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I am not a peasant, and I acknowledge only one Lord
I meant to write a movie review yesterday, but Tuesday as I recall it was composed primarily of working, trudging errands in the rain, and falling over suddenly in the evening for two hours' sleep, none of which are exactly conducive to critical analysis. Now I've watched another movie tonight and all of a sudden I have a queue. And a story I'm in the last scene of. And the same lower back pain that interferes with my picking up chairs. I may give up on critique and just throw things at this screen. I hope we're all good with that.
I did not drown getting to the mead tasting on Monday, but the storm broke my umbrella on the driving concrete plains between Trum Field and Ball Square; I arrived at Ball Square Wines slightly shell-shocked and wringing-wet. The store was crowded to the point of dancefloor with curious drinkers in similar condition and the occasional regular fighting against the current. Terms of entry included showing your ID and leaving your umbrella at the door. It was a maelstrom and totally worth it.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gaudior met me after waiting out the cloudburst somewhere on Broadway; we tried somewhere around a dozen kinds of mead and cider, of which Moonlight Meadery's Sensual was the one I liked enough to bring a bottle home ("It's like being punched in the face with a beehive, except it's a pleasant experience"), and I watched her try to make an origami beer can for the Kesslers we ran into at the second cider station, except we're not sure she was quite drunk enough. derspatchel turned up after the mob had dispersed and we walked home in time to catch the double rainbow over Winter Hill. It kept brightening, new bands of color coming visible as we moved up Broadway: there were at least three layers of violet we could count, vibrating against the grey-blue washed sky. Everyone was taking pictures. Rob did, although they may be locked. The light from under the clouds made each end seem to melt to sunlight on a patch-glowing roof. We had planned to drink the mead when we got home, but there turned out not to be a corkscrew in the apartment. We made grilled cheese and ham in my skillet instead, set off the smoke alarm—which talks—and repaired to my room with a DVD handful_ofdust sent me in January for a late tribute to Peter Cushing. We watched Twins of Evil (1971).
This is the movie I wanted to watch for Cushing's birthday in May, when I didn't realize the DVD was still in Lexington and settled for enjoying The Abominable Snowman (1957). Having finally seen it, I'm not really surprised to find he's the aspect of the film I want most to talk about. The rest of it isn't worthless—if nothing else, it has great cinematography. (I was interested to see afterward that the same director was responsible for The Legend of Hell House (1973); some of the curious framing of faces and interior architecture is reminiscent. I noticed more at the time that it recalled Dutch portraits of the correct century or still lives.) But I can describe all the rest of the characters simply: Count Karnstein is an open-shirted libertine who offers up his soul to Satan out of existential ennui and is still kind of a poseur afterward; choirmaster Anton is the Enlightenment hero whose rational approach to superstition makes him the go-to for accurate vampire advice; the eponymous twins Maria and Frieda—Mary and Madeleine Collinson, Playboy Playmates of October 1970—are a classic virgin/vamp split, the shy, sweet-natured one living in the shadow of her brazenly seductive sister. Katy Weil is a stronger and more nuanced figure than her handful of lines, but I credit that entirely to Kathleen Byron, whom I've followed ever since Black Narcissus (1947) and The Small Back Room (1949). The Count has a sort of Renfield in the form of Dennis Price, with the hopeless job of organizing a diversion perverted enough for his master whom even a Black Mass bores. The choirmaster has a sister who doesn't last as long as I thought she would. Several girls who are neither witches nor vampires burn for it all the same. Any time we're watching Cushing, though, the characterization is something else again.
