Reviews – Kathryn L. Ramage

The Black Stone

“They say foul things of Old Times still lurk in dark forgotten
corners of the world. And Gates still gape to loose, on certain
nights, shapes pent in Hell.”

This is my favorite Robert E. Howard story, and in my opinion his best Lovecraftian one, so I was delighted when I heard that Dark Adventure Radio Theatre was doing an adaptation of it. Although a downloadable version was available earlier, the CD with props finally arrived just before the holiday weekend.

In The Black Stone, an unnamed first-person narrator, acquainted with von Junzt’s occult book, Unaussprechlichen Kulten*, as well as the mad poet Justin Geoffrey’s “People of the Monolith,” takes his vacation in the location where the Monolith, or Black Stone, stands; this is in the mountains of rural Hungary, on an open meadow plateau above a tiny village with the intriguing name of Stregoicavar: the Witch Village. The age of this mysterious stone object is disputed; some claim a fabulous antiquity and puzzle over the strange markings upon in.

At Stregoicavar, the protagonist not only examines the Black Stone for himself, but learns something about its true age, the barbaric rites performed there on Midsummer nights long ago, and the reason why Justin Geoffrey went mad after his visit here — more than he really wanted to know.

The HPL Historical Society takes this tale and builds upon it, adding the usual spirited period dialog to enliven the audio drama and bestowing upon the nameless hero not just a name, but a character which DART fans are already familiar with: Charlie Tower.

This is not, however, the millionaire playboy adventurer we know from The Whisperer in Darkness, Brotherhood of the Beast, and Dagon: War of the Worlds. He’s a younger man, freshly scarred and disenchanted by the earthly horrors of the first World War.

In the summer of 1919, young Charlie (played by Sean Branney) is hanging around Europe after the war in pursuit of various decadent pleasures. We find him in Berlin in a nightclub named Himmel und Hölle –Heaven & Hell — sipping champagne and chatting with an underaged Marlene Dietrich, when he hears a poet read Geoffrey’s “People of the Monolith.”

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Dead Tongues

A short student film, presented to the Lovecraft Film Festival in 2016 and made available through the Film Fest on DVD. I finally bought a copy from them when I was at the NecronomiCon this summer. The DVD cover says that it’s “inspired by an H. P. Lovecraft story,” but the link is tenuous one.

“I haven’t slept in about four days now, translating shit, words I’ve never even heard of before. I had to board up the windows to help me concentrate. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is a hieroglyph… This is important.”

We hear this speech over quick cuts of a young man recording his video diary, the same young man pouring gasoline on himself and flicking a cigarette lighter, and a young woman in black attending his funeral.

When she goes to his apartment with armloads of cardboard boxes some time after the funeral, we get their story in flashback.

A month earlier, Stacey (Phoebe Fox) was excited when her boyfriend Tony Jermyn (Robert Justin Dresner) returned from a grad-student archeological trip to Peru, but Tony was even more excited about the discovery of wall carvings in a cave that looked like much smaller versions of the Nasca Lines. He wanted to do some independent research on them with an eye toward career establishing publication before sharing his findings with the (unnamed) university . “I’m going to be in National Geographic!”

Tony was extremely eager to get started right away, oblivious to all of Stacey’s Welcome Home overtures and forgetting this was their anniversary. Realizing that she wasn’t as important to him as his work, Stacey told him she was leaving; Tony was already so focused on his computer that he didn’t even realize she was breaking up with him.

Stacey exited in tears, leaving the flowers and Happy Anniversary card she bought for him on the living-room coffee table.

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Doctor Who: Peladon

Peladon is a planet that featured in two stories during the 3rd Doctor’s run during the 1970s. These Big Finish audio four stories carry on the drama on Peladon — the environmental issues, the political intrigue both on the planet and among interested parties elsewhere in the galaxy, and the lives of various characters seen in Curse of Peladon and Monster of Peladon.

Just a note before I begin: I haven’t seen either of the two Peladon episodes in years and my memories of story details are vague.

The Ordeal of Peladon

This first story is set near the end of the reign of King Peladon (David Troughton, who played the young prince way back in the 1970s). Aging, he’s been in semi-seclusion for the past ten years and lets his chancellor Raarlan do most of the work of administration for the kingdom. Unfortunately, this enables Raarlan to do as he likes and keep things from the king. For example, the new mines that have recently opened up in the desert provinces.

King Peladon is worried about a holy man named Skarn who is also in the desert provinces and is developing a cult following due to his claims that the old gods are speaking through him. The king wants to know more about Skarn and wants to understand what the people see in him.

When a woman offers to take him to meet Skarn, the king is eager to go. This means leaving the citadel and taking a long walk out into the desert, with an adventure or two along the way. The meeting is not what the king was hoping for, but then Skarn’s new prophet-like powers aren’t what he imagines them to be either — as the surprise cameo appearance of a Doctor not appearing on the cover art makes clear when he pops up in a flashback and explains the situation.

