#Ira Levin

[esqueletosgays]

THE STEPFORD WIVES (1975)

Director: Bryan Forbes Cinematography: Owen Roizman

[etirabys]

quick, probably typo filled review of Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying. he's the guy who wrote the stepford wives and rosemary's baby, and this is his debut novel. he was 23 and his talent is incredible

it's a thriller, very good, pulled me in immediately and was wonderfully structured and executed

I'll spoil the main twists (I warn you that you will enjoy the novel much less if you read them):

It's about man who wants to marry into money, but his college girlfriend gets pregnant too early and he knows a shotgun marriage would get her disowned by her harsh father. She won't abort, so he kills her. Then he transfers to the school of one of her two sisters and successfully courts that sister. It helps that he's heard a lot about her and how to appeal to her. When the sister starts playing detective and gets too close, he kills her too. He moves back to his hometown for a bit, where he feels suffocated... and then... the mad lad... he decides to go after the third sister. I picked this novel up at a book swap a twitter mutual was hosting in a park, and at this point I got out of my camp chair to walk around, cackling. He makes a pros and cons list. The pros include "I already know a lot about her" and "it would perfectly wash away the sour taste of failing the first two times". And he can't think of a single con. I love this scene.

All three of them have damage from growing up in an unloving home; the third sister is the one the other two call "the intellectual". The most remote one, the most anxious one. She lives alone and cares meticulously for her apartment, which is filled with the things she loves: her books, her favorite art, her music. Her secret heart. The killer finds it hard to get to her – normal charm doesn't work. But after the first failed flirtation he arranges a chance meeting in the museum she's touring alone, and gushes about the artists he's researched – the ones he knows to be her favorite –

They get engaged. Her father, the industrialist, doesn't necessarily like him, but he can see his daughter – whom he's started caring for more after the deaths of the other two – blossoming in the relationship, and he also sees that his prospective son in law is trying to reconcile her to him. When he's contacted by a man who got caught up in the death of the second daughter, saying that he thinks that he's found the killer, he doesn't like what he hears. But the evidence is increasingly hard to ignore. The third daughter is looped in; she moves from disbelief to anguish when shown her fiancé's research notebook on her, filled with details from her sisters. She has a bit of nervous breakdown about it and isn't super involved in the resolution.

I stayed up too late reading this, had a great time, and when I woke up the next morning I went: Hang on. I thought it was being telegraphed when the third section begins – when the killer decides to go after the third sister – that she was going to catch him. Not this random guy who got pulled into the second sister's murder and found it hard to stop digging. I thought that was where the "she's sharper and weirder than the other two" was pointing. But I guess it was written in 1953, it wasn't as much a thing to write about women having agency... what a waste.

Then I thought: is that true? Is it a waste? Was it actually an inferior narrative choice? Or does this disapproval stem purely from my distaste for books where women appear a lot but never as subjects who make plot-consequential decisions? Because while I endorse that distaste, it's a different thing from the author making a mistake.

After a bit of thinking I concluded: in this case, clearly, yes. I love random guy as a character, but given the astonishing, hilarious hubris of the antagonist, it's structurally worse for the novel that the murders were investigated and solved by someone who was pulled in by chance than by the final target. Going after the third sister! Going after the third sister, who is described from the very beginning as the bright one, the weird inward one! For this person to not discover and entrap the murderer personally and get justice for her sisters subverts my expectations, and not in a good way.

(I also thought that the random guy, when we see him gear up to dig deeper after the death of the second sister, was being set up to be the endgame love interest of the third sister – they'd obviously get together during the investigation.)

I don't get this way about every book where women don't do anything. I've been reading a lot of Zelazny recently. Zelazny's women never do anything and I find this fine as long as I'm not reading too many books like that in a row. I get much more heated when such an oversight makes the story worse. Ira, you didn't have to make up an unrelated guy and bring him in!! Your own character was right there!! Ira!!!!!!

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: White Mage

Charles Williams: Submitted for the approval of the midnight pals, I call this the tale of the devil and the lady Williams: it's about a woman who gets impregnated by the devil to birth the antichrist Ira Levin: hey wait a minute

Williams: the whole reason that the concept is scary, you see, is because the devil is real Williams: ira will back me up on this Levin: what? no! Levin: don't bring me into this! Levin: i'm not William peter blatty!

Williams: how do i know that the devil is real, you ask? Williams: it's because i Williams: am a wizard Poe: King: Lovecraft: Koontz: Barker: Barker: oh shit not another one Poe: clive! be nice!

Williams: that's right, i am a wizard Aleister Crowley: yes! YES! DO WHAT THOU WILT!! HA HA! Williams: but don't worry Williams: i'm a good wizard Crowley: what the fuck

Williams: that's right Williams: i only practice the whitest of white magic Williams: in keeping with the dictates of the Anglican church Crowley: BOO! BOO! Crowley: BOOOOOO!

Williams: i only do magic in service of God almighty, see Crowley: that's not magic! Crowley: i bet you've never even summoned a demon by eating a big block of hashish and ass fucking a guy Williams: Williams: [hanging head] no you're right Williams: i haven't

Crowley: white magic! that's so stupid! Crowley: why would anyone waste their time with white magic?! Crowley: I'M THE GREAT BEAST!!!! Crowley: [pounding table until it's reduced to splinters] DO WHAT THOU WILT!

