Lawrence C. Connolly

The 21st-Century Scop banner

scop (noun): Old English – bard, minstrel, storyteller

  • T. P. Cooke’s Demon:
    The First Pop-Culture “Frankenstein”

    An explosion. Fire and smoke. Laboratory doors shatter. The Demon appears in a blast of red flame! That’s how the Frankenstein monster made its entrance in the first dramatic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Loosely adapted by Richard Brinsley Peake and starring actor T. P. Cooke as the monster (referred to as “The Demon” in…

  • A Child and a Monster go to the Lake, or …
    “What shall we throw in now?”

    Set in central Spain shortly after the Spanish revolution, Victor Erice’s film The Spirit of the Beehive opens with the children of a rural village watching James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). Two of the children, sisters Ana and Isabelle, watch wide-eyed as the monster encounters a young girl by a mountain lake. It’s the same scene you’ll…

  • A Monster of a Mix Up:
    The Strange Case of Creepy No. 10

    Today we continue unpacking some of the titles mentioned during my conversation with Brentley Palmer and Nicholas Schwartz in the Frankenstein installment of their Horror Drafts podcast. if you haven’t listened to that discussion, you can find it here. As for the previous blog posts in this series, you can find them here and here. …

  • Not Your Universal Monster:
    The Hammer Frankenstein Series

    It’s alive! Out of the lab and in your earbuds, the latest episode of the Horror Drafts podcast featuring a two-hour discussion of all things Frankenstein is available now. Here’s the description from the podcast site: This week we are joined by author, screenwriter, playwright, podcaster, and all-around Frankenstein expert Lawrence C. Connolly to draft…

  • First Impressions:
    Discovering Frankenstein

    A recent episode of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre features responses to the question “Where did you first encounter Frankenstein?” The responses are varied, with listeners referencing Mel Brooks, Boris Karloff, and (appropriately) Mary Shelley. But a response closest to my own experience is from a Facebook friend who reports that she had been aware of…

  • Today at Confluence:
    Where To Next? Trends in Science Fiction

    Writing horror in the days of covid is a bit like living in a science fiction novel. Not the Michael Crichton variety, where things pretty much go back to normal after humankind deals with the inciting incident, but the Richard Matheson kind (think I am Legend) where things change and those of us who get…