It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This past week was an interesting one in some ways and a regular one in others.
On Tuesday I had a not-so-fun experience at the polling place in my little tiny town. Lesson learned to mail-in ballots from now on. It had nothing to do, by the way, with who I voted for. It just had to do with adults who were rude to my child and it really ticked me off. This paragraph is completely unrelated to politics other than I was in a polling place for an election.
Thursday was better, though, because it was our son’s 18th birthday. My neighbor asked how I felt having an 18-year-old.
I sent her this gif:
Then I told her I was also very proud of my son because he’s grown into a wonderful young man.
It’s all gone by so insanely fast, though. There is so much I miss about him being younger but so much that is also great about this age.
We bought him a War Hammer model set and he’s having a blast painting them. It is a new hobby for him. Little Miss and I traveled to my parents on Thursday to help make apple pies for The Boy because he prefers pie over cake.
My mom ended up coming down with a sinus infection that triggered a flare of her fibromyalgia while we were there. It was a little scary as she was in excruciating pain all over and having some trouble walking. That night she spiked a fever.
We still had a nice day and the next day she was much better and the fever was gone. None of us can really understand why whatever she had only lasted a day and went away, but I do know I prayed a lot that day and night for her healing.
The pie, by the way, was “great” according to The Boy who doesn’t easily give compliments out so Little Miss and I, with my parent’s directions, pulled it out after all.
Yesterday The Boy and The Husband had fun during a father-son day in a city about an hour away. They visited a comic book shop where he picked up some more figures to paint.
They then walked around town, visiting the local university and a used book shop where my husband picked this up for me:
He knows me way too well. That’s an original 1941 Hardy Boys book. I can not wait to read it – as long as the mildew smell doesn’t mess with my sinuses. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
I forgot to mention that on Friday we had an art class and then drove the 30-minutes north to pick up our groceries.
Yesterday I spent the day relaxing with an old movie and a new cozy mystery show and also worked on the final chapters of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I definitely am not used to Daylight Savings yet I’ve come to realize. I was so tired all day yesterday, for one, and then at one point I yawned and thought how I could go to bed soon. That’s when I looked at my laptop clock and it said 6:42.
“6:42? For real??” I cried. “I thought it was 8!!”
I suppose my body will get used to it – you know, by spring when we spring forward.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christy by Catherine Marshall, and The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. Yes, I enjoyed it and yes I just started the series and no it does not keep to the book.
The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)
The Farmer’s Son by John Connell
The Husband is reading The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden
What We watched/are Watching
This week Erin and I watched Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
I watched Harvey with Jimmy Stewart on my own.
I also watched the first two episodes of The Marlow Murder Club on Amazon (that is all that is out so far).
What I’m Writing
I sound like a broken record but I am finishing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I am listening to The Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon on Audible.
I am also listening to this song my Downhere:
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching Comfy Cozy mmovies This week we had to switch up the movie we were watching because Amazon and Frevee and all the other free streaming services removed Skylark, which is the second movie in the Sarah, Plain, and Tall series.
Instead we chose Bringing Up Baby at my suggestion because I wanted something funny and goofy but also cozy.
I’ve seen this movie twice before and it is absolute chaos and craziness. Everyone except poor Cary Grant is off their rocker and it is glorious.
The movie stars Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Katherine is absolutely batty in this film which makes it all even more hilarious.
Cary Grant’s character (Dr. David Huxley) is a paleontologist who accidentally runs into Katherine Hepburn’s character (Susan Vance) a totally nuts socialite who immediately latches on to Cary and decides she’s going to become obsessed with him and make his life a living hell.
In the beginning of the movie, David has been building a dinosaur skeleton for years and the last piece of it has just been found. He and his fiancé – Alice Swallow – are thrilled that the intercostal clavical has been found and will be arriving soon in the mail. Alice – a very uptight, proper women who says the point of their marriage will be to only advance his research and not for love — also knows that more money needs to be secured for his research so she tells David he must go golfing with an important doner.
