Sea Oak

Sea Oak is a 2000 short story by award-winning author George Saunders. You can read it online here. This one includes a club where men perform for clients, just so you're not surprised by the descriptions once you get into the story. It begins,

At Six Mr. Frendt comes on the P.A. and shouts, "Welcome to Joysticks!" Then he announces Shirts Off. We take off our flightjackets and fold them up. We take off our shirts and fold them up. Our scarves we leave on. Thomas Kirster's our beautiful boy. He's got long muscles and bright-blue eyes. The minute his shirt comes off two fat ladies hustle up the aisle and stick some money in his pants and ask will he be their Pilot. He says sure. He brings their salads. He brings their soups. My phone rings and the caller tells me to come see her in the Spitfire mock-up. Does she want me to be her Pilot? I'm hoping. Inside the Spitfire is Margie, who says she's been diagnosed with Chronic Shyness Syndrome, then hands me an Instamatic and offers me ten bucks for a close-up of Thomas's tush.

Do I do it? Yes I do.

It could be worse. It is worse for Lloyd Betts. Lately he's put on weight and his hair's gone thin. He doesn't get a call all shift and waits zero tables and winds up sitting on the P-51 wing, playing solitaire in a hunched-over position that gives him big gut rolls.

I Pilot six tables and make forty dollars in tips plus five an hour in salary.

After closing we sit on the floor for Debriefing.

Henry V (1944)

Henry V is a 1944 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play. It is directed by and stars Laurence Olivier. William Walton wrote the score. I'm a firm believer in watching -not reading- plays, so I look for them and watch them when I find them online. I found this one here.

trailer:

The film's opening:

St. Crispin's Day speech:

TCM has an article. Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 100%.

When It Changed

When It Changed is a 1972 award-winning science fiction short story by Joanna Russ. You can read it online here. It begins,

Katy drives like a maniac; we must have been doing over 120 kilometers per hour on those turns. She’s good, though, extremely good, and I’ve seen her take the whole car apart and put it together again in a day. My birthplace on Whileaway was largely given to farm machinery and I refuse to wrestle with a five-gear shift at unholy speeds, not having been brought up to it, but even on those turns in the middle of the night, on a country road as bad as only our district can make them, Katy’s driving didn’t scare me. The funny thing about my wife, though: she will not handle guns. She has even gone hiking in the forests above the forty-eighth parallel without firearms, for days at a time. And that does scare me.

Katy and I have three children between us, one of hers and two of mine. Yuriko, myeldest, was asleep in the back seat, dreaming twelve-year-old dreams of love and war: running away to sea, hunting in the North, dreams of strangely beautiful people in strangely beautiful places, all the wonderful guff you think up when you’re turning twelve and the glands start going. Some day soon, like all of them, she will disappear for weeks on end to come back grimy and proud, having knifed her first cougar or shot her first bear, dragging some abominably dangerous dead beastie behind her, which I will never forgive for what it might have done to my daughter. Yuriko says Katy’s driving puts her to sleep.

For someone who has fought three duels, I am afraid of far, far too much. I’m getting old. I told this to my wife.

“You’re thirty-four,” she said. Laconic to the point of silence, that one. She flipped the lights on, on the dash—three kilometers to go and the road getting worse all the time. Far out in the country. Electric-green trees rushed into our headlights and around the car. I reached down next to me where we bolt the carrier panel to the door and eased my rifle into my lap. Yuriko stirred in the back. My height but Katy’s eyes, Katy’s face. The car engine is so quiet, Katy says, that you can hear breathing in the back seat. Yuki had been alone in the car when the message came, enthusiastically decoding her dot-dashes (silly to mount a wide frequency transceiver near an I. C. engine, but most of Whileaway is on steam). She had thrown herself out of the car, my gangly and gaudy offspring, shouting at the top of her lungs, so of course she had had to come along. We’ve been intellectually prepared for this ever since the Colony was founded, ever since it was abandoned, but this is different. This is awful.

