#Victorian chillers

[sadhorsegirl]

started watching br*dgerton again to relax after getting through hellish shifts at work and have reentered into a potential legal feud with the entire shondaland bloodline over the shows continued refusal to just let eloise be gay

[vvyvernicus]

I recently started watching Emma: A Victorian Romance.

Mainly because I wanted to watch a show similar to Black Butler (set in the same time period), while I wait to rewatch it from the beginning.

I'm currently 5 episodes in out of 24 in total and it's so awkward and sweet (in a good way). Watching these people try to flirt and show interest in this adorable.

But also, as I'm watching this sweet show I can't help but wonder where the demons are. Or like, when will it turn into a murder mystery? I know it probably won't, but I keep noticing little similarities here and there that make me think of Black Butler XD

I'll headcanon that it takes place in the same universe, but without all the darkness. Basically most lives who doesn't get involved with Ciel and Sebastian.

There's also a character in it that's an Indian prince which immediately made me think of Soma, and he's like a chiller version of him along with a bit of Lau mixed in.

I'm planning on rewatching the entire series with my boyfriend who has never seen it before (hopefully by this October). I still haven't seen the newest season where Ciel goes to school, but I'm looking forward to it and have so far avoided major spoilers. A lot of the character designs I've seen look great and interesting.

I know the second half of the first season and the entirety of season 2 aren't "canon", but they are still nostalgic for me. Black Butler will always have a special place in my heart, since it was around this time I really started getting interested in anime.

[candy-floss-crazy]

Contemporary Themed Catering Carts

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[zinzinina]

We all know about order 66 at this point but I’ve just reached the end of tcw (it’s taken me a while to get through all 7 seasons) and I am very much not ok 😭😭😭

Idk if you’re currently taking requests (if not pls ignore) but if you are… *rattling empty bowl like a pitiful victorian orphan* can u spare a Drabble where the clones actually live happily ever after?

Ohhh hi lovely anon! There is absolutely no way to prepare for the amount of pain at the end of TCW 💔 I hope you had plenty of tissues handy.

And I'm not really taking requests at the moment, but I thought this was such a sweet idea and you just so happened to catch me in the mood for something like this, so I hope you enjoy this very teeny tiny slice of post-war life! x

Approx. 500 words, mentions of Codywan, mentions of food.

Rex is trying very hard not to say anything.

He’s trying so hard, in fact, he’s missed most of the conversation, and tunes back in mid-sentence.

“…and then I said, if they want an interview, it’ll cost extra. My schedule’s packed; I’m making another address in Monument Square with Senator Organa, a very important one, for the anniversary of the clone emancipation act, and then I’ve got a nightclub opening to go to, and then…”

Echo is bending to pull another ardees from the chiller. Rex can’t see his face, but he can see his shoulders shaking with barely-suppressed laughter as Fives continues talking, totally oblivious. Jesse, on the other hand, looks thoroughly unimpressed, arms folded atop the table.

“…and it’s hard, y’know, when everyone wants a piece of you. Which is what I told her, when I said it wouldn’t work out.”

Echo adopts a tone of faux-innocence, sliding a fresh bottle across the table. “Huh. That’s funny. Tup said he heard from Waxer, who was talking to Kix, who heard from Thorn that she broke it off with you.”

Fives huffs. “Well Thorn’s full of shit. It was mutual.”

“So not everyone wants a piece of you, then,” Jesse says drily.

Rex is thinking mournfully of the side of namba in the chiller. He’d been planning to roast it tonight with herbs and wine. He was going to put on some music while he cooked. He likes cooking with music; something he’s learned about himself since retiring from active service. It was going to be a nice, quiet evening. Relaxing.

And then Fives had shown up, completely unannounced, with a bag over his shoulder, asking to crash on his sofa, telling him he’d already called the boys to come by, and that he’d meant to bring a little thank-you gift for Rex for letting him stay but it had just slipped his mind, and is that a new rug? Very nice, and...

Fives sounds airily indignant. “Not everyone can handle the level of public adoration I have to deal with. When it’s the whole galaxy—“

“Yeah right, you saved the whole galaxy,” Echo says, rolling his eyes. “And I’m the king of Hosnian Prime.”

Still breathing calmly, Rex smooths his hands up over his hair; no longer quite so severely short, beginning to flick into tight curls at the grown-out-bleached ends. He is absolutely calm.

Fives takes a sip of his ardees, then puts the bottle back down on the table. Right beside the coaster.

Rex takes in one last slow, deep breath, mentally counts to five, and then barks his next words more sharply than any order he’s ever delivered on or off the battlefield.