Barker: we're just lousy with wizards around here Barker: half you lot are wizards! Poe: clive don't say that in front of dean Koontz: there's wizards here?!?!

Barker: it's okay dean they're not real wizards Barker: they can't do magic Aleister Crowley: what the hell Crowley: don't tell him that! Barker: oh yeah? give a little spell then, aleister Crowley: Crowley: i Crowley: i don't feel like it right now Barker: right

Barker: what kind of stuff do you do anyway? Williams: i cure diseases Williams: i exorcise evil spirits Williams: i spank comely young ladies on their bottoms Edward Lee: bro Lee: bro!

[numnum-num]

Ruth Gordon in "Rosemary's Baby" (1968)

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[runicsurvivorfissure]

Melek Messo Salla Salla Yer Yerinden Oynasın♥️ Off

[thecrownnet]

‘The Boys From Brazil’: Jeremy Strong To Play Nazi Hunter In Series From ‘The Crown’s Peter Morgan

By Christopher Marc, The Playlist

February 12, 2025

Jeremy Strong is heading into the final stretch of the Oscars season with the Best Supporting Actor nominee poised to potentially nab a statue for his compelling performance as Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump biopic, “The Apprentice.” While Strong has ended his award-winning HBO series “Succession,” he’s looking to make a significant return to the small screen with a series adaptation of the 1976 Ira Levin novel “The Boys From Brazil.” Netflix, according to Deadline, has cast Strong in the fictionalized telling of the Nazi Party, now defeated across Europe, trying to rebuild in the South American country of Brazil. The story explores Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele attempting to launch The Fourth Reich, and then Nazi hunters are made aware of their nefarious plan. Strong is set to play Ezra Lieberman in the show, which hails from Peter Morgan (“The Crown”). The character is a Nazi hunter that is tipped off about their resurrection and attempts to regroup, which would threaten the entire world if left to their own devices. The original logline for the 1976 novel as posted by Amazon: “Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project―the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed. Thus, Ira Levin opens one of his career’s strangest and most masterful novels. Why has Mengele marked a number of harmless aging men for murder? What is the hidden link that binds them? What interest can they possibly hold for their killers: six former SS men dispatched from South America by the most wanted Nazi still alive, the notorious “Angel of Death “? One man alone must answer these questions and stop the killings―Lieberman, himself aging and thought by some to be losing his grip on reality.” While the feature film adaptation from 1978 starring the late Gregory Peck (who played the fictionalized version of Dr. Josef Mengele) took place in the 1970s, the lingering influence of modern Nazis and fascists operating today is sadly topical as hell, with democratically elected politicians, musicians, tech-bros, and a sitting President championing the dark side of humanity that stood for the percussion, genocide, and amplifying the normalization of race/religion-based bigotry. We can’t wait to see who they end up casting alongside Strong because this series will have plenty of seasoned and new actors jumping on “The Boys From Brazil” to work with Morgan and Strong.

The Boys from Brazil 1978 movie poster. Trailer here.

[immaculatenothing]

October 2, 2024: I'm too close to You

keeping twice the silence —

No electricity ;

i am a dying light.

you'll see another strand of change

winding in the dark

away

quietly

so quick

away and free

down the hallway

to the window

and out

___________________________________________________

Erasure/found poem. Source text: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. (Blackstone Edition, Ashland, OR, 2024, pp. 6-8.)

[vintagewarhol]

[creepynostalgy]

Roman Polanski and Mia Farrow on set of Rosemary's Baby (1968)

[abs0luteb4stard]

W A T C H I N G

[thestepfordwivespoemingoctober]

[fearisnear31]

day 23

society housewives suspicious of city call girls with silhouetted figures in a cottage on Fairview Lane

remix poem composed from words on pgs 34-35 Levin, Ira: The Stepford Wives (1972) edition published by Corsair, Constable & Robinson, Ltd, 2011 photograph credit: Vlad Gedroics

[galtchild]

I finally read the original Frankenstein and I'm disappointed that the character became a mono syllabic monster in pop culture and not the epic poetry quoting weirdo he is in the novel. As a writer, I think Shelley holds up far better than Bram Stoker. The first half of Dracula is very spooky, then all the rich people come together to pray the gay away and I lost interest. Frankenstein stays spooky and romantic without falling victim to pearl clutching. It's probably a mistake to compare the two novels, but you fight both of their monsters in Castlevania so I think it's fair.

My other Halloween read was Rosemary's Baby, an expert potboiler. The reading experience is a lot like Blair Witch, where I'd been so expertly teased for the entire running time that, by the time the inevitably silly conclusion played out, it didn't feel silly at all.

A major difference being that Rosemary's Baby ends on a joke. And is full of playwright dialogue rather than actor torture.

I've been writing and reading. I need to draw more. I always need to draw more. Reading is easier.

[susanburch]

10/20/24

in her armpits a secret scream

A remixed poem from:

levin, ira. the stepford wives, William Morrow, 1972. P. 109, 113, 117.

[brokehorrorfan]

Steven Luros Holliday debuted a Rosemary's Baby poster at HorrorHound Weekend and has made the remaining quantity available online. Priced at $25, the 20x30 print is limited to 175.