Double, Double, Toil and Troubles, Dani Burns and Jordumb Bubbles.

Well, this Thursday's show was the most (first) really entertaining episode all summer. Power rocked back and forth, and unlikely were the outcomes. (And nothing more unlikely than who won the second HOH after the show ended, but for the sake of spoiler avoiders, we'll save that for a later column.)

But before Thursday came Wednesday.

Both Homophobic Asshole and Voldebitch endlessly say they respect "Players," and want to oust "Floaters." So what did H.A. and Boobiac do? Voted out Major Player Daniele, and left Major Floaters Edsel and Knobby the Big Brother House Elf.

Why would Daniele even consider throwing the POV competition? Trusting Homophobic Asshole would be a stupid thing to do. Getting rid of her is both his right move strategically, and also his right move vengeance-wise.

Ah Knobby, what a great deal-maker! His offer to Homophobic Asshole between clouds of cigarette smoke (I've seen more smoking on this show this summer than I've seen in real life this summer. I know like one person who still smokes, and he lives in Minnesota.) was that IF he won the POV, he would let Homophobic Asshole make him his bitch. And he'd also let H.A. have the first-born offspring of the monkeys that will fly out his ass if he wins the POV competition. But H.A. already has Jordumb.

Voldebitch's verbal torture of Daniele, with its peculiar obsession about turning 25, which appeared to be pure juvenile verbal harassment and overwhelmingly petty personal vengeance, was, I believe, also strategic, as a way of getting Daniele off her game before the POV challenge, and it was quite effective. My favorite moment was Voldebitch's: "One time when I turned 25, like last year..."


"One time"? How many times has she turned 25? And "like last year"? In other words: "One of the many times I turned 25, like when I turned 25 last year, for the 8th consecutive time, I..." To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: "Las Vegas Society is full of VIP-Waitress/Whores of the very lowest emotional maturity who, of their own free will, have remained 25 for years. Lady Voldebitch is a case in point. To my own knowledge, she has been 25 ever since arriving at the age of 40, and that was many years ago now."

Boobiac: "Do you hate me? I already know he answer to that." Yes and yes. That is truly a question she should never ask anyone. When Jordumb, who has the mind of a slow child, is more emotionally mature than you are, you are a mess.

Daniele on Voldebitch not getting selected to play in the POV competition: "The look on her face alone was enough of a win for me." Not really, as things turned out.

I see that several of my readers who leave comments have stated that they could not understand anything the Zingbot said. Now I find the Zingbot dreadfully tiresome. I'm sorry; I'm funnier. (It didn't dare steal from me, but it stole one from regular commenter "Pablo Diablo". Hey Zingy, get your own act!) However, I had no trouble understanding what he said: so I'll transcribe his zingers for the sake of those to whom it was just a whine. (And why would they take its voice up an octave for a "Build Zingbot a Bride" competition? They must have been building a lesbian fembot, to celebrate Gay Marriage in New York. How ironic that Homophobic Asshole won it. He made a lesbian fembot faster than anyone. I'll bet he's made Lesbians out of many fems who were not Lesbians when they first met him. Jordumb certainly seems to be getting closer to Boobiac these days for no good reason. Hmmmm.)

"You say 'Mischievous,"
And I say 'Mis-CHEEV-e-ous.'
You say 'vertiginous,'
And I say 'Huh?'
Mischievous, Mis-CHEEV-e-ous,
Vertiginous, Huh,
Let's call the whole thing off."

Yes. Let's. (And it's "mischievous." You can take the hick out of the back woods, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.)

Queen Kalia had a "good feeling" that the POV challenge would be "something that we're good at." So the competition would be about sucking at Big Brother? The amount of actual information about the upcoming challenge contained in Queen Kalia's "good feeling" was "Zero." As for it's accuracy rating: also "Zero." It was jigsaw puzzle-solving in three-dimentions, and you both sucked at it harder than Voldebitch after receiving a $300 tip from a Japanese businessman who just sat through a Seigfried & Roy performance and now wants relief!

When the Zingbot 3000 entered the Big Brother House, it committed a terrible crime; it upstaged Voldebitch. She Who Will Not Just Be Ignored could not stand that the Zingbot was the immediate Center-of-Attention, her rightfully-born throne, so she tried to claim attention back from the usurper, by chiming in: "Zing me!" This produced something you do not see every day: a robot having an awkward moment. Zingbot had a script to deliver, and Zingbot is not to be tricked into delivering his material out of order. Zingbot's act has "structure." Zingbot has never worked The Comedy Store Main Room at midnight on a winter Wednesday night, for 7 drunk hecklers. I have. Zingbot just stared, wishing it had Gort's death ray from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Zingy, we all feel that way when looking at, or worse, hearing Voldebitch, but what can you do? (Seriously, WHAT can you do?)

