Chased
No flick arrived from Netflix this week, but the Movies! channel, 5–2 on ota in NYC, came through once again last night, airing Macabre (1958), a production of horror schlockmeister William Castle, based on the novel The Marble Forest by Anthony Boucher. I’m not sure I understand the plot, which is unusually dense for such fare, but there are elements of the film’s history that are fun. Castle hit on a clever marketing ploy that boosted the box office return, providing each member of the audience an official certificate issued by Lloyds of London insuring the person for $1000 against death by fright. The opening scene is of a clock, and the unseen narrator says: “Ladies and gentlemen — for the next hour and fifteen minutes, you will be shown things so terrifying that the management of this theatre is deeply concerned for your welfare. Therefore, we request that each of you assume the responsibility of taking care of your neighbor. If anyone near you becomes uncontrollably frightened, will you please notify the management so that medical attention can be rushed to their aid? Please set your watches. It is 6:45 in the evening in a town called Thornton…” Of course, the scares are tame by modern standards. Although many of the players had nice careers, the most familiar are Jim Backus, William Prince, Ellen Corby and Jacqueline Scott. The station followed that tidbit with Mad Love (1935), one of several adaptations of the 1924 Maurice Renard novel The Hands of Dr. Orlac, which stars the ever creepy Peter Lorre, Colin Clive and Frances Drake. The parts I saw were entertaining. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I was unable to prevent nodding off, an annoying circumstance of life at 71. The same went for the night’s third film, the classic The Thing From Another World (1951), which was remade so skillfully in 1982 by John Carpenter, who incorporated the technology unavailable decades earlier and who used Bill (son of Burt) Lancaster’s altered screenplay to great effect. Tragically, Lancaster, who had polio as a child, was taken by a heart attack at 49 in 1997… As is the case in life, there is often good in bad — nod off and one forgets about snacking.
Headline from nypost.com: “Survey says: New poll shows US is more divided on politics than ever before.” Ya think?
Covid conflict continues, headline from foxnews.com: “Largest Louisiana health system fines employees with unvaccinated spouses.” Would that stand up to a legal challenge?
And to anyone expecting the political divide to close, there’s this from FN: “Georgia Dem would rather keep Confederate monument than raise Clarence Thomas statue.”
It was an instant replay of the past five days for the floating book shop except for one important factor — a ban going forward on doing business in front of Chase. After 20 or so years without incident, a bigwig gave the order to the manager, who was kind enough to let me slide today since I had the display set up more than half way. Since the bank isn’t open on Sunday, I don’t anticipate a problem tomorrow. When I first started setting up shop there, I expected to be told to take a hike. Instead, I became friendly with some of the staff, one of whom became a regular customer. This will be a problem in winter, as the bank gets sun most of the day and blocks some of the wind. I’ll have to find an alternative. I’ll go nuts staying home all day… My thanks to the kind folks who bought and donated. Here’s some of what sold: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III; The Alienist by Caleb Carr; A Garland for Girls by Louisa May Alcott; The High Window by Raymond Chandler; Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow; Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary by Juan Williams; and this:
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