Happy Halloween 2011 From the Catalogue of Curiosities!

It’s hard to believe that Halloween day is here already. Although I wasn’t able to post as much as I would have liked this year, I had fun nonetheless, and as always with the Countdown to Halloween, half the fun is reading what other writers are posting. Stay tuned in November, as I will have some scary left-overs—posts I was planning to make, but was never able to get to.

I thought I would end with some trailers from the master of horror movie self-promotion, William Castle. Happy Halloween!

Read Full Post »

Halftone Horrors Part Four

Read Full Post »

Music For a Giallo Evening

Over at the film blog groove-machine that is Cinebeats, Kimberly Lindbergs has been making horror-themed music compilations all month long (part of The Countdown to Halloween) and her latest, Giallo Note, might just be the most inspired installment. Gathering music from a wide spectrum of Giallo films, you’ll hear pieces from Morricone to Goblin and dive deep into all manner of lounge music, Italian style.

And in light of the inclusion of music from Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970), I thought I would re-post my illustration of Edwige Fenech based upon a scene from the latter film (seen above).

And be sure to check the other blogs participating in this year’s Countdown to Halloween! There’s plenty of thrills and chills to be had.

Read Full Post »

Birth of the Cool: Barbara Steele

Read Full Post »

Up, Up and Away: Supergirl 1961

Read Full Post »

Vampira’s Sinister Summer Grab-Bag-O-Rama!

As summer draws to a close, why not enjoy these last days with the Glamour Ghoul herself, Vampira. Who knew that even vampires enjoy lounging by the pool on occasion…

Read Full Post »

For the Birds

Read Full Post »

Summer Remains, Jayne Still Lingers

Jayne Mansfield always reminds me of summer, as strange as that sounds. Perhaps it’s all the photos of the smiling, phosphorescent leggy blonde in bikinis, often lounging by a pool, sunning herself, sultry and white-hot in the bright sunlight. Jayne Mansfield is the summer of Americana, of bygone eras that always appear glamorous in photos, always feel nostalgic despite whatever reality they actually inhabited. Vacationers lingering by pools, by lakes; the heady smell of newly cut grass, of hot dogs and hamburgers grilling, of ice cream pops dispensed from musical trucks; lazy days that stretch on and on, skies at dusk fading to a burnt-orange color. All around the sound of kids shouting and laughing, adults drinking and talking until it was dark.

This is the history that is exhumed, minus the racial chasm, the gangsters, the junkies, the crooked politicians, all of the foriegn entanglements—shot through the lens of a movie camera. Mansfield was certainly part of that; the American movie-of-the-mind, a summer drive-in double feature of sand and sun and the and good-looking young men and women dancing to transistor radios blasting static-ridden bubblegum pop.

But then there is the flipside: her often bizzare later career which spawned such tacky treasures as The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield (1968), and her terribly sad death in a car crash that killed nearly everyone aboard. This is the dark side of my associations of Jayne Mansfield. I cannot help but imagine that car accident when I think of Mansfield, the lurid details not only played out in the tabloids, but immortalized in film maker Kenneth Anger’s tell-all book of the dark underbelly of Hollywood, Hollywood Babylon. Much of the book is wholly imagined of course–amplified rumors and innuendo, or out-right lies, but these are the details that stick, the images that remain, the hot-bed of a public’s collective memory. This is the evil twin of the cotton-candy nostalgia: the awful, turgid realities that are twisted and distorted for the bizarre glee of an audience wanting all of the dirt on people who seem larger-than-life.

Still, Mansfield occupied a certain space, along with her “blonde-bombshell” counterpart, Marilyn Monroe, in the American landscape. Monroe mixed sexuality with innocence, but Mansfield was all raw sexuality. She was uninhibited and wild; she held nothing back, or so it seemed. Surely Monroe has posed by enough pools, retained that same sun-kissed glow of summer, but somehow Mansfield has become indelibly linked to all of those thoughts of summer, remaining somewhere in the back of my mind.

She lingers in black and white, sometimes in color, a woman who symbolized a nation’s new-found sexuality, bubbling with optimism, the sun as bright and intense as her short-lived career.

Read Full Post »

On the Street: Yourna Byrd on 48th Street, New York City

Yourna Byrd, wife of Jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd, photographed in 1960 by William Claxton.

Read Full Post »

Twice As Deadly or Danger, Danger, Bang, Bang

Newspaper ad for Twice As Deadly or Danger, Danger, Bang, Bang (1966).

Read Full Post »