Saturday, October 31, 2015

Combo: FFB: The anthologies of Betty M. Owen; October's Underappreciated Music; Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links and more

25th anniversary issue; source of "Ghost Hunt"
Illustration by Lee Brown Coye
Please see below for the "Tuesday's" A/V, October Underappreciated Music, and Friday's "Forgotten" Books posts in that order...thanks to all contributors and all you readers (and viewers/auditors!) and happy Hallowe'en...


TUESDAY'S OVERLOOKED A/V ON FRIDAY:
Dedicated to the memory of Ed Walker...and Maureen O'Hara.

Ali Karim: Bouchercon


Anne Billson: The Heat and its cat


Anonymous: Maureen O'Hara;  Short Term 13; The Dark Corner; The Professionals


Anonymous 4 (my early-music-loving friend) recommends:


Bhob Stewart: Jack Kerouac reads Dr. Sax; One Fast Move or I'm Gone


Bill Crider: Never Too Late [trailer]


Brian Arnold: And Now the Screaming Starts!


B. V. Lawson: Media Murder


Short Horror Films #1:
"The Empty Space In Between" (some nudity)

The Empty Space In Between from Maria Tornberg on Vimeo.

Colin: Shotgun


Comedy Film Nerds: Tyler Smith and David Bax


Cullen Gallagher: Blood and Lace


Cynthia Fuchs: Life Itself


Dan Stumpf: Malpertuis (aka The Legend of Doom House)

Dellamore Dellamorte

David Vineyard: Dellamorte Dellamore (aka Cemetery Man)


Diana B: Early AMC, and TCM now/#LetsMovie


Dorian Bartilucci: North by Northwest


Ed Walker: his last The Big Broadcast

Elizabeth Foxwell: The Chalk Garden


Short Horror Films #2:
"Monster" (the seeds of The Babadook)

Monster - Jennifer Kent from Jennifer Kent on Vimeo.

Evan Lewis: Nosferatu (1922) restored


Gary Deane: Hell Bound


George Kelley: Burn, Witch, Burn!


Gilligan Newton-John: There's Nothing Out There


Short Horror Films #3:
"There Are Monsters"


How Did This Get Made?: Death Spa 

Iba Dawson: NY ComicCon

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Great American Dream Machine


J. Kingston Pierce: origins of The Streets of San Francisco


Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby"


Jackie Kashian: Crazy Stupid Love; Breanna Conley on photobooths




Jacqueline T. Lynch: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; Maureen O'Hara

James Clark: The Red Circle 


James Reasoner: The Cat and the Canary (1939 film) 


Janet Varney: All Jane Comedy Festival; Rhea Butcher 


Jerry House: Drop Dead! (Arch Oboler's 1962 album): "The Dark" 

Vincent Price reads Joseph Payne Brennan's "The Calamander Chest" (Caedmon Records)--a favorite story of Jerry Houses's.

Part 2
To hear an earlier Price/Caedmon Hallowe'en/horror-themed album (sleeve below; illustration by Leo and Diane Dillon), please click on this sentence.


John Grant: Blues in the Night; Woman Unafraid 

Jonathan Lewis: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula: The Walking Dead (1936 film); Terror Train


Karen Hannsberry: Guest in the House 


Kelly Robinson: Destiny (1921 film); The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film); Melinmontant; Die Pest in Florenz (aka The Plague in Florence); Warning Shadows (1923 film); Der Golem (1920 film); Au Secours!


Short Horror Films #4:
"The Underpass"


Ken Levine: Friday questions 


Kristina Dijan: The Uninvited (1944 film); Cloverfield; Tremors; The Devil Rides OutRodan; Underrated 1955 films; The Abominable Dr. Phibes; horror films 


Laura G.: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon; Appaloosa; Palm Springs Classic Science Fiction Film Festival; Public Hero #1; Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956 film); Flaxy Martin


Lucy Brown: Mrs. Biggs

Marty McKee: Nightmare in Chicago (longer variation on Kraft Suspense Theater: "Once Upon a Savage Night"); The Zebra Force; The Bubble; Invasion of the Blood Farmers  (my take on "Once Upon a Savage Night" among other work)

Michael Shonk: US commercial broadcast primetime

More short surrealist than horror film:
"Thanatopsis" by Ed Emshwiller


Mystery Dave: Focus 

Patricia Nolan-Hall: 3 Bad Men; Werewolf of London

Patti Abbott: sitcoms; The Dick Van Dyke Show: "It May Look Like  a Walnut"

