Surreal Pinscreen Animations Bring Kafka, Gogol & Mussorgsky to Life (1933–1972)

in Animation, Film, Literature, Uncategorized | October 29th, 2026

What do Franz Kaf­ka, Niko­lai Gogol, and Mod­est Mus­sorgsky have in com­mon? They stand alone among their peers for their dark­ly humor­ous sen­si­bil­i­ties, fas­ci­na­tion with the grotesque, imag­i­na­tive takes on cul­tur­al tra­di­tions, and a pre­dis­po­si­tion for the pro­to-sur­re­al. Like the odd fig­ure lurch­ing through the first move­ment of Mussorgsky’s Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, they are gnom­ic artists: enig­mat­ic and ambigu­ous, giv­en to the apho­ris­tic in sto­ries and tone poems of mon­strous and mar­velous beings. It’s easy to imag­ine the three of them, or their works at least, in cryp­tic con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er.

We might imag­ine that con­ver­sa­tion as we watch three works by these major Euro­pean artists—all of which we’ve fea­tured on the site before—animated via the painstak­ing pin­screen method pio­neered by hus­band-and-wife, Russ­ian-and-French duo Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er.

The two invent­ed the tech­nique in the 1930s. Ded­i­cat­ed to this extreme­ly labor-inten­sive process, they made 6 short films over a peri­od of 50 years, includ­ing adap­ta­tions of Kafka’s “Before the Law,” nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles, Gogol’s “The Nose,” and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Moun­tain.

We know the Mus­sorgsky piece as a ter­ri­fy­ing vignette from Walt Disney’s Fan­ta­sia. Sev­en years before that mar­riage of clas­si­cal music and ani­ma­tion came out in 1940, Alex­eieff and Park­er released their ver­sion, at the top. Steve Stanch­field at Car­toon Research calls it “one of the most unusu­al and unique look­ing ani­mat­ed films ever cre­at­ed.” Its “delight­ful and at times hor­ri­fy­ing imagery… chal­lenge the view­er to com­pre­hend both their mean­ing and the mys­tery of how they were cre­at­ed.” The same could be said of “The Nose” (1963), whose impro­vised sound­track by Hai-Minh adds dra­mat­ic ten­sion to the eerie ani­ma­tion.

Each of these films uses the same method, a hand­made pin­screen device in which thou­sands of pins are pushed by hand out­ward and inward for each frame to cre­ate areas of light or dark. The pair intend­ed to move beyond the flat­ness of con­ven­tion­al cel ani­ma­tion tech­niques and cap­ture the depth and con­trast of chiaroscuro. They achieved this through the most aching­ly slow process imag­in­able, yet “the illu­sion of dimen­sion­al draw­ing in ani­ma­tion has rarely been cre­at­ed bet­ter,” Stanch­field writes, not even in the most sophis­ti­cat­ed com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery.

Alex­eieff and Parker’s “Before the Law,” from a para­ble in Kafka’s The Tri­al, takes a pic­ture-book approach to the ani­ma­tion that would reward younger view­ers. Welles’ nar­ra­tion anchors the pro­duc­tion with even more than his usu­al grav­i­tas. In 1972, they returned to Mus­sorgsky, in the short Pic­tures at an Exhi­bi­tion, above. Here, after a pro­logue in French and the styl­iza­tions of the open­ing Pre­lude, the fig­ure of “The Gnome” appears, a translu­cent homuncu­lus hatch­ing from an egg and danc­ing across the piano keys. I like to think Mus­sorgsky, Kaf­ka, and Gogol would find this imagery irre­sistible.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Kafka’s Para­ble “Before the Law” Nar­rat­ed by Orson Welles & Illus­trat­ed with Pin­screen Art

Night on Bald Moun­tain: An Eery, Avant-Garde Pin­screen Ani­ma­tion Based on Mussorgsky’s Mas­ter­piece

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

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Inside the Making of the Sagrada Família, Barcelona’s 144-Year Megaproject