Zingbot: "Hey Jeff, 1995 called; they want their soul patch back." Hey Zingbot, 1985 called, and it wants its tired, outdated "so-and-so called" joke-set-up back. Will your next zinger feature "Knock-knock?" or "You may be a redneck if.."? Everyone laughed as though this was funny. Also, "1995" would be an "It," not a "They." Zing!

Zingbot: "Hey Portia, shouldn't you be named for a car with a roomier trunk?" This joke would work better if there were a car called "Portia," but there isn't. There is a car called "Porsche," but that's not what he said. And she should be named for a topless convertable, because she has nothing up top. Zing!

Zingbot: "Rachel, every other word out of your mouth is the F-word: fiance, fiance." That was the best it could do for Voldebitch? That's like zinging Hitler with a joke about waking up hungover and accidentally using his mustache for a toothbrush. There are, shall we say, richer lodes to mine in Boobiac.

Zingbot: "Daniele, do you own a car? Or do you still prefer to just ride your daddy's coattails?" The horribly mangled metaphor in this lame joke left me with an image of Evel Dick racing down the 405 Freeway on foot, running as fast as he can, with Daniele hanging on to his coattails (which means I see him dressed in a swallowtail frock coat from about 80 years ago) for dear life, as she is battered along the concrete, her dragging, bloody legs in constant danger of being run over and pulped by passing cars. Also, there are too many words in the joke, and a needlessly split infinitive. The joke should be: "Daniele, do your own a car, or do you prefer riding Daddy's coattails?" It's still not funny, and the metaphor is still mangled, but it's more concise and has better comic rhythm.

I'm not going to bother quoting his previously-mentioned, Knobby-is-Uncle Fester joke. Go read the original joke in the comments here a few entries back.

Zingbot: "Shelley, what do you call someone who likes to smoke, hunt, and fish? A dude." Okay, that was a bit funny. A dude who is a jerk, I should add. Her loves are all killing: hunting is killing animals, fishing is killing fish, and smoking is killing Leatherface. Puff, fella, puff! Smoke more! (And unsurprisingly, Leatherface's Diary Room rejoinder was her wish she had a gun from her personal arsenal to shoot Zingbot with, and kill some working-for-scale day player inside it, overhwelmingly hot. Killing, that's Leatherface's idea of a good time.)

Zingbot: "Kalia, you write a sex blog, but you seem to be an expert on the thing done after sex, like sleeping." What a long way to go for such a limp joke. Before it got to its sleeping joke (and you have to be a relentless feeds watcher to know that Queen Kalia, like most house pussies, spends 85% of her time asleep), I had finished four other jokes using all or part of this Dostoevskian set-up line:

"Kalia, you write a sex blog. If there's two things you know nothing about, it's writing and sex."

"Kalia, you write a sex blog. Is it called 'Sex For Dummies'?"

"Kalia, you seem to be a expert on what you do after sex: grabbing a sixpack, and watching TV."

"Kalia, this week you seem to be an expert on the things you do after sex, rolling over and going home."

Zingbot: "Hey Jordan; the only reason Jeff hasn't proposed yet is because he knows you're terrible at answering questions." Again, a long, long way to go for an extemely tiny excuse for a joke. Jordan couldn't possibly be expected to follow a sentence with that many words in it, and sure enough, she nodded off during her own zinger. Her response to her zinger, "Wait, what?", was the single funniest moment in the entire hour.

Bride of Zingbot will never make anyone forget James Whale's masterpiece, Bride of Frankenstein, but as a tribute to last weekend's Khardasian wedding, it was fully appropriate, as Kim is made up wholly of artificial parts also. And of course, The Chenbot is a Fembot herself. And it was a good and difficult challenge. You couldn't float through this one. I'd be curious to know what Homophobic Asshole's winning time was. My guess: 72 hours. (And he was still three days ahead of Jordumb.)

Knobby didn't bother to try to win, just futzed around. I'm deeply shocked. Of course, if Homophobic Asshole was serious about sending Floaters home, Knobby would be well-advised to win POV. Plus demonstrating that he can actually win something (Remember, his previous POV "win" was Daniele deciding to let him win.), might give his deal proposals some small element of credibility, since they always hinge on "If I win HOH..." or "If I win POV..." or "If dinosaurs return and eat Cleveland..."

Queen Kalia: "The problem for me is that all the pieces look alike." So this wasn't a problem for anyone else? This isn't a basic aspect of blank jigsaw puzzles generally? Queen Kalia's idea of a puzzle is: which shoes to wear with her purse.

If only Bukie were here to play this challenge; he would have assembled the Fembot that would have cured cancer! Thanks for nothing, CBS

Leatherface intentionally tanked it too. She doesn't "make." She destroys.

