THE GHOST OF GUIR HOUSE by Charles Willing Beale

The last of Bleiler's "Five Victorian Ghost Novels" collection, this is a standout largely because it's the only one set in the U.S. And it's less about the supernatural as it is about occult philosophy.

Paul Henley, living in New York of 1893, receives a letter meant for another P. Henley who passed away, but is intrigued enough to read it. It's from a Dorothy Guir, asking P. Henley to visit her family at Guir House in Virginia. Henley, having time on his hands and possessed of an adventurous spirit, decides to go down and see if he can help.

Once he arrives, he finds Guir House in a dilapidated state, and its inhabitants, the lovely Dorothy and the elderly Ah Ben, both welcoming and secretive. Henley tries to probe the house's mysteries, but the reader soon knows that Dorothy and Ah Ben are not what they seem, and get annoyed with Henley when he's so slow on the uptake. Especially when Ah Ben gives interminable lectures on Theosophy, and even gives me a vision of the mystical city of Levachan that exists in the year 3000 when the world is full of spiritually advanced people.

It's all a muddle of occult woo-woo mumbo-jumbo that frequently doesn't make sense. There are some genuinely creepy and atmospheric bits when Henley explores the crumbling house, but the book is ultimately done in by its didactic content.

Not recommended! And I couldn't find a decent illustration of the author or the book cover, so this will have to do.

Required Reading: A PHANTOM LOVER by Vernon Lee

The fourth in Bleiler's collection FIVE VICTORIAN GHOST NOVELS, this is probably the most modern and psychological, a real contrast to the previous work, MONSIEUR MAURICE.

Also known as OKE OF OKEHURST (yawn-inducing, eh?), it's narrated by an artist who's hired by a Mr. Oke to come to his country seat and paint portraits of him and his wife.

Of course, it gets complicated. Mr. Oke is a nice enough guy, but bland and uninteresting. Mrs. Oke...Alice...is different. Exotic, beautiful, intense, and intelligent, she's also obsessed with the story of an ancestor who had a passionate affair with a local poet. Said ancestress later murdered, assisted by her husband, the poet, for unclear reasons. And now Alice seems to be having an affair with the poet's ghost.

It's a great story, simply great. There's all sorts of hints about the state of their marriage. Oke complains about his wife's health, and at one point complains of not having children. Has the marriage been unconsummated? Why did they get married? Oke is intimidated by his wife, and is always on edge. The narrator notes that Oke is horribly shy, and that shyness is induced by a fear of making a fool of himself in his wife's eyes, and it's only when he's away from her that he can relax. Alice barely notices her husband, and takes no interest in his political work (in which he seems diligent, but undistinguished). She moons and obsesses over her ghostly lover, claiming that he visits her.

And in that lies the story's brilliance. This is in tune with Henry James' ambiguity in THE TURN OF THE SCREW (and Lee was a great friend of James, making me wonder...). We never see the ghost ourselves, and it's never truly confirmed that it's supernatural. Alice may just be mentally ill, obsessing over an old family story. Or this may be a story of domestic violence, of the psychological sort. Alice is doing it to relieve the tedium of her unhappy marriage, and to torture the husband she's come to loathe and resent.

Of course, it all leads to an act of violence, and a wonderfully ambiguous last bit that doesn't resolve much of anything, but does it in great style.

Vernon Lee's real name was Violet Paget (1956-1935), and was one of the great decadent writers, as well as a noted travel author and art critic. She was also a feminist, a lesbian, part of the Aesthetic movement, and quite the thinker on topics like psychology and people's reactions to art. She spent most of her life on the Continent although she wrote in English for an English audience; her longest residence was near Florence, and her library remains there, at the British Institute. She's best known these days for her supernatural tales, but reading some of her biographical material, she sounds like a fascinating person and I'd like to dip into some of her works on aestheticism. Lee's enthusiasm for art shows in this novella, where she paints great visuals of the Okehurst mansion and of the narrator's artistic work, and her grasp of psychology is remarkable. (The portrait above was painted by John Singer Sargent.)

Some critics have said this story is definitely supernatural, but it's not. There's a ton of ambiguity here and there's an extremely good case to be made for it being a case of psychological torture as a result of an extremely unhappy and ill-matched marriage. I'm happy to include this in the Required Reading list, and recommend that readers delve into Lee's other works. I've read some of her other stories in the past and enjoyed them all, and I can't help but think her works on art and aesthetics will be interesting. And the good D&C fan also appreciates art...

Mark Your Calendar...IN BLOOD!

Just so my DC area readers know, and in case I actually have some DC area readers...



The date's been set for the Silver Spring Zombie Walk! The fun will be on Saturday, Oct. 23, with a special movie being arranged with the AFI Silver. The route has not been set yet; last year's crowd overflowed the starting point, the Quarry House Tavern, so there may be a move to a bigger venue this year.

Keep an eye on the official site, and maybe you can hang out with this handsome fiend...



(Yeah, that's me.)

So, hope to see some of you there...maybe there'll be a D&C team...

