The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

Last week, in my "sermon" on The Exorcist (and I know how weird that phrasing sounds--perhaps that's why I wrote it that way), I mentioned how faithful the film adaptation was to the original novel.  I gave full credit on this to William Peter Blatty who wrote both the novel and the screenplay.  My mother the librarian always (well... almost always) believed that the book was better than the movie.  By and large, I think most people tend to agree with that sentiment.  By and large, so do I.  But the more books I read and the more films I watch, the more I realize that they are in fact two different media--even two different art forms.  The older I get, the more I tend to look at the book and the movie as two distinct entities and it may be unfair to compare the two.

I probably should have come to this realization in college.  I was taking a class in media writing.  We were tasked with writing a screenplay based on an existing piece of literature.  I chose a short story written by Jimmy Buffett titled "I Wish Lunch Could Last Forever," perhaps my favourite story from his book Tales From Margaritaville.  In the process of writing it, I discovered why the movie often differs from the book.  Oftentimes the written word doesn't translate easily into a visual medium.  It's sometimes necessary to make alterations in order to make it work in a different format.  For my short story adaptation, I actually added a character of a journalist who is interviewing the main character for a magazine article.  She basically tells the story to him.  I seem to recall that  I also tweaked the ending a bit--I didn't change the ending or anything, I just enhanced it somewhat.  I don't know whether my professor ever read the original short story, but he gave me a B on it (perhaps even a B+.  It's been a few decades, I honestly don't remember).  I always thought of sending it to Buffett to see what he thought of it, but I think I was just too embarrassed to do so.

These days, I find that one of the highest compliments that can be paid to a film that is based on a book is to say it was faithful to the source material.  Obviously this is not a prerequisite for a film's success--many of the Bond films, especially during the Roger Moore era, were little to nothing like the Ian Fleming novels of the same name.  Sometimes endings get changed--such as it was in The Natural--just because the audience would be disappointed.  Sometimes details get altered or omitted--such as it was with the 1941 adaptation of The Maltese Falcon--in order to avoid being labeled "indecent" (and, for the most part, that version of The Maltese Falcon was a faithful adaptation).

This week's film has always puzzled me.  I went to see it opening night in 2014 just because I was fond of the cast (and I have quite the crush on Tina Fey).  Until the opening credits rolled, I didn't realize it was based on a novel.  Honestly, I had forgotten that little detail until it was released on DVD.  I had enjoyed the film enough that I wanted to own it.  For some reason, I went through one of my temporary "addictions" and found myself watching it many times over.  I was reminded of the fact that it was based on a book during those many viewings, which prompted me to buy a copy of the book.

When I read it, I was taken aback for a number of reasons.  There were many elements that were left out of the movie, which would have possibly made it run over three hours in length.  That's easy enough to overlook and forgive.  What caught me off guard was how unlikable the characters in the book were.  By the end of it, I understood why they were the way they were and they actually became more likeable by that point.  The book was also very well written which made me want to finish it.  But I found I liked all the characters much more in the movie than in the book.  I can only assume this was due to the actors who played them.  When I watch the movie, I want everything to work out for the characters.  It's a lot harder to root for them in the book.

Under normal circumstances, these differences wouldn't have concerned me at all--different media and all that.  The main reason I was thrown off by this was the fact that Jonathan Tropper wrote the screenplay to the film based on his own novel.  Aside from the issue of not wanting to make a three hour family drama, I can't understand why someone would alter their own work that much in adapting it.  He even changed the surname of the family from Foxman to Altman.  I've lost track of how many times I've watched the movie over the last decade.  I have, however, only read the book once.  While I can't say one is necessarily better than the other, I think it's safe to say I do like one over the other.

The film stars Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Rose Byrne, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, Ben Schwartzman, Debra Monk, and Jane Fonda--hard not to like that cast.  Directed by Shawn Levy, please enjoy This Is Where I Leave You.