Unfortunately, after the challenge, we went on watching the contestants kissing Homophobic Asshole's asshole, instead of watching Zingbot "interface" with Fembot on their wedding night. As some of the more-smug-looking ladies working at Disneyland could tell you but won't because it would get them fired, sex with audio-animatronic robots is incredible. As long as they're plugged in, they keep right on going, plus they vibrrate on nine different speed settings, from "Mild Temblor" to "Puree." Those three Johnny Depp robots in the Pirates of the Carrabean ride get more action than the real Johnny Depp does, and the two robot Harrison Fords in the Indiana Jones ride were nearly dismantled for doing gay robot porn videos under fake names.

Edsel heats a thing that holds her head up? Is her neck too weak to do the job itself from undereating, or has she never learned how to operate her neck?

Queen Kalia tried throwing Edsel under a bus, which sounds like three freeway lanes clogged up for two hours. In trying to aim Homophobic Asshole in his stated direction of going affter Floaters, she said: "It really bothers me that I could leave before someone who has done literally nothing." Whereas Queen Kalia has only done nearly nothing. She did have a week as HOH where she screwed up royally and massively. Of course, H.A. doesn't know it yet, but he's screwing up pretty fiercely by not taking her deal. He'll be regretting it to The Chenbot fairly soon.

So Homophobic Asshole pulled down Edsel and put up Daniele, and her goose was thorougly cooked. The Floaters chances of making it to the end increased exponentially.

Apparently Leatherface and Homophobic Asshole had a huge fight Thursday morning, when it was too late to edit into the show. I hope we see it on Sunday.

The great things about the double eviction episodes is that they are fast-paced, with all the fat trimmed, and secondly, the game gets really unpredictable. This was a satisfying hour with genuine suspense.

Queen Kalia wept crocodile tears over having to turn on Daniele. Oh boo-hoo. Tell it to Leatherface, Misstress of Crocodile Tears.

Daniele managed to move Leatherface into actively working to keep her in. But, after another bout of her Diary Room crocodile tears, her highly-resistable force met a truly-immovable object: Knobby's intense stupidity, and his hero worship of Homophobic Asshole. Knobby's tastes are appalling: "Metal" (among my favorite minerals), Torie Spelling, bacon, hollering, early heart failure, Evel Dick, Homophobic Asshole, being lame. Leatherface spelled out the whole logical case for why he is a fool to support the surviving Vets any longer, and he smiled , nodded, and, like any blob at rest, would not move.

Leatherface tried turning Voldebitch against Homophobic Asshole. When did they become buds again? Last I heard, they hated each other.

Daniele, whose fate hung in a precarious balance already, made a keep-me speech that consisted of berating players, ala Dominic earlier on. It was really a vote-me-out speech. What was she thinking?

Queen Kalia's speech was much, much shorter, and even dumber: "Vote for me!" No, you idiot. You want them to vote for Daniele! It's an eviction vote, not an awarding-the-prize vote. You just asked everyone to vote you out.

Daniele informed The Chenbot that she is "not a coaster," so the Chenbot had to place her coffee cup on someone else. Oh Knobby!

In her classy farewell speech, Boobiac told Daniele that she, Daniele, is a bitch. I can't choose from the 400 remarks this triggers in my mind, so insert your own irony here.

The first HOH challenge was a mental challenge, yet Jordumb came within a hair's breadth of winning it. Had the last question gone the other way, the situation in the house would be a hell of a lot different now. But Queen Kalia took it, and enacted Daniele's Revenge, consequences be damned!

The poor players only had one commercial break to kiss Kalia's ass. Fortunately, her ass is so huge that they could double, and even triple, up.

Voldebitch didn't even bother trying to kiss Kalia's ass. If ever there were a lost cause. Homophobic Asshole and Voldebitch went up. On to the live HOH competition. Wow. Suspense!

But it was looking for giant clown shoes in a tub of colored balls? Is this a challenge for adults, or a game for a 7 year-old's birthday party? (Wouldn't Voldebitch have an advantage? After all, she uses clown shoes for bra cups.) This competition was so easy, Edsel won it, and she's still afraid of clowns.

Edsel wisely left the nominations as they were, despite Homophobic Asshole reminding Edsel that he used the POV to save her earlier in this column. The Queen of Evil vs the Last Athlete Standing. Although I would have preferred Voldebitch be evicted, or burned at the stake, there's little doubt that it's best for everyone except Jordumb that it was H.A. who hit the highway.

Think about it. Now left we have Queen Kalia bonded tightly with Edsel, and apparently with Leatherface, though how firm that is depends on whom the next HOH is (It's...), since Miss Naugahyde of 2011 goes where the power goes. Then you have Jordumb and Voldebitch clinging to each other, Jordumb the Stan Laurel of the two, she knows she's a fool, and Boobiac is the Oliver Hardy, who thinks she's a whole lot smarter than she ever actually is. And then there's Knobby, the last man standing. (God, what a bad season for men on this show), who, if he can be trusted to vote with them, makes it three-to-three, but Knobby's ideas of self-interest (which are unrelated to what is actually good for him, see his bacon-love) will also sway in the breeze. So the good thing is, the rest of this season could go either way. It's unpredictable again. The bad thing is, there's no one there I want to see win. I'm rooting against all of them!