“Men!” Yuki had screamed, leaping over the car door. “They’ve come back! Real Earth men!”

Join me as I visit the T Stands for Tuesday bloggers and have a cup of coffee:

and enjoy the First Robin of Spring:

Of course robins are year 'round birds here, but we still set up a cry of "First Robin of Spring" every time we see one on a pretty day. It's a family tradition that predates me.

The Great Breteche

The Great Breteche is an 1831 short story by Honoré de Balzac. It is the story behind the abandonment of a manor house. You can read it online here. It begins,

“Ah! madame,” replied the doctor, “I have some appalling stories in my collection. But each one has its proper hour in a conversation—you know the pretty jest recorded by Chamfort, and said to the Duc de Fronsac: ‘Between your sally and the present moment lie ten bottles of champagne.’”

“But it is two in the morning, and the story of Rosina has prepared us,” said the mistress of the house.

“Tell us, Monsieur Bianchon!” was the cry on every side.

The obliging doctor bowed, and silence reigned.

“At about a hundred paces from Vendôme, on the banks of the Loir,” said he, “stands an old brown house, crowned with very high roofs, and so completely isolated that there is nothing near it, not even a fetid tannery or a squalid tavern, such as are commonly seen outside small towns. In front of this house is a garden down to the river, where the box shrubs, formerly clipped close to edge the walks, now straggle at their own will. A few willows, rooted in the stream, have grown up quickly like an enclosing fence, and half hide the house. The wild plants we call weeds have clothed the bank with their beautiful luxuriance. The fruit-trees, neglected for these ten years past, no longer bear a crop, and their suckers have formed a thicket. The espaliers are like a copse. The paths, once graveled, are overgrown with purslane; but, to be accurate there is no trace of a path.

“Looking down from the hilltop, to which cling the ruins of the old castle of the Dukes of Vendôme, the only spot whence the eye can see into this enclosure, we think that at a time, difficult now to determine, this spot of earth must have been the joy of some country gentleman devoted to roses and tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but above all a lover of choice fruit. An arbor is visible, or rather the wreck of an arbor, and under it a table still stands not entirely destroyed by time. At the aspect of this garden that is no more, the negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces may be divined as we divine the history of a worthy tradesman when we read the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the mournful and tender impressions which seize the soul, on one of the walls there is a sundial graced with this homely Christian motto, ‘Ultimam cogita.’

“The roof of this house is dreadfully dilapidated; the outside shutters are always closed; the balconies are hung with swallows’ nests; the doors are for ever shut. Straggling grasses have outlined the flagstones of the steps with green; the ironwork is rusty. Moon and sun, winter, summer, and snow have eaten into the wood, warped the boards, peeled off the paint. The dreary silence is broken only by birds and cats, polecats, rats, and mice, free to scamper round, and fight, and eat each other. An invisible hand has written over it all: ‘Mystery.’

“If, prompted by curiosity, you go to look at this house from the street, you will see a large gate, with a round-arched top; the children have made many holes in it. I learned later that this door had been blocked for ten years. Through these irregular breaches you will see that the side towards the courtyard is in perfect harmony with the side towards the garden. The same ruin prevails. Tufts of weeds outline the paving-stones; the walls are scored by enormous cracks, and the blackened coping is laced with a thousand festoons of pellitory. The stone steps are disjointed; the bell-cord is rotten; the gutter-spouts broken. What fire from heaven could have fallen there? By what decree has salt been sown on this dwelling? Has God been mocked here? Or was France betrayed? These are the questions we ask ourselves. Reptiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and deserted house is a vast enigma of which the answer is known to none.

42 Anniversary!

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the first episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was first broadcast on Radio 4 on March 8, 1978.

