Halloween Movie Marathon: Trilogy of Terror

This was a television movie that aired in 1975 and as the name suggests, it was a trio of stories strung together only by their star, Karen Black, who played different parts in each section. I only remember one thing about the movie and that's a scene where a creepy witch doctor doll chases Karen Black around with a knife-sized spear. If you ever saw the movie, you remember that scene (and probably not much else). I suspect watching the movie as an adult would be a very different experience. It's probably campy as hell and not scary at all, but I was scared to death.
Karen Black starred in Nashville the same year she did Trilogy of Terror, and she was also in Airport 1975. (Remember?  she was the plucky flight attendant who ends up landing the plane.) The year before, she'd played Myrtle Wilson in the Redford/Farrow Great Gatsby.  She's still working, and in fact has roles in three movies coming out in 2013.
The movie had a lot of geek cred--Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows) was the director and William F. Nolan (Logan's Run) wrote it.  Nolan also wrote the horror movie Burnt Offerings, which also starred Karen Black and was also directed by Dan Curtis. this is the kind of movie you put on in the background while decorating the house for a Halloween party. 

Dakota does it in French

I'm reading Dakota Cassidy's Burning Down the Spouse and loving every page. She just posted the French cover of her book You Dropped a Blonde on Me, from her ex-trophy wife series or as they say in French, "Le club des ex."  The puppy in the pink bag kills me.
"Larguee" means something like "abandoned" but it may be an idiom. "Abandoned and recycled?" 

Halloween Movie Marathon--The Haunting

The 1963 version of The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. And yet ... it's all done with dutch angles and music and suggestion. (That was not true of the remake from 1999. I was working at DreamWorks at the time the remake was released and we were shown the trailer during one of our story meetings. The trailer line was, "Some houses are born bad." I laughed out loud, was not the reaction they were looking for.)
I am a big, big fan of the novel, which I believe is flat out the best haunted house story written in the 20th century. If you haven't read it, give it to yourself as a Halloween present. It's a fast read and available used online at a zillion places.  And any reasonably stocked library should have it on their horror shelves as well.
the movie stars Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn, and Richard Johnson as the paranormal researcher. Of the four, Johnson had the lowest profile. He was a theater actor who'd mostly done television in England. (He's still working, and had a multi-episode arc on MI-5.) Russ Tamblyn had had a huge hit in West Side Story two years before this movie came out, but he worked mostly in television after that. (One high-profile gig was his role on Twin Peaks.) Julie Harris was a well respected stage actress whose breakout role had been recreating her part in A Member of the Wedding.  She was also in East of Eden and Requiem for a Heavyweight, playing "good girl" ingenue roles.  Like Tamblyn, she then divided her time between television and features and theater. (She was last on-screen in 2009.)
The movie is in black and white, and the lighting is moody and creepy. It was directed by Robert Wise, who also directed the classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and the first of the Star Trek movies.
If you're putting together a night of Halloween movies, this movie should be in the mix.

12 Nights of Christmas

I know, it seems like I'm rushing the season, but last year I didn't get the book out until it was very nearly Christmas and it was greeted with a massive "ho hum" instead of a "ho ho ho." This year I'm republishing 12 Nights of Christmas (12 Short stories) with a new cover (courtesy of Indie Author Services) and some little tweaks and twists. I'm very fond of these stories, some of which originally ran on the Dark Valentine site as part of our Twelve Nights of Christmas promotion. The stories are  al"inspired" by the verses of the classic Christmas son.
As of today, it's available at Smashwords (for 99 cents) and it will be up at Amazon.com by tomorrow if all goes well.