August's Musical Interlude

I got to see this group twice in as many days recently, during a rare east coast tour. They're my favorite band, and this particular song is appropriate, so even though I've featured them before, here they are again...Vagabond Opera, with their delightful song "Ganef"!



And here's some photos from the first concert, at the Palace of Wonders...

Still Crazy After All These Years: RE-ANIMATOR at 25

I just got in from a showing at the AFI of Stuart Gordon's RE-ANIMATOR. I have to say...a quarter of a century later, it still packs a whallop.

Loosely, very loosely based on a short story by H. P. Lovecraft, it chronicles the adventures of Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs, in a star-making performance), mad scientist extraordinaire, as he experiments with a new "reagent" that reanimates the dead. He ropes in med student Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), who's dating the dean's nubile daughter (Barbara Crampton, who was quite a sport for enduring this movie), and also has to deal with the hostile dean (Robert Sampson) and deranged brain specialist Dr. Hill (David Gale). And the result is gore galore.

When I first saw it (rented in the 80s from my small-town video store; I never saw it on the big screen until tonight), I was first a bit shocked by how it turned a Lovecraft work into a comedy. But then...I had to admit...it worked, like gangbusters. As a more mature horror fan, I read Lovecraft and see how easy it is to turn it into comedy; Lovecraft's over-the-top phrenzy is easy to parody. Combs' West is a great interpretation of the mad scientist; it's just restrained enough to make the character believable and somewhat sympathetic. West is obviously the smartest man in the room, and he knows it. He's unconcerned with emotion and ethics; everything is done to further his research, and while sometimes the things he does are shocking, they make sense from his viewpoint. The late David Gale had a ball, hamming it up as Dr. Hill; he later said in interviews that he thoroughly enjoyed the role and took an active part in developing Dr. Hill's personality.

What the flick is famous for is the cheerful over-the-top gore, in amounts that films today rarely touch. Not to mention one of filmdom's most gruesome sight gags, when Meg is strapped to the table and Dr. Hill is paying her some attention.

But what stands out for me now is the homoerotic subtext. West's recruitment of the hunky Cain as an assistant seems as much motivated by Cain's looks as his qualifications as a medical student. (We're never led to believe he's anything more than an average student.) The static existing between West and Meg is natural for rivals, and she's furious when she catches them together...well, in an experiment, but still. West and Cain's first human experiment is a tall naked hunk (played by Peter Kent, Arnold Schwarzenegger's stunt double). And when Cain goes into shock after an experiment goes awry, West's solicitous treatment is about as loving as he can get.

I've only seen the sequel, BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR, once, but I recall it carrying the subtext, with West doing what he could to hold on to Cain, even creating him a woman if it meant that Cain would hang around. ("Look, OK, I'll let you have a woman on the side, just stay with me! I need you!")

All that aside, it's stood up well. There was a second sequel, BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR, that I've never seen, and a fourth film, HOUSE OF RE-ANIMATOR, has been languishing in Development Hell for years (and the buzz is that it will never happen, but some still hold out hope). It's hardly totally loyal to Lovecraft (although a wonderfully funny and macabre scene, where a reanimated headless body sneaks into a morgue with a fake head strapped on, is lifted more-or-less directly from Lovecraft), but it's a breath of fresh air in an age when horror films tend to focus on killing as many teenagers as possible. It's flawed, sure (Meg is underwritten and an annoying character, and the technical crudeness shines through from time to time) but the nostalgia helps make up for any missteps.

Hardly a film for horror beginners, and not for those with weak stomachs, it's still a worthy rental (or even a purchase) for longtime fans.

At the Theater: Molotov's THE HORRORS OF ONLINE DATING

It's Molotov's first musical! It's AVENUE Q with gore! It's a gleefully tasteless romp! And with far more depth and meaning that you might think!

HORRORS is the tale of Judy (Jenny Donovan), who's cruising for dates online under the name "Carrie." She has conversations with her cat, her laptop, and a bottle of antipsychotic medications (all played by puppets), and ends her hookups with torture and murder. She has a prickly situation with co-workers Donna (Karen Novack) and Kent (Graham Pilato), but eventually hopes to find salvation in the form of self-help guru Francis Rabassa (Lucas Maloney)....

It was about ten times the play I expected. Sure, it gets down to the brass tacks with a disembowelment in the opening scene, and blood flies left and right and up and down (plastic ponchos are issued to audience members as they walk in, and no, sitting in the back row won't save you), but it's pleasantly surprising by showing some real depth. Donovan, who was the innocent victim in MONDO ANDRONICUS, is exceptional here as Judy; it's a role easily played as an eye-rolling maniac, but she brings out Judy's loneliness, vulnerability, and confusion, until she becomes a sort of homicidal Everywoman who simultaneously evokes sympathy and terror. Her murders stop seeming gratuitous and instead are a symptom of a person who finds ways to hurt other people before they have a chance to hurt her. At one point she's asked about the last time she had sex, and maybe she wouldn't be so uptight if she actually would have sex instead of murdering people? Another time she explains her murderous habits by saying that it made her happy...but Donovan's expression tells that the happiness she finds is only fleeting.