in Architecture, History, Religion | October 28th, 2026

To get a sense of Sagra­da Famíli­a’s pop­u­lar­i­ty with YouTu­bers, you have only to take a look at the relat­ed Open Cul­ture posts linked below. As will hard­ly escape your atten­tion, most sub­jects that con­sis­tent­ly draw the atten­tion of the GoPro class are not nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Catholic church­es. But Antoni Gaudí’s mas­ter­piece, whose con­struc­tion alone has sur­vived him by a cen­tu­ry now, tran­scends many bound­aries of intel­lec­tu­al and cul­tur­al inter­est: his­to­ry chan­nels fea­ture it, trav­el chan­nels fea­ture it, reli­gious chan­nels fea­ture it, and, of course, archi­tec­ture chan­nels fea­ture it. Most recent­ly, Sagra­da Família has appeared on The B1M, which is all about con­struc­tion — the more ambi­tious, the bet­ter.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed B1M videos on the Flat­iron Build­ing, the Guggen­heim Muse­um Bil­bao, the extrater­res­tri­al­ly curv­ing work of Zaha Hadid, and every gen­er­a­tion of New York sky­scraper. That selec­tion only hints at the range of struc­tures to which the chan­nel’s cre­ator Fred Mills has paid close atten­tion, and yet it’s Sagra­da Família that puts him at a loss. “There’s parts of this build­ing where you can’t help but describe what you’re see­ing,” he says as he stands in its stained glass-illu­mi­nat­ed cen­tral nave. “There’s oth­er moments where you don’t have the words; it’s just emo­tion.” Enter­ing it feels, as he describes it, “less like you’re stand­ing inside a build­ing, and more like you’ve been trans­port­ed to the thresh­old of heav­en itself.”

How does Sagra­da Família cre­ate this expe­ri­ence for its vis­i­tors, even in its incom­plete state? Some will cred­it divine inspi­ra­tion; oth­ers, Gaudí’s sheer archi­tec­tur­al genius. Mills seeks out more con­crete forms of expla­na­tion, right down to the very blocks of stone used to build its tow­ers. Grant­ed much more access than ordi­nary tourists, who now come at a rate of about 1,500 per hour, he goes all the way up to see the mas­sive cross assem­bled on the church’s pin­na­cle, and all the way down to the base­ment work­shop where intri­cate mod­els test the myr­i­ad pos­si­ble ways to real­ize Gaudí’s vision. For when he died in 1926, hav­ing been hit by a tram, the plans he left behind did­n’t exact­ly explain all the details about how to fin­ish what resem­bled no oth­er build­ing ever erect­ed, reli­gious or oth­er­wise.

As Mills points out, sub­se­quent­ly devel­oped tech­nolo­gies have helped keep Sagra­da Famíli­a’s now 144-year-long con­struc­tion pro­ceed­ing apace. And though great cel­e­bra­tion attend­ed the top­ping-out of its cen­tral tow­er high above the streets of Barcelona this past Feb­ru­ary, more work remains to be done. Com­plet­ing its inte­ri­or, roofs, and side chapels, as well as the grand façade with its main entrance, should take anoth­er decade, depend­ing on how the rel­e­vant dis­putes involv­ing local res­i­dents and the city coun­cil play out. Still, it seems like­ly indeed that Sagra­da Família will final­ly be fin­ished with­in our life­times, which makes for the kind of dra­ma that will keep attract­ing both large- and small-time doc­u­men­tar­i­ans. “I’m not sure we’re ever going to see any­thing else quite like it,” Mills says, which hints at anoth­er rea­son for all the con­tent-cre­ator fas­ci­na­tion: though it may well be com­plet­ed in our age, Sagra­da Família could hard­ly be less of our age.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of Sagra­da Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Auda­cious Church That’s Been Under Con­struc­tion for 142 Years

The Incred­i­ble Engi­neer­ing of Anto­nio Gaudí’s Sagra­da Famil­ia, the 137 Year Con­struc­tion Project

The Japan­ese Sculp­tor Who Ded­i­cat­ed His Life to Fin­ish­ing Gaudí’s Mag­num Opus, the Sagra­da Família

The Longest Con­struc­tion Projects in His­to­ry: Why Sagra­da Família, the Milan Duo­mo, Greek Tem­ples & Oth­er Famous Struc­tures Took Gen­er­a­tions to Com­plete

How Design­ing Build­ings Upside-Down Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Archi­tec­ture, Mak­ing Pos­si­ble St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, Sagra­da Família & More

LEGO Lets You Build Gaudí’s Sagra­da Família in Its Largest Set Ever

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Vibrant Color Wheels Designed by Goethe, Newton & Other Theorists of Color (1665–1810)

in Art, Science | October 28th, 2026

Maybe it’s the clois­tered headi­ness of Rene Descartes, or the rig­or­ous aus­ter­i­ty of Isaac New­ton; maybe it’s all the leath­ern breech­es, gray waist­coats, sal­low faces, and pow­dered wigs… but we tend not to asso­ciate Enlight­en­ment Europe with an explo­sion of col­or the­o­ry. Yet philoso­phers of the late 17th and 18th cen­turies were obsessed with light and sight. Descartes wrote a trea­tise on optics, as did New­ton.

