Even those funny non-flying Angry Birds take time off from battling the pigs to go trick or treating. But they come up against something so fierce it sends them packing. Luckily for them it really is the sweet loving bird that can inflate itself. Then again one ought to be careful about such pranks. You never know what might come knocking at the door next! 🙂
Category Archives: Holidays
Countdown to Halloween: Monster Mash By Singing Pumpkins
Countdown to Halloween: The Haunting of Hill House
One of the finest ghost stories ever written was Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. It was made into a 1963 movie The Haunting regarded as one of the best supernatural movies in cinema history. The movie was modestly received when it first came out and scared many viewers. Using cleverly designed sets and distorted angles, the film stands out as a first rate psychological horror movie that is unmatched. A remake in 1999 starring Liam Neeson, Lilli Taylor and Catherine Zeta Jones did not capture the original film’s essence and failed at the box office. Although the 1973 movie The Legend of Hell House incorporates themes of the Hill book, it was based on Richard Matheson’s book and he wrote the screenplay.
There is no gore in the book or original movie but instead relies on the terror the people experience as the entity makes itself known. This theme inspired Stephen King for his book The Shining and later for a made-for-television story Rose Red. As the story unfolds (in the book and movie) it comes clear that Eleanor becomes the target of the entity and one point even possessed by it. The unsettling end where Eleanor dies leaves one to speculate whether it was caused by the entity or her own emotionally disturbed state. There is no doubt the house is haunted by a malevolent entity but now it has claimed a new victim whether by its hand or not. And these haunting words, a voice over by Julie Harris who played Eleanor at the end, sums it all up:
Hill House has stood for 90 years and might stand for 90 more. Within, walls continue upright, bricks meet, floors are firm, and doors are sensibly shut. Silence lies steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House. And we who walk here… walk alone.
Important note to parents: Neither the book or movie is for young kids and has themes that might trouble parents.
Countdown To Halloween: Headless Horseman
Countdown to Halloween: Horror of Dracula (1958)
Bela Lugosi was for many years the standard by which Dracula portrayals were judged by until 1958 when Christopher Lee(1922-2015)assumed the role in Hammer Films Horror of Dracula. The movie differed,like the 1932 version,from the book and would spawn a series of sequels (some of which towards the end had dubious quality). Lee’s depiction had both a seductive quality and one of horror. In this movie showing blood was not taboo as it was back in 1932 (note that by today’s standards the gore factor here is light). The movie had not only Christopher Lee but such recognized actors as Peter Cushing (as Van Helsing) and Michael Gough (Arthur Holmwood). It was well received at the box office and still gets high marks from Dracula movie buffs usually near the top of most Dracula film ranks. Consider adding it to your Halloween fright movie lineup.
Lee had a long career in cinema after Dracula but has become better known to millions of fans for his portrayals in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hallow,as the traitor Saruman in Lord of the Rings, and of course Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus in Star Wars (Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith).
Countdown to Halloween: The Mummy
Image:Public Domain
Inspiration for many mummy-themed movies is drawn from a Bram Stoker book called Jewel of the Seven Stars. Unlike Dracula which has been given both literary and cinematic status, this 1903 book is not as widely known but influenced the mummy franchise we generally know today. The story is about a dead Egyptian queen named Tera who during her life amassed considerable dark powers. A mummy hand with seven fingers, adorned with a ruby ring with seven points that look like stars is found with her in the tomb. Abel Trelawny, a noted Egyptologist, becomes obsessed with the idea of resurrecting her. His daughter, Margaret, born not long after the tomb’s discovery, bears a resemblance to the dead queen and later seems to either be connected to her or controlled by her.
The ceremony to resurrect Tera is performed and in the original ending appears to succeed but at great cost to those who participated. However the ending was quite shocking and upset quite a lot of people (it was not a happy ending except for Queen Tera). The result was that in 1912 Stoker wrote a second ending where the ceremony failed and the Margaret and the story’s narrator (Malcolm Ross) married. The essential story of an ancient Egyptian mummy being resurrected via dark forces though would inspire other tales and most notably the 1932 movie The Mummy starring Boris Karloff. In the movie, Imhotep was caught attempting to resurrect his dead love, Princess Ankh-es-en-amon, and sentenced to be mummified alive. He comes alive when an archaeological team finds his mummy and disappears returning 10 years later as Ardeth Bay to help another excavation team find Ankh-es-en-amon’s tomb. He encounters a young woman named Helen Grosvenor (played by Zita Johann)who likes like Ankh-es-en-amon. He seeks to bring back his former love by trying to show she is the reincarnation and later in a ceremony where Helen will be killed.
The movie was a success but no direct sequels were ever made. Hammer made a series of mummy movies based on the same story. The Mummy (1999)starring Brendan Fraser was billed as a remake but really re-imagined (like the more recent version of Battlestar Galactica). Several attempted mummy movies based on the Stoker novel are mostly unremarkable except for the 1971 Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb. Like the original ending of the Stoker novel, most are dead at the end and the ambiguous ending leaves you guessing whether Tera or Margaret survived (albeit not in the way Tera would have hoped for if it was her.) To begin our countdown to Halloween, here is a clip from the 1932 movie The Mummy starring Boris Karloff.
And here is the trailer for the 1999 re-imagined version:
Happy Father’s Day
Photo: Karen Leubenstein, USFWS
Memorial Day 2015
Photo: U.S. Library of Congress, digital id npcc 11495
Today is Memorial Day, a day set aside to remember those who gave all to serve this country. At national cemeteries and smaller ones around the country, flags and flowers have been placed to remember them. We also remind ourselves that freedom is not easily granted, often requires great sacrifice. President Lincoln made note of this in his famous 1863 Gettysburg Address:
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Easter Sunday
Today is Martin Luther King Day
Photo:Public Domain (U.S. Library of Congress digital id cph 3c26559)