Movies in a Halloween spirit on Oct. 30

SALISBURY — Fans of classic horror films have a terrific double bill Sunday, Oct. 30, at the Scoville Memorial Library, with “The Thing from Another World” (1951) and “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954).In “The Thing,” a flying saucer crashes in the Arctic not too far from an American station, and it turns out that the pilot is a large, bulletproof, bloodsucking alien fiend.It’s sometimes instructive to go back to contemporary reviews, and Bosley Crowther of The New York Times perhaps stumbled on the essential subtext of “the Thing” when he wrote:“The film is full of unexpected thrills as the head scientist, a Nobel Prize winner no less, wants to protect and study the find and the army lads just want to stay alive.”“The Thing” is one of the great Cold War films, which often feature idealistic but dense scientists. You can tell them from regular American men by their little pointed beards, turtleneck sweaters and double-breasted blazers.And when a scientist has to be physically restrained from allowing the giant bloodsucking alien fiend from running amok in the tight confines of the Arctic observation station, he is obviously some kind of Commie.The subtext of “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” is that beautiful young girls should be darn careful about dark scaly beings.The Creature, or “Gill-Man,” is discovered hanging around in a geologic fluke of a black lagoon somewhere up the Amazon. One scientist wants to harpoon him; another wants to study him, and the girl just wants to go swimming.Unlike a lot of 1950s films, which feature ordinary critters such as ants mutated by radiation into giant marauding killer ants, there is no atomic problem at the black lagoon. Just a peaceful gill-man hanging around the grotto. Until She shows up.So is the film a somber warning against stirring things up with too much science? A none-too-subtle fable of the dangers of miscegnation? (The film was made in 1954, after all, and premiered on a double bill with “Brown vs. Board of Education.”)Or was it simply an expression of generalized dread, with a great costume?Originally in 3D, with those goofy glasses that never really worked.At the Scoville Memorial Library, Sunday, Oct. 30, 4 p.m.. Admission is free.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less