Three Out of Three

In love and relationships, passions run so high and people have so much pride on the line, each party in a dispute may be fully committed to a different version of reality. Many comedies and dramas have been written from this premise, including the charming 1957 musical Les Girls. Featuring songs by Cole Porter that don't rank among his best they're adequate for the film because lovely visuals and a great cast more than pick up the slack. The screenplay isn't Rashomon but it's not bad, either, and director George Cukor exercises his formidable storytelling instincts.

The man with the sandwich board wanders a crowded street outside a courtroom in which the sensational trial everyone's talking about forms the film's framing story. A wealthy society woman named Sybil (Kay Kendall) has written a scandalous memoir and she's been taken to court for it by Angele (Taina Elg), with whom Sybil once worked as a dancer on stage in Paris. The film's divided into three parts for three versions of events and in the first one Sybil tells us about Angele's torrid affair with their manager and co-star, Barry Nichols (Gene Kelly).

This was my favourite part of the movie as we're introduced to the three flatmates who banter engagingly about life in Paris and devotion to work. In this, Sybil's version of events, Sybil is a composed, sensible woman; Angele is reckless and romantic; and rounding out the trio is the ever chipper but somehow unobtrusive Joy (Mitzi Gaynor). Despite their misgivings, Sybil and Joy help conceal Angele's affair with Barry even when they're not supposed to know about it themselves. Angele and Barry go through a thin pantomime of greeting each other for the neighbours' benefit and then take off together in a car around the corner.

This sequence has the best song, "Ca C'est L'amour", in a really lovely scene where Angele and Barry relax in a row boat.

Angele's fiance is incensed by Sybil's account so Angele takes the stand to tell the story of an extravagantly alcoholic Sybil torn between Barry and a wealthy Englishman--Sybil's present day husband. Finally, Barry himself takes the stand to set things straight--it was Joy he'd been going with the whole time. But as Joy herself remarks, there's too much in Sybil and Angele's stories they couldn't have made up so by the end of the film there's a reasonable argument for the veracity of any one of the stories.

Supposedly the alternate points of view are motivated by Sybil and Angele each believing that the other had tried to commit suicide over the impossibility of being with Barry. Barry's story offers an explanation for the confusion but really doesn't clear things up.

There's a terrific dance sequence at the end seemingly modelled on The Wild One--minus the emotionally authentic portrayal of misfit youth but with a great heat of its own. It follows a tradition in musicals of the 50s and late 40s wherein there's at least one big dance sequence that has nothing at all to do with the plot. The movie resolves on a nicely uncertain note, allowing the audience to contemplate the insoluble puzzle of tangled romance.

How Green was My Gallifrey

One positive thing about The Deadly Assassin being one of my least favourite Doctor Who serials is that I haven't watched it as many times and there were still ways in which it felt relatively fresh when I watched it this past week. I enjoyed it a lot more this time, too.

The first Doctor Who serial to spend a significant amount of time on Gallifrey, it establishes a glimmering Emerald City look I really like. Sadly, this was abandoned immediately in the next Gallifrey serial the following season, The Invasion of Time, and was never seen again. I suppose the shiny green is a bit dated but I love it even more for that somehow.

There are three reasons I generally don't feel like watching The Deadly Assassin--the Doctor has no companion in the serial, its a serial featuring the Master whom I used not to like as much as I do now, and there are no women in it. It's really only the last aspect that still disappoints me. Not for any political reasons, I just like having women around. Certainly it seems improbable that in the whole capital of Gallifrey we see not one Time Lady. There's quite a crowd, too, when the Doctor (Tom Baker) walks into being framed for assassinating a retiring president.

Tom Baker is good as always despite having no companion to explore a chemistry with. The closest the serial has to a companion is the man in charge of investigating the murder, Castellan Spandrell, played by Czechoslovakian actor George Pravda.

He's certainly interesting. He seems to have a little trouble remembering his lines but his delivery has a refreshing quality of coming from a different acting background than most everyone else on the show. He and Baker never play off each other in an especially interesting way, though--Pravda's rapport with a Time Lord engineer played by Erik Chitty, who died the following year, is a little better. They come off as two men who bond over their shared age and experience while mildly chiding each other on the inefficiencies of each others' roles.