You discover actors as you find them: I began to take notice of Cushing with Cash on Demand (1961) because it came out on DVD right after I saw it mentioned in his BFI profile. Somebody in the history of cinema must have seen him first in Twins of Evil. With the flexibility afforded by Netflix and libraries, I almost wouldn't recommend it to anyone without prior exposure to Horror of Dracula (1958) or The Brides of Dracula (1960), because Gustav Weil is such a troubling and fascinating place to push the Van Helsing archetype. A fervent and self-appointed deliverer from evil in the forests of eighteenth-century Austria, the Puritan Weil is quite right in his conviction that evil exists in his world in the very form in which he fears it—Satan and his servants, savaging the innocent for dilettante kicks—but his worst moments of doubt are equally true: that he doesn't know how to fight them, that he's a sinner unequal to the task, that it's not God's work he's managed to do on this earth. His ineffectiveness is the most frightening thing about him. As a vigilante witchfinder, riding at the head of his carrion-crow flock (a Puritan Wild Hunt) or preaching in their church of God's purifying flame, he makes a fearsome figure: a man of hard black-and-white lines, his unsmiling mouth and his set shoulders the same resolute drive; grim as a death's head, implacable as an angel, a creature of single and terrible purpose. Until Karnstein, he hasn't faced a single real demonic thing. He thinks he knows what evil looks like—he sees it everywhere he looks, unless to heaven—but he can't even recognize which of his nieces is which, never mind which of them is the vampire. "His methodology is suspect," Rob said kindly. And on some level, he seems to know. His crusade is wasting him like a fever; he's burning in those flames. Not with empathy, because he can't let himself think that far, but with despair. He can see it's not working. The darkness is still out there. He doesn't know what else to do.
Gemma has pointed out that if the last rising ofCarmilla Mircalla Karnstein, the Count's notorious ancestor who turns him in answer to his half-play-acting prayer, was only a generation or so ago, Gustav was either around for the bloody events or raised on tales of people so wicked, they wouldn't even die from a vampire's bite; it does not make his tendency to burn any woman who looks like the broadest definition of a witch any more sympathetic, but it's a more thoughtful set of reasons than plain old narrow-mindedness. One of the reasons I believe his collapse after the revelation of Frieda-as-new-turned-vampire (which I love, the way her snarl of fear at the cross is almost a predator's smile, triumphant with horror; like the vacant mirror, it really, truly proves she's what Karnstein promised she'd be), from which point the audience is encouraged to read him as an antihero rather than a villain, is that he's been such a strangely painful fanatic. "Some men like a musical evening," the Count mocks him, safe in the protection of the Emperor. "Weil and his friends find their pleasure in burning innocent girls . . . You can have Gerta if you like—if you want some excitement. You'll feel better then. You won't go around burning pretty girls!" That's the first time we can see he's human, not some inexorable soldier-saint of hell, but it's stung pride and powerlessness then, the disgust on Gustav's face for both of them. The scene with his wife is without pride, because there's no use for it anymore. I suppose this might be the difference between humiliation and humility. He answers Karnstein's charges of hypocrisy with a leveled pistol, which he then cannot (provoking more laughter) bring himself to fire; to his wife, he says only, achingly, "I have tried always to be a good man." The coolness with which Katy replies, "Yes. You've tried," is one of the reasons I believe she does love him. She's being truthful with him. Until he starts listening to her, listening to Anton, at least trying to remember that Maria and Frieda are two different people, not some inconvenient, indecorous gestalt visited upon him by the vagaries of God and plague in Venice, Gustav has failed at pretty much everything he set out to do as a man of God. He'll die trying to do better. It might even be the end he thinks he deserves.
There should have been more of this. It's too late now. Oh, God, I have to sleep.
I did not drown getting to the mead tasting on Monday, but the storm broke my umbrella on the driving concrete plains between Trum Field and Ball Square; I arrived at Ball Square Wines slightly shell-shocked and wringing-wet. The store was crowded to the point of dancefloor with curious drinkers in similar condition and the occasional regular fighting against the current. Terms of entry included showing your ID and leaving your umbrella at the door. It was a maelstrom and totally worth it.
