Jamie
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vanjpes.bsky.social
Jamie
@vanjpes.bsky.social
750 followers 260 following 1.8K posts
Tired enthusiast. I write weird things. Mostly here to post about old television shows, films, comedy, books, and horror.

Rambles and tangents on culture here: https://arowofopengraves.co.uk/
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Reposted by Jamie
willmckinley.bsky.social
CROWHAVEN FARM debuted on ABC #OTD in 1970.

ROSEMARY’S BABY meets folk horror in this Aaron Spelling TV movie w/ Hope Lange, Paul Burke, John Carradine + Cindy Eilbacher.

Genuinely spooky w/ some plot points that make it a delightfully perverse choice for Thanksgiving week 55 years ago. #FilmSky
Hope Lange John Carradine Paul Burke and Cindy Eilbacher
November 25, 2025 at 5:00 AM
vanjpes.bsky.social
More Chaplin tonight: The Star Boarder (1914, dir George Nichols). A slight, but enjoyable farce which has Chaplin the focus of his landlady's awkward affections. Preferred at the boarding house, he gets special treatment. Her husband isnt so enamoured. Ends in a fight, of course.
The Star Boarder title card In a house's dining room, a landlady has her back to two men, one Charlie, the other her husband. Charlie is making a mocking gesture at the husband with his hand. Charlie and the landlady in a garden, in conversation that appears flirtatious. The husband is stood behind Charlie looking annoyed. Charlie and other people from the house watching a magic lantern show by the landlord's young son. The current image is of two cats fighting.
November 24, 2025 at 10:54 PM
Reposted by Jamie
andrewmale.bsky.social
Watching 1968 British horror film Corruption and you just know things are going to turn weird and wrong when the role of the cool David Bailey-esque photographer is played by a blond-wigged Tony Booth.
A 35-year old Tony Booth, resembling a cross between a chipped Toby Jug and a Pekinese.
November 24, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Jamie
bavalamp.bsky.social
Have I...made it? 🤔

BEYOND EXCITED to read my featured interview in the latest issue of @ruemorguemag.bsky.social

My thanks go out to @monicaskuebler.bsky.social & @necromandrea.bsky.social this is an absolute dream come true
A copy of Rue Morgue magazine, open to a page that reads 'PRIESTS, POPCORN, AND PANIC' and features an interview with me.
November 24, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by Jamie
brendonconnelly.bsky.social
I'm looking for people who love murder mysteries and whodunnits. It's for a thing! Can you connect us? Thank you.
November 24, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Jamie
regretteruane.bsky.social
Slept dreaming of, woke up thinking about the extraordinary What Resembles the Grave but Isn’t by Anne Boyer
what resembles the grave but isn't Always falling into a hole, then saying "ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole," getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying "ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole," getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying "this is not your grave, get out of the hole"; sometimes being pushed, saying "you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave," and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying "this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole," all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually; sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there's just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying "look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from…
November 24, 2025 at 9:30 AM
vanjpes.bsky.social
Next up in the Chaplin filmography: the pretty decent Cruel, Cruel Love (1914, dirs. George Nichols and Mack Sennett). Charlie (here no tramp but a well-heeled gentleman) gains and immediately loses a fiancée, becomes despondent, imagines himself in hell, and then everything ends in a wild fight.
Cruel, Cruel Love title card A sitting room in a well appointed house. A table, various plants and flowers, and a piano can be seen in the background. Minta Durfee and Charlie Chaplin are in the foreground, Chaplin nervous about proposing. Out in the garden, a dejected Charlie is being sent away by a furious Minta who has mistakenly understood him to be flirting with her maid. Later, a distraught Charlie thinks he has taken poison and imagines himself in hell, being prodded at with pitchforks by two devils.
November 24, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by Jamie
afizgig.bsky.social
I have a few thoughts about this...

