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Gentle reader,

My fascination with the screen started with drive-in movies when I was too young to sit still in a theater. Within a few years I lived for weekly treks to theater with my mother and little brother.  It would have been wonderful to see films more than once a week but the movies cost money -luckily, television was free. Before DVDs and cable networks absconded with classic film libraries, local television stations included films from the 30s, 40s and 50s as part of their daily lineup.  My favorite movies were usually from the 1930s and especially pre-code films from the early 30s. Any film with James Cagney, Mae West and Jean Harlow topped my list. On television, Mae West and Shirley Temple co-existed in the same universe and no one complained.  As I matured, my adoration spread to filmmakers; the producers, studio heads, directors and writers who transformed movies from flicking images on bed sheets into jaw-dropping, black and white imagery.  Mitzi of the Ritz grew out of my life long obsession. 

The work of Hitchcock, Bergman and Fellini always resonated with me but there were specific films that became part of my psyche including Dracula, Rebecca, The Lodger, Gaslight, Night of the Hunter, The Haunting, The Innocents, Psycho the chilly horror of Rosemary s Baby and The Shining.  The Gothic genre, whether on film or the written page, continues to hold me captive. I thank my father, an avid reader of horror and science fiction, for helping develop my taste for the macabre. Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Bloch, Daphne du Maurier, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Conan Doyle, the works of the Bronte sisters and Bram Stoker have given me hours of pleasure.  I ve also enjoyed the works of newer writers including Sarah Waters, Barbara Hambly and Diane Setterfield. 

Like the late Roald Dahl and Alice Sebold, it is what lurks beneath the rocks in my metaphoric garden that fascinates me more than the flowers. My interest in the darker aspects of life fueled sojourns to Forrest Lawn and the Hollywood Cemetery. I also have vivid memories of my maternal grandfather s funeral in rural Louisiana. His body was laid out in the parlor of a Victorian frame house and then taken to the cemetery in an old-fashioned funeral cortege complete with a horse-drawn hearse.  Those recollections of a five-year-old led me to The Boston Embalming Clas and the Gothic Queen, Sarah Bernhardt and her Doctor God . 

The In A Gothic Mood   pages are literate observations by friends on different aspects of the Gothic and will continue to grow.  

Please visit often.

 

 

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