gaudior met me after waiting out the cloudburst somewhere on Broadway; we tried somewhere around a dozen kinds of mead and cider, of which Moonlight Meadery's Sensual was the one I liked enough to bring a bottle home ("It's like being punched in the face with a beehive, except it's a pleasant experience"), and I watched her try to make an origami beer can for the Kesslers we ran into at the second cider station, except we're not sure she was quite drunk enough. derspatchel turned up after the mob had dispersed and we walked home in time to catch the double rainbow over Winter Hill. It kept brightening, new bands of color coming visible as we moved up Broadway: there were at least three layers of violet we could count, vibrating against the grey-blue washed sky. Everyone was taking pictures. Rob did, although they may be locked. The light from under the clouds made each end seem to melt to sunlight on a patch-glowing roof. We had planned to drink the mead when we got home, but there turned out not to be a corkscrew in the apartment. We made grilled cheese and ham in my skillet instead, set off the smoke alarm—which talks—and repaired to my room with a DVD handful_ofdust sent me in January for a late tribute to Peter Cushing. We watched Twins of Evil (1971).This is the movie I wanted to watch for Cushing's birthday in May, when I didn't realize the DVD was still in Lexington and settled for enjoying The Abominable Snowman (1957). Having finally seen it, I'm not really surprised to find he's the aspect of the film I want most to talk about. The rest of it isn't worthless—if nothing else, it has great cinematography. (I was interested to see afterward that the same director was responsible for The Legend of Hell House (1973); some of the curious framing of faces and interior architecture is reminiscent. I noticed more at the time that it recalled Dutch portraits of the correct century or still lives.) But I can describe all the rest of the characters simply: Count Karnstein is an open-shirted libertine who offers up his soul to Satan out of existential ennui and is still kind of a poseur afterward; choirmaster Anton is the Enlightenment hero whose rational approach to superstition makes him the go-to for accurate vampire advice; the eponymous twins Maria and Frieda—Mary and Madeleine Collinson, Playboy Playmates of October 1970—are a classic virgin/vamp split, the shy, sweet-natured one living in the shadow of her brazenly seductive sister. Katy Weil is a stronger and more nuanced figure than her handful of lines, but I credit that entirely to Kathleen Byron, whom I've followed ever since Black Narcissus (1947) and The Small Back Room (1949). The Count has a sort of Renfield in the form of Dennis Price, with the hopeless job of organizing a diversion perverted enough for his master whom even a Black Mass bores. The choirmaster has a sister who doesn't last as long as I thought she would. Several girls who are neither witches nor vampires burn for it all the same. Any time we're watching Cushing, though, the characterization is something else again.
You discover actors as you find them: I began to take notice of Cushing with Cash on Demand (1961) because it came out on DVD right after I saw it mentioned in his BFI profile. Somebody in the history of cinema must have seen him first in Twins of Evil. With the flexibility afforded by Netflix and libraries, I almost wouldn't recommend it to anyone without prior exposure to Horror of Dracula (1958) or The Brides of Dracula (1960), because Gustav Weil is such a troubling and fascinating place to push the Van Helsing archetype. A fervent and self-appointed deliverer from evil in the forests of eighteenth-century Austria, the Puritan Weil is quite right in his conviction that evil exists in his world in the very form in which he fears it—Satan and his servants, savaging the innocent for dilettante kicks—but his worst moments of doubt are equally true: that he doesn't know how to fight them, that he's a sinner unequal to the task, that it's not God's work he's managed to do on this earth. His ineffectiveness is the most frightening thing about him. As a vigilante witchfinder, riding at the head of his carrion-crow flock (a Puritan Wild Hunt) or preaching in their church of God's purifying flame, he makes a fearsome figure: a man of hard black-and-white lines, his unsmiling mouth and his set shoulders the same resolute drive; grim as a death's head, implacable as an angel, a creature of single and terrible purpose. Until Karnstein, he hasn't faced a single real demonic thing. He thinks he knows what evil looks like—he sees it everywhere he looks, unless to heaven—but he can't even recognize which of his nieces is which, never mind which of them is the vampire. "His methodology is suspect," Rob said kindly. And on some level, he seems to know. His crusade is wasting him like a fever; he's burning in those flames. Not with empathy, because he can't let himself think that far, but with despair. He can see it's not working. The darkness is still out there. He doesn't know what else to do.
Gemma has pointed out that if the last rising of
There should have been more of this. It's too late now. Oh, God, I have to sleep.
no subject
Whoever came out with the "It's like being punched in the face..." is a damn genius and I wish them well. Actually, the origami beer can's genius too. If you haven't tried it yet, get hold of some African mead if you can - gorgeous stuff.