I've seen this movie must be 50 times no joke! I love it! It's a classic fun, camp, humorous horror movie that everybody loves cause of the absurdity, but oh boy I'm shooketh hear me out in comments 👇🏻
afizgig.bsky.social AlTheColorsOfTheDark💀🦇🪦 @afizgig.bsky.social · 1d
#NW
PIECES (1982) 📽
dir. Juan Piquer Simón

The original uncensored directors cut presented in Spanish with original score by Librado Pastor cause.... I ain't seen it 🤷‍♂️
A bluray copy of the movie Pieces I recently bought.
November 23, 2025 at 10:21 PM
vanjpes.bsky.social
Murder by the Clock (1931, dir. Edward Sloman) is a macabre mystery that while not technically good (early talkie and it shows) is *huge* fun. Crypts, murders, an old dark house, hidden passages, fabulously fake cemeteries. And Lilyan Tashman having an absolute ball as the scheming Laura Endicott.
Murder by the Clock title card A woman stands in a dining room, paintings of important, dead men hanging on the wall next to her. Behind her, we can see the creeping shadow of someone approaching her with hands outstretched to attack. A man in a suit on the left sits opposite a woman with blonde hair in a dress. Between them is a table with candles on it. In a graveyard at night, a tomb has beeb opened and a man in a suit can be seen climbing out of it.
November 23, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Reposted by Jamie
stuartmanning.bsky.social
It's Doctor Who Day. To celebrate, I've edited and designed a new digital bookazine for @radiotimes.bsky.social, collecting the best of the magazine's articles and rare photography from the show's early years. Download it FREE from www.radiotimes.com/doctor-who-t...
Cover design for Radio Times: Doctor Who Insiders – The Early Years. Internal spread from Radio Times: Doctor Who Insiders – The Early Years. Internal spread from Radio Times: Doctor Who Insiders – The Early Years. Internal spread from Radio Times: Doctor Who Insiders – The Early Years.
November 23, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Reposted by Jamie
grindrod.bsky.social
My other books, Concretopia on Britain’s postwar rebuilding, Iconicon, on the stuff built since the 80s, and Outskirts, on the green belt, make a loose trilogy about our weird and wonderful modern places www.johngrindrod.co.uk/books
November 23, 2025 at 4:32 PM
vanjpes.bsky.social
It's Boris Karloff's birthday today (BOTD as William Henry Pratt in 1887), so here he is with some canine pals at home in 1936, just because
Boris Karloff in his garden in 1936. He's sitting in a big whicker armchair, surrounded by dogs, looking very happy (photo by William Grimes/Michael Ochs Archives)
November 23, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Jamie
tobytram.bsky.social
Knowing she’d like the tiles I forwarded this post to my mother.

She responded with a long memory - I had totally forgotten my English grandfather was a fish and chip shop owner for a while in the 1960’s (many decades later he was head chef for Ipswich Town FC restaurant)

I like the chairs waiting
Part of a text message from my mother. …buildings, rooms half filled with wood chairs not stacked but standing around waiting for the extra bus load of holiday makers to tumble into the restaurant..it was a wonderous place to roam, clackety clack up thé bare stairs ..in the small back yard I sat at the machine that I dropped the potatoes in thén the machine would peel them thén another machine sliced them. A lot of fun. My sister would help with serving customers, I was far to shy for that, hence the glory of the potatoe peelers ...
November 23, 2025 at 11:18 AM
vanjpes.bsky.social
My occasional prod to say I wrote a book of short horror stories, and they're really fucking good (said by other people with inarguably exceptional taste)

Shitty people get what's coming to 'em. But also, cannibalism! Ghost children! Revenge! Grave robbing! You know, the fun stuff.

Links below
The cover for a book called A Row of Open Graves (And Nine Other Stories Of A Macabre Persuasion) against a purple background. The cover is an illustration of a torchlight illuminating three open graves with bodies inside them. A spade can also be seen. Cover illustration by Ray Newman. Two quotes from reviews are next to the cover. They are: "If you enjoy quintessentially British ghost stories and weird tales, then do yourself a favour and check out A Row of Open Graves" and "Ten fantastic and very British horror tales to entertain"
November 23, 2025 at 11:02 AM
Reposted by Jamie
charliebrigden.bsky.social
A ★★★★★ review of Le Samouraï (1967)
Impeccably cool, unbearably tense. Everything is so concise, the way a whole devastating relationship is basically played out silently. Amazing score, too.
boxd.it
November 23, 2025 at 10:30 AM
vanjpes.bsky.social
The Unholy Three (1930, dir. Jack Conway) stars Lon Chaney in a sound remake of a film he made with Tod Browning 5 years before. A blackly comic crime melodrama, it was Chaney's only talkie before he passed away. What a loss to sound pictures, too: he's *fantastic* in it, the film itself great fun.
The Unholy Three title card The titular trio: Echo, the ringleader, Tweedle Dee, a person of smaller stature, and Hercules, a tall, muscular man sit plotting out their next job. Echo in his guise as Mrs O'Grady, next to a metal cage. The door is slightly open and a gorilla inside is trying to get out. Echo is shaking his fist at someone offscreen. The trio again, in a lounge, next to a fireplace Echo and Tweedle Dee sat a table, Hercules stood up next to them. Echo has his hand over his mouth, having just realised a mistake.
November 22, 2025 at 9:01 PM
vanjpes.bsky.social
Pitching a horror story in which an England cricket fan goes to sleep while England are winning and wakes up to find out they... didn't stack it and won the test. Said fan immediately knows something is very, very wrong with reality...