A Noble Radiance

A Noble Radiance is the 7th book in the Donna Leon Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series. It takes place in the early Spring.

from the back of the book:

In a small village at the foot of the Italian Dolomites, not far from Venice, the gardens of a deserted farmhouse have lain untouched for decades. But the new owner, eager for renovations to begin, is summoned to the house when his workmen disturb a macabre grave. Nearby, a valuable signet ring is found, reigniting an infamous cold case of kidnapping and diappearance involving one of Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families. The victim's cousin, next in line to inherit the family business and fortune, is the logical suspect, but Brunetti senses something more insidious at play. Only Commissario Guido Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into the heart of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving for their lost son.

I've read the following from this series:

#1 Death at La Fenice (1992)
#2 Death in a Strange Country (1993)
#3 Dressed for Death (1994)
#4 Death and Judgment (1995)
#5 Acqua Alta (1996)
#6 Quietly in Their Sleep (1997)
#13 Doctored Evidence (2004)
#18 About Face (2009)
#19 A Question of Belief
#20 Drawing Conclusions
#22 The Golden Egg

Sartana's Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin

Sartana's Here… Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin is a 1970 spaghetti western, the 3rd in the Sartana series. George Hilton takes over the title role.

You can watch it at TubiTV here or below in two parts.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Spaghetti-Western.net calls it "surprisingly well-made and entertaining".

Quietly in Their Sleep

Quietly in their Sleep is the 6th novel in the Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery/detective series by Donna Leon. This is a long-running series, and I'm working my way through them as I find or are gifted them. The book order doesn't seem to matter with these. I've enjoyed them all and look forward to more. This one takes place in the early spring.

from the back of the book:

In the sixth novel featuring Donna Leon's ever-charming and sympathetic protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nun, a nurse who has five patients unexpectedly die and decides to leave her convent. In the course of his inquiries, Brunetti encounters an unusual cast of characters but discovers nothing that seems criminal. Is the nun simply creating a justification for abandoning her vocation? Or has she stumbled onto something very real and very sinister -something that places her own life in imminent danger? A beautiful, suspense-filled novel, Quietly in Their Sleep is Donna Leon at the top of her form.

I've read the following from this series:

#1 Death at La Fenice (1992)
#2 Death in a Strange Country (1993)
#3 Dressed for Death (1994)
#4 Death and Judgment (1995)
#5 Acqua Alta (1996)
#13 Doctored Evidence (2004)
#18 About Face (2009)
#19 A Question of Belief
#20 Drawing Conclusions
#22 The Golden Egg

The Night Flier (1997)

The Night Flier is a 1997 film adaptation of the Stephen King short story. This is another one I didn't finish. It's a modern vampire story so should've been right down my alley, but there's just too much of the doomed hard-bitten reporter here for my taste.

HorrorFreakNews calls it "an Original Vampire Movie with a Great Story." Moria praises it saying, "What keeps the film going is an original story, which comes as a well structured mystery where the piecing together of the puzzle gives the story an intriguing drive."

The Knowers

The Knowers is a science fiction short story by Helen Philips. You can read it online here. It begins,

There are those who wish to know, and there are those who don’t wish to know. At first Tem made fun of me in that condescending way of his (a flick of my nipple, a grape tossed at my nose) when I claimed to be among the former; when he realized I meant it, he grew anxious, and when he realized I really did mean it, his anxiety morphed into terror.

“Why?” he demanded tearfully in the middle of the night. “Why why why?”

I couldn’t answer. I had no answer.

“This isn’t only about you, you know,” he scolded. “It affects me too. Hell, maybe it affects me more than it affects you. I don’t want to sit around for a bunch of decades awaiting the worst day of my life.”

Touched, I reached out to squeeze his hand in the dark. Grudgingly, he squeezed back. I would have preferred to be like Tem, of course I would have! If only I could have known it was possible to know and still have been fine with ignorance. But now that the technology had been mastered, the knowledge was available to every citizen for a nominal fee.

