BARE BEHIND BARS. (1980) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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BARE BEHIND BARS. (1980) DIRECTED AND WRITTEN B Y OSWALDO DE OLIVEIRA. STARRING MARIA STELLA SPLENDORE, MARTA ANDERSON, DANIELLE FERRITE AND NEIDE RIBERO.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘In a South American prison, life is cheap but sex is cheaper…’

Not to be confused with the animal exploitation film, BEAR BEHIND BARS (relax, there’s no such thing; I made it up!), this is a sexploitation flick of the ‘women in prison’ genre. It was banned by the British Board of Film Classification in 1994, though that’s since been reversed, I do believe.

There’s no excuse for anyone to be watching this film, really, except that it’s chock-a-block with female nudity, lesbianism and simulated sex, both heterosexual and same-sex. No gay men though, only heaps and heaps of lesbians!

The scenes of nudity and sex are threaded together loosely by a thin plot involving a sadistic female prison warden, a…

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Lydia Fakundiny and the Art of the Essay — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

By Nicole Graev Lipson After my son was born, I emailed my college writing teacher to share the news, eager to bring her along with me into this new life stage. Once, she’d been the notoriously intimidating professor whose name got passed around among Cornell’s English majors. But after three semesters in her classroom, over […]

Lydia Fakundiny and the Art of the Essay — BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog

DEAD SNOW (2009) and DEAD SNOW 2: RED VS. DEAD (2014): A DOUBLE BILL OF ZOMBIE MOVIES REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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DEAD SNOW (2009) and DEAD SNOW 2: RED VS. DEAD (2014). DIRECTED BY TOMMY WIRKOLA. WRITTEN BY TOMMY WIRKOLA, STIG FRODE HENRIKSEN AND VEGAR HOEL.

STARRING VEGAR HOEL, STIG FRODE HENRIKSEN, CHARLOTTE FROGNER AND ØRJAN GAMST.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Help! Emergency Services? We’re being attacked by Germans from World War Two…!’

‘Well, lick my soft little man-pussy…!’

The sequel you did NAZI coming…!

I liked these two comedy horror films, although I didn’t love them, and of the two, I preferred the original film to the much bigger budget, cast-of-thousands sequel. The first one has quite an EVIL DEAD vibe to it.

It sees a bunch of Norwegian medical students taking their Easter vacation in a log cabin, owned by one of them, in the Norwegian mountains. They’re happy enough to party the night away, until a mysterious stranger arrives without explanation and proceeds to harsh their buzz…

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FANGS AND FOREPLAY… THE EROTIC ADVENTURES OF DRACULA: THE TRANSYLVANIA YEARS. BOOK 5- PART 21. BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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THE STORY SO FAR. 06/02/2021.

Well, here we are again, and about time too! Some of my readers might remember that I was obliged to abandon Anna and her Count Dracula to their own devices for a bit in December 2019, in order to concentrate on my romantic trilogy, THIRTEEN STOPS.

The first book, THIRTEEN STOPS, came out in June 2020, just as the first COVID-19 Lockdown was coming to an end. THIRTEEN STOPS LATER, the sequel, will be out sometime this Spring.

I never thought I’d be away from my beloved Anna and her Count for as long as a year (and what a year it’s been!), so now, even though I’m still up to my tonsils writing Book Four of the trilogy (yes, yes, I know what a trilogy is, lol!), I’m coming back to them and I hope they’re as happy to see me as I surely…

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THEM, or ILS. (2006) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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THEM, or ILS. (2006) DIRECTED BY DAVID MOREAU AND XAVIER PALUD.

STARRING OLIVIA BONAMY AND MICHAEL COHEN.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I absolutely love this French-Romanian horror movie, but that’s not to say I don’t have my beef with it. It’s the story of an extremely attractive French-speaking couple in their thirties, Clementine and Lucas, who have recently moved to a fabulous old house- I think- in the Romanian countryside.

The old mansion and its deliciously dilapidated garden are the real stars of the film for me, along with the drop-dead gorgeous live-in lover, Lucas, who stabs himself in the leg with a shard of glass like a big fool as soon as the action kicks off.

