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Letty Lynton opens as Sternbergesque exotica, becomes a charming shipboard romance, then something more touching, before reaching an almost frightening intensity. The film’s grip lessens in the last stretch, but what’s come before is amazing.

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Ready for Halloween, thanks to Tesco!

My new Iggy Pop Tshirt. Iggy is looking undead inside a coffin shape. The header reads “Halloween 1981”.

Some have complained that there’s not much of a plot, but The Fog is a gorgeous mood piece. I would be an avid listener to Adrienne Barbeau’s late-night jazz station, even with the occasional breaks in programming to scream at her kid to get out of the house.

Adrienne Barbeau screaming on the radio between Tom Waits tracks

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I may have to watch this just to see Jayne Mansfield as a mob boss.

Jayne Mansfield, pistol in hand, menaces three blokes

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Just talking with @adriandoran.bsky.social about how Frank Miller must have modelled Marv in Sin City on Aldo Ray.

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Woman Who Came Back (1945) starts alarmingly with a witch-burning flashback and an old biddy sending a busload of passengers to their deaths, but then settles down to become something like a contemporary Universal rural Sherlock Holmes mystery minus the mystery.

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Antique Superheroes @antiquesuperheroes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Happy Christopher Reeve's Birthday to all who celebrate!

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Kazuyoshi Kawasaki @kawasaki1972.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Marina Vlady (1938 - 2026).

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Starting here, I’ve gone into a Sorcerers deep dive on Bandcamp. Groovy jazz exotica.

Celia is one of the “radio drama adapted for the big screen” quickies that were Exclusive (pre-Hammer)’s bread and butter before they stumbled upon gothics.

Chnouf is sometimes described as a procedural, but it’s actually more a How It Works account of the 1950s drug business, with Jean Gabin as our helpful guide through a series of “Now I want to see how it’s made/transported/sold” scenes. It reminded me of the first part of Scorsese’s Casino.

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I feel that on his Lonesome trilogy, Beck has captured the “cosmic American music” Gram Parsons said he was after. It’s country, but out of Scott Walker and A Winged Victory for the Sullen. The consistency of purpose and execution is such that I would defy a newcomer to order them chronologically.

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#NowPlaying #JazzSky Sweets Edison and Conte Candoli introduce us to the West Coast sound.

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#NowPlaying #JazzSky Vibes, flute—pardon me while I adjust my beret and comb my goatee.

The Devil Bat is essentially Kind Hearts and Coronets with giant shrieking bats as the means of assassination. Bela Lugosi is the least likely “Paul Carruthers” imaginable. Then again, he’s a small-town doctor who doubles as a corporate perfumier.

The Giant Claw! “It’s as big as a battleship!”

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Mysterious blonde in a huge classic car bewitches a drifter who discovers she has a double nature. There’s a lot of Robert Hossein’s Nude in a White Car (C’est Toi, le Venin) in David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and they share a dream-logic feel.

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What scene makes you emotional no matter how many times you see it?

CC Baxter looks at Miss Kubelik’s cracked compact mirror in The Apartment and suddenly understands

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

#NowPlaying Bar the odd clanger (like Surrey with the Fringe on Top), a lovely record, the strings light seasoning rather than a slathered dressing.

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

#NowPlaying This early Reprise album, arranged by Neal Hefti, is one of Sinatra’s most lighthearted, including the impenitent caught-cheating Don’cha Go ‘Way Mad, the assertion that his lady is superior to Venus because she possesses arms, and the diabolical Everybody’s Twistin’.

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Quite Hammer-adjacent, this, with James Donald, Noel Willman and Herbert Lom. Also great sci-fi bubble helmets.

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Things I was frightened of as a child: The swamp at the bottom of our garden (I grew up on a farm) The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (first film I saw—I ran screaming from the cinema) Razor blades on slides Being at the wheel of a moving vehicle with no brakes Nuns

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The casting for the Modesty Blaise film was spot-on, but Joseph Losey delivered a TV Batman-flavoured campfest that wasted Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp.

Willie and Modesty drawn by Jim Holdaway

Vitti and Stamp wearing daft hats and sharing an ice cream in Modesty Blaise (1966)

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

“Ah sayd, Gahd is ahm-NI-puh-tunt!”

Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

#NowPlaying The Karman Line by Outer Worlds Jazz Ensemble has a tasty 70s spiritual jazz aesthetic coloured by the likes of Alice Coltrane and Yusuf Lateef (yes, there’s flute and harp). It feels like the soundtrack to a movie about a detective who uses the I Ching to help him with his cases.

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

#NowPlaying After Ethiopiques, Malaysia is looking like the next jazz territory rich for exploration. This is great, from the Audible Beauty label.

Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I was never certain what exactly Alain Delon’s job is in Mort d’un Pourri, but he’s seeking vengeance for the murder of his friend and he’s seemingly indestructible as Captain Scarlet, walking away without a scratch even from having a car transporter dropped on him.

Alain Delon holding a gun and kicking someone in the nuts

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars (Corcovado)

Andy Williams’ versions of Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars and How Insensitive predate Frank Sinatra’s album with Jobim by a couple of years, and I’m convinced Frank was listening. youtu.be/MB6nrYLRp_Y?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Andy Williams - Topic

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If you play the “take a drink every time someone on screen does” game with Mr Denning Drives North, you’ll be plastered quite quickly. The crazy plotting and rife racism suggest the author was doing the same as he wrote. Another oddity is that the credits are shouted.

Just found another of Richard J Anobile’s photobooks—the precursors to VHS. I didn’t know there was one dedicated to Play It Again, Sam.

A movie poster just waiting for its typography.

Briony Neilson @brionyneilson.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

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Allen Lane, co-founder of Penguin Books, extracts a book from the brand new "Penguincubator" – a vending machine with a range of Penguin titles available for sixpence, placed outside Collet's bookshop on London's Charing Cross Road in July 1937 🗃️

b&w page with a photo of a man in a suit extracting a book from a vending machine

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Susie M @wrathofgodherself.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Some more Salamander shoes advertising for your delight.

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TCMFanatics @tcmfans.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Next up, Kim Novak and James Stewart, Bell, Book and Candle, 1958.

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Helen Day @lbflyawayhome.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Back when tinned grapefruit (or a slice of melon or a glass of orange juice) was an ‘hors d’oeuvres’ - and signified the start of a posh meal

Photo illustration of a glass filled with a portion of tinned grapefruit, standing on a patterned coaster on a green tablecloth

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I Know Where I’m Going! is my favourite film, so I’ll take the opportunity to share some photos from my pilgrimage to Mull.

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Reakythèque @reakytheque.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

#NowPlaying Track 1: Ain’t It Funky Now. Why yes, since you ask.