The matrix composed of brain patterns overseen by Chitty's character is a nice concept, leading to the scenes the occupy most of the middle two episodes where the Doctor enters the dream world (of course a quarry) and becomes a target in a "Most Dangerous Game" style story. There's not much for director David Maloney to do to make the quarry look like a strange nightmare realm--it certainly never stacks up to The Mind Robber--but I appreciate his framing Tom Baker's face with little pink flowers.

My appreciation for the Master has grown since last watching this serial. Peter Pratt, who assumed the role here after Roger Delgado's untimely death, is hidden behind an impressively gruesome mask, the bare, bulging eyes serving as a fitting illustration for the Doctor's comments regarding the Master's tenacity.

Twitter Sonnet #1122

Some disembodied hair rejoined the scalps.
Composure met the swirling world in time.
The jewel of coughing crests the vapour Alps.
At last the moon became a fruitless lime.
In vanished pictures milk was counterfeit.
In noticed cringles bulges top the cook.
We all assumed the mop would handle it.
A salsa pool assured a moistened look.
A novel sparrow spies escaping whales.
A vanished clock contained a master skull.
The sea the thieves conveyed in em'rald pails.
Reminders tally lone upon the hull.
A quote becomes a speck of sugar dust.
The perfect steel acquires perfect rust.

Pictures from the Waning Year

I don't know much about Anthony Bourdain, the widely loved celebrity chef who committed suicide this morning. I have a lot of friends who love his work and I've seen a thing or two from him I liked. His death naturally has provoked a lot of discussion online to-day--I've seen a few comments along the line of depression being a mental illness and that suicide doesn't have any causes external to the person who kills him or herself. I don't think it's that cut and dry, I think there are people more prone to commit suicide because of mental illness, but I don't think it's a coincidence suicide rates increase after terrible events. Under certain conditions, suicide is arguably a very sane choice. It's certainly a brave decision.

One thing of Bourdain's I read that I liked was his top ten list he came up with for Criterion in 2011. I love most of the movies on his list, including his number one pick, the 1973 film noir The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Bourdain called a "bleak masterpiece of low-level criminality."

Set in Boston in autumn, the film centres on a gangster played by Robert Mitchum at the end of his career. He has to be in New Hampshire in a few days to face charges and he's looking for a way to cut a deal with the cops so he won't have to do time. But like a lot of movie gangsters, he still has an aversion to being a rat.

There's a lot of irony in the title. Although Mitchum's character, Eddie Coyle, is at the centre of the story, the film spends a lot of time focusing on weapons dealers, small time robbers, and other gangsters. It creates a very credible network of cops and crooks who speak to each other with well worn patterns of language. A crooked barman played by Peter Boyle only has to say that he's been talking to people on the phone before the cop he's with knows to give him twenty dollars to hear about the people he's been talking to. There are all these people who understand the game and need each other for the roles they play but fundamental to everything is distrust.

There's a gang of bank robbers--who wear some of the creepiest masks in the history of crime films--who have a very good, sure routine of taking bank managers' families hostage. But at base everything is done without any real plan for what to do when the latest score runs out. Everyone acts like there's some kind of normality to this life but Eddie's anxiety growing too big to be contained by Mitchum's trademark cool reflects how precarious it all is. Yet at the same time there's a feeling of stasis in the film for its minimal soundtrack and its quiet scenes of people just talking. Meanwhile, it's all set in some of the most beautifully autumnal environments committed to film, reflecting death going on all around however stable it might seem.

Most of the movie people are wearing shades of rust and grey. Splashes of colour like the bright yellow car of the weapons dealer or the neon cutting through the great black 70s night scenes only serve to emphasise the film's general autumn. It is certainly bleak, more Brian Eno bleak than Slayer bleak. Its an inexorable, steadily worsening reality, a portrait of people who talk themselves into a slow burning hell in the hopes of finding one swiftly delivered salvation.

Getting a Grip in the Confounding Expanse

Last night's nice new episode of The Expanse ruminated on the nature of family loyalties. It also advanced its continued discussion on how and why people dedicate themselves to something higher.

Spoilers after the screenshot

And it turns out that Melba (Nadine Nicole) is another Mao. The episode seems to indicate, somewhat vaguely, that her mission is revenge against Holden. Flashbacks to a posh party allow us a dose of the show's Laura Palmer character, Julie Mao (Florence Faivre), who turns out to be Melba's sister.

