All the rest of us – you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa – we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.
Ernie Pyle
Author: photog
04NOV2025 – Photo of the Day
The Black Cat (1934) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
To call this a horror movie would be kind of absurd. Whatever value this movie possesses stems from the enjoyment of imagining the quaint innocence of the audiences in the 1930s being frightened by the silliness on screen. Reviewing this movie, I will not worry about spoiling the plot twists. They are too ridiculous to consider.
Peter and Joan Alison are an American newlywed couple inexplicably celebrating their honeymoon in the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary. They meet Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) on the Orient Express and all three leave the train to take a bus to their destination. But the bus crashes during a rain storm and Joan is injured so Werdegast takes them to the home of his arch-enemy Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) whom Werdegast believes has stolen his wife while Werdegast was imprisoned in Russia for fifteen years after WWI.
Werdegast treats Joan for her injury and injects her with a powerful sedative so she will sleep the night. Peter Alison sees that Werdegast and Poelzig are foes but he bides his time to leave the house the next morning when his wife is well enough to travel. Meanwhile Werdegast confronts Poelzig and demands to know where his wife Karen is. Poelzig brings him down into the subterranean fortress under his house (the one still wired with dynamite). Here he is shown Karen’s embalmed body in a giant bell jar. And he is told that his daughter (also named Karen) is dead. Slightly later on we find out that Werdegast’s daughter isn’t dead but instead is married to Poelzig and that she believes her father died in prison.
The next morning, we learn that Poelzig is a Satanist whose cult is about to celebrate the new moon by sacrificing a female victim. Poelzig wants Joan to be that sacrifice. Werdegast agrees to play a game of chess against Poelzig to decide Joan’s fate but he loses and so Werdegast seems to acquiesce in her role as victim and allows his man-servant to obey Poelzig and render Peter unconscious with some Hungarian karate chop and imprison him in a round room with a rotating tube as its wall. Don’t ask me why such a room is part of the story. The whole house is full of goofy modernist architectural features. Meanwhile Joan is being prepped for her role as sacrifice at the satanist ceremony.
But at the last second Werdegast rescues Joan and while leading her to escape they find the body of his daughter Karen that Poelzig has just murdered. Through a series of fight scenes Werdegast and his man-servant manage to manacle Poelzig and Werdegast uses a scalpel to skin Poelzig alive. Joan sees this and starts screaming. Peter finds a gun that Poelzig’s dead servant dropped and thinking that Werdegast is harming Joan, he shoots him. While dying of his gunshot wound, Werdegast orders the young couple to flee the house as fast as possible while he triggers a five-minute timing device that will set off the dynamite under the house killing himself, Poelzig and the whole satanic cult gathered at the house.
O, brother! Well, on the positive side the architecture in Poelzig’s house has some interesting German Expressionist touches. And the dialog is sometimes hilariously over the top. There is Karloff reciting a two-minute incantation in Latin which is quite absurd. And then when Lugosi is supposedly flaying the flesh off of Karloff’s face, they show Lugosi’s shadow and the way his hand is moving it looks like he is scribbling on him. This movie is a museum piece of what a 1930s horror movie might be. And there is just enough atmosphere to make watching it silly fun. Only for fans of the genre.
03NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
Our artillery has really been sensational. For once we have enough of something and at the right time. Officers tell me they actually have more guns than they know what to do with.
Ernie Pyle
03NOV2025 – Photo of the Day
Camera Girl’s Seal of Approval
For the last couple of weeks Camera Girl has been asking me to send her a copy of my book. And I kept forgetting. Now, she’s not the most tech savvy individual. So, reading a book from her laptop isn’t ideal for her. But a few days ago she finally figured out how to open the file I e-mailed her and began reading it. Somehow yesterday she informed me that the last twenty pages of the book were missing. This panicked me because I had sent her the same file I sent to all of the other readers and I was afraid everyone would think I was losing my mind and forgot to finish the book. But on examining her copy I could see those last twenty pages. Somehow, she had a second copy open and something screwy happened to it.