This is where he meets crazy Susan who tries to steal his car, takes off with him riding on the footboard while he tries to tell her it is his car, and then leads him on various crazy adventures. He runs into her again at a dinner where he is trying to secure a donation from a woman named Elizabeth Randall who is considering a $1 million donation.
The scenes at the dinner party include this a hilarious scene where Katherine’s dress gets ripped and she and Cary have to make their way through a crowded dining room with Cary against her back to make sure nothing is scene. It is so classic and hilarious and always has me laughing.
David thinks he has shaken Susan loose after a bizarre journey with her where she tries to wake up the doner he’d been trying to meet at the golf course and David ends up knocking him out with a rock.
The next morning the clavical arrives and David is thrilled, but somehow Susan gets his number and, thinking he is a zoologist rather than a palentologist, she asks him how she should take care of a leopard named Baby that her brother sent her from Africa.
David promptly tells her he doesn’t care about her Leopard and doesn’t know anything about it, but when she trips and falls while on the call, he thinks she’s being attacked. She’s thrilled he thinks this and hams it up even more, which sends him flying out the door to her apartment to “rescue” her.
Of course, when he gets there, Susan is fine, but yet another plot twist is coming up when Susan says she needs to go to Connecticut with the leopard because she doesn’t want her aunt to find the leopard there when she decides to visit. The aunt is going to give Susan $1 million someday and if the aunt finds the leopard there, she won’t give her the money.
So Susan decides they need to take Baby to the country in Connecticut and begs David to take her. Somehow David gets caught up in taking her, even though it is his wedding day and he needs to be in New York to get married. While in Connecticut, Susan realizes she is in love with David.
I should also mention that to calm Baby they have to sing, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.”
The movie is – as I said earlier – absolute chaos from start to finish.
Cary and Katherine are the perfect pair to play against each other in a screwball comedy and had some experience with it already since they also starred opposite each other in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and Holiday , which released the same year as Bringing Up Baby (1938). They also starred together in The Philadelphia Story in 1940.
This is a risqué movie in many ways with a lot of double entendre moments and innuendos that are clean but a bit sassy. I suppose some people could make the double entendre moments more crude, but there are people who can do that with anything.
I wanted to know about the leopard that was used in the film and while looking up information about it, I thought it was interesting to read that the Jack Russell Terrier in the film was the same dog used to play Asta in The Thin Man film series, which is a favorite series of mine. The dog’s real name was Skippy incidentally. The tame leopard (Baby) and another leopard (you will have to watch the movie to know what that is all about) were both played by a trained leopard named Nissa.
The trainer was a Swedish woman named Olga Celeste, who would stand by with a whip during shooting. According to Wikipedia, at one point, when Hepburn spun around, her skirt twirled and Nessa lunged at her. She was subdued when Celeste cracked the whip. After that Hepburn wore heavy perfume to keep Nessa Calm but Grant was terrified of Nissa and a stand in had to be brought in with his scenes with the leopard.
This movie has some terribly hilarious quotes including:
Cary: “In moments of quiet, I am strangely drawn to you, but well there haven’t been any moments of quiet with you.”
Cary: “It never will be clear while she’s explaining it.”
Cary: “You don’t understand: this is my car!”
Katherine: “You mean this is your car? Your golf ball? Your car? Is there anything in the world that doesn’t belong to you?
Cary: “Yes, thank heaven, YOU!”
Katherine:” Anyway, David, when they find out who we are they’ll let us out.”
Cary: “When they find out who you are they’ll pad the cell.”
The movie was directed by Howard Hawks. The screenplay was written by Dudley Nicholas and Hagar Wilde and was based on a short story by Wilde that appeared in Collier’s Magazine in 1937.
Have you ever seen this chaotic comedy? What did you think of it?
Next week we will be watching Grand Budapest Hotel and the following week we will be having a group watch of Chocolate on November 17 at a time to be announced.
I’m sorry this post is late, but we had to change our movie this week for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema because it turns out that Skylark is no longer streaming anywhere.