Knobby looked ready to cry over choosing which of these two close, personal friends, who barely speak to him and view him with barely-concealed contempt, to vote out.

Homophobic Asshole's speech was all trying to talk Leatherface into voting for him over whatever their fight was about.

And then, to make it still more suspenseful, it was a tie: Jordumb and Knobby voted for Voldebitch, while Edsel and Leatherface voted for Homophobic Asshole. This left it up to Queen Kalia to complete Daniele's Revenge. I so hoped for Voldebitch, but I can't fault her for throwing out H.A.

Homophobic Asshole's classy statement that "no one in there has a sac," is literally true. There are five women and Knobby, who has shown again and again that he lacks any balls whatever. H.A.'s comment was meant as railing against Floaters, but he didn't evict floaters. He talks, talks, talks one game, and plays, plays, plays a different one.

As always, Voldebitch's tears are ambrosia. Let us savor them for a few days. Cheers darlings.

Cornholing.

Am I to believe that no one on the Big Brother staff, no one in the Big Brother house, and no one at CBS Standards and Practices knows what "cornholing" actually means? Hello? It's had its obscene meaning for at least 200 years.

You want some laughs? Check out Lawon's exit interview with The Chenbot online, which never aired. It opens with The Chenbot trying to strangle the idiot. Nothing Lawon says makes any sense. He's a total, drooling moron. He's a Martian, a particularly stupid Martian. He is ready to start PLAYIN' the game now though. "I still I think I won, because I came in the house the same way I was outside of life." (Huh?) What, exactly, is good about that? In any event, Lawon, you did not "win," not ANYTHING!!!! And we learned that Dani, Lawon, Edsel, and Queen Kalia's alliance has a name: "The Pajama Jammers." No wonder they're all too embarrassed to say it on TV, except Lawon.It's perfectly clear that nothing can embarrass Lawon, short of dressing well.

Well, whatever went wrong this last week, at least Bukie is gone to the Jury House, though utterly gone would be better. This is another reason they should have evicted Voldebitch weeks ago. Now, even when she's out, she'll still be on the jury, and I'll still have to see, and worse, hear the hideous bitch.

The problem with the soap suds challenge is we watch this show to see the players play dirty, not clean. It is, of course, great fun to watch the players fall on their asses, though sadly, no serious injuries. But it was pretty obvious even before last Thursday's episode ended that Homophobic Asshole (A man who thinks cornholers shouldn't educate kids) was going to win HOH, and the instant it ended, I went online and found out that, yup, he did. But did Voldebitch or Leatherface choke to death on suds, or break a limb falling over? Sadly, so, so sadly, no. (The tricky part was the poor CBS show staff who had to dangle large, rabid dogs over the challenge, to drool foam on them.)


Voldebitch: "Rachel is back!" Boobiac, you never left! Go away. dig a hole, crawl in, and pull the dirt in over you.

"I'm probably the only person in the house who knows what a dishwasher is," said the woman who has no idea what an avocado is, and thinks Guacamole is some rare, "weird," exotic dish. Where do they find these people? Edsel has never tasted an onion, and Leatherface has no idea what an avocado is, nor what a "moral scruple" is either. I guess she's not interested in foods she can't go out and kill. On the plus side, since avocados and guacamole are delicious, the fact that Leatherface has missed out pleases me. What does she eat? Pig intestines? If so, watch out Voldebitch! (I used to grow yummy avocados on trees in my yard, and by me, I mean my staff.)

I'm sure Voldebitch knows what a dishwasher is: "The Hispanic guy who works in the kitchen, but isn't a cook." And I 'm certain Boobiac has washed dishes. It's how she pays for restaurant meals at restaurants that don't take blow-jobs in place of cash.

Voldebitch: "I like a foam party just as much as the next girl, but I don't know if I can handle this much foam." OK, Leatherface (who is the next girl) doesn't know what avocados are, and I have no idea what a "Foam Party" is. Cujo's birthday celebration? Maybe Voldebitch's tricks are so afraid of catching arcane diseases from the shrill trollop that they won't let her touch them naked unless they are both covered in antiseptic soap studs. She should be sterilized before every use, or better yet, cauterized.

When Jordumb predictably fell on her tiny butt (vanishing completely into the mountains of suds) Leatherface helped her up. You wana play boy scout, Rawhyde-puss, or do you want to win Big Brother? Because you need to win HOH. Did you see Homophobic Asshole, who thinks he loves Jordumb, and who constantly tells us how the pathetic child is "a little cutie," stop to help her? No. And who won HOH? Homophobic Asshole.

