Midnight Pals: Frankensexy
Guillermo del Toro: Submitted for the approval of the midnight society, I call this the tale of frankenstein
del Toro: but this time
del Toro: there's a little twist
del Toro: the twist is that frankenstein is hot
del Toro: see, what if it starred Andrew Garfield and Oscar Isaac?
Mary Shelley: which one is frankenstein?
del Toro: doesn't matter, they're both pretty fuckable
Shelley:
Shelley: yeah that's right
Bram Stoker: are we back on this fuckable frankenstein kick? this is just awful
Stoker: you're destroying the essence of the story!
Stoker: frankenstein can't be hot
Stoker: he's SUPPOSED to represent the hubris of man's folly!
Mary Shelley: shut the fuck up bram
del Toro: and we're getting mia goth to be in it too
Bram Stoker: and who's she playing?
del Toro:
del Toro: uhhhh
del Toro: igor?
Mary Shelley: igor's not in the fuckin book
Stephen King: are you sure about that, mary? i mean i've seen frankenstein and i'm pretty sure there was an igor
Shelley: that was the MOVIE steve
Shelley: and also igor wasn't in that either!!
Shelley: jesus christ you guys
King: whoa whoa whoa mary
King: are you saying that igor wasn't in the frankenstein book OR the frankenstein movie?
Shelley: that's right
King: well then
King: where's he from?
Barker: that's some real mandela effect shit
Shelley: NO IT'S NOT
King: ok but where's igor from then?
Shelley: how the hell should i know? probably from one of those fuckin idk flintstones meets frankenstein shit specials or something
King: c'mon mary that's just silly
King: also it would be frankenSTONE
Shelley: what
Shelley: fine! put an igor in! I don't fuckin care
Shelley: do whatever you fuckin want with your fuckin femme igor that
Shelley: femme igor
Shelley: wait
Shelley: wait a second actually this idea slaps
del Toro: anyway back to my
del Toro: [waggles eyebrows] cabinet of curiosities!
del Toro: watch, i'm going to introduce every episode the cabinet of curiosities with a pithy philosophical monologue
del Toro: like if i was the giant flying liquid metal skull at the beginning of skeleton warriors
Barker: pft you can try man but you're no tony jay
del Toro: light
del Toro: dark
del Toro: the two sides of the same coin battling for the hearts of mens souls
del Toro: but what of those in the middle?
del Toro: which way del Toro: will they turn?
[dramatic pause]
King: just gives ya chills doesn't it?
Barker: not really
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There's still a haunt on the hill...
In my previous post, I dug through the ghostly chain of adaptations of Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House" starting by its various movie incarnations. But I am not done...
Because in 2018, Mike Flanagan released on Netflix his massively successful television series, "The Haunting of Hill House".
Flanagan's television series was strongly influenced by "The Shining", another major haunting-story of the 20th century, first marking American literature under the pen of Stephen King...
... Then marking American cinema by the movie adaptation of Stanley Kubrick.
Mike Flanagan never hid his passion and love for "The Shining", both the Kubrick and King versions, and it is for this reason he was the man behind the 2019 movie "Doctor Sleep"....
... an adaptation of Stephen King's sequel-novel to The Shining.
And fascinatingly, a lot of details and ideas of Flanagan's "The Haunting of Hill House" (or its sister-series, "The Haunting of Bly Manor") were reused for his Doctor Sleep movie...
But, speaking of Stephen King, did you know he made his own "The Haunting of Hill House"? Well, almost... He and Steven Spielberg worked on a project in the 1990s: a remake of The Haunting/a new movie adaptation of "The Haunting of Hill House". Unfortunately this movie never came to the light of day, as the two men split apart due to creative differences...
However this did not stop Stephen King from reusing the unused/unfinished script/concept for his "Haunting of Hill House" adaptation, throwing in a lot of elements from his own "The Shining", with several nods to the real-life Winchester Mansion, and tadaa! The result was 2002's mini-series "Rose-Red".
Stephen King has very often praised Jackson's novel. In fact, in his eyes it is one of the two greatest ghost stories of American literature... Alongside Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.
Do you recall Henry James? Sure you do! From the previous post... He wrote the "Ghostly Rental" story, that itself got adapted in 1999 into a horror movie called "The Haunting of Hell House" - confusing Jackson's "Hill House" with Matheson's "Hell House".
