Sherlock Holmes - A Study in Scarlet (23rd September 1968). Holmes makes a series of elementary deductions.

Currently revisiting Dracula: Prince of Darkness again, and I love this absurd, gloriously daft gem of a Hammer film

a film you consider "perfect" The Big Swallow (1901)

Absolutely captivating 1987 documentary about identical twins Freda & Greta Chaplin who moved & spoke as one. A sensitively made exploration of their intense co-dependency, obsessive behaviour & complex shared life story youtu.be/eAD9YbPNbCw?...

Some very cool illustrations collected here, like this one. 👇

Currently, part way through the episode of The Avengers where Cathy Gale recruits an assassin who first meets her disguised as an animatronic teddy bear, and you can't tell me television hasn't been prestige from the start

An early spooky season instalment of Ghoulishly Good Times covering several (mostly) silent film gems, for your reading pleasure 👇🏻 arowofopengraves.co.uk/2025/09/21/g...

THE BIG SWALLOW (1901) is possibly the earliest comedy to deal with photographic consent. A man objects to being filmed and when the cameraman does not stop, he eats him. (Don't tell @moderation.bsky.app or they'll ding me for disturbing imagery and a nonconsenting model.)

It's my monthly(ish) 'maybe if I mention my book some people might buy it' post. If you are partial to spooky tales in which rotten types discover uppences are come (okay, that doesn't work), or - as quoted - "enjoy quintessentially British ghost stories and weird tales", I think you'll enjoy.

It's my monthly(ish) 'maybe if I mention my book some people might buy it' post. If you are partial to spooky tales in which rotten types discover uppences are come (okay, that doesn't work), or - as quoted - "enjoy quintessentially British ghost stories and weird tales", I think you'll enjoy.

BLOG POST: “It doesn’t really matter that the London of the Krimi film is unconvincing because in this context it is merely a mythic playground for archetypes...” 🎥🎞️ precastreinforced.co.uk/2025/09/16/t...

The well-named Suspense. (1913, written and directed by Lois Weber) is a thoroughly effective short. A mother is abandoned by her maid and menaced by a man invading her isolated house as her husband rushes home. Escalating tension is framed by imaginative direction, one gorgeous shot after another.

I'm the guest on the new episode of the Golden Silents Podcast with Stewart Lee, talking in-depth about my book "The Silent Film Universe". Listen in whereever you get your podcasts. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

We're just a week out from RITUAL OFFERINGS: A NIGHT OF SHORT FOLK HORROR FILMS at Reading Biscuit Factory! We've released some last-minute tickets for the screening on the 21st, and there are still some available for the 25th! 🌙🌾🪨 www.readingbiscuitfactory.co.uk/movie/ritual...

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928, dirs. James Sibley Watson & Melville Webber) is a 13-minute bad trip version of the story. Expressionistic influences, no dialogue or intertitles, and this one is all about the visuals, which are a remarkable approximation of a nightmare you can't wake up from.

private detective in Bologna

Jekyll's transformation to Hyde in the 1912 Thanhouser production. Star James Cruze swapped acting for directing and helmed THE COVERED WAGON and THE GREAT GABBO.

There's a story in ‘Intervals of Darkness‘ which has a bunch of different people telling their version of the story of the ghost of Totterdown Lock. It started as a zine that I gave away and then expanded into something more substantial. I wanted to capture how garbled local ghost stories become.

Name a film that's so beautifully shot it feels like a painting. Sorry to be basic but Blood and Black Lace (and, less obviously, Autumn Sonata)

It’s Maurice Jarre’s birthday. He had an illustrious career as a film composer (Lawrence of Arabia) but I first came across him when I saw Witness. His score is exquisite but this scene, in particular, is just beautiful, with the synthesiser played by Clark Spangler: youtu.be/BL_X7GelX5Q?...

Contributing to anti-doomscrolling with Max Linder, the sparkling French comedian who inspired Chaplin and is the earliest known movie star with his name on a poster (circa 1909).

The weather here is very much for witches skidding sideways through the gloomy gales, so this Jill McDonald gorgeousness feels like just the right Puffin Post perfection for today

The Haunted House (1929, dir. Walt Disney) finds Mickey lost in a vicious storm and seeking shelter in an abandoned house. Not really abandoned, though: its menacing inhabitants force him to play an organ while they dance, before he escapes. The genuine stuff of nightmares, full of macabre imagery.

Asta Nielsen (BOTD 1881) starred as Hamlet in 1921 (dirs. Svend Gade and Heinz Schalland), and like Conrad Veidt, inspired generations of none-more-black Goths in her wake

'View from the Vila', the first episode of Danger Man, was broadcast on this day in 1960.