Dani expressed doubt that Queen Kalia has ever washed a dish in her life. Queens have kitchen maids for that sort of drudgery. I have my doubts that Queen Kalia has ever eaten off a dish before. Kalia may not be smart, but she is a lousy competitor. Kalia, of course, blamed Dani's cheer leading for her ultra-lame performance. Queenie, if you were a competitor, you would tune everything out, and play the challenge to win! Kalia is pathetic. Quit blaming others for your lousy game play. The I-hope-Edsel-will-win-HOH "strategy" didn't really pan out, Edsel having won so far - ah - oh yes, nothing!

Fierce competitor Voldebitch, decided her strategy would be to cheer on Homophobic Asshole rather than play to win.

Voldebitch: "Come on girls, at least when you win, I pretend like I'm happy." This was the biggest single lie anyone has told in the house all summer. Pouting, sobbing, having tantrums, getting all weepy in the bushes, so Bukie has to talk her down from near-suicide is her "pretending like I'm happy"? How does she express misery? Firebombing Tripoli?

The worst thing about Homophobic Asshole winning HOH is that getting rid of, or better yet, killing, Voldebitch is not a priority with him. Leatherface now loathes Boobiac, but it's too little too late. I will never come to like Leatherface. Likewise Voldebitch is sick of Leatherface, and "had enough of her fake attitude." Oh that's the deepest cave in the world calling the Sun "dark." I've had enough of Voldebitch's fake boobs, fake hair, fake laugh, and fake education. (But I've had enough of Leatherface too. It's double-eviction week. Wouldn't it be great if Leatherface and Voldebitch both went? Please, please, please. Next week is my kitty cat's 14th birthday. Do it for my pussy.)

Dani thinking her "deal" with Jordumb and Homophobic Asshole means anything is purest wishful stupidity. Has she ever met her own father?

I liked that even Homophobic Asshole now knows that the answer to "Who wants to see my HOH room?" is always "No one!" Can we retire that ritual now, please? Even the players are sick of it. Apparently Jordumb has been teaching Homophobic Asshole's neices how to spell.

Leatherface decided, apropos of nothing, to go gratuitously start another fight with Voldebitch. This is a woman who would stamp on Godzilla's tail, and yell: "You call that levelling a city? My granny eats cities better than you do, and she's only radioactive after she eats baked beans!" And the substance of her complaint? She wanted Boobiac to stop "making eyes" at her. Of all Voldebitch's many great Crimes Against Humanity, making eyes at Leatherface is low on the list. After all, looking at Leatherface won't give Voldebitch any pleasure - nor anyone else. She's a sight to make eyes sore. I loved Boobiac's lame defense: "Shelley, I haven't been talking about you to anyone --- --- --- like recently." (By "like recently," she means since Leatherface, like, entered the, like, room.

Okay, Leatherface likes peanut butter. Many otherwise-sane people do. She likes English muffins. So do I. But she claims to be 40, for Heaven's sake (which means she's 55), and she eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Yuck! Even at 8 years old, that made me bilious. But she likes it. Fine. Eat it, but you might at least TRY sampling other foods offered you. Even being from The South is no excuse for picking up a pear and having to ask "What is this?" I don't much like pears, though they are preferable to even the world's finest apricot or nectarine, but I friggin' know one when I see one. She called pears and avocados "weird foods." Leatherface, what's weird is a woman of 55-but-admitting-to-40 not recognizing a pear, and eating peanut butter and jelly. Maybe if she'd gotten some decent nutrition at some point in her life, she wouldn't have skin that would shame an alligator. (But she only eats peanut butter she herself has killed.)

I was eating an egg salad sandwich when I saw that "America" had voted to allow Have-Nots to eat hard-boiled eggs. Homophpobic Asshole picking The House Stooges, I mean the remaining Pajama Jammers, to be the Have-Nots was kind of funny in a sick way, or would be if it didn't forbode his nominations. (I was waiting for Leatherface to say: "What is an 'egg'?" We don't have 'eggs' in The South. It's Yankee food, suh!" She should love avocados. They used to be called "alligator pears," and she's now seen what pears look like, and she has skin like that of an alligator with bad skin.) Queen Kalia told us of Jalapenos: "I physically can not eat them!" Can she eat them spiritually? How about metaphysically? How about stuffing some up her over-abundant ass? It's not like she's being forced to eat something "weird" like a pear.

The table got smaller. Whoopie. I could spend this time watching old George Burns & Gracie Allen TV shows.

Dani: "I'm not stupid." Well, not compared to Jordumb or Lawon, but she's never going to get her doctorate any more than Bukie ever will.

Homophobic Asshole was pretty funny, when Edsel came up to talk game, being sarcastically impressed that she was ready to start playin' this game, 49 days in.

He nominated Queen Kalia and Edsel, planning on backdooring Daniele. Well, maybe the double eviction on Thursday will get one of these stones out of my gall bladder.