Do the links stop here? NOT AT ALL! Flanagan's "The Haunting of Hill House" was supposed to be the first season of an anthology series about ghost stories. This project got cancelled, but not before a sister-series to "The Haunting of Hill House" was made... a second season called "The Haunting of Bly Manor", which is a loose adaptation of "The Turn of the Screw".
AND THERE'S MORE! Because you see, before being re-adapted by Mike Flanagan, "The Turn of the Screw"'s most famous adaptation was a 1961 movie called "The Innocents". A movie which also became a classic of black-and-white haunted house horror movies, just like "The Haunting" that was released two years afterward... Film critics, cinema theoricians and movie enjoyers all agree that the two movies have to be compared, with something of a sibling relationship to each other.
"The Turn of the Screw" - and more specifically the 1961's "The Innocents" movie - also had a huge influence on one of the greatest Spanish moviemakers of the 21st century: Guillermo del Toro. In fact, it was to pay homage to both the classic of Gothic that was "The Innocents", and the behemoth of the traditional horror that was Kubrick's The Shining, that he decided to create his own Gothic horror movie... The wonderfully horrifying "Crimson Peak", released in 2015.
And not only does Crimson Peak unites The Turn of the Screw with The Shining (Guillermo also invoked the influence of other massive horror movies, such as The Omen or The Exorcist) - but this movie also is the final union, the ultimate blooming of Jackson and James' works. Because del Toro's original intention for this movie was to pay homage to the "two grand dames" of the haunted house movies... 1961's The Innocents, and 1963's The Haunting. The two ghostly tragedies finally united in one Gothic movie...
Well... To be fair, the uniting of "The Haunting of Hill House" and of "The Turn of the Screw" had already happened long before del Toro's Crimson Peak, but with a much less famous and successful movie: 1971's Let's Scare Jessica to Death... A cult piece (despite its lukewarm reception), it was created with only one goal in mind: recreating a psychological horror story with ambiguous implications, in the style of James' The Turn of the Screw, and Robert Wise's The Haunting.
(Think we're done? FOOL! Just you wait...)
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Midnight Pals: Fuckenstein
Guillermo del Toro: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, I call this the tale of Frankenstein
del Toro: but what if Frankenstein was hot
Stephen King: do you mean the doctor or the monster
King: because, technically, the monster is frankenstein’s monster and
del Toro: I know what I said, steve
Del Toro: in this retelling, the doctor is played by Oscar isaacs
del Toro: and the monster is played by Andrew Garfield
Barker: do they fuck
Poe: clive
Barker: no really
Barker: I think in this situation
Barker: this is a good question
King: yeah actually he has a point
Mary Shelley: sup fuckers
del Toro: I was just talking about my Frankenstein adaptation with Oscar isaacs and Andrew Garfield
Shelley: do they fuck?
Barker: see? That’s what I was asking!
Del Toro: “do they fuck”
del Toro: what a question!
del Toro: would I, Guillermo del toro, cinema’s most notorious monster fucker, make a film where monsters fuck!
del Toro: it’s like none of you even saw the shape of water
King: oh what happens in that?
del Toro:
del Toro: they fuck
King: wait do they really
King: on screen?
del Toro: hardcore X-rated swim bladder action
Bram Stoker: oh GREAT now you’re gonna ruin Frankenstein!
Stoker: it’s bad enough that they made Dracula horny
Stoker: now they’re gonna back Frankenstein horny!
Stoker: so gross
Stoker: bleh!
Stoker: why do you guys always have to make everything so sexual
Stoker: it was better when Frankenstein was a big green thing with, like, the weird head
Stoker: man, there was NO way yo could get horny looking at that
Stoker: so totally good and unsexy
Stoker: now that’s the way to do it
Mary Shelley: shut up
Mary Shelley: so they fuck right
del Toro: of course they fuck
Shelley: I got a great scene for ya Guillermo
Shelley: what if they fuck on the monster’s mother’s grave
del Toro:
del Toro: um the monster doesn’t really
Shelly: [flipping switchblade] who’s writing this story, nerd?
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Psychopathy is a pathologic state characterized by a disharmony primarily in the emotional and volitional aspects of the personality in which the intellect remains relatively intact.
1. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) Sweeney Todd Benjamin Barker
2. Secret Window (2004) Mort Rainey
3. Crimson Peak (2015) Lucille Sharpe
4. Hell Is Other People (2019) Seo Moon Jo
5. House of Wax (2005) Bo
6. Midnight (2021) Do Shik
7. Scream (1996) Billy Loomis
8. The Black Phone (2021) Albert Shaw
9. American Psycho (2000) Patrick Bateman
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