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A long time ago on this blog, I wrote that I was skeptical of the claim that the exterior shots of Desmond Hall were filmed at Casa Loma. That was because, at the time, I hadn't seen photos of the side of the mansion shown in this old photo taken in 1953.

Kudos to Steve for sending me this photo and Barbara for digging it up.

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If Holly used Gen Alpha slang.

My muse tortured me by playing that stupid "I have skibidi rizz" song over and over in my head until I made this. What the muse wants, the muse gets.

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Michelle its Barbara (aka NYCTWINMUM). Just wanted to check in and see if you're ok ?

I'm fine right now. Thanks for asking! Life has been treating me better than it did when I first put my reviews on hiatus. I probably should post an update now since it's been almost two years since things have changed a lot since then.

I haven't posted recently both because I've been busy lately in real life and because I fell out of the habit of posting. Although I still like SP, I've had neither the sort of free time I had during the pandemic nor the obsessive passion that used to keep me spending 6+ hours per week writing, researching, and screencapping for my posts.

I still don't know when I'll get around to finishing my Episode 47 review, let alone any other long posts, even though there is so much I still want to say and so many topics I haven't discussed or have barely discussed so far. This winter, maybe?

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Not too long ago, a friend of mine reminded me of the wonderful Episode 74, where Jean Paul very melodramatically struggles to resist the temptations of the Mark of Death. Looking through my massive screencap collection, I found numerous freeze-frames of my favorite headache faces of his from the scene, which I decided to animate tonight into two (admittedly dodgy) GIFs.

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Not directly related to Strange Paradise, but get a load of these costumes from a recent movie allegedly set in 1684 at the court of Louis XIV! They make the hodgepodge of ye-oldey-timey outfits from the 1689 flashbacks look historically accurate in comparison (especially because Jacques and pals were still--mostly--wearing styles from the 17th century, just the wrong decade).

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I’m going to have to check that out when I get the chance. Thanks for letting me know!

Looks a bit like C-Fox has some Bissuts face in the shots from Tommy Boy. Thank you! Have you seen Buttons the Dresser (Puppets Who Kill) with him? He was nominated for an award for that one. - Barbara

He does have a little Bissits Face going on, especially in the first shot of him with Pat Moffatt. Good observation!

I haven't seen any episodes of Puppets Who Kill, but I'll have to check that one out, then maybe write a short post about it. Thanks for the recommendation!

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Today is Colin Fox’s birthday and it’s The Holiday Season™ again, which makes it the perfect day to post this.

I was browsing around my Google Photos album a while back when I stumbled upon this photo that I forgot that I took of Colin Fox’s Ming the Merciless costume from A Christmas Story (1983), back when I visited the Christmas Story House five years ago. (That was probably the first time I had ever heard of Colin Fox, despite having seen him in some minor TV roles without knowing his name.) There was signage accompanying the costumes, but I neither have a photo of it, nor do I remember what it said about him, if anything.

Here’s what Colin said about the scene, which was cut from the theatrical release:

The whole thing is about this young boy wanting to have a Red Ryder BB gun, and his father says, “You'll shoot your eye out, forget about it,” and he keeps hoping and hoping, and he comes up to Santa and sits on his knee and Santa's a horrible man who just sends him down the slide and ignores him at this department store. The whole thing is set in the 1940s. One of the fantasies he has is shooting these bad guys who are all coming over in big prison stripes over the fence of his backyard, he has this fantasy of plugging each one of them. And the other fantasy is rescuing Flash Gordon from the evil of Ming the Merciless. Now, Ming the Merciless arrives on the scene in a space balloon...So what happens is they got you all made up in this Fu Manchu kind of makeup and I'm coming out of the ceiling of the set on this huge space balloon. There's a very good-looking guy whose name I can't remember at the moment [Paul Hubbard] who played Flash Gordon and there's little Peter Billingsley (he played the boy) with his BB gun shooting down the balloon of Ming the Merciless, then there's an effect where he's flying away. And it's cut!...I took my stepdaughter Sarah, who was--I don't know, I guess about three or four years old. I said, “Now this is where it's coming up”...”Maybe a little later, Sarah, don't worry about it,” and I'm looking and I'm thinking, “Oh no, they've cut it!” But, you know, one of the saving graces is the fact that, since my name is in the credits...I get the residuals.