 

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

 

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

This week's album and accompanying "sermon" was inspired by an article in The New York Times this week... as well as the fact that yesterday was Hallowe'en.  While doing subsequent research, I discovered that I misinterpreted what I'd read.  Last week, one of my favourite songwriters was honoured with a tribute concert in Los Angeles.  It was a four-and-a-half hour affair featuring many artists performing the songs of the inimitable Warren Zevon.  The show was organized by Zevon's son Jordan, longtime collaborator Jorge Calderón, and lifelong friend and fellow performer Jackson Browne.  Zevon, who died in 2003, is set to be honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with their musical influence award during their annual induction ceremony next week.  He is not, as I originally understood, being inducted as a performer himself, which is, in my opinion, a gross oversight that should have been rectified years ago.  Still, I guess this is better than nothing and better late than never.

I first became aware of Warren Zevon through David Letterman.  During his late night tenures at both NBC and CBS, if bandleader Paul Shaffer was away for some reason, Zevon would often fill in and would also appear as a musical guest when he had something to promote.  In his career, he only had one commercial hit, 1978's "Werewolves of London" from his album Excitable Boy.  To this day, it's the only song of his I've ever heard on the radio--and it's not even his best one.  In a career lasting nearly 35 years, he wrote songs that ran the gamut of emotions and looked at much of life with a dark sense of humour and sharp wit--things that don't typically produce "radio friendly" tunes.  As Jackson Browne said after the tribute concert, "Listening to all these songs, it occurred to me that Warren never pandered at all.  He never dumbed down for anybody or tried to write a hit. He just wrote and went on writing the best songs he could until the moment he was gone. That was his singular achievement."

Having a somewhat dark (described by many as "inappropriate") sense of humour my own self, I tend to appreciate it in others--I'm especially drawn to it in popular culture.  Even his song titles dripped with an attitude that has been described as "sardonic" by more than one music journalist over the years--songs like "I Was in the House When the House Burned Down," "Disorder in the House," "Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead," and "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner," which I've always felt is perhaps rock's greatest ghost story.  While he could also write a tender love song with the best of them ("Mutineer" is perhaps my favourite of these), I tend to primarily give him credit for writing the greatest expression of desperation ever uttered--"Send lawyers, guns, and money.  The shit has hit the fan."

So it's in honour of some long-overdue honours that he's finally receiving (22 YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH), that I submit one of my favourite of his albums.  This was the second-to-last album released in his lifetime.  Released in 2002, he co-wrote most of the songs with writers who typically wrote poetry and prose (some still do).  Novelist Carl Hiaasen, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, sportswriter Mitch Albom, and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson all received what is likely their first songwriting credits, lending the album a literary flair that makes it stand out in Zevon's discography.  This week, please enjoy My Ride's Here.

I would feel remiss if I didn't bring up the song "Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)," co-written with Albom--likely my favourite cut on the album.  In what could be described as a full-circle moment, Paul Shaffer and various members of what was then known as The CBS Orchestra play on the track (in fact, drummer Anton Fig plays on the entire album) with a lovely guest appearance by David Letterman himself that never ceases to make me smile every time I hear it.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember to enjoy every sandwich.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

Because Hallowe'en is less than a week away, I feel compelled to visit the horror genre again.  But there's more to this week's cinematic "sermon" than the fact that it's a horror film.  I'll even go so far as it to call it THE horror film.  It's certainly the scariest movie I've ever seen.  But I have a weird, personal connection to this week's film--or at the very least, I have a weird, personal connection to the book on which it was based.  In many ways, it's actually an odd (really odd) love letter to my mother.

Mom was a serious reader.  She was never happier than when she had her nose buried in a book.  She loved all kinds of literature, but she was particularly fond of historical fiction, historical nonfiction, and romance.  She even later became the librarian in my hometown.  A few years back, my friend Brad sent me a picture of her reading to his kids.  As he pointed out, Mom was the librarian to four generations of his family.  (FUN FACT:  His mother was my high school librarian.)