Tem stood in the doorway as I buttoned the blue wool coat he’d given me for, I think, our four-year anniversary a couple years back.

“I don’t want to know where you’re going,” he said. He glared.

To honor T Stands for Tuesday I'm offering this quote from the story and a public domain illustration:

We sat drinking coffee in rocking chairs on the front porch of a bed-and-breakfast on a hill in the chill of early spring. Tem was generous to me; it was his least favorite day of the year, but he managed to pretend; we’d stroll. We’d eat ice cream. The silly little band-aids.

My life would seem normal — bland, really — to an outside observer, but I tell you that for me it has been rich, layered and rich.

The Dark Mirror

The Dark Mirror is a 1946 film noir psychological thriller film directed by Robert Siodmak and starring Olivia de Havilland as twins and Lew Ayres as their psychiatrist. It also stars Richard Long and Thomas Mitchell.

Senses of Cinema has an interesting article. Time Out calls it an "Impressively unusual thriller". Noir of the Week says, "I don't know much about de Havilland (this being her only walk into the back alley of noir) but she's more than excellent in this." DVD Talk says, "the fine cast and Siodmak's excellent pacing keep the story moving and hold the audience's attention."

The Man Who Went Too Far

image from Flickr

The Man Who Went Too Far is a 1912 ghost story by E.F. Benson. You can read it online here or here. You can listen to it here. It begins,

The little village of St. Faith’s nestles in a hollow of wooded till up on the north bank of the river Fawn in the country of Hampshire, huddling close round its grey Norman church as if for spiritual protection against the fays and fairies, the trolls and “little people,” who might be supposed still to linger in the vast empty spaces of the New Forest, and to come after dusk and do their doubtful businesses. Once outside the hamlet you may walk in any direction (so long as you avoid the high road which leads to Brockenhurst) for the length of a summer afternoon without seeing sign of human habitation, or possibly even catching sight of another human being.

Shaggy wild ponies may stop their feeding for a moment as you pass, the white scuts of rabbits will vanish into their burrows, a brown viper perhaps will glide from your path into a clump of heather, and unseen birds will chuckle in the bushes, but it may easily happen that for a long day you will see nothing human. But you will not feel in the least lonely; in summer, at any rate, the sunlight will be gay with butterflies, and the air thick with all those woodland sounds which like instruments in an orchestra combine to play the great symphony of the yearly festival of June.

Winds whisper in the birches, and sigh among the firs; bees are busy with their redolent labour among the heather, a myriad birds chirp in the green temples of the forest trees, and the voice of the river prattling over stony places, bubbling into pools, chuckling and gulping round corners, gives you the sense that many presences and companions are near at hand.

Yet, oddly enough, though one would have thought that these benign and cheerful influences of wholesome air and spaciousness of forest were very healthful comrades for a man, in so far as Nature can really influence this wonderful human genus which has in these centuries learned to defy her most violent storms in its well-established houses, to bridle her torrents and make them light its streets, to tunnel her mountains and plough her seas, the inhabitants of St. Faith’s will not willingly venture into the forest after dark. For in spite of the silence and loneliness of the hooded night it seems that a man is not sure in what company he may suddenly find himself, and though it is difficult to get from these villagers any very clear story of occult appearances, the feeling is widespread. One story indeed I have heard with some definiteness, the tale of a monstrous goat that has been seen to skip with hellish glee about the woods and shady places, and this perhaps is connected with the story which I have here attempted to piece together. It too is well-known to them; for all remember the young artist who died here not long ago, a young man, or so he struck the beholder, of great personal beauty, with something about him that made men’s faces to smile and brighten when they looked on him. His ghost they will tell you “walks” constantly by the stream and through the woods which he loved so, and in especial it haunts a certain house, the last of the village, where he lived, and its garden in which he was done to death. For my part I am inclined to think that the terror of the forest dates chiefly from that day.