“Fives. You’re not staying here. Cody has a spare room; go bother him. And get your feet off my table, or Maker help me—”

Fives blanches, his mouth dropping open in horror. “Not Cody! Rex, vod, I can’t—you can’t! Do you know how loud they are? Kenobi leaves the door open when he’s in the ‘fresher! They have drawings of each other! Not just in the bedroom, but in the hallway—“

Echo and Jesse’s snorts drown out the rest of Fives’ protests.

[meanstreetspodcasts]

BONUS - Best of Vincent Price

In this bonus show, I'm sharing my four favorite episodes of Suspense starring the great Vincent Price. First, he co-stars with Ida Lupino in "Fugue in C Minor," a Victorian-era chiller from Lucille Fletcher (originally aired on CBS on June 1, 1944). Next, Price and Lloyd Nolan go on a "Hunting Trip," but only one man will come back alive (originally aired on CBS on September 12, 1946). Then, Claude Rains joins Vincent Price in the hunt for a serial strangler in "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole" (originally aired on CBS on December 2, 1948). Finally, Price stars in one of the scariest old time radio shows of all time - "Three Skeleton Key" (originally aired on CBS on November 11, 1956).

Check out this episode!

[thiswasinevitableid]

Hey!! I read the Doctor Colds Chiller Theatre fic yesterday and can’t stop thinking about it... Would you consider making a longer fic based on this premise/fic? Also!!!! The Victorian au indruck/sternclay fic is 🥰

Thank you, I'm so glad you're liking the Victorian one!

I've thought about expanding the the Dr. Cold' Chiller Theater because I love the set-up, so if folks are interested I might do it!

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (December 11, 1922 – January 10, 2008), known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was a Finnish-American actress and television personality who created the campy 1950s character Vampira.

The daughter of a Finnish immigrant, Nurmi was raised in Oregon and relocated to Los Angeles in 1940 with hopes of being an actress. After several minor film roles, she found success in the Vampira character, television's first horror host. Nurmi hosted her own series, The Vampira Show, from 1954–55 on KABC-TV.

After the show's cancellation, she appeared in the 1959 cult film Plan 9 from Outer Space, directed by Ed Wood. She is also billed as Vampira in the 1959 film The Beat Generation, where she appears out of character and instead plays a beatnik poet. Nurmi also appeared in the 1959 crime film The Big Operator. She was portrayed by Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic Ed Wood.

Maila Nurmi was born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi in 1922 to Onni Syrjäniemi, a Finnish immigrant, and Sophia Peterson, an American of Finnish descent. Her place of birth is disputed: according to biographer W. Scott Poole in Vampira: Dark Goddess of Horror (2014), Nurmi was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. However, during her career, Nurmi claimed to have been born in Petsamo, Finland, claiming she was the niece of Finnish athlete Paavo Nurmi, who began setting long-distance running world records in 1921, the year before her birth. Public U.S. immigration records show her father's immigration at Ellis Island in 1910. Additionally, Dana Gould claimed in a 2014 public interview that he had seen Nurmi's birth certificate, which listed her birthplace as Gloucester, Massachusetts.

During her childhood, Nurmi relocated with her family from Massachusetts to Ashtabula, Ohio, before settling in Astoria, Oregon, a city on the Oregon Coast with a large Finnish community. Her father worked as a lecturer and editor, and her mother also worked as a part-time journalist and translator to support the family. She graduated from Astoria High School in 1940.

In 1940, Nurmi relocated to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career, and later in New York City. She modeled for Alberto Vargas, Bernard of Hollywood, and Man Ray, gaining a foothold in the film industry with an uncredited role in Victor Saville's 1947 film, If Winter Comes.

She was reportedly fired in 1944 by Mae West from the cast of West's Broadway play, Catherine Was Great, because West feared she was being upstaged.

On Broadway, she gained much attention after appearing in the horror-themed midnight show Spook Scandals, in which she screamed, fainted, lay in a coffin, and seductively lurked about a mock cemetery. She also worked as a showgirl for the Earl Carroll Theatre and as a high-kicking chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens along with stripper Lili St. Cyr. In the 1950s, she supported herself mainly by posing for pin-up photos in men's magazines such as Famous Models, Gala and Glamorous Models. Before landing her role as 'Vampira', she was working as a hat-check girl in a cloakroom on Hollywood's Sunset Strip.

