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Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Hyde, and the Horrors of Science

For the past month, I have been diving into some of the Golden Age Horror films from the 1930s. Like most people, these are movies that have always been in the background of my cultural knowledge, but ones that I have never actually seen. I decided to change that this October, so I watched Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Like a lot of older films, they can be slow and somewhat hokey at times. Since these were some of the first sound films ever produced, most of the actors came right from the stage to the screen, and it shows. As anyone who has been in acting knows, you have to overact on a stage production in a way that comes off as silly in a film, but since many of these actors were not used to the transition, a lot of the performances come off as overdone.

But none of that can suppress the genuinely great scenes in these films; indeed, they deserve the bone-chilling reputation that they have garnered over the decades. No one can ever forget Lugosi’s haunting performance as the title character of Dracula, Fredric March’s leering grin as Mr. Hyde, or Colin Clive’s electrifying screams of “It’s alive! It’s alive!” as the horrifying creature comes to life.

Caribbean Halloween Killing: A True Story

We never knew some things about my gentle Grandmother Loyd. She kept those things secret. Darkly secret. Black secret.

Halloween stories are ridiculous. And I say that as a man who has had probably four run-ins with ghosts, not including this one. But this all happened.

My earliest memory of her was of her sweet, loving face beaming at me when I was three and leaving with my friends to Trick or Treat down my suburban street in Austin. She wore a 1950s pleated sleeveless, collared dress and waved goodbye to me and said, with music light as a wind-chime in her voice, “I’ll see you again after you go around.” Only years later, after the unlikely deaths in Puerto Rico around our vacation home, her old home, did the prescience in those words strike me.

Transformative Titles: From St. Augustine to Koontz’s Frankenstein, The Exorcist, & Dinesh D’Souza

Which books and authors most shaped your life? Part 3

Books have been transforming me, getting under my skin, ever since I read Charles Lindbergh’s The Spirit of St. Louis as a boy. Many books, and many years later, here are some that I currently enjoy.