THE MASTER CALLS....
Saturday, October 31, 2020
THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM
Watch Gary D. Rhodes (my BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE coauthor) deliver an illuminating virtual lecture about his 2018 nonfiction book, THE BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN HORROR FILM, complete with rare photos and clips. This talk was streamed on October 29th, 2020 and sponsored by the Orange County Library System:
Friday, October 30, 2020
Bela Lugosi: Targeted By the FBI
My BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE coauthor, Gary D. Rhodes, recently appeared on J.G. Michael's PARALLAX VIEWS podcast to discuss the FBI harassment experienced by horror icon Bela Lugosi throughout the 1940s and '50s. Here's Michael's description of the episode:
The Parallax Views countdown to Halloween continues as we revisit the life and times of the actor most associated with Count Dracula, Bela Lugosi, with the world's foremost Bela Lugosi scholar Gary D. Rhodes. Gary previously joined us to discuss Lugosi's cinematic career from his runaway success and rise to superstardom courtesy of the Universal Studios classic Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) to his later years appearing in the notorious films of the infamous Ed Wood such as Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and Bride of the Monster (1955). In this conversation we shift our focus to the political life of Bela Lugosi including his involvement in the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, Gary's research into Bela's support of working classes causes, Lugosi's anti-fascism, and how Lugosi's early life may have shaped his politics. And then we delve into the little known story of how Lugosi headed up an organization called the Hungarian-American Council for Democracy. This led to Lugosi being monitored by the early U.S. intelligence agency known as the OSS, who referred to the HUACD as the "Dracula Council" and believed it to be a communist front organization. It turns out, however, that Lugosi was also informing the OSS on the activities of Hungarian fascists in the U.S. while those very same fascists reported on Lugosi to the same agency! It's a wild tale that Gary has dubbed a "Horror Noir" and it doesn't end with the OSS. In fact, Gary's scholarship, which involved digging through national archives and making Freedom of Information Act requests, shows that after WWII the FBI was monitoring Lugosi well into the 1950s when the horror icon's star had faded and he was close to death. It's a fascinating story and definitely one you won't want to miss this Halloween season as Gary D. Rhodes returns to Parallax Views!
To listen to this discussion, click HERE.
(By the way, you can hear my own 9-15-18 appearance on Michael's PARALLAX VIEWS podcast right HERE.)
John Carpenter on MIKE HODEL'S HOUR 25
In honor of Halloween, I recommend checking out this interview with one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter, conducted by J. Michael Straczynski (author of BECOMING SUPERMAN) and his co-host, the late Larry DiTillio (creator of She-Ra). I distinctly remember listening to this episode when it originally aired on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles 33 years ago....
Here's the description of the episode from Straczynski's YouTube channel, Synthetic Worlds: "J. Michael Straczynski and Larry DiTillio hosted Mike Hodel's HOUR 25 for five years at KPFK-FM Los Angeles. The two-hour weekly talk show featured the best and brightest in science fiction, fantasy and horror. Most of the recordings were considered long lost, but a recent discovery brought many of those lost recordings to life. This is one of the best: a 90 minute, commercial free interview with director and writer John Carpenter that covers everything from Quantum Physics to the Bible, to his many movies, behind the scenes stories, and a host of personal and professional topics. The interview was originally broadcast October 30th, 1987 and has not been available since then."
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Diane di Prima, R.I.P. (1934-2020)
From Andrew Limbong's 10-27-20 NPR obituary for Diane di Prima....
Diane di Prima was born in Brooklyn in 1934. She committed herself to poetry as a teenager, and by the 1960s she was working on her own poetry while editing the newsletter The Floating Bear with poet Amiri Baraka (with whom di Prima had a child). According to an archive of di Prima's papers at the University of Connecticut, this work got her arrested by the FBI for alleged obscenity (the case was eventually thrown out) [...].
At the press conference when she was named Poet Laureate of San Francisco, she told the crowd about a dream she'd had recently that showed her how all the work ever written was part of the same big piece that "cuts through time and cuts through space, and we have no idea what it is — it's so wonderful and large." Her deepest service, she added, was to poetry and to humans.
To read the entire obit, click HERE.
If you haven't read di Prima's work, I suggest beginning with MEMOIRS OF A BEATNIK (1969) and PIECES OF A SONG: SELECTED POEMS (1990).
Note: Di Prima's poem "Rant" (see below) directly inspired my essay "The War Against the Imagination."