New­ton first described in his 1672 paper the “rev­o­lu­tion­ary new the­o­ry of light and colour,” the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Whip­ple Library writes, “in which he claimed that exper­i­ments with prisms proved that white light was com­prised of light of sev­en dis­tinct colours.” Sci­en­tists debat­ed Newton’s the­o­ry “well into the 19th cen­tu­ry.”

One ear­ly oppo­nent famous­ly illus­trat­ed his rebut­tal. Poet, writer, and sci­en­tist Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe pub­lished The­o­ry of Col­ors (see here), with its care­ful­ly hand-drawn and col­ored dia­grams and wheels, in 1810. From New­ton’s time onward, col­or the­o­rists elab­o­rat­ed pre­vail­ing con­cepts with col­or wheels, the first attrib­uted to New­ton in 1704 (and drawn in black and white, above).

Newton’s wheel “arranged red, orange, yel­low, green, blue, indi­go, and vio­let into a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion on a rotat­ing disk.” A few years lat­er, two col­or circles—one with 7 col­ors and anoth­er with 12—appeared in a paint­ing man­u­al attrib­uted to Claude Boutet (top), based on Newton’s the­o­ries. Artists, chemists, map­mak­ers, poets, even ento­mol­o­gists… every­one seemed to have a pet the­o­ry of col­or, gen­er­al­ly accom­pa­nied by elab­o­rate col­ored charts and dia­grams.

The col­or wheel was one among many forms—which often pre­sent­ed con­trast­ing the­o­ries, like that of Jacques-Fabi­en Gau­ti­er, who argued that black and white were pri­ma­ry col­ors. But the wheel, and Newton’s basic ideas about it, have endured almost unchanged. The wheel fur­ther up (third one from top) by British ento­mol­o­gist Moses Har­ris from 1766 shows Newton’s 7‑color scheme sim­pli­fied to the 6 pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary col­ors we usu­al­ly see, arranged in the com­ple­men­tary and anal­o­gous scheme, with ter­tiary gra­da­tions between them. Anoth­er ento­mol­o­gist, Ignaz Schif­fer­müller, drew the 12-col­or wheel right above.

Col­or is always rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Newton’s orig­i­nal wheel includ­ed “musi­cal notes cor­re­lat­ed with col­or.” By the end of the 18th cen­tu­ry, col­or the­o­ry had become increas­ing­ly tied to psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries and typolo­gies, as in the wheel above, the “rose of tem­pera­ments,” made by Goethe and Friedrich Schiller in 1799 to illus­trate “human occu­pa­tions and char­ac­ter traits,” the Pub­lic Domain Review notes, includ­ing “tyrants, heroes, adven­tur­ers, hedo­nists, lovers, poets, pub­lic speak­ers, his­to­ri­ans, teach­ers, philoso­phers, pedants, rulers,” grouped into the four tem­pera­ments of humoral the­o­ry.

It’s a fair­ly short leap from these psy­cholo­gies of col­or to those used by adver­tis­ers and com­mer­cial design­ers in the 20th century—or from the artists and sci­en­tists’ col­or the­o­ries to abstract expres­sion­ism, the Bauhaus school, and the chemists and pho­tog­ra­phers who recre­at­ed the col­ors of the world on film. (Goethe’s col­or wheel, below, from The­o­ry of Col­ors, illus­trates his chap­ter on “Alle­gor­i­cal, sym­bol­ic, and mys­ti­cal use of colour.”) See more ear­ly col­or wheels, like Philipp Otto Runge’s 1810 Far­benkugel, as well as oth­er con­cep­tu­al col­or schemes, at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Woman Who The­o­rized Col­or: An Intro­duc­tion to Mary Gartside’s New The­o­ry of Colours (1808)

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete High-Res­o­lu­tion Dig­i­tal Scan

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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How Balzac’s Extreme Coffee Habit Fueled His Productive Writing Routine

in History, Literature | October 27th, 2026

Even now, in this age when the very read­ing of lit­er­a­ture is endan­gered — or so the arti­cles tell us — Hon­oré de Balzac (1799–1850) retains a notable abil­i­ty to pick up new admir­ers. But even though he may have a decent read­er­ship by the stan­dards of French nov­el­ists who died in the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, one does won­der whether he still inspires the kind of devo­tion embod­ied by William Hobart Royce. A Brook­lyn book­seller’s assis­tant first intro­duced to Les Cent Con­tes dro­la­tiques as an impres­sion­able (and duly scan­dal­ized) teenag­er on a trip to Eng­land, Royce became not just the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s fore­most Amer­i­can expert on Balzac, but also a kind of clone of the man him­self, right down to his appear­ance.