On the night of 17 April, 1974, my very pregnant mother was at my paternal grandparents' house.  According to her, she was reading William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist, which had recently been made into a movie that had been released the previous December.  As someone who was not really a fan of scary movies and believed that the book was always better than the movie (or at least she believed that before The Bridges of Madison County was released), I'm guessing she opted to read the book before--or, more likely, instead of--seeing the film.  While reading the book, she went into labour with me.  Gramps drove her to the hospital, Grandma called Dad on the other end of the state, and I was born on the morning of 19 April.

Like most people who grew up at that time, I knew The Exorcist primarily as that scary movie that my parents wouldn't let me watch.  There was a girl who could turn her head all the way around and spit pea soup at people.  There was a bed that levitated.  The things in the film had been talked about so much that when I saw Richard Pryor in the "SNL" sketch "The Exorcist II," I got the jokes even though I'd never seen the film.  ("The bed must be on the floor.  The bed must be on the floor."  THUD!  "The bed is on my foot.  The bed is on my foot...")

I first saw The Exorcist when I was 23 years old.  My surrogate brother, Rindt, had a VHS copy of the film which he loaned to me.  I thought it was a really good movie.  It had the proper balance of shocking, scary, and creepy.  I can understand why a lot of people were freaked out by it.  It made me jump once or twice.  But beyond that I didn't really give it much thought.  Just because I'm naturally drawn to comedy, I think I was more taken with the film version of M*A*S*H, which Rindt had also loaned me.  To this day, it's one of my favourite comedies.

Three years later, Rindt and I were both living in the suburbs of Cleveland.  One of us had seen that The Exorcist was being re-released in theaters featuring about seven minutes of footage that had been deemed too scary to be released in 1973.  We went to see it together and were both properly scared by it.  This is one of those instances when seeing it in your living room is no comparison to seeing it in a theater.  It shot to the top of my scariest movies list and has been there for 25 years now.  I watched the film again when director William Friedkin passed away and was delighted to find my ticket stub from that night in the DVD case (just a little something I do).

"I've seen The Exorcist about 167 times, and it keeps getting funnier every single time I see it!"

--Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, 1988

Since the end of the pandemic, we've been seeing people within the movie industry talking--even preaching--about how movies are so much better in theaters.  Sure, streaming them at home is more convenient, but the experience is better.  And I agree with them wholeheartedly.  For as corny as Nicole Kidman's AMC ad may seem, and in spite of how much the whole thing was ridiculed, everything she says in that ad is spot on.  I watch a lot of movies from the comfort of my living room, but when I see them in theaters (especially classics that I've seen multiple times), comedies are more over the top, action films are more intense, and horror films are scarier than they are at home.

Shortly after I moved to the South Bend/Mishawaka area, I was working in the now defunct music and video department of Barnes & Noble.  While straightening the blu-ray section one day, I had discovered that some customer had just left a paperback copy of The Exorcist on the shelf rather than taking the effort to re-shelve it where they had originally found it.  Normally (as you might have guessed), this annoys the hell out of me.  But, given my history with the novel, I bought it rather than complain about less savory customer habits.

I read it the week I turned 39.  As the son of a librarian, I decided to compare the two.  I have to say it is one of the most faithful book-to-screen adaptations I've ever seen.  I'm sure most of this can be attributed to William Peter Blatty who not only wrote the novel, but also the screenplay.  (Although I've seen other films where the screenwriter adapted his or her own novel and completely changed everything--more on this in upcoming weeks) I will go as far as to say it is the scariest book I've ever read.  And the character of Father Merrin is even more badass in the novel than he was in the movie.

Mom confessed to me that the book freaked her out so much she had never seen the movie.  I felt she needed to, so I made her watch it a couple months before she died.  I'm pretty sure the two events were not related...

So, in honour of Hallowe'en, the connection between literature and cinema, and my mother--one of the greatest small-town librarians of all time--this week I'm recommending 1973's The Exorcist.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

Ticket stub from The Exorcist re-release, 2 October, 2000

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for their kind thoughts and comments regarding last week's musical "sermon."  It certainly meant a lot to me, and I hope it did for Victoria's family.

