Dark Entries returns to The Red Room podcast.

We have the distinction of being a repeat guest on the Ruminations From The Red Room podcast! This time Mitch has 100% truth in advertising with the focus being on Twin Peaks: The Return's (a.k.a. Season 3) first four episodes.

Listen to us here.

Mitch's blurb summary:

Mitch and Guillermo don't dissect, or deconstruct in this episode of From The Red Room. It's two long-time fans, taking in the first sights, and sounds of an adventure both familiar, and new. So much to come, and we'll dig deeper as we get our footing. Just glad to back in those big, majestic pines.

Predictably we loved it, but of course this raises all the whys & hows involved in that love. And there was even something in it we didn't actually love, but you'll have to listen to find out. Plus what Lynch creation isn't worth comparing & contrasting notes on to try and divine the secrets behind his darkly glassed world?

[We love that Nicole LaLiberte more than faux dop-Coop.]

There are points where I relate Dale Cooper to Sigurd of Saga of the Völsungs, and utter the inspired phrase "playground of charm" three different times. These moments alone make our dialogue brilliant, but also tune in & subscribe for my host's irrepressible sincerity & persona that makes his podcast a cut above the internet itself.

[The So Fine Ladies of the Double RR Diner!]

Stay tuned as Dark Entries will likely equinox otherworldly space again on Ruminations From The Red Room after the next installment of Twin Peaks: The Return!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Into the Velvet Darkness: Vincent Price & The Masque of the Red Death.

During the mid-1960s aspiring director Roger Corman was wrangled by producers into making a series of films loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, most starring Vincent Price. Unforeseen by anyone, it would be this unlikely congruence of resourceful auteur, gothic progenitor, and incomparable leading man which resulted in the dark miracle that is "The Masque of the Red Death".

Set in early renaissance Europe, a plague known as The Red Death makes everyone it touches bleed from every pore of their body -- an excruciating end to the lives of millions. Yet safely within the sealed keep of tyrannical nobleman Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) an endless party of sinful delight and decadence goes on. Three peasants are also trapped with them whom Prospero plans to use as both fodder for his court's entertainment and object lessons to spread his satanic gospel.

As inhuman as Price's Prospero seems, he's also potently charismatic, and slowly convinces and compromises peasant girl Francesca (Jane Asher), whose life and faith (and the lives of her fiancee and father in the dungeon below) hangs in the balance, towards her first tentative steps to a darker illumination. At the same time his courtship of the naive Francesca destabilizes his relationship with fetching princess and disciple Juliana (Hazel Court), making for poisonously royal intrigue.

[It almost looks like they've been caught doing something ... .]

While much of this plot is not in the original 30-page short story, Corman integrates Poe's "Hop-Toad" too, and adds fitting elements to flesh out a top-notch hour and a half. And a viewer would never know Corman worked on a less than shoestring budget, with only five weeks to deliver it. Early Universal monster films aside, there are few other horror offerings more classic than this parade of costumed revelers, garishly gorgeous path color splash, and soul-stirring dialogue.

So put on your best Venetian mask and listen as Prince Prospero mellifluously intones, "The way is not easy, I know, but I will take you by the hand and lead you through the cruel light into the velvet darkness." Thank you for the soirée, sweet prince.

[Francesca listens to Prospero!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.