"The Curse of Frankenstein" is a British horror film released in 1957. It was Hammer Film Productions' first color horror film and the first in their series of Frankenstein films. Directed by Terence Fisher and produced by Anthony Hinds, this movie marked a significant turning point in the horror genre. The film revolves around Victor Frankenstein, portrayed by Peter Cushing, a brilliant and ambitious young scientist who becomes obsessed with reanimating the dead. He partners with his former tutor Paul Krempe, played by Robert Urquhart, to bring his macabre experiment to life. Together, they manage to create a creature, played by Christopher Lee, but their creation is far from the beautiful being Victor had envisioned.

Austin Musts: Walton’s Fancy and Staple

When we were kids, my sisters and I were obsessed with a movie called Practical Magic. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman were in their long-haired prime, playing two stunning sisters who happened to be witches. The soundtrack was filled (most appropriately) with Stevie Nicks songs like “Crystal.” The movie was just the right balance of heartwarming and terrifying, and watching the two close-as-crap sisters run around in an old, crickety house hit pretty close to home for us.

What does this have to do with food, you ask? Well, the first time I walked into Walton’s, the first thing I thought of was that movie.

Walton’s is the sister restaurant to Sandra Bullock’s Bess Bistro (there will be a post on that place, that’s for sure), but it’s association with the lovely Ms. Bullock isn’t necessarily why it reminded me of Practical Magic. Maybe it’s the succulents hanging from the ceiling in different-sized glass globes. Maybe it’s the “garden” of fresh flowers against an exposed-brick backdrop. If you’ve seen the movie and seen that gorgeous greenhouse at the aunts’ house, you might see my point. If you haven’t, well, I apologize for the last paragraph.

My first meal at Walton’s was a takeout salad and a croissant-turned-cinnamon roll. My mom picked it up for us as we moved my stuff in. I remember being intrigued by the dressing and caramelized pecans and being super happy with the cinnamon roll. But to enjoy Walton’s, you have to go to Walton’s yourself.

Weekday lunches guarantee a line, but I didn’t mind. On a random Tuesday, I stood at the end of a 15-person line and ogled the beautiful display case of pastries, tarts and chocolate treats. I admired the just-the-right-amount-of-frills menu board: white text on black “chalkboard.” I got really, really excited about the dash of southern on the menu. I decided between their breakfast-all-day, blue plate special or sandwich options and settled on the Turkey Sweet sandwich the second I read “onion apple chutney.” And it was everything.

First of all, the sandwich is on a croissant. Extra butter usually sells me pretty quickly. But the Turkey Sweet at Walton’s is more than its backdrop; it features fresh sliced turkey, applewood smoked bacon, white cheddar, maple aioli and that effing chutney. It’s so good, you guys. Get it pressed (pictured above) and you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else than the food in the your mouth. I hovered over it like an ogre and inhaled the thing in record time.

During an equally pleasant weekday lunch, I ordered the freebird chicken sandwich. Not as orgasmic as its sweet sister, but I applaud the great multigrain bread and the jalapeno aioli. It’s quality.

I need to explore their breakfast options further because I wasn’t crazy about the breakfast sandwich. Everything piled on it is on point, but the cute little biscuit is SO dry–not the kind you want for a sandwich. It is the kind of biscuit you want, however, with a little of their housemade strawberry jam, found by the iced tea and lemons. I’ve been tempted to steal a few of those little plastic containers more than once.

Sitting and eating at Walton’s is just plain pleasant. It’s beautiful and feminine and perfectly fuses Southern quaintness with European class. Is it a great mother-daughter-grandmother-aunt place? Sure. But the food is good enough that you should bring everyone you know. Just not during my lunch break. The line’s long enough, thanks.

Walton’s Fancy and Staple

609 W. 5th Street, Austin

The Practical Magic Prequel is Almost Here

People chimed in with their personal cinematic masterpieces: Ever After, 13 Going On 30, The Goonies, and even National Treasure. Pretty much anything that airs on a Freeform movie weekend sponsored by Proactive.

