Wonders in the Dark

by Sam Juliano

Double Indemnity handily wins our massive Best Film Noir polling!

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by Sam Juliano

I was thrilled to hear Criterion’s October announcement of the long-awaited Blu-rays of the final two Val Lewton films to be released in that format—I Walked with a Zombie and The Seventh Victim. Some of us count these two films among the most sought-after in high-definition!  The silent masterpiece Pandora’s Box was also announced.

Politics has taken over everyone’s consciousness these days, and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump has commandeered the headlines.

Voting on the Greatest Film Noirs and Best Songs of 1958 continues until Saturday.  Anyone still wishing to cast ballots is advised to do so over the coming days.  The number of returns has been incredible!  Many thanks! Continue Reading »

by Sam Juliano

Wild action this week!  Two polls have ended, and two have just started! (Our best Western Poll attracted 104 ballots, the most for any of our polls ever!)

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The Influence of Film in Contemporary Literature

In my 2018 novel, Then Came Darkness, I was greatly influenced by The Night of the Hunter – not the novel, but the classic film, which I previously wrote about on Wonders in the Dark. I attempted to create that same sense of dread and menace hanging over a plot that put kids in similar jeopardy with my Depression-era historical thriller. The influence was indirect, though the novel featured other direct references to film when the children go to see a matinee of King Kong.

In my new novel, West Falls Revisited, the setting is more recent and contemporary, and film again haunts the pages in more ways than one. The novel pieces together a mosaic of the residents of a small town outside of Philadelphia and the various traumas (including a brutal murder and the global pandemic) they endure over the years.

In a pivotal flashback, twelve-year-old Robbie Elms sneaks away to the local Rialto Theater to see the original Jurassic Park instead of the July 4^th fireworks with his friends in the summer of 1993. The local movie house, with its iconic neon marquee, holds a special place in Robbie’s heart, as it was where his father took him to see his first movie, The Flight of the Navigator, whose theme of a boy disappearing takes on extra significance in the context of the novel.

The real-life model for the fictional Rialto Theater is the famous Westmont Theater, where Steven Spielberg frequented as a child when he briefly lived in New Jersey.

In a chilling funeral scene, a grieving woman flashes back to meeting her husband in film class and watching Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet. The indelible climax of that transcendent film leads the woman to imagine her own beloved rising up out of the coffin during the viewing.

Other direct references are made to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which shares similar themes with the novel and is watched fervently by some characters as teenagers in the early 1990s. At a high school dance, one character does her hair to look like “Shelly the waitress.”

I also can’t help but think about the influence of other cinematic limited television/streaming series. The novel shares similar themes with the Olivia Coleman series Broadchurch, and there’s no denying that I was watching the Kate Winslet stunner Mare of Easttown while crafting the early chapters. Like The Night of the Hunter did for Then Came Darkness, these murder mysteries influenced the mood and tone of West Falls Revisited, and in terms of location, the fictional town of Easttown is a stone’s throw from the fictional town West Falls. Of course, they didn’t have the global pandemic to deal with, and this event reshaped the whole direction of later parts of the novel as they took place in “real-time” during the historic lockdown.

There are more film references and allusions to be found in West Falls Revisited, but it stands as an example of art influencing art and common themes being interwoven across different forms and modes of expression. The films referenced add color to the characters watching them and additional layers of context to the novel’s recurring themes. It wouldn’t be the same novel without the films & series I watched that left their indelible marks on my creative mind.

West Falls Revisited is currently available as a paperback anywhere fine books are sold, or exclusively as an ebook through Amazon or Kindle Unlimited.  – David H. Schleicher

Purchase link: https://mybook.to/westfallsrevisited

by Sam Juliano

The Greatest Western Films of All-Time Polling! (20 choices!)  NOTE:  Astoundingly, 87 ballots have been cast so far.  The poll will run through next Saturday—We will also be doing THESE in the coming months!!    Film Noir; Musicals; Science-Fiction/Fantasy; Horror; Gangster Films; War Films; Mystery/Thrillers; Romantic Drama; Comedy Films; Childhood-Adolescent Films; Gay-themed Films; Documentaries; Animation.  We did these categories at the site years back, but we now have a far bigger audience to participate on FB.  The 1957 Best Song Poll will run until next weekend, as promised.

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by Sam Juliano

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by Sam Juliano

Canadian Valerie Clark’s recent passing brought forth an outpouring of grief on her Facebook page, where many spoke of this remarkable lady in glowing terms, the kind of which I experienced in the decade and a half I knew her.  Communication with Valerie was an uplifting experience.  This vivacious, positive energy life force made you feel good about yourself and what you were doing, and she was always there to lend a helping hand.  Those visiting Wonders in the Dark over the years have witnessed the film reviews of Jim Clark -Valerie’s dear husband and one of our treasured writers.  Valerie was always behind the scenes via e-mail and Facebook messages, guiding the specifications for the postings.  She was a dear personal friend whose passing has made the world darker but whose memory will always bring a smile till my final days.  Jim and Valerie were a beautiful couple in every sense, and I express my deepest condolences for his unconscionable loss to Jim.  Reading tribute after tribute on her page brought many tears.  Many have noted her exceeding kindness and eternal effervescence.  R.I.P. Valerie.  Your generosity and support will never be forgotten.     (I have posted all the lovely tributes about Valerie below in the lengthy comments under this post)

