Of How about World Goth Week, our famous trio of terror~~~

Hello  Darklings,

Well my brother and his family are now south in the Santa Cruz area enjoying their Memorial weekend vacation, one of many that they are planning to take.   In a way I’m a little jealous, it would be nice to have a Gypsy Wagon to travel here and there, but we also have to be realistic.   But we know they arrived safely Thursday evening after taking the long route there to avoid the steep climb of Highway 17 which has destroyed more than one vehicle’s transmission.

I swear I think May should be World Goth Month or have at least World Goth Week from May 22 (which is World Goth Day) through the traditional Memorial Day May 31,  that way we can also encompass the three birthdays of our Three Gentlemen of Terror Peter Cushing, Vincent Prince and Christopher Lee as well as the date when “Dracula” was published for the first time and saw the ‘light of day’ in print.

It seems to make sense to me to do that.

I mean look at it May 22 World Goth Day

                         May 26 Peter Cushing’s Birthday

                            

 May 26  Dracula published 1897

                             

May 27  Vincent Price’s Birthday

                           

May 27  Christopher Lee’s Birthday

Followed by Memorial Day in the United States to remember those who fought for Freedom.

Of course Dracula by Stoker was not the first Vampire novel, that goes to John Polidori who wrote “The Vampyre”  based upon notes by Lord Byron although it was Polidori who introduced the concept of charm being deadly,  this was followed in the 1850’s by “Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood”  then in 1871 by Le Fanu’s “Carmilla”. but it was Stoker’s Dracula who  defined its modern form, and the novel has spawned numerous theatrical, film, and television interpretations.

            This is the 1899 American edition of Dracula.

The novel ends 7 years later with Jonathan and Mina’s son listening to them recounting their adventures but a small section was removed from the original final chapter, in which Dracula's castle falls apart as he dies, hiding the fact that vampires were ever there.

It went as follows:

    “As we looked there came a terrible convulsion of the earth so that we seemed to rock to and fro and fell to our knees. At the same moment with a roar which seemed to shake the very heavens the whole castle and the rock and even the hill on which it stood seemed to rise into the air and scatter in fragments while a mighty cloud of black and yellow smoke volume on volume in rolling grandeur was shot upwards with inconceivable rapidity.

    Then there was a stillness in nature as the echoes of that thunderous report seemed to come as with the hollow boom of a thunder-clap - the long reverberating roll which seems as though the floors of heaven shook. Then down in a mighty ruin falling whence they rose came the fragments that had been tossed skywards in the cataclysm.

 

  From where we stood it seemed as though the one fierce volcano burst had satisfied the need of nature and that the castle and the structure of the hill had sunk again into the void. We were so appalled with the suddenness and the grandeur that we forgot to think of ourselves.”

    — Deleted excerpt from the original Dracula manuscript

Stoker was even considering giving the title of his manuscript “The Undead” but instead changed it to the name of his anti-hero.

                         Original manuscript by Stoker with original title.

 A nephew of Stoker did write a sequel to the original story, but it was not well received.    So it is fitting that the last full week of May at least should be considered at least World Goth Week and have some sort of celebration,  after all the First of May is kicked off with Walpurgis Night which is the 30^th of April or May Eve and that is when Witches and Evil things wander the land.

Sis, Doyle, Brian and I did our mini-celebration watching films that featured our favorite trio of Terror, and we are finishing it tonight with 3 movies tonight, Horror of Dracula, Madhouse and that sendup “House of the Long Shadows” which also includes John Carradine who also played Dracula at least twice.   Although this film was considered a disappointment by critics, it doesn’t matter to us, we are in it for the enjoyment and on this very warm evening we are going to watch it outside on the screen enclosed back porch while we are having ice cream for dessert.   But I also have on hand extra ice cream as well as soft drinks because I know our other neighbors are going to be peeking over the fence and want to join us and why not, the more the merrier I always say.

 

But next year I am going to carefully mark that week on my next Calendar perhaps even plan on doing a “Black Feast” for it and invited a few friends to dress up in their vampire or Goth best.   It is something worth planning for.  

And now I must go,  I have to make sure that Doyle and Brian place the T.V. screen in the right place.

Later Darklings 

       But I must confess Darklings my Heart belongs to Christopher Lee.  