“In their long asso­ci­a­tion, Royce has con­tract­ed sev­er­al habits from Balzac,” writes the New York­er’s Alva John­ston in a 1933 pro­file. “When work­ing late at night or ear­ly in the morn­ing, he com­bats fatigue, as Balzac did, by tak­ing snuff, smok­ing Latakia tobac­co, and drink­ing enor­mous quan­ti­ties of cof­fee. These are not mere whims or idol-wor­ship­ping cer­e­monies on the part of Royce; they are prac­tices which he adopt­ed from Balzac after test­ing them and con­vinc­ing him­self that they were sound.”

Balzac him­self explains the impor­tance of these sub­stances to the writ­ing life — noth­ing less, to his mind, than life itself — in “Traité des exci­tants mod­ernes,” or “Trea­tise on Mod­ern Stim­u­lants,” an essay he append­ed to Phys­i­olo­gie du goût, the cel­e­brat­ed text by the lawyer-politi­cian-gour­mand Jean Anthelme Bril­lat-Savarin.

Known for drink­ing his own cus­tom blend of beans from Mar­tinique, cof­fee from Bour­bon (now known as Réu­nion Island), and Mokha from the pot pic­tured above, Balzac also rec­om­mends to his fel­low “men of exces­sive vig­or” a “hor­ri­ble, rather bru­tal method” involv­ing “fine­ly pul­ver­ized, dense cof­fee” pre­pared with as lit­tle water as pos­si­ble and con­sumed on an emp­ty stom­ach. In response, he promis­es in this par­tial Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the essay, “ideas quick march into motion like bat­tal­ions of a grand army to its leg­endary fight­ing ground, and the bat­tle rages. Mem­o­ries charge in, bright flags on high; the cav­al­ry of metaphor deploys with a mag­nif­i­cent gal­lop; the artillery of log­ic rush­es up with clat­ter­ing wag­ons and car­tridges; on imagination’s orders, sharp­shoot­ers sight and fire; forms and shapes and char­ac­ters rear up.”

In the case of Balzac, who cre­at­ed thou­sands of char­ac­ters and deployed them across his body of work, that charge could have been a fear­some sight indeed. Yet he proved equal to it night after writ­ing night, sit­ting down to his desk some time between mid­night and 2:00 a.m., then pro­duc­ing man­u­script pages with his quill at a type­writer’s pace until morn­ing. After a nap, more work fol­lowed until 4:00 or so in the after­noon; soon there­after would come an ear­ly-evening din­ner, and thus the cycle would repeat. A com­mon­ly cit­ed fig­ure holds that Balzac drank as many as 50 cups of cof­fee per day, which even the most proud­ly caf­feine-hooked lap­top jock­ey today would strug­gle to touch. Nor would it be advis­able to try, giv­en that Balza­c’s for­mi­da­ble cof­fee habit may have con­tributed to his death at age 51 — but then, it cer­tain­ly played a part in the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that ensured his immor­tal­ité.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Paul Gia­mat­ti Plays Hon­oré de Balzac, Hopped Up on 50 Cof­fees Per Day

Is Cof­fee Good for You?: A Cof­fee Con­nois­seur Reviews the Sci­en­tif­ic Research

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

The Case for Writ­ing in Cof­fee Shops: Why Mal­colm Glad­well Does It, and You Should Too

How Cof­fee Affects Your Brain: A Very Quick Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Soviet Animation of Stephen King’s Short Story “Battleground” (1986)

in Animation, Literature | October 27th, 2026

Stephen King has that rare, and spec­tac­u­lar­ly prof­itable, skill to suck you into his world and com­pel you to flip to the next page. And when you’re hooked, his words have the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to sim­ply unfold like a movie in your head. So it isn’t sur­pris­ing that his books have been wide­ly adapt­ed to the sil­ver screen. Some are flat out mas­ter­pieces. Oth­ers are most decid­ed­ly not. This appre­ci­a­tion by film­mak­ers of King’s sto­ry­telling chops isn’t just con­tained to this side of the Iron Cur­tain. In 1986, Sovi­et ani­ma­tor Mikhail Titov — whose pre­vi­ous work includes How the Cos­sacks Played Foot­ball (1970) — turned King’s short sto­ry “Bat­tle­ground” (1972) into an ani­mat­ed movie, titled sim­ply Сражение or Bat­tle.

The short is about a noirish hired gun who dress­es in a trench coat and a fedo­ra. He is con­tract­ed to kill a toy mak­er. When he returns home, he dis­cov­ers that there’s a box on his doorstep and makes the com­plete­ly unwise deci­sion of tak­ing it inside. Soon, toy sol­diers start to tum­ble out of the box. They have live ammo, rock­et launch­ers, tiny lit­tle heli­copters at their dis­pos­al and they are on a sin­gle-mind­ed mis­sion to kill him. The killer soon finds him­self pinned down in the bath­room, wait­ing for the next attack.