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR AGAINST THE IMAGINATION
ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT
--Diane di Prima, "Rant," 1985
"Halloween Decorations Prompt Multiple Police Visits"
From Jamie Vahala's 10-27-20 DALLAS OBSERVER article entitled "An East Dallas Home's Halloween Decorations Prompt Multiple Police Visits":
Halloween, the high holy day of spooky season, has a sort of Spooky Scale™ that runs the gamut from the casual black cat, full moon, or harmless jack-o'-lantern to the extremes of disembodied corpses, chainsaw massacre enactments or, even scarier, the thought of paying bills every month under the terror of COVID-19.
Local artist Steven Novak finds himself comfortably at the "horrifying" end of the scale, as his East Dallas neighbors and the Dallas Police Department will surely attest.
“I’ve always been up to hijinks like flying ghosts or 7-foot tall snow sculptures of myself, so if I was gonna do Halloween, it was obvious that it should be hyperreal," Novak says. "No lights, fog machine, or camp … something that would really freak people out walking by in the dark. So I whipped up some dummies and slung 20 gallons of blood all over.”
Novak's home holds a horror show. In his M Street yard, one dummy lies with his head pulverized, one lies with a scale where his or her head used to be, and a few more lie in bloodied trash bags fallen off a wheelbarrow. All the while, in the window of the house, a zombie horde attempts to break out....
To read the entire article, click HERE.
Wednesday, October 28, 2020
The "Halloween Spook-tacular" Marathon
Courtesy of the WOTR Radio Network, the 2020 "Halloween Spook-tacular" Marathon begins on October 29th. Details below....
"It's that spooky time of year here at Old Time Radio USA and it's about time for the annual 'Halloween Spook-tacular' marathon event! 72 hours of Halloween fun starting October 29th with the 52 part serial of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Followed by the widely popular annual marathon of The War of the Worlds back to back, all day long on October 30th. Then, Halloween Day, 24 hours of classic old time radio horror and thriller episodes!
"It's Old Time Radio USA's 'Halloween Spook-tacular' starting October 29th at 6am ET!"
Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff's Unholy 13 (Reprise)
BELA LUGOSI'S TOP 13
I originally posted this a couple of years ago, but I thought it would be worth another visit, particularly if you want to find a film worthy of your time on Halloween. What follows is a list of the essential entries in Bela Lugosi's five-decade-long filmography.
A few years ago a friend of mine saw Rowland V. Lee's SON OF FRANKENSTEIN (1939) for the first time at The Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles. At the end of the film his first comment was, “Why does everybody say Bela Lugosi was such a bad actor? He’s great in this! He steals the whole movie—and that’s not easy when you’re sparring with Lionel Atwill, Boris Rathbone, and Boris Karloff!” He then asked me to recommend other Lugosi films, so I took the opportunity to compile my personal “Top 13 Lugosi” list. Your forthcoming Halloween viewing experience can be vastly improved by the addition of any one of the following films from the Golden Age of Hollywood....
BORIS KARLOFF'S TOP 13
Of course, it's only appropriate that we give equal time to Lugosi's most frequent collaborator and rival, Boris Karloff. What follows is my personal "Top 13 Karloff" list. Each of these films (some acknowledged classics, others relatively obscure) represents a high watermark in the history of cinematic horror....
TARGETS (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE
Behold!!! Click HERE for a special pre-Halloween treat, courtesy of ShoutFactoryTV....
Tuesday, October 27, 2020
Cosmic Horror - An Old Time Radio Collection
As we hurtle our way toward All Hallows' Eve, listen to the cosmic horror stylings of classic old time radio shows directly based on (or inspired by) the works of H.P. Lovecraft....
Sunday, October 25, 2020
MEDIUM: "Dark Twins of a Distorted American Dream"
My new article, "Dark Twins of a Distorted American Dream," analyzes a pair of recent American novels that explore the concept of the American Dream in the wake of the "Trump era." This piece focuses on the illuminating parallels between SHADOWBAHN by Steve Erickson and OFFED by Gary D. Rhodes. Click HERE to read the entire article.
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 10
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 10: Where the Pearls Were Hidden" directly below....
Saturday, October 24, 2020
"Unknown Assailants Wielding Novel Directed Energy Weapons"
From Julia Ioffe's 10-10-20 GQ article entitled "The Mystery of the Immaculate Concussion":
He was a senior CIA official tasked with getting tough on Russia. Then, one night in Moscow, Marc Polymeropoulos's life changed forever. He says he was hit with a mysterious weapon, joining dozens of American diplomats and spies who believe they’ve been targeted with this secret device all over the world—and even at home, on U.S. soil. Now, as a CIA investigation points the blame at Russia, the victims are left wondering why so little is being done by the Trump administration....
