Movies (Part 1)

Am I showing my age by calling this movies? What if I said Flicks? Perhaps Edison's or Magic Lantern Shows? Whatever the jargon we want to assign to them at various decades, I admit I like them.

The photo that opens this little spiel is of the Warner Bros. Theater in West Chester, Pennsylvania, as it looked in 1948. I would have been seven that year and the Warner was one of three movie houses I frequented during my boyhood years. The other two were the Auditorium in Coatesville, and most of all, the Roosevelt in Downingtown. After all, for most of that time I lived in Downingtown. The Auditorium and Warner were First Run houses and your big A Movies played there. The Roosevelt featured second runs and B Pictures. I saw most of the old Universal Monsters at the Roosevelt along with a lot of old-time Oat Operas

(Westerns) staring Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, Hoot Gibson and others of that ilk, as well as Gene Autry & Roy Rogers.

That is the interior of the Roosevelt on the right.  Sadly, although the buildings still exist, the Roosevelt and Warner are no longer showing films. The Warner is a hotel and last I saw it the Roosevelt was vacant and for sale.

But I really didn't intend for this to be a nostalgia piece, only a kind of review of some films I saw over the years that I liked. I also don't intend this to be considered a critique, even though in a galaxy far, far away I once was a critic, both of movies, live theater and books. I did movie and theater pieces for "Philadelphia After Dark" and book reviews for "Media & Methods" as well as some other places. I'm not a big fan of critics, however. I think people should make up their own mind about such things. Like what you like and dislike what you will, although I would suggest you also think about the films you view and consider why you like or dislike them. I don't mind reviews that give me a clue to what I may see in a film, but I am careful about the judgments of their worth and meaning as given by the critic. So All I want to do is mention some films I enjoyed a great deal and tell you what they were about without any spoilers, and let you decided if you care for them upon seeing.

I must warn I have some odd tastes in films. For example, let me explain some movies I saw in the past that I particularly like, but other people may find a little ...uh...bizarre.

For instance, "The Dark Backward, even the title is a bit strange and the film even stranger. I suppose this is something in the line of David Lynch's world (and I do also like David Lynch films). The movie came out in 1991 and was written and directed by Adam Rifkin. Rifkin is probably best known for directing "MouseHunt" and "Underdog",, movies somewhat removed from "The Dark Backward". He did this particular film in 1991 and it was named one of the ten best films of the year by the New York Post, although other critics weren't so kind. Neither was the public and it did very, very poorly at the box-office. Nonetheless, I liked the thing, which shows you how weird I can be.

How can I explain it? The main character, played by Judd Nelson, is a garbage man and would-be stand up comic, except his act is really garbage itself and he is going nowhere until one morning he wakes up and discovers he is growing a third arm. This new appendage is square in the center of his back. (Of course this can be handy for when he gets an itch between the shoulder blades.) His sudden acquisition does land him in a club where he becomes a featured act accompanied by his best friend, Gus (another trash man), who plays an accordion he is never without. From this point the story begins to be a bit strange.  Don't dismiss this as a bunch of amateur nobodies. Besides Nelson the movie stars Bill Paxton, Wayne Newton, Lara Flynn Boyle and James Caan.


Another film I saw several years ago that I liked a lot is "The Legend of 1900", a picture

written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and released in 1998.  The 1900 legend is not about the year, but is the main character's name, as well as the year he was born. He was found as a newborn in a box aboard a luxury liner named the Virginian and destined to live his entire life about the ship. As he grows, he becomes a fabulous pianist, plays with the ship's orchestra and has a very exciting piano duel against Jelly Roll Morton, the immortal New Orleans Jazz man. I don't want to say much more because I don't want to spoil anything, but I feel it is a very beautiful film.

Now one of my all-time favorite films, one I have viewed a number of times and thought about often, is Frank and Eleanor Perry's version of the John Cheever short story, "The Swimmer".   It is something of a tour de force by Burt Lancaster, who stars in it. (He also has a nude scene, so be warned.)

I find the movie psychologically brilliant. I also find it profoundly sad.

Lancaster plays fit and tanned Ned Merrill. In the beginning he appear at an affluent Connecticut couple's swim party and while sipping his cocktail he observes how the swimming pools of these well-to-do homes spread across the valley like "a river" to his own distant house. He decides to swim home and dives into the pool, emerges from the other side and begins his odyssey across the valley and through his mind and time. What seems fairly straight forward at first, a middle-aged man proving he still has some youth by this marathon swim soon turns into something much deeper. One hint that something more than just a day in his life is occurring is close observation will let you see how part way along the summer day has actually become one of autumn. You really can't get this film on one viewing. neither it's meaning or out of your head.