Halloween Movie Marathon--Silver Bullet

It is no secret that I'm a fan of Stephen King's books and more often than not, I've really liked the movies/miniseries made from those books. (I love, love, love Dolores Claiborne, and thought Kathy Bates was even better in it than she was in Misery, which won her an Oscar.) I also loved The Stand, and I hear through reliable sources that the reboot/update of that is very good.  I've not heard good things about the new It, though.
One of my favorite Stephen King movies isn't actually that good, 1985's Silver Bullet (or as it was billed, "Stephen King's Silver Bullet"). If you've never seen it, Silver Bullet is a werewolf movie and the "mystery" of the werewolf's identity is pretty much obvious from the moment the character walks on the screen.
Forget the werewolf stuff. The reason to see the movie--the reason I love it so much--is that the story is about a spunky, likable kid in a wheelchair and his maternal uncle, who supercharges the chair without the boy's mother knowing it, and who is a warm and supportive presence in the boy's life.
The kid was played by Corey Haim and his uncle was played by Gary Busey and both were terrific.
It makes me sad that Haim did not survive Hollywood and became yet another drug casualty. Silver Bullet came before the movies he's most famous for, Lucas and Lost Boys.
Gary Busey, who played "Uncle Red" was in kind of a mid-period in his career. He's been working steadily since 1968 (he has three movies coming out next year) and mixed in with the good stuff is so much not-so-good stuff that it's easy to forget just how damn good he is.  I first saw Busey in a little-known television show about a quirky family called The Texas Wheelers. It was sort of a Texas version of Party of Five (although Jack Elam played the dad) and I loved it to death.  Busey played the eldest brother and a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill was one of his little brothers.  I don't really remember much about it except that the theme song was John Prine's "Illegal Smile."
Three years later, Busey channeled Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly story and earned, if I'm not mistaken, an Oscar nomination for the part.  He's so natural and so likable in this movie that it's a shame he's been doing so many psycho villains lately.
This is a good Halloween movie to watch with little kids.

Mean People Suck

I'm not a saint.
I like snark as much as the next person.
Purposeful negativity is not something I seek out. Apparently though, I am in the minority. Two different people I know are being cyber-bullied. In one case, it has to do with a woman's involvement in the fandom of a minor-league celebrity and it's pretty easy to pinpoint the source of the anger being directed toward my friend. (It's sheer, delusional jealousy.)
In the other case it has to do with expectations not being met and lack of communications. But what's going on is that a woman has been posting to all her friends on something awful.com, ranting about what a terrible person my friend is. It's interesting to me that people who are part of the site call themselves "goons." My friend is understandably freaked out by all this negative attention but what strikes me is that there are actually people--strangers to her--who are getting involved in the whole situation. And all I can think of is the question--Don't they have anything better to do?
It's schadenfreude taken to the nth degree. Somewhere inside all of us is a little dark spot that sparks up when we hear that bad things have happened to people who have wronged us in some way. But honestly--feeling good about somebody you don't even know having troubles?  If you're doing that, you need to get a life.

Smart is Sexy and Science is Smart

The best teacher I ever had used to insist that "math is fun." And he made it fun with puzzles and tricks and shortcuts. I remember magic boxes. (If  you've never done them, check out a site called allmath.com) Most of my teachers weren't that great, and an algebra teacher I had was downright mediocre. I wish I'd had more teachers like Byron Nelson because if I had, I might have been a rocket scientist or an epidemiologist today.  Instead, once I was done with high school, I never took another math class.
I did take science classes though--biology and chemistry and enough geology classes that I ended up getting a minor in it. (And since I graduated, Dr. Jack Horner's discoveries have pretty much negated everything I learned about dinosaurs.)
Which is all to say that I have an appreciation of science and am thrilled to see sites like Science is Awesome and I Fucking Love Science getting the word out that "science" isn't just some abstract concept meant for misfits but something that can be useful and amusing in real life. Oh yes, we have gone way beyond papier mache volcanoes erupting with baking soda and vinegar. (There is a
GREAT t-shirt place called Science TEEcher that provides geeky t-shirt fun. See the "Peace of Pi" shirt on the above.)
There is a series of new websites going up even as I type called City Science Club. There's one in Portland, one in Seattle and a number of others planned for roll-out shortly. I am going to be reporting for the Los Angeles City Science Club. I hope to entertain and inform and I hope to see you there. More details soon.