I envy you that rainbow. I need to rewatch Twins of Evil - Friday night always seemed to be Hammer night on the Beeb. Hope things go well with the story and that you get some decent sleep.
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Thank you. I shall try. I should go back to posting desktop notes, which are not polished; it was a useful means of convincing myself that it is all right not to produce 5000-word essays every time I want to talk about something that interests me.
Whoever came out with the "It's like being punched in the face..." is a damn genius and I wish them well.
I'm afraid that was me. I was enthusing at the staff.
If you haven't tried it yet, get hold of some African mead if you can - gorgeous stuff.
Will do. I think I may have had some once, but it was at a party and in small quantities. All the mead I've had recently is local, which I find pretty cool.
Hope things go well with the story and that you get some decent sleep.
Both have kind of been on hold today, but it was a good day nonetheless.
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Sovay, you make me laugh--in a good way.
And yes, keep throwing these notes up here, please!
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Yeah, I agree with you completely about Gustav. I know Cushing was religious (because Helen was religious, more than anything else), and think he was some variety of Anglican, so maybe that has a bit to do with it--there's this (rightful) fear of Puritan/Protestant overkill that Catholics and Catholic-variants have, this sense that when you remove the intervening/interpretive support structure between you and God's word, you set yourself a task at which you will inevitably fail. I know that for me, one of the creepiest things about hardcore, Salem Witch Trials-style Puritanism was the idea that you would never know if you were one of the Elect unless God Himself told you so. You might live your entire life never knowing and having to act like you did, approaching death as though it was a Pass/Fail entrance exam (which I guess we all do, but the Puritans also had a very palpable, specific idea of Hell and its discontents, because that's so much more easy to inculcate into a generation of children). And that's what I see in Gustav, this mixture of terror and resignation. I think he's suspected that he himself may be damned for quite some time, but if he can at least manage to save other people from the same fate...except, as you point out, he really hasn't, up 'til he lets Maria go and kills Frieda, so Maria won't have to deal with looking exactly like her anymore. But at least he dies doing what he always wanted to, which is try and kill a Karnstein directly. Too bad he's just a bit too old and tired to pull it off, at that point.
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And then he went on to direct Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978), which confuses me deeply. I can't tell now if I should try to re-watch the first one (which I thought was a complete Zenna Henderson rip-off when I saw it as a child) or just accept it as one of those weird things about movies. Short career overview here.
And that's what I see in Gustav, this mixture of terror and resignation. I think he's suspected that he himself may be damned for quite some time, but if he can at least manage to save other people from the same fate...
I think I agree with you: again, it's not an excuse, but it is a complicating factor that he doesn't treat himself with any more clemency than anyone around him; he decries the wickedness and depravity of the world they all live in, but we never hear him claim grace. "I have tried." It's a wrongheaded self-awareness, but at least it's something up on Karnstein, who really thinks he's starring in a novel by the Marquis de Sade when that crimson-lined opera cloak would embarrass any Gothic hero.
try and kill a Karnstein directly. Too bad he's just a bit too old and tired to pull it off, at that point.
It's a sacrificial death: Anton couldn't have succeeded without its distraction. I think Weil would have been all right knowing that.
(He is badass, though, with Frieda, and neither
[edit] And just tonight I noticed that through some exhaustion-based quirk of autopilot I had not credited you properly with sending me the DVD. Fixed that. Apologies!
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I feel you need to dubbed film program curator, someplace with a nice-sized screen and good popcorn and only-slightly-creaky seats.
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Several, although I don't like the kind that are designed to taste like something other than cider: if I liked IPA, I'd drink IPA, ditto white wines. The concept of a champagne cider is fascinating to me, but not after more than a sip. My favorites were an unfiltered summer cider from J.K.'s Scrumpy with a lemony sharp-sweetness and an oak-aged cider I think by the name of "Green Goblin." I still took the mead home, because I have much less regular access to that sort of thing.
My favorite ciders in general are probably from Fox Barrel, because they're actually perry, but as far as stuff with apples goes I am very fond of Downeast Cider, which I discovered earlier this year at Magoun's Saloon.