It also gives Jules-Pierre Mao (Francois Chau) a chance to be the archetypal tough patriarch and display insight--his respect for Julie's passion despite her rebelling against him--in the most dickish way possible--dressing down Melba with impunity. So that's the chip on her shoulder.

It's not until the end of the episode we get another visit from Miller (Thomas Jane), who demonstrates to Holden (Steven Strait) that he can't give him the information he needs directly. The technical terms are too far over Holden's head so he reluctantly allows Miller to keep delivering it metaphorically, giving him information via stories of his old life as a detective.

Miller and Julie, the detective and the victim, both characters much larger than life. The figures of story and legend now part of some mysterious alien omnipresence. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck seem to be using an intriguing method of discussing the nature of myth--the protomolecule seems to be an allegory of mythologies.

In addition to family and myth, last night's episode provided two more examples of standards people follow--Anna (Elizabeth Mitchell) and her religion and Naomi (Dominique Tipper) and her nation, the Belt.

Anna's faith is starting to destabilise, though. She's reminded by one of her colleagues that this "miracle" may turn out to be the devil's work. Anna receives several reminders of how this quest is causing her to neglect her family--her colleague says he can't stay because he has a family to think about, she continues to be tempted by a flirtatious stranger, and she's unable to send a communication to her wife before the UNN ship makes its fateful plunge into the ring.

Meanwhile, Naomi is reinterpreting her own motives. Her devotion to the Belt, she decides, was motivated by nostalgia--her true family is on the Rocinante. I guess we'll have to wait until next week to see if this is a family she can go back to.

Wardrobe for Any Climate Extreme

If there's one thing fantasy has taught us it's that hot and cold don't get along, a thematic struggle perhaps best distilled in Ralph Bakshi's 1983 film Fire and Ice. Bakshi's infamous rotoscope animation technique gets a big aesthetic boost for designs by Frank Frazetta. Along with Bakshi's great talent as a filmmaker, the film has plenty of good qualities to make it a simple, stimulating variation on classic themes.

At the end of an Ice Age, everyone already dresses like it's the Amazon rain forest--the movie might've been called Thongs and Loincloths. This is pretty normal for Frazetta's artwork, though, and his stylised studies of anatomy are one of the great things about his work. The rotoscope technique, which involves animators drawing over filmed live action, is sadly particularly ill-suited to replicating Frazetta's style. Attempts by the animators to exaggerate physical features are never consistent, creating weirdly wobbling contours. The lack of shading too often reduces body parts to amorphous blobs.

On the other hand, the backgrounds are gorgeous and colour choices are top notch. I love how often the filmmakers achieve interesting contrasts, typically between dark foreground characters and bright backgrounds.

This goes some way towards making up for the absence of the distinctive shading in Frazetta's art. The story is about contrast, of course, but it never wearies the viewer with exposition on the topic. Massive walls of ice under the command of the villainous Nekron (Sean Hannon [body] and Stephon Mendel [voice]) are threatening the lands inhabited by tribes of scantily clad humans. Our two protagonists have never met as the story opens, coming from two different realms--a warrior named Larn (Randy Norton and William Ostrander) and a princess named Teegra (Cynthia Leake and Maggie Roswell).

Teegra, first seen squirming happily on a divan, is the pampered royalty while Larn is a man of the wilderness and war. Both represent aspects of the physical compared to the icy Nekron, who seems bored by his mother's scheme to have him marry Teegra. But Teegra is kidnapped for the purpose by Nekron's orcs (or "sub-humans") who for the most part don't seem especially turned on by Teegra, either. Happily, the filmmakers repeatedly show us what the orcs are missing.

The story of how Larn and Teegra meet and deal with Nekron's forces is nicely inventive and never falls mindlessly into typical plot patterns. Her efforts to escape come off as credible which she succeeds or fails and her first meeting with Larn has a nice awkwardness to it that nonetheless establishes a certain nobility of nature in both characters.

The film's extreme fantasy atmosphere often reminds me of Lovecraft's Dreamlands, particularly some flying beasts that Larn and his mentor, Darkwolf (Steve Sandor, body and voice), ride near the film's climax. The shortcomings of the rotoscope are before very long eclipsed by the great virtues of this film. You can currently stream it in HD on Amazon Prime.

