TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD Has Been Nominated For a Rondo Award!

The nominations for the 21st Annual Rondo Awards have been announced! TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD (edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Tom Weaver) is included among the nominees for "Book of the Year (Non-fiction)." This book includes my long essay, "'We Didn't Lie to You, Folks!': The Thin Line Between Deception and Foma in the Worlds of Tod Browning." Please consider voting for TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD!

YOU CAN VOTE FOR TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD IN 3 EASY STEPS....

1. Copy-and-paste the ballot below into an e-mail.
 
2. Choose TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD in the BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION) category.
 
3. Then email to David Colton (taraco@aol.com) by midnight on April 23rd, 2023.

Don’t forget to include your name in the e-mail!

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BOOK OF THE YEAR (NON-FICTION):
— TOD BROWNING’S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD (Tom Weaver’s Scripts from the Crypt #12), compiled and co-written by Gary Don Rhodes (BearManor Media, softcover, 266 pages, $34). Unfilmed 1932 script sparks new appraisal of Browning.

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TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD shines some much-needed light on many essential lost and/or forgotten Browning projects. If you would like to hear Gary D. Rhodes and I discussing the book on J.G. Michael's PARALLAX VIEWS podcast, click HERE.

Here's the publisher's description of TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD....

“THE GRAVE WILL GIVE UP ITS OWN, UNTIL THE WORLD WILL BE FILLED WITH THE WALKING DEAD.”

London throbs with terror when the dead rise from their graves and walk its streets. The city will soon be overrun. The horror of it all is driving residents to madness and suicide. One victim suffers possession, stigmata and crucifixion. With occult forces at work, civilization may be doomed!

Decades before Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and other industrial-strength shockers, Tod Browning’s 1932 screen treatment and script The Revolt of the Dead anticipated their horrors – and at the same time echoed Browning’s Dracula (1931) by featuring duplicates of several of that film’s major characters. Enter an unexplored corner of Browning’s universe as the Scripts from the Crypt series world-premieres this ultra-rare work, along with background information unearthed by the redoubtable Prof. Gary D. Rhodes.

To delve deeper into Browning’s storytelling process, Professors Rhodes, Nathaniel Bell, Will Dodson and Robert Guffey examine multiple script drafts of Browning’s Freaks (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Devil-Doll (1936) and document the step-by-step evolution of those macabre tales.

The cinematic universe of Classic Horror’s “darkest” director is about to get weirder, wilder and more shocking!

"We justifiably gnash our teeth over what might-have-been had George Romero's sadly unfilmed 1980s Day of the Dead screenplay been made as Romero intended—anticipating as it did so much of what followed, including The Walking Dead TV series—but far, far more mind-blowing is this rediscovery of this lost screenplay to Tod Browning's unfilmed horror epic Revolt of the Dead. Expanding upon Abel Gance's hallucinatory march-of-the-WWI-dead climax to the 1919 J'Accuse, transforming William Seabrook's localized Haitian zombie scourge of his 1929 bestseller The Magic Island into an apocalyptic pandemic, what Browning intended to bring to the screen in 1932 would have scandalized & devastated audiences, rocketing the horror genre decades beyond what was considered even remotely possible at the time. Revelatory, relentless, essential reading!"
- STEPHEN R. BISSETTE (Swamp Thing, Taboo, Studio of Screams, Midnight Movie Monograph: David Cronenberg's The Brood)

 “A trove of fascinating materials that sheds light on Browning projects made and unmade.”
— MURRAY LEEDER, Horror Film: A Critical Introduction

You can order TOD BROWNING'S THE REVOLT OF THE DEAD through Amazon.

Fun in Florida!

From Lisa Tolin's 2-13-23 Pen.org article entitled "Florida Book Bans: Why Are There Empty Shelves in Florida Schools?"

You may have seen pictures of empty bookshelves in Florida classrooms, or heard about book bans across the state.