This week, I'm in something of a funk.  Part of it is left over from last week.  Honestly, it feels more like hungover than leftover.  Part of it is that I'm currently at work today after doing more than twelve hours yesterday.  I'm also dogsitting for someone (maybe a nascent side hustle?) and I kind of feel like I'm neglecting Ranger just by being at work... likely one of the many reasons why I don't have a dog of my own.  Frankly, I'm feeling kind of disjointed.  So this is what I do when I'm feeling disjointed and emotionally hungover--I write and I listen to music.

At times like these, my first instincts are to match the music to the mood.  Brooding, sometimes dark stuff works well--Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Dylan, acoustic Springsteen.  Blues music always works well in these situations as well--Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Little Walter.  Sometimes I just dive straight into John Lee Hooker (my personal favourite) and induce a blues coma.

But I thought I'd go in a different direction this time.  I initially thought I might like something kind of silly.  Then I realized I was merely looking for something upbeat--possibly even, dare I say, hopeful?  Perhaps even whimsical?  I started scrolling through my portable jukebox (or "phone" as it's called in most social circles), looking for something that would fit that description.  I got to the letter "H" and my eyes immediately latched on to this week's album and I decided to play it--because when Harry Nilsson's music plays, it's hard not to at least smile.  I've always liked the album, and it features at least two of my favourite Nilsson compositions, but I didn't really know too much about the album itself.  So I did a little research--mostly to check songwriting credits.  Wikipedia said of this album that it "does not have a distinctive style but ranges over ballads, show tunes, nostalgic Americana, and tin pan alley-like soft shoe numbers."  I have to be honest--that may be one of the best album reviews I've ever read.  And while it may not necessarily have pulled me out of my funk, I enjoyed the vibe enough that I've moved on to later albums in his discography.

This was his fourth album (fifth if you count the soundtrack he recorded for the 1968 Otto Preminger film Skidoo) and features his classics "The Puppy Song" and "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City"--both of which were featured in the 1998 rom-com You've Got Mail--as well as covers of songs by The Beatles ("Mother Nature's Son"), Jerry Jeff Walker ("Mr. Bojangles"), and Randy Newman ("Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear").  (In fact, Nilsson was so taken with Newman's songwriting style that his follow up album was comprised entirely of his songs.)

So without further ado, I encourage you to lighten your own vibe with the great Harry Nilsson and his 1969 album Harry.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week! (One from the Vault!)

I wrote this album "sermon" and posted it on Facebook on 25 June, 2021.  The weather today in northern Indiana reminded me of it--so much so that I actually played it in my car during my work commute.  It seemed a good time to revisit it.  Fun fact:  even though I didn't write this in the fall, it's definitely applicable for this particular time of the year.  Also a correction--the album was released in 1960, not 1959 as I initially wrote here.  The notes on my LP indicated that it was recorded in late 1959 and I'm sure I just assumed (without adequate research) that that was when it was released.

 

I'm a little early this week, but the weather right now is perfect for this.

It's a rainy Friday morning (at least for another ten minutes--then it'll be a rainy Friday afternoon).

 

I recently picked up a few things during a Record Store Day (RSD) event in Goshen (unsolicited plug--Ignition Music Garage is the best place in a 50-mile radius to buy music). There are a number of titles I bought that I still haven't had the chance to listen to. I've been waiting for the right moment. Things like Tom Waits are best saved until after the sun goes down (maybe later tonight).

 

While running errands in the rain, I was thinking that when I got home I should pop on the lone jazz record I picked up. I don't own enough jazz on vinyl. A lot of jazz (especially that which is heavy on trumpet and/or piano--which this week's album is) sounds best on a rainy day. I'm almost through Side 2 of the album. The rain seems to have let up (at least for awhile), and the whole experience was... almost mystical.

 

So this week, please enjoy trumpeter Kenny Dorham with his 1959 classic "Quiet Kenny," recorded by producer extraordinaire Rudy Van Gelder, featuring Tommy Flanagan on the piano, Arthur Taylor on drums, and the great Paul Chambers on bass.

 

(NOTE: the link below does add a rendition of "Mack the Knife" by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht that does not appear on the original album.)

 

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

 

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

This week's "sermon" is terribly hard for me to write.  If there are any typos, that's because I likely didn't see them through the tears.  I apologize in advance, and I'll correct them later.