The idea for the Vampira character was born in 1953 when Nurmi attended choreographer Lester Horton's annual Bal Caribe Masquerade in a costume inspired by Morticia Addams in The New Yorker cartoons of Charles Addams. Her appearance with pale white skin and tight black dress caught the attention of television producer Hunt Stromberg, Jr., who wanted to hire her to host horror movies on the Los Angeles television station KABC-TV, but Stromberg had no idea how to contact her. He finally got her phone number from Rudi Gernreich, later the designer of the topless swimsuit. The name Vampira was the invention of Nurmi's husband, Dean Riesner. Nurmi's characterization was influenced by the Dragon Lady from the comic strip Terry and the Pirates and the evil queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

On April 30, 1954, KABC-TV aired a preview, Dig Me Later, Vampira, at 11:00 p.m. The Vampira Show premiered on the following night, May 1, 1954. For the first four weeks, the show aired at midnight, moving to 11:00 p.m. on May 29. Ten months later, the series aired at 10:30 p.m., beginning March 5, 1955. Each show opened with Vampira gliding down a dark corridor flooded with dry-ice fog. At the end of her trance-like walk, the camera zoomed in on her face as she let out a piercing scream. She would then introduce (and mock) that evening's film while reclining barefoot on a skull-encrusted Victorian couch. Her horror-related comedy antics included ghoulish puns such as encouraging viewers to write for epitaphs instead of autographs and talking to her pet spider Rollo.

She also ran as a candidate for Night Mayor of Hollywood with a platform of "dead issues". In another publicity stunt, KABC had her cruise around Hollywood in the back of a chauffeur-driven 1932 Packard touring car with the top down, where she sat, as Vampira, holding a black parasol. The show was an immediate hit, and in June 1954 she appeared as Vampira in a horror-themed comedy skit on The Red Skelton Show along with Béla Lugosi, and Lon Chaney, Jr.. That same week Life magazine ran an article on her, including a photo-spread of her show-opening entrance and scream. A kinescope of her The Red Skelton Show appearance was discovered in 2014. It is available as part of the Shout Factory DVD box set Red Skelton: The Early Years.

When her KABC series was cancelled in 1955, Nurmi retained rights to the character of Vampira and took the show to a competing Los Angeles television station, KHJ-TV. Several episode scripts and a single promotional kinescope of Nurmi re-creating some of her macabre comedy segments are held by private collectors. Several clips from the rare kinescope are included in the documentaries American Scary and Vampira: The Movie. The entire KABC kinescope, plus selections of the KABC pitchman who introduced the clips, is available in the 2012 documentary Vampira and Me.

Vampira and Me also features extensive clips from two previously unknown 16mm kinescopes of Nurmi as Vampira on national TV shows, including her starring guest spot on the April 2, 1955 episode of The George Gobel Show, a top 10 hit. The Vampira and Me restoration of the Gobel kinescope was documented in a 2013 short film entitled Restoring Vampira.

Examination of Nurmi's diaries in 2014 by filmmaker and journalist R. H. Greene verify longtime rumors that in 1956 she was the model for Maleficent, the evil witch in the Disney conception of the classic fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty." The Disney archivist subsequently confirmed these findings.

In 2007, the kinescope film of Nurmi in character was restored by Rerunmedia, whose restorations include The Ed Sullivan Show and Dark Shadows. The restoration utilized the groundbreaking LiveFeed Video Imaging process developed exclusively for the restoration of kinescopes. The restoration was funded by Spectropia Wunderhaus and Coffin Case.

A reconstructed episode of The Vampira Show was released on DVD by the Vampira's Attic web site in October 2007. The release imitated a complete episode by using existing footage of the show combined with vintage commercials believed to have been directed by Ed Wood[citation needed] and the full-length 1932 feature film The Thirteenth Guest.

Nurmi made television history as the first horror movie hostess. In 1957, Screen Gems released a syndicated package of 52 horror movies, mostly from Universal Pictures, under the program title Shock Theater. Independent stations in major cities all over the U.S. began showing these films, adding their own ghoulish host or hostess (including Vampira II and other lookalikes) to attract more viewers.

Nominated for a Los Angeles area Emmy Award as 'Most Outstanding Female Personality' in 1954, she returned to films with Too Much, Too Soon in 1958, followed by The Big Operator and The Beat Generation. Her best known film appearance was in Ed Wood's camp classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space, as a Vampira-like zombie (filmed in 1956, but released in 1959). In 1960 she appeared in I Passed for White and Sex Kittens Go to College, followed by 1962's The Magic Sword. The classic clip from Plan 9 from Outer Space featuring Vampira walking out of the woods with her hands pointing straight out was used to start the original opening sequence of WPIX Channel 11 New York's Chiller Theatre in the 1960s.

By 1962, Nurmi was making a living installing linoleum flooring. "And if things are slow in linoleum, I can also do carpentry, make drapes or refinish furniture", she told the Los Angeles Times.

