Tag: frankenstein
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The Scattershot Lunacy of Movie Director Richard E. Cunha
Anyone who has visited Bill Ectric’s Place for any length of time knows that I like reading about low budget B movies, especially horror and science fiction. Sometimes watching them can be fun; sometimes reading about them is better than actually watching them. Unless you are either watching them on Mystery Science Theater, or with…
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Danel Griffin on The Implications of Vlad the Impaler and the Alchemist Dippel’s Fictional Metamorphosis
If you’ve read the About page of Bill Ectric’s Place, you know I’m interested in academic pursuits, and if you’ve read more than a couple of my blog entries, you know my interests include the mysterious, the esoteric, and the Gothic. Imagine my delight at finding this article by Danel Griffin on his Film as…
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Less Electricity, More Elixir of Life!
All the many Frankenstein movies had left me with the bogus memory that lightning and electrical equipment figured prominently in Mary Shelley’s book. When I recently read Frankenstein again after many years, it surprised me to discover that Shelley barely mentions electricity at all. Victor Frankenstein is vague about the procedure, telling the sea captain…
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Another Trip to the World of Westfahl
Over at World of Westfahl, Professor Gary has a relatively new entry in his Biographical Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Film. This one is on film director Erle C. Kenton, whose credits include A Haunted House (short) (1922), Island of Lost Souls (1932), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945), and The Cat Creeps (1946).…
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uNcAnNy
The word “uncanny” is often used interchangeably with words like “eerie” and “weird.” After Boris Karloff portrayed the Frankenstein monster in the classic 1931 movie, he was sometimes billed as “Karloff the Uncanny.” I recently decided to look up the actual definition of uncanny and discovered a treasure trove of cool information, including some psychology from…
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A Graphic Sense of Unhallowed Nietzschean Bravado
As teenagers, James Morrow and his friends made short 8mm movies based on Coleridge and Poe stories. Morrow went on to earn a master’s degree from Harvard University, then published his first novel, The Wine of Violence, in 1981. His latest, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, prompted the Library Journal to compare Morrow to enlightenment luminary Denis…