iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jamie

Alan Sepinwall @sepinwall.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Free for everyone to read, it's an all-Rod Serling edition of Ask Alan, with plenty of great questions about a guy I've learned a thing or three about while writing a biography of him:

whatsalanwatching.com

Ask Alan: All-Rod Serling edition

Taking your questions about 'The Twilight Zone' creator as we approach the publication of my Serling biography

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 23h

One of tonight’s short silent 📽️ Do Detectives Think? (1927, dir. Fred Guiol) gets us a step closer to the familiar Stan and Ollie partnership, but also includes one of their always welcome flirtations with the macabre with graveyard slapstick and murderous brutes with knives. It’s also a lot of fun.

Front page of a paper called Daily Post with the headline “Throat-slasher in sensational escape!” along with a picture of a mean looking man with dark stubble and messy hair.

In a graveyard, Stan reaches out to pick up two hats, with his shadow and the shadow of the grave stone he is leaning out from showing on a wall behind him.

Stand and Ollie stand, worried by a noise. Behind them, the shadow image of a goat and some metal cans can be seen on a wall, looking devilish.

The man from the front page of the newspaper in a butler’s outfit, holding a knife, seen through a keyhole that another character is looking through.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

‘In His Image’, the opener of The Twilight Zone’s maligned fourth season of hour-long episodes, has its protagonist Alan suffering from murderous rages and gaps and errors in his memories. Finding out what is happening will bring no relief. This Charles Beaumont-scripted ep is a pretty bleak start.

In a still from the episode, a man, Alan, stands on a subway platform, in conversation with a disheveled woman who is harassing him about his eternal soul.

Title screen for the episode has “In His Image” laid over an image of a woman in her apartment, in which chairs, a coffee table, a chess set and decorations can be seen.

Rod Serling, in black suit and tie with white shirt, stands speaking to camera in front of a dark background.

The man from the first image stands with a woman in a graveyard. He is looking at a grave and headstone, his hand held up on his head in distress. She is looking at him with worry. Behind them, a sheriff is walking towards them, a police car visible behind him.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

We love talking about Columbo for good reason but let’s not forget Richard Levinson and William link also steered Ellery Queen to television for one pretty great season, with a similarly outstanding guest star roster: Joan Collins, Vincent Price, Ida Lupino, Roddy McDowall, Vera Miles, and more.

Photograph of the dvd set of Ellery Queen Mysteries: The Complete Series against a green fabric background

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

To round off an Old Dark House evening, tonight’s 📽️ was The Cat and the Canary (1939, dir. Elliott Nugent) in which Bob Hope does his cowardly smart-ass thing character and Paulette Goddard steals the film. It has atmosphere, style and remembers to ditch the comedy for a cobwebbed, thrilling ending.

Poster for The Cat and the Canary shows illustrations of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard bottom left, a monstrous looking hand top right, cast details and the film title written in large yellow lettering.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Bonus 'The Bat', (directed by Paul Nickell) for the premiere episode of NBC's Dow Hour of Great Mysteries. A solid TV adaptation, with some appealing low-budget imagery and a good go at atmosphere. And the cast! Helen Hayes, Margaret Hamilton, and Jason Robards are in this and all perfect. Good fun.

A person in a bat costume stands arms spread out at the top of a stairway

A fake bat - meant to be real - pinned to a doorway in close-up

An open window on a roof, with a man leaning out of it, looking down. To the top right of frame, a person in a bat costume looks down at him, their arm raised as if they are about to throw something.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

A third The Bat for me, this time from 1959, written and directed by Crane Wilbur and with 100% more Vincent Price. He's in a version that dispenses almost entirely with any horror elements and plays like a light but cynical Scooby Doo episode. It's still fun, though, and has its moments of style.

A gloved hand holds a magazine page, which shows two images of bats with the headline 'Warning: Beware of Bats!'

A shot of windows with net curtains, and outside a figure dressed in a suit, with a mask obscuring their face, wearing a hat, and gloves that have long claws attached to them.

That same figure is in close-up, holding up one gloved, claw-fingered hand and moving towards the camera

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Nobody’s asked for rankings of versions of The Bat: The Bat Whispers (1930) The Bat (1926) The Bat (1960) The Bat (1959)

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

The Monster (1925, dir. Roland West) adapts Crane Wilbur's play for some old dark house fun, a mad scientist, and wicked experiments. It's a slightly creepy comedy, with naive hero Johnny trying to prove himself to the woman he loves. Chaney plays it broad, though we still get some sinister imagery.

