Happy Halloween everyone! To celebrate, here's part of one of the best vampire movies ever made: The Hunger. Please excuse the poor quality. Somebody ought to post a descent version of the opening. Shesh!
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It's a rainy day here in Detroit with some nice thunder storms predicted for later today (I just love a good thunder storm). As it happens, over the past few days I've been reading and rereading some of M. R. James' classic ghost stories. While I avoid horror stories and movies that rely on gore, I do love old fashioned ghost stories such as "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, and "The Body Snatcher" by Robert Louis Stevenson (which was written long before, and has nothing to do with the movie about pod people and alien invasions). Given their plots, both of these stories could have been very grotesque. However, both Jacobs and Stevenson only hint at things, and this makes their stories truly scary. Frankly, I think gore and graphic violence are creative cop-outs. To my mind, it is much harder and requires much more talent to write a scary story (or to make a scary movie) without gore. A contemporary writer who succeeds at creating chills without gore is Susan Hill. I love her Man in the Portrait (you can read my review of it on Goodreads here), and I'm looking forward to the new movie version of her novel The Woman in Black which stars Daniel Radcliffe. On her website, Ms. Hill notes that when she sat down to write The Woman in Black, she felt it was essential that the ghost have "a purpose...There has to be a motive for the hauntings." Today, I think many horror stories and movies lack a villain with purpose. Some have argued that the "Random Slasher" of contemporary horror is a personification of the contemporary fear that the world is chaotic and random, and anyone's life can be visited with disaster and tragedy. I do get this, but to me the Gothic tales and English ghost stories where the past purposefully comes back to haunt the present are far more compelling. Do you have a favorite ghost story? Ever told, or listened to, a ghost story around a camp fire up North? I once made a student of mine (who loved zombie movies) write a horror story without one drop of blood. Have you ever tried to write a scary/ghost story without any gore? Is it essential that the ghost (or creature/villain/etc) have a purpose or motive? Are writers and movie makers who rely on gore talentless hacks? This past weekend I searched the web to see how the movie version of The Woman in Black was coming along, and I found this teaser trailer. It's only 47 seconds long, but it is seriously creepy. Penguin Classic Edition I love to practice "literary archeology." That is, I love to dig down to find out who inspired and influenced the writers I like. For example, one of my favorite writers is H. P. Lovecraft. A friend of mine introduced me to Lovecraft's work when I was a teenager and I've been hooked ever since (I'll save the full story of my introduction to Lovecraft for its own post). As I got older, I started to explore the authors that Lovecraft grew up reading and those that influenced him: Edgar A. Poe, Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood. By doing this, I've discovered some wonderful stories, and, in the case of Poe, I've read an author with fresh eyes. Recently, I've started reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' planetary romance A Princess of Mars (which incidentally was the last book I bought from Borders). I read that it was a model for Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, as well as countless other science fiction/fantasy stories, so I put it on my "to read" list. I've only read the first couple chapters, but from what I've read, it seems that Princess was also very influential on the work ofRobert E. Howard, in particular his Conan stories. Both have a "barbarian" warrior coming into contact with an ancient and dying civilization, which itself is built on the ruins of an even more ancient civilization. Have you read the works that have influenced your favorite author? Did you like them? Did reading them add to your appreciation of your favorite writer? P.S. Here's the trailer for a new movie version of A Princess of Mars (it's titled John Carter). It'll will be released March 2012. Looks pretty good to me. It is interesting that the studio is releasing it in March. I would have thought that a movie version of such a seminal adventure story would be a summer popcorn movie. Maybe its makers are trying to avoid Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. The new movie Super 8 is an excellent example of how to take elements from some well-worn genres, and turn them into something fresh. I don't want to describe a lot of details and possibly give away too much, so I'm going to be rather vague. I will summarize what the trailer reveals: A group of middle school kids making a Super 8 movie manage to film the wreck of an Air Force train carrying...something. And mysterious things start to happen. It could have been a standard horror movie, but it is so much more because it includes several other story lines that are woven together. In addition to the horror story, the movie is also a story about holding onto one's youthful dreams and keeping the adult world at bay for at least one more summer. Conversely, it is also a bildungsroman, a story of moving purposefully into the adult world. This may sound like a mess of ill-fitting pieces. However, the genius of the movie is that these disparate pieces work together in surprising harmony; the plot of Super 8 is so finely crafted that the various story lines are woven seamlessly together. Indeed, calling these multiple threads sub-plots would be a disservice; they all have their own beginning, middle and end, and they all propel each other forward. Two examples: The train crash that unleashes the horror that will menace the group's hometown also breaks their camera. A new camera must be found before they can finish their movie. That night also brings together two characters that are separated by a very wide, and completely unrelated, gulf. Throughout the movie, these story lines progress in an organic way. This is not easy to accomplish, but J. J. Abrams makes it look easy. The movie gently carries its viewers steadily to the end. And this is a sign of excellence. If you haven't already, go see this movie. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Recently Lovecraft fans, myself included, suffered a blow with the news that Guillermo Del Toro won't be making At the Mountains of Madness. However, another one of Lovecraft's stories will be coming to the screen some time soon. The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has finished their film adaptation of "The Whisperer in Darkness." Here's the second trailer. Seems they've taken some liberties with the plot, but it still seems pretty creepy, and just as important, it does look like it was made in the 1930s. The Whisperer in Darkness blog has been updated recently with some stills. It's looking very good. Check it out... |
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