Announcing the Film. Release. Repeat. Blogathon!

Jim/Quiggy of The Midnite Drive-In and I are gearing up to co-host our first event of 2026!  We're very excited to bring you the Film. Release. Repeat Blogathon.  This is a blogathon dedicated to sequels and remakes, those movies that came about because some Hollywood executive somewhere figured if one movie was good, why not have two?  Or four?  Or more?

Obviously, sometimes remakes are just as good as the original that inspired them.  Sometimes, they're better.  And sometimes... well, sometimes, they're a cheap cash grab, and we all know it.  And the same goes for sequels!  Sometimes, a movie is well-suited to creating a franchise, and sometimes it should have been left to stand on its own.

There are soooooo many ways you can join this blogathon!  You can review a movie a remake.  You can compare a movie and its remake.  You can review one or more movies in a series.  Is it a remake or sequel that improves on the original film?  Is it a remake or sequel that no one should ever have even considered making?  Is it one great film in an otherwise lackluster franchise, or the one dud in a stellar series?  The possibilities are very wide open.

Here are a few guidelines that Jim and I have set up:

1. One person per movie... but that only means we don't want two reviews of Rocky III -- someone else can review Rocky II, and a third blogger could do a post comparing all the Rocky movies or rating them from best to worst, etc.  

2.  Please limit yourself to two entries for this blogathon.  We love enthusiasm, but we'd rather not have one or two bloggers take over the whole show.

3.  Once you settle on what you want to contribute, leave it in a comment either on this post or Jim's announcement post so we can add you and your choice to the roster. 

4.  Try to use one of the blogathon banners in this post on your own blog to promote the event so others can join the fun.

Any questions?  Ask in the comments! 

The Roster

+ The Midnite Drive-in: reviews of The Thing (1982) [remake] and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) [sequel]

+ Hamlette's Soliloquy: review of You've Got Mail (1998) [remake]

+ Nitrate Glow: review of You Can't Run Away from It (1956) [remake]

+ Cinematic Scribblings: review of Carmen's Innocent Love (1952) [sequel]

+ Angelman's Place: review of A Star is Born (1976) comparing to other versions [remake]

+ Classic Film and TV Corner: reviews of The End of the Affair (1955) and The End of the Affair (1999) [remake]

+ Realweegiemidget Reviews: review of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) [sequel]

+ Movies Meet Their Match: top ten sequels

+ Critica Retro: review of Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961) [sequel]

+ Hoofers and Honeys: comparison of The Mummy (1932) and The Mummy (1999) [remake]

+ The Wonderful World of Cinema: review of Cape Fear (1991) [remake]

+ Silver Screenings: reviews of Blondie (1938) and Blondie Meets the Boss (1939) [sequel]

+ 18 Cinema Lane: review of Lovey: A Circle of Children Part II (1978) [sequel]

+ YOU!

Don't Miss the Black Friday Book Sale!

Are you ready for the most wonderful time of the year?  It's nearly time for the Black Friday Book Sale!  The time when a couple hundred indie authors (including me) put some or all of their Kindle books on sale for $.99 or FREE!  From Black Friday through Cyber Monday, you can stuff your Kindle full of amazing indie books at ridiculously low prices.

I'm marking all six of my Once Upon a Western books down to 99 cents.  Same goes for A Noble Companion.  And all the authors of Follow the Lonesome Trail agreed to lower its price to 99 cents for the weekend as well!  

This price drop is part of the massive indie book sale showcased at blackfridaybooksale.com, a site run by the wonderfully organized Perry Elizabeth Kirkpatrick.  My books are mainly in the Historical Fiction section, except for A Noble Companion, which is in the fantasy section.  A lot of other books in the Cornerstone Series (which ANC is part of) are part of this sale too.

All of the books included on that sale site are clean, which means they do not contain smut, the violence is non-gory, and any cussing is kept to a below-PG-13 level.  There are a couple hundred authors involved in this, which means hundreds and hundreds of ebooks available at their lowest price possible!

It looks like the price for my books has already dropped even though it isn't Black Friday, so if you want to go shopping a little early, go right ahead ;-)

I am on a Podcast!

