Let's Talk About Horror Fiction and Film

[JacksonArcher]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

I re-watched Michael Dougherty's Trick R Treat. It should be required Halloween viewing.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

Yeah, I wound up watching Trick 'r Treat twice this month. I watched it once near the beginning, but a few nights ago, my wife said she wanted to see it, so we threw it in. Such a great little movie that should have been in theaters instead of Rob Zombie's Halloween II.

I decided to wing it as far as movies go this year, and capped off the night with TCM's showing of the Lon Chaney The Phantom of the Opera. Silent movies have an extra eeriness about them that goes well with Hallowe'en.

 

[Captain Craig]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

I re-watched Michael Dougherty's Trick R Treat. It should be required Halloween viewing.

An ex-girlfriend of mine finally saw it since I had mentioned it and while she was in neither camp(hate it/love it) she didn't "get it"(the love), as she put it.

I didn't even build it up for her so no fault there. She said she found it interesting in an out of sequence "Pulp Fiction" manner. Would she watch it again, sure but not over other choices she said.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

Trick'r'Treat is definitely a new Halloween classic.

TCM showed the Vincent Price House Of Wax Sunday afternoon, but they also showed the original original Mystery Of The Wax Museum Friday morning, along with a bunch of other early 30s Fay Wray movies. I love Fay Wray.

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

Yeah, I wound up watching Trick 'r Treat twice this month. I watched it once near the beginning, but a few nights ago, my wife said she wanted to see it, so we threw it in. Such a great little movie that should have been in theaters instead of Rob Zombie's Halloween II.

Which actually hit theaters in... August. Talk about poor marketing.

 

[Captain Craig]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

Yeah, I wound up watching Trick 'r Treat twice this month. I watched it once near the beginning, but a few nights ago, my wife said she wanted to see it, so we threw it in. Such a great little movie that should have been in theaters instead of Rob Zombie's Halloween II.

Which actually hit theaters in... August. Talk about poor marketing.

It ended up going straight to DVD. Didn't get a NAm release in theaters. BOM would have it and its not listed.

 

[Starbreaker]

Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing, 2010!

I meant Halloween II

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Well, now that the Christmas season is upon us, is anyone planning to read or watch some holidays-themed horror?

I've got a few stories remaining from last year's HORROR FOR CHRISTMAS anthology, I'll probably be finishing that. Afterward, I'm thinking maybe some ghost stories from HAUNTED CHRISTMAS, or maybe something sillier, like CHRISTMAS IS DEAD: A ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY.

 

[RJDiogenes]

What's frightening is how much Black Friday resembles Dawn Of The Dead.

Maybe this year I'll finally get around to watching Nightmare Before Christmas.

 

[RJDiogenes]

There was some sad news last week about Dorchester Publishing, which produces the Leisure Horror line, including the bulk of paperbacks by Brian Keene and reprints of Richard Laymon's work. Paperback sales are down 25%, so in order to stay afloat, they're switching to an all-digital and print-on-demand model. I suppose it's good that these modern publishing options allow them to stay in business, but I'll miss seeing their paperbacks in stores. They've been around since '71.

There was an update about these guys in the latest Locus and it's some pretty good news. They've gotten rid of their president over some financial shenanigans and they've reversed their decision to go digital. According to the news item, they will be releasing 4-5 books a month. There was also mention of bringing back the Leisure Line at some point.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before now. I imagine they'll still do ebooks, too, but we'll see. A lot of established horror writers are dipping their toes into republishing old works on ereader platforms for a reduced price. Necon eBooks is gaining some steam with authors like Rick Hautala, Ramsey Campbell and others. Some are trying to cut out the middleman entirely, like Scott Nicholson, whose THEY HUNGER I discussed earlier in this thread. He can sell his stuff at significantly reduced prices because he's cut out a lot of costs. We'll see.

Anyways, read or buy anything good lately? I've been on a non-fiction streak lately, but I'm feeling the itch to get into some good horror. I've still got some horror comics to read, like Mike Mignola's WITCHFINDER and THE SIXTH GUN, which looks like a Weird Western story. I also picked up THE UNSINKABLE WALKER BEAN, which is more a "kids' pirate adventure"-type story, but I guess it has some horror elements. The art is fantastic.

My wife gave me Wellington's OVERWINTER for Christmas, so that'll probably be the next novel I read. I'm also kind of anxious to get back into his vampire series.

 

[RJDiogenes]

eBooks are definitely the wave of the future, and one reason is that you can not only sell at a significantly reduced price but with a greater profit margin. I recently released my second short story anthology for the Kindle and Nook-- it's priced at 99 cents and I make almost three times as much per copy.