The film is a lot of fun. Titov relies heav­i­ly on roto­scop­ing – an ani­ma­tion tech­nique you prob­a­bly remem­ber from A‑ha’s music video Take On Me. The killer’s form and move­ments feel real­is­tic as the rest of the movie’s height­ened, brood­ing world bends and bulges as if ren­dered through a fish­eye lens. And like A‑ha, the film’s synth and sax­o­phone sound­track might sound painful­ly 80s to some. You can watch Bat­tle with sub­ti­tles above or with­out sub­ti­tles below. The dia­logue is min­i­mal through­out.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Sovi­et Ani­ma­tions of Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Watch the Sur­re­al­ist Glass Har­mon­i­ca, the Only Ani­mat­ed Film Ever Banned by Sovi­et Cen­sors (1968)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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Harry Houdini Died 100 Years Ago This Halloween: Was He Really Killed by a Punch to the Stomach?

in History | October 26th, 2026

This Hal­loween marks the 100th anniver­sary of the death of famed escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni. Today, most of us know more about the man­ner of that death than we do about any of the feats of escape artistry that made him famous in the first place. As the sto­ry goes, he’d mas­tered his own body to the extent that he could tight­en his abdom­i­nal mus­cles so as to with­stand even the hard­est punch to the gut. Or at least that’s the image he let cir­cu­late: tak­ing it as a chal­lenge, a stu­dent and ama­teur box­er turned up and offered his fist to Hou­di­ni as an unex­pect­ed test. A week and a half lat­er, the great escapol­o­gist was dead of peri­toni­tis.

It seemed that the blow he sus­tained had rup­tured Hou­dini’s already-inflamed appen­dix, and that remained the wide­ly accept­ed, if not med­ical­ly air­tight, expla­na­tion for near­ly a cen­tu­ry. Yet there was always some­thing too dra­mat­i­cal­ly neat in the tale of a man famed for defy­ing death being done in by noth­ing more than a thought­less young man’s suck­er punch. Gen­er­a­tions of enthu­si­asts have offered expla­na­tions of their own, some more plau­si­ble than oth­ers, but few inves­ti­ga­tions into this qua­si-leg­endary demise have been con­duct­ed as seri­ous­ly as the one under­tak­en in our time by retired urol­o­gist Lar­ri­an Gille­spie, author of Hou­di­ni: The Man Who Died Twice.

When she had the chance to exam­ine his death cer­tifi­cate, Gille­spie noticed appar­ent irreg­u­lar­i­ties that led her down the rab­bit hole to “a paper trail of mis­state­ments and actions by more than a dozen peo­ple close to Hou­di­ni, includ­ing rel­a­tives and employ­ees,” writes the New York Times’ Robin Pogre­bin, “includ­ing a con­spir­a­cy to change his offi­cial death date to Octo­ber 31st, fix­ing his mem­o­ry to Hal­loween.” Accord­ing to her recon­struc­tion of events, Hou­di­ni actu­al­ly died the day before: not of appen­dici­tis, and not as a result of the young man’s punch. “Rather, she argues, the cul­prit was a bow­el obstruc­tion, brought on by a fibrous mass of chop suey that Hou­di­ni ate on Oct. 28.”

Emer­gency surgery took place the next day, but it was too late. “Sep­tic shock set in, Houdini’s fever spiked to 105 and his rapid breath­ing led to mus­cle spasms and uncon­scious­ness.” He was oper­at­ed on again the day after, and “Gillespie’s research into the death cer­tifi­cates indi­cates that the magi­cian died that after­noon at 1:26 p.m.” Gille­spie argues that the lack of a prop­er autop­sy helped con­ceal pos­si­ble med­ical mal­prac­tice and allowed Hou­dini’s wid­ow to col­lect a dou­ble-indem­ni­ty pay­ment for what was treat­ed as an acci­den­tal death. Even if accept­ed, her the­o­ry prob­a­bly won’t erase the cul­tur­al link between Hou­di­ni and Hal­loween. But the the­o­ry does add a new dimen­sion of irony to his life sto­ry: the man who could sur­vive a Chi­nese water tor­ture cell proved to be no match for Amer­i­can Chi­nese food.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Har­ry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape (Cir­ca 1920)

Browse the Mag­i­cal Worlds of Har­ry Houdini’s Scrap­books

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

How Anti-Chi­nese Immi­gra­tion Laws Unex­pect­ed­ly Led to a Chi­nese Restau­rant Boom in Amer­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear an Hour of the Jazzy Background Music from the Original 1967 Spider-Man Cartoon

in Comics/Cartoons, Music | October 26th, 2026

Ray Ellis had a six-decade career as a pro­duc­er, arranger, and jazz com­pos­er. And while he’s best known for arrang­ing music for Bil­lie Hol­i­day’s Lady in Satin (1958), he also enjoyed a long career orches­trat­ing music for tele­vi­sion. Work­ing under a pseu­do­nym “Yvette Blais” (his wife’s name), Ellis com­posed back­ground music for the car­toon stu­dio Fil­ma­tion between 1968 and 1982. And, dur­ing the late 60s, he notably cre­at­ed the back­ground and inci­den­tal music for the orig­i­nal Spi­der-Man car­toons.

