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              The Life And Tragic Death Of A Forgotten Starlet    Mention the name Jenny Maxwell and many people - including classic film and TV buffs, probably won't know who you're talking about, but the moment you mention the girl Elvis Presley spanked in Blue Hawaii (1961) , they may have a hint of recognition. Other than that, she's not particularly well-remembered today, but she had a fairly prolific career in television and appeared in four feature films. The only other reason people may know her name is because of the mystery surrounding her untimely death at age 39. It was not just a tragically early death, but a brutal one - she died of a gunshot wound to the head, in the lobby of her Beverly Hills condominium on June 10, 1981. Her estranged husband, attorney and former sheriff's deputy Ervin "Tip" Roeder (pronounced Raider) had also been shot and had been taken to the hospital, where he too, would die of his wound a few hours lat...
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                      Revisiting Adaptations of Thomas Hardy's                       Tess Of The D'Urbervilles   It seemed a fitting time to write about the adaptations of Thomas Hardy's novel, and to also share a bit about some of the lost earlier versions. I recently re-watched the available adaptations and re-read the novel (something that I like to do every few years), and felt compelled to share my feelings once again.  Once again, we will start with the best-known adaptation, Tess (1979), the celebrated but also controversial feature film directed and co-adapted by Roman Polanski. His name alone makes the viewing of the movie somewhat uncomfortable due to his off-screen conduct.  It has the benefit of being a feature film (and the only surviving cinematic adaptation; more on that later) so the cinematography is undeniably superior and the widescreen Panavis...
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Babysitter In Peril The urban legend, the real-life cases that inspired it, and its                                influence in literature and on film Most of us are familiar with the urban legend "The Babysitter And The Man Upstairs" or some variation (some include a creepy clown statue, which turns out to be a killer), which was made famous by films such as "When A Stranger Calls", "Halloween", etc. The urban legend apparently began circulating in the 1960s, which led the TV series, "Mostly True: Urban Legends" to state that it had no basis in fact, primarily because the whole "the calls are coming from inside the house" (now almost cliche) was very unlikely due to the fact that there tended to be only one phone line per house. However, as the documentary "Killer Legends" (2014) pointed out, there does appear to have been at least one true crime case (if not more) that probably inspired it.  I won't g...
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