The Art of Horror, sneak peek on ISSUU!

The Art of Horror An Illustrated History is filled with rare and unfamiliar images, sourced from archives and private collections around the world. Fans of horror and the unknown will enjoy this book and its 10 chapters of themed genres such as, vampires, zombies, demons, aliens, and more. This book has a wide range of topics starting from the history of horror all the way to the development of art and graphic design. It will also become a major source book for collectors and traders of horror memorabilia. For a sneak peek click here.

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Amazingly, there has never been a book quite like The Art of Horror An Illustrated History (October 13, 2015): a celebration of fearful images, compiled and presented by some of the genre’s most respected names. While acknowledging the beginnings of horror-related art in legends and folk tales, the focus of the book is on how the genre has presented itself to the world since the creations of Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley.

The stunning illustrations featured in The Art of Horror will captivate you right from the start. With chapters like, The Blood Is The Life, Man-Made Monsters, and Giant Behemoths, Editor Stephen Jones showcases an unprecedented collection of some 400 of the finest examples of horror-related art. Each chapter begins with an overview of the featured area of the genre, and also contains two special features on specific topics (e.g. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, or the paintings of Clive Barker). These 10 chapters also showcases quotes from artists/illustrators, and a selection from writers and filmmakers, are featured throughout.

Jones and his stellar team of contributors have sourced visuals from archives and private collections (including their own!) worldwide, ensuring an unprecedented selection that is accessible to those discovering the genre. They also include many images that will be rare and unfamiliar to even the most committed fan. From early engravings, via dust jackets, book illustrations, pulp magazines, movie posters, comic books and paintings, to today’s artists working entirely in the digital realm. It’s all here, from the shockingly lurid to the hauntingly beautiful.

Here’s a sneak preview of The Art of Horror An Illustrated History.

The Zombie Film excerpt

Here is an excerpt from The Zombie Film by Alain SIlver and James Ursini!  Take A Closer Look here!

The Top Ten Reasons Why I Hate Zombies (and the Movies About Them)

by Linda Brookover

10. They’re ugly. Megan Fox in Jennifer’s Body notwith- standing (was Jennifer really a zombie, after all), taken as a horde or as individuals with their swollen tongues, yellow eyes, skin that suggests much too long a stay in a tanning bed/grave, and sunken (or missing) cheekbones…I’ll grant that “R” in Warm Bodies has a certain je ne sais quoi; but he gets de-zombified. Before that was someone actually considering sex with a zombie. Deadgirl may turn on some desperate jocks but, seriously, guys, could you really imagine getting it on with the lovely pictured below? These hideous creatures give the Frankenstein’s monster and just about any ghoul that ever haunted the screen a shuffle for their money.

 

9. Speaking of that: They can’t dance. Yes, yes, I’ve seen the “Thriller” video and that is the exception that proves the observation. Sure boyfriends may have come back from the cemetery to attend the prom, but they were still geeks with no sense of rhythm.

8. They’re undead and uncouth. They have no sense of personal space and constantly seek to violate that of whomever they encounter without compunction, such as bashing their heads through car windows. As for table manners, well, if you have seen just one of these movies, enough said.

7. They’re not very romantic—in the literal rather than the literary sense, but actually not in that sense either. Even in the misbegotten comedies that involve teen couples, they are simply never huggable. Can you imagine a zombie date, a zombie valentine, or, perish the thought, zombie sex? Even the most hardcore necrophile would have to be repulsed.

6. Despite no sex, they breed faster than rabbits. Sure you could argue that it is not actual breeding, but what else would you call it? It starts with just one zombie moving into the neighborhood, and before you know it the kids next door are inviting themselves to lunch…off your flesh.

5. They have no fashion sense. They look like they slept in their clothes. Even if they never spent time in a coffin but went right from ordinary life to zombiefied after being bitten, their previously unremarkable wardrobe is suddenly very shabby and somehow still looks like it was worn inside a freshly dug grave: it’s dirty, shredded, and bloodstained. If vampires rep- resent the height of movie monster fashion, zombies without question are the nadir.

4. They look like they smell bad. One can only presume that from the reactions and occasional com- ments of those who encounter them, so thank heaven Smell- O-Vision no longer exists. I mean Scent of a Mystery was one thing, can you really imagine Scent of a Zombie. Eew!

3. They’re pathetic. Okay, there may be the occasional zombie for whom the word “hope- less” has some emotional heft, who is capable of experiencing some angst, as in Warm Bodies or Zombie Honeymoon or Deadheads; but 99% could never strike a tragic pose or express anything other than a ravenous hunger. Except for a coup de grâce, nothing can be done to help them as they overrun the environment. Perhaps the real reason people like to watch them on screen is to feel better about themselves.

2. They tried to kill Brad Pitt, probably the only person that could get me to pay hard- earned money to see a zombie movie. It’s one thing to threaten the unknown (at the time, and probably still) low-budget performers in Night of the Living Dead and hey, would you really have cared if they managed to devour Jesse Eisenberg (his attitude was a tad conde- scending) in Zombieland; but hands off Brad.

