Saturday, January 16, 2010

Friday, December 4, 2009

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Hands of Orlac














The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände) (1924)
A concert pianist, Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt), loses his hands in a railway accident. Replacement hands are transplanted onto him in an experimental procedure, but the hands are those of a recently-executed murderer. From now on the pianist is tortured by panic attacks and irrational fears. He believes that with the hands of the murderer he has also gained the murderer's predisposition to killing. Strange signs and bizarre threatening letters reinforce these fears. When his father is killed, with whom he was on bad terms, the pianist is suspected of the murder. He only finds peace by clearing up the plot.

There were two direct remakes:
Mad Love (USA 1935) with Peter Lorre, directed by Karl FreundThe Hands of Orlac / Les mains d'Orlac (GB/FRA 1960) with Mel Ferrer and Christopher Lee, directed by Edmond T. Gréville.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Lon Chaney Jr.
























Lon Chaney, Jr. (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973) was an American character actor, known mainly for his roles in monster movies and as the son of a famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney. Originally credited in films as Creighton Chaney, he was first credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." in 1935. Chaney had English, French and Irish ancestry.

Death

At the age of 67, Lon Chaney, Jr. died on July 12, 1973 of heart failure in San Clemente, California.
His body was donated for medical research.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Edgar Allan Poe
























Death of Edgar Allan Poe
On October 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say Poe's final words were "Lord help my poor soul. "All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. However, the actual cause of death remains a mystery; from as early as 1872, cooping was commonly believed to have been the cause.




Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Art of Steve Fiorilla 2



The wind blows through the crumbling canyons in Fiorillaville. The chill drives the inhabitants inside where they huddle around pot-bellied stoves and tell tales about the glorious long-ago lives of their majestic ancestors. It was a time before the Great Fiorilla Madness that changed the world forever...

Here are images found inside a locked metal box under the floorboards of an abandoned house in Fiorillaville. It was reported that the house dematerialized when the box was taken outside.