Curse You, Demon of the Night!

According to film lore, director Jacques Tourneur didn't want the actual demon in "Night of the Demon" (or "Curse of the Demon" in the U.S.) because he thought it was too obvious. What's obvious is the man, who admittedly had a way with the spooky, clearly didn't realize the importance of a giant fanged monster with great big claws to the audience. Especially the audience at the drive-in. These people were easily distracted — by the speaker falling off the car door, by the soda spilling on the front seat, and by the young woman's breasts in the tight sweater.

Dana Andrews is Dr. Holden, a no-nonsense psychologist who goes over to England to help sort out some bushwa about a devil cult. Unfortunately, the evil Dr. Karswell (Niall MacGinnis) is no phony, and soon Dr. Holden gets the parchment and has only a couple days to live, which he spends getting blown around Karswell's house and gazing at Peggy Cummins and her sweater.

The "Curse" version is the U.S. release and is about 10 minutes shorter, from what I can gather. I watched "Curse" but not the slightly longer "Night" because what got cut was plot that could only have gotten in the way of the story. Some excellent creepiness. Take the cheesy demon out and this is straight film noir. Dana Andrews looks like my friend and fellow CACA member Thos. Good stuff. Three honest coils.

What season is it again?

Last night — clear, cold. Flannel pajamas and I shut the window I usually leave cracked. This morning — clear and sunny, 50s. Hmm. Had to roll out early to interview an 8th grader. I don't remember school starting at such a ghastly hour, but that's probably just old age kicking in. Then off to get an oil change. So — classic LL Bean Norwegian over a Bean flannel shirt, and lined LL Bean jeans. SmartWool socks and LL Bean boat shoes. (Hmm II — lots of Leon in there.) This is on Long Pond Road in Salisbury, Conn., looking toward Sharon. Mudge Pond in distance. Very trouty-looking stream in that valley, too. Might have to go bushwacking later.

Fall 2012 Style

After a summer of not giving a damn about clothes or much of anything else I snapped out of it when the weather did. Harder to do "don't give as shit" when it's cold and rainy out. I also did an enormous purge of the closet(s). I'm talking 50 suits and sportcoats, with shirts, chinos, jeans, shoes, ties and odds and ends to go with them. It went to a local church's fall festival sale, to aid a food bank. What was left over went to a thrift shop that helps people pay medical bills. Those worthy outfits get some cash, I get some breathing space, everybody wins.

Never Answer the Door During a Rain Storm

So in this DVD set — "50 Incredibly Lousy Flicks" — I spotted a Sondra Locke flick called "The Seducers."

Hey, it was made in 1977, so there's a decent chance of some gratuitous nudity and bad white people dancing. And "The Seducers" delivered.

See, George's wife, who is a croquet fiend, has to beat it from their Northern California home to San Diego on account of her father's appendix burst. You'll have that, and George is sanguine as he settles in for a relaxing evening of listening to the hi fi while wearing shirts with huge open collars.

But the doorbell rings, and these two soaking wet cuties say they're lost and can they use the phone.

George has just turned 40, in one of those clever plot twists, and you can tell he's kinda wondering, with the wife in San Diego and all...

So the kids go to freshen up. They take a hell of a long time, though, and when George goes to see what's up they are nekkid in the hot tub.

George tries to resist but he is, after all, just a weak man.

This doesn't turn out so well, for either George or the viewer, because the next 45 minutes are devoted to the gals tying up George, trashing his house, killing the kid who delivers the groceries, trying on Mrs. George's clothes, laughing hysterically, and, finally, getting hit by a van from the Humane Society.

I am not making this up.

Death in fish tank. Bad dancing to worse music. Sandra Locke and Colleen Cap, nekkid from the rear, which is fine. Dogpile in hot tub, with superimposed images. Croquet as dramatic foreshadowing. Fun with makeup. Shrill laughter. Gratuitous use of hourglass to indicate that George is on thin ice. Greatest deus ex machina ending of all time. Boring. Shot in the dark. Bad dubbing. Two coils.

A Sink Full of Trout; My Cousin Collin

I couldn't stand it anymore, and bolted for Ulster County, N.Y. the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Even though the streams were still low, the temperatures had cooled a bit and I thought there might be a sporting chance at catching a few trout.

I make do with fishing for bass and other warm water species during the dog days of summer. It's an exercise in rationalization, based on the assumption that it's just as much fun catching a largemouth as a fat rainbow.

It isn't.

The Esopus Creek below the Portal continues to be plagued by murky releases. Plus over the weekend the flow was raised to accomodate tubers.

