Favorite Halloween Movies

Here are some movies I like to watch when it gets to be fall-like and Halloween-y out:





Dracula with Bela Lugosi. My favorite part is the Count's reaction when he is offered a cigarette from a case with a mirror in the lid.











The Mummy with Boris Karloff. Ardeth Bay is the scariest looking mummy ever.







Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant. Whenever I see fall leaves blowing down the street I think of this movie. It's lots of fun and creepy too. What's not to like about two lovable old aunts who poison lonely old gentlemen with homemade elderberry wine?












The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. My favorite thing about this movie is the old gypsy woman.








Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy. This is an Abbot and Costello spoof of The Mummy. When I was little I thought the mummy's name was Clarence. I wondered why somebody from ancient Egypt would be called that. When I grew up and saw the movie again, I realized that the mummy's name is Claris.





Hocus Pocus. I can't put my finger on why I like this movie. Maybe it's because the witches are so funny, or because of the black flame candle, or because of Billy the (un)dead boyfriend, or Binks the cat who used to be a boy and has lived for hundreds of years. It all comes together in a very entertaining Halloween movie.


As you can see, I tend to lean toward the old classics. I also like I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake, and Bell Book and Candle with Jimmy Stewart (interestingly enough, in this movie about witches there is an actress whose real name is Hermione G., but the G doesn't stand for Granger, it stands for Gingold).

Well, Happy October to you. I'm going to watch a few of these movies this month.

Go Speed Racer!

I saw the movie Speed Racer yesterday. At first I didn't want to go because the previews I saw made it look kind of stupid. I was a big fan of Speed Racer when I was little and I didn't want my childhood memories of joy to be ruined by a bad movie. My husband convinced me to go see it when the paper gave it an A- in its review.

So we went.

It was great! Go see it, but not if you're prone to epilepsy.

When I was little I couldn't ever quite figure out if Trixie was Speed's sister or his girlfriend. I concluded that she must be his girlfriend, but I was never 100% on that. Thankfully the movie has cleared that up =^..^=

Really, though, it was a good movie- even for an old fan - they didn't let me down.

Now they need to make a good Johny Quest movie!

Magical Gardens

Please check out this picture (larger one here). I found it while doing a quick search for late August blooming plants in Ireland on Google. This blog came up in the search with a page of August entries. I have since placed this blog in my 'interesting links'.

The image conjures up stories of faerie and magic. Doesn't it? What story does it stir up in you? Childhood memories? Come on - we all had imaginations at one point to do this image justice. It makes me want to sit down for story time.

According to the windywillow blog, the picture is from a garden in Cornwall called Heligan Gardens (more about the gardens here)and the scupture is by one Alan Thomas. It's called the mud maid.

Why was I googling late August blooming plants in Ireland? I was revising a manuscript and suddenly wanted/needed to know what one could find blooming in late August in Ireland. Although when I found the windywillow blog I became a little side-tracked, and then my husband came and suggested that we go do something, and that was the end of revising for the day.

One of the things we did was rent the movie Into The Wild. My husband had a small projection screen and projector that he had checked out from the library at the university where he teaches. He needed it over the weekend for a presentation. We ended up setting it up in the living room, and with the help of his laptop and the stereo, we had a really nice little movie theatre. It all worked so well that now he wants a big screen TV and surround sound =^..^= The movie was really good, by the way. I would recommend seeing it if you haven't already. And the book is supposed to be excellent too.

Weeping Camels

I saw a movie recently that I would highly recommend. I found it at my library in the foreign films section. It's called The Story of the Weeping Camel. But wait! Don't click the link yet! Read on first.

You will never forget this film if you see it. I'm hesitant to say more about it because I checked it out of the library with only a look at the front cover and not so much as a glance at the blurb on the back. So all I knew about it was that there were two people riding furry camels on the front cover, and below them a TIME magazine quote, "A truly beautiful film the whole family ought to embrace!" Because I knew nothing about it - only that I wanted to be taken somewhere far away - as the story unfolded I was mesmerized, entranced. And when the ending unfolded, it was magical.

It may have felt exactly the same if I had read the back blurb ahead of time, but somehow I feel that it was all the more powerful because I knew absolutely nothing about it. If you do want to read more about it, click the link above.

The only thing that I would caution about is one agonizing camel birth scene. It had me writhing in empathy.

This film is one of those rare things that can remind us that many beautiful and magical things still exist in this world despite all of our modern progress.