Nearly three decades ago, folklorist
Alvin Schwartz published
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the first of three horror anthologies that would go on to become
the single most challenged book series of the 1990s. But most of the
backlash was against not the stories themselves (which were fairly tame), but rather the illustrations of artist
Stephen Gammell. His bizarre, grotesque, nightmarish black-and-white inkscapes suffused every page with an eerie, unsettling menace. Sadly, the series has since been
re-issued with
new illustrations by Brett Helquist, of
A Series of Unfortunate Events fame. Luckily for fans of Gammell's dark vision, copies of the old artwork abound online, including in these three image galleries:
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Interested in revisiting the stories themselves? Then don't miss
the virtual re-enactments of YouTube user MoonRaven09, or
the dramatic readings of fellow YouTuber daMeatHook.
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 29, 2010 -
48 comments
This may only occur to the obsessive student of The Parent Trap, but once the subtleties are noticed, hints start stacking up, and a creeping sense of the mythic pervades the film...
Join Chris Stangl,
King of the Beanplaters, as he obsessively studies
The Parent Trap,
Little Shop of Horrors,
Beetlejuice,
Teen Wolf, the original
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and
more.
posted by Iridic
on Oct 28, 2010 -
33 comments
Nobuhiko Obayashi's
House (also called Hausu) has been a cult film legend pretty much since its 1977 release in Japan. As director, Obayashi alchemizes the usual horror trappings (seven pretty young girls, each defined by one personality trait, visit a mysterious aunt who lives in a creepy house in the middle of nowhere) into a glorious, barely coherent, eminently watchable fever dream. The film has been
discussed by
those in the
know for some
time, but unless one knew who to ask, or lucked into the right festival, actually
seeing the movie outside of the
trailer or scenes on Youtube has been a bit of a difficult task. This particular injustice has officially been remedied, in a move for which very few people were calling out, but more might have if they'd known about it: House has been released on region 1 DVD and Blu-Ray
by no less an entity than the Criterion Collection, finally taking its rightful place in cinematic history alongside such films as
Rashomon,
The Seventh Seal, and Olivier's
Hamlet. Just in time for that Halloween party! Provided you not only want your guests to be entertained but also thoroughly bewildered and maybe slightly shellshocked.
posted by FAMOUS MONSTER
on Oct 26, 2010 -
40 comments
‘We feel that the stories in this book are such that if your nerves are not of the strongest, then it is wise to read them in daylight.' For a certain time, in every second-hand bookshop in the UK you would always be able to find a musty and dog-eared copy of one or more of the
Pan Books Of Horror Stories edited by the splendidly named Herbert Van Thal. Now the first is
being re-printed.
[more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Sep 8, 2010 -
21 comments
The Running of the Dead: How the shift from slow zombies to fast zombies inverts the political statement in the
Dawn of the Dead remake, the Hobbesian influence on zombie narrative, and the implications for
28 Days Later. In four parts.
posted by 0xFCAF
on Sep 7, 2010 -
192 comments
Breaking the Fourth Panel: Neonomicon and the Comic Book Frame (
1,
2) Alan Moore’s recent Lovecraftian comic dissected. (MLYT, Possibly NSFW language and SAN loss)
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Aug 3, 2010 -
18 comments
Video of horrific, Japanese maggot-man robot allegedly designed to act as a physical presence during phone calls. More info and photos
here.
posted by picea
on Aug 2, 2010 -
90 comments
Are you an aspiring writer of genre fiction? Would you like to workshop your stuff before submitting it to magazines and publishers, but you don't happen to have a group of local friends that you can workshop with?
Critters.org is an online, highly automated fiction workshop. You submit your manuscript, it waits in a queue until its time comes up, and then it gets sent out to all the active subscribers, some of whom will hopefully send you some helpful feedback! Make sure to critique at least one story every week, though, or you lose your privileges to post your own stories to the queue.
[more inside]
posted by kavasa
on Aug 1, 2010 -
19 comments
Cult Radio A-Go-Go. "Our radio crew, including your hosts Terry & Tiffany, Cragg our drive-in movie gargoyle and Wicked Kitty, welcomes you to our world of exploration into the very bizarre genre of ultra rare B - pop culture in comedy, parody. horror, sci-fi, exploitation, sexploitation, T.V., Old Time Radio & drive-in movies! We are stationed at the abandoned drive-in near death valley where we are broadcasting our pirate internet radio signal to you, for the audio pop culture junkies needing a fix!"
[more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses
on May 5, 2010 -
1 comment
The HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast talks to director Stuart Gordon about Herbert West - Reanimator (
part 1,
part 2). A prolific director, Gordon is responsible for some of the
better adaptations of Lovecraft's work (and
From Beyond). Currently he is directing Reanimator star Jeffrey Combs as
Edgar Allan Poe in the one-man shoe Nevermore, which just finished a hugely successful run in LA and is now heading for Poe's hometown of
Baltimore.
posted by Artw
on Dec 25, 2009 -
23 comments
What's 51 years old and made of silicone with red food dye?
The Blob, best known for it's work in
The Blob, an independent film released in 1958, with Steve McQueen's second movie role (following
Never Love a Stranger, which was released earlier that same year). The movie has been considered
the definitive '50s film about a town that won't listen to the kids until it's too late (as noted in a review for the
Criterion laserdisc release), with a
super-catchy theme song (
extended single version and b-side
Saturday Night in Tiajuana) that was
Burt Bacharach's third US hit song. (See more:
theatrical trailer,
full film on Veoh,
full film as YouTube playlist) Times change, and so do monsters, and things got a bit wacky in the 1970s, with
Beware! The Blob (aka
Son of Blob;
wiki,
trailer,
full film). The sequel played more to the slapstick comedy than the sci-fi/horror spectrum of things. Thirty years after the original,
The Blob was remade in 1988 (
wiki,
trailer,
full film), and is supposedly
being re-created by Rob Zombie, though his statement about reviving The Blob without "the big red blobby thing" has people asking,
then why remake The Blob? (
previous blobby goodness)
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Nov 3, 2009 -
53 comments
Respect Your Pet has launched with a mission of tracking down those individuals who mistreat and humiliate their pets with such tools as creative grooming and silly photography. Their "
about" page hints at one reason this is such an important cause for the couple that started the site.
[more inside]
posted by amelioration
on Oct 13, 2009 -
78 comments
