Where we are now

You would think that with all the “free” time I have that I would be blogging more. According to my very own eyes, I haven’t posted anything since I rode my bike to Sea Isle in August. Since then, I swear I’ve done a lot, but the fact remains: I’m still unemployed and looking for work is a job in and of itself.

We are six weeks into the school year and new patterns of life–amid the randomness of the kids’ hybrid schedule–are falling into line. I say “randomness” since the school seems to be hellbent on taking any sort of predictability out of the school week.

Still, I need to write. I have some possible contracts in the pipeline, but I’m not doing any writing yet. I’m working here to clean out the cobwebs.

Media Consumption: The Haunting of Bly Manor

I was a big…well, fan isn’t the word…but I was fond of the Haunting of Hill House. So, yeah, I was a big fond. It wasn’t the Shirley Jackson story, of course, which is haunting without being scary in any reasonable sense. It played with the ideas of terror and foreboding without actual horror. The horror was in the implication and weirdness. Hill House wasn’t that, but it did provide some actual scares and a scary premise that was really compelling until it wasn’t. Horror stories are a hard thing to end, because they rarely follow their own rules to a satisfying conclusion.

In that sense, The Haunting of Bly Manor succeeded. It wasn’t scary throughout, but it did develop an atmosphere and, I think, it really delivered on its own premise in a way that Hill House didn’t. Bly Manor was less The Turning of the Screw than Haunting of Hill House was…the Haunting of Hill House.

Without spoilers, it turned a ghost story into a story about choices and love. Not a bad trick, and while I think it earned its ending, it was perhaps an episode or two too long.

If the new era of television is going to succeed, it needs to allow creators to set the pace. This felt like Netflix needed two more episodes than the story really required.

The cast was superb and seemingly odd choices paid off later, but I won’t get into those. A few actors joined in from Hill House, including Henry Thomas, who played the father from the last series. He’s Texan, I believe, but he does a passable James Mason-style English accent (to my American ears, at least). Of course, I think James Mason is the one accent Americans can perform consistently, if only in imitation. I did a 7 minute Ewok with a James Mason back of the throat grumble in video this summer for the Scouts, which amused me, if anything.

So, yes, it is Spooky Season. To my delight, a good number of Universal Monster movies are free (with commercials) on the NBC/Comcast/Universal/LordKnows Peacock service, as well as a bunch of

Further reading:

The Haunting of Hill House was, in the book form and the classic film (not the crappy late 90s version), ostensibly a story about a ghost investigation, which brought ghost hunting out of the pulps and into the mainstream, opening the door to Scooby-doo, The Ghostbusters and numerous direct imitators, including:

Hell House by Richard Matheson. A hacky attempt to cash in on the Haunting of Hill House’s fame by a decidedly non-hacky author. As such, it was scary and vulgar in ways Shirley Jackson would never really be. It was made into The Legend of Hell House in 1973 with the superb Roddy McDowell.

Further Watching:

The House on Haunted Hill. A classic Vincent Price 1959 flick with Vincent at his Vincentyness, which was undoubtedly named so to confuse folks about the popular book (also 1959) and film. Even better than the contrived plot is the location: Frank Loyd Wright’s Ennis House.

The Haunting of Hill House was made into a good movie, The Haunting, in 1963. Remade as a bad movie 1999. The House on Haunted Hill was also remade in 1999. Got it? Because I’m confused.