DVDs out the WAZOO - Part 2

Okay, now we've moved out of the living room and into the hallway between the dining room and master bedroom, and here we find -- another bookcase full of DVDs! These shelves contain drama, modern suspense films, and foreign films. If you look on the bottom shelf, right side, you'll find a collection of East Side Kids movies. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether or not those count as dramas or foreign.

This is as good a time as any to mention that there are also DVDs packed away in boxes 'cause there's currently no room for them. We're musing over how to find or build additional storage for these things.

On top of the bookcase, note the really cool edition of A Christmas Carol from Borders Classics, one of a new series of great books being released in a "retro" style design. Highly recommended.

On the upper shelf with the DVDs, you'll find a Christmas gift from last year: a very heavy metal bank. You put a coin in the dog's mouth and the pooch jumps through a hoop and puts the money in the slot in the barrel. Cool.

Almost forgot this one! It's on the other side of the TV, opposite the bookcases you see in Photo #1. On the right are CDs (obviously; this represents about a quarter of the Gravy CD collection) but on the left are more DVDs, boxed sets of various subjects. Let's see... right offhand, I see the Warners Classic Comedy, Musicals, and Cult Classics DVD boxes, Blondie pictures, Ma & Pa Kettle and Francis the Mule boxes, Shakespeare and Literary collections, and the TCM Archives collections. Good stuff!

Here's Laughing Gravy's throne, so to speak, where he sits and watches his movies (when he's not watching them on his laptop, which he does more and more these days, for convenience's sake). The noir/mystery bookcase is behind this chair.

Hey, see those framed stills on the back wall? Those are of Warren Hull as the Spider; the current FNF serial is of course The Spider Returns.

Part of the fun of movies, of course, is the exploitation. Some clueless movie websites may boast that it isn't 1935 any more, but here In The Balcony it's ALWAYS the heyday of great movies. Here you see a replica full-size one-sheet of our current serial, original lobby cards for Beach Party, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Little Shop of Horrors (you can't see it 'cause of the glare, and it's signed by star Jonathan Haze, too!), and an original poster, the first classic movie poster Gravy ever bought. It's too bad he doesn't have room for more posters -- he owns a bunch of 'em, including such Republic serials as Jungle Girl, King of the Royal Mounted, and a Zombies of the Stratosphere that's hanging in his office. He tries to rotate 'em earlier this year, you'd have seen posters up for The Giant Claw, Mr. Sardonicus, and Top Hat. The frame for Spider Returns is the type that opens up from the front, so the poster can be easily changed. Highly recommended; framing is expensive!

More posters heading up the stairs.

When we watched the 1949 Batman and Robin serial, one of the FNF kids pointed to this poster and said "When are we going to see THAT serial? Batman and Robin look MUCH better in that one!" Gravy had to explain that this was a poster for the serial we WERE watching... But the kid was right!

On the right, there's another Gravy favorite, a linen-backed poster for the great WWII serial The Secret Code starring Paul Kelly.

Around other areas of the house, mainly in the office, you'll find framed lobby cards and autographed stills from such stars as Mara Corday (Tarantula) and Linda Stirling (The Tiger Woman). There are also several books filled with stills and lobby cards. Oh, and two large framed posters of Laurel & Hardy (a third L&H poster is in his office).

Hope you enjoyed this little trek through Castle Gravy and the DVD treasures therein!