Marc Polymeropoulos awoke with a start. The feeling of nausea was overwhelming. Food poisoning, he thought, and decided to head for the bathroom. But when he tried to get out of bed, he fell over. He tried to stand up and fell again. It was the early morning hours of December 5, 2017, and his Moscow hotel room was spinning around him. His ears were ringing. He felt, he recalled, “like I was going to both throw up and pass out at the same time.”Polymeropoulos was a covert CIA operative, a jovial, burly man who likes to refer to himself as “grizzled.” Moscow was not the first time he had been on enemy territory. He had spent most of his career in the Middle East, fighting America’s long war on terrorism. He had hunted terrorists in Pakistan and Yemen. He did the same in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had been shot at, ducked under rocket fire, and had shrapnel whiz by uncomfortably close to his head. But that night, paralyzed with seasickness in the landlocked Russian capital, Polymeropoulos felt terrified and utterly helpless for the first time.
Struggling to regain control over his body, Polymeropoulos couldn’t have imagined that this incident would upend his life. It would end a promising career that had just catapulted him into the ranks of senior CIA leadership, and threw him into the middle of a growing international mystery that has puzzled diplomats and scientists, and raised concerns on Capitol Hill. In the months ahead, he would come to realize that it wasn’t a spoiled sandwich that had mowed him down. Rather, it was his macabre initiation into a growing club of dozens of American diplomats, spies, and government employees posted abroad who were suffering in much the same way he was—targets of what some experts and doctors now believe were attacks perpetrated by unknown assailants wielding novel directed energy weapons. Though many of these apparent attacks have been publicized, including those that took place in Cuba and China, others have not been revealed until now, including at least three incidents that officials from the CIA and Capitol Hill say targeted American citizens on American soil.
To read the entire article, click HERE.
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 9
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 9: Trail of the Phantom Church Bell" directly below....
Friday, October 23, 2020
Podcasts! Podcasts! Podcasts!
A frequent correspondent recently sent me this LINK, which is a useful guide to some of my various and sundry appearances on podcasts such as CONSPIRINORMAL, THE HIGHERSIDE CHATS, NOX MENTE, OUR BIG DUMB MOUTH, and PROJECT ARCHIVIST.
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 8
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 8: The Kidnapping of Clawfoot" directly below....
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Return of the Phantom Clowns
From Charlotte Regen's 9-19-20 BIRMINGHAM MAIL article entitled "Terrifying Clown 'Tormenting Kingswinford Neighbourhood'":
A Black Country street has been gripped by the fears of a clown after residents claimed they are being terrorised by a bare-chested motorist in full circus make-up [...].The bizarre spate of clown encounters is no laughing matter, say locals. They described the confrontations as "sinister". They have CCTV footage.
On Thursday, the individual approached a young couple delivering leaflets.
At first they thought he was on his way to a children's party. Then the red-nosed individual "stared out" the 19-year-old woman before guffawing in her face.
Her companion told Black Country Live: "He laughed like a clown."
The 20-year-old added: "He stared at my girlfriend for a minute or so and started to laugh like a clown.
"At first I just thought he was on his way to a children’s party or something, I didn’t see him that clearly.
"We tried to ignore him and carried on doing the leaflets, we tried to pay no attention to him to see if he would stop. But as we got closer, he got in his car and opened his passenger door and asked me if I was someone he knew.
"When I said no, he started laughing more. It was a scary experience for both of us. I went out last night and spent half the time looking over my shoulder."
The "victim" has provided a detailed description.
He added: "He was about 5ft 8ins tall. He was wearing clown face paint, false clown teeth, no top on with a black cap and joggers. He was laughing like a clown and had knife scars on his belly."
Click HERE to read the entire article.
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 7
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 7: Captain Friday Vanishes" directly below....
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Kenan Malik: "The Freedom to Offend is a Priceless Commodity"
From Kenan Malik's 10-18-20 GUARDIAN article entitled "The Freedom to Offend is a Priceless Commodity":
The details are still emerging, but the horror is clear – the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, in Paris, apparently in response to his using Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a classroom discussion on free speech.
After such attacks there are always claims that “free speech isn’t worth it”. Hardly had news begun filtering out about the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders than there were suggestions that the cartoonists had brought it on themselves. The same will no doubt happen again.