It was ten years ago I had one of my more memorable experiences at Comic-Con when I saw Ralph Bakshi as a panel of one. I wrote about it in this 2008 entry. Among other things, he told a story about Fire and Ice that remains one of my absolute favourites about any movie production:

Painting backgrounds on the movie were a young James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade. Apparently, according to Bakshi, they learned all they knew about painting from Frazetta, which is hilarious in itself. "Kinkade makes a lot of money off garbage now," said Bakshi, at which point the room applauded. "But I will say this for Kinkade; he was the greatest hustler I ever met."

He described Kinkade constantly coming into his office and demanding more money, and they'd get into really heated arguments partly because, as Bakshi said, Kinkade "didn't like Jewish guys from Brooklyn" (Bakshi's a Jewish guy from Brooklyn). Finally, one day Kinkade tells Bakshi he and Gurney have to hitchhike across the country. "What d'you mean you gotta hitchhike across the country? We're making a movie!"

But Kinkade eventually wore Bakshi down, and he and Gurney went from town to town getting their pictures in every local paper, talking about the movie and how they were the great artists. When they got back to Los Angeles, Bakshi said Kinkade, "told me he needed a raise. I said, 'why' and he said because he's famous now."

Twitter Sonnet #1121

A brow above the eye invites a dart.
A tempting line addressed the flowing hair.
A river like a nostril took the part.
Along the nose a bolder cheek could dare.
A quarter granted clipped a nickel throne.
A seven saved escort a Doppler hue.
The summer caved on flurries weirdly thrown.
A spruce could bark for all the needles through.
In eighty captured eyes the peace recursed.
A water clock enclosing juice conformed.
It seemed as if the stars were all rehearsed.
Forensic carpet goats were well informed.
A blade of grass contorts in candied bight.
The diff'rent shadows kept an evening light.

The Hundred Year Soldier or Tree?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Shoulder Arms, one of several films Charlie Chaplin directed and starred in in 1918. But at forty-six minutes it was by far the longest film he'd directed and remained so until 1921's The Kid. Shoulder Arms remains a brilliant film. It lacks the pathos his films became known for following The Kid but it also clearly shows Chaplin's ability to translate his comedic storytelling to directing.

Filmed during World War I, Shoulder Arms transports Chaplin's Tramp to the trenches, his uniform somehow having the same measurements to emphasise his tiny shoulders and exaggerate his legs.

There's a lot of good material in the young fellow's life trying to look nonchalant and brave in the trench but the film really picks up for me when he goes behind enemy lines disguised as a tree.

The commitment and determination on his face get me every time. This is a serious strategy and, by gum, it does work as he slyly clunks a few Germans over the head. The Germans, of course, don't come off very well in this film with their almost universal moustaches with waxed tips--so distinctive that when Chaplin encounters a Frenchwoman played by Edna Purviance he mimes to her that he can't be German as she first thinks because he has the wrong moustache. Obviously this was a bit that couldn't be repeated in The Great Dictator.

Purviance is no Mabel Normand (whose own movie, Mickey, was top box office in 1918), Chaplin's former leading lady, but she was always a capable supporting performer for Chaplin. She has a chance to show off some of her own comedic instincts towards the end of the film.

Another highlight is her bombed out building where Chaplin's character takes refuge. His shutting the window and shutter before stretching and collapsing on the bed of a room without a wall is absurd in itself but also says something about how hungry the young soldier is for a familiar domestic environment. Still, this one is mainly played for laughs and is worth watching a century on.

A Vague Sketch of Anti-Semitism

One of the most important steps in combating bigotry is to shine a light on it, and that's just what investigative reporter Phil Green attempts to do in 1947's Gentleman's Agreement. An Elia Kazan film that's not half as good as his great films from the 50s, its portrait of anti-Semitism in the U.S. is lacking in too many specifics and its more generalised take comes off as preachy. The first half has some decent rumination on writing and has some good character building scenes but the second half, despite its laudable intentions, devolves into actors dully enacting exposition.

Gregory Peck as Phil is a big part of what's good about the film, his natural warmth and earnestness almost succeeding in grounding some of the later stuff. Also very good is John Garfield as Phil's Jewish friend, Dave.