I know nothing about cricket btw
November 22, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by Jamie
mgcroadster.bsky.social
Horrors are merely described but not seen, dead sled dogs the only corpses on show, and James Arness's shadowy planet trekking space carrot is largely unseen; Nyby/Hawks lets the audiences imaginations do the heavy lifting and it works a treat. My Letterboxd review... #FilmSky boxd.it/bN3sxd
A ★★★★½ review of The Thing from Another World (1951)
Christian Nyby's (side-eye...) sci-fi classic; 87 delicious Hawksian minutes, with not an ounce of fat on display. It's all there; dialogue has never overlapped as entertainingly as this, Kenneth Tobe...
boxd.it
November 21, 2025 at 8:43 PM
vanjpes.bsky.social
If you STILL like lists after that - and again, who doesn't? - here's one I put on Letterboxd with every film from the second book in the Kinsey series about horror, science fiction and fantasy movies, this time Fantastic Films of the Decades Volume 2: The 30s

boxd.it/QfGgu
Fantastic Films of the Decades Volume 2: The 30s
Every film from Fantastic Films of the Decades Volume 2: The 30s
boxd.it
November 21, 2025 at 7:56 PM
vanjpes.bsky.social
If you like lists - and who doesn't? - here's one I put on Letterboxd with every (existing) film featured in Wayne Kinsey's opening book in a series about horror, science fiction and fantasy movies, Fantastic Films of the Decades Volume 1: The Silent Era

boxd.it/QfEoQ
Fantastic Films of the Decades: The Silent Era
Every (existing) film from Fantastic Films of the Decades Volume 1: The Silent Era by Wayne Kinsey
boxd.it
November 21, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by Jamie
regretteruane.bsky.social
This gorgeous little book of slides from the Design Council collection has arrived & single handedly saved my sanity
A book with a white cover and a photo of a slide of a traffic island titled projecting British design stuck onto it in red lettering A white book page with a photo of a slide children in animal costumes
November 21, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Jamie
miseryvulture.bsky.social
I have this knit dress with imitation pearl buttons and a frilled collar that I thrifted last year, and whenever I wear it I feel like I'm working in a 1930s office. Specifically, I feel like Ginger Rogers in this charming little Paramount short.

youtu.be/pVtULLtX6aU?...
"Office Blues" Ginger Rogers (1930)
YouTube video by Michael Laprarie
youtu.be
November 21, 2025 at 7:49 AM
vanjpes.bsky.social
"It's alive! It's alive!" Happy birthday to Frankenstein (1931, dir. James Whale), which scared US box offices from this day in 1931
In a laboratory, Frankenstein and his assistant Fritz watch as a table with a body in bandages on it starts to lift upwards. Light from equipment casts shadows across the room. Frankenstein looks up, with a range of lab equipment behind him, a determined look on his face. Frankenstein stares intently at the his creation's hand, which has already twitched, to be certain it is animated and alive Frankenstein in rapture staring upwards now that his creation (visible behind him) is alive. His friends Moritz and Waldman are either side of him, shocked at what is happening.
November 21, 2025 at 7:39 AM
Reposted by Jamie
moviessilently.bsky.social
Alice Guy made a comedy about a visibly pregnant woman on a crime spree because she has the munchies.

Alice does not need your help or consolation prizes.
November 21, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Jamie
raynewman.bsky.social
BLOG POST: An attempt to put into words my *feelings* about generative AI and why (a) I don't like being tricked into consuming it and (b) I just don't care about things that are made using it.

precastreinforced.co.uk/2025/11/21/a...
AI farts stink up your art
Purely as a matter of aesthetics, on an emotional, instinctive level, I reject the use of generative AI in the creative arts. When people were playing with Craiyon a few years ago, I found somethin…
precastreinforced.co.uk
November 21, 2025 at 6:06 AM