But in such moments, we need to do the opposite: to reaffirm commitments to free speech and the freedom to offend.
To read the entire piece, click HERE.
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 6
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 6: The Ghoul in the Grave" directly below....
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi!
Today would have been the 138th birthday of Bela Lugosi, the undying star of such classic Golden Age horror films as DRACULA, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, WHITE ZOMBIE, ISLAND OF LOST SOULS, THE BLACK CAT, THE RAVEN, etc. In honor of this most venerable day, I suggest listening to the 10-22-19 episode of Roejen Razorwire's PROJECT ARCHIVIST podcast in which Gary D. Rhodes and I discussed our Rondo Award-nominated nonfiction book, BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE. So feel free to slip into your black-velvet-lined coffin, relax, smoke some opium, and get ready for an hour-long discussion filled with mind-boggling, Lugosi-related mysteries such as the FBI and OSS surveillance of Lugosi throughout World War II, Lugosi's peculiar relationship with Ed Wood, and the always fascinating surrealism of such cinematic enigmas as THE APE MAN, BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT, and THE CORPSE VANISHES! This makes perfect listening for the Halloween season! If you want to check out this weird and macabre interview, simply click HERE!
(And if any if this piques your interest in BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE, you can buy a copy right HERE!)
As an added bonus, here's a photo of The Ghost Host at Disneyland standing beside Yours Truly outside the gates of The Haunted Mansion as we find ourselves hypnotized by the weirdly alluring, vampiric prose of BELA LUGOSI AND THE MONOGRAM NINE....
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 5
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 5: The Skeleton Walks In" directly below....
Monday, October 19, 2020
"QAnon Has Made Life Difficult for the Organizations Actually Trying to Save Children..."
What follow are three relevant excerpts from Kaleigh Rogers' 10-15-20 FiveThirtyEight article entitled "Trump Said QAnon ‘Fights’ Pedophilia. But The Group Has Made It Harder To Protect Kids.":
It’s hard to argue against a phrase like “save the children.” Which, presumably, is why QAnon uses it as a hashtag. The growing online conspiracy cult has co-opted the phrase to push falsehoods about pedophiles who run the world. But in promoting its radical worldview, QAnon has made life difficult for the organizations actually trying to save children. And the results could be putting kids at risk [...].Over the summer, Q followers began using #savethechildren to spread the conspiracy theory, and it worked. From Aug. 9 through Aug. 15, more than 12,000 public Facebook posts used the hashtag, according to the social media tracking tool CrowdTangle. The rest of the year, the hashtag tended to garner fewer than 200 posts per week.
But most of the content shared using #savethechildren was based on a Q-fueled and completely warped picture of what child trafficking looks like in this country. And that has made life difficult for the people who actually do anti-trafficking work.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” said Lisa Goldblatt Grace, co-founder and executive director of My Life My Choice, an anti-trafficking nonprofit. “We’ve worked so hard for the last 18 years to shift the narrative and have people understand this is happening in our communities. QAnon instead gives folks this incredibly sensationalized ‘other’ to fear and be angry about.”
In reality, child trafficking in the U.S. doesn’t look like a bunch of Hollywood and D.C. elites performing satanic rituals on children they stole from suburban playgrounds. Instead, kids who are sexually exploited are often poor, children of color, immigrants, or some combination of the three, and they’ve often been in the child welfare system or run away from home. In 2018, 1 in 7 kids who were reported as runaways to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were likely victims of child sex trafficking, according to UNICEF [...].
Even if QAnon is bringing people’s attention to child trafficking in general, it’s focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized, largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like. And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem.
“It can lead to not only a misunderstanding of the issue, but also a wrong response,” said Borislav Gerasimov, the program coordinator for communications and advocacy at the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women.
As an example, Gerasimov cited the gunman who fired inside a pizza shop in 2016 because he wrongly believed it was the location of an underground pedophile ring, a conspiracy theory called Pizzagate that is a precursor to QAnon. “If you portray human trafficking as something that a secret cabal is doing, the solution becomes guns and surveillance. This is totally not the solution to trafficking.”
The solutions that anti-trafficking groups advocate for aren’t about raiding pizza shops or decoding Justin Bieber’s headwear choices, they’re about improving social programs so kids don’t fall through the cracks and end up in situations that leave them vulnerable to exploitation. That’s not as easy of a sell to the QAnon crowd.
“I don’t find that I’m able to translate the kind of fervor and excitement and investment people get for #savethechildren into an investment and focus and excitement in caring for the most marginalized among us,” said Goldblatt Grace.