Above, hear Ray Ellis’ Spi­der-Man sound­track. The show’s talk­ing parts and sound effects have been removed as much as pos­si­ble, then “pieced back togeth­er into com­plete form,” by a YouTu­ber who uses the moniker “11db11.” All of the music from Sea­son 1 is includ­ed, plus many record­ings from Sea­sons 2 and 3. It’s worth not­ing that the 52 episodes from the orig­i­nal 1967 Spi­der-Man TV series have been com­plete­ly restored. You can pur­chase them on DVD online.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read 20,000+ Gold­en Age Com­ic Books Free Online: Super­heroes, West­erns, Romance, Hor­ror, and More

The Math­e­mat­ics of Spi­der­man and the Physics of Super­heroes

Crime Jazz: How Miles Davis, Count Basie & Duke Elling­ton Cre­at­ed Sound­tracks for Noir Films & TV

Watch Miles Davis Impro­vise Music for Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows, Louis Malle’s New Wave Thriller (1958)

Every Spi­der-Man Movie and TV Show Explained By Kevin Smith

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Watch Rome Rise, Fall, and Rise Again in a Three-Minute 3D Timelapse

in Architecture, History | October 23rd, 2026

Schol­ars dis­agree on when, exact­ly, Rome fell. But if you watch the new video from City 3D Time­lapse above, you’ll under­stand the lack of debate on the ques­tion of whether it fell. Around the turn of the sixth cen­tu­ry AD, build­ings start van­ish­ing at a rate that soon turns alarm­ing; long before the end of the first mil­len­ni­um, it’s clear that Rome has been plunged into very hard times indeed. In the video’s accel­er­at­ed visu­al his­to­ry, that much-scru­ti­nized 500-year span pass­es in a lit­tle more than five sec­onds. Just one minute lat­er, it has spread not just beyond the old city lim­its, but beyond the very frame of the aer­i­al view, becom­ing the vast urban­ized region we know today.

Leg­end has it that Rome was found­ed in 753 BC, when Romu­lus killed his twin broth­er Remus. As reflect­ed by the video, archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence sug­gests that the area was set­tled ear­li­er, though the tra­di­tion­al date of Rome’s found­ing rough­ly coin­cides with the emer­gence of what we know as the Roman King­dom.

There fol­low the Roman Repub­lic, the Roman Empire, the medieval era — when the once-for­mi­da­ble Eter­nal City was left prac­ti­cal­ly for dead  — the Renais­sance, the Roman Baroque peri­od, the indus­tri­al era, and final­ly, our time of glob­al­iza­tion. For ref­er­ence, the clas­si­cal archae­ol­o­gist Gio­van­ni Pirane­si went to Rome and drew his influ­en­tial etch­ings of its ruins around the 1:55 mark of this three-minute video.

Not that the Rome cap­tured in Pirane­si’s Vedute bears much resem­blance to the Rome of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, for bet­ter or for worse. You can still see the Colos­se­um by moon­light, but the ambi­ence won’t be the same: the over­growth has long since been scraped off, and the car­go shorts are out in force year-round. Regard­less, no city is best appre­ci­at­ed through its land­marks alone, not even the mod­ern Rome so long both cel­e­brat­ed and dis­missed as an open-air muse­um. Watch­ing it rise, fall, and rise again from above with­in the length of a Euro­vi­sion song reminds us that it was­n’t built, or rebuilt, in a day — and that, in the face of often-for­mi­da­ble dif­fi­cul­ties, it even now man­ages to put up some­thing new once in a while.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Rome Began: The His­to­ry As Told by Ancient His­to­ri­ans

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 CE: Explore Stun­ning Recre­ations of The Forum, Colos­se­um and Oth­er Mon­u­ments

The Chang­ing Land­scape of Ancient Rome: A Free Online Course from Sapien­za Uni­ver­si­ty of Rome

What Did Ancient Rome Look Like? A 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the City Dur­ing the Sec­ond Cen­tu­ry AD

Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion Lets You See the Rise of Cities Across the Globe, from 3700 BC to 2000 AD