Pop My Culture: Scott Aukerman 

Prashant Trikannad: Million Dollar Arm

Rick: The Norliss Tapes; Universal's 1940s Mummy films; Hammer's Dracula films from best to worst 

Rod Lott: Trick or Treat (1986 film); Tales of Hallowe'en; Dark Places; The Lodger (2009 film); Hidden (2015 film); Trapped Ashes; Colour-Correct My Cock; The Vatican Tapes; I Spit on Your Grave III: Vengeance is Mine

More short whimsical than horror film, but still kinda: 
"When Tickling Goes Wrong"
(as far as I know, there're no further parts)


"Rupert Pupkin": Twice Upon a Time

Ruth: The Italian Straw Hat 

Salome: The Leopard Man; Asphalt; I Wake Up Screaming

Sam Juliano: City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel)

Scott A. Cupp: Count Yorga, Vampire

Sergio Angelini: Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York  (Yvette Banek on this one.)
Murder, My Sweet

Stacia Jones: Murder, My Sweet

Stephen Bowie: Serge Krizman

Steve Bailey: The Creature with the Atom Brain

Steve Lewis: Mimic; B.A.D. Cats: "Pilot" 

Television Obscurities: favorite '80s obscure series

Todd Mason recommends: "Ghost Hunt", a 1949 episode of Suspense...based on H. Russell Wakefield's story in the 25th anniversary issue of Weird Tales, and a radio predecessor of sorts to all the "found footage" films of the last thirty-forty years.


Victoria Loomes: Twin Peaks: "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer"

Vienna: Maureen O'Hara; The Unknown Man  

Yvette Banek: favorite Hallowe'en films

OCTOBER'S UNDERAPPRECIATED MUSIC:

Harry Partch: The Outsider


Patti Abbott: Music and Songs

Brian Arnold: The Glass Prism: "The Raven"


Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Friday Night Videos


Paul Brazill: A Song for Saturday

Jim C.: The Philly Joe Jones Sextet: "Blues for Dracula"; Dave Pike

Moondog: "Fog on the Hudson"


Steve Coleman: The Small Faces: Ogden's Nut Gone Flake; Cory Wells

Bill Crider: Song of the Day; Forgotten Hits, Local Charts; The Bobby Fuller Four

Jeff Gemmill: Melody Gardot in concert; Greta Isaac; Neil Young in Concert,1989; Top 5s

Jerry House: John McCutcheon on the hammered dulcimer; Daily Music+; Hymn Time


George Kelley: David Bowie: Five Years (1969-73)


Fanny: "Ain't That Peculiar"


Kate Laity: "I Put a Spell on You"; The Classics IV: "Spooky"


Steve Lewis, Jonathan Lewis, Mike Doran and Michael Shonk: Music I'lm Listening To


Todd Mason: A Quick World Tour; Some Television Theme Music (and songs thus employed)


Lawrence Person: Shoegazer Sunday

Charlie Ricci: Paul Desmond: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings featuring Jim Hall; Cory Wells


Blue Rose: "River of Change"


FFB: THE ANTHOLOGIES OF BETTY M. OWEN

Betty M. Owen was an editor most visibly for Scholastic Book Services in the 1960s and '70s...and her most prolific contributions were of the horror and associated weird fiction anthologies she produced for Scholastic, along with some other compilations (her 1966 Christmas carol anthology, with fellow SBS anthologist Mary MacEwan, featured transcriptions/arrangements by none other than a relatively young Carla Bley) of more than passing interest, including a selection of Jack London's short work and two anthologies of fiction from the Scholastic Magazines young writers' contests. A lover of sf, as well, she produced one anthology of more or less purely science fiction content, albeit that was one I've never actually held or seen, as it appeared after I was out of the Scholastic Book Services' reach, for the most part (I was in highs school by then, and occasionally seeing their magazines in class, but for whatever reason we weren't getting the book offers). Perhaps notably, the most prominent book of hers not published by SBS is the critical survey Smorgasbord of Books: Titles Junior High Readers Relish. (Indices courtesy ISFDB.)

Her first horror antho for SBS was:
A fine start, and indicative of her lack of any sort of "purism" among selections that were sfnal, more criminous, and otherwise not necessarily horror per se, though, for example, the Blackwood qualifies by any measure. As someone already having cut his teeth on the eclecticism of the Robert Arthur "Alfred Hitchcock" anthologies, this was not unwelcome. 

