Sybil Bruncheon's "Hollywood's Hysterical History"...

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)... starring an intimate cast (by 1930s Hollywood standards!) of Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, and the always fascinating Ernest ("Gods and Monsters!") Thesiger!...and directed by James Whale… (as flamboyant as ever!)

The title just about says it all, doesn't it? A weird and weirdly funny movie from the pre-code era, that sets a black & white horror mood rather brilliantly. Merrily macabre in so many ways, I often wonder how many takes some scenes took just because the cast broke out laughing especially with the extraordinary James Whale larking about behind the camera with Thesiger flouncing around in front of it! A Must-See, if you haven’t already!! Enjoy!!...

 …oh!... and did I ever tell you about the sequel? YES!! James asked me to star in it along with the reassembled Dark House cast! It was to be called QUEERISH CASTLE (1933 or so). James was getting more and more defiant of Hollywood’s closeted attitude about LGBTQ issues, so he decided to rub the big studios’ noses in it! No longer satisfied with only calling the lead character “Horace Femm”, the residents of Queerish Castle were to be Humpmey Bogart, Beulah Bondage, Finger Rogers, Poosile Ball, Orson Smells, Spencer Lacey, Lesbie Ann Warren, Julie Man-Drews, Clit Walker, Vulvian Vance, and Peener Youstinoff. The castle, though terrifying and full of dead bodies, trap doors, and secret passages, was also to be a fabulous dance hall/speak-easy with Vaudeville acts, including drag performance-knife throwers, transvestite-trapeze artists, contortionist-fortune tellers of indeterminate gender, and dog-and-cat ventriloquism! I was going to play “The Insatiable & Inscrewtable Vaj-eena”, a gypsy fortune teller who uses tea leaves and oblong vegetables to determine the unsuspecting guests’ futures… Misfortune and Merriment ensues!... or so we hoped. The Hays Committee shut us down for “Gross Indecency!... and oblong vegetables!” JEEEESH!!!!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "I'm A Fan of Fabulous Films"...

I love thrillers!... suspense films that make you completely forget you're sitting in a movie theatre with hundreds of strangers or tucked into a blanket shivering away on your sofa in the dark! And there are so many different variations on the thriller genre; science fiction, horror, serial killers, slasher films, who-dunnits... oh, the list goes on and on! Here are a few of my favorites, and I would have added another ten or twenty, but a photo collage is only so big!…

If you’re having trouble with the titles of these great suspense films, the answers are directly below!

[Top row: PSYCHO (1960), THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995), REAR WINDOW (1954). Middle row: CHINATOWN (1974), L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997), SEVEN (1995), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962). Bottom row: KLUTE (1971), JAWS (1975), THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)]

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Film Flim-Flam!"... 1969...

IRIS?!?!... dear God I thought it was a still from that little known nudey/horror/science fiction film down in Times Square, THE VAGINA THAT ATE AKRON (1953)... it was on a double bill with THE NAKED NUN & THE HEADLESS FULLER BRUSH SALESMAN (1954)... and then the midnight “all-boy revue” at the Gaiety just upstairs from the Howard Johnson’s… good times… ah, good times…

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Sybil Bruncheon's 31 Days of Halloween: THE HAUNTING (1963)...

THE HAUNTING (1963), the gold standard...nay! The platinum standard for horror films, if only because so much is left up to your imagination and to the brilliant direction by Robert Wise and the writing of Shirley Jackson. Starring Julie Harris in one of her most definitive roles, Clare Bloom in a provocatively suggestive portrayal of lesbian glamour, and Richard Johnson, Russ Tamblyn, Rosalie Crutchley, and others in supporting parts as disturbing or disturbed onlookers to what appears to be the unraveling of a fragile mind in an appalling house...

But for fans of this film, it touches on bigger and more existential issues. Truly, it is a "modern" horror film; no headless corpses or gratuitous blood. No gouged out eyes or ski masks, no long phallic knives, and nubile high school girls being chased through swamps... Just isolation, rejection, skepticism, mockery, hopelessness, futility, chronic forlorn illness....and the desperate wanting to be loved by someone or something that turns out to be evil....selfishly, completely evil in that blank, flat way that signifies the narcissism and nihilism of the late 20th century. The final lines say it all. More tragedy than horror...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Who'z Dat?"... Happy Birthday to Jerry Goldsmith! (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004)

Jerry Goldsmith (born Jerrald King Goldsmith) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for such films as STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979) and four other films within the Star Trek franchise, THE SAND PEBBLES (1966), PLANET OF THE APES (1968), PATTON (1970), LOGAN'S RUN (1976), PAPILLON (1973), CHINATOWN (1974), THE WIND AND THE LION (1975), THE OMEN (1976), THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (1978), CAPRICORN ONE (1978), ALIEN (1979), OUTLAND (1981), POLTERGEIST (1982), THE SECRET OF NIMH (1982), GREMLINS (1984), HOOSIERS (1986), TOTAL RECALL (1990), BASIC INSTINCT (1992), AIR FORCE ONE (1997), L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997), MULAN (1998), THE MUMMY (1999), and THREE RAMBO FILMS.