The official website for A Christmas Story House has the screenplay for the deleted scene, along with two others. According to the website, MGM (who distributed the film) demanded that it be trimmed to around 90 minutes so that theaters could show it more times per day. The Lost Media Wiki shows some screencaps from the rare scene, including one of Colin Fox in costume and Fu Manchu-esque yellowface makeup: accurate to the character’s appearance in the original 1930s/40s serial, but still a questionable choice for a film made in the early 1980s (although the same can be said about the stereotyping in the Chinese restaurant scene at the end).

Apologies for the blurriness; the phone I had at the time couldn’t take high-quality photos and the costumes were inside a glass case.

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LOL

Did they explain why it was “too intellectual” for them? (I’m imagining they must have tuned in one day to hear Jean Paul and Alison discussing something sciencey and got confused.)

I just recently found this blog and an SP sister! I had a HUGE crush on Colin Fox when I was 13. HUGE!! I still think he’s one of handsomest men ever. And very talented at that. He moved seamlessly into character acting when his hair took a hike. I feel he enjoyed that more. He’s the reason I became an actor. I wrote him a couple years ago and told him so. Surprised that he had a first wife before Carol. But I couldn’t imagine someone at hot as him being on the market long. Thank you!

Thank you! I’m happy to hear from another fan of Colin Fox. He was very handsome back in the day and still not bad-looking for his age. I can see why he might have preferred character roles: more fun and more opportunities to chew the scenery than most leading-man roles, and not having to conceal his receding hairline anymore.

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This week’s new episode of Dark Paradise features interviews with Penny Dreadful on the subject of Barnabas’ character development on Dark Shadows and Steve Shutt on Strange Paradise’s DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES and his diabolical possession of Jean Paul Desmond.

Highlights from the SP segment include speculation on:

1960s celebrity influences on the characters of Jean Paul and Erica

How and why Jacques was able to contact Jean Paul from the beyond

The theme of Fate in SP

Probable influences of SP on DS

AND

The intriguing possibility that Ian Martin may have intended for the evil Jacques to be “more ambiguous and ambivalent” than Raxl thinks

If you’re a fan of both series (as most if not all SP fans are), then I recommend listening to the whole thing, including the pilot episode of the DS/SP crossover prequel series Cursed Dwellings at the end. Also, thank you very much to the host Rachel Pulliam for promoting this blog!

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We come out of the barely hidden Temple of the Serpent to share this new podcast series by Rachel Pulliam, the creator of the Strange Paradise audio dramas featured on this blog back in early 2020, or approximately three hundred years ago. Her new series explores the history of both Dark Shadows and Strange Paradise (and even the DS tie-in novels!) from the perspective of a long-time fan of both series. I highly recommend it!

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I saw Cort in Cleveland!

Think Cort Desmond is only a fictional character from the Desmond Hall arc? Well, you’re WRONG, and I’m about to prove it! I’ve run into Cort several times since I created this blog two and a half years ago, and I have proof!

Here he is, on Superior Ave. in early 2020:

Here’s Cort again in an alley off Prospect Ave. a little less than a year ago:

And here he is once again, just outside Tower City last May:

I’ve also seen him drive past me at least once, but that time I was in a car. No pics from that time. Sorry.

April Fool’s!

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Did you succeed?

I just recently found this blog and an SP sister! I had a HUGE crush on Colin Fox when I was 13. HUGE!! I still think he’s one of handsomest men ever. And very talented at that. He moved seamlessly into character acting when his hair took a hike. I feel he enjoyed that more. He’s the reason I became an actor. I wrote him a couple years ago and told him so. Surprised that he had a first wife before Carol. But I couldn’t imagine someone at hot as him being on the market long. Thank you!

Thank you! I'm happy to hear from another fan of Colin Fox. He was very handsome back in the day and still not bad-looking for his age. I can see why he might have preferred character roles: more fun and more opportunities to chew the scenery than most leading-man roles, and not having to conceal his receding hairline anymore.

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Hi, @nyctwinmum​, and thanks for all your responses! I always enjoy hearing from other fans of SP.

I plan on eventually visiting Casa Loma, but I don’t know when. When I do, I’ll be sure to seek out parts of the exterior that match up with the shots used for Desmond Hall. I admit that I’m still skeptical, but then, I haven’t had the chance to explore Casa Loma and its grounds in person yet.

Hi Michelle, hope you're well. I have a trivia question and thought you might know the answer to it. Obviously the action shifted from Maljardin to Desmond Hall after episode 65 and I know they filmed the exteriors for Maljardin at Casa Loma but do you have any idea where they got the exterior shots for Desmond Hall from?