Happy publication day to Ghosted! This book was so much fun to research and write, and I can't wait to go on a ghost hunt again. Thank you to everyone who's ordered a copy! I hope you enjoy reading it...with all the lights on, obviously. 👻 (Note: video plays crackling static sound)

I know money's great, and being skint sucks, but how about you just don't join the cast of *that* audio book series or *that* television series? Had that occurred to you? I dunno, man, if your choice of priorities is between a) money or b) showing marginalised people their lives are important...?

Working in tech consultancy, it's important to maintain an up-to-date reference library.

Everyone suggesting versions of Bagpuss, give the job to ME you cowards, I would be faithful to the source material I promise

My illustrations for The Woman in Black are now available as signed giclee prints. You can view them on my website nicktankard.co.uk I’ll also be making the original illustrations available here on Bluesky, watch this space…The illustrations are in the hardback edition published by Vintage Classics.

The Haunted House (1921, dirs. Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline). Keaton's bank clerk's day goes out of control, from an <ahem> sticky situation with cash and a pot of glue to bank robbers and a haunted house full of 'ghosts'. Lots of solid gags and some beautiful frames make for a good time.

Reading the title cards out loud soon became a theater faux pas during the silent era but I am not sure how anyone resisted with the comedy MISS STICKY-MOUFIE-KISS It's about a soldier who returns home to his beloved only to discover that she has taken up (horrified whisper) baby talk!

The Morecambe & Wise Show (7th September 1969). Peter Cushing begins a lengthy quest to secure his fee ....

I’m going to make a concerted effort to sell some of my original illustrations (and prints) for The Woman in Black this autumn. Autumn seems like the right time. Watch this space…

Great piece by Ben Model here on television, film, and culture's long history of eating itself, via Ernie Kovacs on TV, 1961: "(Kovacs) sets up his satire of Westerns up by saying: “There is a formula for success in the entertainment medium, and that is…beat it to death if it succeeds.”"

Wild idea I know, but maybe... some things just are what they are. We don't need to 'fix' or 'reconstruct' or make something 'found' again. Let things be. How they exist (or if they don't) is what they are.

Is Spiritualism a Fraud? - The Medium Exposed (1906, dir. J.H. Martin) is a wonderfully odd short slice of weird imagery and slapstick violence as a group of people set out to test whether a medium is genuine and take revenge if they are not. It's pretty dark at times for a fun little trick film.

Lunchtime treat: ‘The Electric House’, dir. Buster Keaton and Eddie Cline, 1922. A graduate in botany accidentally gets hired to electrify and automate a house. Several moments feel as if they're from a different, scarier film. 🎥🎬

Pondering just this: how you should focus on making something good and interesting and compelling (to you, mainly, too, not an imagined 'audience') as I map my Old Dark House outline. Originality is a dead-end frequently. That idea you have? Someone already had it. But, they won't write it like you.

woolbotherer.sumupstore.com/product/tiny... I just bought all the medicated cat food for the next couple of months and am very broke, but then I realised my elbow is good enough for one tiny pet a day, so I have opened back up my comissions for tiny pet portraits, great Christmas presents (sorry!)

‘A Crowned Fairy King Seated on a Hedgehog Drawn by a Young Girl Holding a Giant Daisy, Accompanied by Dancing Fairies’, Charles Altamont Doyle, late 19th century. Inscription: “The seat of fairies is not always enviable.” artuk.org/discover/art...

This instalment of 'classic horror actors with their animals' isn't at home. Instead, it's Lon Chaney Jr. on set with his briefly beloved pal Moose.

Blankety Blank (4th September 1982). The most unexpected BB celeb booking - Vincent Price.

If I ever get an intertitle t-shirt business up and running, this goes in the 'Halloween Collection'

Laurel and Hardy enter the synchronised sound era - score and sound effects - with 1928's Habeas Corpus (dirs. Leo McCaret and James Parrott). A dubious scientist offers to pay them $500 to bring him a body back from the graveyard. It's silly, clever, funny, and a joyful way to spend twenty minutes.

On Anna May Wong for the Guardian www.theguardian.com/film/2025/se...

There's a reason actors in silent movies wore so much makeup on their faces. I found a demonstration of this in "Stranded" (1927), which was shown at Cinecon Classic Film Festival this past weekend. silentfilmmusic.com/orthochromat...

Other discussions about horror genres on here have me thinking about good examples of what is explicitly *not* horror and yet functions primarily as it. I'm reminded of 1972's The Organization. For me, seven episodes of skin-crawling terror ostensibly about staff at a profit-obsessed corporation.