Utterly fabulous!  I adore Barbara Steele.  I would be content simply to take her out to dinner and let her discourse upon any topic of her choosing.

Luckily, her conversation has been captured in a couple of the DVDs of her old films released in the past year--especially the commentary track on She Beast, and the video portrait of Barbara included as an extra on Nightmare Castle. 

G.

Fans,

While running my usual every-so-often search for Grayson Hall items on YouTube, this clip popped up from Elvira's airing of hoDS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX_ilhP1L7A&feature=related

(this is part one of two)

Warning:  not only are there some really excruciating jokes ("being grounded is no big deal if you've already been buried!"), but only intermittent clips of the movie are shown.  I'm guessing that whoever put the footage up on YouTube did this themselves, because the main intent was to showcase Elvira's unique ... um, humor?

holiday cheer to all,

G.

What a fabulous t-shirt!  Evan's definitely Hip to THEE Warlock!

Happy Birthday!

Just a reminder that it's always worth checking Amazon's "New and Used" vendor section for these because they often sell the DVD sets at a price that's considerably lower than Amazon's own listed price.  A year or two ago, I picked up several sets in the $20 to $30 range over a period of months.

Happy Shopping!  as we lurch towards Black Friday...

G.

My favorite moments in this one are:

(1) Julia waking up after spending the night in a chair at the Old House.  (And why the hell was she in a chair?  Are we supposed to believe that after all this time, they had only renovated the one bedroom--Josette's?  It's frustrating, to me, that after Barnabas returned to mortal state again, we never got to see  his bedroom.  I would have loved to have seen what they would have done with that.) You really need to go back and watch how Grayson plays this little moment.  It's priceless--the craning of the neck, swanlike stretching of facial muscles, and arabesque of the lips is really beyond describing.  I LOVE GRAYSON HALL!!!!

(2)  Julia and Carolyn at the Antique Shoppe.  "Are you ready, Carolyn?"  "Yes--for anything!" 

(3)  Carolyn's encounter at the Altar of the Great Old Ones with the Mysterious Stranger.  I love how deftly Dennis Patrick defines this new character, and of course, Barrett is spot-on as always.

G.

Midnite darling, thanks so much for doing the detective work of going back to those video interviews.  I don't think I"ve even played them yet.

That's pretty outrageous about Frid, since it is documented from multiple sources that not only was DC in England at the time of the casting and set-up for Barnabas, but when he came back, he actually thought they had "cast the wrong guy" since he had supposedly sent a different head shot back for the guy he wanted. (I've always wondered whether they did a reading with that guy and found out he just did not have the goods, at all.)

I've been watching Mad Men, season one, over the past couple of weeks, and a lot of DC's behavior seems rooted in the "executive culture" of the Sixties.  But he obviously was quite the maverick and had his own very strong personality... I am definitely of the school of thought that DS turned out to be an underground classic *despite* DC's input!

Thanks again!

G.

Ah, and so it begins--Love of LeviaLife!

From the point of metanarrative, this episode is very cool (or maybe it was the one before?) because we finally get a Jonathan-on-Grayson fanging sequence.  Love how the actors played it, even though I'm sure Frid, at least, was squirming (given his oft-stated objection to the fanging scenes on principle--and the outrageousness of this particular setpiece in specific).

I would LOVE to know where and when DC claimed to have "hated Leviathans from the beginning just as much as the fans did."  Even for him, that's EXTREME revisionism of established DS history.  About on the level of Mao having Liu Shao-ch'i erased after his fall from various group photographs recording certain Party functions.  But then, there never seemed any limits to DC's personal megalomania, particularly in the sphere of DS.

I love the design elements in our introduction to Haza, Oberon, and the Leviathan altar.  (or the "cairn," as Julia always, rather oddly to my mind, called it.)  Thinking of them now, I wonder whether Haza and Oberon were the actual ancestors of Uncle Fester Addams.  I'd know that pasty skin, those sunken eyes, that crazed leer, and those long snake-like robes anywhere.

The aesthetic atmosphere here always makes me think of the drawings of Edward Gorey.  Particularly in this scene with Barn in that gorgeous 1790s cape.

Angelique has a line in a later episode in which she describes the Leviathans as "creatures of the Underworld."  That element is certainly present in how Haza and Oberon are depicted here.  Their makeup may also hint at an episode in Lovecraft's tale, The Whisperer in Darkness.  I think the main story that DC read to help fill in the elements of the Leviathan narrative must have been the Dunwich Horror.

vile serpentine hissing,

G.