This morning we met our new Pastor, her first Sunday leading the church. Pastor Tonya comes across as intelligent and articulate, perhaps with a more serious demeanor than Pastor Gordon, whose style was open and expansive. But she also seems very pleasant, and she said that - of the several churches at which she has ministered over the last fifteen years, in Texas and California - she has never received a welcome like the one she's gotten since she came to Reseda UMC, so that was nice to hear.
The singing was very good today, and in the car on my way home from Pearl's, I worked on a few vocal exercises to try and increase my range and give the high end some strength and stability. I like to sing Todd Rundgren songs, and Bowie too. Just stuff to work on to make my voice more powerful so I can finally hit that Pat Upton note, as mentioned a month or two ago.
Hot and swampy this afternoon, but "only" 102. :) I stayed in and read my Phillip Nelson/Martin Luther King book, and then this evening I read some more.
This eve, I watched one of the weirdest horror movies I have ever seen : "Mad Love" (1935) starring Peter Lorre as a gifted surgeon who is losing his mind over his obsession with a Paris actress. Yvonne Orlac (played by the beautiful Frances Drake, who we saw recently in "The Invisible Ray") works in a live show at Le Parisian House du Torture, or something similar to that name, and right off the bat as the movie begins, her stage show lives up to it's billing. The ticket taker is a headless woman in a tux. Ms. Orlac is subjected to The Rack and other barbaric contraptions. This is performed in front of a live audience, and Peter Lorre, the shaven-headed surgeon, is shown to be her biggest fan. He has attended 47 performances in a row, seated in the same box every night, and he finally finagles a meeting with the actress backstage, which she feels obligated to accept because he has been such a good customer.
But of course he is Peter Lorre, and make no mistake - he is no Mr. Moto here, no polite Japanese detective. In "Mad Love", he is playing the type of supremely evil and creepy role for which he became famous and even stereotyped, but in this movie he gives an iconic performance.
Once his character finds out that Madame Orlac is married, and that she has just given her final performance in Le House du Tortiere, because she and her husband are moving to England, he comes unglued. He is fixated on the actress, and as a consolation prize he purchases a wax statue of her that stood in the lobby of the theater, and he has it delivered to his mansion, where he places it in his living room, and plays organ music to it while reciting weird mantras about Pygmalion and Galatea.
Listen : I am trying to tell you how weird this movie is, but I can't do it justice.
You've just gotta see it for yourself, and in fact you are hereby ordered to do so.
"Mad Love" is a remake of a well-known silent film from 1924 called "The Hands Of Orlac", which was taken from a book of the same name. Those hands refer to Madame Orlac's husband, a world class pianist (played by Colin Clive, aka "Dr. Framkenstein" himself!). After a piano recital, he is injured in a train accident, which leads to his becoming a patient of Peter Lorre's "Dr. Gogol", one of the weirdest characters in horror history. Madame Orlac the actress has become fearful of Dr. Gogol, because he is clearly a psycho, but he is also the only surgeon in the world who can work the kind of miracles for which he has become famous.
Her husband, Mr. Orlac the pianist..........needs a hand transplant.
Um.......better make that "both hands". You see, his own hands became mangled in the train crash.
Horrific, I know.
And to make matters much, much worse, Peter Lorre has a plan to both operate on the husband Mr. Orlac and to steal away his wife, the actress with whom he has been obsessed.
I have told you too much already, but even so, you can see this movie afresh just by starting at the beginning and immersing yourself in this ultimate example of 1930s Demented Horror.
As I have become a fan of the genre over the last several years, I have asked myself "where did this fascination with True Creepiness come from"?
What was the atmosphere like in Hollywood at the time? I know that German Expressionism had a big influence, but boy were they ever exploring the dark and sinister side of things in the 1930s.
You'd not only be hard pressed to find a film this odd, and this dark, in our modern era, but I don't think you could find one in all of filmdom. The grim looking sets, the photography, and the melodramatic stage acting - with Peter Lorre's presence on top - create an exploration into some macabre sections of the human psyche. They don't make horror even close to this anymore. This strange, this weird.
Two very big thumbs up, therefore. You have got to see "Mad Love", and then when you are done you will be grateful for the return of the mild-mannered Mr. Moto, Peter Lorre's other extreme.
I am gonna fall asleep any second, so I will see you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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