In the early 1960s, Nurmi opened Vampira's Attic, an antiques boutique on Melrose Avenue. She also sold handmade jewelry and clothing. She made items for several celebrities, including Grace Slick of the music group Jefferson Airplane and the Zappa family.

In 1981, Nurmi was asked by KHJ-TV to revive her Vampira character for television. She worked closely with the producers of the new show and was to get an executive producer credit, but Nurmi eventually left the project over creative differences. According to Nurmi, this was because the station cast comedic actress Cassandra Peterson in the part without consulting her. "They eventually called me in to sign a contract and she was there", Nurmi told Bizarre magazine in 2005. "They had hired her without asking me."

Nurmi worked on the project for a short time, but quit when the producers would not hire Lola Falana to play Vampira. The station sent out a casting call, and Peterson auditioned and won the role.

Unable to continue using the name Vampira, the show was abruptly renamed Elvira's Movie Macabre with Peterson playing the titular host. Nurmi soon filed a lawsuit against Peterson. The court eventually ruled in favor of Peterson, holding that "likeness means actual representation of another person's appearance, and not simply close resemblance." Peterson claimed that Elvira was nothing like Vampira aside from the basic design of the black dress and black hair. Nurmi claimed that the entire Elvira persona, which included comedic dialogue and intentionally bad graveyard puns, infringed on her creation's "distinctive dark dress, horror movie props, and...special personality." Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams The New Yorker cartoon character Morticia Addams, though she told Boxoffice magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea.

In 1986, she appeared alongside Tomata du Plenty of The Screamers in Rene Daalder's punk rock musical Population: 1, which was released on DVD in October 2008. According to a Daalder interview on the 2 disc special edition of Population: 1, "There was a wild lady living out in back in a shed. Tomata befriended her and found out she had played Vampira".

In 1987, she recorded two seven-inch singles on Living Eye records with the band Satan's Cheerleaders. The singles, entitled "I Am Damned" and "Genocide Utopia," were both released on colored vinyl, the second one with a swastika on the label, and are extremely rare collector's items.

In 2001, Nurmi opened an official website and began selling autographed memorabilia and original pieces of art on eBay. Until her death, Nurmi lived in a small North Hollywood apartment.

Unlike Elvira, Nurmi authorized very few merchandising contracts for her Vampira character, though the name and likeness have been used unofficially by various companies since the 1950s. In 1994, Nurmi authorized a Vampira model kit for Artomic Creations, and a pre-painted figurine from Bowen Designs in 2001, both sculpted by Thomas Kuntz. In 2004, she authorized merchandising of the Vampira character by Coffin Case, for the limited purpose of selling skate boards and guitar cases.

In the early 1950s, Nurmi was close friends with James Dean, and they spent time together at Googie's coffee shop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. She explained their friendship by saying, "We have the same neuroses."

As Hedda Hopper related in a 1962 memoir that included a chapter on Dean: "We discussed the thin-cheeked actress who calls herself Vampira on television (and cashed in, after Jimmy died, on the publicity she got from knowing him and claimed she could talk to him 'through the veil'). He said: 'I had studied The Golden Bough and the Marquis de Sade, and I was interested in finding out if this girl was obsessed by a satanic force. She knew absolutely nothing. I found her void of any true interest except her Vampira make-up. She has no absolute.'"

The 2010 public radio documentary Vampira and Me by author/director R. H. Greene took issue with Hopper's depiction of the Nurmi/Dean relationship, pointing to an extant photo of Dean and Vampira sidekick Jack Simmons in full Boris Karloff Frankenstein make-up as evidence of Nurmi and Dean's friendship. The documentary also described a production memo in the Warner Bros. archive citing a set visit from "Vampira" while Dean was making Rebel Without a Cause.

The Warner Bros memo was first mentioned in the 2006 book Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause by Lawrence Frascella and Al Weisel, who were given access to the Rebel production files. An interview Frascella and Weisel conducted with actress Shelley Winters also uncovered an instance where Dean interrupted an argument with director Nicholas Ray and Winters so he could watch The Vampira Show on TV.

In Vampira and Me, Nurmi can be heard telling Greene that Dean once appeared in a live bit on The Vampira Show in which Vampira, dressed as a librarian, rapped his knuckles with a ruler because "he was a very naughty boy."

The English Punk rock band The Damned wrote a song about their relationship entitled ‘Plan 9, Channel 7’ and can be found on the 1979 album ‘Machine Gun Etiquette ‘ ( Chiswick Records )

On June 20, 1955, Nurmi was the target of an attempted murder when a man forced his way into her apartment and proceeded to terrorize her for close to four hours. Nurmi eventually escaped and managed to call the police, with assistance from a local shop owner.