One last film I'd like to mention here that I like a lot is "The Village".  This is a 2004 film by M. Night Shyamalan. It was not well received by the critics, dismissed by them as another twist ending gimmick by the director. Worse, the critics felt the twist was revealed too early and thus destroyed the effect.

Personally I disagree. I feel these critics missed the point. I don't consider the twist as the central part of the plot at all. I say the point being made is that we cannot escape evil in this world, that it will always find us out and we need to learn to face it, not hide away and try through fairytale to protect out children from it.  The Village Elders don't see this anymore than the critics did, but the blind girl Ivy Elizabeth Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the one who can face and see reality.

I find it a beautiful movie to watch.

I would also note it was filmed not far from where I live and nearby where I often walk. The filming was done in fields along side "The Devil's Road", which runs between Centerville, Delaware and Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. This road is legendary in my neck of the woods. Sometimes called "the Valley", driving Cossart Road (my photograph of it on left) at night is something of a rite of passage among teenagers. Its haunted hills were a perfect setting to make this film.

I also say the production company marketed the picture wrong. The ads and trailers presented it as a horror film, a monster flick. The emphasis on the "Monster" really led to false expectations on the part of the audience and as a result it proved a let down and anti-climatical. If it had been marketed differently the reception would have been much greater in my option.

When I do Movies (Part 2), I will be talking about films I saw for the first time in 2015 and I will point out one of these that was grossly mis-marketed as well.

Devil's Road Revisited

We, the Little Woman and I, took a ride after dinner one day recently. We had eaten at one of our usual spots and I decided to check out a couple places we used to go regularly, but haven't in quite a while (read years). One was the Four Dogs in Marshallton. It was a favorite chow-down tavern, but one day as we drove the Strassburg Pike we were stopped by a bridge being out. It wasn't so much out, as in collapsed or anything, but it was under construction and they had closed off the road and sent us off on a detour. It is pretty country in this particular part of Pennsylvania, but we weren't out for a scenic tour. We were hungry. We twisted this way and that and never did find our way around to the Four Dogs, thus we drove off elsewhere and ate late. We didn't attempt to go back there until now, and yes, the road is now open.

Having established that we could retry the place if we so wished, I turned about and took some more back roads out past Longwood Gardens and checked on Manny Hattens. We were frequent diners upon their high top tables a time ago as well, but then felt their quality slipped and we slipped away. They have also slipped away and are no longer serving, although there is a new restaurant at the location.

This little research on old dining habits complete and with twilight darkening as we came back down Baltimore Pike towards Chadds Ford, I decided to take my wife down the Devil's Road. She had never been there. It now being not quite night, but not light anymore either, it should prove a sufficiently eerie time to introduce her to the legendary "Valley".

Of course, I had never heard of "The Valley" or "Devil's Road" growing up since I lived in the northern environs of Chester County in those more formative years, but I sure heard enough once we moved to this part of Delaware thirty-plus years ago. Apparently if you grew up around here you were expected at some point to take a midnight run to The Valley. The experience was a rite of passage that a lot of people around here shared and talked about.  Even my own children made the jaunt to The Valley during their high school years.

So what's the deal? It's an out of the way place full of spooks and legends, our own little Sleepy Hollow with mysterious SUVs and Pickup Trucks instead of a headless horseman, with tales of deformed children, ghostly murdered babies, KKK rallies, Biker terrors and some kind of cult up in the woods. It has eyewitness claims of strangely twisted trees, chases by invisible drivers and skull-like trunks, all flung along an extremely narrow little road called Cossart.

Added to all that history, M. Night Shyamalan filmed his movie, "The Village" along it. The picture at

the beginning of this little essay is a scene from that movie. The photo on the right is in the area I believe the  prop village was erected and the action took place. I will tell you it is a favorite movie of mine. A number of critics didn't like it, but the critics had turned on Shyamalan. Personally I think it is a better picture than "The Sixth Sense" (which I also like a lot) because it has more depth and a deeper meaning. The critics, being intellectual elitists caught up in their own sense of importance and superiority of taste failed to grasp this. They dismissed it as just another of Night's trick endings, but then even went on to criticize the reveal as coming too soon, which it had to in order to put emphasis on the real lesson of the film, the one the critics so caught up in their Aha Moment, dismissed as Shyamalan just up to his usual tricks, failed to see .