Jewish in real life, Garfield was keen to play a role in this film, though he doesn't show up until about halfway through. The film begins with Phil settling into his new home and job in New York after moving from the west coast. His wife has recently died and he lives with his young son (A very young Dean Stockwell) and his mother (Anne Revere). His mother is a refreshingly crisp and sly lady for the period and from the way she and Phil banter about his work it's easy to imagine her as the journalist.

Phil's first assignment is an article on anti-Semitism and, after several scenes where he agonises about finding an angle, he settles on the idea of posing as Jewish himself. He explains in an exuberant rush to his mother how all his other best stories came after trying to go through the same experiences, as much as possible, as his subject. The importance of writing based on the author's own experiences was an idea brought into vogue by the early twentieth century Modernist writers like Joyce and Hemingway.

Phil does learn several things that may have been good to illustrate to an audience in 1947. He has the experience of having reservations revoked when a hotel proprietor believes he's Jewish and when the kids at the schoolyard start bullying Phil's son. But when his son ask him what Judaism actually is, the most Phil can tell him is that it's another religion like Catholicism or Protestantism, and this is the most the movie goes into actually exploring specifics.

It's ironic for Elia Kazan to have made an anti-bigotry film considering he's infamous for naming names for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Though maybe it makes sense of the fact that one of the few specific aspects of anti-Semitism alluded to in the film is the stereotype of Jews as greedy. It's this aspect of ant-Semitism that makes it a fit for some extreme Leftists.

Another strange thing about Gentleman's Agreement, considering when it was made and both Phil and Dave are portrayed as having recently served in the military, there's not one mention of Nazi Germany. You'd think if you're talking about anti-Semitism in the late 40s that's one topic that would come up. It's very indirectly alluded to in a scene where Sam Jaffe plays an obvious Albert Einstein analogue, a famed physicist named Lieberman. He makes an interesting comment about how, despite being an atheist (a surprising thing for a character to acknowledge in a movie from the period), he feels compelled still to call himself a Jew because of the bigotry that continues to exist against Jews.

John Garfield gives a passionate performance in the second half of the film but too much time is spent schooling Phil's fiancée, Kathy (Dorothy McGuire), on what would to-day be called "micro-Aggressions", as when she tries to console Phil's son after he's been bullied by reminding him he's not really Jewish or when she refuses to denounce a guy at a party for telling anti-Semitic jokes. It's never very effective, though, for each instance being either over the top or silly. Are we supposed to think she's an anti-Semite because she doesn't start a fight with someone she hears telling bigoted jokes? There could be other reasons a woman might want to avoid trouble.

It's a film with good intentions and good actors but the whole is unfortunately never equal to the parts.

King John and Robin Hoods

It's eighty years this year since the best film version of Robin Hood was released. Starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia de Havilland, and Claude Rains, it managed a combination of action, adventure, romance, and heartiness that's never been matched as a cinematic experience either by films that sought to replicate it or films that sought to subvert it. The newest version, due for release later this year, doesn't even look like it's trying. It looks like the filmmakers saw all the mistakes Guy Ritchie made with King Arthur and decided to triple down on them while removing any of the rough gangster charm Ritchie managed to evoke with his anachronisms.

I found myself in the mood to watch the Errol Flynn version again recently even before I realised it was the anniversary. I also found myself in the mood to watch an adaptation of Shakespeare's King John and I found a decent one on Amazon Prime from the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada.

Directed by Barry Avrich it has some beautiful costumes and really nice performances. Somehow I was in the mood to watch both these movies without considering I was itching for two different ahistorical takes of the real King John of England who reigned from 1199 to 1216. Yes, that's right, after everything you see in any adaptation of Robin Hood, the real John actually did succeed in taking the English throne after the death of Richard the Lionheart. Come to think of it, Tom McCamus, who plays John in the production of the Shakespeare play I watched, gives a performance not unlike Claude Rains in the Errol Flynn film. Both Johns are petulant, smug, and sort of catlike.

There's no Robin Hood in Shakespeare's play though one could say the character of Philip Faulconbridge, aka "the Bastard", bears some resemblance. A resemblance the Stratford Festival perhaps sought to emphasise by dressing him in bright green.

Played by Graham Abbey with appropriate and entertaining sardonicism, Philip is the illegitimate son of Richard the Lionheart who comes to serve John after John and Richard's mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Patricia Collins), recognises him and is charmed by his brazen attempt to steal his half brother's legitimate inheritance.