22 things about Christopher Lee that we didn't know about and I'm FREE from Jury duty~~~~

Hello Darklings,

Well I am free of Jury Duty, how did the trial turn out??  We were dismissed!!!  The two culprits took a plea deal, when the defense attorney found out about security video and another witness.  If they went forward with the trial, and with that new information that just came forward, they would have been found so Guilty!! 

But when I was in the elevator I heard one of the victim's parent say to their own lawyer that to go ahead with the Civil suit, hit the defendants and their families in the wallet, and that new information will be presented.  

I am so glad I'm not going to be on that Jury!

So I am now free to enjoy the Summer, even with the on again off again warm weather.

And now my Darklings, Doyle found for me this lovely article which I am going to share with all of you~~~~

22 Incredible Facts About The Life and Career Of Sir Christopher Lee

If Sir Christopher Lee had just been a movie star, he would still have been an icon. But the late actor, who passed away last week, had an amazing life even beyond his incredible body of work. Whether you’re still lamenting his passing or unsure why his death is such a loss, here’s 22 reasons why Christopher Lee will always be a legend.

1) He was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records in 2007 for most screen credits, having appeared in 244 film and TV movies by that point in his career— at which point he made 14 more movies, with a 15th due later this year (titled Angels in Notting Hill). He also holds the record for the tallest leading actor — he stood 6’ 5” — but also for starring in the “most films with a sword fight” with 17.

2) His mother was an Italian contessa, and through her Lee descended from the Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire and was related to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.

3) He met Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, the assassins of the Russian monk Rasputin. He didn’t do this as research for his later film role as Rasputin (in the 1966 Hammer film Rasputin the Mad Monk), but just as a child in the 1920s.

4) At age 17, he saw the death of the murderer Eugen Weidmann in Paris, the last person in France to be publicly executed by guillotine.

5) During World War II, Lee joined the Royal Air Force but wasn’t allowed to fly because of a problem with his optic nerve. So he became an intelligence officer for the Long Range Desert Patrol, a forerunner of the SAS, Britain’s special forces. He fought the Nazis in North Africa, often having up to five missions a day. During this time he helped retake Sicily, prevented a mutiny among his troops, contracted malaria six times in a single year and climbed Mount Vesuvius three days before it erupted.

6) At some point during the war he moved from the LRDP to Winston Churchill’s even more elite Special Operations Executive, whose missions are literally still classified, but involved “conducting espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe against the Axis powers.” The SOE was more informally called — and I can’t believe this somehow hasn’t been made into a movie yet — The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

  

7) Lee never said anything specific about his time in the SOE, but he did say this: “I’ve seen many men die right in front of me - so many in fact that I’ve become almost hardened to it. Having seen the worst that human beings can do to each other, the results of torture, mutilation and seeing someone blown to pieces by a bomb, you develop a kind of shell. But you had to. You had to. Otherwise we would never have won.” By the end of the war he’d received commendations for bravery from the British, Polish, Czech and Yugoslavia governments.

8) Speaking both French and Italian, Lee spent his time after World War II he hunting Nazis with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects until he decided to give acting a try at age 25. Yes, all of this happened before Lee was 25 years old.

9) While filming a sword-fight with a drunken Errol Flynn during the filming of The Dark Avengers in 1955, Flynn accidentally cut Lee’s hand so badly his finger nearly came off, and permanently injured. Later, Lee cut off Flynn’s wig while Flynn was still wearing it. Flynn stormed off set and refused to come out of his trailer until Lee claimed it was an accident.

10) While best known for his portrayal of Dracula in countless films, he’s also starred as the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster. Of course he’s known as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in the Star Wars prequels, but his other villainous roles include Fu Manchu, Rasputin, Rochefort of The Three Musketeers (whose portrayal was so popular the character now inevitably appears with an eye patch, although it wasn’t in the book — Lee introduced it), Lord Summerisle of The Wicker Man, the James Bond villain Scaramanga, Mephistopheles, and Death himself.

11) Lee was not only related to James Bond creator and author Ian Fleming — they were step-cousins — but Lee was actually one of Fleming’s first choices for the role of Bond, not least because of Lee’s World War II and SOC experiences.