Erin and I decided to change the movie to Bringing Up Baby — a screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. This is streaming on Tubi for free and several other streaming services. It is also on YouTube for free, but I can’t guarantee the quality of it.
If you decide to watch the movie and write about it, you can share your thoughts with us on our link on Thursday.
Also, we will be watching Chocolat together on November 17 at a time to be announced. We will be pressing play together on the movie and chatting in our Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/TpWNxJ4Z
Today the theme was top ten covers with [an item of your choice] n the front and I chose top ten covers with cats because I have a lot of books with cats on the front. That’s probably because I read a lot of cozy mysteries and cozy mystery readers and authors like cats in their books and on their covers. Sometimes they barely mention a cat in the book but they still put a cat on the cover. Cozy mystery readers and authors also like dogs but today I went with bookcovers with cats on them.
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue by Lilian Jackson Braun
When I looked through my The Cat Who books I was actually surprised by how many of the covers didn’t have cats on them. They had paw prints, but no actual cats. It looks like there are some knock-off covers online but those are not the official covers so I did not include them. A couple of the books, such as this one, did have cats on them, though.
2. The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
I have not read this one yet but I hope to this winter. I have had it on my list for a while and planned to read it but got distracted by some other books first. Yes, the story of my life.
2. Mums and Mayhem by Amanda Flowers.
The cat is part of the story in this series but not a huge part. The fox pictured here is more a part than the cat.
4. Read and Buried by Eva Gates
I’ve only read one book in this series and it was pretty good. From what I remember, the cat was a big part of it.
5. A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon
This one was on my fall TBR but I don’t think I’m going to get to it so I am pushing it off until winter. My daughter picked this one out because of the cat, which looks a lot like our cat Scout.
6. Apple Cider Slaying by Julie Anne Lindsey
I don’t really remember there being cats in this book but I liked the cats on the cover at least.
7. We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida
I have not read this one yet, but it is on my list and I like the name because cats often help me when I don’t feel well or I am down. Sometimes they drive me crazy too.
8. Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing by Lisa R. Howeler
Yes this is my book but it has a cat on the front so…I shamelessly added it. It is on sale on Amazon and can also be read on Kindle Unlimited if you are interested. *wink*
9. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
This is a writing craft book that I have read part of and would like to read more of but have put it somewhere and can’t find it.
10. The Crime That Binds by Laurie Cass
I’ve had this one on my shelf for over a year so I really hope to get it read soon. This series looks so good and I am interested to see how the cat fits in to the story.
How about you? Do you have books with either cats on the cover or a lot of books with similar images?
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Today I sit here as a parent amazed I didn’t spend most of yesterday in the emergency room after my 10-year-old daughter took fall after fall while riding scooters and playing with her friend.
The first one I saw (more may have happened before) was her coming off a steep hill, full speed, on the scooter, hitting the side along the road, and flying off the scooter, meeting the ground with her face. I actually didn’t fully see that one. I was recording the ride and saw the aftermath of her holding her wrist and saying, “That’s it. I’m done.”
She wasn’t done though and an hour or so later she and her friend were back at it and this time she swerved to avoid our cat and ended up on her knees on the pavement.
That incident was after she’d been rocking back and forth on a stool she was sitting on to eat her supper and the stool tipped and she landed on her arms on the legs of it. That time I was certain she’d broken her arm because a long red mark spread up her skin.
“This is it,” I said to myself and then did the mental gymnastics of how I would drive my husband’s big, ridiculous truck up to the ER since he’d taken the car to work, and tell the mom of Little Miss’s friend to meet us there, while explaining it wasn’t her kid this time. Her kids have a history of breaking bones. Her one son broke both his arms in the span of a month.
“I’m okay,” Little Miss said after a few minutes of rubbing the arm.
And back she went to eating her supper.
Later they rode the scooters, she skinned her knee, and when it got so cold we were all shivering and so dark I worried any cars coming up our street would run over them we went inside where she promptly tripped over the dog and almost fell into the coffee table and then turned on a lap and while walking away from it it fell and almost hit her in the head.