She married her first husband, Dean Riesner, in 1949, a former child actor in silent films and later the screenwriter of Dirty Harry, Charley Varrick, Play Misty for Me, and numerous other movies and TV episodes.

She married her second husband, younger actor John Brinkley, on March 10, 1958.

She married actor Fabrizio Mioni on June 20, 1961 in Orange County, California.

On January 10, 2008, Nurmi died of natural causes at her home in Hollywood, aged 85. She was buried in the Griffith Lawn section of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.



[nitrateglow]

Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Vivien Leigh

If you could go back in time and have tea with one actor/actress, who would it be?

BUSTER KEATON. I would love to hear him talk about his work! And to tell him how much of an inspiration both his work and life have been to me.

Favorite on-screen couple?

Can’t just pick one. Here are a few:

Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky

Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland

Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole

Favorite period drama?

If we’re just sticking to old Hollywood, then probably Gaslight. It’s the perfect Victorian chiller.

[slamthatspam]

Bibliography

Snyder, S., Jock, Hollingsworth, M., Robins, C., & Brothers, D. (2017). Wytches. Portland, OR: Image Comics.

Cassuto, L. (2017). Urban American Gothic. In J. A. Weinstock (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to American Gothic (pp. 156–168).

Snyder, S., Jock, Hollingsworth, M., Robins, C., & Brothers, D. (2017). Wytches. Portland, OR: Image Comics.

Lloyd-Smith, A. (2005). American Gothic Fiction: An introduction. New York: Continuum.

Harris, R. (2018, November, 16). Elements of the Gothic Novel. Virtual Salt. Retrieved from: https://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm

Sandner, D. (2006). Fantastic literature: A critical reader. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Round, J. (2014). Gothic in comics and graphic novels : a critical approach. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Freud, S., McLintock, D., & Haughton, H. (2003). The uncanny. New York : Penguin Books

Walpole, H., & Lewis, W. S. (n.d.). The castle of Otranto : a gothic story. Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Dr. Spooner, C. (2017) Spine-chillers and suspense: A timeline of Gothic fiction. Retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/timelines/zyp72hv

 Freud, S., McLintock, D., & Haughton, H. (2003). The uncanny. New York : Penguin Books

 Jancovich, M. (1994) American Horror from 1951 to the Present (England: Keele University Press, p. 9.

Halberstam, J. (1995). Skin shows : gothic horror and the technology of monsters. Durham, N.C. ; London : Duke University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat01619a&AN=up.633802&site=eds-live

Schneider, S. (1999). Monsters as (Uncanny) Metaphors: Freud, Lakoff, and the Representation of Monstrosity in Cinematic Horror. Other Voices: A Journal of Critical Thought, 1(3).

 Whale, J. (Director). (1931). Frankenstein. [Motion picture] [U.S.A.]: Universal Pictures. (1931)

penny dreadfuls: the Victorian equivalent of video games". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 November 2018.

[mermaidsirennikita]

October 2018 Book Roundup

This was maybe my weakest reading month this year, in terms of quantity--but it picked up towards the end!  There were good books and meh books, but Anna-Marie McLemore’s Blanca and Roja was wonderful.  If you haven’t tried any of her books--please do.  This one was a beautiful fairy tale retelling full of magical realism and romance, while featuring LGBT+ and disabled characters.  One of the best books I’ve read all year.

Siracusa by Delia Ephron.  2/5.  A pair of married couples go on an Italian vacation together, where their internal strife builds to a boiling point.  This is like... plot-wise, pretty much what you expect.  But I’m fine with “expected” domestic thrillers... yet I hated this.  The prose itself wasn’t bad, and there were themes that I enjoyed.  But the male characters were the types of male characters where most of their pagetime is devoted to how much they hate women and how much they love tits, and that’s so boring.  The women were more interesting, but why bother at that point?

Sadie by Courtney Summers.  4/5.  After thirteen-year-old Mattie is found murdered, her sister--and caretaker in the wake of their drug addicted mother’s absence--Sadie goes missing.  After their cases capture the attention of radio personality West McCray, Sadie and Mattie become the focus of a podcast, “The Girls”.  As the podcast unfolds and West struggles to piece together the girls’ pasts and what drove Sadie’s disappearance, the story also follows Sadie’s journey, and the ghosts that haunt her.  This is a sad one.  Very sad.  If you’re easily triggered, I recommend steering clear because the worst part about Sadie’s life is not the brutality we see, but the reality of what we know has happened.  Summers is very restrained, and the horrid things that happen are not graphic, but... we know.  Sadie’s love for her sister was extremely relatable for me as a reader--I’m the oldest of four, and my youngest sibling is a good bit younger than the rest of us, much like Mattie was a good bit younger than Sadie.  It was a rough read, but very well-written.  The ending didn’t really pack the punch I hoped for, but perhaps that was the point.  Some stories don’t get to be wrapped up the way we want them to be.