A figure with a cadaverous face wearing a cloak sits in a tree looking down at something

A woman lays on a bed, seemingly unconscious, covered in a blanket. From either side of her, arms reach out from under the bed to grab her.

Lon Chaney in a doctor's gown, with thick greyed hair, advancing towards the camera, an angry, sinister expression on his face

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Dark house mystery thriller The Bat (1926, dir. Roland West) is great fun. In it, a masked thief dressed as a bat terrorises a house full of people as a mystery plays out. It's a solid story enlivened by West and cinematographer Arthur Edeson cramming the film with some gorgeous, inventive imagery.

A large room in an apartment. There are two large candle holders on either side of the frame, and between them a figure sits at a small table, their chair trailing a runner across the floor. There is a large window and outside we can see another building with an illuminated window.

A dirty window frame in a basement. The window is smeared and on the other side of the glass is a figure wearing a large bat's mask. It is in silhouette and appears menacing.

A staircase is nearly completely dark, outside of a shaft of light. In the beam of light, the dialogue "Give me that blue print!" is written.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

The Old Dark House (1932, dir. James Whale) is about as good as films get. Stranded by a raging storm, several people find the house they seek shelter in might be even more dangerous. It's funny, thrilling, genuinely unsettling, moving, beautifully performed, and gleefully subversive. Outstanding.

Title card for The Old Dark House, showing the name of the film and the credits 'With Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas and Charles Laughton, Produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.'

Still of Morgan the buyer, a man with a full beard, opening a door. The door is open enough so that we can see the left side of his face staring back at us.

Still of Horace Femm, a somewhat cadaverous looking man in formal suit and combed back grey hair, stood holding a knife and carving fork.

Still of several people looking up a staircase at Morgan, who is looming over them in threat. Behind him, further up the stairs, we can see the hand of a hidden person, resting on the bannister.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Roland West remade his The Bat (1926) as The Bat Whispers a few years later in 1930. As a pre-code mystery, it drops the expressionist trappings and dials up the comedy, so we get a substantially different but equally entertaining film. Shot in widescreen with some daring camera work it's great fun.

A figure dressed in a mask and cloak that resembles bat wings stands in a tree, on a thick branch, preparing to jump down

That same figure, in mask and cloak, is walking slowly towards the camera, hunched over and menacing. The figure is shot lit against the wall of a room.

A gloved hand reaches out to a candle, their intention to snuff the candle out

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Dunno why it took me so long to get around to The Cat and the Canary (1927, dir. Paul Leni), because it's *really* good. Plenty of non-annoying comedy sits alongside proper horror imagery and some effectively creepy sequences. Beautifully made and performed, it's a little long but *very* enjoyable.

Gorgeous illustrated frame of the many-towered mansion, set against a green-tinted night sky.

Shot of the portrait of the dead millionaire, from below. He looks severe, with one eye wider than the other. I'd say he's a real bastard, but he made it hard for his money-grubbing relatives to claim his money, so... who knows?

Shot of a secret door in a bookcase opening and an arm reaching out. The hand has claws and hair on the back of it.

Looming close-up of the maniac. They wear a hat, and have a fake eye and tusks protruding from their mouth, a leering grin on their face. They are wearing a hat pulled down low.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Pondering the best Old Dark House classics as I revisit 1926’s The Bat

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Wilfully frustrating, nightmarish, oddly moving, full of remarkable imagery, Seven Footprints to Satan (1929, dir. Benjamin Christensen) is best come to knowing as little as possible about it. A distorted riff on the old dark house mystery, it's frequently brilliant, challenging and darkly funny.

Two people, a man in a tuxedo, a woman in a dress, are in a corridor. A large painting is on the wall behind them, to their side two large, ornate wooden doors. They are looking off towards a figure we can only see in silhouette. The figure is gesturing for them to follow them.

The man in the tuxedo from the previous shot is reaching up to a transom that has been blocked by a blind with a skull and crossbones on it.