While efforts to remove books have been intensifying for the past year, what’s happening now is that new laws passed last year in Florida are having a clear chilling effect on classroom teachers and librarians. School districts are interpreting the laws differently, but some teachers have been told they must suspend access to their classroom libraries, so each book can be vetted by a media specialist for approval first. If they don’t comply, they could risk losing their teaching license or even being charged with a felony, if they are found in violation of one of these new laws.

For the most part, nobody knows what is being lost from the shelves, because so many books have been removed at once.

“It’s a bleak situation in parts of Florida. We’ve got teachers teaching on eggshells, in classrooms with no books,” said Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s director of Free Expression and Education programs [...].

One high school student in Manatee told the New Yorker, “I’m scared they’re going to take my one history book away.” In Duval, a media specialist described to The Independent, a “sad sight” of students walking by an empty, closed library unable to access books, until she reviews 37,000 of them. The process, she explained, is challenging and subjective: “The phrase ‘harmful to children’ is so vague… It used to just encompass pornography. They have now added excessive violence. They’ve added negative language. Just they have snuck so many little things underneath harmful to children, it just seems like they’re trying to catch us making a mistake.”

To read the entire article, click HERE.

From Arno Rosenfeld's 3-7-23 FORWARD article entitled "What Do You Do When Neo-Nazis Start Projecting Swastikas Across Your City?":

When thousands of college football fans flocked to Jacksonville for an annual rivalry game between Florida and Georgia on Halloween weekend, they saw an unprecedented series of antisemitic displays. That Friday, a group of men stood on a freeway overpass with painted banners. “Honk if you know it’s the Jews,” one read.

That same night, an identical message appeared scrolling across a Wells Fargo skyscraper and the Lynch Building, a historic apartment tower, both downtown.

White supremacists had unfurled banners like that before, but what came next was new. As the sold out crowd at TIAA Bank Field started to stream out of the stadium on Saturday, they were greeted by a message more than 10 feet high and roughly the length of a billboard, projected with lasers onto the back of the structure. “Kanye is right about the Jews,” read the flickering, handwritten script.

Jacksonville quickly became the epicenter of antisemitic projections on buildings. “Tom Brady got Jew’d” appeared on a parking garage the following month. In December, projections showed up on a downtown bridge and on a former navy ship docked in the St. Johns River. A towering symbol that combined a swastika and cross was projected in January onto the headquarters of the railroad company CSX, one of Jacksonville’s largest employers.

While the most dramatic incidents made national headlines, the Anti-Defamation League tracked more that escaped coverage. It found at least seven such events in and around Jacksonville — and three more elsewhere in Florida — starting on Oct. 29 and running through January, when the city council outlawed them, according to data shared with the Forward. But the laser projections have since spread throughout Florida.

To read the article, click HERE.

From Vic Micolucci's 3-14-23 News4Jax.com article entitled "Jacksonville Jewish, LGBTQ+, FBI Leaders React to Spike in Hate Crime Reports":

Hate crimes reported in America are showing an alarming rise again, according to a revised report from the FBI documenting 2021 cases.

The report shows a 12% increase in hate crime reports across the nation. Those hate crime reports include 18 murders.

Agents point out that the data isn’t complete, as not all police departments and sheriff’s offices contributed. In Florida, the latest data report shows 116 reports of hate crimes.

From projections on downtown Jacksonville buildings and the stadium to signs on interstates and flyers in yards, North Florida has seen signs of hatred.

News4JAX on Tuesday spoke with Jacksonville Jewish Federation CEO Mariam Feist and asked her if she worries that messages like those are going to amplify the risk of crimes against the Jewish community.

“You always worry about that — less concerned about the actual people in these groups, as compared to someone who feels that what their messages that they’re portraying are a call to action,” Feist said.

Feist said she’s disappointed but not surprised to see the latest FBI report shows an increase in hate crimes.