Just like everyone else, I have those movies that may not have won an Oscar but it won my unrelenting devotion. I can unabashedly recite whole scenes from Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Go ahead and test my trivial knowledge about Reality Bites. I still giggle like a tween when Tom Hanks discovers that Meg Ryan is the object of his virtual affection in You’ve Got Mail. However, there is one film that I will essentially drop anything and everything for just to watch, no matter what I’m doing:

Practical Magic

The film that brought us amazing set decor, maxi skirts, midnight margaritas, and belladonna has a permanent rotation in any of my themed movie binges. Having a Sandra Bullock movie night? It fits perfectly in between Forces of Nature and Two Weeks Notice. Watching movies about the complexity of family dynamics? Um, hello ancient family curse that kills your true love. Need ideas for your upcoming home renovation? Say hello to your new kitchen…

Based…okay, let’s be real and just say loosely based on the novel by Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic at its core is about the unshakable bonds between sisters and finally accepting who you are. It’s been 21 years since we last saw the Owens sisters on the big screen, and while the film provided a satisfying denouement for both Sally and Gillian, fans of both the novel and the film have always wanted more time with the Owens family.

In 2017, the author granted that wish with The Rules of Magic, a prequel that centered around the younger Aunt Jet and Aunt Frances. However, with no movie deal or production news following the release of the prequel, I lost hope in seeing the Owens women on the big screen again. That was until this week…

Together, they manage to create a creature, played by Christopher Lee, but their creation is far from the beautiful being Victor had envisioned. As the story progresses, Victor's lack of empathy and disregard for human life become apparent. He disposes of bodies to continue his experiments and commits murder to obtain vital organs for his creature.

The Rules of Magic is Coming to HBO Max

The streaming service that is bringing Circe to life is also continuing the complex story of the Owens sisters, only this time it’s Jet and Frances’ story. Please hold my midnight margarita while I put my Practical Magic soundtrack on repeat. Yes, I do own it, thank you very much.

What We Know About The Rules of Magic So Far…

Um, it’s not much. We don’t have actors, a premiere date, or even an episode count. What we do have is this:

• The show will be set in New York City in the 1960s, and will feature the eccentric aunts as well as their brother, who never appeared in Practical Magic.
• Apparently, we’re going to find out more about the witch who started the Owens family curse: Maria Owens.
• Melissa Rosenberg will be the show’s creator. While other outlets are citing her work on Netflix’s Jessica Jones, we know Melissa as the one who made Bella and Edward come to life with her work as a screenwriter for the entire Twilight Saga. #EGBTT

What We Hope the Show is Brewing Up…

See the witch pun I made? It’s lame, but I don’t care.

• The return of the original cast – Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Stockard Channing, Dianne Wiest, Evan Rachel Wood, the other child actor who played Sally’s youngest daughter and please, let her still have the mouse ears. I know that this is a prequel, but to have the film cast return in some flash-forward capacity would make me cry tears of unadulterated joy.
• An all Stevie Nicks soundtrack. Sure it’s been 21 years, but her “If You Ever Still Believe” is still one of my favorite songs of all time.
• The ages of the aunts. If you’ve seen the original, you know that both Sally and Gillian have no idea how old their aunts actually are.
• How midnight margaritas came to be and the actual recipe. Please and thank you.

Are you excited as I am about The Rules of Magic coming to HBO Max?

About Julie

Julie’s Current Obsessions: Sangria. Anything Outlander. Reading great books more than once. Jimmy Fallon. J Crew Factory deals. Red Lipstick. The Civil Wars (R.I.P.). Atticus Finch. Taylor Swift’s 1989. Anthropologie. Dancing and not caring who sees. Instagram photo filters. Target’s Mossimo skinny jeans. Attempting French. Men’s forearms (don’t ask). Not getting over How I Met Your Mother’s series finale. The Twilight Soundtracks (yep, all of them). Audrey Hepburn. Find her on Twitter @julep0405

The flawed but fun Practical Magic is the Thelma and Louise of witch movies

Gillian (Nicole Kidman), Sally (Sandra Bullock), and the abuser who meets an untimely end. Warner Bros.