HP Lovecraft Film Festival, Best of 2020

After a long delay, I have finally obtained the BluRay for the best short horror films from around the world shown at the 2020 HP Lovecraft Film Festival (a streaming festival that year).

It’s an interesting batch, with only one film loosely based on a Lovecraft story, and a couple of others that might be called allusions to the works of HPL.

U14

A pretty good US-made film in an atypical setting. What starts out as the usual, boring night at work for a country and western DJ/radio talk show host named Rooster turns into a bewildering experience in recursive horror when several of his call-ins request that he play an oldie they call “U14”.

Rooster has no clue what U14 is, if it’s a song title or a juke box number, but since so many people are asking for it, he has a look in the store room. After digging through stacks of old 45s, he finds a box containing a set of cassette tapes labeled U1, U2, and so on. One is labeled U14, so he takes it back up to the control room along with some antique equipment that will let him broadcast tapes.

Doctor Who: Out of Time 3

Wink

This is the third in a sort-of series of stories in which the 10th Doctor (David Tennant) runs into one of his previous selves and they have an adventure together. In the first Out of Time, he and 4th Doctor (Tom Baker) battled the Daleks in a transtemporal abbey. In the second story, he joined the 5th Doctor (Peter Davison) jumping around different eras in Parisian history to stop a very long-term plot of the Cybermen.

This time, it’s the 6th Doctor (Colin Baker). The threat they face is the Weeping Angels.

The Tardis has been kicking up a fuss and, instead of taking the 10th Doctor where he wants to go, lands on Lucidus Silvara, a planet famed for being constantly in the blinding white light of its “thousand cold suns,” except for one day each year when there’s an eclipse and the beauty of the planet is visible briefly in the dim light. This is not that day. The Doctor cannot see the man who calls out to him from the bright light, but people who’ve watched the original Doctor Who series, or listened to these Big Finish audios, recognize that voice right away.

The 6th Doctor had dropped in to see the planet on its annual eclipse day, and doesn’t understand why it’s suddenly so bright again; the eclipse shouldn’t have ended for a few more hours. He’s lost his own Tardis somewhere around here, but of course can’t see where it is. But he soon realizes that he’s talking to the Doctor and not just a doctor, and who else would be in a position to lend a hand? (although he doesn’t care for the “grubby” look of Dr. 10’s Tardis).

The problem of what happened to Dr. 6 becomes apparent, when a Weeping Angel is discovered in the vicinity, coming toward them at “blink” intervals. The Weeping Angels can’t move when someone, even another Angel, is looking at them, but they can move very fast–in the blink of an eye–when that gaze is interrupted.

Actually, there are two of them, on either side of the Doctors.

Dr. 6: “Angel to the left us. Angel to the right.”

Dr. 10: “Here I am stuck in the middle with you.”

Dr. 6 [groaning]: “You’re not one of those Doctors, are you?”

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The Lone Centurion: Camelot

Big Finish continues the adventures of Rory Williams (voiced by Arthur Darvill), that unassuming modern lad from Leadworth who, by a remarkable set of circumstances, ended up as an ageless Auton in 120 CE in a shrinking universe without stars.

At the end the Lone Centurion, when Rory abdicated as Emperor and left Rome, he apparently made his way back to Britain. This second set of audio dramas picks up a few centuries later in Wales, where Rory is now living in Camelot and serving as an apprentice to Malthus, the court physician. Since Rory was a nurse in his human life, this is a job he feels more suited to than gladiator or assassin–although he wryly observes that nurses were underpaid even then.

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Dead of Night

Ealing Studios is best known for its sometimes dark comedies, but in 1945 they released this early example of horror anthology — the type of film that another British studio, Amicus, would turn out regularly 20 to 30 years later.

While it’s often remembered for its final segment, there are other good and spooky stories presented here, original material or adapted from writers such as EF Benson and HG Wells. Four different directors worked on the individual segments. And the implications of the framing story are even more unsettling.

Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) is driving along a country lane somewhere in Kent. As he approaches a rather charming half-timbered house, he stops and stares at it for a moment before going on.

Eliot Foley (Roland Culver) is waiting at the gate to greet him, and the chatty dialog informs us that Craig is an architect whom Foley has invited down to his home, Pilgrims Farm, to have a look at the house with an eye toward expanding it.

While Craig says that “I’ve never been here before. Not actually,” he seems strangely familiar with the place. He knows already that they need more than the two bedrooms they currently have and another living room, and that the converted barn, where the Foleys are currently putting their guests, has central heating and modern conveniences. When they enter the house, he knows where to go to hang up his hat and coat before Foley points the alcove out. He also knows that the other guests for the weekend are having their afternoon tea before Foley takes him into the parlor, where Mrs. Foley (Mary Merrall), Eliot’s mom, is pouring out tea for the group.

Let’s meet the rest of the party:

Psychiatrist Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk). In those days, psychiatrists were all Freudians and had foreign accents, and the good doctor is no exception.
Hugh Grainger (Anthony Baird).
The Courtlands, Peter and Joan (Ralph Michael and Googie Withers).
A teenaged girl named Sally O’Hara (Sally Ann Howe) who is a neighbor of the Foleys.

