cinema history class: the screaming skull

Session: Get Some Skull, Week 3
Movie: The Screaming Skull (1973)
Directed by Gloria Monty

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
After Dr. Pratt kills his wife, her skull comes back to haunt him. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

The first thing I need to say is that this The Screaming Skull is not the famous 1958 film (which I have yet to see). This was a 1973 made-for-TV production. It's not exactly famous -- I couldn't find anything about it on Youtube (which is why I have just the still picture up there instead of a trailer) or Wikipedia.

Originally broadcast in color, the film seems to only be available in black and white -- in a version taken from a kinescope. Oddly, the loss of picture quality serves this interesting ghost story well -- enhancing the nightmare quality.  I suspect that it wasn't as effective in the original full color crisp version that aired on TV. It also made the production feel much older. It had a 1950s feel to it.

Gloria Monty's direction was generally good, though at times (especially early on) she made the film feel like a soap opera. Which kind of makes sense given that she is best known for her work with the soaps. Vincent Gardenia and David McCallum play off each other beautifully, even if they really don't look convincingly like brothers.

This, I should note, is a nearly-forgotten gem that I likely would have never heard of if not for Keith's class. 

 

Ratings

Me: 9.5

Bob-O: 8.7

Christina: 9.2

Dave: 9.3

Ethan: 8

email shortcut

I figured out a shortcut that will save me time in sending group emails -- a way to easily put a bunch of email addresses in the "to" line of my emails without having to enter each one individually. Put simply, a distribution list. Yeah, I am sure Gmail has a way to do it, but I haven't figured it out.

I am the newsletter editor for LIDS. In that capacity, I sometimes have to send group emails to the entire LIDS membership. I have a membership list in a spreadsheet with several dozen email addresses. In the past, I've typed each email address in. I haven't had to type the full addresses because of the predictive features. But it's still a pain in the ass. And it's prone to error.

But I realized -- and I wonder how it took me so long to realize -- that I can use Excel's features to create my distribution list. Using Gmail's website for my email, the required format for entering multiple addresses in the "To" line is to separate addresses with a comma and a space. So in the membership spreadsheet, which has one row for each member (or couple), I added a new column for the distribution list. As the rows go down, it builds the list. So the entry in the last row is the full list -- which I can copy and paste in the "To" field. I figure I can do this for other things where I have more-or-less set lists of people to send emails to. The JEA Board, Keith's film class...

For the purposes of illustration, I created a simplified list of three names, showing how the distribution list would grow. This obviously works for longer lists. If someone changes email addresses, or people are added or removed, this is easy to change. In the LIDS list, I also included logic to ignore rows where there is no email address -- yes, we have a few members who eschew such things. For what it's worth, people who are more comfortable in Word can create and update a similar type of list in Word and use it in GMail. But I used Excel because I am much more comfortable in spreadsheets than in word processors.

I used my LIDS list this past weekend to send out the fall newsletter, and it was so much easier.

All that said, I realized as I wrote this that I probably could have Googled something like "Create a distribution list in GMail." I'll bet there's a simple way of doing it. But I have my solution so, whatevs...

cinema history class: the skull

Session: Get Some Skull, Week 2
Movie: The Skull (1965)
Directed by Freddie Francis

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
Collectors are interested in the skull of the Marquis de Sade. But it comes with a heavy price. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

This was a Peter Cushing tour de force. There are large stretches of this film with little or no dialogue, yet Cushing manages to convey so much with that face. There was a great cast in this -- along with Cushing, the film starred Christopher Lee, Richard Wymark, and a bunch of other really good actors.

Some of the best parts of this movie -- though my description will just make them sound creepy -- are the scenes in which the titular skull is exerting its influence, controlling people and (possibly most unsettling), floating from place to place. The fact that the damn thing moves so slowly and hauntingly makes it work -- despite what one might think from the description.

Whoever designed the sets and pulled together the props did a tremendous job. In the collectors' homes, it seemed like everywhere you looked there was a visual treat. Maybe they just went to the old prop storage shed and pulled anything and everything that could possibly fit. 

I probably should have rated this higher.

 

Ratings

Me: 8.75

Bob-O: 9.7

Dave: 10

Christina: 8.8

Ethan: 10

Joe: 10

storytelling class -- round 2

Back in March of 2020, Ethan and I started a Storytelling class at The Magnet Theater. I blogged about that class -- or the start of it anyway -- here. Well, that class ended after one session. COVID. Ethan and I had the option of continuing the class in Zoom, but decided against it. Instead we bided our time, hoping things would eventually open up.

And open they did. A bit anyway.

So Ethan and I restarted Adam Wade's storytelling class last month. Today was the sixth session, which means that next week is the class showcase -- the finale, where we each get onstage in front of an audience and tell our story. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the year and a half since the abortive session, Adam has changed things up quite a bit. Back then, at the end of the first class, Adam asked us to come back with three story pitches. Some amount of time in the subsequent classes would have been spent discussing the pitches and each of us deciding what story to tell. Remembering that, I was -- in the first class - already contemplating what stories I would pitch.

But those thoughts were wasted -- Adam has taken a different approach. In the first class, he gave us a prompt -- a beloved childhood object. Near the end of class, we each got up and spoke about such an object. He told us, for the second week, to prepare a talk about a favorite restaurant or similar eating establishment. And in the secondo class he told us to prepare, for the third week, to talk about a mentor or friend. After that, we each had to pick one of those three prompts and build it into our story.

That had me disappointed. Even though I was having trouble coming up with three stories to pitch, I was feeling oddly annoyed that Adam was limiting us to these three prompts. In fairness, Adam did  give us the option of going off menu -- subject to his approval -- if we had some other story that we really really wanted to go with. But when I thought about it, I realized that I could craft stories from each of the three prompts, so the hardest part was picking one of them.

But I picked one. And the last three weeks have been spent building my story. figuring out what works and what doesn't. Adding bits and removing others. And Ethan has been doing the same with his. We have each presented three iterations for the class, and listened to critiques and suggestions. We still have a week to practice, but at this point we're pretty much ready.

So next week I'll be onstage, telling my story about ... well, just tune in next week. 

cinema history class: the four skulls of jonathan drake

Session: Get Some Skull, Week 1
Movie: The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)
Directed by Edward L. Cahn

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Plot:
The men of the Drake family have all died at age 60. A long-dead archaeologist and his also-dead companion want to make sure that keeps happening. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

This is an interesting story, and it's well-paced. There are some good performances -- notably by Henry Daniell, who played Dr. Zurich. And, it should be noted the gore -- tame by today's standards -- was (at points) envelope pushing.

All that said, I didn't find any of the characters interesting, and it was therefore hard to really feel engaged with the story. In fact, I enjoyed myself immensely while watching the film, but I think that was more a product of the environment than the movie itself, because within a few days it had kind of left my brain. Were I to rate it now, it would fare worse than it when I rated it fresh off the viewing. 

 

Ratings

Me: 8

Bob-O: 9.5

Dave: 9.4

Christina: 8.2

Ethan: 8.5

Joe: 10