1) tell if a moderator is online?  It was always sort of comforting before to see anywhere from 1 to 3 moderators online.  And, in some cases, like when I was posting at 4 a.m., it was a relief to see that no one was there wondering what the heck I was doing posting at 4 a.m. ... 

2) how does one delete a post one has made -- e.g. I wasn't used to the way the new board works, and I thought my post hadn't been posted, so I re-posted it (with a couple of corrections)!  Maybe I should just ask Darren about this one ... 

This is an off-shoot of a conversation started in a Shadowgram Update thread in the Announcements area of the board.

MB wrote:

Wallace based much of the original idea for DS on his teleplay for The House, which is about a reclusive woman named Caroline, whose husband had been mising for years, and her daughter Elizabeth. (Wallace simply switched the characters' names of the characters for DS - and changed Caroline to Carolyn.  ) I've only read bits and pieces about it, though, so I'm not sure if Caroline also believed she'd murdered her husband. But I suppose we'll find out at the Fest...

I've wanted to read the script for "The House" since finding out about it in Art Wallaces' story bible, "Shadows on the Wall."  I would also like to see the original broadcast on Goodyear Playhouse in 1958.  Does anyone know who was in it?

Perhaps someone involved in the festival could see if the script is available, perhpas for purchase (in which case, I'd pay for someone to buy me one and mail it!).  Is there someone I might contact from the festival?

I'd be interested in comparing "The House" with "Shadows on the Wall."  Just one area of interest I have would be to see if the "House of the Seven Gables" influence was in the "The House."

Also, was there a Victoria Winters/governess of unknown origins character in "The House"?

Does anyone know anything about the reputability of an online outfit called "MTC Europa Video"?

They claim to have VHS and DVD available low-cost of many movies that have been discussed on this forum that are either out of print or have never been released on VHS or DVD to my knowledge.

Some examples:

Louis Jourdan's Dracula

Witchfinder General (aka The Conqueror Worm)

Eye of the Devil

Burn, Witch, Burn!

and others.

Maybe I should have ended that with a "?" rather than a "!", but if one didn't cause another, it was a strange coincidence.

Earlier today, I saw I had an IM.  Since I didn't have the time to read it carefully at the moment, I decided to copy and paste the message into a Word document.  I looked in vain for a "print" feature somewhere on the IM page, but there was no print feature, which I sometimes have used in the past.  i.e., I have sometimes copied and pasted text from the "Print" page to avoid copying and pasting all the html stuff (or whatever).

Since there was no "Print" feature (which seems strange as it is, and I think I'd noticed that in the past, too), I decided to just highlight the text of the message (i.e., I didn't highlight anything that didn't have to be copied, such as Subject Heading, etc.).

I then pasted this into a Word document.  At the same time, I had a file open on my computer.  It was a lengthy file of Miscellaneous information -- credit card numbers and dates for quick reference, a To Do list, personal contact information, notes to myself, etc.  This wasn't a Word document but rather a Wordpad document that I just keep on my computer "Desktop."

After pasting the IM text into a new Word document, I went back to my Wordpad file, which had been fine before.  I hadn't added or changed it in any way today.  Now, however, the file was suddenly frozen.  I couldn't type a new message in it or even move the cursor in the document.

I tried closing and reopening the document.  This time, the file took forever to open instead of just opening instantaneously as it always does.

As I scrolled down, I discovered that the bottom 90 percent of the document was gone, replaced by some odd looking back slashes (i.e., they didn't even look like normal backslashes, but were sort of wavy).

Immediately before these backslashes, and in the middle of my notes which were now cut off, was this strange message:

FHYPERLINK "../Indexes/timeline.html"


Tonight I called the university tech desk, and they said the file had somehow become corrupted.  To my dismay, they said there is no way to recover it.  I find that difficult to believe since we hear so much about how nothing is ever really gone from your computer no matter how you try to delete it.

Anyway, the moral of my story is a warning, I guess, not to copy and paste text from the html versions of the pages on this site!

This was my first venture into the special Video section of the board.  I may be missing something obvious, but how do you get the video(s) to play?

I tried three of the selections and none of them worked.  Each one opened like a normal post and had a picture of the RealOne logo.  I have the most recent version of RealOne on my computer.  But nothing happens when I go into these posts.  I tried clicking and double-clicking on the RealOne picture, but nothing happens.

Thank you.

Just before I got online tonight I turned on the TV to catch the last 20 minutes or so of a PBS special on Peggy Lee.  It was called something like "Fever: The Music of Peggy Lee."  As the end credits rolled, I saw:

Produced by Jim Pierson

Is this "our" Jim Pierson, of DS renown?

I had never heard of "Suspiria" or Italian director Dario Argento until about a year ago when someone (I think it was Luciaphil) brought up this movie, which included Joan Bennett's last screen appearance.

I had mixed feelings about the movie after seeing it on the SciFi channel at that time.  I've come to conclude, though, that that airing didn't provide a good basis for evaluating the film.  The color was washed out, both the print and sound were terrible, and the film seemed to have been chopped to bits for television.  I was intrigued enough from from this suspect airing, though, in addition to reading a lot of commentary, to purchase the VHS tape, which was a revelation in comparison.  (Incidentally, it is also available on DVD in restored format, as is the VHS version.)  I also learned that "Suspiria" was the first in a proposed trilogy conceived by Argento, and that the second part had been filmed, "Inferno."  In fact, I rather prefer "Inferno" to Suspiria ... it has the same stylized, unrealistic quality both visually and in terms of the storyline.   "Inferno" is one of the movies where I think virtually every frame exactly fulfills the director's vision for the movie.  And with Inferno, the implication is made more clearly that we are entering the realm of the subconscious, and that events unfold with no more logic than a dream or nightmare.

Argento's inspiration for the trilogy came from English writer Thomas de Quincy's dreamlike meditations in his autobiograpical "Confessions of an Opium Eater", in which he imagines three "mothers" -- spirits or shades, if I remember correctly -- who inspire and inflect mankind in equal measures.  The link is rather tenuous, IMO, based on my reading of the relevant sections in de Quincy, but interesting.

For years (decades, now) there's been speculation as to when, if ever, the final installment of the trilogy would ever be undertaken.

The good news is that Argento has told a number of European publications that the third movie is in the works and he expects filming to commence in August.  The working title is "La Terza Madre" (The Third Mother), and he says it will deal with gnosticism (a Christian offshoot -- heresy, really -- that I've always been deeply drawn to) and persecution.  The movie centers on Mater Lachrymorum (Latin for "mother of tears"), whom he imagines as the most cruel of the three "mothers"; we will first see her in medieval Rome.  Witchcraft will also play a role.  Now, I'm not expecting anything like a realistic depiction of gnosticism, but as a backdrop to the third movie it sounds interesting.

A final note:  Argento has said on the record that he originally conceived of the school in "Suspiria" as a school for little girls -- not the young women it turned out to be.  The movie would probably have been even more horrible that way, and I wonder if it might have been better, too.

Also -- from what I remember, I don't think Joan Bennett considered this movie to have been high art ... I think she brought the right qualities to her role as the school mistress, however.

Recent discussions in another thread got me thinking about what exactly a witch is.  Some statements presented there surprised me because I thought I knew ("of course, everyone knows what a witch is"), but this forum shows that there's always more to learn ... 

It might help to define what sort of witch we're talking about.

The witches that I'm somewhat familiar with would be historical "witches" and fictional "witches."  Another category might be modern day practioners of witchcraft such as Wiccans (not sure if I am using these terms correctly).

The usual thinking in academic literature is that those accused of witchcraft in historic times, as in the Salem trials and in the witch hunts all over Europe that spanned several centuries, were innocent people, often poor and disenfranchised women.  It's often claimed that those accused were usually people living on the fringes -- outsiders distanced by their unusual behavior and/or nasty personalities.  This definitely wasn't always true, as in the case of the Salem trials.  Those events took place in 1692 in Salem Village (which was later renamed Danvers, Mass.).

In contrast to this conventional view, someone on this forum pointed me to the writings of Margaret Murray, whom if I'm not mistaken believed that many of those accused of witchcraft were actually practioners of the old pagan religions.  I'm not sure what scholarly opinion has to say about this theory, but it's an interesting one.

It seems highly likely to me that in some cases those accused did deal with old folk beliefs involving things like herbs, charms, and spells.  In fact I know this is true in the country of Finland, where the practice of spells was fairly commonplace well into the Middle Ages if not later, and folk beliefs such as charms (both physical talismans and orally recited) continued well into the 20th century.  Proceedings against witches in Finland were usually prosecutions for malevolent witchcraft, while more "white Magic" witchcraft was more tolerated.  Perhaps uniquely, most of those prosecuted in that country were male, and there may be a connection between these male witches with the vanished shamanistic culture of ancient times.  The usual punishment was a hefty fine (such as a horse), although there were some executions too.  I believe that I have also read that there were witchcraft prosecutions prior to the Christian era, but I would have to do more checking to verify my memory on this point.

These are some of the historical witches, then.  So far this sounds different from witches like Angelique on DS, since the real life witches were human, mortal people who could, let's say, have possibly been lured off a cliff.  Whereas Angelique would seem to be far more powerful.  I can't think of specific examples offhand, but I think that's how we see Angelique.

I remember being surprised during my first complete viewing of DS during the last run on SciFi when it was said that Angelique was immortal.  I had never heard of witches being immortal before.  Does anyone know if this is actually common to fictional witches, or was this unique to DS?

Is Angelique the witch par exemplar, or is she really not all that special in the world of witches?  I know it has been pointed out in the past that she makes a lot of mistakes early on, although she is capable of transforming someone into an animal which shows she has some rather out of the ordinary powers, or at least access to them if not fully under control.

My experience with fictional witches that I can think of is mostly of witches as they appear in children's literature.  For example, in "Hansel and Gretel," the two children are able to outwit the evil witch and Gretel pushes her into the oven where she is killed.  I take it that some DS posters would not want to consider her as a real witch since she is deceived and killed (some indicated that this rules out someone like Joanna Mills from consideration as a witch).  Although today we think of fairy tales as for children only, they were originally told as folk tales and were not primarily told for children's enjoyment.  I also read an interesting analysis of a fairy tale that may have preserved a more positive view of witches and the apprenticeship to becoming a witch.

The other fictional witches that have stood the test of time that I remember are those in L. Frank Baum's Oz books.  Interestingly, Baum populated his magical land with both good witches (such as the unnamed Witch of the North, and Glinda the good witch of the South).  Magical practices are widespread in Oz and can be used for good or evil depending on the character of the witch or wizard.

Children's books are filled with witches and my sense is that there are many variations in the literature as to a witch is.  But there must be common denominators so that we recognize, yes, that's a witch.  I think Baum is somewhat unique in more classical literature for presenting so many positive views of witches.

I just realized that I'm leaving out the whole category of witches in the movies, which have probably shaped our view of witches as much as anything else.  My guess would be that these are overwhelmingly negative portrayals, with witches being in league with evil.

Does anyone care to elaborate on what they think a "witch" is, in any of these contexts?  I got the impression from some comments that there are certain things that define a witch and other things that rule one out as a witch.  If that's the case, what are the rules, and what is the origin of these rules, I wonder.  ("Rules" may not be quite the right word.  Someone may have a better term but at least you can probably tell what I'm getting at).  Are they based on fictional representations I'm not aware of, or might these conceptions stem from the thinking of modern day Wiccans?  Or some other source?