There's blood on it again.- Countess Marya Zaleska Five years after Universal's Dracula (1931), and five minutes after Dracula's on-screen demise, Dracula's Daughter (1936) arrived to continue her father's sanguinary spree. But unlike her malevolent sire, Countess Marya Zaleska (Gloria Holden) is no self-satisfied monster. Rather, she is an addict, bound by compulsions she cannot … Continue reading The Other Side of Death
Night Battlers
A miscellany of various infernal infants, night battlers and good walkers from my zibaldone. Cambion. 'A crooked child'. The offspring of an incubus or a succubus, and a human being - or possibly the child of demons, using the human as a surrogate. Also a term that might refer to a changeling, depending on how … Continue reading Night Battlers
Good Dies Here
Everything good dies here. Even the stars.- Paul Holland Val Lewton's horror films have a strange rhythm to them. Where the Universal horror films of that era have a sort of fairy tale quality to them, Lewton's are more grounded, and the horrors more nebulous. Are they devils of the mind, or the flesh, or … Continue reading Good Dies Here
Autumn Thoughts
That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country … Continue reading Autumn Thoughts
A Heap of Things
I've had a blog of some form or another for around seventeen years, give or take. Seventeen years of wrangling with format, purpose and scheduling. By turns, I tried to be professional, colloquial, impersonal and friendly. Sometimes I succeeded, mostly I just flailed from one extreme to the other, utterly missing the mark. I wanted … Continue reading A Heap of Things
