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Married Geek Couple

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big, Bad Wolves:  CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE and Personality Development

By Park Cooper and Barb Lien-Cooper

This post contains SPOILERS for the wonderful spooky films THE CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE! So you should very probably consider going and watching them first if you haven’t already!

Okay, here we go:

When adults don’t care enough to save a child, what option does the child have but to save herself?

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The Townhouse of Ideas

Fiction: A Hungry Ghosts story: “The Well” –THE CONCLUSION (part 2 of 2)

(Note: Here’s the rest of the Hungry Ghosts short story from two weeks ago!

If you missed reading the first half two weeks ago, go here and read it now!

Okay, so now, here’s the conclusion (read below)! )

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“I tried to see Tokubei, but he was off inspecting his lands and attending to business,” said Eisai-sama. “So I asked to see Osono. I was told that she would not see me. So, I asked to see her father, a man named Mosaku. I was led to his quarters… I was surprised to see prayer sutras all over his room… and he looked scared of something. When he found out that I was a monk and that I had seen a face in the well water, he begged me to say prayers over the well. I did so…”

“It didn’t work,” I guessed, although since I knew the well was still haunted, it was a pretty easy guess.

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The Townhouse of Ideas

Fiction: A Hungry Ghosts story: “The Well” PART ONE (of two)

by Barb Lien-Cooper

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Kiyoko wasn’t doing well in the battle, and we could all see it. These weren’t just tough peasants with big talk, these were experienced soldiers, and she was a young woman (with her hair cut short, who happened to be passing herself off as a young man). She was not half bad with a sword, not at all, but these were killers, and she lacked the killer instinct.

“We would gladly share our food with you, sirs. None of this is necessary,” I heard Eisai-sama say, over on my left.

“We want the magical pouch of rice you carry! Then we would never be hungry!” shouted the leader of the pack of soldiers as he lunged at Eisai-sama, who easily blocked the man with his sword, the legendary Lightning-on-the-Water.

“…We’re hungry for blood, Takeshi,” the voice of the old man in my head said.

“Starve yourselves,” I told the old man’s voice in my head, “just like these soldiers starve. Just because you want me to use my sword to kill doesn’t mean I want that…”

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Uncategorized

“Guidance Counseling” — A Dark Shadows Story

Carolyn Stoddard Hawkes stared into the fire of the drawing room.

My father is dead, she thought. My husband is dead. But no one cares but me. My mother has gone on with her life, which isn’t surprising, since she and Father separated years ago. My uncle doesn’t care, because he never liked my father nor my husband. Cousin David doesn’t care, because he’s so young—at that age, everything is about him. Cousin Barnabas is too busy spending time with Dr. Hoffman to care, whatever it is that those two do together… Cousin Quentin is too busy dating whoever he’s dating right now to care… Isn’t family supposed to care when someone’s grieving?

She barely noticed when her uncle Roger came into the room and poured himself a brandy.

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Married Geek Couple

Barb Approves of More Stuff!

Look, it’s more stuff of which Barb approves! (And I, Park, do, too!)

Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (1974) (also known as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue

I am not usually a fan of zombie films. They bore me. All zombie films have the same plot: zombies eat a bunch of people, humanity is screwed, the end. 

Yes, there are exceptions. I love the original Night of the Living Dead, Hammer Studios’ Plague of the Zombies, and the obscure radio production of a Halloween one-off called “The Peoria Plague.” But unless a zombie film has something different to offer me like the Blind Dead films or, I just have no interest in the walking-dead-type films.

So, I was surprised how deeply affected I was by Let Sleeping Corpses Lie. It had such a stupid title, just for a start. But Kill Baby Kill has a silly title, and I like that film, so, what the heck, I decided to poke those sleeping corpses with a stick to see what gives.

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Uncategorized

The Wonderful World of Dismemberment

There used to be a television show called The Wonderful World of Disney, where a kid could see old Disney cartoons and live action films. We now have Disney Plus, which I have a free subscription to for six months because my husband got a new phone. But I’d trade Disney Plus for a horror channel that had as much old content as Disney has. About the best streaming service for horror is Shudder (we also have a six-month free subscription because of the phone thing), but it doesn’t have a lot of selection of older films, and I’m just not interested in their exclusive content. I do thank them for the quality of the prints of the movies they show. And I also thank them for all of the Giallo films they have. Finally, I thank them for showing my favorite folk horror film, Eyes of Fire. I appreciate Shudder, it just doesn’t have enough stuff that I’m into.

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Uncategorized

Was Angelique SO Wrong? (A Dark Shadows Essay)

Time for another essay about the 1966-1971 gothic daytime soap opera Dark Shadows

When it comes to the 1795 Dark Shadows storyline, I am a bit of an Angelique apologist, with two huge exceptions:

1/ What Angelique does to Victoria Winters, the only person who, in the Collins household, offers Angelique friendship, one of the few people who wants to be kind to Angelique, and Angelique frames Vicki for being a witch (instead of herself)! Yes, it was an act of self-preservation on Angelique’s part, but it was still a nasty thing to do.

2/ What Angelique does to Sarah Collins when Barnabas tells Angelique that he knows that Angelique is a witch. Yeah, I get it, Angelique, you’re angry as heck at Barnabas, but sticking pins in a voodoo doll representing Barnabas’ little sister and then threatening to stick one right in the dolly’s heart? Sorry, that’s a step way, way too far. I was totally on your side before that (I wasn’t all that fond of Vicki, sorry).

Still… let me tell you why I have more compassion for Angelique than I do for most villains.

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Uncategorized

Dark Shadows: Anatomy of a Scene #3

Okay so here’s the thing: Barb and I wanted to do another Anatomy of a Scene, because this, to us, is Fun. It is F-U-N, as they said one time on MST3K. But we weren’t sure what Dark Shadows scene really NEEDED us to deep-analyze it. There are certainly other great scenes on Dark Shadows, but we would need another one that (1) NEEDED analysis (so that seemed to exclude scenes with Willie Loomis, because they’re all amazing, but they’re also not as SUBTLE as the scenes we’ve done so far), and also scenes that (2) no one ELSE had already analyzed. There are other amazing scenes in Dark Shadows, but other writers have already done a good job of analyzing some of those.

Well, we talked about it, and finally realized that what we might need to get into is Barnabas’ relationship with his father—like, say, the first time we see them together.

As it happens, that moment ALSO happens to be in the same episode where we first get Angelique—just earlier in the episode.

SO HERE WE GO.

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Married Geek Couple

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT DARK SHADOWS (Part TWO): How To Watch Dark Shadows

Okay so: Dark Shadows. The 1966-1971 gothic soap opera. Maybe you are thinking about watching it.

Here’s some stuff you need to know.

You have two options:

1. Start at the very beginning. NOT RECOMMENDED UNLESS YOU ARE INTO 1960s SOAP OPERAS IN THE FIRST PLACE. OR unless you are not used to scary/supernatural stories in the first place. If you are not used to scary/supernatural stories, then yeah, maybe you di want to start with episode 1. (But if either of those don’t sound like you, then come back and watch the first 209 episodes later, after you’re totally hooked.)

2. RECOMMENDED for some people : You might want to consider starting with the vampire. The vampire is where practically everyone, at the time, started paying attention.