Oh, and all you New Yorkers squawking about the earthquake there yesterday? Shut up. Less than a Richter 6, with the epicenter several states away in Virginia? Puh-leaze. Here in California, that's not an earthquake, merely a vibrator that got left on. Wake me when you get a real earthquake.

Until then, Cheers darlings.

A Shining RAY of Joy.

Today is the 91st birthday of Ray Douglas Bradbury. (Little Dougie likes including Ray's middle name, for obvious reasons.) Bless his huge heart, he's still with us. Stay with us Ray; we need you.

Here's a link to the posting I put up a year ago on his 90th birthday. It could use a revisit today, or a first visit, if you didn't read it last year. All Hail Ray Bradbury. Cheers, Ray darling!

No More Sequels for Jimmy.

Screenwriter/director/producer Jimmy Sangster died on Friday, at the too-tender age of 83. Primarily known as Hammer Films's main scribe, Little Jimmy wrote some of Little Dougie's favorite movies growing up.

He wrote this lovely memoir, which is required reading for all fans of Hammer monster movies. Little Dougie never met Sangster (who, in his prime, was billed as Jimmy "Frankenstein" Sangster), though they must have walked right past each other one evening in May, 1987. At the time, Sangster's wife was playing a small role in Shaw's Pygmalion on Broadway with Peter O'Toole, Amanda Plummer, Lionel Jeffries, and Sir John Mills. Jimmy used to come by the theater every evening when the show let out to escourt his wife home. As it happens, Little Dougie saw this production, and pathetically hung out at the stage door after the show to get autographs from the above-listed actors. Sangster must have walked right by him, but Dougie had no idea what he looked like back then. Had Dougie recognized him, Sangster would have been in for a boring ten minutes of "I love your movies!" but he was too busy gushing over Pete.

Sangster's book is chatty, and includes hilarious tales of Bette Davis literally chasing him around the sofa, trying to get into his pants, which Mrs. Sangster did not appreciate. Approachable and friendly, Sangster even made comments and engaged in fan dialogues on the message boards of his page on the IMDb, which you can still read there. (He gave there as his reason for no longer writing: "I'm too old, too tired." I know the feeling.)

Meanwhile, let's take a little photo-stroll through his career.

The second movie he wrote was the Hammer sci-fi classic X - The Unknown. This was a follow-up to their two successful movie adaptations of Nigel Kneale's first two Quatermass TV serials. X was a faux-Quatermass story, about a sentient radioactive mud monster (No, I am not joking) that seeps up from a crack in the planet and eats stuff. Here we see the Mud Monster rolling over a nuclear power plant. Yummy radioactivity was the Mud Monster's favorite dish. Hammer still, mistakenly, thought an American name was needed to topline a film to make it sell in the USA, so as Brian Donlevy had been a ridiculously American head of the British space program in the Quatermass pictures (Frankly, the idea of a British space program was pretty silly in and of itself.), so Dean Jagger was imported to star in this film. I'd like to have been there the day that Jagger's agent convinced Michael Carreras that the name "Dean Jagger" would sell tickets in America. Who, besides his immediate family and friends, ever went to see something JUST BECAUSE Dean Jagger was in it? Irony: future big, big star, far bigger than Dean Jagger would ever be, Anthony Newley, is in it, in a small role as a soldier who gets eaten early on by the mud monster. It's not a bad movie.


Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 was the movie that really began it all. It made a star of Peter Cushing. It made a horror team of Peter Cushing & Sir Christopher Lee, both taking their first horror roles as Baron Victor Frankenstein and his monster respectively. It was the first Hammer Technicolor gothic horror movie. It was Terence Fisher's first time directing a monster movie, which he quickly became a specialist in. It was the first color Frankenstein movie at all, it was Hazel Courts's first horror movie. It was the first absolute remake of the novel Frankenstein since James Whale's Frankenstein. Sangster's screenplay bears no resemblance to either Whale's movie or Mary Shelley's novel, but it's a fine, well-made ripping yarn, and spawned five sequels. Little Dougie discusses this movie further in his book The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies.


Flat-out my favorite Hammer horror movie and favorite Jimmy Sangster movie, and favorite Dracula movie is Horror of Dracula, which was merely titled Dracula in Britain. Though one of the least-faithful adaptation's of Stoker's novel Dracula ever, it may be the best and scariest Dracula movie ever made. The Count in this movie was a lot more like the guy in the book, not to mention my late tragic third husband, Count Vlad Tepes, who was not thought of kindly by his serfs, than Bela lugosi's tepid vampire menace ever was. The film made Sir Christopher Lee a star and forever identified him with the role of Count Dracula. I've seen this movie dozens and dozens and dozens of times. When Little Dougie first saw Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula, at a double feature on the big screen in a theater in Santa Ana, CA, in 1964, Horror of Dracula came on first. Dougie so fell in love with it that he phoned home at intermission and asked his parents (He was only 13 at the time) to pick him up at the theater 90 minutes later than planned, as he HAD to watch it a second time. Dougie discusses this movie further in his book The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies.