This was the first I bought among her books, and it's one of the more dear to me, as it introduced me to Finney with what I still think of as one of his best stories, and generally hewed closely to its stated remit, featuring mostly, at least, true horror as I think of it (supernatural suspense fiction, essentially)...the Poe being one of the relatively few exceptions...also notable that while Owen had mixed mostly classic and relatively "slick" writers in her first book of the outre, she reached just a bit into the more "insider" work of the likes of Evans, Hughes and, still to some extent in 1969, Lovecraft. Though whether she read the Evans in William Sloane's Stories for Tomorrow or Zacherley's Midnight Stew would be a good question to ask if we had the opportunity.

Well, this is probably the best of her anthologies for Scholastic, and probably why I chose it (in 2009, how time escapes) as the only of her books I've covered so far previously among FFB selections. I believe this book, also the first of hers I read in a borrowed copy, introduced me to Lawrence, Calisher and Borges...don't know if also St. Clair and Highsmith, but quite possibly--I suspect I'd read both of them perhaps a bit earlier in Arthur's "Hitchcock" anthologies.

This was the last of Owen's books I purchased as a youth, and by the time I found it, I'd already read the Bierce stories, and a couple of the Hearn and Le Fanu stories, but decided what the hell, let's see what the balance are like. It's an oddly budget-conscious and rather lazy-seeming antho, given it's devoted to three writers whose work was all firmly in the public domain, but perhaps the selections were very dear to Owen. This would also be the last anthology of macabre fiction she placed with SBS.

As noted, I've never owned a copy of this one, published by the time I was reading essentially only books published for adults, anyway, but it, too, is a rather neat collection of chestnuts and at least one obscure selection (the Hood, previously only in a William F. Nolan anthology) and one or two arguably so (though the Felsen had been anthologized by Groff Conklin after appearing in F&SF, and Felsen was reasonably well-known for his YA writing...the Abernathy being one of those stories that people who know the author's name at all tend to think of first). Clearly, SBS was hoping to cash in on some Star Wars/Close Encounters gravy...I wonder why Owen stopped at this point (SBS's notoriously low rates of pay?). 

Below, some of Owen's other work for SBS:
1980s or later reprint.

























selections from the Fitzgerald translation
edited by Owen








































For more of today's books, please (as almost always) see Patti Abbott's blog.



Saturday, October 24, 2015

Saturday Music Club: a quick tour









"End of the Rope" is the token Hallowe'en song for this week!










Harry Partch: Music Studio  (1958)

(Part 2)

Deb Fox (and Ron Pellegrino): "Excerpt from Study 12"


Macedonian polyphony


Light in Babylon: "Kipur"


Pentangle: "Hunting Song"


The Tuttles with A.J. Lee: "Sugar Moon"


The Renaissance Bluegrass Band: "End of the Rope"


Chris Connor: "A Taste of Honey"


Sheila Jordan: "Willow Weep for Me"

Friday, October 23, 2015

FFB: ILLITERATURE by Carol Lay (Boom! Town 2012)

Carol Lay has been one of the more brilliant cartoonists who've been producing both "underground" comics work (in the likes of Weirdo, Wimmin's Comix and her own title, Good Girls) and syndicated strips, notably her Story Minute (which she retitled Way Lay eventually), which ran for nearly two decades in the now vanishing breed of alternate papers (she wrapped it up in 2008, in fact, because the likes of the City Papers around the country were cutting back on their comics budgets...the Philadelphia City Paper, where I once called out editor Duane Swierczynski on a bit of editorial/advertising hypocrisy, just folded earlier this month after 34 years, several months after being sold to the publishers of the Metro chain of daily papers).  Her primary gig over the last decade or so has been at Simpsons Comics, aimed a bit younger than the work she's continued to do in other venues. The heirs to Jules Feiffer in the tabloids that have been the heirs to The Village Voice around the country have included no lack of remarkable talent, ranging from Matt Groening (who was doing well with Life in Hell well before becoming a millionaire via The Simpsons), through Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Charles Burns, and Chris Ware to, with his The Angriest Dog in the World, filmmaker David Lynch. 

Illiterature was the first of a planned series of collections of Story Minute/Way Lay strips, and here's a quick sample of how they run (please click to enlarge):


...and this, which leads off this volume:



By me, her wry, offhanded mixture of surreal, criminous and fantasticated concepts, grounded in small compasses, are irresistible, and I'm glad she's returned to doing longer-form work (the self-published Murderville) and a regular strip, Lay Lines, on GoComics.


For more on today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.


Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links to reviews, interviews and more

The L-Shaped Room
The selections (reviews, interviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences... and for the Hallowe'en season, further celebration of the macabre even more than we might see otherwise. If I've missed your or someone else's post, please let me know in comments, and thanks as always to all the contributors and all you readers...

Anne Billson: "Alternate chick flicks" (inspired by Crimson Peak)

Anonymous: Libeled Lady; Scarface; Joan Leslie; People Will Talk

Bhob Stewart: August Derleth and Cornell Woolrich adapted for comics, television and film


Bill Crider: The Frogmen [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors; "A Ghost on Hallowe'en"

B.V. Lawson: Media Murder

Colin: The Last Posse

Comedy Film Nerds: Jackie Kashian

Criterion Blues: Kristina Dijan and classic film blogging

Cullen Gallagher: A Town Called Hell

Cynthia Fuchs: Crimson Peak; Bridge of Spies

Dan Stumpf: Voodoo Woman; The Disembodied


The Dana Gould Hour: Hallowe'en edition with Patton Oswalt

David Vineyard: Have Gun, Will Travel: "The Gladiators" (television)

Diana B: Carmen Miranda and the Good Neighbor Policy


Dorian and Vinnie Bartilucci: Three O'Clock Courage; Strange Brew


Ed Walker et al.: The Big Broadcast


Elgin Bleecker: Cleo from 5 to 7

Elizabeth Foxwell: "Disorder in the Court"

Evan Lewis: Fallen Angels: "I'll Be Waiting"

Fritz Leiber interviewed by Randall Garrett, 1978

Gary Deane: Strange Bargain; Chair de poule

George Kelley: The Last Kingdom; Starsky and Hutch: The Complete Series

Gilligan Newton-John: The Playbirds; Massage Parlor Massacre; Shock Theater

Iba Dawson: Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Don Rickles Specials, Volume 1

J. Kingston Pierce: Bouchercon

Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: "Help Wanted"

Jackie Kashian: 2011 Summer Superhero Films; Dwayne Perkins on Jay-Z and movie podcasting

Jacqueline T. Lynch: Jane Wyatt: We're Only Human; Pitfall

James Clark: Leon Morin, Priest

James Reasoner: It Came from Outer Space

Janet Varney: Tara Platt

Jerry House: Purple Death from Outer Space; TED Talks: "Brian Greene: Is Our Universe the Only Universe?"

John Grant: Whistle Down the Wind; The Undying Monster; Peekaboo

Jonathan Lewis: Monster on the Campus

Karen Hannsberry: Detour

Kate Laity: National Theatre Live: Hamlet; Bouchercon; 1970s horror films (hosted by Paul Brazill)

Kelly Robinson: The Fall of the House of Usher (1928); The Cat and the Canary (1927): Frankenstein (1910); The Bat (1926); Genuine (1920); The Penalty (1920)

Ken Levine: hit procedurals; stupid ads: writing Cheers

Kristina Dijan: Thunder Road; The Man Who Could Cheat Death; Dead of Night (1945)

Laura G.: No Man's Woman; The Homesteaders; The Round-Up; Palm Springs Classic Science Fiction Film Festival; Julie Adams; Fargo (1952 film); Riders of the Purple Sage (1941 film)

Lucy Brown: The Mad Miss Manton

Martin Edwards: Unforgotten

Marty McKee: Indian Raid, Indian Made; American Ninja 2: The Confrontation

Michael Shonk: The Player (tv series)

Mystery Dave: Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

Patricia Nolan-Hall: Sleepers West (James Reasoner's recent review)

Patrick Murtha: The October Man

Patti Abbott: The L-Shaped Room; Sicario

Pop My Culture: Lori Alan


Randy Krbechek recommends, on Rara-Avis: Outside the Law

The Archive.org version features a rather more robust, full-orchestral score.

Raquel Stecher: Nosferatu rescored

Rick: The Invisible Man Returns; Murder on the Orient Express (1974 film); Poirot: "Murder on the Orient Express"

Rod Lott: Dark Places; WNUF Hallowe'en Special; Neon Maniacs; Theater of the Deranged II

"Rupert Pupkin": The Naked Prey

Ruth: 42nd Street; Strangers on a Train

Salome: Pickup

Sam Juliano: The 400 Blows

Scott Cupp: Dr. Jekyll vs. the Werewolf

Sergio Angelini: Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion

Stacia Jones: Persecuted

Stephen Bowie: Jack Laird and Jeri Emmett

Steve Bailey: The Big Combo

Television Obscurities: My Living Doll

Todd Mason: 13 Horror Films; 13 Suspense Films; 13 more outre films; 10 obscure horror tv series

Victoria Loomes: The Fifth Element

Vienna: Rafaela Ottiano

Yvette Banek: A New Leaf