I have this memory from my teenage years of walking through Mega Movies – the former Burger King turned massive video store rental place – looking for something to watch. We went there at least once a week (and in the summer multiple times a week). Going so often, I’d reach the point where I’d seen all the new releases and regularly dug into the regular shelves. But it was a big enough place I’d still stumble upon something that looked interesting.

I remember seeing an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The cover had a girl in a bikini or some scantily clad outfit, and she was standing by a great big hook of some kind. That cover and the fact that the title had “screw” in it made me think this was something titillating, not an adaptation of one of the great literary works of the last century.

I want to say I rented it and was greatly disappointed by it, but I really can’t remember.  But the idea they were trying to reach dumb, horny teens like me with a scintillating cover for a Henry James adaptation makes me smile. I just tried to figure out which adaptation it was, but I had no luck. 

This is not that movie, but a rather dull BBC adaptation starring Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens. You can read my review at Cinema Sentries.