The man in the tuxedo again, he is in a large hall, at the bottom of a set of steps. The room and steps are brightly illuminated and on the steps are even brighter outlines of footprints. The man is looking up, deciding which step to take, and appears very nervous.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Ah, but then straight after you get a Anthony Lawrence (The Sixth Sense, Sweet, Sweet Rachel etc) Satanic Panic episode in Legion of Demons, as country girl Shirley Knight moves to the city and runs afoul of a coven of witches. Director Paul Stanley and DoP Emmett Bergholz go all in, too. Wonderful.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Every good series has its duffers, and so it goes with the likes of recent ep Doorway to Death, in which poor Susan Dey’s two younger siblings effectively pimp her out to the lonely, but homicidal and axe-wielding ghost in the apartment above, courtesy of a risible, meanderingJimmy Sangster script.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Intervals of Darkness is indeed Ray’s The October Country, perfect for longer nights closing in. It’s creepy, unsettling, weird and, often, darkly funny. Every one of Ray’s books are great (his mystery novel included), you should definitely read them all.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It’s a Saturday, so it’s time for the Weekend Book of Ghosts and Horror asking the big questions: Did a flying saucer visit the Buckinghamshire village of High Wycombe in 1871?

A book called Weekend Book of Ghosts and Horror which has a cover illustration of a woman screaming, only half of her face is a skull.

Text from a story in the book:

The undertaker and the thing from outer space
By DONALD DINSLEY

DID A FLYING SAUCER visit the Buckinghamshire village of High Wycombe in 1871?

A manuscript hidden in a secret drawer of a local undertaker's desk suggests something odd happened in the early hours of October 4 that year. And analysing the manuscript, which remained hidden for nearly 100 years, David Langford, holder of an Oxford degree in physics, is convinced that the tale has the hall-mark of truth.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Really enjoying a revisit to this Ghost Story (aka Circle of Fear) set, William Castle’s messy but frequently beautifully weird and entertaining horror anthology series. All the best bits of 1970s horror television, plus some of its worst, and so fantastically odd throughout (complimentary).

A photograph of the Blu-ray set for Ghost Story aka Circle of Fear, the cover showing Sebastian Cabot on it, with other people floating behind him in a purple swirling image.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Yes, *you* like your ‘prestige’ television, but I’m just watching the Circle of Fear episode where Kim Darby and Martin Sheen fight with a cursed, malevolent hobby horse toy, so I ask you, who here is having more fun? I thought so.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I don’t care for voted ‘best 100’ lists of anything, give me your weirdest show you love and write an essay about it

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The coast looking beautiful yet again, this time late afternoon daylight edition, with a seagull cameo

A shingle/pebble beach, divided by a wooden fence, stretches out to low tide, revealing rocks and beyond it, sea and a slightly cloudy blue sky. It looks beautiful and peaceful. On the fence, a seagull can be seen looking out, marvelling at the beauty of nature. Probably.

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Reposted by Jamie

Andrew Nette @pulpcurry.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Travelling at present so next Substack newsletter is delayed. Meanwhile, here’s a short story I wrote about Lee Marvin’s passion for deep sea fishing, his unlikely friendship with actor Toshiro Mifune & the film that they made together, HELL IN THE PACIFIC (1968) open.substack.com/pub/andrewne...

open.substack.com

"I only make movies to finance my fishing": A short story about Lee Marvin, Toshiro Mifune, the film they made together and deep sea fishing.

Lee Marvin was a lot of things.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So, when one finishes Ludwig, does one follow it with Death Valley (oh everyone also looks tremendously annoying in it, too) or Magpie Murders? Or just go straight to Campion?

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Silent London @silentlondon.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Don’t miss the 4K restoration of horror-com classic THE CAT AND THE CANARY with @neilkbrand.bsky.social score on 1 November at BFI Southbank whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

whatson.bfi.org.uk

Buy cinema tickets for The Cat and the Canary + intro by Patrick Stanbury of Photoplay | BFI Southbank

2026-11-01T15:15:00.000, Screen NFT1

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Other people say things like “Ten fantastic and very British horror tales…wouldn’t be out of place on an episode of Inside No. 9” www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

goodreads.com

A Row Of Open Graves: And Nine Other Stories Of A Macab…

Here are ten tales of a universe with a door halfway op…

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If you’re wondering just how hard a mid-1930s radio horror series could really go, imagining surely it was pretty light stuff, a bit twee? The answer is it did not fuck around.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia page on radio horror Lights Out reads: Cooper's run was characterized by grisly stories spiked with dark, tongue-in-cheek humor, a sort of radio Grand Guignol. A character might be buried, eaten, or skinned alive, vaporized in a ladle of white-hot steel, absorbed by a giant slurping amoeba, have his arm torn off by a robot, or forced to endure torture, beating or decapitation-always with the appropriate blood-curdling acting and sound effects.
Cooper stayed on the program until June 1936, when another Chicago writer, Arch Oboler, took over.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I wrote a collection of short horror stories inspired by mid-20th century radio and television like One Step Beyond and Quiet, Please! Come for the classic influences, stay for the cosmic justice, exploding body parts, ghostly revenge, cannibalism, and grave robbing. Clever people say it’s great!

The cover for the book A Row of Open Graves (And Nine Other Stories Of A Macabre Persuasion) which shows an illustration of open graves with a beam of yellow torchlight illuminating the purple bodies laying in them, along with a spade. The book title and author name are also in purple. Cover design by Ray Newman. Set against a purple background.

Two quotes against a purple background read as follows:

"Quintessentially British ghost stories...like a modern update of M.R. James or Tales of the Unexpected, these stories are full of charming oddities and twisted secrets."
- David Sodergren

"Evans' attention to detail when
establishing the worlds of these stories is unmatched... Each story reads like a love letter."
- Saoirse Ní Chiaragáin

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

More detective shows should be clearly divorced from reality, like how in Columbo, multiple appearances from actors playing different villains represent the Lt’s brain trying to make sense of delusion and memory while receiving treatment in an institution for the breakdown he suffered

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Halfway through Ludwig S2 and the most realistic thing about it is that nearly everyone in it is tremendously annoying

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Rose Ruane @regretteruane.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

You’re Getting In My Hair, created c.1968 by Mavis Oultram, in the art therapy studio at Netherne Hospital, Surrey, where she was compelled to live. This is one of a small number of surviving works, which all feature the motif of eyes. No biographical information is currently known to us

Painting of snaking flowering brown tendrils of human hairs with blue human eyes stashed on the unfinished head of a figure with only the eyes and brows partially painted in, the rest of the face sketched out in pale pencil but almost invisible

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Up to The Messiah on Mott Street in my run thru of Night Gallery and whoo boy that lands differently these days. Always a joy to watch Edward G. Robinson act the absolute shit of a script but the story, sentimental and melancholy and rage filled and above everything, hopeful. Not just for Christmas.

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Fred Connelly @brendonconnelly.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

This was outrageous fun. I have been a guest on the best podcast for true golden age mystery buffs, talking about the genre's clichés and mechanisms. I hope the listeners don't think I'm lightweight. theinvisibleevent.com/2026/09/12/i...

The Done to Death and In GAD Trust logos, the latter is which is a graphic monocle, mustache and headphones arranged to be a detective listening to a podcast

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Matt Zoller Seitz @mattzollerseitz.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Dreamed I was watching a movie modeled on The Magnificent Seven where a town enslaved by an evil gunfighter sends a telegram seeking hired guns to defend them, and when the heroes get there, they find out the gunfighter is sixty feet tall. It was weird. But also, kind of awesome.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It’s 1980 and time for ‘Ghosts in Council Houses!’ “THE ODD-SHAPED POTATO that housewife Brenda Newman was about to peel resembled a grotesque human face. Her husband, Derek, a steelworker, put it aside to show their children, Alan, aged Il, and Kay, aged 9, when they came home from school.”

A 1980s newspaper shot of a couple called Derek and Brenda Newman and their child Lee photographed outside their ‘haunted flat’

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

In other book-excavating news, by far Jonathan Rigby’s best book? Discuss.

A photograph of the book Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema by Jonathan Rigby

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Quite taken with this Pat Boyette interpretation of The Headless Horseman

An illustration of The Headless Horseman shows the horseman riding at night, cape billowing behind him, arm raised into the night, tree branches visible at the edges, having thrown a head towards the bottom corner of the image, trailing smoke and with its eyes aflame

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Let’s all congratulate the absolute shit out of @brendonconnelly.bsky.social (and extended cast and crew) for new mystery Done to Death premiering on Radio 4 today - an achievement indeed! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

bbc.co.uk

Drama on 4 - Done to Death - BBC Sounds

A whodunnit mystery that can only be solved by... reading whodunnits.

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Jamie @vanjpes.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Blogpost: Stuff I Have Been Enjoying, the all-television edition. Here is some of the great and good of what’s been in rotation recently for me. What have you been enjoying? wp.me/pgpnV3-cF

wp.me

Stuff I Have Been Enjoying: The Armchair Edition

I don’t actually have an armchair, but never mind about that. In between being distracted by work, life, and so on, I usually keep a rolling programme of television going, but not of the live…

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Ray Newman @raynewman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

1. To escape a social media feed full of bleak news, I recommend clicking links like this one and actually *visiting* blogs. 2. I always enjoy reading lists of ‘stuff I have been enjoying’. More people should make them.

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