In May 1997, with the release of Steven Spielberg’s THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, he gained more popularity with his fanfare of the 1997 Universal Studios opening logo, which would be among the most iconic studio logo music of all time. He worked on both dramas and for many lighter, comedic films such as the family comedy THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS (1966), and the James Bond parodies OUR MAN FLINT (1966) and its sequel IN LIKE FLINT (1967).
During his career, he composed both classical music for orchestra concerts and themes and background music for television shows. He collaborated with some of film history's most accomplished directors, including Robert Wise, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Joe Dante, Richard Donner, Roman Polanski, Ridley Scott, Michael Winner, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven, and Franklin J. Schaffner. His work for Donner and Scott also involved a rejected score for TIMELINE (2003) and a controversially edited score for ALIEN, where music by Howard Hanson replaced Goldsmith's end titles and Goldsmith's own work on FREUD: THE SECRET PASSION was used without his approval in several scenes.

Goldsmith was nominated for six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and eighteen Academy Awards (he won only one, in 1976, for THE OMEN). He composed the Paramount Pictures Fanfare used from 1976 through 2011. Over the course of his career, Goldsmith received a total of 18 Academy Award nominations, making him one of the most nominated composers in Academy Awards history. Despite this, Goldsmith won only one Oscar, for his score to the 1976 film THE OMEN. This makes Goldsmith the most nominated composer to have won an Oscar only on one occasion.

Goldsmith died at his Beverly Hills home on July 21, 2004, from colon cancer at the age of 75. He was survived by his wife Carol and his children Aaron, Carrie, Ellen Edson, and Jennifer Grossman, and Joel (who also died of colon cancer on April 29, 2012).

This closing credits composition from THE MUMMY expresses just one beautiful example of his work; Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8d_gMWVujY

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Sybil Bruncheon's "31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN!".... what is that, there in the shadows?...

....the tradition had always been to make a wonderful costume either with your friends in the weeks before the big night, or do it all separately from them all so you could surprise them on Halloween night at the parties before everyone went out Trick-or-Treating. That was the tradition... and it was a good one... and one that everyone trusted, generation to generation... father to son, mother to daughter... on and on... Until the Bad Time came.... when children were no longer safe to go out into the night and only play at being scared, and to gather candies in exchange for facing their childhood fears.

True, in the past, there were occasions, rare, very rare occasions when a child might go missing, but those were very few and far between. But NOW... in the Bad Time, no one would dream of sending a child off into the night, not in the neighborhood, not even into the gentle countryside to celebrate the merriment and mystery of Halloween without watchful, even fearful adults, hovering, questioning, fretting.... And that was why, when she appeared out of nowhere... well, so much upheaval. Rumors whispered, compounded on more rumors... wild, strange terrifying stories about horrible, horrible... too horrible to even name. Grown-ups spent sleepless nights…or else endless nights of strange, heated sleep, sweating but frozen too till they shivered and ached in their soaking wet sheets...tangled and twisted with dreadful visions... to wake exhausted into flat gray mornings. Too gray to even know if it was morning..

She was nameless, so someone, unnamed themselves, called her The Melon Lady because of that... was it a face? ...At some point, she became The Melon Lady. And her reputation was instantly known far and wide because she had been named. Her .... "proclivities"...and "habits" had been witnessed...from "remains".... but it was the naming that made everything so final. And so factual. There was the fact now of what she could do...and might do.. and how much farther and more grotesque it might get...if she wasn't stopped...She had to be stopped. But how? The banal powers of the "modern world" were useless...stupid and clumsy.