At that point, I felt like we should invest in bubble wrap and wrap it around her several times.
She was so tired last night she fell asleep in the middle of reading Harry Potter which was nice because usually I have to argue with her and tell her to put her book down and go to bed.
Zooma The Wonder Dog was also exhausted after having a long walk earlier in the day with The Husband, chasing the girls up and down the street, barking crazily at our neighbors, and almost getting run over by The Husband while he was backing out of the drive to head to work.
Today Little Miss is limping and sore. Luckily, she doesn’t have to do anything or go anywhere.
We are staying home as a family since The Husband actually has a day he doesn’t have to go anywhere.
Next week we have to go somewhere at least once place every day and The Husband has meetings or play rehearsals every single night. On Monday we have an appointment at the vet for our dog. On Tuesday we have art class. On Wednesday night Little Miss has Kid’s Club at a local church. On Thursday – oh, wait. I think we don’t have to go anywhere on Thursday. On Friday we have art class again and grocery pick up, or I might pick the groceries up on Saturday to avoid as much running since I did the art class and pick up this past Friday and it made it a very long day.
By the way, if you are new here, I call my husband The Husband for the sake of the blog as a joke. I nicknamed my son The Boy for the blog because The Husband jokingly calls him that sometimes so then I thought I’d call my husband The Husband to be funny. He does have a real name, of course, and since my name is the domain of this blog, anyone could find it out if they truly cared to know. And everyone who knows us knows his name and that I don’t walk around calling out, “The Husband, where are you?”
What I/we’ve been Reading
I’m juggling three good books and finding it hard to switch between them because I am liking each of them.
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
Grime Doesn’t Pay by Jay Larkin
Two of them are mystery books – one involves murder, the other doesn’t (or at least not yet). The Maestro’s Missing Melody does have a mystery in it but isn’t hard hitting or a strict mystery book.
I’ve decided to share a description for each in case you are interested:
The Marlow Murder Club:
Judith Potts is 77 years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.
One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar.
Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.
When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape….
The Maestro’s Missing Melody (this is part of a series but there is no reason to read them in order. I’ve read two so far and they are not connected in any major way):
For aspiring musician and college student McKay Moonlight, winning a summer internship with Scottish master fiddler Huntley Milne was a dream come true. When a last-minute change moved the internship program from the Scottish Highlands of her ancestors to a village she’d never heard of along the River Deben, McKay was determined to make the best of it. However, she didn’t expect to make such a terrible first impression on her summer mentor.
Hosting a bunch of college students was the last thing Maestro Huntley Milne needed. He was already up to his ears in problems, with Aunt BeeBee being placed in a care home, resulting in him having emergency custody of his tween nephew and niece. Then he met McKay Moonlight, and the chaos really began.
Grime Doesn’t Pay:
Fired from her boring office position, Jenny lands her dream job at Aunt Audrey’s Angels cleaning agency, where she pursues her twin passions of cleaning houses and solving mysteries. Inquisitive, resourceful and persistent, the cleaner-turned-sleuth stumbles across mysteries wherever she works, including theft, extortion and fraud. Along the way, she enlists the help of a police detective, a private investigator and an attractive lawyer. When Jenny herself is framed for a jewelry heist, she needs all her courage and tenacity to outsmart the criminals and reveal the truth.
I didn’t finish anything this week. I’ve just been reading along. A couple of weeks ago I finished one called The Case of The Innocent Husband, but I don’t think I mentioned that here. It was pretty good.Up
I have a tentative November TBR list that includes finishing the books I am currently reading and then adding The Secret of the Wooden Lady (A Nancy Drew Mystery), The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Miracle in a Dry Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas, and Christy by Catherine Marshall.
Will I get through all these? Eh, probably not but at least The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I am reading with The Boy for our British Literature class.