Click HERE to read the entire article.
(And click HERE to read my recent five-part SALON series about QAnon.)
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 4
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 4: Old Clawfoot Again" directly below....
Sunday, October 18, 2020
The Weird Worlds of Richard Sala
If you're looking for the perfect reading material for this Halloween season, look no farther than the weird worlds created by the late Richard Sala. Sala passed away earlier this year, leaving behind decades of sui generis graphic novels that somehow manage to pull off the always difficult tightrope act of marrying the grotesque with the absurd. I recommend watching the following Sala retrospective produced by FOR THE LOVE OF COMICS this past May in the wake of the artist's unexpected death....
Footnote: Back in December of 2017, I wrote about Sala's THE BLOODY CARDINAL in a Cryptoscatology post entitled "The Cryptoscatology Top Ten: The Best Comic Books of 2017!" On November 18, 2019, Richard Sala quoted from my review of THE BLOODY CARDINAL on his Facebook page. I was pleased to know that he approved of my assessment of his book:
Note to my readers and to lovers of unusual comics in general: I hope to
finish up my web serial THE BLOODY CARDINAL 2 by the end of the year
(at the rate of a page or two (or 3) a week…. Psst! There's a new one
coming tomorrow). Then sometime next year (??) the story will be one of
four graphic novels in a hefty omnibus from Fantagraphics. -- So I have
been glancing back over my shoulder at The Bloody Cardinal book which came out in 2017 -- and while doing so I discovered a very
nice quote about it from a column on the 10 best comics of 2017 (on
which it was included). Of course I am much too humble to repost it
here…
Just kidding! -- how can I resist since the reviewer kindly name checks two of my paisanos!:
"Imagine Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (a
playfully self-reflective novel in which a pair of obsessed readers
explore the interdependence of art and reality) mixed with an Italian
giallo slasher film directed by Mario Bava, throw in a man dressed like a
big red bird and a cast of innocent young women in danger of being the
homicidal fowl’s next victims, and you won’t even come close to the
treasure trove of strangeness awaiting you in Richard Sala’s perversely
humorous graphic novel, The Bloody Cardinal."
Grazie!
Old Time Radio Flashback: THE CITY OF THE DEAD Chapter 3
Carlton E. Morse's legendary radio serial ADVENTURES BY MORSE: THE CITY OF THE DEAD originally aired in the 1940s. You can hear "Chapter 3: The Body That Walked Off" directly below....
Saturday, October 17, 2020
QAnon Abroad
From Mitch Prothero's 10-13-20 BUSINESS INSIDER article entitled "European Intelligence Agencies Are Deploying Resources to Track QAnon as the Conspiracy Theory Spreads Beyond the US, Sources Say":
Europe's domestic intelligence and law-enforcement services have apprehensively watched the QAnon conspiracy theory migrate from the US and now consider it a significant security concern.
That assessment was given by two security officials contacted by Insider, both of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity given the nature of their work [...].
A Belgian counterterrorism official told Insider that many European services like his were now rethinking a decision to ignore QAnon as a solely American phenomenon.
He drew parallels between QAnon and jihadist movements that have traditionally occupied intelligence agencies.
"I worked on jihadis and Al Qaeda, ISIS, for over 20 years, and now I am looking at the secular American version," said the official, who's part of Belgium's Federal Police.
"This Q thing is very similar to jihadism in several ways that are not obvious at first. For example, both are cults of magical thinking. Jihadis are drawn to the cause because they find comfort in a black-and-white morality in a complex world.
"And then they get to participate in a new version of reality, one where they aren't just a flawed person but they're heroes in a battle that normal people are too ignorant to even see.
"So it turns out the world isn't a complex place where making the right choices and understanding things around you can be a challenge," the official continued. "It's a very simple place where there's good and evil and you get to be good and oppose evil.
"And you're no longer some Moroccan kid from Molenbeek — you're a holy warrior protecting the true Islam," the official said, referring to a Brussels neighborhood associated with jihadism. "Or you're no longer some normal suburban person with a boring job — you are on the front lines battling a lizard-person death cult."
When asked whether fears of Q-related violence in Europe were legitimate, the official said they probably were [...].
A French police official based in Paris said that a long list of other concerns meant that significant resources hadn't been assigned to QAnon. But he said that could change.
"French love conspiracies; half our country thinks the Masons run the world, and the other half thinks the Masons should," the police official said.
Click HERE to read the entire article.
(And click HERE to read my recent five-part SALON series about QAnon.)