Review – Dark Harvest

As often as scarecrows end up turning into serial-killing demons, it’s a wonder farmers don’t find some other way to protect their crops from avian attack. This one combines the gore monster with approximately equal parts of “The Lottery” and 50s era juvenile delinquent pastiche to no particularly good effect. Then the false endings start. See if desperate

Review – The Haunted Palace

Though the title promises Poe, the story delivers Lovecraft. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” crops up here and there. The rest follows the heir to the eponymous location possessed by the evil spirit of his ancestor, who resumes efforts to summon evil forces from another dimension. Vincent Price is the main draw of this otherwise largely forgettable production. Mildly amusing

Review – Firebrand

Poor Katherine Parr. If she’d been married to any other English monarch, she would have been a memorable queen. But pitted against Henry VIII’s previous five, she tends to end up as a bit of a footnote. So at last here she gets her own movie. The fictional twist at the end increases the entertainment value of a production that’s otherwise a bit on the dull side (unless you’ve an affection for abusive husbands with dementia). Mildly amusing

Review – Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)

I guess if you’re going to take the title of your movie from one of Poe’s best-known stories, the only way to keep from boring your audience is to tell a tale that has nearly nothing to do with Poe’s work. Instead this a half-assed version of Phantom of the Opera, which was all extra unnecessary as Herbert Lom already did a half-assed version of Phantom of the Opera nearly a decade earlier. See if desperate

Review – The Fear of Darkness

Anytime horror and psychiatry mix, there’s a good chance that a big part of the plot will turn out to be pure hallucination. Throw in a hearty dose of DMT, and there’s almost no chance that anything we see will be anything but imaginary. This production has a few interesting visual twists, so it’s a shame they were wasted on a largely non-functioning story. See if desperate

Book Review – Fall of Civilizations

Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline by Paul M.M. Cooper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Arguably this book could have been shortened to “greed.” Or at least some of the chapters could have been effectively summarized as “Rome” or “Spain.” And yet the fascinating parts of the deaths of civilizations lie in the details, here copiously supplied by the author. I particularly loved the range of dead societies covered by the text, from the ancient to the nearly modern, from the places everyone’s heard of to whole civilizations frequently omitted from high school history texts. Paul M.M. Cooper’s writing is engaging, neither frivolous nor academically stuffy. Though it took me awhile to get through it, I enjoyed the experience.

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Book Review – Pox Romana

Pox Romana: The Plague That Shook the Roman World by Colin Elliott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Colin Elliott serves up an exceptionally thorough consideration of the Antonine plague, the world’s first pandemic to leave a written historical record and a contributing factor to the end of the Pax Romana period in Roman history. It’s amazing that such a relatively short book can include careful (and unfortunately occasionally repetitive) study not only of the disease itself but also its complex interrelationship with climate, famine, war and social mismanagement, all of which proved to be a deadly combination in the later years of the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This is worth a read for anyone with an interest in the history of either Rome or epidemiology or both.

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