This week Little Miss has been reading Harry Potter, The Sorcerer’s Stone. The Husband is reading a book by Michael Connelly that I forgot the name of. The Boy is going to be starting The Hound of the Baskervilles with me this week.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched Dracula for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema and wrote about it on the blog. Up next for Comfy, Cozy Cinema was supposed to be Skylark. Big problem. It has been removed from all streaming services when I thought it was still there! Oops! That was my mistake. So Erin and I decided to watch Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which I have watched a couple of times and enjoyed. My dad is not a movie watcher but even he sat and watched this one and laughed so hard during it. This one is streaming on various services.
I’ll put up a post later today or tomorrow to let people know we’ve had to switch movies.
The other day I watched a movie called The Rage of Paris. I don’t know if the name matched the movie, but it was so funny and just fun to watch. It was made in 1938 but it really held up great.
I also watched a movie of Detective Kitty O’Day. That one was interesting and only about an hour long. It was released in 1941.
What I’m Writing
I will be finishing up Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family tree this week and I am so excited! It has been a loooong haul on this one but it has also been a ton of fun. I’m already brainstorming ideas for book four.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Do you ever look back at the previous month and can’t remember what you did during it or if any of it was worth mentioning?
That’s me pretty much every month. Ha! But last month really was not terribly exciting for us and I think that is just fine.
We did celebrate Little Miss’s birthday at the beginning of the month. We took her roller skating with a friend and she also had a sleepover.
The Husband and I both remembered our grandmothers in October since they both had October birthdays.
Little Miss and I started taking art classes at the beginning of the month that will last another week and that has been fun. There will be a reception the week after next for the art the children produced in their class and then they will be on display at the library in town (which is also the county library because it is the only library in this tiny county).
I attended one of the adult art classes and will try to attend the last two. The instructor doesn’t really instruct, though, and I find drawing bottles absolutely dull, but I guess it gives me a bit of time to decompress and relax, away from responsibilities at home.
The Boy has also been getting back into art again. He drew these characters from various video games on the white board in his classroom at the technical school:
Our leaves changed rather slowly this year and did offer us some brilliant yellows and deep oranges. We still have a few on the trees, but for the most part the autumn winds have knocked them down. Little Miss and The Boy had one leaf-jumping day and then it became too cold. When it did warm up, we didn’t think about going back in the leaves again.
We had a mix of cold and warm weather in October, which sent our sinuses on a rough ride part of the time, especially last week when Little Miss and The Boy ended up with very short colds.
The Boy felt awful the day we took Little Miss trick-or-treating in a town about 30 minutes away so she could go with her friend and The Husband could take photos for the paper he works for.
Little Miss’s friend photobombing The Husband’s photo of the paper was one of my favorite moments of October.
The Boy and I sat in the car and listened to an audiobook he’s been enjoying while The Husband walked around town with her and her little friend, something he loves to do (don’t worry, I didn’t make him! Ha!).
By Sunday Little Miss was hit hard with the cold and on Monday she was absolutely miserable with a sore throat and pouring nose. On Tuesday she was better and was totally over it by Wednesday.
I thought I was going to get it as well but in the end, it somehow skipped me, other than a headache and minor sinus stuff on Monday.
As an example of the weird weather this week, yesterday it was 67 degrees and today it is 50. The day before yesterday it was 75. Today it is 50. I wish Pennsylvania didn’t have the yo-yoing weather it has. Pick one, Pennsylvania! Seriously, though, the nice and warm days were welcome, even if they felt a little odd to be having.
I’m looking forward to cooler temps in November that will leave me with an excuse to stay home, cuddled under a blanket. We will have to wait and see what happens and will make the best of it no matter what.
We have two birthdays to celebrate in November – The Boy’s first and then The Husband’s.
The Husband’s is on the same day as my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary.
As for the rest of November, we don’t have a ton planned.
I will be finishing up the last draft of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and passing that on to editors and beta readers to read. I will be glad to have the project finished and plan to take a month-long break from novel writing and just enjoy some reading and movie-watching time in preparation for the Christmas season.
How did you October go? I hope it went well. Do you have anything exciting planned for November?
This is a blog link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts but we encourage it. So share away!