The house looks like it’s been around since World War Two or even earlier. I’d love to live in a big old sprawling house like that, steeped in history and surrounded by…

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THE GIRL IN A SWING. (1980) BOOK REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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THE GIRL IN A SWING. (1980) A NOVEL BY RICHARD ADAMS.

BOOK REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Beautiful, haunting erotic love and an absolutely terrifying ghost story.’

The New York Times Book Review.

A Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection.

At the time of writing this book review, I haven’t actually seen the 1988 film that was made from the book, but reading the film’s entry on Wikipedia certainly helped to clarify a few things that were left unexplained in the book, lol.

Not that I didn’t enjoy reading the book. Quite the contrary. I loved reading it. It gave me something to look forward to on those cold dark January nights just gone. It was a fantastic read right up until the last thirty-five pages or so, after which things became positively baffling and I admit I was disappointed by the ending, because I felt that the mystery surrounding Käthe, the…

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ABOUT A BOY (2002) and NOTTING HILL (1999): A DOUBLE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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ABOUT A BOY (2002) and NOTTING HILL (1999): A DOUBLE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

ABOUT A BOY. (2002) BASED ON THE BOOK BY NICK HORNBY. DIRECTED BY CHRIS WEITZ AND PAUL WEITZ.

STARRING HUGH GRANT, NICHOLAS HOULT, TONI COLETTE, RACHEL WEISZ, NATALIA TENA, ROSALIND KNIGHT AND VICTORIA SMURFIT.

NOTTING HILL. (1999) WRITTEN BY RICHARD CURTIS. DIRECTED BY ROGER MICHELL.

STARRING HUGH GRANT, JULIA ROBERTS, ALEC BALDWIN, RHYS IFANS, HUGH BONNEVILLE, TIM MCINNERNY, EMMA CHAMBERS, GINA MCKEE, DYLAN MORAN, JULIAN RHIND-TUTT AND MISCHA BARTON.

‘You don’t even have a kid, do you???’

‘They were singing, with their eyes closed…!’

‘But driving fast behind the ambulance was fantastic…!’

‘Look who’s coming round the bend, it’s Santa and his reindeer friends…!’

‘But let’s say that I’m wrong, and you’re right, and that there’s this whole world going on out there for Marcus that I’m not even aware of … what are you…

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EAST IS EAST (1999) and WEST IS WEST (2010). A DOUBLE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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EAST IS EAST (1999) and WEST IS WEST (2010): A DOUBLE REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

EAST IS EAST (1999). DIRECTED BY DAMIEN O’DONNELL.

STARRING OM PURI, LINDA BASSETT, JIMI MISTRY, IAN ASPINALL, RUTH JONES AND LESLEY NICOL.

WEST IS WEST (2010). DIRECTED BY ANDY DE EMMONY.

STARRING OM PURI, LINDA BASSETT, JIMI MISTRY, LESLEY NICOL, AQIB KHAN, NADIM SAWALHA, ZITA SATTAR AND ILA ARUN.

EAST IS EAST is one of my all-time favourite films. It’s warm and funny with a huge heart and a lot to say about multiculturalism and the clash of cultures. In this instance, it’s the Pakistani and British cultures that are clashing like the orcs and the humans in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, that is to say, clashing big-time!

George Khan came from his native Pakistan to Salford, England in 1937. It’s now 1971 and he runs a chippy and is married to…

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MILDRED PIERCE. (1945) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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MILDRED PIERCE. (1945) BASED ON THE BOOK BY JAMES M. CAIN. DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CURTIZ. STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD, ANN BLYTH, EVE ARDEN, BUTTERFLY MCQUEEN, JACK CARSON, BRUCE BENNETT AND ZACHARY SCOTT. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

JOAN CRAWFORD: THE ULTIMATE MOVIE STAR- A FEATURE-LENGTH DOCUMENTARY. (2002) WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY PETER FITZGERALD. NARRATED BY ANJELICA HUSTON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

What perfect viewing for a lockdown Saturday! I absolutely love Joan Crawford, she of the fur coats with the wide shoulders and the imposing eyebrows. She’s every bit as good an actress as Bette Davis, her one-time screen rival and her co-star in one of the best psychological horror films of all time, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).

Maybe more people have a soft spot for Bette Davis than they do for Joan Crawford, though, and I suppose the book (1978) and the subsequent film (1981),

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