Well, the good news is she likes the book. And this cheered me up quite a bit. Firstly, because I think she really means it. She is a very honest woman and even taking into account her bias in my favor, her positive comments were recognizable facets of the story. Secondly, I’m encouraged because this gives me my first test sample for women readers. And Camera Girl is a voracious reader of thrillers. She’s always reading a Lee Child book or some other big author in the genre. And she’s not a science fiction reader so if the other aspects of the book appeal to her it makes me think my story will have general appeal, possibly even with women!
And I’ll have to say that shocks me. I would say that my reading and writing preferences are definitely pre-feminist. The world at large currently is immersed in fiction that is geared for women readers almost exclusively. Even male authors take into account the sensibilities and preferences of a female audience. And to such an extent that men must notice that something has changed in these books. So, I’m surprised that my writing style hasn’t triggered some alarm bells in Camera Girl’s fiction reading programming. So, I think that’s interesting.
Of course, this has made me want to get some more female beta readers, but they’re hard to find in my circle of associates. If any of you know of any women who are interested in this branch of fiction please let me know and I’ll send along a copy for her. The trick is to find women who wouldn’t be politically triggered by the right-wing nature of the plot and characters.
Of course, Camera Girl still has twenty pages to go so there’s no guarantee that she won’t hate the ending. But one positive sign is that a scene in the book sparked her desire to bake a crumb cake today. And as much as I’m on a diet I saw it as a positive sign for her ultimate seal of approval on the book. So far, she says her favorite scene in the book is when Chastain is being pressured to accept becoming the next President of the United States by the remaining upper echelons of the federal government (Supreme Court Justices, highest ranking military officers, etc.) and he tells them he has to call his wife first to get her advice.
Well, I hope she likes it. I’m depending on getting her recommendation on the back cover.
02NOV2025 Photo of the Day
02NOV2025 – Quote of the Day
The front-line soldier wants it to be got over by the physical process of his destroying enough Germans to end it. He is truly at war. The rest of us, no matter how hard we work, are not.
Ernie Pyle
Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 01NOV2025 – Goin’ South
We moved from Burlington, VT, to Charleston, SC, 13 years ago, and never looked back. It took about six months to realize we were spending $1000 LESS per month . House payment (a real HOUSE, not a condo), gas, electricity (we bought an all-electric house and I feared the worst, and was VERY pleasantly surprised). I did a little research and found SC power is around 12.9 cents/kWh, while Vermont is 21.5 Mapped: The Average Cost of Electricity by U.S. State
Groceries, pet supplies, home repairs, etc. were all lower. the Charleston cultural life is as vivid and varied as Boston or NY. And perhaps more culturally balanced. Museums, sport arenas, the Galliard Playhouse, North Charleston Performing Arts Center, are always booked with everything from rock concerts to Broadway plays, The Sound of Music just opened for an 8-day run, and Jeff Dunham will be turning Walter and Achmed loose just before Thanksgiving. The SC Aquarium will be kicking off its annual Christmas program with light shows, music, and yours truly —among others —as SCUBA Santa!
And not a bottle of hot sauce in sight!
We’ve had snow twice since we moved down here, the first time literally a year to the day we moved in. We played it smart and stayed home until it melted off. The way you drive in snow in Carolina is YOU DON’T! We Damnyankees may know how, but the locals have not got a clue!
Overall, I will take Southern Living over Vermont. We don’t get Leaf Peeper Season here on the coast, but a short drive up towards Clemson gets you into some nice color. And I definitely do not miss having to dig my car out of a snowdrift at 5AM in double-digit-below-zero temperatures. I saw it as a sure sign of civilization when I drove past Lowes and Home Depot in November, and there was not a single snow-blower or even shovel on display!
Stay warm, my friend!
Tom’s World – 01NOV2025 – Something for the Soul
There are a large number of performances of Pachelbel’s Canon by various musicians using various instruments but this one is the peak by my estimation. When I’m in a mood to just totally reject humanity due to the insanity, violence, cruelty, stupidity and seeming lack of any redeeming quality, something like this performance will recenter me.