I’m familiar with most of these actors later in their careers, so it’s always interesting to see them so young.

As the group is introduced to him, Walter Craig seems to find them all as familiar as Pilgrims Farm. He even says that Dr. Van Straaten will treat him; he always treats him.

This baffles the doctor, since he’s never met Walter before, and Walter at last explains his deja vu:

“I’ve seen you in my dreams. Sounds like a sentimental song, doesn’t it? I’ve dreamt about you over and over again… Everybody in this room is part of my dream. Everybody.”

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Diaries of River Song: New Recruit

River Song: “You know, my favorite thing about this time period?”

Liz Shaw: “The discovery of Hawking radiation?”

River: “The boots! Look at them! My legs look amazing!”

River Song joins UNIT during the first part of the 3rd Doctor’s run! The concept of dropping that time-traveling archeologist into that vaguely 1970s/80s-era scientific and military alien-invasion milieu was too tempting to resist, although I was curious about how the Doctor, the Brigadier, and Liz Shaw were going to be portrayed, since Jon Pertwee, Nicholas Courtney, and Caroline John have all passed on and are not available for audio work.

Like most of these Big Finish audio drama sets, this one contains 4 separate adventures.

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The Blood Spattered Bride

This was an extra feature on the Daughters of Darkness BluRay. I’ve been meaning to review it for years. I was under the impression that it was an English-dubbed French film, but now that I watch it again, I see that I was wrong; it’s Spanish.

The plots of the two films are similar–a newly married couple is beset by an ancient but chic lesbian vampire–but the former is based on the legendary Erzsebet Bathory and her atrocities, and the latter is one of many adaptations of Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla.

We meet the newlywed couple in this film speeding along in a convertible. They are so newly married that the bride Susan (Maribel Martín) is still in her wedding gown with a full length veil. Her husband (Simón Andreu), who doesn’t seem to have a name, stops at a hotel so they can change. Susan doesn’t want to; she’d rather drive on “at 90 miles an hour”, she laughingly responds. But stop they do. Hubby leaves her on the front steps of the hotel with their luggage while he parks the car. No valet service here.

As she enters the hotel alone, Susan notices a woman seated inside a parked car, watching her.

A bellman shows her up to her room. As she starts to remove her veil and dress, a man with a stocking over his face emerges from the closet and attacks her. She lies in a faint while he tears open the front of her dress to rape her.

But when her husband comes upstairs a moment later, Susan is sitting alone on the bed. Her dress isn’t torn. The rape was some kind of terrible hallucination.

Susan tells her husband that she doesn’t want to stay in the hotel. “I don’t like it here.” And who can blame her, after that?

Bride

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The Beast Must Die

The opening voiceover and dramatic white-on-black text of The Beast Must Die sums it up nicely:

“This film is a detective story — in which you are the detective.

“The question is not ‘Who is the murderer?’ — But ‘Who is the werewolf?’

“After all the clues have been shown– You will get a chance to give your answer. Watch for the Werewolf Break.”

There we are then: Amicus is presenting us with a country house whodunnit featuring a werewolf. Lon Chaney Jr. meets Agatha Christie, with an audience-participation gimmick straight out of the William Castle playbook. The Beast Must Die is cheesy in a funky 1970s way, but it’s those same elements that make it fun.

The story starts off somewhere in the remote Scottish countryside, with a black man (Calvin Lockhart) being hunted in the woods. A man in a helicopter reports on whether or not he has “visual contact” whenever he sees “the target” or loses sight of him through the trees. Another man (Anton Diffring) seated in a control station with a wall of monitors and 1970s big computers reports “scanner contact” when he detects the runner on cameras placed in the trees or via sensors buried in the ground. A bunch of armed men drive around in a jeep, following the directions provided by these two men to locate their quarry. Some of men get out of the jeep to pursue “the target” on foot.

When the black man hides in the underbrush, unfortunately near a microphone, he’s discovered. One of the armed men points a rifle at him, but the control-room guy–who seems to be in charge–orders, “Give him another chance. Let him go.” The man with the rifle withdraws. “The target” runs off. The hunt resumes.

This introductory action sequence looks like a high-tech version of The Most Dangerous Game, but it’s all a clever inversion of our expectations.

The pursued man has a few more close calls with the armed men, but eventually he makes his way out of the woods, sweaty, out of breath, clothes a bit tattered and muddy. He steps onto the well-kept lawn of a large country house. A group of people are having tea. The armed men catch up with him and, to the horror of the tea party, shoot him. As they gather around him, he laughs.

The man is millionaire big-game-hunter Tom Newcliffe. The house belongs to him, and the people having tea on the lawn are his wife Caroline (Marlene Clark) and their guests for the weekend. The men who have been chasing him work for him, and the high-tech hunt is his idea of a fun way to check out his newly installed monitoring system.

I’d call Tom the hero of this story, since he’s the central character and the one who’s going to be playing detective, but he’s a self-centered, entitled jerk.

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