What do you do when you make a film of Frankenstein, and it's a surprise international hit and the biggest-grossing British movies in 10 years? You do two things. You make a Dracula, and you make a sequel to Frankenstein. Hammer knocked out Horror of Dracula and The Revenge of Frankenstein so quickly, one after the other, that they have some of the same sets, quite recognizable. Jimmy wrote both. If there is anything Revenge of Frankenstein is not, it's a remake of Bride of Frankenstein, from which it could not be more different. The monster is dizzolved in acid and Frankenstein himself beheaded at the end of Curse. They couldn't very well undizzolve the monster, so Victor built a new one. The film opened with showing how the Baron managed to get the unsympathetic priest who had listened to his whole confession in Curse, beheaded in his place. (Turns out that if you're a rich aristocrat, you can bribe the guillotine operator to kill a priest instead of you. And people say these films are unrealistic! I love that it's Science killing Faith.) Sangster's cleverest touch comes at the end. The Baron has built but not animated a third monster. When the new monster dies (He sort of falls apart, in public yet. Poor stitching I suspect.), and the Baron is ripped apart by the outraged patients in a hospital for the indigent (They discovered he was using the parts he amputated off of them in his monsters. Cheeky! And again, a clever Sangster idea.), his assistant, Hans or Carl (In the Hammer Frankensteins, he always has an assistant named either Hans or Carl, though in each film they are different Hanses and Carls, but NEVER an Igor!), saves the Baron's brain, puts it into the new monster and brings it to life. The new monster is a dead (literally) ringer for Baron Frankenstein, so at the end, when he sets up shop in a new town, the monster and the doctor have fused! Dougie discusses this movie further in his book The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies.

Originally titled The Trolleberg Terror, you have to admit that The Crawling Eye is a better title for this black & white science-fiction thriller. Forrest Tucker and his amazing, immense dick starred. We ran this on Fright Night With Seymour once. At the end, jet planes napalm the giant crawling eyes. Seymour reran the clip with the soundtrack removed and instead, a slow, sultry vocal of "Smoke Gets in Your Eye."


Hammer's success in the 1950s led Universal to do a deal with Hammer. Universal would release their films in the USA, and Hammer would have rights to remake Universal's classics. This led to this first remake of The Mummy. It's an odd movie: the non-mummy characters take their names from The Mummy with Karloff, but the mummy is named Kharis, from The Mummy's Hand and it's three sequels, and is basically a remake of the entire Kharis series in one movie, and a much better movie than that entire series. Techncially, the 1999 Brendan Fraser movie The Mummy is a remake of this movie, but it bears no resemblance at all, and takes more from Universal's 1932 The Mummy, though no previous mummy pictures had thought to do it as an action movie ala Indiana Jones. Little Dougie wrote an essay on Hammer & Sangster's The Mummy in his book The Q Guide to Classic Monster Movies.



Any resemblance between this movie and the facts of the real Jack the Ripper are purely accidental.

One of Hammer's duller exercizes, it was based on a play, The Man in Half-Moon Street, and is really too stage bound. Still, any movie with both Sir Christopher Lee and Hazel Court in it, is worth seeing.

Sangster was assigned to write Hammer's sequel to Dracula naturally, with only one slight proviso, Sir Christopher refused to play Dracula again so he had to write a Dracula movie without Dracula in it. The poster above says "The most evil Dracula of all." No, more like "The Most Absent Dracula of all." Oddly enough, when Universal did their Dracula sequel, they also left Dracula out, except as a corpse, and went with Dracula's Daughter. (They made this dumb decision AFTER they had signed Lugosi to star in it. As a result, Lugosi was paid more not to appear in Dracula's Daughter than he was to appear in Dracula.)

Sangster used the character of Van Helsing, so it is still a sequel, and wrote an original tale that is actually pretty creepy and cool. And Martita Hunt, as a vampire's doting, tragic mommy, steals the movie.
I haven't seen this one, but I had an horrific experience in the Hellfire Club myself, to be found in Chapter 8 of my autobiography, My Lush Life.

I've never seen this very un-PC picture, but it seems to have been a dry run for Lee's later series of films as Fu Manchu.


I saw this silly pirate movie quite recently though. The pirates raid a town 50 miles inland, so there is ONE shipboard scene, and the entire rest of the movie takes place onland, mostly in a swamp. "Blood River" is a river full of piranha. Christopher Lee had to do a lot of fencing in this one while wearing an eyepatch!

I have not seen this pirate movie, though, since Sir Christopher Lee got killed in the last one, and wears no eye patch in this one, it's not a sequel.



After Psycho became a big hit, Hammer started turning out psychological thrillers in black & white, and Sangster became the go-to screenwriter for these imitation-Robert Bloch movies.