Above the Portal, where the Esopus is a medium-sized trout stream, things were a little better. Not a lot of water, but enough to keep the half-dozen or so deep runs — between Old Route 28 and Route 42 on the east end and the third state-maintained angler's pull-off a couple miles upstream — full of relatively cool water.

Dusk was good, but dawn even better. And I mean dawn. I left the house Labor Day at 5 a.m., in the dark, and tied on a Stimulator by penlight 25 minutes later.

There are some black stoneflies on the rocks up there. They look like termites, sort of, and can be imitated subsurface with a Copper John or anything else with a v-shaped tail.

Or you can plop a big hairy Stimulator in the head of a given run, where bigger trout gather to complain about the weather and enjoy some scarce aerated water, and watch the fish slam them.

I had an order for fish, so I went into killing mode for a while, long enough to feed a couple of people and not feel bad about it. (For the record, I release over 90 percent of my catch.)

Cleaning them promptly, I noticed that these fish were pretty much starving, which would explain why they were so enthused about the Stimulator. "At last! A square meal!"

All in all I took enough for me, my mother, and my cousin Dwight and his wife Winnie.

Meanwhile, back in the Nutmeg State, I took my cousin Collin, 17, out in the canoe one morning. I gave him the choice of using his spinning rod, which I described as Communist and weak, or using a fly rod, the manly, American option.

Collin's a good lad. He went with the manly choice.

He's a good student, too. After some fiddling, he got a bluegill. Later on he got a largemouth. Flushed with success, he followed me into the squirrelly little brook with a short rod and tried his hand at spooky brook trout. He got a couple of strikes but no takers, and did not get discouraged by hiding behind rocks and occasionally getting tangled up in the back cast.

Sacre Blecch!

They look sad because it's only the opening sequence and there are 90 minutes to go.

Jean Rollin"s "Requiem for a Vampire" is a little bit Antonioni, a little bit Hammer, and a whole lot of boring.

See, these two girls bust out of boarding school and naturally all they want to do is dress up like clowns and shoot at the cops.

This does not work out so well for the poor sap they got to drive them but c'est la vie.

So they wander around the countryside until they blunder into a ruined castle that everybody insists on calling a chateau. It's got some pretty lame vampires and three ugly mooks who apparently look after the vampires in between raping the gals they got chained up in the basement.

One of the mooks looks a bit like Ralphus from "Bloodsucking Freaks" if that helps when you are wondering whether to rent this sucker.

So there's a lot of blah blah blah from the main vampire about being the last of the line, and lots of aimless walking around, and mooks attacking the chained up nekkid girls and saying "arrrgh" a lot, and some more shots of the countryside, and of green slime, and the clown suits, and the revolvers that have 56 shots in them, and some mild lesbitation, and what does it all mean?

It means you should check the batteries in the remote, because you're gonna be hitting that fast-forward.

Bah. One grudging coil. (I can't find the coil photos, so you'll have to imagine it.)

An outtake from the upcoming "50 Shades of Grey"? Nope — just the vampire slaves tapping into the fringe bennies on a slow day in the dungeon.

They like this sort of thing in France. In Europe, for that matter.

When hippies breed, part VII — The Boho Vampiress. First she lulls you to sleep singing "Joe Hill." Then she closes in for the kill.

"Shall we go up? Shall we go down? Shall we take our clothes off? Shall we reload?"

"Or shall we roll around nekkid in the vampire master bedroom?"

Dog Days 2012

Now is the time of year when fly-rodders in Northwest Connecticut must either trek to the Farmington or forget about fishing for trout.

August is bass season — smallmouth in the Housatonic, and largemouth in lakes and ponds.

Also bluegill, crappie and perch.

It's not bad, floating around in a pontoon boat chucking gigantic flies at the dumb brutes.

But it only goes so far. I'd gladly sacrifice summer weather for waders, a sweater and trout.

Luckily, the heat wave snapped, and it's getting down in the 50s at night. We're getting there.

Pontoon boat — powered by oars and/or swim fins

Largemouth bass, Lower Lake, Mt. Riga, Conn. This is a typical specimen. They get bigger.

The colorful and silly bluegill (aka sunfish)

A larger largemouth. A largemouth bass is basically a swimming mouth.

The perch. They don't get much bigger around here. They travel in swarms.

The crappie, which looks like the hideous combination of a bass and a bluegill. People out west and in the south like to pronounce it "croppie," but not me.

Yours truly, in delightful LL Bean fishing shirt, with nylon and polyester goodness. The most comfortable one of its kind I've found. Discontinued, of course.