The Corset by Laura Purcell.  4/5.  In 19th century England, the privileged Dorothea visits women’s prisons, her interest in phrenology fueling her desire to examine the skulls of murderesses and uncover what makes them tick.  Sixteen-year-old Ruth Butterham, about to go to trial for killing her mistress, sticks out for her youth and her plain simplicity.  Yet she insists that she killed the lady of the house--with just her needle and thread.  As Ruth tells Dorothea her tale, Dorothea begins to question her solid views on the nature of evil--and takes a second glance at those surrounding her.  I love that Laura Purcell is giving us these Victorian chiller novels.  Her writing style, her sense of description, gives everything a horrifying creepiness even when the gore isn’t on full display.  (Though plenty of awful things happen in full view in The Corset, it isn’t quite as lurid as The Silent Companions.)  There is a ton of tragedy in The Corset, and a lot of ambiguity in its ending.  A bit more ambiguity than I’d like, to be honest?  It didn’t pack quite the punch I think the rest of the story deserved.  But it was still great, and I’d recommend Purcell to anyone--especially if you’re looking for spooky reads.

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White.  2/5.  Frankenstein retold from the perspective of Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s foster sister and eventual wife.  I wasn’t going to pick this up--but then I realized that Kiersten White wrote The Conqueror’s Saga, one of my favorite series ever. I just should have stuck with my gut.  White writes well, but the first half of the book is sloooooow (where’s Victor + flashbacks basically sums it up) and because I was so bored, I couldn’t get invested in Elizabeth and Victor’s relationship.  The toxicity of their borderline incestuous bond is really supposed to make this a great “mad love” kind of story.  But no.  You never even really get the sense that they were physically attracted to each other.  And White should be able to do this well.  One of the centerpieces of The Conqueror’s Saga was the love triangle between Lada, Radu, and Mehmed--and how Radu and Lada were both very drawn to Mehmed while loathing him.  I think she got kind of caught up in the “fix it fic” aspects of a retelling, which--just don’t go there.  I get it.  Mary Shelley was amazing, but also a woman of her time who wrote a book in which the (somewhat) significant female characters get treated like garbage.  Victor Frankenstein is The Worst.  But everything was so transparent; you knew where the story was going at all times, and not because it was a retelling but because you knew EXACTLY where it would deviate.  And the ending?  RAAAAGE.  Just a missed opportunity.

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke. 2/5.  Frey is one of the Boneless Mercies, women whose trade is death.  She and her group deliver mercy killings upon request--and she’s tired of it.  In order to break out of her role as a Mercy, Frey persuades her band to pursue a mysterious beast, embarking on a perilous journey that will endanger all of their lives.  Tucholke’s prose is beautiful.  Her idea here was amazing--a sort of take of Beowulf with women (and one guy, who was not at all what you’d expect).  She was obviously inspired by Norse mythology, and the overall world and cultures presented are so compelling.  The story?  Is a lot of journeying.  It’s very slow.  I couldn’t get into it, no matter how hard I tried.  It was really disappointing because so many components of this I loved, but the pacing just dragged and it seemed like the story was a stream of events via a road trip, which can be awesome but... the characters just didn’t play off of each other in a way that made me care.  I’m not sure about how much of this was even the book, and how much was me not connecting with it--but is that my fault?  I’m just left frustrated.

Blanca and Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore.  5/5. Blanca and Roja del Cisne are a part of a family with a terrible curse.  The del Cisnes always have daughters--at least two.  And one of those daughters is always taken by the swans and absorbed into their ranks.  Blanca, sweet and light, and Roja, aggressive and resentful, have long worked to attempt to up-end the odds, neither one wanting to let go of the other.  But the magic that controls the woods extends beyond the sisters’ curse, bringing two boys into Blanca and Roja’s predicament, and complicating their fates even further.  This is McLemore at her best.  The writing is beautiful, the romances are fantastic, the relationship between Blanca and Roja is heartbreaking and frustrating and everything it should be.  McLemore also excels at writing authentic magical realism, pulling from her own experiences as a Latinx woman and injecting it into the lives of the del Cisne women.  And as an added bonus, Page, Blanca’s love interest, is a nonbinary trans boy who uses varied pronouns and this is actually discussed on-page; and Barclay, Roja’s love interest, is adjusting to the loss of sight in one eye, and is a survivor of abuse.  McLemore is so careful about how she treats these issues, without ever seeming preachy.  This is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, one of my favorite fairy tales--and it’s my favorite McLemore book so far.