I haven't seen this one, but the poster is good and lurid, and adorable, gay Kerwin Matthews starred.




I've seen The Nanny though, and it made me scream with horror, but that was the American TV series The Nanny. I've also seen this excellent, thoughtful Hammer chiller The Nanny, but it is nowhere near as scary as the TV series.


Later in the 1960s, Sangster started exploiting his pitch-black sense of humor in his scripts. The Anniversary was an adaptation of a successful stage play, all very Freudian-imitation-Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. Sangster and director Roy Ward Baker turned it into a very black, black comedy about a family so weird, they make The Addams Family look like pillars of the PTA. Davis dominates the picture as an hilariously horrible monster of a mother, who makes a full-time occupation out of ruining her children's lives. Trust me, it's a scream, my favorite Sangster picture after Horror of Dracula.

Bette's designer eyepatch was see-through, so she didn't collide with the scenery. Working with Miss Davis could be - ah - challenging. The first director couldn't manage her, and was fired after a single week. The first thing the new director, Roy Ward Baker, decreed was that the major staircase be moved from the middle of the main set to one side of the set. His reason? Simple and brilliant: so that they could not use ANY footage shot by the first director. Wrote Sangster in his memoir: "Bette hated everybody and everybody hated her."

Finally, in 1965, Sir Christopher Lee was convinced to play Count Dracula a second time, Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Once the ice was broken, it was all anyone could do to get him to stop playing Dracula. Sangster wrote a creepy original vampire tale for this picture. Terence Fisher made a fairly slow-moving film from it, and Lee hated his dialogue so much, he cut all of it, so the Count, who doesn't make his entrance until halfway through the movie, never speaks, though he hisses quite elequently. Still, it looks great (the first widescreen Dracula movie), and has several striking scenes. Renfield, unused in Horror of Dracula, appears in this one, now called Ludwig, and the unforgettable scene in the book where Dracula opens his chest with his nails and forces the heroine to drink from him is used here most effectively. The DVD commentary track has Lee and three of the other stars of the picture watching it together, clearly not having seen it in many years, and it's like having them over to watch it with you. I saw this in a drive-in when it came out, very excited to see Lee play Dracula a second time. After this movie, the Hammer Dracula series went to Hell very fast. Sangster did the script from a story the producer knocked out. Since both worked under psuedonyms on this film, I assume he wasn't proud of it. In his autobiography he claims he never saw it. Well I have.

Oh but I've seen this bit of psychological Grand Guinol. Don't jump to the conclusion that Oliver Reed is the titular paranoiac, though he certainly plays a nasty piece of work. Good, weird, a bit over-the-top thriller. And see, Rocky Horror fans, Janette Scott did more than just fight a Triffid that spits poison and kills. She also fought an Oliver Reed that spits poison and kills... or does he?


I've not see Phobia at all, but you have to notice when, instead of Terence Fisher or Freddie Francis, a Sangster screenplay was directed by John Huston, himself a legendary screenwriter.

Sangster produced and directed as well as wrote this remake of his earlier Curse of Frankenstein. But he was so bored at repeating himself, that this time he did a spoof. Not a big, obvious spoof like Young Frankenstein, but a subtle spoof, and not advertised as a comedy, so you had to notice that it was actually an hilarious black comedy as you watched it. I saw it in its original release, and believe me, I noticed it was funny.


Horror of Frankenstein was also notable for the hunkiest, most-homoerotic Frankenstein monster ever, played by David Prowse, soon to be world famous as Darth Vader. Prowse, whom I've met, later played the Frankenstein monster again, in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell, the last of the series that began with Curse. Horror of Frankenstein, though made by Hammer, was not part of its series, but a stand-alone with a different actor as Frankenstein, Ralph Bates. It bombed, and Hammer returned to Peter Cushing's Baron Frankenstein again. Prowse's second monster was not hunky or hot at all, but was a rather interesting monster.

Lust for a Vampire was one of Hammer's attempts to keep its dying vampire pictures going by adding tits. Tits are nice and all, but no replacement for Peter Cushing or Sir Christopher Lee.


This was Sangster's entry into the old-lady-horror-movies genre of the 1960s that began with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, when movies discovered that the scariest people on earth are crazy, mean old ladies. I could have told them that. This one is sort of loosely based on Hansel & Gretel. It's pretty good, with Winters typically shrill, over-the-top nutso. I saw it in a theater and now have the DVD. Gay director Curtis Harrington, who was a friend of James Whale, stylishly directed this horror romp. Little Mark Lester, who had played the title role in the Best Picture winning musical Oliver, played the imperiled little boy in this one as well, though he had grown a bit, and was the protective big brother of his little sister.

These movies were made a long time ago, and Little Mark "Oliver Twist" Lester grew up, and was for a time, pretty hot. He could have put the "fag" in "Fagin".


Okay, when you're writing this kind of dreck for Disney, it is time to retire, so I shall. Cheers darlings.