Practical Magic is at least four different movies in one.

There's the zany magic comedy about a family that produces witches two by two, in pairs of sisters (one redheaded and free-spirited, the other brunette and pragmatic). There's the sweeping romance, which laments the family curse that kills any man a witch loves. There's the revenge thriller, about one of those pairs of sisters (Sandra Bullockand Nicole Kidman) banding together against the man who abuses one of them to her breaking point. And then there is the story of the sisters' loopy witch aunts (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest), who are only supporting characters in Practical Magic but by all rights could have starred in their own supernatural Nora Ephron franchise.

The scattered script (written by Akiva Goldsman, Robin Swicord, and Adam Brooks) and constantly changing tenor are why Practical Magic received such negative reviews upon its 1998 release. (Also, 1993's Hocus Pocus seemed to sour critical goodwill toward witches for quite some time.) Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave it a D, calling it "slapdash, plodding, and muddled." Roger Ebert was just perplexed. "Practical Magic is too scary for children and too childish for adults," he wrote. "Who was it made for?"

The most magical aspect of Practical Magic is that it prioritizes sisterhood

As it turns out, Practical Magic was made for people who can forgive its lack of cohesion and appreciate the movie in pieces — more specifically those scenes Gleiberman dismissed as "cartoon feminism."

However many stories the movie tries to tackle from Alice Hoffman's original novel, the moments that have lived beyond Practical Magic's expected expiration date celebrate sisterhood with a fierce heart and love that blazes across cities. No matter how many times the script changes its tune, Sally (Bullock) and Gillian (Kidman) remain completely devoted to each other. They grasp for each other in the dark, and hold on with a white-knuckled grip.

Whenever Practical Magic remembers that the sisters are the reason it exists, it clicks into a groove that feels exactly right. It Their bond, and the matching bonds reflected in their aunts and Sally's daughters (Alexandra Artrip and a tiny Evan Rachel Wood), ensured that Practical Magic would find life beyond its lackluster reviews.

At its best, Practical Magic is the Thelma and Louise of witch movies

The crux of Practical Magic, messy though it is, comes when Gillian calls Sally to help her escape her abusive boyfriend, Jimmy (Goran Visnjic). Sally knows something is wrong even before she gets the call, and so she's out the door and at Gillian's side in no time.

But Jimmy not only fights back, he takes them both hostage. He keeps Sally driving at gunpoint, possessively slinging his other arm around Gillian's neck in the backseat and slugging tequila from the bottle. The first chance she gets, Sally poisons Jimmy's tequila — and it kills him instantly.

This sequence doesn't follow the exact events of Thelma and Louise, in which Louise (Susan Sarandon) shot a man to keep him from raping Thelma (Geena Davis). But the sentiment is the same. Thelma and Louise had only come out a few years prior to Hoffman's novel, and many Practical Magic reviews are quick point out the similarity in plot (two women kill an abusive man and must subsequently hide the evidence).

But these reviews discuss the similarities like Practical Magic 's version is just a pale imitation. It's true that Thelma and Louise , a committed drama, delves deeper into the psychological consequences of killing a person than Practical Magic , which explores the severe ramifications of abusing the Craft between giggly pancake parties.

Beneath Practical Magic's giddy interludes and saccharine soundtrack (Sally's first kiss with her doomed husband is set to Faith Hill's "This Kiss"), though, there are roots in the same kind of fiercely devoted sisterhood that drives Thelma and Louise. All of these women would do anything for each other — and so they do.