I've also been reading non-fiction the past couple of months, notably The Killing Of Crazy Horse (which is great, but long and tough slogging at times). I'm a little behind because I didn't read anything for about two weeks while I was struck down with the flu. I also picked up Witchfinder and several other Mignola books that I haven't read yet. Walker Bean is the one drawn by Severin, right? It looks beautiful. He's also done a couple of books lately that were drawn by Corben, which were fantastic.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

WALKER BEAN is by Aaron Renier, and it's fantastic in every sense of the word. Gorgeous book, fun story.

Netflix has been adding Universal Monsters flicks in recent weeks, some of them in HD. I watched Bride of Frankenstein in HD tonight and it looked great. I get the feeling they're upscaling it a bit rather than streaming an HD source, but they're doing a pretty good job of it.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Oh, I thought Walker Bean was the comic that Mignola collaborated on with Severin. I should click on links.

I don't know if this counts as Horror, exactly, but I'm currently reading the 50th Anniversary Twilight Zone anthology; it includes an unproduced story treatment by Serling.

I recently watched the Wolf Man "remake," but it's not really a remake; it's got nothing in common at all with the original besides the recycled names, which were nothing but a distraction. As an original production, it's actually pretty good for the most part. Decent story, well cast and acted, and atmospheric. Unfortunately, a couple of the CGI sequences had a Van Helsing-like awkwardness to them, but for the most part it was well directed.

I just ordered Gojira on DVD. I've never seen it before.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I got a Nook for my birthday and so I am finally able to read Varney the Vampire. B&N has it for 99 cents. I've wanted to read this for decades, but the only book I ever saw was a very expensive hardcover edition, so I'm delighted to finally get my hands on it. It's absolutely awful so far, and I'm loving it. It's rife with basic writing errors (e.g. willy-nilly tense changes) and the prose is as purple as a bruise on your brain. I'm only a couple of chapters into it, and it is a long book. But for anybody like me, who is both a writer and an aficionado of historical fiction, this is a must read.

 

[Goliath]

I recently discovered that there's a top-notch used bookstore here in town, and bought a bagful of old horror paperbacks. Basically, I snagged anything that had words like Devil, Satan, or Lucifer in the title.

The first one I read was Next, After Lucifer by Daniel Rhodes--a tale of demons, medieval black magic, and spirit possession in southern France. A bit of a slow burn, but with a satisfying climax.

One of the most interesting things about it is the way it anticipated the current obsession with the Knights Templar, decades before Dan Brown. An American professor of medieval history buys a villa, and investigates the legends around the Bluebeard-like Templar who used to reside in a nearby ruined castle. Only to discover that the legends are true, mwahaha.

Man--I wish I could afford a villa in southern France. Sounds like a fun place.

Now I'm reading the sequel, Adversary.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Nice. That's one of the drawbacks to the advent of e-books; it will put an end to used books if they take over completely.

 

[Kemaiku]

Nice. That's one of the drawbacks to the advent of e-books; it will put an end to used books if they take over completely.

I've been perfectly able to get obscure horror books for my kindle for a reasonable price. My original 1978 Penguin copy of Dracula isn't going to disappear because of it either.

Actually I seem to have been buying nothing but horror novels for it for the last several months, a lot of books I'd been meaning to pick up or hadn't bothered to before, all for less than the paperbacks go for in stores, a lot of the classics being given out for free from Amazon.

Which makes me regret buying the entire Varney Compendium for £30 (~$60) considered the thing is so damned huge and the Kindle version is free...

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Yeah, authors who have had their works out of print for years are finding new life in ebooks.

I read one of Guy N. Smith's "Killer Crab" novels years ago, and I've kind of always wanted to find some of the others or anything else he's done. Now he's got tons of his stuff on Kindle, and, I assume, on Nook. Not only is the whole "Crab" series there, but also his werewolf series and lots of other stuff.

 

[Goliath]

Well, I finished Adversary. It was pretty good as well--not quite as atmospheric as the first novel, but a bit faster-paced, with more action.

This time, I recognized a number of borrowings from The Satanic Bible. The story is set in San Francisco, where the undead Templar necromancer from Next, After Lucifer attracts disciples and victims by posing as some kind of mysterious psychic guru. He even talks about "psychic vampires," at one point.

Interestingly, the story also reminded me of The Devil's Advocate. The Al Pacino/Keanu Reeves film was based on a novel by Andrew Neidermann, which was published years after Adversary, and apparently wasn't as good. I hope Daniel Rhodes laid a curse on Neidermann for stealing his movie deal.

The ending is clearly designed to leave room for a third book, but it seems this third book was never written. Rhodes has published a third novel entitled Kiss of Death, in the same vein, but apparently it's unrelated.

Next up: The Bedeviled by Thomas Cullinan (1978)
The house made people do strange things... too horrible for the mind to conceive... too ungodly for the soul to fight.