But this is not a movie review, just a short narrative of taking my wife down Devil's Road for her first time.

I admit, my first time wasn't all that long ago (2011), when I tried to film the excursion only to have my camera fail as I started. I wrote about that dreary day and the Black Pickup, whose driver I couldn't see, that followed me out of the road and then turned back up it, giving truth to the many legends told over the years.

This time I did no filming and this time it was growing night. Nobody followed up. Even the street sign was up in Centreville marking the entrance to the road. In 2011 the street signs had been removed to hide the road. Three years ago I didn't even know where "The Valley" was. I thought it was somewhere on Beaver Valley Road, which is nearby. Somewhere I stumbled after a number of attempts on the location and then I Google mapped the road. Good thing, because there were no street signs up at that time. It was kind of a hidden, narrow opening off Route 52. If interested, you can read that account (and watch what video I managed) HERE -"Mystery of Devil's Road: A Frank March Mystery. It is a very narrow road, with barely enough room for cars to pass by each other.

I know the residents who live along Cossart Road don't really like all the attention. They have had plenty of the midnight drive-thoughts and minor vandalisms, but at the same time I kind of hate to see these old legends die. Nobody has really ever settled the rumors either it seems. They did, I heard, cut down the "Skull Tree" where the ghostly baby supposedly could sometimes be heard crying and they posted most of the land to keep people out.

There is this defaced tree on the right  along the

bank in the general area of where the Cult House is claimed to be, but this isn't quite the Skull Tree, which I have pictured on the left for comparison.

Now as to the Cult House, the place where the trees shrink away in horror and where claims of deformed children, results of incest, were kept hidden away from the world, itself remains hidden away from the world.

(I would love to hike up into the woods there and see for myself, but I wouldn't go alone and I would go a bit fearful of arrest.)

If the Cult House does indeed exist, I would think it would be in this area pictured on the right. This is maybe halfway along Cossart. It seems the only parcel of land heavy enough with woodland to hide a large house. The other fields and hills don't seem as likely, especially since most have home owners living upon them.

If you drive along Cossart into this stretch you will find a padlocked gate on the same side as all these trees. There are some keep out signs too.

The drive behind the locked gate turns to the right as you enter and runs parallel to Cossart for a bit and then dead ends. It gives the appearance of being some sort of dumping site. There is trash all along the side of this drive.

But if you look down to the right of the right photo, near where this junkyard driveway enters off of the road, you can just barely make out the beginning of another drive, one seemingly somewhat overgrown, that disappears into the forest.








Following the direction of this old trail up the hill
through the trees you will find a rather large house.

You will also notice how the trees begin to take a slightly warped shape, as if pulling away from the house.

Could this be the Cult House?

I'm not claiming it is. I'm just speculating based on satellite images of the only area that would be a likely candidate for such a place.

Now people read these Blogs. perhaps someone is familiar with this big house in the woods on the hill. Maybe they can explain if anyone lives here or what the history of this building is. If  people want to kill rumors and legends then the best thing to do is shine lights on it, not remove street signs or have people be chased by mysterious vehicles or cut down strange trees. This just adds credibility to the suspicions and attracts more of the curious.


At any rate, now my wife has been down the Devil's Road none the worse for wear…but I'm still curious.

Driving the Devil's Road Redux

A year and three-quarters ago Frank March drove down the Devil's Road. We told of that adventure on these pages. This included a short video that also was shared on YouTube. Just a little diversion was all it amounted to.

One has to know the Urban legend of the road. (I suppose Urban legend is a misnomer; it's pretty rural about there, but no one said "Rural legend, do they?)

The gist of it is that a cult house hides in the woods somewhere along the route. There are tales of Satanism, of KKK meetings and also that this was the dumping ground for a number of monstrous children produced by duPont family inbreeding.

There is also the side story of the skull tree, so named for the appearance of its trunk and roots. Allegedly a mother left her baby at the base of the tree to die and the roots absorbed the child and formed the skull face. Claims are made that if you stop here in the night you will hear a baby crying.

The third aspect of this whole Devil's Road folderol is the mysterious vehicles that will suddenly appear to chase away any intruder. These are usually described as black pickup trucks or SUVs.


Here is my original video.