[kornkongsaeng]

From The Limehouse Golem to Lady Bird, pick of the week's TV films

Film of the week

The Limehouse Golem, Saturday, BBC One, 11.05pm

Peter Akroyd’s 1994 murder mystery Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem, set in a bawdy and filthy Victorian London of music halls and sex workers, is a hit-and-miss affair in its own right. It’s no surprise then that in adapting it for the big screen Kick-Ass writer Jane Goldman suffers a few mis-steps. However the biggest change she makes – putting a peripheral police detective centre stage – works well enough, and both the performances from the strong cast and the image-making of director Juan Carlos Medina raise this 2016 chiller above the usual run-of-the-mill historical serial killer fare. คาสิโน

[0531223]

From The Limehouse Golem to Lady Bird, pick of the week's TV films

Peter Akroyd’s 1994 murder mystery Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem, set in a bawdy and filthy Victorian London of music halls and sex workers, is a hit-and-miss affair in its own right. It’s no surprise then that in adapting it for the big screen Kick-Ass writer Jane Goldman suffers a few mis-steps. However the biggest change she makes – putting a peripheral police detective centre stage – works well enough, and both the performances from the strong cast and the image-making of director Juan Carlos Medina raise this 2016 chiller above the usual run-of-the-mill historical serial killer fare. สูตรเซียน

[chabu22]

From The Limehouse Golem to Lady Bird, pick of the week's TV films

Peter Akroyd’s 1994 murder mystery Dan Leno And The Limehouse Golem, set in a bawdy and filthy Victorian London of music halls and sex workers, is a hit-and-miss affair in its own right. It’s no surprise then that in adapting it for the big screen Kick-Ass writer Jane Goldman suffers a few mis-steps. However the biggest change she makes – putting a peripheral police detective centre stage – works well enough, and both the performances from the strong cast and the image-making of director Juan Carlos Medina raise this 2016 chiller above the usual run-of-the-mill historical serial killer fare. สล็อตออนไลน์

[rgnhyukuof]

Download (EPub/PDF) The Corset - Laura Purcell

  Read/Download Visit :

https://escanor01.blogspot.com/?book=B07BSNYJDJ

Book Details :

Author : Laura Purcell

Pages : 416 pages

Publisher :

Language : eng

ISBN-10 : B07BSNYJDJ

ISBN-13 :

Book Synopsis :

Read Online and Download The Corset .The new Victorian chiller from the author of Radio 2 Book Club pick, The Silent Companions.Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain?Dorothea and Ruth.Prison visitor and prisoner. Powerful and powerless.Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder.When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she is delighted with the chance to explore her fascination with phrenology and test her hypothesis that the shape of a person's skull can cast a light on their darkest crimes. But when she meets teenage seamstress Ruth, she is faced with another theory: that it is possible to kill with a needle and thread. For Ruth attributes her crimes to a supernatural power inherent in her stitches.The story Ruth has to tell of her deadly creations ? of bitterness and betrayal, of death and dresses ? will shake Dorothea's belief in rationality, and the power of redemption.Can Ruth be trusted? Is she mad, or .

Laura Purcell book The Corset.

 s

[meanstreetspodcasts]

“A tale well calculated to keep you in…SUSPENSE!”

For twenty years, listeners were chilled by Suspense, “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills."  One of the finest programs from the Golden Age of Radio, Suspense boasted some of Hollywood’s brightest stars turning in memorable performances, backed up behind the scenes by the finest writers and directors in radio.  As engrossing today as it was over seventy years ago, Suspense remains one of the crown jewels for modern day old time radio fans and collectors.

The show was the brainchild of producer/director William Spier (the same man who brought Sam Spade to radio in 1946).  As CBS’ head of dramatic development, Spier experimented with potential new shows including Forecast, a sort of revolving door series that presented audition shows of potential new series.  In 1940, Forecast presented an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lodger,” directed by no less than Hitchcock himself.  That audition show was a way to test the waters for an ongoing anthology series of thrillers. The intended program was meant to be an anthology of Hitchcock films adapted for the airwaves - stories like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, but the final product would be different when it came to radio two years later.