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

When the Colos­se­um in Rome Became the Home of Hun­dreds of Exot­ic Plant Species

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Christopher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe: “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” & More

in Literature | October 22nd, 2026

Sir Christo­pher Lee and Edgar Allan Poe went way back. Or at least they went as far back as 1969, the year of The Oblong Box, a loose and lurid film adap­ta­tion of the epony­mous sto­ry star­ring Lee and the also Poe-asso­ci­at­ed Vin­cent Price. Lee plays the doc­tor to whom a gang of grave-rob­bers deliv­ers Price’s char­ac­ter, an Eng­lish­man dis­fig­ured in a voodoo cer­e­mo­ny who fakes his own death in order to escape the cap­tiv­i­ty of his broth­er. What­ev­er its enter­tain­ment val­ue, the pic­ture does­n’t rank espe­cial­ly high in the canon of Poe adap­ta­tions. Nor, for that mat­ter, does the orig­i­nal sto­ry rank along­side works like “The Pit and the Pen­du­lum,” “The Fall of the House of Ush­er,” “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” or “The Black Cat.”

You can hear Lee him­self read all those macabre, imag­i­na­tive sto­ries and oth­ers besides in the YouTube playlist above. Some of the record­ings come from Christo­pher Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe Tales of Hor­ror, the 1979 bud­get-label cas­sette pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. Oth­ers include Lee’s per­for­mances of “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Hop-Frog,” and “The Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue,” which is com­mon­ly cred­it­ed with launch­ing the entire genre of detec­tive fic­tion.

Though now most wide­ly remem­bered as a hor­ror actor, the pro­lif­ic Lee proved com­mand­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res: in the final decade of his life, he appeared in numer­ous crime pic­tures, adap­ta­tions of The Gold­en Com­pass and Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, and sev­er­al Star Wars and Lord of the Rings movies.

Not that he’d left Poe behind. Among the last cred­its Lee racked up in his life­time is Extra­or­di­nary Tales, from 2013, a five-sto­ry anthol­o­gy film in which he nar­rates “The Fall of the House of Ush­er.” Though British, his dis­tinc­tive man­ner and slight­ly mid-Atlantic accent were as ver­sa­tile on the screen as they were in read­ings of Poe, whose writ­ing dates from a time when more than a few Amer­i­cans still con­sid­ered lit­er­a­ture itself an import from across the pond. This Hal­loween, if you don’t have the hours free for a com­plete lis­ten-through of the playlist do con­sid­er at least putting on “The Raven.” It remains a mat­ter of debate among Poe enthu­si­asts to what extent Lee’s deliv­ery of “nev­er­more” real­ly cap­tures the spir­it of the poem, but it would be hard to imag­ine a more appro­pri­ate fig­ure to pre­side over All Hal­lows’ Eve.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

Watch Vin­cent Price Turn Into Edgar Allan Poe & Read Four Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries (1970)

Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Hear Clas­sic Read­ings of Poe’s “The Raven” by Vin­cent Price, James Earl Jones, Christo­pher Walken, Neil Gaiman & More

Hear Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

A Read­ing of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in 100 Celebri­ty Voic­es

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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What Ancient Latin Sounded Like, And How We Know It

in History, Language Lessons | October 22nd, 2026

Latin is a lan­guage

As dead as dead can be; 

It killed the Romans long ago, 

And now it’s killing me.

That famed dit­ty isn’t like­ly to res­onate with many mod­ern school chil­dren, but inter­est in ancient Rome remains fair­ly robust. 

We’ve come to accept that those state­ly ruins were once cov­ered in graf­fi­ti.

We can recre­ate their meals from hors d’oeuvres (Boiled Eggs with Pine Nut Sauce) to dessert (Pear Pati­na).

Ther­mae Romae, a pop­u­lar Japan­ese man­ga-cum-fea­ture-film, took us inside Emper­or Hadri­an’s bath­house.

But what did the Romans sound like?

Kirk Dou­glas’ Spar­ta­cus? Or Lau­rence Olivier’s Cras­sus?

The HBO series Rome upheld the tra­di­tion of British accents.

Ani­ma­tor Josh Rud­der of NativLang did a fair amount of dig­ging in ser­vice of find­ing out What Latin Sound­ed Like, above.

(And he seems to have done so with­out the help of Derek Jarman’s NSFW Sebas­tiane, the only fea­ture film to be filmed entire­ly in ser­mo vul­garis or vul­gar Latin.)

Instead, he draws from ancient rhetori­cian Quin­til­ian and Virgil’s poet­ic meter. Scroll back­ward through the Romance lan­guages, and you’ll see Ger­man­ic tribes trad­ing with and fight­ing ancient Roman troops.

