“And they used Bon Ami!”

Before my family and I relocated from Teays Valley to Ravenswood, West Virginia in the fall of 1972, I spent my formative years attending St. Francis of Assisi in St. Albans.  It was a Catholic school, and I’ve always had mixed feelings about it because while I remember with great fondness the wonderful friends I made…

“My name is Victoria Winters…”

There was an unsettling rumor going around last November that the long-running daytime drama Days of Our Lives was in danger of getting a pink slip and losing its parking place at NBC...but DOOL’s demise turned out to be a premature one, and it was confirmed that the program would soldier on with Season 56.…

From the DVR: The Wonderful World of Disney

The Starz/Encore people have managed to acquire some feature film titles from Walt Disney Pictures of late, because I was afforded an opportunity to catch up with two of the studio’s animation releases that had eluded me for a good while: The Princess and the Frog (2009; I liked this one) and Frozen (2013; not…

Adventures in Roku II: Texas Blood Money

The recent acquisition of the Roku in the House of Yesteryear has been both a source of welcome entertainment (for your humble narrator) and amusement (also for your humble narrator, because his mother is now calling it the “Yoko”).  I mentioned in this last post that I am fast becoming a fan of some of…

Boris Bad Enough

The very first “blogathon” in which I participated took place in 2009, when the Frankensteinia blog hosted a seven-day tribute to actor William Henry Pratt—better known to (and beloved by) fans as Boris Karloff.  My love of Karloff’s work was an inspirational muse during this event; I posted entries on Thrilling Days of Yesteryear for…

Adventures in Blu-ray: The Addiction (1995)

Kathleen Conklin (Lili Taylor), an NYU student preparing for her doctorate in philosophy, is attacked one night by a mysterious woman (Annabelle Sciorra as "Casanova"), who insists that Kathleen forcefully tell her to go away and leave her alone.  Kathleen is unable to do this, and so Casanova does a number on her neck, calling…

Next in line

How many times has this happened to you?  You and your better half are celebrating your 35th wedding anniversary and have invited family and friends to a secluded Missouri cabin for the festivities.  The wine has been poured, the food is ready...and two of the members of your admittedly dysfunctional clan are already opening old…

“To something new!”

Returning to stately Osterna Castle after two years of being abroad, Graf (Count) Greven exhibits a demeanor vastly different than his pre-travel behavior.  He instructs his staff to put Osterna on lockdown, because for unexplained reasons he’s quite paranoid and fearful—with no explanation forthcoming.  His faithful manservant (Bernhard Goetzke) contacts a minister (Hermann Picha) who…

Guilty Pleasures: Sssssss (1973)

You might remember Phil Hall as the author of an excellent book that I reviewed back on the blog in August of 2016 entitled In Search of Lost Films; Hall, a film critic/journalist who has contributed to the likes of Film Threat and American Movie Classics Magazine, also wrote The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time, published in 2013 through BearManor Media—the…

“I hate to break the news to ya…but I think you’re a vampire!”

There’s a straight-to-video feature film—released in 1996—entitled Star Hunter…which I will charitably describe as a homage (French for “rip-off”) to Star Wars and Predator.  The presence of Roddy McDowall and Stella Stevens does not mean that this is a good movie, but what may be of interest to the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful is that the direction of this cheesy…