As the play progresses, he does show himself to be a man who sees past the assigned roles of class and state in crafting his own schemes. But he's a far more self-interested character than Robin Hood. After he has manipulated England and France into joining forces to raze a town he remarks on the base greed in both parties he's exploited to do so. But then continues:

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Since kings break faith upon commodity,
Gain, be my lord, for I will worship thee.

Perhaps Ridley Scott had King John in mind when he made his 2010 adaptation of Robin Hood which, like the Shakespeare play, spends a lot of time focusing on conflicts between England and France. But Russell Crowe's version of the character is so weirdly surly and anaemic that the story lacks the driving force of either a Philip or Robin.

Oh, Errol Flynn, we'll never see the like again. Philip is fun but the generosity of spirit in Flynn's Robin Hood that exists alongside the treason he speaks "fluently" uniquely capture the essence of the character. There's a sweetness to his scenes with Marian--De Havilland portrays her affection for him with both intelligence and guilelessness that seems to comprehend and take in his puckishness rather than misunderstand or ignore it. No film adaptation has matched the duel between Flynn and Rathbone at the end, either, one of the most vigorous and spellbinding swordfights in film history.

Twitter Sonnet #1120

A cloak about the lime abused the peach.
The night collections stole from two to one.
Reviving candles lick yet out of reach.
A pupil peel absorbed a juice's run.
The shattered cards collect casinos now.
For good or ill a verdant felt conducts.
A present smoke remains to watch a row.
The veins a novel diamond soon inducts.
A ragged splinter sketched a rough plateau.
Descending icy moons corrupt the sand.
Adobe huts became a big chateau.
A team of birds became the feather band.
Opposing belts contain the mountain's dog.
Within the moon's a great and tranquil frog.

Sontaran Pockets

Who would dare rip of the greatest warriors in all of time and space? None other than Grendel from Beowulf in the 2013 Doctor Who audio play Starlight Robbery. Writer Matt Fitton brings back his version of Grendel, or "Garundel", introduced in the audio play he wrote the previous year, Black and White. Maybe he appears in something by another writer but I suspect he's a character only his creator could love (fitting, I suppose) because I was never impressed by how modern and sassy he is--a bit like one of the Pythons doing their gay American impressions (I kept imagining Terry Gilliam saying "Peachy Face"). But the story itself, which continues from Persuasion and features the reincarnated Nazi, Klein, and the UNIT scientific advisor, Will, as companions to the Seventh Doctor, isn't bad.

Garundel (Stuart Milligan) is a little easier to take outside the context of the period setting, too, and I found myself enjoying his scheming along with his blue skinned alien female assistant, Ziv (Jo Woodcock). This pretty young rogue captures the heart of bumbling young Will (Christian Edwards), the relationship between the two mostly evolving nicely over the course of the story with a very effective conclusion that made me want to know if there would be more in future audios.

Klein (Tracey Childs), meanwhile, seems to be channelling her old Nazi self when she starts to build a slow burn, love/hate relationship with one of the Sontarans (Dan Starkey), who are thankfully not played as a joke in this story.

Sylvester McCoy is good as always though the Doctor has kind of a background role for most of the story. He does manage an effectively clever bit of manipulation near the end that has even more effective, unexpected results.

The Alphabet isn't Safe

This morning I read the new Sirenia Digest, which contains a new Caitlin R. Kiernan story, or rather collection of vignettes, The Eldritch Alphabetos (A Lovecraftian Primer). Of course, you're better off if you're already a Lovecraft fan but if you're not then Caitlin's new story might help you open your mind a bit. Offering different individual vignettes for the letters A through M--the rest of the alphabet promised in an upcoming issue--The Eldritch Alphabetos presents thirteen glimpses into Lovecraft's world via Caitlin's own distinctive vision. Certainly Lovecraft likely never envisioned his ghouls quite as lovely and sexual as the one presented in "G is for Ghoul" or could have made the aesthetic connexion to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in "F is for Fruiting Bodies (also Fungophobia)".

The reader will also find credible and imaginative continuations of aspects of Lovecraft's stories, one of my favourites being "J is for John Raymond Legrasse". This vignette provides a pleasingly macabre description of the man's ultimate fate, and beyond, following his appearance in Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu.

A really nice little bundle of weird fiction is The Eldritch Alphabetos.