12) He has played Sherlock Holmes, his brother Mycroft Holmes, and also Sir Henry Baskerville of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

13) Tired of playing Dracula and feeling that the movies had gotten sub-par, Lee tried to quit Hammer films, but studio executives guilted him into returning by stressing how many people could be out of work if Lee stopped churning out hits. Lee agreed to star in 1966 Dracula: Prince of Darkness, he felt the script was so awful he adamantly refused to say any of the dialogue. (Hammer decided that it was far more important to have a mute Lee as star as opposed to anyone else, and thus had Dracula hiss and yell through the film.

14) In the ‘50s, Lee was engaged to Henriette von Rosen, daughter of Count Fritz von Rosen. The Count apparently didn’t like Lee, because after hiring private detectives to investigate the actor and demanding references, he also refused to allow his daughter to marry him unless Lee got the blessing of the King of Sweden. Lee got it.

15) Lee was a major Tolkien fan, reading The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy once a year for the majority of his life. He was the only member of the movie cast to have met Tolkien personally — apparently he ran into him randomly in a pub — and fanboyed out. Tolkien actually gave him his blessing to play Gandalf in any future Lord of the Rings movie.

16) When Lee heard that Hollywood was going to finally make the LotR trilogy into movies, he took a role in the terrible 1997 TV series The New Adventures of Robin Hood as a wizard, specifically so he’d have clear evidence of his ability to be a wizard. When he heard Peter Jackson would direct the films, he sent Jackson a personal letter asking to be in the movies along with a picture of him dressed up as a wizard. Unfortunately, Lee’s advanced age and his natural ability to play villains made him an even better choice for Saruman.

17) The story has gone around a lot, but it bears repeating because it is incredible: During his death scene in Return of the King (only included in the Extended Edition to Lee’s disapproval), director Peter Jackson was describing to him what sound people getting stabbed in the back should make. Lee gravely responded that he had seen people being stabbed in the back, and knew exactly what sound they made.

18) Lee was quite interested in the history of public executions, and reportedly knew “the names of every official public executioner employed by England, dating all the way back to the mid-15th century.”

19) He’s always been a big metal fan, but he released his first full heavy metal album in 2010 at the age of 88. Titled Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which won the “Spirit of Metal” award from the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony. He made a metal Christmas album in 2012. He was the oldest metal performer, and the oldest musician to ever hit the Billboard music charts.

20) In addition to his impossibly prolific film career, Lee was a world champion fencer, an opera singer, spoke six languages, and was a hell of a golfer.

21) He was made a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2009, a Commander of the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1997, made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2011, earned he British Academy of Film and Television Arts Fellowship in 2011, received the The Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1994, and so many more.

22) Last but not least: Despite everything you’ve heard about the “six degrees of Kevin Bacon,” Christopher Lee was recognized as being the most connected actor in the world in 2008, again by Guinness. He connects to virtually any actor in 2.59 steps, beating Bacon.

[Via Wikipedia, Guinness World Records, Badass of the Week, Factfiend, The Independent]

 

In watching a You Tube video of Lee acting as Sauruman, everyone on the set was more interesting in listening to all the various experiences he had with other actors that it got to the point where one of the "Script women" or someone, I know it was a woman, had to get everyone back on point or the movie would run over budget. 

Even Doyle said that if Christopher Lee told him to take a "Long Walk off a short pier" in that precise voice that he used in the Johnny Depp version of "Dark Shadows" he would have done it willingly.

He should have be claimed as both a National Treasure as well as an International Treasure, and we are all poorer for losing him.

Later Darklings,  I'm going to go and cry some more.

RIP Christopher Lee~~~~

Darklings,

Today I'm having a hard time trying to not cry.  My Heart is broken, the man for whom I turned Goth for is gone.

Christopher Lee, the vampire count, the Villain of Villains,  the man who has "saved" my virtue a number of times, is gone.

Except for Doyle, he is the only man I ever had a serious "crush" on.

Mother would not let me go to the movies with a boy unless it was a film starring Christopher Lee, because she knew I would be more interested in the film, instead of a pimple-faced boy trying to make like an eight-armed octopus,  needless to say I never had repeat dates with those callow youths.  My heart always belonged to Him.

Doyle admired him too and could understand my "crush".

As I understand it he passed away this last Sunday of respiratory problems, he was 93.  He now joins, Vincent, Peter, John Caradine, Boris, and Lon.