Aren't I cool and trendy and all that jazz?  I am the guest on a podcast!  It's a podcast that Northwestern Publishing House started back in 2024 that revolves around conversations with some of the authors whose books they either publish or carry.  The intention is to have those authors share insights, discuss faith-related topics, and generally chat about common questions we all have during our lives.  I am the first fiction author they've featured, which I am taking as a pretty big compliment (whether they meant it as one or not -- I might be the guinea pig, lol).

You can listen to my episode right here any time you want!  I talk about how fiction stories can be more than mere entertainment, but can help us grow in our faith, apply lessons and truths to our own lives, and help adults and young people connect with fun and meaningful conversations.

If you give it a listen, I'd love it if you pop back over here and drop me a comment with your thoughts on the podcast discussion!

"The Invisible Man" (1933) -- Initial Thoughts

I watched The Invisible Man (1933) for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and my real takeaway simply is: wow.

I got it from the library to watch with my mom and, as I started it up after I had put my teens to bed, she said to me, "This isn't going to give me nightmares, is it?"  I was like, "Mom, I haven't seen this before either.  But we've both read the book.  And it was made in 1933.  How scary can it be?  The special effects will probably make us laugh!"

I was half right and half wrong.  It wasn't scary in the slightest.  But the special effects?  They were most impressive and didn't make us laugh once.

The film begins when a mysterious stranger (Claude Rains) all bundled up against the snow arrives in a small English inn and pub.

He asks to rent a room, and to have supper served to him there, which leads to rampant speculation amongst the pub's regulars.  We may not have laughed at the movie's special effects, but we definitely laughed a lot while watching this movie!  It has lots of humorous parts, especially revolving around the pub's landlord and landlady.

Speaking of the landlady (Una O'Connor), she surprises the stranger at his supper, and he snatches up a napkin to cover his lower face quickly before she can see him.

She finds this most shocking and leaves in a huff.  But she would have been much more shocked if he hadn't!

He lowers his napkin after she leaves, revealing to us that... this is the Invisible Man, and boy howdy, is he ever invisible!!!

Now, thanks to the internet and film historians, I know in my head that they achieved this effect by having Claude Rains wear a black body stocking sort of thing with other clothes on top of it and filming him in front of a black cloth, and then they superimposed that over a background.  Something like this, yes.  But it is still breathtakingly cool!

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Great Britain, a scientist (Henry Travers) and his pretty daughter Flora (Gloria Talbott) are worried because one of his assistants has gone missing, and he was courting Flora, and she thinks he would surely not have left her without saying goodbye, right?

Well, we don't really have to wonder who that assistant is, or why he left so abruptly.  He's holed up now in this little inn, working madly away at figuring out how to reverse his condition.

The landlady hates her new lodger because he threatens people if they try to get in his room and even throws things at them, sometimes pushes them down the stairs.  Her husband is more concerned about getting a drink quick while his wife isn't looking than he is about pressing charges, though.

The police decide to intervene.  They burst into the stranger's room and demand he take off his disguise.  So he obliges.  

Once again, even when you pause and screencap it, these effects are so incredible!

Bit by bit, he removes all his clothing until he has nothing left but his shirt.  

He dances around them mockingly, then slips off the shirt and runs away unseen.  Now there's an invisible naked man loose, which terrifies absolutely everyone.

Flora's dad confides in his other assistant, Arthur, about what his protege had been working on and how dangerous some of the substances he'd used could be.

Arthur wants to get together with Flora himself, so he figures it's good riddance to bad rubbish until the Invisible Man shows up in his house and gets comfy there.  He's no longer interested in returning to visible form -- he wants to use his invisibility to get rich, to terrorize the authorities, to do whatever he wants to do.  He goes on a crime spree with spectacular results, and ends up back at that same inn.

There are a multitude of constables after him by then, and they converge on the inn, trying to capture him somehow.  The Invisible Man makes a desperate bid for freedom, and... is it really SPOILAGE if a book is 128 years old and a movie is 92 years old?  Well, if it is, skip to the shot of The End and don't read what I write between now and then.

Flora is distraught.  They finally find the Invisible Man by tracking his footprints in the snow, and are forced to shoot him before he can kill again.  Flora and her father rush to his bedside, for they're pretty sure he is dying.   

When he dies, the Invisible Man becomes visible again at last, leaving us with the biggest shock yet: Claude Rains Does Not Have a Mustache!!!  I repeat, it's a mustacheless Claude Rains, folks!  What?!

