Good weekend

Saw two “thons” this week­end. The first, and more cinephilic­ally con­geni­al, was up in Suffern, held by my friends at the Lafayette Theatre…

…for the occa­sion, a three-day fest of which I was able to be present at two, Lafayette bur­gomeister Nelson Page dis­played a couple of rare and fant­ast­ic one-sheets, above. Saturday we saw a lovely print of Bride of Frankenstein, a film that mol­ded me as much as Psycho did (and who among us can­’t say the same thing, really?), and an even bet­ter print of Erle Kenton’s House of Dracula, a quite hil­ari­ously dread­ful piece of work that bears cer­tain affin­it­ies with SIodmak on the one hand (the “Moonlight Sonata”-goes-faux-Antheil scene) and with Wood, Jr. on the oth­er (“Say, look—it’s Frankenstein’s mon­ster!” etc.).

Sunday was the New York Marathon. Believe it or not, in 2012 I hope to be among these schmucks. The run­ners, I mean. The fel­low spec­tat­ors in the shot are all friends and not a schmuck among them. Here they, and I, are, from the reverse angle:

Who’s this “Keith” “Katz,” you ask, and is he any rela­tion to film­maker Aaron? As a mat­ter of fact, they’re cous­ins, but nev­er mind. Our Mr. Katz was among the…aforementioned…runners this year…

…bless him, and he has been some­thing of an inspir­a­tion to me, regal­ing me with ter­ri­fy­ing tales of “long short runs” of 11 or 12 miles or so that I’ll be in for if I opt to fol­low his, erm, foot­steps. What am I think­ing? I sup­pose I’ll find out. Anyway, Keith seemed to be keep­ing his cool as he paused to greet his clam­or­ing fol­low­ers a few miles in…

…after which it was back to Suffern. I prom­ised in my last dis­patch from the Lafayette that next time I’d share some views of its fant­ast­ic ceil­ing retouch­ing, so here you are:

Today my old friend Joseph Failla and I took great pleas­ure in Corman’s The Raven…

Hazel Court, WTFIU?…also, play­ing Peter Lorre’s son—

…lately Jack is look­ing rather like Peter did in this 1963 goof…also seen was a superb print of the American International cut of Bava’s Black Sabbath, just fant­ast­ic­ally enjoy­able. Nelson’s part­ner in keep­ing mot­ley movie nuts happy, Pete Apruzzese, pro­jec­ted these prime selec­tions beau­ti­fully. While My Lovely Wife came out on Saturday and had a great time, I could­n’t goad her into this par­tic­u­lar bill, des­pite pas­sion­ate prot­est­a­tions (“But Jean-Pierre Leaud’s mom is in the Bava!”). You can­’t have everything. But this was quite a lot. And now, I am exhausted.