Sybil Bruncheon's "Hollywood's Hysterical History"...

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932)... starring an intimate cast (by 1930s Hollywood standards!) of Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, and the always fascinating Ernest ("Gods and Monsters!") Thesiger!...and directed by James Whale… (as flamboyant as ever!)

The title just about says it all, doesn't it? A weird and weirdly funny movie from the pre-code era, that sets a black & white horror mood rather brilliantly. Merrily macabre in so many ways, I often wonder how many takes some scenes took just because the cast broke out laughing especially with the extraordinary James Whale larking about behind the camera with Thesiger flouncing around in front of it! A Must-See, if you haven’t already!! Enjoy!!...

 …oh!... and did I ever tell you about the sequel? YES!! James asked me to star in it along with the reassembled Dark House cast! It was to be called QUEERISH CASTLE (1933 or so). James was getting more and more defiant of Hollywood’s closeted attitude about LGBTQ issues, so he decided to rub the big studios’ noses in it! No longer satisfied with only calling the lead character “Horace Femm”, the residents of Queerish Castle were to be Humpmey Bogart, Beulah Bondage, Finger Rogers, Poosile Ball, Orson Smells, Spencer Lacey, Lesbie Ann Warren, Julie Man-Drews, Clit Walker, Vulvian Vance, and Peener Youstinoff. The castle, though terrifying and full of dead bodies, trap doors, and secret passages, was also to be a fabulous dance hall/speak-easy with Vaudeville acts, including drag performance-knife throwers, transvestite-trapeze artists, contortionist-fortune tellers of indeterminate gender, and dog-and-cat ventriloquism! I was going to play “The Insatiable & Inscrewtable Vaj-eena”, a gypsy fortune teller who uses tea leaves and oblong vegetables to determine the unsuspecting guests’ futures… Misfortune and Merriment ensues!... or so we hoped. The Hays Committee shut us down for “Gross Indecency!... and oblong vegetables!” JEEEESH!!!!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "I'm A Fan of Fabulous Films"...

I love thrillers!... suspense films that make you completely forget you're sitting in a movie theatre with hundreds of strangers or tucked into a blanket shivering away on your sofa in the dark! And there are so many different variations on the thriller genre; science fiction, horror, serial killers, slasher films, who-dunnits... oh, the list goes on and on! Here are a few of my favorites, and I would have added another ten or twenty, but a photo collage is only so big!…

If you’re having trouble with the titles of these great suspense films, the answers are directly below!

[Top row: PSYCHO (1960), THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995), REAR WINDOW (1954). Middle row: CHINATOWN (1974), L.A. CONFIDENTIAL (1997), SEVEN (1995), THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962). Bottom row: KLUTE (1971), JAWS (1975), THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), THE SIXTH SENSE (1999)]

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Sybil Bruncheon's "True Tales Of Tinsel Town":

Jane Fonda, of course, won the Oscar for playing Bree Daniels, a call-girl trying to be an actress in the mystery/thriller KLUTE (1971). Set in NYC it was directed by the great Alan J. Pakula... I, on the other hand, was offered the low-budget slapstick sequel called KLUTTERMAN (1973)... set in Boca Raton and directed by Moe Howard… yes, that Moe Howard, of Three Stooges fame. I was cast as Bris Danielovich... a female rabbi with a fabulous recipe for calamari... Confusion and merriment ensues!!

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A New Sybil's "Who'z Dat?"... ALAN RICKMAN (February 21, 1946 – January 14, 2016)...

Who can say why the passing of a stranger can be so heartbreaking?... an artist whose work has changed your life and perhaps not for "the role he was best remembered for"! I saw Alan Rickman walking alone on the street many years ago, and didn't want to interrupt his private time to gush over how much his talent meant to me. His Hans Gruber in DIE HARD (1988), homely-handsome, suave, witty, wry, merrily villainous, and the perfect foil to the goofy, fumbling-but-direct, all-American yahooist John McClane of Bruce Willis' was an astounding debut in American film! Unforgettable!.... and of course, then there's the Harry Potter juggernaut...

But for me, the role that changed my life was Rickman's Colonel Brandon in SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. He had none of the fireworks, glamour, or even the screen time as his co-stars, but I can't think of anyone who could have communicated so much through the silences, the soulful glances, the pauses, and his measured deliveries done like a viola being played in another room. I found myself looking at him and studying his “listening” more than the other characters even as they spoke.

I had no idea he was ill, and his passing has been described as fairly sudden. All I can do at this point is to borrow the much-used quote, "A great light has gone out.".... and it has indeed in the world of film and theatre according to the messages being posted by his compatriots. His many fans will miss him for Snape, but for me it will be for all those quiet moments in his most subtle performances, and the unexpected beauty, passion, and sexiness of his soul that came through those oh-so expressive eyes... A great light indeed.

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