I was exchanging dad jokes with my (actual biological) sister via text the other day.  As I said to her, I tell dad jokes even though I don't have any children--I'm a faux pa. (Insert rim shot here.)  I recounted the time I was at the memorial service of a dear friend who recently passed.  A gentleman asked me if he could say a word.  I encouraged him to go ahead.  He stepped to the front of the room and said, "Plethora."  Then he sat back down.  I said, "Thanks.  That means a lot."  (Thank you, I'll be here all week.  Try the veal.  Don't forget to tip your servers!  Good night, everybody!)

In all seriousness, though...  in hindsight, if I could think of one word to describe Victoria, it would be "plethora," because she means a lot.  I don't remember if I ever told her that--I know I certainly didn't do it in those words.  And even though I'm sure she was intelligent and perceptive enough to figure that out on her own, that's no excuse.  I should have told her.

"The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead.  What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral.  To sit at the front and hear what was said--maybe to say a few things yourself."

--Ian Bannen as Jackie O'Shea in the film Waking Ned Devine, 1998

I found out the other day that Victoria passed away last weekend.  I first responded to the Facebook post in which I found out by saying that I was "utterly devastated."  Even as I write this, those are still the only words that I can think of to describe how I'm feeling in the moment.  It's fascinating to me how detrimental a personal tragedy can be to one's vocabulary.

I first met Victoria one night at Barnes & Noble after hours.  As I was straightening up one area of the store, I saw a woman seated in one of our "comfy chairs" reading.  I tried to explain to her that the store was closed for the night and she would have to leave.  She explained to me that her husband, Hugh, was the assistant manager and she was waiting on him to finish up closing procedures.  We became friendly and I began to think of her as one of the B&N gang.  Occasionally, if a bunch of us were closing, we might get together afterward for a drink at the Irish restaurant/pub in downtown Bloomington and she would even join us.

We became close after I returned from my year in Cleveland.  She would pop into my music department from time to time to check up on an order she was trying to procure.  (I spent six months trying to order a book for her--O Sisters Ain't You Happy by Suzanne Ruth Thurman.  No one was more grateful than I was when it finally arrived.)  We would start chatting about this and that.  At one point, she said I reminded her a little bit of her younger brother.  I realized I had begun to think of her as an older sister--something I didn't have.  We somehow "adopted" each other as siblings.  Since about 2003, I've thought of her and referred to her as my "big sister."

She was my biggest champion.  If she happened to be around when a customer was being a jerk to me, she would let that customer know in no uncertain terms that I was extremely helpful and knowledgable about what I was doing and that I was a really great guy.  One customer in particular stood out to me.  She was giving me grief about something.  Victoria walked up and started extolling my virtues to this woman, subtly implying that she should back off.  I said to her, "Yeah, she knows.  Victoria, this is my mom, Rosie.  Mom, this is Victoria."

We would write letters--something I consider a lost art--and send postcards to keep each other updated on what we were doing.  I frequently used her as a sounding board to see what she thought about my concerns and ideas.  I hope she knew she could have done the same to me.  I actually sent her a postcard just a couple weeks ago.  In what is a haunting parallel with my mother's passing, apparently it arrived, but whether or not she saw or read it is uncertain.

Our fathers died fairly close together in 2016.  Two years later, our mothers did the same.  I always said we were exploring life as middle aged orphans together.  I took a lot of comfort in that.  When I inevitably would work on Mother's Day, I knew I could text her when it was slow to complain about how much I missed Mom.

I only just realized in the last few days that she seemed to get me in ways that most people don't--or, at the very least, she faked it beautifully.  I'm dazed and devastated because I no longer have my big sister.  I've got no one to write letters to, or make mix CDs for (I must be the only person who still does that).

