Let's Talk About Horror Fiction and Film

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Spaceman Spiff, Oct 10, 2007.

  1. Spaceman Spiff

    Spaceman Spiff Intrepid Explorer Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2001
    Not to get too far off-topic, but I just saw this tutorial for getting started with a tablet. The whole site is great, but that post's an excellent starting point.

    Speaking of Horror, Etc., do you guys listen to any other horror podcasts? I've listened to a few different ones, but I'm looking for one I'll really like.
     
  2. Shanndee

    Shanndee Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2010
    Location:
    Canada
    Ugh, Session 9 was horrible. I saw the Changeling (the one with George C. Scott) 20 odd years ago with 2 friends. We watched it on a black and white TV in the middle of the afternoon...and we were creeped out for weeks. I saw it again a few years ago and was disappointed to find it slow and not at all scary...but I think I have become very desensitized to horror over the years!
     
  3. Mr. Adventure

    Mr. Adventure Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Jun 9, 2001
    Location:
    Mr. Adventure
    When my local Blockbuster went belly up I spent a couple of bones and on a whim picked up Fragile with Calista Flockhart. I thought it was pretty decent for a haunted hospital type movie. It has a lot of atmosphere and there seems to have been more effort expended than many films of this ilk.
     
  4. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Thanks. That looks very helpful. I haven't had a chance to practice much, since it took a while to get the laptop set up to my satisfaction.

    Actually, I don't know of any. The only podcasts I've listened to are Chris Mihm's and that's probably not the type of thing you're looking for.
     
  5. Spaceman Spiff

    Spaceman Spiff Intrepid Explorer Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2001
    Just a heads-up, there's a pretty good mini-marathon of 1930s horror on TCM Wednesday. It starts with Frankenstein at 3am (PDT). Lots of good stuff, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Freaks, Murders In the Rue Morgue, Island of Lost Souls, ending with Laughton's version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
     
  6. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    That's a great Marathon. All of those are fantastic films. I have them all on DVD except Hunchback of Notre Dame, which I really need to get at some point. "Sanctuaryyyyy!" :D
     
  7. Spaceman Spiff

    Spaceman Spiff Intrepid Explorer Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2001
    Yes! YEEEEESSS!

     
  8. Spaceman Spiff

    Spaceman Spiff Intrepid Explorer Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2001
    Also, there's some potentially interesting news regarding Dorchester Publishing (Leisure Horror), who we've discussed in this thread.

    A few months back, Dorchester pretty much collapsed after barely trying out their ebook/POD business model. And since authors weren't getting paid royalties or getting their rights reverted back, not many people had sympathy.

    But now Amazon is bidding to buy their assets.

    There are no guarantees, but the way Amazon's been courting authors, it seems like potentially a good deal for these authors. There's no telling if Amazon would be required to fork over the monies owed, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did it anyway just to pull these authors in.

    Here's hoping.
     
  9. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    It seems like I just bought those Legacy collections. :rommie: This collections looks really nice, though. Interesting that Phantom of the Opera is included. I guess he didn't get a Legacy collection because he never had a sequel or appeared in a sequel, poor guy.

    Actually, the article does say that Amazon would pay all outstanding royalties to authors. This would be great news for everybody concerned. While I love real physical books, e-publishing is much more profitable and affordable (and environmentally friendly). My e-book is priced at only 99 cents, yet I make three times more from every sale than I do from one of my paperbacks. It also makes it easy to keep classic stuff available and you can carry it all around with you-- my Nook is full of a library's worth of stuff like Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, Clark Ashton Smith, H Rider Haggard et mucho al.
     
  10. drmidnite66

    drmidnite66 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2002
    Location:
    Texas
    The 1944 Boris Karloff thriller "The Climax" was conceived as a sequel to "Phantom". It was to star Claude Raines, Nelson Eddy and Susanna Foster continuing their roles. However, Raines wasn't available so the characters were changed - only Foster carried over and Karloff was cast as the "villain".

    If Universal was inclined to do so they could have created a Legacy set with these two films as well as the silent 1925 version of "Phantom" ...
     
  11. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Thanks, that's very interesting. I don't think I've ever seen The Climax, so I'll have to track it down. It's kind of a shame it didn't turn out as planned.
     
  12. Spaceman Spiff

    Spaceman Spiff Intrepid Explorer Administrator

    Joined:
    Jun 21, 2001
    Another year, another renaming of this thread. Man, this year has zipped by.