“All reports have shown that they’re getting worse and especially in different areas, so Florida is a hotspot. Northeast Florida is a hotspot. And the rhetoric is just increasing,” Feist said.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

From Ken Tran's 3-21-23 USA TODAY article entitled "Florida Bill Would Ban Girls from Talking About Their Periods in School, GOP Lawmaker Says":

As local bills on gender, sexuality and diversity make their way through Florida’s state legislature, new legislation could ban any discussion of menstrual cycles in school before the sixth grade.

That breaks from the advice of medical providers who recommend talking to children about puberty and changes in their bodies before they occur.

First periods typically start between ages 10 and 15 but can begin as young as 9 years old. That means a student could likely be in third grade up to tenth grade, or later when a period begins.

During a subcommittee hearing in the Florida House on Wednesday, Republican state Rep. Stan McClain said his bill would include restrictions on girls talking about their menstrual cycles. The legislation doesn't specifically mention periods or menstruation but McClain told a subcommittee hearing that it would include restrictions on conversations about girls' menstrual cycles.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.

Operation Mindfuck In the Wild

Yes, the rumors are true! We've had a confirmed sighting! OPERATION MINDFUCK has been spotted in the wilds of a Barnes & Noble in Long Beach, CA by a brave photographer/explorer with experience in capturing--under a panoply of life-threatening conditions--crisp images of ghosts, UFOS, and rarely seen, endangered, cryptozoological species (not to mention cutting-edge books attempting to unveil sadistic psychological warfare campaigns directed against the unsuspecting masses). But if you don't want to venture out into the dangerous landscape of a corporate bookstore to get your hands on a copy of OPERATION MINDFUCK, perhaps try ordering a copy from the publisher right HERE!!!

 

Bert I. Gordon, R.I.P. (1922-2023)

From Robert D. McFadden's 3-8-23 NEW YORK TIMES article entitled "Bert I. Gordon, Auteur of Mutant Monster Movies, Dies at 100":

Bert I. Gordon, the professed king of the monster movies whose B pictures featured giant rats, giant spiders, giant grasshoppers, giant chickens, a colossal man and 30-foot teenagers laying waste to everything in sight, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 100.

His daughter Patricia Gordon confirmed the death.

As anxieties over nuclear testing and the effects of radiation swept postwar America, Mr. Gordon embarked on a low-budget filmmaking odyssey that turned mutated monsters loose on the hapless world [...].

“Bert has never given much thought to social message,” Beverly Gray wrote on the Beverly in Movieland blog in 2014. “He just wants to tell stories on film.”

Six months after the release of the popular “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” directed by Jack Arnold, American International Pictures distributed Mr. Gordon’s “The Amazing Colossal Man” (1957). Caught in a nuclear accident, the title character grows to 60 feet and is shot by the police in Las Vegas. Variety said the film’s technical aspects were “well handled,” and other reviews were generally positive [...].

Called “Mr. B.I.G.,” both for his initials and for his techniques of creating movie monsters, Mr. Gordon wrote “The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mr. B.I.G.: An Autobiographical Journey,” which was published in 2010.

To read the entire article, click HERE.

 

Robert Blake, R.I.P. (1933-2023)

From Alli Rosenbloom's 3-9-23 CNN article entitled "Robert Blake, Embattled Actor of ‘In Cold Blood’ and ‘Lost Highway’ Fame, Dead at 89":

Robert Blake, noted actor and Emmy-winner who starred in crime series “Baretta,” has died, according to his daughter, Delinah Blake Hurwitz. He was 89.

Delinah Blake Hurwitz told CNN in an email that her father died “peacefully” on Thursday “surrounded by family.”

Robert Blake died in Los Angeles from heart disease, according to his niece Noreen Austin, who released an obituary notice via a representative.

Over the course of more than 60 years working as a professional actor, Robert Blake amassed a number of memorable credits, including 1967’s “In Cold Blood” and David Lynch’s 1997 film “Lost Highway,” the actor’s final screen credit.

To read the entire article, click HERE. 

Lost Highway - Mystery Man