I bought this week's album a year or so after it was released.  When I discovered a special deluxe edition of it, I bought that and wanted to give the original a good home.  Knowing Victoria's fondness for female musicians and singers and songwriters, I sent it her way.  She seemed just as entranced with it as I was and we bonded over the artist's music for the next decade.  Her new album comes out on Hallowe'en.  I pre-ordered special editions of both the vinyl and the CD a couple of months ago.  I feel like a little kid waiting on Christmas.  But that excitement is tempered by the fact that I won't be able to gush about it to my big sister.

So, in honour of Victoria, this week, I wanted to share that album that I gave to her all those years ago.  Please enjoy Florence + The Machine with their sophomore effort from 2011, Ceremonials.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, kove, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill

 

 

Commemorating our fathers over lunch at Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza, September, 2016

The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Film of the Week!

It's that time of year again.  Fall has finally fallen, the weather's at least a little cooler, it's a dreary, grey Saturday (which I love), fake skeletons are popping up in peoples' yards, and there is a generally spooky vihe in the air.  I have to be honest, it works for me.  Hallowe'en is in a couple of weeks and it's time to dig out the scary movies.  As I wrote last year, unlike a lot of people my age--and certainly unlike those younger than me--I do tend to like the old black and white Universal horror movies that were made from the 1930s through the 1950s.

One thing I've noticed is that I do tend to like to laugh while being scared or just creeped out.  Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice are two classics from my childhood that I still love to watch and, sadly, quote... whether anyone wants me to or not.  My friend Paul and I used to thow out quotes from Ghostbusters whenever we could think of one that was appropriate in that particular circumstance.  I'm still proud of the fact that one time in my life, I was in a position where I could say, "I'm worried--it's getting crowded in there and all of my recent data points to something big on the horizon."  Eh... you kind of had to be there.

And as much as I adore Mel Brooks's 1974 classic Young Frankenstein--and I do--I kind of wish I had seen the original Universal films beforehand.  As funny as Young Frankenstein is, it's even funnier if you've seen what was made 40 years earlier.  When I first watched the original 1931 Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff as the monster, I kept playing out scenes from Young Frankenstein in my head.  At one point, as Henry Frankenstein's assistant Fritz (played by the underappreciated Dwight Frye) slowly rises to watch the burial going on below, I found myself uttering, "Get down, you fool!"  Suddenly I heard Henry (played by Colin Clive) push down on Fritz's shoulder and say, "Get down, you fool!"  This phenomenon occurred even more as I watched the subsequent films.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy these movies.  Quite the opposite.  Frankenstein--the monster--is one of the most heartbreaking characters in cinema.  And the fact that we still refer to him as a monster tells me that after 95 years (more than 200 if you count Mary Shelley's novel), most people don't seem to get that.  He was just a man who wanted to be loved.  Yes, he was stitched together from various pieces of various dead people, reanimated, and brought back from the dead, but he was still a man who just wanted friendship and companionship.  He didn't think of himself as a monster (in spite of his sometimes murderous tendencies), he just didn't want to be feared and ostracized by everyone.

This week's film is the second film in the storied Frankenstein franchise ("Frankise"?).  If you've only seen Young Frankenstein, it references this film even more than its predecessor.  In this week's film, it would appear that the monster survived the destruction of the windmill at the end of the first film (SPOILER ALERT!).  While he's inadvertently terrorizing the villagers, a doctor/scientist blackmails Dr. Henry Frankenstein into working with him to ultimately create a mate for the monster he created.

Boris Karloff returns for his second of three appearances as Frankenstein's creation.  He would also go on to appear in 1944's House of Frankenstein, but as a wholly different character.  Colin Clive also reprises his role as the mad doctor, this time working under duress.  Dwight Frye also returns, this time as Karl (Fritz was killed in the previous film).  And in a dual role, the great Elsa Lanchester makes one of cinema's great entrances (in one of those roles).  British director James Whale, who helmed the original Frankenstein, as well as 1933's The Invisible Man, ties the whole thing together with a flair for both horror and humour.   So in honour of Una O'Connor's 140th birthday this week, from 1935, please enjoy what I think is one of the greatest sequels ever made, The Bride of Frankenstein.

 

The Album of the Week "sermon" is being delayed for technical reasons.  I hope to have it up within the next day or so. 

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock 'n' roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill