Hell's Bells!  what a GORGEOUS portrait of our Beloved Grayson on today's capture!  I'm fainting in the aisles!  Stagger-drunk with Beauty! 

My hat, were I wearing one, would be off to the Most Magnificent and Munificent Mysterious Benefactor!  Huzzah!

gasping for breath, hand clutched dramatically to throat,

G.

MB, I also read Art Wallace's interview in the old DS Files book (which I don't think I own any longer--moving multiple times over the years is tough on a personal library), and I was very surprised when I saw Malcolm Marmorstein's interview on one of the DS: the Beginning DVD sets recently, and Marmorstein actually claimed credit for inventing the character of Barnabas!  If I recall correctly, Art Wallace also claims credit for inventing the character in that old interview, and then there's the story of Bob Costello finding the name of Barnabas on a tombstone in an old cemetery.  In the newer Malcolm Marmorstein interview, he says that he chose the name Barnabas from a list of names he found in a book, and he ran it by Costello, who then supposedly spotted that tombstone somewhere.

The continuing revision of the early history is almost as intriguing as some of the original storylines...

G.

Laura did scream when the flames took her.  In a memorable scene with Quentin in 1897, she expressed with crystalline clarity just how painful her initial "death by fire" had been in Alexandria.

But who knows--perhaps her screams in 1967 were orgasmic.  There was this lady who used to live upstairs from me, and--

sorry, I was about to go WAY off-topic there.

cheers, G.

I love the mantilla--very stylish and very late 1940s!

I saw the Secret beyond the door a few years ago and found it to be very Dark Shadows-ish, down to some of the themes in the plot.  Natalie Schafer is a hoot and has some really way-out lines in it.

G.

Grayson looks as if Julia is having a severe attack of gastritis in the "Dave ... is dead?" scene.  LOVE it.

G.

Just a thank you to MB for allowing us to enjoy the spectacle of LeviaLiz in all her glamorous glory giving Willie a FREEZING reception upon his historic return to Collinwood in 1970.  This has to be one of my all time favorite scenes on DS--poor dear Willie is completely unaware of just how very little Liz cares about the fact that he's returned or anything he's saying.  Truly priceless!

I wonder whether we'll get at least one more capture from the Leviathan era before the 1970 bits switch to Parallel Time?

cheers, G.

I love the seance sequence at the beginning of Count Yorga Vampire.  That, and the scene where the Count, attired in a smoking jacket and a very frosty smile, is "entertaining" the two protagonists who have been unwise enough to enter his home, I actually found reminiscent of similar sequences on DS.  I thought the film slithered rapidly downhill from a rather promising start.  For years, I had thought that it was the fault of the hack job the censors had done on the CBS Late Movie broadcast print, but a few years back I finally got to see the original, uncut release film and it was still cheesy, slipshod, amateurish work.

My personal favorite Quarry performance is as Darius Beiderbecke in Dr. Phibes Rises Again.  Although Quarry and Vincent Price did not get along very well (due to some busybody who "helfpully" told Price that Quarry was being groomed as his "replacement" at AIP), they had a wonderful chem together onscreen.  They acted together as well in Madhouse, which is out on DVD now but I have yet to catch up with.  I saw it on VHS in the 90s and was distinctly underwhelmed, despite the fab cast--Peter Cushing and Adrienne Corri also appear--Corri probably has the best scenes of anyone in this.

There was a really good print interview of Quarry in one of the mags some years ago.  His departure has yet another "end of an era" ring to it.

G.