So, such as the story is, I have set it forth in connected form. It is based partly on the accounts of the villagers, but mainly on that of Darcy, a friend of mine and a friend of the man with whom these events were chiefly concerned.

The Lady and the Beard

The Lady and the Beard is a 1931 Japanese comedy. The Imdb has this plot synopsis: "A bearded kendo champion has difficulties in life because of his conservative ways and his unusual beard."

Click the little "CC" at the bottom right of the video to get the English subtitles.

The Purple Cloud

The Purple Cloud is a 1901 science fiction novel by M. P. Shiel. I love these old science fiction stories. To see what these people thought the future would bring is interesting. The plots themselves vary, but this one's a keeper. It was recommended by M. John Harrison. You can read it online here. It begins, not including an introduction that's part of the story,

Well, the memory seems to be getting rather impaired now, rather weak. What, for instance, was the name of that parson who preached, just before the Boreal set out, about the wickedness of any further attempt to reach the North Pole? I have forgotten! Yet four years ago it was familiar to me as my own name.

Things which took place before the voyage seem to be getting a little cloudy in the memory now. I have sat here, in the loggia of this Cornish villa, to write down some sort of account of what has happened—God knows why, since no eye can ever read it—and at the very beginning I cannot remember the parson's name.

He was a strange sort of man surely, a Scotchman from Ayrshire, big and gaunt, with tawny hair. He used to go about London streets in shough and rough-spun clothes, a plaid flung from one shoulder. Once I saw him in Holborn with his rather wild stalk, frowning and muttering to himself. He had no sooner come to London, and opened chapel (I think in Fetter Lane), than the little room began to be crowded; and when, some years afterwards, he moved to a big establishment in Kensington, all sorts of men, even from America and Australia, flocked to hear the thunderstorms that he talked, though certainly it was not an age apt to fly into enthusiasms over that species of pulpit prophets and prophecies. But this particular man undoubtedly did wake the strong dark feelings that sleep in the heart; his eyes were very singular and powerful; his voice from a whisper ran gathering, like snow-balls, and crashed, as I have heard the pack-ice in commotion far yonder in the North; while his gestures were as uncouth and gawky as some wild man's of the primitive ages.

Well, this man—what was his name?—Macintosh? Mackay? I think—yes, that was it! Mackay. Mackay saw fit to take offence at the new attempt to reach the Pole in the Boreal; and for three Sundays, when the preparations were nearing completion, stormed against it at Kensington.

The excitement of the world with regard to the North Pole had at this date reached a pitch which can only be described as fevered, though that word hardly expresses the strange ecstasy and unrest which prevailed: for the abstract interest which mankind, in mere desire for knowledge, had always felt in this unknown region, was now, suddenly, a thousand and a thousand times intensified by a new, concrete interest—a tremendous money interest.

And the new zeal had ceased to be healthy in its tone as the old zeal was: for now the fierce demon Mammon was making his voice heard in this matter.

Within the ten years preceding the Boreal expedition, no less than twenty-seven expeditions had set out, and failed.

The secret of this new rage lay in the last will and testament of Mr. Charles P. Stickney of Chicago, that king of faddists, supposed to be the richest individual who ever lived: he, just ten years before the Boreal undertaking, had died, bequeathing 175 million dollars to the man, of whatever nationality, who first reached the Pole.

Such was the actual wording of the will—'the man who first reached': and from this loose method of designating the person intended had immediately burst forth a prolonged heat of controversy in Europe and America as to whether or no the testator meant the Chief of the first expedition which reached: but it was finally decided, on the highest legal authority, that, in any case, the actual wording of the document held good: and that it was the individual, whatever his station in the expedition, whose foot first reached the 90th degree of north latitude, who would have title to the fortune.

At all events, the public ferment had risen, as I say, to a pitch of positive fever; and as to the Boreal in particular, the daily progress of her preparations was minutely discussed in the newspapers, everyone was an authority on her fitting, and she was in every mouth a bet, a hope, a jest, or a sneer: for now, at last, it was felt that success was probable. So this Mackay had an acutely interested audience, if a somewhat startled, and a somewhat cynical, one.