Anonymous,

I have no idea where they filmed the shots used for Desmond Hall. Since none of the websites I consult for my blog have ever named the original building or its location, I decided to look into it yesterday. First, I took some screenshots of the intros to some of the Desmond Hall episodes, then I compared them to these photos of Canadian castles and ran reverse image searches on the shots showing the building’s more distinctive features. I also did Google image searches for more photos of castles in Ontario and Quebec, but to no avail. I learned that there are a lot of Canadian castles with a similar aesthetic to Desmond Hall, but couldn’t find any with the same distinctive towers, nor what appears to be a covered walkway between the first and second floors.

The distinctive towers of Desmond Hall, from Episode 68.

Detail of one of the towers, from Episode 77.

Day-for-night shot from Episode 67, showing the covered walkway between the floors.

I wonder if perhaps I was looking in the wrong places. The building standing in for Desmond Hall could have been somewhere outside of Canada (most likely in the northern United States) or a Canadian building not commonly referred to as a “castle.” I’ve decided to investigate this mystery further and hope to have identified the building by the time I begin reviewing Desmond Hall Arc I.

If anyone reading this blog recognizes the building used in the Desmond Hall shots, please let me know. I’m curious and would appreciate an answer to this mystery.

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November 20. Wishing our man Fox-C a very happy and healthy birthday! Barbara

Happy birthday, Colin Fox, and thank you for bringing joy to us fans! We love you and wish you well this coming year!

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Colin Fox in Puppets Who Kill S03E03 “Buttons the Dresser”

Last week, Barbara recommended this episode of the 2003-2006 Canadian TV series Puppets Who Kill, which I watched--and very much enjoyed--last Friday. While I have neither the time nor inclination to write a full recap, I wanted to share some screencaps and highlights from it on here as well as my thoughts. If you want to watch the episode, it’s available here on YouTube for viewing.

In this episode, Colin Fox guest stars as the Shakespearean actor Sir Percy Quill, who is playing the title role of the Scottish Play. He actually played Macbeth long before this on Canadian School Television in 1968[1]; I suspect that they cast him because of his history playing the role. Assisting Sir Percy in his dressing room is the promiscuous puppet Buttons the Bear (James Rankin), who is trying to avoid an unwanted affair with him while he pursues the actress playing Lady Macbeth (Kate Trotter). Fox-C was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Individual Performance in a Comedy Program for this performance, and rightfully so, because he is hilarious!

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE EPISODE. ALSO, SOME SPICY DARK HUMOR THAT MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY WORK-SAFE AND MAY BE POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING FOR SOME.

The face Sir Percy makes while asking, “Where’s my dresser?” is priceless.

Couldn't help but hear a hint of Jacques when he says, "Where's my robe? I feel chilly."

Sir Percy: “Actor? I’m not an actor! That’s like saying Jesus was a carpenter. Oh, it isn’t a job, it’s a calling! You don’t choose this profession; it chooses you.”

Giving Buttons the ring that he gives to all his dressers. He has an affair with every one of them, as he tells us later on.

Sir Percy: “You know, over the last two weeks of rehearsal, I’ve grown quite fond of you, friend[...]The way you lay out my tights, the way you look after my codpiece: certain attention to detail.”

Stealing a kiss.

Asking for the ring back when Buttons expresses his reluctance. Buttons successfully persuades him to hold off on sex until after opening night.

Demonstrating his acting chops during the performance...

...which is not devoid of goofy acting faces.

Sir Percy's reaction to Bill the Ventriloquist Dummy's murder of a guest whom he mistakes for his boss, who threatened to fire him for delivering his lines with a “sibilant S” (better known as a lisp).

Getting his hands warmed up for the hot bear puppet rumpy-pumpy, now that it’s opening night.

Sir Percy: "Certainly, my boy! I'll lend you the ring, if you find a way of…uh…expressing your appreciation."

He's using the Jacques voice in this part *and* doing the cute Jean Paul thing with his hand (sort of)!

Let’s get it on!

Busted!

Notes

[1] The Gazette (Oct 12, 1968), p. 43.

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Looks a bit like C-Fox has some Bissuts face in the shots from Tommy Boy. Thank you! Have you seen Buttons the Dresser (Puppets Who Kill) with him? He was nominated for an award for that one. - Barbara

He does have a little Bissits Face going on, especially in the first shot of him with Pat Moffatt. Good observation!

I haven't seen any episodes of Puppets Who Kill, but I'll have to check that one out, then maybe write a short post about it. Thanks for the recommendation!

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Colin Fox and Pat Moffatt in another scene from Tommy Boy (1995), watching the title character make a fool of himself on TV. She plays his wife in the movie. This is her only scene and his second and final one.