Now these many months later the video drew a response:

"None of this is true. I live literally a few feet from the road and I have driven up and down it and walked it at all times of day. I also know most of residents that live up and down it. There is no "cult house"... it simply doesn't exist. However there is a farm half way down it with another house and gate just opposite from it. They do have their own security and cameras on the grounds. If they catch you the cops are usually called immediately. Anyone following you is probably someone screwing around. I know Ive scared my fair share of people down there. The supposed "cult house" is a house in the distance on a hill and it isnt even on Cossart rd. At the bottom of the hill where the trees bend and the skull tree is.. where its suppose to be. But at the top of the hill is just a field. Nothing more. Oh and the skull tree was filled with concrete and taken down because of vandalism."

This is how the Skull Tree looked originally .The baby supposedly left in that hole between the roots.

You can see the skull imagery by imagining that hole and the one to its left as eye sockets. The triangular hole at the base forms the nose.















This is how the tree looked after the holes were filled in with cement. 

People coming by at night wrote graffiti around the base (hopefully none of which you can read in this picture).

According to the comment I received the tree has since been taken down. It is kind of a shame actually. Legends should continue.

(Both photos taken from "Weird Pennsylvania".)

Also according to the comment, none of this is true. Yet, there is a house and there is a tree. They exist. Cults and gangs and women who desert babies all exist. I don't believe in ghosts, spooks and disembodied voices, such as the dead baby's cries being heard if you stand near that tree. But other than that there is nothing in the tales that isn't possible, if improbable.

Why did I once drive down the Devil's Road. Like the proverbial cat, to satisfy my curiousity. You don't live in this area long befoire you hear tells of "The Valley", of "Devil's Road" and of the "Cult House". It is a rite of passage for high school kids to visit the road late at night and scare each other. Even my own children did it. So, with my own bizarre taste for spooky things, I also wanted to experience it.

The first trick was even finding it. I had ofter heard Beaver Valley Road mentioned, but these things weren't on Beaver Valley Road. (By the way, that's beaver, not Bieber -- one spooky thing at a time.) I learned they were on Cossart Road, but where in the world was that? It is actually a road running between Centerville and the Chadds Ford area, but don't look for a road sign saying Devil's Road or even Cossart, for they took down all the street signs, which only adds to the intrigue.

But I found it.

I admit, on the dreary, rainy day I transversed it i found it very spooky indeed. There are a lot of spooky roads in this region. I have driven Old Rt. 100 between Chadds Ford and West Chester probably more than a 1,000 times in my life and stretches of it are just as spooky as can be. It is also lined with oddly twisted trees that seem to reach for you as you pass.

I would have given less notice to Cossart Road if it hadn't been for the black pickup. Yes, just as in all the legends a black pickup suddenly appeared behind me as I reached the point of the alledged cult house. It trailed behind the rest of the way to the end of the road.

Coincidence is how I figured it in my mind. Black pickups are hardly a rarity around here. However, when i exited the road I saw the black pickup do a U-turn and go back up Cossart and that gave credence to all the wild tales.
The Commenter on YouTube said: "Anyone following you is probably someone screwing around. I know Ive scared my fair share of people down there."

You mean people living there have nothing better to do. I wasn't some kid snaking through there in the night. I was an old man driving the speed limit through in broad daylight. (Well, perhaps with the rain, slim daylight, but daylight none the less.) I've heard the residents are tired of the invaders of their peaceful road. If so I would advise them to put the street signs back up and stop scaring their fair share of people by following. All those things do is perpetuate the myth.

Besides, I prefer the myth to the reality anyway.

By the way,  M. Night Shyamalan filmed "The Village" in the fields and woods along this road, one of my favorite movies.

Mystery of The Devil's Road: A Frank march Adventure

Frank first heard the legend several years ago when he moved into Delaware. Even though he had grown up to the North in Pennsylvania not far from the center of the stories, he hadn't heard them before. In Northern Delaware trips to "The Valley" were something like teenage rites of passage. Frank's own kids experienced this. Frank never had.

Now Frank is a curious fellow, much like his cats, but it took a long time to ever act on these mythos. Decades in fact, yet lately he felt compelled to see for himself.

It isn't that he believed any of it. He doesn't believe in ghosts and such and he felt these things were easy to shrug off. Strange growing trees and mystery vehicles could be easily explained. He'd seen many odd and spooky trees in his life, especially along the banks of the Brandywine and the narrow country roads thereabout. And mystery cars could be teenagers playing pranks on more gullible teenagers.

So on this April morn Frank decided to find the so call "Devil's Road" and take a look. You will notice despite all his professed skepticism he did decide to make his drive on a Saturday MORNING rather than a Saturday (or any) NIGHT. It wasn't he had any apprehension about the tales he had heard or fear of things that go bump in the night (or morning as this case was), but only the road was in unfamiliar territory and he needed to have good light to find it.