A truly lion-hearted man this must have been, after all, to dare proclaim a point-of-view so at variance with the spirit of his age! One against four hundred millions, they bent one way, he the opposite, saying that they were wrong, all wrong! People used to call him 'John the Baptist Redivivus': and without doubt he did suggest something of that sort. I suppose that at the time when he had the face to denounce the Boreal there was not a sovereign on any throne in Europe who, but for shame, would have been glad of a subordinate post on board.

On the third Sunday night of his denunciation I was there in that Kensington chapel, and I heard him. And the wild talk he talked! He seemed like a man delirious with inspiration.

The people sat quite spell-bound, while Mackay's prophesying voice ranged up and down through all the modulations of thunder, from the hurrying mutter to the reverberant shock and climax: and those who came to scoff remained to wonder.

Put simply, what he said was this: That there was undoubtedly some sort of Fate, or Doom, connected with the Poles of the earth in reference to the human race: that man's continued failure, in spite of continual efforts, to reach them, abundantly and super-abundantly proved this; and that this failure constituted a lesson—and a warning—which the race disregarded at its peril.

The Girl Who Dared

The Girl Who Dared is a 1944 mystery film starring Lorna Gray. from the Imdb site: "A young woman seeking adventure, and several other people have to outwit a mysterious killer on a remote island."

TCM has information.

My Last Story

My Last Story is a 1951 short story by Janet Frame. You can read it online here. It begins,

I'm never going to write another story. I don’t like writing stories. I don’t like putting he said she said he did she did, and telling about people, the small dark woman who coughs into a silk handkerchief and says excuse me would you like another soda cracker Mary, and the men with grease all over their clothes and lunch tins in their hands, the Hillside men who get into the tram at four forty-five, and hang on to the straps so the ladies can sit down comfortably, and stare out of the window and you never know what they’re thinking, perhaps about their sons in Standard two, who are going to work at Hillside when it’s time for them to leave school, and that’s called work and earning a living, well I’m not going to write any more stories like that. I’m not going to write about the snow and the curly chrysanthemums peeping out of the snow and the women saying how lovely every cloud has a silver lining, and I’m not going to write about my grandmother sitting in a black dress at the back door and having her photo taken with Dad because he loved her best and Uncle Charlie broke her heart because he drank beer. I’m never going to write another story after this one. This is my last story.

The life story of this author is interesting, as she had a history of repeated admissions to mental hospitals and was saved from a lobotomy when her story collection was published and won an award.

*******

I won some Happy Mail from CJ:

Have you ever seen such delights? I'm excited about all these. I've never used watercolor crayons before, just as one example, and all these sweet things will be such fun!

There's a cup in the photo at the top of the page. It's a public domain picture from Pixabay, and it's my beverage reference for the T Stands for Tuesday blogger gathering.

The Pot

The Pot is a 1925 Japanese short animated film. It combines two stories into one seventeen-minute movie: 1) The Fisherman and the Jinni from One Thousand and One Nights, and 2) the story of the fox and the lion from Machiavelli's The Prince. You can watch it online here.

Division by Zero

Division by Zero is a 1991 short story by Ted Chiang. You can read it online here. It begins,

1

Dividing a number by zero doesn’t produce an infinitely large number as an answer. The reason is that division is defined as the inverse of multiplication; if you divide by zero, and then multiply by zero, you should regain the number you started with. However, multiplying infinity by zero produces only zero, not any other number. There is nothing which can be multiplied by zero to produce a nonzero result; therefore, the result of a division by zero is literally “undefined.”

1a

Renee was looking out the window when Mrs. Rivas approached.

“Leaving after only a week? Hardly a real stay at all. Lord knows I won’t be leaving for a long time.”