You see, the Bad Time had created her ...and made her necessary... in an odd irony. The Bad Time had brought her here...and she was created out of the great mystery of the thing known as Balance. And that Balance was what was both a horror…and a comfort. For you see The Melon Lady was the one who did the bad things… to the bad people. It started out only as rumors… a person would be found perhaps days after being reported missing… well parts of them would be found..in various places where many people would find what she had left behind. There would sometimes be writing …on the pieces.. or if fire was involved, then on a wall nearby.. or a note pinned to a doorway. As the acts became more hideous, a sort of humor would be injected… the notes would be scrawled on fine stationery… in blood… or ..No!... it was lipstick… It started out as a word or two, a phrase, but eventually they turned into short poems with deliberately bad punctuation, misspellings, dangling modifiers… split infinitives… or… “provocative” drawings… drawings that sneered at the victim, and insulted his or her family… and even threatened them as well…

And so, she became bolder, more brazen in her daring… the Balance required that, as the Bad Time worsened, she had to be more… thorough. Because she was the Protector of children. The Avenger. The Terrible Price. Her names became manifold…. So it was easier, more expedient… and more terrible just to say that The Melon Lady had come. The Melon Lady had been there. The Melon Lady had left.. that… behind. The Melon Lady would punish you. And she did. She always did. …and …gradually the Bad Time and its friends began to be burned away… She was never wrong. The Balance was infallible… She was The Melon Lady… and children everywhere grew to love her… love her very much.

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Sybil's "31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN!"... Eeeek!....

Many of you have asked me about my years doing horror films at the Hammer Studios in London with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Barbara Shelley, and the rest. Here’s a publicity photo from the horror musical THE SPINSTER SPINS HER WEB (1958) with the opening number “Stop Staring At My Legs!” directed by Busby Berkeley, (and involving thirty-six platinum blondes as house-flies buzzing around my web. Sadly, the overhead camera kept getting caught in the strings!) My costars were Evan Dalrymple as Baron Hugo Dumpp, Glynda-Lee Salvo as Rose-Marie Harrow, and Giles Pinque as The Town Ruffian. Sadly, production was shut down for two months while our director/producer Hadley Phroot was recovering from a dessert of clotted cream that had gone quite bad in the players’ canteen! Several of the chorines thought it was cold cream and had it all over their faces! The production unfortunately never recovered…. The little that was filmed was later stolen and spliced into nudie-stag films and shown at shriners’ weekends and in burlesque houses as novelty shorts before the live acts came onstage…. Glynda-Lee was so traumatized by the ridicule that she attempted suicide by eating fourteen boxes of Louis Sherry chocolate-covered cherries in one mad weekend. She succeeded only in getting a very bad rash…. And spending eight days in hospital on a calamine drip…..

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Sybil Bruncheon's 31 Days of Halloween... Favorite Film Quotes!: A night at the Hairdresser’s…

“I told you Autumn Auburn! Autumn Auburn, dammit! But you’ve made me a dull old brunette…and with a page-boy too!”..

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Concerning Stephen King:

Concerning Stephen King: His movies always strike me as either the best or the worst movies.... I adore THE GREEN MILE (1999), STAND BY ME (1986), DOLORES CLAIBORNE (1995), THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994)...... but so many of the others strike me as ...well, amusing but tacky sideshow tents at a two-bit carnival that's rolled into town for a rainy weekend... some thrills, some chills, some giggles ..and then it’s stumbling off through the mud to the tilt-a-whirl, a drooping paper cone of flaccid cotton candy, and the ring-toss booth for a stained kewpie doll. And the titles! THE ENRAGED FRIENDSHIP BRACELET (1978), MRS. CHARNER’S VERY BAD BROWNIES (1981), WISHFUL OBJET D’ARTE (1983), THE GRUMPY MARY-KAY LADY (1987), THE ELDERLY MAN WHO WORE MILDEWED GYM SHORTS (1989), THE SPOON THAT TURNED INTO A FORK (1990), and SPANXIE & THE WET BALL OF YARN (1991)…..(jeeesh!) 

And sadly, I’ve also noticed that NONE of the Stephen King films that I appeared in were on any Best Films list….. THE REALLY ANGRY SUNBEAM TOASTER (1985), HE THAT LIMPS AND CLEARS HIS THROAT (1987), MURIEL DESATNICK AND HER NOTIONS COUNTER OF SNARKINESS (1994), and of course, THE CLUTTERED NIGHT STAND WITH THE DRAWER THAT REMAINED STUCK (1995)…

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Sybil Bruncheon’s Halloween Game Time!!!

MATCH THE FACES WITH THE DESCRIPTIONS!!!

1) Junior manicurist at “Happy Hands Hide-Away” in Piscataway, New Jersey
2) Captain of The Hefty Ladies Of Hartford Bowling League
3) Serial caller to the local police precinct reporting UFOs (Unattributable Farting Offenses)
4) A rutabaga that rolled behind the refrigerator....or possibly Ann B. Davis.
5) Borscht Belt comedian from the 1950s with three thumbs
6) Stray kitty with disturbingly “inter-species” facial features
7) School superintendent much loved by Junior High children….on Uranus.
8) Dog grooming catastrophe at The Perky Poodle Canine College
9) Mindy Resnick, unrepentant aquarium gravel and prop hoarder

(Answers will appear on page 119 of your Highlights Magazine)

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