At this point you probably should hear the basic details of the legend.

There lies up in the wooded hills in Pennsylvania, just across the Delaware border a place called The Valley and the Cult House. The rumors persist this was yet another duPont Estate, but a sinister one, where malformed children from family inbreeding were stored away from public view. Other tales speak of Satan worship being conducted in this house, thus the name Cult House, as well as stories it was also a gathering place of the Ku Klux Klan. Dead animals, warning signs and the usual accoutrements further surround these fancies. The M. Night Shyamalan film "The Village" was supposedly shot in the woods about the Cult House, although from scenes Frank saw, it could have easily been shot in the Brandywine Creek State Park where he often hikes.

Two other persistent aspects of the legend are the Skull Tree and the Mystery Vehicles. The photo on the right is the Skull Tree as taken from Weird Pennsylvania by Matt Lake and published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. Frank had hoped to see this tree and photograph it if he could.

Allegedly, a mother left her baby at the base of the tree to die and the roots absorbed the child and formed the skull face. Claims are made that if you stop here in the night you will hear a baby crying. If you look you can see the form of a skill in both the heavy root structure at the base of this tree and also within the large hollow on the right. Frank did not find the tree or the Cult House for reasons explained later.

The Mystery Vehicles are another commonly reported feature of Devil's Road. If a person drives down the road too slowly or lingers in the area of these legends, a black (in one reported instance, the vehicle was red) pickup or SUV will suddenly appear and chase the loiterer down the road.  No matter how one tries, though, the face of the driver can never be seen.

And so with these rumors and tall tales in mind, Frank decided to investigate. The first trick was finding Cossart Road. This did not seem too challenging. It was said teens went out Montchanin Road to where it intersected. Montchanin Road is Old Rt. 100 and actually passes right by Brandywine Creek State Park then runs to Baltimore Pike at Chadds Ford. So after his morning walk, Frank headed down Old Rt. 100.

Old Rt. 100 is a narrow twisting road following along the Brandywine. In Pennsylvania, where Frank grew up it was called Creek Rd. It also has a plentiful share of spooky misshapen trees along it's twisting route.

However, the entry to Cossart Road was not found and Frank ended up in Chadds Ford. So thank heaven for Google Maps, for he knew Cossart ran from Old Rt. 100 to Rt. 52 where it ended just below the Fairview Inn from studying Googles overhead shots. (The portion of map on the left shows the area where the cult house is to be found.) Otherwise, Frank would have never found the road. It has no street signs, not at either end or along its length when it crosses roads. An oddly, unmarked byway, even though there are homes here and there along it.

Thus Frank now entered from Rt. 52. The road was very narrow and soon seemed strange. Now long after turning in, he saw something black in the very center of the street. As he came nearer, this black object raised a head and he saw it was a very large black bird. It stared at him a bit before it finally flew from his path. Certainly this was a foreboding omen.

A bit further and now a white van sat motionless in the road. Cossart is very narrow, barely wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass and Frank wondered whether he could get around this van. He also wondered why it was sitting there in essentially nowhere. But then it began to drive away and he was able to continued unimpeded.

As strange as it seems, Frank was getting a bad vibe from the area around him, an unease. He was getting nearer the enchanted area and here and there were objects narrowing the road. First a small evergreen, like a Christmas Tree cut in half appeared. One half on the left and the other on the right and both intruding onto the road surface.  Then there was a long canvas-like bag, perhaps six feet long, filled with something and also lying on the road.

Beyond all this Frank came to his presumed destination and snapped the photo seen at the top of the post and turned on a video. At this point the rain began streaming down and after a half minute his camera batteries died ending any filming.

On normal days if such a thing had happened, Frank would have pulled over briefly and reloaded the camera. Why didn't he this morning?

Because at that moment a black pickup suddenly appeared behind him, even though this was daytime, not night, and it followed him all the way out of Cossart to Old Rt. 100.  Frank recalled the stories and he wondered if it would continue behind him on 100. At the dead end of Cossart, Frank turned right. He looked in his mirror to see if the pickup followed, but it seemed to go left instead, except it didn't go left afterall, it was simply turning around and going back into Cossart Road.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it? It certainly made Frank wonder and someday he will return and explore further. Someday...when he can take some friends along.

The short video Frank shot before his batteries died is below.

At the end of the video you can see the white van in the distance. It turned out to be a Verizon FiOS truck, obviously lost.