Sunday, October 24, 2010

31 Days of Halloween - Day 24 - Movie



Bell, Book and Candle (1958) is a romantic comedy that I'm not going to say too much about. If you haven't seen it, you should. If you have seen it, then you know the intricacies of the story already. Telling too much about really would be spoiling it.

In essence, Kim Novak plays a witch in New York City who decides to use a spell to make publisher, Shepherd Henderson (James Stewart) fall in love with her, partly because she likes him, and partly because he's about to marry a woman (Janice Rule) that she despised back in college. The spell works, but then she ends up falling in love with him as well. Then things get complicated.

Bell, Book and Candle features fine performances from its cast which also includes Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester, Hermione Gingold and Ernie Kovacs who steals every scene he's in. To further prove my fondness for this movie, Adam and Julia's cat in my comic book series Midnight, Mass. was named after Kim Novak's cat/familiar, Pywacket.


      

2 comments:

Stephen said...

That picture alone is enough to make me want to see it. Putting this one on my list...

Steven Altis said...

One of the best movies ever... Halloween season or not! Could never decide if that "Treasures of the Sea" store (or whatever it was called) was intended to be as hideous as it was or was it just dated by the passing years. Was the art gallery she originally owned supposed to be the hideous one? Because she was a witch? It always made me a little sad to see Kim Novak's character selling those blown glass monstrosities there at the end.