The worst thing Practical Magic does is pretend it needs men

Read the room, dude. Warner Bros.

For as much as Practical Magic owes Thelma and Louise, it could have learned a crucial lesson — namely, that it didn't need a romantic subplot in any way, shape, or form.

The movie tries very hard to get us to care about the family curse, which goes all the way back to a jilted Salem witch ancestor. The curse presents itself in the form of a "death beetle," which croaks from the beyond as time runs out for its latest victim — a.k.a. whomever the cursed witch has fallen in love with. We learn that the curse caught up to Gillian and Sally's father, causing their witch mother to promptly die from heartbreak. We learn that after swearing that she would never fall in love, Sally does so anyway, and the curse claims him once they have their two daughters and a seemingly perfect shared life.

The grief Sally feels after her husband dies is enormous; it fills every shot with anguish. When she finds out her aunts were responsible for nudging her toward this man in the first place, she swears off magic and buries her powers deep within herself.

Sally's vision of a perfect life — kids, a yard, a rugged husband to garden with — contrasts sharply with Gillian's, which looks more like collegiate spring break. And Gillian's grief after losing Jimmy is messier than Sally's was, wilder and mean, as she struggles to free herself from Jimmy's hypnotic grip. Still, neither Jimmy nor Sally's husband (whose name I have never been able to remember for more than five minutes) matter as specific people. They are strictly plot points, or maybe even beside the point. Anyone the Owens sisters love, or even entertain the thought of loving, are incidental to the family's storied history of putting each other first.

The wrong turn Practical Magic takes, then, is making Sally's renewed love life a focal point after the sisters reanimate — and then rebury — Jimmy's body. Right when the movie could go full steam ahead with the sisters' compelling story, of them trying to start over, it brings in Detective Hallett (Aidan Quinn) to investigate Jimmy's death and sweep Sally off her feet. Whichever comes first.

It's not that I don't want Sally to be happy. She and her magnificent hair deserve all the love in this godforsaken world. But Practical Magic's biggest weakness, by a long shot, is that it thinks "happily ever after" means Aidan Quinn bumbling around a crime scene when Nicole Kidman is right there.

Just look at Nicole Kidman's hair. It is glorious. Warner Bros.

Shoehorning romance into Practical Magic immediately dilutes its power. Bullock does her level best, but trying to sell Sally's instant connection to this uninspiring man is a losing game — especially when her devotion to Gillian outshines everything else onscreen. Hell, the first time we see Sally and Gillian as adults, they're making a blood pact to make sure they die together, so they don't have to live a single day without each other. No man could challenge the kind of chemistry Bullock and Kidman have, Faith Hill soundtrack be damned.

And all the while, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest sweep around the house, being the best

Gillian and Sally's love swallows Practical Magic whole, but as long as Hollywood is intent on churning out sequels to prequels and reboots of revivals, I would like to take this opportunity to advocate for a sweeping epic devoted to Aunt Franny and Aunt Jet's magical midnight margarita hour.

(I'm reserving my best brocade bathrobe for the midnight release.)

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This descent into darkness and immorality is a central theme of the film and serves as a critique of unchecked scientific ambition. "The Curse of Frankenstein" is known for its graphic scenes and gore, which were groundbreaking at the time of its release. The film's use of vibrant colors and innovative visual effects add to its impact and contribute to its lasting influence on the horror genre. It also established Peter Cushing's portrayal of Victor Frankenstein as one of the most iconic in cinema history. Despite generating controversy upon its release, "The Curse of Frankenstein" was a commercial success and paved the way for Hammer Film Productions' subsequent horror films. It was followed by several sequels, creating a series that left an indelible mark on the horror film industry. Overall, "The Curse of Frankenstein" remains a significant milestone in horror cinema. Its exploration of the ethical implications of scientific progress and its groundbreaking visual effects continue to captivate audiences. The film's enduring legacy is a testament to its unique and enduring impact on the horror genre..

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