I can’t believe we are at the end of October. It doesn’t even seem possible and our weather doesn’t seem to be showing that it is fall. We’ve been having above average temps. Today it was close to 80. Yuck! I do not like warm falls at all. One year about 9 years ago we had a super warm fall and winter. It was 80 degrees on Christmas Eve, which is unheard of in this area of the U.S.
I always talk about the weather on Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot day. I have no idea why. Maybe because it is better than talking politics, which I am so sick of I could scream and have actually screamed over recently. All the commercials, texts on my phone, signs in the town, and even entire tents being set up in the middle of our town. I have had it and I can not wait until it is all over!
Let’s move on to our most clicked posts for this week.
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Originally, I was going to write about Practical Magic because Erin was watching the movie and I thought I would too. Then I watched Practical Magic and…plans changed. I’ll leave it at that.
Instead, I decided to rewatch the original black and white Dracula movie from 1931 and write about that. I will admit this movie is neither comfy or cozy!
At the beginning of the movie, we see a group of people traveling through a remote area – where it is we aren’t told but later the movie subtitles say they are speaking Hungarian.
One woman is reading about the area and says there are ruins of castles in the area that can be seen. She almost falls over as the carriage continues and a man asks for the driver to slow down.
“No!” one man declares. “We need to get to the village before sundown. It is Walpurgisnight, the night of evil.”
There are dark things afoot when the sun sets, he says.
Soon the carriage stops and we have one of the men telling the villagers that he isn’t going to stay in their village but instead is going to go up the mountain around midnight to meet a carriage and go on to the house of Count Dracula. The villagers are clearly upset at this news and urge him not to go. They tell him there are vampires at the castle of Count Dracula and, in fact, they come into the village and drink the blood of anyone who stays outside after sunset.
The man is determined though and off he goes, much to the disappointment of the villagers and carriage driver. One of the women even hands him a necklace with a cross and begs him to take it for the sake of his mother to protect him.
The carriage takes off over the desolate hills and next we see a clip of a man and woman climbing from a coffin in a dark basement or crypt and the man looking ominously at the camera, dark shadows all around him except for a spotlight on his dark eyes. The three women in long white dresses walk around inside the crypt, carrying candles.
This movie is 93 years old this year and still had shivers sliding up my spine. A foreboding atmosphere hangs over the scenes, telling the viewer that something bad is going to happen or the bad is going to continue to get worse.
The movie is shot very, very dark, which sometimes makes it hard to see what is going on, but the viewer can certainly tell that the man – R.M. Renfield (played by Dwight Frye) — is very nervous when the carriage pulls up in the rain to pick him up. He’s regretting his decision even more when he walks into the ruins of the castle. Renfield is there to arrange the lease of an abbey in London for the count.
The view of this castle from the inside is insane and if it was today, I’d say it was CGI, but this movie was made at a time when they didn’t have CGI. The inside shot when the man first walks in and sees the scope of this castle is mesmerizing.
I was shocked when I read that the scenes in the castle were shot in Universal City, California on a sound stage. The set was painstakingly built and the ruins of the castle were used for years in other movies, one article stated.
Much of the so-called special effects of the movie were created with fog, camera angles, and lighting.
The effects are in full force when a man walks down the long stairway, out of the dark shadows to meet Renfield.
“I am Dracula,” the man says, his face lit by the candle.
The actor who plays Dracula is, of course, Bela Lugosi, whose portrayal, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica is considered the definitive portrayal of Count Dracula. Bela’s version of Dracula is absolutely haunting. Old movie or not, the acting in this movie is done terrifyingly well.
Dracula is a character created by author Bram Stoker who wrote the novel of the same name in 1897. This movie was based on the 1920s stage production of the book. Lugosi portrayed Dracula in that production on Broadway, in 1927, as well.
According to the Encyclopedia Britanica web page, “[Lugosi’s] halting speech, in his own thick Hungarian accent, contributes to the frightening appeal of the film, along with its eerie atmosphere, long tension-raising pauses, and lack of music.”