I feel you need to dubbed film program curator, someplace with a nice-sized screen and good popcorn and only-slightly-creaky seats.
I would consider that a lot of fun. I wish I knew how to organize it so that it paid.
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It's kind of what witch hunts were, I suppose. Mad cruel rampages across the landscape without any self awareness about the cruelty.
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Please write something with it; it's yours.
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Because wow: "Yes. You've tried." It's like the dead-serious version of the meme that goes around I guess on tumblr? The little star that says, "you tried." Condemnatory recognition of a truth. And a Puritan Wild Hunt? Hoo boy! Because isn't that exactly what the Puritans are/are like? (or at least, the Puritans as a type... not talking about actual Puritans. But then again, maybe we could make the same qualifying remarks about actual fair folk).
Weil is quite right in his conviction that evil exists in his world in the very form in which he fears it ... but his worst moments of doubt are equally true: that he doesn't know how to fight them, that he's a sinner unequal to the task.
That seems like the ideal of doubt toward which all doubts tend: that one's best efforts aren't good enough and may, in fact, be totally misguided. Whoa.
(And you put that in a guy who is as implacable as an angel and willing to burn suspects to death and yikes.)
But the other stuff! At the beginning--a drink that's like being punched with a hive of bees only pleasant? I want one! And your smoke alarm talks? Please, please tell me what it says. I'm imagining that it recites Congressional filibusters or something.
And your double rainbow.
We walked home
bones resonating with the vibrations
of three shades of violet
Can't wait to read the story you're writing.
no subject
Thank you. I felt this one got very ragged at the end as my brain hit the five o'clock wall, but I'm glad to hear it worked.
That seems like the ideal of doubt toward which all doubts tend: that one's best efforts aren't good enough and may, in fact, be totally misguided. Whoa.
Yeah. And if you believe your soul's on the line for it . . .
(And you put that in a guy who is as implacable as an angel and willing to burn suspects to death and yikes.)
He's a disturbing character: I like that Cushing was willing to take him on. And I like that a cheaper version of the story would have justified his actions with the reveal that there really are vampires and devil-worshippers (which in this universe seem to be sub-categories of one another) in Karnstein, whereas here it's not until Gustav understands the depth of his error that he becomes sympathetic—and it comes in stages, not a single moment-of-Damascus conversion. Learning that he's given his nieces the kind of home environment where becoming one of the damned undead was a preferable alternative for one of them, his first reaction is still to go upstairs with his belt and preemptively thrash the survivor, so she won't get any ideas; Katy stops him and he falls apart so suddenly and completely, it's almost as if he was running on a kind of autopilot of who he used to be. He's still willing to go through with the burning, because he doesn't yet know it won't actually put down the vampire (or release Frieda's soul from hell, as a clean death from staking or decapitation has at least a chance of doing), but his continuing inability to distinguish one twin from the other almost kills the wrong one. And then there's nothing to do, finally, but look at the blood on his hands, which might all be innocent now, and pray to be forgiven, though I agree with
And your smoke alarm talks? Please, please tell me what it says. I'm imagining that it recites Congressional filibusters or something.
Unfortunately, we think it says something banal like "There is a fire in your house. Please exit the bedroom," which is a little silly considering it's in the living room. It makes loud rattling electronic blats at exactly the frequency that hurts my ears so much, I had to cover them instead of waving ferociously at the alarm with a dish towel, which is my usual response to something like this. It's the first time I've had it go off while cooking—I've been frying things in that skillet for months now. Next time, I'll put the fan on.
(The stovetop fan comes on automatically if you boil two pots of water at the same time, but apparently it's not so much primed to notice smoke. This is another thing about the apartment that isn't really a surprise, but seriously, come on.)
Can't wait to read the story you're writing.
I have gotten almost nothing done on it this week, but if I can sleep, finally, maybe.
I like your rainbow poem. It feels like a beginning.
no subject
--that was the original message, but they thought it was too hardcore.
The rainbow poem: these days I'm specializing in poem fragments. One day I'll work up the energy for a whole poem!