Rock Music and Horror Films, Part II
Imagine a darkened bedroom. Black candles flickering, burning low the oil of angst and the first hard throbs of libido. A record player is the conduit of this black acetate cosmos, playing Black Sabbath. A hand stops the record from turning, the distorted harmonies slowing with an unearthly moan. Then, they begin moving backwards, faster and faster. New sounds, capering barks and cheers, fill the shadows of the bedroom and settle in the corners, waiting. Listen hard. What do you hear? Is it gibberish? Or is there something evil hiding in the sonic disruption — a voice with a secret…
Rock Music and Horror Films, Part I
Rock music has carried associations of the demonic and the theatrical ever since the genre was spawned from the Blues and its heartbroken cross roads devil — Robert Johnson (King of the Delta Blues Singers) was the legendary bluesman who sang of his dealings with the Devil. Associations such as these were eventually capitalized on and marketed to a very lucrative end. Rock and roll acts that embraced the darker side of their art, and borrowed dark imagery from horror films and literature can be traced back at least as far as the fifties. The images of Ozzy biting the…
A Haunting We Will Go: An Exposé on Halloween Haunts (Part One)
THE BEAST STIRS… Believe it or not, the life of a horror magazine editor can sometimes get tedious. After all, there are only so many hours one can sit watching psychotronic films; reading, editing, and writing articles; and maintaining a web presence, before getting totally burnt out. One fine day, I looked down to see that the puddle of drool beneath my computer desk had reached the high-water mark that I had established as an indicator for “break time.” So, I schlepped into the kitchen for a lemonade and noticed on my calendar that it was currently October. “Whoa,” I…
Wondrous and Strange: Dial M for Murder in 3D
I had never seen Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder (1954) before, but I knew its reputation as one of his lesser works. Dial M is widely reputed to be too close to its theatrical source material to be considered a cinematic masterpiece—people complain that it’s too stagey, and just feels like theatre on film (a complaint also frequently leveled at another overlooked Hitchcock film, Rope [1948]). In stark contrast, Hitchcock’s other 1954 effort, Rear Window, is widely viewed as one of his best. It’s an institution in film studies: if you ever take a class in film theory at the…
Celebrating Herbert Lom (1917-2012)
Herbert Lom, a Czech actor who narrowly escaped the Nazi occupation in 1939, died today at age 95. Though best known for his role in the Pink Panther series, as the beleaguered boss who had to deal with Inspector Clouseau’s constant mishaps, Lom had an extremely long and varied career on stage and on screen that included TV series’, comedies, musicals, and many roles in horror films. Renowned for his elegant bearing and imperious speaking voice, Lom acted in both low-budget genre fare like the notorious Mark of the Devil (1970) and Asylum (1972), and iconic films like Jess Franco’s…
They Don’t Build ‘Em Like They Used To: The Decline of the Haunted House Movie
The new Jennifer Lawrence vehicle House at the End of the Street is just what you’re hoping it’s not: a bad amalgamation of all the slasher movie clichés that can be crammed into an hour and a half. Plucky heroine who nonetheless can’t save herself when it counts? Check. Creepy shut-in next door with a basement full of secrets? Check. Intimations of something nasty/potentially supernatural running around in the forest? Check. Bad acting, worse writing, and unforgivable plot holes? Check, check, check. Even Lawrence, with her respectable acting chops (see Winter’s Bone), can’t save this trashy, disappointing flick. So, rather…
Twenty Years of Silence: Horror and the Oscars
It’s been just over 20 years since Jonathan Demme’s masterpiece THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS swept the “big 5” categories at the 1991 Oscars: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Only two films had done it before: ONE FEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975) and IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934). Before 1991, only one other true horror film had even been nominated for best picture: box-office smash THE EXORCIST (1973). Needless to say, it didn’t end up winning. It goes without saying that horror as a genre has been woefully underrepresented—particularly given its popularity with audiences—at the Academy Awards…
INTERVIEW: H.P. Mendoza on “I Am Ghost”
The ghost story is a time honored horror tradition, a metaphor that combines the fear of death and the other side, with the manifestation of repressed memory. I Am A Ghost is director/writer H.P. Mendoza’s horror debut, but like all the great horror films before it, it can’t be contained in one single genre. The classic ghost story is inverted and colored by dabs from an experimental brush, borrowing from movies like Poltergeist and books like The Haunting of Hill House to create a unique expression of the terrifying rifted between memory and time. H.P. Mendoza, a Filipino American director…
DayZ: The History And The Future
In an interview with PCGamer magazine, DayZ creator Dean Hall recounted a scarring training experience from his early days as a soldier. A native New Zealander and member of the Air Force, he was part of an exchange program with the Singapore military when he participated in a 30-day survival simulation in the jungle. Admittedly pampered from New Zealand’s comparatively large military meals, he had eaten through his rationed food in two weeks. From there, it only got worse: his fingernails turned yellow from lack of nutrition, he nearly poisoned himself on inedible local fauna, bouts of dysentery from the…
Bad Moon Rising: A History of the Werewolf
The scene has been set time and time again: a desolate stretch of moorland surveyed by the solitary burning eye of the full moon, summoning up mist from the churning soil like ghosts not yet gone from this earth. A man—poor young wretch of a city dweller—is brought to supplicant knees by the boot heel of an indifferent God who will not be banished by electric light. The man is split by forces within and without him, his very soul clawing monstrously to the surface until at long last he emits a howl, damned and utterly free. The legend of…
