And is that why Shaggy’s so hungry the whole time?’ and I’m like ‘How and why do you know what high means?’ and also ‘Actually, those are bloody good questions’ 🤔

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 1d

Nailed the entire premise, expert analysis

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Reposted by Jamie

Hellebore @helleborezine.bsky.social · 3d

British folk horror and occult characters to be on Halloween, a thread.

1. Mr Fisher from Robin Redbreast (1970).
Catchphrase: “The study of religions is one of my many interests.”
You’ll need:
- Tweed trilby
- Mutton chops
- Cracked spectacles
- A copy of The Golden Bough

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 3d

The damage on the print (frames burning up) also added to a general sense of weirdness. It was an agreeably gothic flavour.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 3d

The fantastic coincidence of the framing device kept me occupied, if nothing else.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 3d

A random find: melodrama A Window on Washington Park (1913, dir. Laurence Trimble). A melancholy millionaire keeps seeing an old man shivering in the park. He gets his butler to bring the man inside, and he tells a sad story. Loved the high-angle shot of the park. Strangely compelling little short.

High-angle shot of the park with several people walking through it. To the left, an older man, dressed in a black coat, leans against a tree.

The older man now inside, in a well appointed room. A younger man is looking at him. The younger man's butler stands behind the older man.

The older man, in a flashback - not quite as old - sitting in a chair. Having just had some bad news on his investments, he has taken a gun out and is holding it, contemplating a significant action.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 4d

Even when it's so-so, turns out I'm still a sucker for old dark house shenanigans (again, also see House of the Long Shadows)

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 4d

Its 65 minutes are filled with characters and pretty much no one can be trusted. The sheer volume of cross and double cross probably plays better on stage, but Ford tries to include some interesting imagery and energy. Most striking: how intense Cohan's blue eyes are every time he's in close up...

Cohan in close-up, looking up - the character of Magee is meant to be thinking, pondering the mystery unfolding before him. But Cohan's strikingly blue eyes on film make him look very intense, like he's concentrating on summoning a demon.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 4d

Seven Keys to Baldpate (1917, dir. Hugh Ford) has George M. Cohan adapt his own stage play version of Earl Derr Biggers' 1913 novel (later the inspiration for 1983's House of the Long Shadows). A convoluted, old dark house-ish tale of crime, cross and double cross. Overcooked but enjoyable enough.

Poster for Seven Keys to Baldpate shows George M. Cohan and Anna Q. Nilsson in the film, he dressed in a suit, she in a dress, fur shawl and hat. She has her hand on the handle of Baldpate Inn's safe, he is pointing at her accusingly. The title is at the bottom, and seven Keys are overlaid on the illustration.

George M. Cohan as the writer Magee, sat at a desk with a typewriter in from of him and a lamp to his side.

Magee again, looking intensely at a closed door, a shadow from a window covering the door in the shape of a cross.

The outside of the inn, wrapped in two balconies (one ground level, one first floor). To the left of the image, a woman is walking along the path. To the right, from the upper balcony, a man is dangling, ready to drop down.

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Reposted by Jamie

Movies Silently @moviessilently.bsky.social · 4d

"Cave man stuff" referred to the craze in the 1910s and 1920s for macho guys taking charge and getting handsy.

This 1918 Gale Henry short, despite its prehistoric ad, was set in the then-present day.

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Reposted by Jamie

P.G. Wodelouse 💀 @pgwodelouse.bsky.social · 4d

Beyond the bombastic score, occasional caricature, iffy narration and odd moment of Hammer unsubtlety, Dr Jeykll and Sister Hyde is a surprisingly probing exploration of duality, gender identity and sexuality, full of lovely symmetry, dramatic irony and Norman Warwick’s gorgeous cinematography