Renee forced a polite smile. “I’m sure it won’t be long for you.” Mrs. Rivas was the manipulator in the ward; everyone knew that her attempts were merely gestures, but the aides wearily paid attention to her lest she succeed accidentally.

“Ha. They wish I’d leave. You know what kind of liability they face if you die while you’re on status?”

“Yes, I know.”

“That’s all they’re worried about, you can tell. Always their liability—”

Renee tuned out and returned her attention to the window, watching a contrail extrude itself across the sky.

“Mrs. Norwood?” a nurse called. “Your husband’s here.”

Renee gave Mrs. Rivas another polite smile and left.

1b

Carl signed his name yet another time, and finally the nurses took away the forms for processing.

He remembered when he had brought Renee in to be admitted, and thought of all the stock questions at the first interview. He had answered them all stoically.

“Yes, she’s a professor of mathematics. You can find her in Who’s Who.”

“No, I’m in biology.”

And:

“I had left behind a box of slides that I needed.”

“No, she couldn’t have known.”

And, just as expected:

“Yes, I have. It was about twenty years ago, when I was a grad student.”

“No, I tried jumping.”

“No, Renee and I didn’t know each other then.”

And on and on.

Now they were convinced that he was competent and supportive, and were ready to release Renee into an outpatient treatment program.

Looking back, Carl was surprised in an abstracted way.

*******

It is reprinted in the collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

The Blue Gardenia

The Blue Gardenia is a 1953 film noir directed by Fritz Lang and starring Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, and George Reeves. Nat King Cole has a cameo as the house pianist in the night club.

Here's Cole:

Senses of Cinema closes its consideration with this:

What we have in The Blue Gardenia is a death-in-life in which we can no longer tell whether the life we live is our own or just an episode from a television series. In this context the closing shot of a LA freeway concrete overpass – a repetition of the film’s opening image – takes on an unexpected relevance and poignancy.

Variety's review says it's "A stock story and handling keep The Blue Gardenia from being anything more than a regulation mystery melodrama". Time Out calls it "relatively minor but still gripping". Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 86%.

The Haunted and the Haunters

The Haunted and the Haunters is an 1859 horror story by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. You can read it online here. It begins,

A friend of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, “Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house in the midst of London.”

“Really haunted — and by what? — ghosts?”

“Well, I can’t answer that question; all I know is this: six weeks ago my wife and I were in search of a furnished apartment. Passing a quiet street, we saw on the window of one of the houses a bill, ‘Apartments, Furnished.’ The situation suited us; we entered the house, liked the rooms, engaged them by the week — and left them the third day. No power on earth could have reconciled my wife to stay longer; and I don’t wonder at it.”

“What did you see?”

“Excuse me; I have no desire to be ridiculed as a superstitious dreamer — nor, on the other hand, could I ask you to accept on my affirmation what you would hold to be incredible without the evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be — and allowed, after the third night, that it was impossible to stay a fourth in that house. Accordingly, on the fourth morning I summoned the woman who kept the house and attended on us, and told her that the rooms did not quite suit us, and we would not stay out our week.” She said dryly, “I know why; you have stayed longer than any other lodger. Few ever stayed a second night; none before you a third. But I take it they have been very kind to you.”

“‘They — who?’ I asked, affecting to smile.

“‘Why, they who haunt the house, whoever they are. I don’t mind them. I remember them many years ago, when I lived in this house, not as a servant; but I know they will be the death of me some day. I don’t care — I’m old, and must die soon anyhow; and then I shall be with them, and in this house still.’ The woman spoke with so dreary a calmness that really it was a sort of awe that prevented my conversing with her further. I paid for my week, and too happy were my wife and I to get off so cheaply.”

“You excite my curiosity,” said I; “nothing I should like better than to sleep in a haunted house. Pray give me the address of the one which you left so ignominiously.”

My friend gave me the address; and when we parted, I walked straight towards the house thus indicated.