Just a quick shout out on one of my favorite poems. The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe was first published with his name attributed to it on this day in 1845. Very haunting and very Gothic. Anyway, if you’d like to read it, go here. If reading isn’t your thing, you can find a recording on Librivox here. If you want to see a video of Vincent Price reading The Raven, go down to the bottom of the wikipedia page on the poem and you’ll find it under external links/video. He does a dramatic reading of the poem, not literal, but hey it’s Vincent Price! And if you want to see the best adaptation of The Raven ever, go here for The Simpson’s Halloween special version. So, if you like really depressing, gothic poems, enjoy!!
Discovery Channel News had a nice, short commentary from Katherine Ramsland, the author of The Science of Vampires. It’s only about 2 and a half minutes long. Lots of still images, some from Nosferatu. So, if you don’t want to watch the Nosferatu movie, you can at least see how they imagined Count Orlok. It’s a pretty interesting commentary and speaks to some of what we’ve recently discussed on vampires. I invite you to check it out and share your thoughts.
One of my favorite movies when I was younger was The Ghost Breakers starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. Released in 1940, The Ghost Breakers perfectly blends comedy and fright with some gothic elements on the side.
Mary Carter (Paulette Goddard) is about to travel to Cuba because she inherited her great-great grandfather’s castle (appropriately named Castillo Maldito, located on Black Island) that is said to be haunted. She is already receiving offers from unnamed others to buy the castle from her. Carter crosses paths with Larry Lawrence (Bob Hope), a radio personality who thinks he accidently killed a man in the hotel corridor, and Lawrence’s valet Alex (Willie Best). They travel with Carter to Cuba after finding out that she might be in danger because of a note (“Death Awaits You on Black Island”) and a death ou-anga, an voodoo amulet of death, posted to the door of her room in the ship. The trio along with Carter’s old friend Geoff Montgomery (Richard Carlson), Cuban Advisor Parada (Paul Lukas), and mysterious Francisco Mederes (Anthony Quinn) meet up at Black Island where they encounter a ghost, a zombie, and a dangerous murderer within their own ranks. [click to continue…]
Nosferatu, The Symphony of Horror (How’s that for a catchy name?) was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is, as far as I can tell from a brief research, one of the earliest adaptations of Dracula. Directed by F.W. Murnau and released in 1922, the film attempted to get around the problem of not having the rights to the Stoker story by changing the setting from London to the fictional German city of Wisborg and also changing all the names of the characters. Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok, Harker becomes Thomas Hutter, Renfield becomes Knock, and so on. Minus the ending, though, the story is essentially the same as Dracula. [click to continue…]
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