The series proper began on June 17, 1942.  Though the show was not sponsored in those early years, it attracted big stars (Orson Welles, Peter Lorre, Bela Lugosi, and Charles Laughton, among others) as well as top writers. John Dickson Carr contributed scripts and stories were adapted from the works of Cornell Woolrich and others.  Perhaps the most famous of the Suspense scribes was Lucille Fletcher.  In the program’s first two years, Fletcher penned “The Hitch-Hiker” (September 2, 1942, starring Orson Welles) and the most famous of the Suspense plays - “Sorry, Wrong Number."  First performed on May 25, 1943, the story of a bed-ridden woman who overhears a murder plot when phone lines are crossed became a classic of the medium.  Actress Agnes Moorehead starred in eight productions of the show during the run of the series, and the story was adapted into a 1948 film starring Barbara Stanwyck. Among her other classic chillers was “The Diary of Saphronia Winters,” another Agnes Moorehead vehicle about a woman terrorized by her new husband, and “Fugue in C Minor,” a Victorian-era drama of music and murder starring Ida Lupino and Vincent Price. Beginning in 1944, Suspense picked up a sponsor in Roma Wines.  Sponsorship (and the additional money) meant more of Hollywood’s big stars could appear on the show, and the following years saw Lucille Ball, Edward G. Robinson, Joseph Cotten, Vincent Price, and many more take turns at the microphone.  Producer Spier frequently employed radio comedians in starring roles, offering them a chance to flex their dramatic muscles. Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, and William Bendix all turned in such "out of character” performances (a trend that Spier’s successor Elliot Lewis continued when he took the reins of the show in 1950). Audiences could tune in to hear Lucille Ball as a thief or Bob Hope as a conniving criminal. Singers also showed off a different side of their talents. Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Dinah Shore, and others starred in dramatic productions.

In 1948, the running time of Suspense expanded to a full hour.  When Roma Wines withdrew its sponsorship, CBS picked up the tab for the show.  Actor and director Robert Montgomery (whose daughter Elizabeth would later star in Bewitched) served as host and occasional star of the new series. The hour-long experiment proved to be a mixed bag for Suspense.  True, the extra running time allowed for richer characters and more complex plots, but the pool of Hollywood stars whose performances were a series highlight were reluctant to sign on for an hour each week.  In July 1948, Suspense returned to a thirty minute format with a new sponsor (Auto-Lite Spark Plugs).  The show began to experiment with stories adapted from the headlines of the day (stories about atomic spies, drug addiction, and the Korean War) as well as adaptations of American songs and ballads like “Frankie and Johnny” and “Tom Dooley.” The star power continued through the mid 1950s, but as television continued to eclipse radio the high wattage Hollywood actors fell away. Casts consisted more and more of the great West Coast radio actors like Stacy Harris, John Dehner, Jeanette Nolan, and William Conrad. 

1960 marked the end of another era, as CBS shut down its Hollywood radio production. The few shows that were still going (including Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar) moved to New York. The familiar voices were gone, and in their places were East Coast radio stars like Elspeth Eric, Joseph Julian, Larry Haines, and Jackson Beck.

The series would continue all the way up until the final night of network radio on September 30, 1962, thrilling and chilling listeners for decades and keeping pace with the rise of television, with master radio producers and directors like Norman Macdonnell (Gunsmoke), William N. Robson (Escape), Antony Ellis (Frontier Gentleman), and Anton M. Leader (Murder at Midnight) behind the scenes at various points in the run.

For old time radio collectors, Suspense is a treat.  Not only do you get to hear the brightest stars of Hollywood and radio in taut, tense scripts, but hundreds of episodes survive.  Nearly the entire run - from those early, sponsor-free days, to William Spier’s parade of Hollywood stars, to Elliot Lewis’ “ripped from the headlines” dramatizations, and finally to the last shows of the early 60s - can be enjoyed today, with each episode hoping once again to keep you in…Suspense!

And, of course, you can tune in every Thursday to Stars On Suspense. Each week on the podcast, I spotlight a different Hollywood legend and his or her performances on “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills.” Click here to subscribe!

[exelitfest]

Lovecraft After Dark - SOLD OUT EVENT

In September we reluctantly bid farewell to summer, clutching on to the warming evenings before the leaves begin to turn. However as we scan across the remaining months of the year, we can look forward and begin to count down the days to the festival. Later this month, 'Don't Go Into The Cellar’ bring to life H.P. Lovecrafts world of creeping terror and cosmic fear in their finely crafted theatre. The company is based in the West Midlands, a region linked with the likes of Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and they aim to introduce new audiences to the classics of Victorian and Edwardian fiction, from ‘fog-bound chillers’ to ‘sensational chillers.’ ‘Lovecraft after Dark introduces us to Cornelius Pike - avid explorer of all things arcane and bizarre. Join him in his journey on a dark path that leads to a final destination wilder than your most disturbing nightmares.’ Set in the atmospheric St Nicholas Priory at Mint Lane in the city of Exeter this will be a truly unique event amidst the countdown to the festival. Just like me, if you can’t til the main festivities in November, be sure to grab your tickets for this spooky night - just watch out for the shadows on the way back home.