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by Sam Juliano

The Eighth Annual Allan Fish Online Film Festival concluded on Friday.  I don’t think I am overpraising it when I say it was one of the best in the series.  Thanks to this year’s writers:  Jamie Uhler, Sachin Gandhi, Robert Hornak, Marilyn Ferdinand, Roderick Heath, Dennis Polifroni, Jay Giampietro, and Joel Bocko for their inspired work and diverse posts.  Equal thanks to Tony D’Ambra, Peter Morose, Duane Porter, Patricia Perry, Celeste Fenster, John Greco, J.D. Lafrance, Todd Sherman, Brian Wilson, Maurizio Roca, the Texas Sam Juliano, Marvin Sommer, Steve Elworth, Jim Clark, and others who have left comments, likes on Facebook and have read the entries.  The site numbers were most impressive.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF VALERIE CLARK, a longtime supporter of the series.

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by Sam Juliano

The following transcript was recorded on June 6 at the Paradise Falls Community Center in Heaven’s Gate, Seraphsville, and transmitted via satellite.

Sam:  It’s been a long time, my friend.  I reckon it may be a year since we last spoke.

Allan: Let me tell you straight away, Sam, that things are not as easy up here as you think.  It’s a place where everyone has their own celestial schedule and activities to which they are partial.  Think of it as our version of Shangri-La.  By the way, speaking of that James Hilton property, up here, they think that the wretched 1973 musical produced by Ross Hunter is a far better movie than Frank Capra’s 1937 original.  They treat the song “The World is a Circle” as another “Over the Rainbow” and think Liv Ullman and Bobby Van are among the best singer-dancers ever.

Sam:  Well, Allan, that film’s reputation has vastly improved.  It has developed a strong cult following.

Allan:  Don’t talk to me about cults.  If they gave me a choice to return to Earth or stay here, I wouldn’t think twice.  What is wrong with the people in your country?  Up here, they just shake their heads.  When I was still in Kendal, in the land of the living, I told you that Trump would return your country to the Civil War era.  The man brought hatred into vogue again.  And even after his conviction the other day, the political experts here think he has an excellent chance to win again.

Sam: Yes indeed, my friend.  The polls here show a close race, but Trump is still narrowly ahead in the battleground states that will decide the election.

Allan: The fact that it is close tells us all we need to know about your country, but let’s not waste our time talking about that con man.

Sam: Allan, I remember you once called him a cretin.

Allan:  Such language is not permitted up here.  I have learned to paint so much in a positive light, but it kills me to do it.

Sam: (laughs) I’m sure you haven’t completely lost your saucy humor.

Allan:  You could say that.

Sam:  To this day, I have never stopped snickering when I remember what you said about Driving Miss Daisy, A Separate Peace, and Brother Sun Sister Moon.  Your takedowns were classic.  Continue Reading »

by Joel Bocko

On April 8, 1990, a new David Lynch work premiered to by far the biggest audience he’d ever receive: thirty-three million viewers on that day alone. The pilot of the new surreal mystery show Twin Peaks, a collaboration with writer Mark Frost, introduced Laura Palmer as a murdered teenager whose death might implicate the whole offbeat small town, launching a storyline that would continue over many episodes (and eventually a prequel feature film even after the mystery was resolved). Yet many elements that would come to define Twin Peaks – especially its supernatural, mythological iconography – weren’t present yet in that pilot. Or were they? Well, it depends which version of the pilot you saw. For TV viewers, and most who’ve caught up with Twin Peaks in the years since on streaming or digital boxsets, the pilot ends when Laura’s mother experiences a vision of a hand picking up a necklace in the woods. But for years on VHS and DVD – due to odd rights issues – the only available version of the pilot went in a different direction entirely: one which, while not canon would introduce numerous characters and images essential to later Twin Peaks (including the third season which followed after a quarter-century interval – the timing itself rhyming with something in this alternate ending). And most of this was inspired by momentary flashes of whimsy and inspiration on Lynch’s part, using actors and sets he had immediately onhand before constructing a whole new world which formed the heart of the show’s visual language, turning up on the series itself as a dream sequence several episodes later.

In this fifteen-minute podcast, an excerpt from my much longer Lost in Twin Peaks series covering every episode in deep detail, I explain not just what happens in this version of the pilot, but why it was shot at all, and how Lynch came up with many of these details.

LISTEN ON APPLE PODCASTS

(You can also listen on Spotify, Pinecast, or most other podcast platforms – unfortunately WordPress makes it very difficult to embed podcast players so I can’t actually make it playable on this page.)

This was originally part of my coverage of S1E3 (aka “episode 2), the episode which first made the “dream sequence” public. You can read/see/listen to more about that episode here, and follow Lost in Twin Peaks on various podcast platforms, including those linked above.

And you can watch the full alternate ending yourself right now: