Judge denies Reality Winner bail on grounds she “hates” the United States

Posted on October 9, 2017

Federal judge Brian Epps of Augusta, Georgia has denied bail for alleged whistleblower Reality Winner in an aggressively worded ruling that claims the 25-year-old intelligence contractor “hates the United States and desires to damage national security.” Epps also cited social media comments by Winner that she”admires Edward Snowden and Julian Assange” as evidence against her bond request.
Reality Winner faces an Espionage Act charge for allegedly passing classified material to media outlet The Intercept. The documents in question summarise the NSA’s view at the time of evidence suggesting Russia’s military intelligence attempted to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election.
In a ruling that reads like a prosecutor’s character assassination, Epps willfully misrepresents Winner’s statements, accepts government talking points as fact, and adds Winner to “the side of Assange and Snowden” to paint her as a duplicitous traitor who was determined to damage national security. Epps ignores Winner’s six years of service with the Air Force as a translator and ignores the substance of the material she allegedly disclosed in his effort to malign her character. A disinterested judge would observe basic facts about Winner’s case, including the nature of the disclosure and her previous service, rather than the prosecution’s deliberate misrepresentation’s of her casual comments in deciding whether she would be a threat if released on bail. Judges in other US whistleblower cases, it’s worth noting, have managed not to appear quite so partisan.

Epps’ ruling continues to allow the prosecution to set the terms of debate throughout Reality’s case. Back in August, the judge sided with prosecutors in ruling the defense would not be  allowed to mention “any information deemed classified by the government, even if it has been widely reported in local, national and international media publications.”

None of this bodes well for Winner’s trial, which is now scheduled for March 2018. Reality will remain in detention until then, with all the hardships that implies.  Neither does Judge Epps’ ruling suggest that Reality will receive a fair hearing when her case does finally come to trial, where she faces a potential sentence of 10 years in prison. If the judge is already this predisposed against Winner’s character, and this willing to accept prosecutorial misrepresentations as established fact, how will he fairly adjudicate whether Winner breached the Espionage Act? Not only does Judge Epps appear unwilling to consider that Winner’s alleged leak might have aided public understanding of a major political issue, he seems already prepared to accept the opposite without much debate, that Winner merely sought to harm the United States.

Epps’ ruling is all the more significant given the heavily politicised atmosphere in the United States, led by the Trump Administration’s virulent rhetoric on journalists and their sources. Reality Winner’s is the first media leak prosecution to be brought under a president who has claimed willingness to extend and expand the war on whistleblowers to include prosecution of publishers. It’s reasonable to assume that whatever happens, Winner’s case will give us an indication of the trials ahead for national security reporting in the United States.

You can donate to Reality Winner’s legal defence fund here, and find the Stand with Reality support network here.

"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

"Put Out The Fire In Your Head"-With The Line From Patti Griffin’s “You Are Not Alone” In Mind

By Special Guest Writer Greg Gordon

Normally I don’t write for blog and on-line publications preferring still the hard copy route to have my work appreciated by any who would appreciate my efforts. The reason that I am writing this little comment is the editor here, my old friend Pete Markin, has asked me to comment on a line from Patti Griffin’s song You Are Not Alone where she asks her lover to “put on the fire in your head”-calm down, take it easy, be with her. I am not personally much into music so that I did not know the song, or the line from the song, nor did I know who Patti Griffin was. But the line intrigued me. Intrigued me more when Pete told me the reason that he wanted me to comment rather than take a stab at it himself since he loves the song is that he wanted my take on who among our still standing old-time from the neighborhood friends could rightfully be asked to do what the phrase asks. And he included himself in the mix so for all practical purposes he is recusing himself.

Now Pete Markin, Seth Garth, Frankie Riley, Fritz Taylor, Bart Webber, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Josh Breslin and about fifty other guys, from what Pete calls the Generation of ’68, whom Pete and I have come to know over the years whatever neighborhood they grew up in, mostly poor white guys like me and him, whatever achievements they have accumulated over a lifetime, whatever heartaches they have suffered as well they, we all have one thing in common. We all have since youth, maybe since, hell, maybe from the womb, had outsized wanting habits, have had the hunger. So each and every one of us one way or another could fall under the sign of “put out the fire in your head.”       

 

For me it has always been an outsized and maybe overblown sense that I have been under-appreciated as a writer now that Gothic detective novels, the niche I had made for myself started way back in maybe middle school when my English teacher Miss Winot encouraged me to flush out my private detective Galen Fiske, are a dime a dozen, maybe cheaper. So maybe I should chill out about it, throw water on that last dream and not to worry. That said I do not intend to go chapter and verse over every guy whom I have mentioned above but give a few words and here and there. I might as well start with Pete who has always had this thing about this woman, let’s call her Josie to give her a name whom he treated like dirt when he was young and was crazy to go to bed with every dame who gave him a second look. Leaving Josie holding the bag.

He had not seen her in about forty years, didn’t know what had become of her (although he belatedly wished her well) but nevertheless on whiskey-sodden barstool nights in some dank barroom he will inevitably bring up her name, his sins against her, and that wistful what might have been had he had the sense God gave geese. I know I have been on the stool beside him. This despite the intervening three marriages and assorted well-behaved kids who came with them. So that fire in his head has been smoldering for a long time, caused him some sweaty, dreamless nights. At this point I don’t think it will ever go out. Some things are like that.

Fritz Taylor’s fire is maybe really fire, really fire that he brought down on the heads of people in Vietnam with whom he had no quarrel, never had except his friends and neighbors at his local draft board in the days when that was the way non-enlistees got called up to military service called his ticket, gave him the ride. He spent years hiding from the “real” world with a bunch of brothers under the bridge out in Southern California trying to drink/drug/cut himself to some place of peace but that vagabond stuff never did the trick. Nor did his three marriages with a mixed bag of good and bad kids. Will still drink himself to a coma, or maybe sleep is better and yell out of nowhere An Loc (a small town/ village/hamlet which he and his men burned to the ground one awful August 1968 night). That fire too seems like an endless sleep.

Now that the reader is getting my drift, getting that maybe that Patty Griffin song, those lyrics might not be susceptible to dousing I will like I said not go through the whole litany of the fire nights among the guys. But one last case should sum things up a bit. Josh Breslin is a guy we met, those of us from the old North Adamsville neighborhood, out in the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967 night. Josh, a little younger than us but a kindred working class guy from up in Olde Saco, Maine, was a real good-looking guy whose moniker was the Prince of Love in those moniker-filled days. Had half the girls around Golden Gate Park in something like his harem. For a while anyway. Then he got caught into the grasp of a woman we called (and will still call her here) Mustang Sally and can draw your own conclusions about why she took that name. The long and short of it was that before too long she got pregnant. Josh was set to marry her or something like that. One night she split we think with a guy named Pirate Johnny and we/he never heard from her again. So Josh, the love them and leave them Prince of Love, too would on moonless ill-begotten nights wonder out loud what had happened to his child. That after two marriages and a parcel of I am not sure what kind of kids. So maybe Patti and her song are wrong. Maybe you can’t put out the fire in your head.            

“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind

“One Johnny Rocco More Or Less Is Not Worth Dying For ” –With Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart’s “Key Largo” In Mind     

By Special Guest Commentator Lance Lawrence

Here is the genesis for this commentary. I don’t normally as much as I love the old time 1940s and 1950s black and white movies do film reviews here or in other hard copy and on-line publications I write for. That was usually handled by my old friend, old neighborhood North Adamsville growing up friend, and colleague at this site Sam Lowell. The “was” part is because Sam has recently retired from the day to day fuss of film editor handing it over to our common colleague Sandy Salmon. He has taken the outlandish and over-the-top title of film editor emeritus. That has allowed him to do occasional commentary without the hassle of every impending deadline and having to watch film he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about (his, our, old-time neighborhood expression which I think is self-explanatory.)              

Sam recently had a problem having to do with the film Key Largo I am keeping in mind as I do this piece. Sandy who does not like doing old-time black and white movie reviews as a rule had asked Sam to review this film. He agreed figuring this would be an easy punt since he had always been crazy for Humphrey Bogart films and had always been half in love with foxy Lauren Bacall ever since she and Bogart steamed up the theater in the very loose film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s To Have And Have Not. Also many years ago he had already reviewed the film and could use that as a basis for a current review. (Sam never throws anything out and of course now the  computer doesn’t have to so he probably has his first grade papers stored somewhere.) Once he had watched, no, re-watched the film though he had another idea. His angle was looking at the Humphrey Bogart character, ex-World War II soldier Frank McCloud, from the perspective of a guy who had had a hard time coming back the “real” world after the war like many guys probably did (and do so now in Iraq-Afghanistan time as well).    

That is when he thought of me, although really it is the late Peter Paul Markin always and forever known as Scribe, another North Adamsville corner boy of ours that he was really thinking about when he had that grand idea (his expression). (The late Scribe not to be confused with the administrator of this site another North Adamsville guy speaking of nepotism who took the Scribe’s name as his on-line moniker in honor of our fallen comrade.) See the Scribe after he got back from Vietnam where he had been an infantryman and had seen some pretty horrible stuff which he seldom talked about had had serious problems coming back the “real” war after his war. Had been up and down emotionally for a while out in California where he lived after he got back from Vietnam. Had once he settled down a bit (for a while) taken up the journalist’s life which he had gone to college for before he made fateful decision to drop out his sophomore year to get tangled up in the Summer of Love experience out in San Francisco in 1967 (and since he had no student deferment was subject to draft and induction into the military and therefore “fateful” is the right word).         

While working for the now long gone but then influential alternative newspaper East Bay Other the Scribe was handed a plum assignment from the editor Sally Jacobs. Handed it because he was the only Vietnam veteran, the only one with enough street “cred” to do the assignment. It seems that a whole bunch of guys were in the Scribe’s boat, had had a tough time coming back to the “real” world and had formed a “community” or better communities down in Southern California along the riverbanks, railroad tracks and under the multifarious bridges. He was assigned to tell their stories, those that wanted to talk and some did and some didn’t. Those who did formed the basis for what was called the Brothers Under The Bridge series which ran for a while in the newspaper and won the Scribe some awards and stuff.    

So what does the Scribe’s work back then have to do with Sam Lowell asking me to give my take on a guy like ex-soldier Frank McCloud. The Scribe, the logical choice, is no longer with us having succumbed to those Vietnam demons, demons which led to his addiction to cocaine as relief and another fateful and fatal decision to do drug dealing which eventually got him two slugs in the head down in Mexico when a deal went bad. Most of us who knew him count him as an uncounted casualty of the war and maybe his name should be etched in that black granite down in Washington with the 58, 000 others. But we haven’t spoken about it much of late although maybe before we pass on we should make an effort even if we have to get a black granite slab and do it up ourselves in North Adamsville Square. Since the Scribe can’t do the job Sam asked me because I too unlike him, who felt it needed a soldier to soldier touch, was a Vietnam veteran as well. Although I didn’t have as many problems as the Scribe I had my fair share in the immediate aftermath of my military discharge. I have written about those experiences extensively elsewhere so I need not repeat them here after all this is Frank McCloud’s story not mine. More importantly I have taken up the Scribe’s cudgels and written plenty about my fellow Vietnam veterans who are still haunted by that fucking war. Still haven’t come back to the “real” world even though the hobo camps are long vanished and they have been left to their own inadequate devises.

I want to describe Frank McCloud, ex-Major in the European Theater of World War II under the sign of ‘one Johnny Rocco more or less in the world isn’t worth dying for ” a classic line uttered a few times throughout the film. That refers to the villain of the piece bastard gangster Johnny Rocco, played by gangster film fixture Edward G. Robinson, deported by the federal authorities as a no account blight alien residing in Cuba but late of Chicago and the gang wars that dominated that town back in the day and how good men let guys like Johnny breathe and breed.  

      

 As the background to why soldier Frank McCloud  had taken the Greyhound bus down to the Keys, down to Key Largo at the beginning one of America land’s end. Why he was to wind up at that very spot locking horns with one Johnny Rocco probably the last thing he had expected to deal with in sunny tropical Florida. Why he had been drifting along in the post-war period after that war had taken the starch out of him, made him cynical. Why he had, sound familiar, a tough time coming back to the “real” world after slogging through the Italian campaign. See he had gone back to the old job he held before the war but just couldn’t make it make sense. Became a drifter, day worker, low rung work, a man of no fixed abode. Not quite down in the under the bridge jungle like out in post-Vietnam California but still restless and moving aimlessly.

So one day Frank decided to take that fateful bus ride down to the Keys to make sense of the life, and death, of one of the guys under his command whose grieving father, played by Lionel Barrymore, and a young done on the run wife, played by Lauren Bacall running the Largo Hotel. Supposedly this was just a courtesy call at least that was what he told one of Johnny’s boys, guys like Johnny always travelled with a “don’t give a fuck” entourage when he was told by that guy there was no room for him in the inn. Then the damn hurricane winds started picking up and that tidy metaphor-filled event would blow the lid off Frank’s duel with the real world.      

Enter Johnny, no, enter a snoopy cop who was looking for a couple of wild-eyed Seminoles who fled the coop on him and sought safe harbor at the hotel. That copper after taking a beating took a couple to the heart by dear Johnny just to prove he had not lost the old touch.  Along the way Frank had chances to show some of the bravery he had shown in war but he was no longer the knight-errant going after bad guys for other guys who would not give him a fair shake. That when he said it all, made it clear the, his post-war world would be every man and woman for his or herself. That shocked that dead G.I.s people, that broken down old man and that fetching wife who had heard better things about Frank from that son-husband’s letters but that was that.

Now is the time to tell why undesirable alien Johnny Rocco was in some stinking off-season deadbeat hotel facing down hurricane winds and playing with fire-power. He was trying to pass paper, trying to unload counterfeit money for dimes on the dollar to a rival gangster and his confederates. This hole-in-the-wall hotel was the meeting place for the exchange which actually happened despite the hurricane coming to blow all the people all away. Problem (beside the sheriff showing up and finding his copper deputy washed up by hurricane) was the big yacht he arrived on had been taken to a safe harbor by the skipper. No boat. No boat to flee back that ninety or so miles to friendly Havana.    

      

Well almost no boat. See among his skills our man Frank had been an expert sailor, had been so since he was a kid. He made the mistake of telling one of Johnny’s boys that fact when he was helping to secure the hotel’s boat against the hurricane blow. So naturally Johnny latched onto the Frank-boat idea as the way to get him, his boys, and that ill-gotten dough back to Cuba. Johnny had taken the measure of the man, had seen that Frank had that beaten down look a lot of returning soldiers had after finding all the patriotic stuff,  all the making the world safe against the night-takers from guys like Hitler and Mussolini down to punk gangster Johnny Rocco was a lot of hooey. Johnny’s entreaty picking up on what Frank had said previously that after all what was it to small guy Frank McCloud whether a putting a guy like Johnny out of commission was worth breaking a sweat for played its part. After a couple of threats to put Frank on the rack and to the disappointment of that disillusioned old man and that comely daughter-in-law he consented.        

You never know what will push a man’s buttons, and what won’t. Given a handy pistol filched from Johnny by the gangster’s moll, Gaye, seemed to have put life back into Frank, got him thinking maybe another small fight against the night-takers was in order. In the end there would now be no brothers under the bridge fate for our boy. It was a thing of beauty to watch as Frank totally outmaneuvered Johnny and his four confederates, one overboard with a nice turning maneuver, another bang-bang, a third bang-bang, ditto the fourth. Then the inevitable mano a mano with evil Johnny. Johnny Too Bad. Johnny gone to push up the daisies. Yeah, you never know what will push a man’s buttons. Bring him back to the “real” world. I wished the Scribe could have figured that one out.         

 10/27 Vigil to save TPS -Temporary Protected Status

Charlie Welch

10/24/2017 5:13 PM

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Don't separate families! Support TPS -Temporary Protected Status

State House Boston

Friday Oct. 27th  6 to 8 PM

Organized by Mass. TPS Committee

info comitetpsma@gmail.com

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GBPSR member Philip Lederer writes today on the linkage between the Poor People's Campaign and nuclear disarmament.   At the end I attach my own report on the Poor People's Campaign rally in Boston last week.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/10/25/poor-peoples-campaign-and-2017-nobel-peace-prize-national-call-moral-revival

Published on

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

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Common Dreams

The Poor People’s Campaign and the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize: A National Call for a Moral Revival

Instead of catastrophic nuclear weapons and unwinnable wars, let's invest in schools, poverty, affordable housing, job training, environmental destruction and healthcare for all.

by

Philip Lederer MD

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The Costs of War project at Brown University documented that the U.S. federal government has spent or obligated $4.8 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East. Most Americans are not aware of that enormous waste of money and human lives. Professor Andrew Bacevich has argued that our military is on autopilot and these foreign wars are not putting Americans first. ( Photo: Courtesy of Author)

The mass meeting at Boston’s historic Trinity Church on October 19 was packed with men, women, and children, rich and poor, of all races and ethnicities.

The jazz band warmed up, a piano, bass guitar, and drums. And we sang, call and response:

Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
I said I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Well I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom
Hallelu, hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, hallelujah

The moral revival signaled the kickoff of a modern civil rights movement and launch of a new Poor People’s Campaign. We were revitalizing what the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had started before his assassination.

In the 1960’s, Dr. King had surprised many by adding opposition to the Vietnam War to the civil rights campaign he was leading. The same linkage of struggle on behalf of the poor, with opposition to militarism, is now a logical path.

Reverends Liz Theoharis and William J. Barber II, leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign, took the stage at Trinity Church and both spoke with a prophetic fire. We must challenge systemic racism, poverty, voter suppression, environmental destruction, and militarism, they argued. Wars increase social upheaval and hurt the poor. Instead, invest in schools, affordable housing, job training, and healthcare for all.

But how to finance the Poor People’s Campaign?

The answer is simple.

The Costs of War project at Brown University documented that the U.S. federal government has spent or obligated $4.8 trillion dollars on wars in the Middle East. Most Americans are not aware of that enormous waste of money and human lives. Professor Andrew Bacevich has argued that our military is on autopilot and these foreign wars are not putting Americans first.

But what part of the military budget should be cut first?

Nuclear weapons.

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on October 6 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations in more than 100 countries. ICAN received the Nobel Prize for their work supporting a new nuclear ban treaty. 

I am a practicing doctor, and my organization, Physicians for Social Responsibility, emphasizes the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. Health professionals argue that the complete abolition of nuclear weapons is the only cure to the grave threat that these weapons represent.

How much money would the adoption of the nuclear ban treaty save? America’s annual expenditure on nuclear weapons is approximately $60 billion dollars. That money could help fix our struggling schools and broken social safety net.

A grassroots nonviolent protest movement linking the Poor People’s Campaign and abolition of nuclear weapons is desperately needed. Such a movement should be led by the poor and working class. In the 1960s, Ella Baker, co-founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, stated, “Strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

At Trinity Church, Reverend Barber brought us to our feet, with the words of Amos 5:16. Go out into the streets and lament loudly. Get everyone who is willing to fill up the malls and shops with cries of doom. Empty the stores, offices, workplaces, and enlist everybody in a general cry. When I hear you crying in the streets, then I’ll help you.

Join the Poor People’s Campaign. Sing for freedom, for an end to nuclear weapons, for peace and social justice. For all our children.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Philip Lederer MD is an infectious diseases doctor, former CDC disease detective, writer, fiddler/violinist, runner, and Dad.

Cole's report:

The Poor People's Campaign event featuring Rev William Barber last night was a significant gathering of the Boston area movement.   Trinity Church was not quite full and there was overflow seating in Old South.

There are four primary planks:

1) End poverty

2) End systemic racism

3) End climate disaster

4) End the war economy

Rev. Liz Theoharis, a young white minister from NYC, is Rev  Barber's co-chair for the campaign.  Both she and Rev Barber listed the same four themes in the same order, which says to me that this is a consciously constructed agenda, one that they are probably repeating in their current tour of 30 or so cities.  So already, we know that the Poor People's Campaign is reaching out on one of our core issues and that we will want to work as closely with them as possible!

Barber spoke at much greater length and with many facts, statistics, and historical perspective, including much about Boston and Massachusetts, and he also also spoke with passion; conceivably, the facts and historical dimension reflected his assessment, no doubt correct if so, about how to appeal to a largely white, educated audience that might be more represented in Boston than in other stops on their tour.   He gave a substantial amount of time to the war economy segment, but devoted most of it to a refutation of Gen. Kelly's remarks in his press conference the same day about Trump's call with Myeshia Johnson -- certainly a timely topic, but he did not address specific peace issues such as Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Korea, or nuclear weapons in any depth.  He did mention once to condemn Trump's "reckless talk about Korea".  He did have quite a few statistics about military spending.  "54% of the discretionary budget goes to the military - that's immoral!" he shouted, and the crowd responded ecstatically.  

He condemned so-called conservative Christians as heretics because they emphasize individualism rather than helping your neighbor, a point I've heard him make a greater length on other occasions and which I'm not qualified to assess theologically, but it's notable in the degree of polarization he proposes on this issue.

He and Theoharis both laid out their goal of a 30-city civil disobedience campaign starting on Mother's Day 2018 with 1000 people per city and 2500 in Washington, DC, that would go on for 40 days.  So look for more work to solidify that objective in the months to come.

Rev. Mariama Hammond, the leader of the Moral Movement in Boston, also spoke. 

Several progressive organizations had group delegations seated in the front with large signs; they included SEIU and JWJ and maybe a couple of others.  Four local low-income workers came up together and spoke about their personal challenges with jobs, income, health care, and the like, and perhaps these organizations recruited them - that is one possible role they might have played, though this was not otherwise explained.

-- 

Cole Harrison

Executive Director

Massachusetts Peace Action

11 Garden St, Cambridge, MA 02138

w: 617-354-2169

m: 617-466-9274

f: /masspeaceaction  t: @masspeaceaction

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In Boston- The Russian Revolution and the Black Liberation Movement November 4 | 1:00 – 4:00 PM / Saturday Duncan McFarland

In Boston- The Russian Revolution and the Black Liberation Movement November 4 | 1:00 – 4:00 PM / Saturday

Duncan McFarland

3:15 PM

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*The Russian Revolution and the Black Liberation Movement*

*November 4 | 1:00 – 4:00 PM*

The Russian Revolution was one of the most important events in modern
history and a great victory for socialists, communists and the Left. The
October Revolution had great impact and on the black liberation movement in
the US, which is closely intertwined with the working class struggle. There
will be ample time for discussion of these issues and the 100th anniversary
of the revolution.

Edward Carson, Chair, Communist Party USA-Boston

Nino Brown, Party for Socialism and Liberation

Johanna Fernández, Baruch College (CUNY) (by skype)

Mark Solomon, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

Panel Moderated by Nicole Aschoff, Editorial staff of Jacobin Magazine

Encuentro 5

9A Hamilton Place

Boston, MA 02108

*We regret that e5 is not wheelchair accessible at this time.*

*LUNCH WILL BE SERVED.*

*Sponsored by the Boston Socialist School
<http://www.bostonsocialistunity.org/>and the Center for Marxist Education
<http://www.centerformarxisteducation.org/>. *

*contact for information: mcfarland13@gmail.com <mcfarland13@gmail.com>*
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When Women And Men Made Horror Movies For Keeps-Vincent Price’s “House On Haunted Hill” (1959)-A Film Review

When Women And Men Made Horror Movies For Keeps-Vincent Price’s “House On Haunted Hill” (1959)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Film Critic Emeritus Sam Lowell

House On Haunted Hill, starring Vincent Price, Elisha Cook directed by wild man horror film icon Billy Castle, 1959       

Sometimes Sandy Salmon the recently hired day to day film critic in this space throws me a “no-brainer” like the film under review mad monk Vincent Price’s Billy Castle-directed horror film House on Haunted Hill. Reason: when I was a kid I spent many, my mother might say too many, Saturday afternoons in the darks of the Strand Theater in downtown North Adamsville watching black and white double feature films to die for in the late 1950s, early 1960s. Mostly I was interested in film noir from the 1940s which Mr. Cadger the affable owner would play to cut down on overhead on first-run expenses and ran what today would be called retrospectives or even film festivals. But whenever a new horror movie was up he was on top of that knowing that kids “liked” to get scared out of their wits and would fill the seats to capacity (and buy gads of popcorn and candy which he told me one time was really how he made money on that now long gone but not forgotten theater turned to condos). So something like the film under review legitimate scary guy Vincent Price’s House on Haunted Hill would be like catnip to kids, including me.

Now everybody knows today, especially the kids who still make up the key demographic for horror films, that these films are driven by max daddy technological thrills and spills, a mile a minute, the more the better. And maybe today’s kids like them. But back in what was the golden age of horror films, the black and white film age where the shadows mean as much as what was shown the thing was driven by plot and not as much by gismos. And this film is a classic example which when I checked with a few guys from the old neighborhood recently scared the “Bejesus” out of them to quote one old friend. So what seems kind of hokey today was the cat’s meow back in the day.         

Here’s the play. This rich decadent playboy type guy Loren, Price’s role, and his youngish fourth wife are ready to party down in a house rented by Loren. (That house according to the blurb a Frank Lloyd Wright creation which now looked fairly modern compared to the usual Victorian house filled with odd spaces and menacing from the outside no question. The poster for the film shows such a Victorian-style house which is a little disingenuous. Worse though were the posters back then showing seemingly half-naked girls being exploited and yet no such thing happened in the film to the chagrin of teenage boyhood.) The game to be played was simple-five unrelated guests who needed dough badly for various reasons including just having that amount would each receive ten K if they made it through the night in the locked house. Fair enough.         

What the collective guest list did not know, would not find out until the end when it too late is that one of the five was a “ringer” had some other additional motive. Once everybody was “in” and locked down the games began. First Loren’s good-looking if diabolical blonde wife was killed which set the place in an uproar. Then one young woman was harassed enough that she would wind up killing the nefarious and weird Loren. Again fair enough. If you play with fire you are sure to get burned at some point. The thing of it was though this whole scene was a house of mirrors despite all the screams and odd occurrences. The wife had not been killed for she was part of a plot to kill her husband for his fortune along with her boyfriend, that Trojan horse on the guest list. And Loren was not killed either because he was on to the plot to kill him by his wife and her lover. In the end that wife and lover took the fall, went down the bloody road. In the end too between the screams and shadows (and even the hokey lover’s skeleton controlled by Loren to scare his wife to perdition) I, and my friends, were scared like crazy. Enough said.