Judy is a mess, seeking affection and affirmation willy-nilly, swallowing a motivational speaker's bulldada about how healing comes from within, but still expecting him to personally fix her. And she's lost in a world of duplicity; the men she meets are almost all cheating on their spouses, her friends are hiding their affairs from her, and her one ray of light is a cynical opportunist merely hoping to get in her pants. She depends on, and resents, her medication, and wishes her laptop would leave her alone. She's the ultimate alienated single person in today's screwy world.

Aside from Donovan's performance, the script by Shawn Paul Northrip touches on the many realities of dating in today's world. I kept thinking of the times I've met with less drastic treatment, dumped in various passive-aggressive ways, or used to find fleeting satisfaction and then discarded. It's something many of us have experienced, and Northrip simply takes it a few steps further.

The songs work well within the context of the show; nothing seems forced or ill-fitted. Donovan has a lovely singing voice, and the rest of the crew range from the serviceable to the pleasant. (OK, there's no major Broadway talent here, but it works.) The puppets and their puppeteers work very well. They're not simply people controlling the plushy puppets, but amalgamations requiring that you divide your attention between the puppet and the person. (In other words, they actually ACT.) Kudos to Luke "The Duke" Ciesiewicz as Frenziapine the antipsychotic medication, Julie Garner as the vampy, leggy Laptop, and Genevieve James as the petulant Mittens the Cat. James is delightful as a sort of Greek chorus appearing between acts, as a little girl jumping rope and making macabre rhymes commenting on the action. Alex Zavistovich isn't in the lead here, but does appear in a succession of victim roles...and takes his chance to add zest to the character of a philandering husband. But he's also the mastermind behind the show's gore effects, ranging from the aforementioned disembowelment to gunshot wounds, power tool murders, and amputated fingers. (In other words, wear something washable.)

This is part of the Capital Fringe Festival, and there's only a few performances left, so run and catch it!

MONSIEUR MAURICE by Amelia B. Edwards

The very name of "Amelia B. Edwards" summons up an image of a prim Victorian lady, and the above photo kinda reinforces that idea. However, it seems she was quite an interesting lady. Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards (1831-1892) was a novelist, poet, journalist, suffragette, travel writer, amateur archaeologist, and passionate advocate for the preservation of Egyptian monuments. She published her first full-length novel at the age of 24, and in 1864 scored a big success with BARBARA'S STORY, a tale of bigamy, and later with 1880's LORD BRACKENBURY, her last novel, that was a runaway bestseller.

She was well-regarded in her time as a social and domestic novelist, but of her fiction, her ghost stories are the most remembered works these days. And gives us the third of Bleiler's collection, FIVE VICTORIAN GHOST NOVELS, although MONSIEUR MAURICE is really more of a novella, or extended short story, than a real novel.

Edwards' work as a domestic novelist shows in this. It's narrated by Gretchen Bernhard, in a flashback back to when she was six years old, shuttling from an unlikable aunt in Nuremberg to living with her father, an official at the Electoral Residenz at Bruhl in 1819. There, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, she becomes friends with a civilized prisoner there, the gentleman of the title. He's actually a very nice man, a polymath who's knowledgeable about the arts and sciences (his furniture includes a telescope and microscope), and serves as a sort of tutor to the girl. As years pass, there's an escape attempt, and then a poisoning attempt following the revelation of a plot, and both times Maurice's life is saved by the ghost of a faithful Indian servant. Eventually, the Elector uncovers that his imprisonment was wrongful, and he is released.

Sounds rather blah, but Edwards gives it enough detail and charm to be entertaining without being overly cloying. The story of Gretchen's friendship with the French prisoner is actually fairly pleasant reading, but one does get impatient for the supernatural content...and when it shows up, it's blink-and-you'll-miss-it, which is the problem. Being part of a collection of "Victorian ghost novels," one expects more ghosts. There's not much of a presence of the supernatural here; it just shows up when it's needed, and life gets back to normal. MONSIEUR MAURICE is probably the most stereotypically Victorian of the novels here, with its ordered content and the ordered lives of its protagonists.

So it's not great as a horror story, but works as a pleasant kindasorta coming-of-age tale with guest appearances by a ghost.

Edwards, however, got more interesting. Shortly after publishing MONSIEUR MAURICE in 1873, she embarked on a tour of Egypt, which resulted in her bestselling travel book A THOUSAND MILES UP THE NILE, and Edwards devoted the rest of her life and work to Egyptology, receiving three honorary degrees and endowing England's first chair in Egyptology, which appropriately went to her friend, Flinders Petrie, who defended her when she was being edged out of archaeology by sexism. And in the late 20th century, she inspired Elizabeth Peters' lady archaeologist, Amelia Peabody.

Edwards never married, and did her traveling with a female companion. (Can't help but wonder...) She actually made enough from her writing to be self-sufficient after her parents' deaths, so she didn't need to marry, but still, makes me a bit curious.

Anyway, MONSIEUR MAURICE is an OK story, but the story of its author is fascinating.