    What's everyone reading and watching this year? I'm reading this Halloween anthology on Kindle. It's pretty good so far, though there are occasionally some that don't have much to do with Hallowe'en beyond being set at that time. But there are plenty that jump into that particular pile of leaves and roll around in it. ;)

    The Universal Monsters Blu-ray set is fantastic. I can't believe how good they look in high definition. I got it for about $40 cheaper than that listed price--it's gone up since the pre-order. However, the UK version of the set is much cheaper, and since Universal doesn't do region coding, it's the smarter buy. Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein looks similarly great in hi-def.

    Other than that, I keep tuning in to TCM's Hallowe'en schedule.
     
  13. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing 2012: 'Ween Harder

    I should start getting my reading and DVD list together. I have the whole week off this year. :D

    That Halloween anthology is in my Shopping Cart. I'll have to see if it's available for the Nook. It looks pretty good.

    I'm kind of in a Hammer mood this year, so I'll be watching and recording stuff from TCM, definitely. I was going to buy Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, but it's now out of print. There's a couple of Hammer box sets, so I might get one of those.
     
  14. Starbreaker

    Starbreaker Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 19, 2001
    Location:
    Birmingham, AL
    Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing 2012: 'Ween Harder

    I've been rewatching The Walking Dead from the beginning and I've been reading Those Across the River, a novel about Civil War plantation ghosts.
     
  15. Brendan Moody

    Brendan Moody Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Apr 26, 2003
    Location:
    Maine
    Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing 2012: 'Ween Harder

    I just ordered the complete series set of the original Dark Shadows, so I'll probably be watching that this Halloween season... and next Halloween season, if not the one after that. I also bought the Blu-ray set of the Alien movies, so I'm watching those when I can find the time. I'd like to rewatch the original Halloween and the Scream movies, but I don't know if I'll get around to it.

    I haven't been doing much horror reading lately, but I did enjoy The Night Class by Tom Piccirilli. For a while there it was rough going-- Piccirilli's stylistic reach exceeds his grasp, making the book feel more lurid than chilling-- but by the end I was surprised how compelling it was in its way. I'll certainly read more of his work when I can. Piccirilli recently had surgery to remove a brain tumor, and while he's doing well his insurance doesn't exactly make such surgery cheap, so the publishers of the e-book editions of his work are currently waiving their portion of the royalty and sending the proceeds directly to him. There's a list of the titles, which are pretty cheap as e-books go, here.

    I also read Five Degrees of Latitude, a debut collection of five novellas that I think would really appeal to fans of late nineteenth and early twentieth century supernatural fiction. There are echoes of Machen, Blackwood, M. R. James, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, but the stories never feel derivative. The print edition is an expensive hardcover from Tartarus Press, but there's also an inexpensive e-book, available either from the publisher (in MOBI or EPUB) or from Amazon (in Kindle format, obviously). I wrote a review of Five Degrees of Latitude here.

    Last night on a whim I pulled a couple books off the shelf and reread two stories by Reggie Oliver, one of my two favorite contemporary writers of ghost stories. (The other is Glen Hirshberg.) They were both still chilling. One, "Bloody Bill," is unavailable except for expensive out-of-print limited editions, but the other, "The Children of Monte Rosa," is in one of the three Oliver collections recently made available as an e-book. You can get Masques of Satan from Amazon's Kindle Store or in MOBI or EPUB direct from the publisher, Ash-Tree Press, which over the past year has made a lot of new and classic ghost story collections available again in e-book form. The other two Oliver collections in e-book, The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and Mrs Midnight, are from Tartarus Press, and can also be ordered direct from the publisher in slightly pricey but handsome trade paperback editions.
     
  16. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

    Joined:
    May 12, 2004
    Location:
    Lancaster, PA

    FYI, the nitpicky editor in me is compelled to point out that it's Claude Rains, not "Claude Raines."

    Nothing personal. For some reason, nobody seems to spell it correctly anymore. I swear, I see "Raines" more often than "Rains" these days, at least on the internet. It's a bit of pet peeve.

    And don't get me started about Bela "Legosi" . . . :)
     
  17. MLJames

    MLJames Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
    Sep 26, 2010
    Location:
    Riverbank, CA
    Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing 2012: 'Ween Harder

    Speaking of Bela, he's going to be part of my pre-Halloween vampire movie marathon. I'll be going through his version of Dracula, the original Nosferatu, and the PBS Count Dracula starring Louis Jourdan.

    On the literary side, I've been going through a bit of a Richard Matheson kick. I just finished rereading I Am Legend, and I'm about to start Hell House.
     
  18. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Re: Hallowe'en Reading and Viewing 2012: 'Ween Harder

    I was tempted to buy that complete Dark Shadows collection, but even at 50% off it was still too steep for me at the moment.

    Nice of Piccirilli's publisher to waive their share of the profits for him. I'll look over those books and pick up a couple.