SUTURE SELF

Check out my reviews of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride!...

...and the Disney/Pixar animated feature Hoppers...

...online at Phoenix Magazine.

LITTLE MORE THAN PUMPKIN, AND LESS THAN KIND

A safe and Happy Halloween to all from Less Hat, Moorhead!

The Wife gave me a Dracula PEZ and Frankenstein Peeps...

On another note: Recently I found this rather badass hornworm in the backyard...

As I escorted him into the alley behind the house, I was startled by how muscular his flexing against my thumb and finger was...

It made me sympathize with poor Ida Lupino, attacked by the giant hornworms in 1976's The Food of the Gods...

A couple of other odds and ends:

I was very saddened to hear that Matthew Perry has passed on. He was possibly the funniest of the Friends, but I also loved him as White House Counsel Joe Quincy, one of the increasingly mythical-seeming "good Republicans" that The West Wing liked to optimistically depict. Nobody could deliver a line like "Sure, we'd never want to compromise the aesthetic integrity of the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue" with the effortless aplomb of Perry. A real loss.

RIP also to Richard Moll, best known as towering but sweet-natured bailiff Bull on Night Court. He was one of the first celebrities I ever interviewed, for the Erie Times-News back in the early '80s when he was in town for a convention or something. Very nice guy. In his MeTV obit, he's quoted saying that when he was auditioning for Night Court and they asked if he would shave his head for the part, he said "I would shave my legs for the part!" He told me the same story back in the day.

Here's a sample of the Halloween decor at Chez Moorhead...

And finally: Let's go D-backs!

BRIDE SHARE

Happy June everybody! In the month's honor, something bridal seems in order, so...

Monster-of-the-Week: ...here's Divine as the Bride of Frankenstein...

It's a poster, unearthed from the Dewey Webb Collection, of a live Halloween show at the GiftCenter Pavilion in San Francisco back in 1985. Wish I'd been there.

ELECTRIC BRIDE

Since it’s June, a bridal theme seems in order, so…

Monster-of-the-Week: …how about this Bride of Frankenstein doll, I mean action figure, from ReAction Figures that I found recently on a discount table…

Notice that I had to take her “As Is.” You know, for better or worse.

I also like how she seems—not intentionally, I think—to be wearing a pantsuit. Nontraditional chic.

BRIDOLATRY

It’s the last day of June, thus…

Monster-of-the-Week: …our last day to do something bridal. How, therefore, can we not honor the greatest Bride in all Monster-dom, the title character in one of the greatest of all monster movies (& also one of the greatest of all sequels), 1935’s The Bride of Frankenstein…

Played by Elsa Lanchester (who also plays author Mary Shelley in the film’s opening scene), the Bride, fashioned by Drs. Frankenstein & Pretorius as a mate for the lonely monster (Boris Karloff), rejects her poignantly eager groom with piercing shrieks every time he approaches her. Not one for wheedling or “just being friends,” the monster pronounces “We belong dead” & blows up the laboratory, Pretorius, the Bride & himself. It’s possible he got off easy—something about The Bride’s quick, bird-like head movements, wide-eyed, wary stare & stand-offish manner suggest that as a wife, she would have been, to put it mildly, high-maintenance.