That lack of music is quite chilling. Apparently, in 1998, Philip Glass was commissioned to score music for the film and it was added to a re-released version of the film. I watched the original film without the music and I prefer it that way. Much like black-and-white photography strips away the distractions of color, the lack of music in Dracula leaves the viewer even more immersed in the horror experience – undistracted by a melody or a tone of a musical piece.
“These first 20 minutes are predominantly silent – in fact, beyond a few snatches of Tchaikovsky and Wagner, there is no background music in the film at all,” TCM’s Rob Nixon writes. “A rising sense of dread is accomplished by the creaking sounds of coffin lids and by cinematographer Karl Freund and Director Tod Browning’s floating camera creating an atmosphere of mystical terror reminiscent of the German silent fantasies.”
When Lugosi comes down the stairs carrying a candle and announces, “I am Dracula,” in a very calm, but eerie voice, Renfield looks slightly relieved. Afterall the carriage driver drove off with his luggage, the cobwebbed-covered castle is bathed only in moonlight, and there are wolves howling outside. Surely this man will be leading him into the cozier setting in the upstairs of the castle.
When Dracula says the wolves are the children of the night, this should have alarmed Renfield more but, no, he continues on, even when he sees a large spider web and spider inside.
Things, of course, go off the rails for poor Renfield when he gets a cut from a paperclip and starts to bleed. This must have reminded the count he was a bit peckish because the look he gets on his face is pure obsession over the blood on Renfield’s finger. The cross that falls from around Renfield’s neck is the only thing that saves him in that moment.
Sadly, it won’t save him for long but I’ll let you find out what happens if you watch the movie, or if you don’t know the story.
Later in the movie, we will be introduced to Professor Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) who will try to stop Dracula from his murderous feasting throughout London.
I won’t give the ending of the movie away but it was seriously not the exciting ending I was hoping for.
This film was filmed in 36 days for $341,191, just under the planned $350,000 budget. When the movie was first discussed, it was going to be a large, sprawling remake of the stage production, according to TCM.com, but the Great Depression hit and the movie had to be scaled back.
People on set say that Lugosi used to practice saying his lines and getting into character by posing in front of a mirror and tossing a cape across his shoulder. He spoke very little to the cast, saying only hello when he came in and goodbye when he left.
According to Nixon, Lugosi was typecast after Dracula to the point he couldn’t break into any other style of acting.
“Typecasting is an inherent danger for any star; for Lugosi, it crept strangely into his private life as well,” Nixon wrote. “For many years, he appeared in public in his trademark costume and demeanor, and was even buried in Dracula’s black cape. When he looked in the mirror, did he only see the Transylvanian count staring back at him? Or, like the vampire character he portrayed, did he see nothing at all?”
A note on him being buried in the cape: other online articles state that Lugosi did not request to be buried in the cape. His son and fifth wife chose to do so because they thought he would like it. Yes, you read that right. His fifth wife.
Anyhow, back to the movie – while it was directed by Tod Browning, some said that Freund was the actual director. Freund was an Academy Award-winning cinematographer for his work on The Good Earth from 1937 and at the end of his career filmed various television shows – including I Love Lucy.
In some ways Dracula holds up more than many films of today. The creep factor was definitely there – especially Frye’s manic/insane portrayal of Renfield after his interaction with Dracula. I don’t think it is a movie I will watch again because I could barely make it through it without wanting to flip to Anne of Green Gables to clear my movie-watching palette.
Have you ever seen this version of Dracula? What did you think of it?
If you want to read Erin’s impressions of Practical Magic, you can find it here.
Up next week for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema is Skylark, the second movie in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series. This one really is a comfy, cozy watch.
Here is our remaining list, including a group watch of Chocolat (date to be announced) that we will be writing about on Nov. 21. You do not have to write about the movie to watch with us.
We will be pushing play together on Chocolat and then chatting about the movie in our Discord group (The Dames), which you can join for free now here: https://discord.com/invite/J7qQ36Uf
If you want to join in and add a blog post you wrote about the movie you watched this week you can leave a link here:
