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Deliverance Film Study
Deliverance is a 1972 movie based on the 1970 novel by James Dickey. Watch it in 2017 and it could have been made this year. The river setting, the timeless costuming, the themes and the film-making techniques have not dated. In fact, Deliverance continues to influence film to this day, including an homage in Carrie (the image of the floating…
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How I Got My Shrunken Head Story Study
How I Got My Shrunken Head by R.L. Stine is classic Goosebumps #10. This is a chosen one story about a white boy transported to an island in South East Asia.
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Welcome To Camp Nightmare Storytelling Study
R.L. Stine has written a huge number of horror books for middle grade and young adult readers. I was a bit old for them when they first came out, though I recollect reading one or two. Now I’ll read some of his works to see how, exactly, Stine took the horror genre and bowdlerized it […]
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The Lottery by Shirley Jackson Short Story Analysis
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson (1948) was first published in The New Yorker and remains the most controversial story The New Yorker has ever run. The magazine was bombarded with vitriol and many cancelled subscriptions. Some readers were angry because this story ruined their day.
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Scarecrows In Children’s Stories and Horror
The best horror objects and settings are those you’ll also see peppered throughout cosy stories for children: Circuses, playgrounds, chants and lullabies, hide and seek… scarecrows.
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Little Muriel Courage The Cowardly Dog
Often in stories with a very small character there is some metaphorical/thematic reason for it, but in this case Muriel’s regression to the body and mind of a 3 and a half year old is pure fun. In other words, this is a carnivalesque story.
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The Snowman Cometh Courage The Cowardly Dog
In The Snowman Cometh episode of Courage is interesting for the way in which the writers comically represent a part of science which is difficult to understand and even harder to portray on screen. SETTING Most of the Courage episodes are set in the Bagge family home in the middle of Nowhere but by this […]
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Heads Of Beef Courage The Cowardly Dog
“Heads Of Beef” is an episode of Nickelodeon cartoon show from the late 1990s, Courage The Cowardly Dog. In any horror comedy starring a dog, surely at some point the dog must find himself a hot dog, right? The trope of the surprise in the burger plays on a primal fear we have when visiting […]
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The Hunchback Of Nowhere Courage The Cowardly Dog
“The Hunchback of Nowhere” is an episode from the first season of Courage The Cowardly Dog. As ever, this modern re-visioning takes inspiration from a wide history of storytelling, including from The Bible. Any adult viewer will know immediately that this is inspired at least partly by The Hunchback of Notre Dame, though the writers can’t […]
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The Clutching Foot Courage The Cowardly Dog
This episode of Courage seems to be a parody of an episode of a TV serial from the 1930s based on a novel by Arthur Reeve. It is called “The Clutching Hand” and is about a detective named Craig Kennedy. This serialised original includes the following elements: A get rich quick scheme Assuming a false identity Criminals […]
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Shirley The Medium Courage The Cowardly Dog
“Shirley The Medium” is an original recomposition of elements from diverse sources: Pandora’s Box, the Ancient Greek Myth A Christmas Carol, Dickens Modern TV psychics STORY STRUCTURE OF SHIRLEY THE MEDIUM SHORTCOMING Courage is unable to tell Eustace not to open the box. He is a dog and can’t speak English. Besides that, the adults don’t […]
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The Duck Brothers Courage The Cowardly Dog
“The Duck Brothers” episode of Courage The Cowardly Dog features opponents who are revealed to be not really bad, which makes for a comical big struggle scene. The big struggle scene is noteworthy for including a wide variety of small big struggles. STORY STRUCTURE OF “THE DUCK BROTHERS” SHORTCOMING Courage is unable to convince Eustace when […]
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Mother’s Day Courage The Cowardly Dog
“Mother’s Day” is an episode from season one of Courage The Cowardly Dog. This is where we get some of Eustace’s back story. Until this point in the series, Eustace Bagge has been a singularly unpleasant character. We haven’t see what made him the way he is. In this episode, for the first time, we […]