Fans,

In the wake of the Banana Splits being "re-booted" as a slasher thriller, apparently Fantasy Island is now a big budget feature film from some outfit called Blumhouse, re-configured as a horror mystery adventure. The blurb:

The enigmatic Mr Roarke makes the secret dreams of his lucky guests come true at a luxurious but remote tropical resort, but when the fantasies turn into nightmares, the guests have to solve the island's mystery in order to escape with their lives.

It sounds more like the old ABC Movie of the Week Haunts of the Very Rich, which in turn was kind of a horror update of the old play and film, Outward Bound.

It seems ironic that these old shows have been re-booted as horror, while DS was rebooted by Burton-Depp as comedy; go figure.

G.

Today's caption is a scream. I'm imagining Julia wearing a leather bomber jacket, the dark glasses and carrying a large Uzi... her next line is "Make... my .... DAY!"

I can definitely see why this publishing company folded.

G.

Last night's late movie was BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957) which should have been titled I WAS A TEENAGE VAMPIRE... set in an exclusive girls' school. Among the faculty is Miss Branding (Louise Lewis), who is "experimenting" to prove the existence of a "terrible power" within each human that would make the pursuit of atomic bombs an irrelevance. Miss Branding, whose experiments involve hypnosis using an elaborately carved medallion which came from a "legendary" region of the Carpathian mountains, seemed quite reminiscent of a certain obsessed lady doctor who debuted on Dark Shadows ten years after this film was released, in the Summer of 1967. I should stress that Miss Branding seemed to foreshadow the original concept of Julia Hoffman--which altered considerably thanks to the genius and popularity of Grayson Hall in the role. The frustrated, coded-as-lesbian scientist in the 1957 film did not meet so kindly a fate.

Complete film here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN-37tFJcNQ&t=1s

G.

I'm sure that was never released as a pub photo. You can see the stagehand holding the end of her train. I think this photo first surfaced just a couple of years ago. It must have been from a still photographer's archive... I have no idea whether Getty really has legal ownership of that image.

G.

I don't know enough about today's Hollywood or the "industry" as it is now to know if hosting this thing means Jenna Dewan's career is dead in the water. At one time, that is what it would have meant. But if the show takes off, she'll make a lot of money off doing it.

G.

Another interview, done when Chris had just turned 70. In 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwuwJPXUBEY

Chris's comic books about working on DS are fun.

G.

I found it on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGEdidBc7Dg

G.

That is a nice article about Alec Newman, although bewilderingly, they failed to mention that his best known role is as Barnabas Collins on the 2004 DS.

Journalism today just is going to the dogs! Or is that the wolves...

G.