The B-Masters Cabal

4 Comments

• #1 by lyzard on December 13, 2010 - 8:39 pm

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  I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how *I* feel about the demonising of cats, Will, in or out of films.

  I don’t disagree with your criticisms, but I find that the positives of Ligeia outweigh them. The bit that kills me is the honeymoon scene, the walk on the beach: the tantilising possibility of normality, which is of course then snatched away. I think Corman once said, didn’t he, that that scene was an afterthought, inserted in post? Incredible. It makes the film, botched ending notwithstanding.

• #2 by Braineater on December 13, 2010 - 8:55 pm

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  The fact that we see them from a distance, walking right at the edge of an immense shadow, makes that particular moment work on many, many levels.

  I really should have mentioned that… since I’m scrambling to make up for lost time — you know; my first review since August, two weeks late for the roundtable — I haven’t been as careful as I should have been.

• #3 by El Santo on December 14, 2010 - 8:15 am

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  “I tend to think Lovecraft is in many respects the Anti-Poe…”
   
  Me too, although I first picked up on it in a much more prosaic sense than either of the ones you mention. I find that Poe’s stories frequently read as if they were the final chapters of much longer works that are otherwise lost, while Lovecraft’s often put me in mind of teaser prologues to novels abandoned because their authors had written themselves into a corner.

• #4 by Elizabeth the Ferret on December 17, 2010 - 1:25 am

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  As the owner of two black cats – an affectionate female Burmese stray named Nightshade and her son Jarn – I definitely agree with your irritation about the black cat. I’ve had a lot of cats in my life, and the black ones have always been the sweetest.