The result is not so much a recon­struc­tive pro­nun­ci­a­tion guide as a lin­guis­tic detec­tive sto­ry.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Lorem Ipsum: How Scram­bled Text by Cicero Became Used by Type­set­ters Every­where

Can Mod­ern-Day Ital­ians Under­stand Latin? A YouTu­ber Puts It to the Test on the Streets of Rome

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Per­formed in Clas­si­cal Latin

Dis­cov­er the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, from Ancient Rome

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist in NYC.

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In 1897, London’s Lampposts Dispensed Hot Coffee, Tea, and “Fluid Beef”

in History, Technology | October 21st, 2026

Any read­er of Vic­to­ri­an lit­er­a­ture will won­der how much a ha’pen­ny was actu­al­ly worth in those days. For a lit­tle more than a year at the very end of that peri­od, it could buy you a cup of cof­fee, cocoa, milk, tea, or “flu­id beef” — which would pour out of a lamp­post on the cor­ner. The Plu­to Lamp, as it was brand­ed, made its debut at the Vic­to­ri­an Era Exhi­bi­tion, which was held in 1897 to cel­e­brate the Queen’s Dia­mond Jubilee. Amid such attrac­tions as a 360-degree panora­ma of ancient Rome, Pep­per’s ghost illu­sions, and over 1,200 works of art by the likes of J. M. W. Turn­er, John Con­sta­ble, and 180 spe­cial­ly select­ed female artists, a bev­er­age-dis­pens­ing street­light might seem mun­dane. Yet apart from being a tech­no­log­i­cal mar­vel in its own way, it also pre­saged the tech­nol­o­gy-sat­u­rat­ed streets one day to come.

Not long after the Vic­to­ri­an Era Exhi­bi­tion, Plu­to Lamps appeared in sev­er­al Lon­don loca­tions, includ­ing Exmouth Street in Clerken­well, Leices­ter Square, and Rose­bery Avenue. In addi­tion to the illu­mi­na­tion of their sur­round­ings, and the drinks warmed by the excess heat thus gen­er­at­ed, they in some cas­es offered post­cards and four-to-the-pen­ny cig­a­rettes for sale as well.

How­ev­er much atten­tion the Plu­to Lamps attract­ed as a nov­el­ty, this was still the infan­cy of the mod­ern vend­ing machine, whose defi­cien­cies had yet to be ful­ly worked out. It proved impos­si­ble, at the time, to defeat the enter­pris­ing scoundrels who used round pieces of tin in place of gen­uine cur­ren­cy, and in any case, main­te­nance costs seem to have proven unex­pect­ed­ly high. (To say noth­ing of the prospect of drink­ing out of an enam­el cup on a chain, shared with the entire pub­lic, which sure­ly put off even some Vic­to­ri­ans.)

All of the Plu­to Lamps were decom­mis­sioned before the end of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, but they’d done their bit to expand pub­lic ideas of what was pos­si­ble in the urban pub­lic realm. “For over a cen­tu­ry, lamp posts would again do lit­tle more than shine light on to the city streets below,” writes Lukas Neck­er­mann in Smart Cities, Smart Mobil­i­ty. “But by the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, the spir­it of the Plu­to Lamps returned. City infra­struc­ture and street fur­ni­ture would once again become mul­ti-pur­pose, mul­ti-use, entre­pre­neur­ial, and con­nect­ed.” And indeed, though talk of “smart cities” may now sound as dat­ed and unap­peal­ing as that of flu­id beef, lamp­posts have more recent­ly been giv­en such side jobs as vehi­cle charg­ing, envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, and even crime pre­ven­tion. That last brings back to mind the Clerken­well Plu­to Lamp, equipped as it was with a tele­graph recorder con­nect­ed straight to Scot­land Yard: a device that, had it last­ed longer, might have inspired many a Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ist.

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Slot Machine Age: A 1964 British News­reel Angsts Over Whether Auto­mat­ed Machines Will Dis­place Peo­ple

Behold the Art-o-Mat: Vin­tage Cig­a­rette Vend­ing Machines Get Repur­posed & Dis­pense Works of Art

Jim Pow­er, aka “the Mosa­ic Man,” Adorns the Lamp­posts of New York City’s East Vil­lage

French Vend­ing Machines Fill Your Mind with Nour­ish­ing Short Sto­ries, Not Your Body with Junk Food

Inside the Automats Where Coin-Oper­at­ed Machines Cre­at­ed a Mod­ern, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Din­ing Expe­ri­ence

Watch the “Bib­lio-Mat” Book-Vend­ing Machine Dis­pense Lit­er­ary Delight

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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