I say that he is NOT DEAD, but only resting, waiting to haunt us in our dreams.

"Good Night Sweet Count and flights of vampire bats help fly thee to thy rest"

Of Christopher Lee and Heavy Metal Carols and an "Addams Family" loss~~~~

Hello Darklings,

I've been outside and with Brian's help we've been making sure things are secure and won't get blown away. 

On the Christmas lights well we'll just have to chance it, there has been talk by our weather man of very strong winds up to 60 miles an hour coming with the next storm front.  That will make for a miserable commute.

Of course those protesters who blocked the 80 Freeway last night on the going home commute didn't do any good nor laying down on the rail road tracks as a train was approaching, fortunately the Engineer was going slow enough that he could stop before anyone got hurt, but blocking the railroad right of way is a Federal Offence as I understand it, and although the California Hywy Patrol has no objections to a peaceful demonstration, doing it on a high speed freeway endangers them as well as the drivers, being hit by a car or truck is equal to falling off a 5 story building.

These people are not using any common sense and while the free way was jammed up a woman went into labor, a man had a heart attack and another man had a stroke, with that I do not consider those demonstrations as being peaceful but life endangering.  No just no common sense at all.  But then Berkeley has never been the city of common sense, not from my personal experience.

But now onto a holiday treat----

Christopher Lee now 92 years old has just released a Heavy Metal Christmas album titled " Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing"   he says at his age every day is a blessing and a joy and he's doing it by doing things he loves doing.  I think I'm going to buy a copy just for the fun of it, because that is what an Elder Goth would do.

I mean think of it Darklings, the Grand old man of Gothicness, and frightening films, doing Heavy Metal Christmas Carols?  How perfectly Dark!  Now if he would just record the 13 days of Halloween it would be perfect!

But on the sad side I've just found out that we lost Ken Weatherwax who played  "Pugsley" of the "Addams Family" T.V. series,
I'm reproducing the article here I was surprised to discover who he was related to as well......

The Hollywood Reporter     December 7, 2014 9:00 PM

Ken Weatherwax, Who Played Pugsley on TV’s 'Addams Family,' Dies at 59 (Report)

Ken Weatherwax, who played the pudgy son Pugsley on the 1960s ABC sitcom The Addams Family, has died. He was 59.

Weatherwax died Sunday from a heart attack, his niece, Shanyn Vieira, announced on Facebook. Later, TMZ reported that he died in his California home and that there will be two funerals, one for the family and one for the fans.

Weatherwax starred as Pugsley, the reserved, insect-eating son of Gomez and Morticia Addams (John Astin and Carolyn Jones) and the brother of Wednesday Addams (Lisa Loring), on the campy Filmways Television sitcom.
Based on the New Yorker comic strip by cartoonist Charles Addams, The Addams Family spent just two seasons (1964-66) on ABC but aired for years in syndication. It also spawned a pair of Barry Sonnenfeld movies in the 1990s that had Jimmy Workman playing Pugsley.

A native of Los Angeles, Weatherwax also appeared in toothpaste commercials and on a 1964 episode of Wagon Train. After The Addams Family ended, he tried out for other roles but didn’t land anything, saying he was a victim of typecasting, he told Bill O’Reilly in a 2008 interview.

He also said kids in school hassled him for playing a character named Pugsley.

“Frankly, I didn’t deal with it very well,” he told O’Reilly. “I was kicked out of like six or seven schools and went into the service [the Army] at the age of 17. I did kind of draw a lot of fire from that.”

Later, he played Pugsley Sr. on a 1977 Halloween Addams Family movie for NBC and reportedly worked as a grip and set builder in Hollywood.

Weatherwax’s aunt was dancer and actress Ruby Keeler, who starred in such famed 1930s Warner Bros. musicals like  “42nd Street”, and his uncle was Lassie’s trainer, Rudd Weatherwax

His other brother is actor Joey D. Vieira, who starred as Porky Brockway on a Lassie TV series of the 1950s and had small parts in such films as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and The Patriot (2000).

~~~~~~~
It's sad that he's passed on but hopefully with the internet and conventions he found some measure of contentment with the new generations who discovered the "Addams Family"

And now back to checking a few more things on the house before the storms come.

Later Darklings

Rest in Peace "Pugsley"