Public Domain Horror: The Red House

This is a real gem, a dark country gothic thriller I first discovered on late-night TV about 20 years ago. It’s tough to find; I’ve never owned a copy.

That’s why I was pleased to find it at The Internet Archive, a fantastic site for public domain films. So I watched it again just now, and it’s every bit as creepy and strange as I remembered. I can’t really call it a horror film, but it does have some dark elements. It’s the story of a young boy who goes to work on a remote farm (owned by the ape-like Edward G. Robinson), only to discover there’s a terrible secret in the woods, a ghost from the past that has ties to the farmer and the young girl who lives with him.

I’ve put the YouTube clip here, but I really do suggest you visit the Internet Archive to watch the whole film. It’s a better version. But if you want to stick with the YouTube version, which loads much faster, it’s here.

Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day in Canada and the U.S. Basically, we all watch a groundhog come out of his little house. If he sees his shadow, it means six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, it means an early spring. It’s kind of bullshit.

Like all folkore-based North American traditions, Groundhog Day emerged from early proto-Celt pagan tradition, which I think I read once involved spying on gophers to determine whether it would rain on the day they planned to sacrifice a virgin to some crazy Irish deity. I might be remembering that wrong.

I never understood the Groundhog Day concept as a kid, because I lived in rural northern Ontario, where February 2 is about the one-third marker each winter. People on TV would moan about there being six more weeks of winter because Wiarton Willie, Ontario’s official weather-prognosticating groundhog, saw his shadow. It didn’t matter to us. Six weeks was a given for us back then. Spring doesn’t come to the North until May, really.

Anyway, there are official groundhogs all over the continent, and each February 2, they are presented to the public in grand ceremonies, all lighthearted but still kind of stupid. If you’ve seen the movie Groundhog Day, you get my drift. Wikipedia claims there’s a Canadian study that determined groundhogs have a 37 per cent accuracy rate. That’s actually better than my local TV weather guy, who is named Jay and is kind of a weiner.

The groundhog determined we’re due for six more weeks of winter, which takes us into mid-March. That’s no biggie. I look forward to the snow melting and that certain smell of spring: thawing dog shit.

Today’s Moron: The Tail Section

"What? They took his name off his articles?"

As a big fan of Lost, I have visited several Lost-related websites, blogs and forums for years. One of those was The Tail Section, which was once the best place for breaking Lost news and cast interviews. It was run by a writer who calls himself DocArzt (named for the mouthy teacher who exploded onto screens at the end of Season 1).

Doc, whose real name is Jon Lachonis, is quite a writer, and applies the rules of good journalism to his work. He’s no geek blogger; he’s an ethical and professional web journalist whose work I trust. His interviews with stars (Michael Emerson, for example) and producers (Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof) were solid and informative.

He founded The Tail Section, but later sold it to BuddyTV.com. After staying on for a time as a writer, he left The Tail Section last year, and now runs his own page, DocArzt’s Lost Blog. It would appear there may be some bad blood between the sites, as Doc recently noticed that his extensive archive of work at The Tail Section has now been attributed to other writers (with stupid made-up names like David Hume, etc.)

Strangely, the change was made to the articles themselves, but not to the teasers on the main page, which still say things like “Doc encounters William Mapother and gets the lowdown on the Ethan Vs. Locke cut scene.” Sloppy. If you’re going to screw someone over, don’t do a half-assed job of it, right?

Doc has blogged about this. First, he let his readers know what The Tail Section had done. Now he has a new post up, saying he was told by The Tail Section that it was a simple mistake, that new names were assigned to his work — only his work — accidentally. But those names are still there, days later. The whole thing smells bad. Now he’s looking into legal action. As well he should.

A writer’s byline is a thing of value, whether it’s a real name or a Web nickname. And it carries a lot of weight. When reporters want their readers to know they disagree with a story they’ve been told to cover, they remove their byline from it. That sends a message.

It looks like The Tail Section is sending a message, not just to Doc but to his readers. For whatever reason, someone at The Tail Section decided to retroactively wipe Doc’s contributions off the site. Backfire! If anything, it’s causing the opposite reaction. Doc is a popular guy, and The Tail Section hasn’t been the same since he left, so this was really just the thing many fans needed to dump BuddyTV once and for all.

I find the whole mess an insult to Doc, an insult to Lost fans and an insult to me, as a journalist. So I won’t be going back to The Tail Section. And neither should you.