It's been a while since I read The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells, but from what I remember, this movie actually sticks really close to what happens in the book.  Unlike a lot of horror pictures made from classic books in the 1930s, it doesn't take a few character names and some story beats and make something new up around those, which is really refreshing.

This has been my contribution to the Early Shadows and Precode Horror Blogathon hosted this week by the Classic Movie Blog Association.  Be sure to click on that link or the blogathon button to read the other contributions by association members!

An Autumnal Sunshine Blogger Award

Cecilia at Craft, Coffee, and Cake has tagged me with a Sunshine Blogger Award!  Thank you, Cecilia!

Rules:

1. Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog. 
2. Thank the person who nominated you. (Thank you again, Liz.) 
3. Provide a link to your nominator’s blog. 
4. Answer your nominator’s questions. 
5. Nominate up to 11 bloggers. 
6. Ask your nominees 11 questions. 
7. Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog post

Cecilia's Questions:

1. If you had to live out the events in a book as the main character, which book would you choose? 

I'd like to be Miss Mary Russell in The Beekeeper's Apprentice for a run through the book, and get to be mentored and befriended by Sherlock Holmes.

2. Favourite weird combination of flavours that everyone else hates? 

Hmm.  I don't make them often, but I do enjoy peanut butter and onion sandwiches.

3. Whom are your favourite actor and actress? 

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara!  How lucky I am -- they made five movies together!

4. If you had all the money in the world to buy an outfit for a ball, what would you wear? (The sky's the limit for this one - you can wear any dress, shoes, bag, hairstyle you like!) 

I'd wear anything from White Christmas that would look nice on me -- probably any of Rosemary Clooney's outfits.  These are two of my favorites:

5. Quote from a film that makes you smile/laugh? 

So many!  Basically every single line from Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), which we quote alllll the time.  "I don't really have much to say about old Millard, as he only arrove amongst us a few days ago and was promptly struck down by whatever deadly disease it was that struck him down" tends to be a big favorite, oddly enough.

6. Social situation from a book/film to which you completely relate? 

Again, so many!  How to choose one?  Maybe, let's go with the exchange in The Avengers (2012) where Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is confused by Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) casual mention of "flying monkeys," and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is all pleased with himself for understanding the reference.  I have been all three of those characters in various situations like that, at different times.

7. Most inspiring quote from a non-religious book? 

I mean, choosing just one is almost impossible.  I do find this line from The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery to be very inspiring, though:

She brushed the old years and habits and inhibitions away from her like dead leaves. She would not be littered with them.

(From my Instagram)

8. What personal quality do you think, if everyone possessed it, would make the biggest difference to the world? 

Cheerfulness.

9. You have to have one antagonist from a novel tag along with you for the next six months. Who would it be? 

Oh my.  How about Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books?  He's a dear favorite of mine, but Harry certainly considers him an antagonist in every single book.  And, odd as this might seem, I don't think I would mind having him living in my house for half a year.  If he got sarcastic about my cooking, I would get sarcastic back.  If he ridiculed my coffee, I'd have an excuse to buy an espresso machine and teach him how to use it.  I'd introduce him to chocolate-chip pancakes and peppermint mocha and sitting outside on the swing reading a book.  Maybe I'd even manage to make him smile once or twice.

10. Can you speak another language? If so, which one? If not, which one would you like to learn? 

I can speak a little bit of German.

11. Would you rather be an amazing homemaker and housekeeper, or be able to write beautiful poetry?

I can write poetry already, and I enjoy doing homemaker things like cooking and baking and arranging nice flowers for the dining room table and switching out some decorations with the seasons... so I pick some kind of magical spell that will turn me into a better housekeeper!  Because I am not good at keeping my house clean and tidy like I ought to be.

Now, it's my turn :-D

My Questions:

1. Thanksgiving or Halloween?

2. Candy apples or caramel apples?

3. Hot apple cider or cold apple cider?

4. Walnuts or almonds?

5. Pecan pie or pumpkin pie?

6. Caramel corn or Chex mix?

7. Bonfire or a fire in a fireplace?

8. Hiking or camping?

9. Canoeing or kayaking?

10. Sweaters or hoodies?

11. Gloves or mittens?

I Nominate:

Anyone who wants to answer these!  I haven't had much time for blogging lately, as you might have noticed, so I'm not going to pick anyone for this.  If it looks fun to you, consider yourself tagged!