SB1962

 As my previous review of the 1936 vampire drama "Dracula's Daughter" seems to have aroused at least one sympathetic comment, I might as well comment on the 1943 stablemate, "Son of Dracula"(a cynic might note that the Transylvanian count is proving to be quite a family man at heart). Although much was and has been made of the fact that it is the first movie in which a vampire is seen transforming into a bat( special effects having advanced since 1943), to my mind that is NOT the most terrifying sequence in this film, which incidentally sees Dracula(or Alucard as he terms himself) move to the "New World", the Deep South of the US, not just t

Sometimes you read things that not even a screenwriter for TV or films ( such as The Simpsons") would dare to say- pace NRA President  Wayne La Pierre's ludicrous claim that the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children and 8 adults would ahve been alive had one or more of the school employees been "packing heat" I have often wondered why the American media declines to make the obvious point that the National Rifle Association is less the friend of gun owners( hunters, sportsmen and law enforcement) and more the shill for gun manufacturers! True,  crazies like Adam Lanza or James Holmes shall always be with us, just as the poor or criminals are, b

Well, Halloween is just but ten days away and precisely HOW what was presumably an American event has become a British one is a mystery that defies explanation. The Churches of all denominations(including my own Catholic Church) tend to treat Halloween( All Hallow's Eve) with an embarrassed silence(possibly because it is based on the ancient Celtic feast of Samhain whereby the barriers between life and death, reality and fantasy are paper thin and can be breached with ease. I have never been comfortable with the exaltation of the powers of darkness( ghosts, ghoulies, jack o'lanterns, vampires, werewolves) even if I recognise that the compani