And the Number 1 reason to hate movie zombies:

You can show me all the Zombie Strippers you want, like the one above and I’m sorry but They’re boring. Conversation is limited to the occasional grunt or perhaps a rattle in their throat like a reverse hiccup, often accompanied by the clacking sound of their deformed teeth biting together in anticipation of finding your neck. If the “dissedents” in Juan of the Dead really had a political agenda, it might be something more than a biting satire about biting people. Tragically some of these post-persons were probably lively conversational- ists when still were still breathing, but now.

Stephen King Films FAQ

Scott Von Doviak’s Stephen King Films FAQ, the latest in the series from Applause Books is now available, with all that’s left to know about the king of horror on flim.  While his book looks back the four decades during which Stephen King has made his mark at the movies, Von Doviak is also looking forward.  Here are his thoughts on what this year may hold for Stephen King film fans.

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Two things we know to be true: Stephen King is one of America’s most prolific authors, and Hollywood is always hungry for material. So it’s not surprising that the Stephen King movie has become a genre unto itself, spanning nearly four decades since the 1976 release of Brian De Palma’s Carrie. This year is shaping up to be one of the most King-heavy in some time, so here’s a brief look at what 2014 has in store.

— Mercy is based on the 1984 short story “Gramma,” which was previously adapted by Harlan Ellison for an episode of The New Twilight Zone in 1986. This feature-length version is directed by Peter Cornwell (The Haunting in Connecticut) and stars The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs and Super 8’s Joel Courtney as two boys who discover their ailing grandmother is not what she seems.

— On a similar note, A Good Marriage is a novella from the 2010 collection Full Dark, No Stars about a woman who discovers her longtime husband is a serial killer. The adaptation directed by Peter Askin (Company Man) stars Joan Allen and Anthony LaPaglia and boasts a screenplay by King himself.

— Cell is now shooting and may make it into theaters by year’s end. The big-screen version of King’s tale about a cell phone virus that turns people into zombies stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson, who previously co-starred in the King-based thriller 1408. Tod Williams (Paranormal Activity 2) directs.

— The first season of Under the Dome on CBS was so successful from a ratings standpoint that what was once intended as a limited series has been extended indefinitely. What began as a promising series quickly deteriorated, however, and the first-season finale was a nonsensical mess. There’s reason to hope the show will get back on track, as King is aboard to write the first episode of the second season, due this summer.

In addition to the above, there are always King projects in various states of pre-production, notably Tom Holland’s The 10 O’Clock People, which may finally go before the cameras this year. One film fans shouldn’t hold their breath for is the long-awaited big-screen version of The Stand, which has churned through a number of potential directors over the years. The latest word is that Josh Boone, writer/director of Stuck in Love (a movie in which Stephen King made a cameo appearance) is on board, but the actual end of the world may come before this post-apocalyptic vision reaches theaters.

Listen: Dale Sherman on Pop Culture Tonight

Dale Sherman, author of Armageddon Films FAQ, joined Patrick Phillips on “Pop Culture Tonight” recently to talk about zombies, contagions, aliens, and the end of the world as we know it!

>>LISTEN HERE<<

Mankind has been predicting its own demise through various methods, from fables and religious scriptures to hard-core scientific studies since the dawn of time. And if there is one thing Hollywood knows how to exploit, it is the fears of Things to Come. Movies about the end of the world have been around since the early days of cinema, and Armageddon Film FAQ is a look into the various methods we have destroyed ourselves over the years: zombies, mad computers, uptight aliens, plunging objects from space, crazed animals, Satan, God, Contagions, the ever-popular atomic bomb, sometimes even a combination of these in the same movie!

Armageddon Films FAQ goes from the silent days of filmmaking to the most recent (literally) earth-shattering epics, from cinema to television and even the novels, from comedies to dramas, from supernatural to scientific. It also explores other aspects of the genre, such as iconic but unfilmable apocalyptic novels, postnuclear car-racing flicks, domestic dramas disguised as end-of-the-world actioners, and more – from the most depressing to the happiest Armageddons ever!

Bela Lugosi’s Birthday

Today is Bela Lugosi’s birthday! To celebrate the most legendary Dracula of all time, enjoy an excerpt from If You Like True Blood… by Dave Thompson.

DRACULA (1931)

Bela Lugosi may not always be viewed as the greatest cinema vampire of all time, and he certainly wasn’t the most attractive. But few of the actors and actresses who have portrayed a vampiric role, particularly among those who have taken on the best-known of them all (go on, guess), have ever seen themselves as anything but one more soul following in the footsteps of the most legendary of them all.

Bela Blasko was born on October 20, 1882, in the Hungarian town of Lugos. His stage name was thus a variation on his hometown, adopted following his arrival in America in 1921, by which time he had already made a string of movies in both Hungary and Germany.

Close to forty years of age, his impact on his adopted homeland was negligible. He made his Hollywood debut in 1923’s The Silent Command, but the talkies seemed set to murder him. His meagre command of the English language saw him confined to mere bit parts, and even there he struggled. Any lines he was given, he learned phonetically, but worse was to come.

Having been hired to direct a drama, The Right to Dream, Lugosi was fired when it became embarrassingly obvious that he was incapable of even communicating with his cast. He sued for wrongful dismissal, but the court could make no more sense of his complaint than the actors could of his direction. He lost the case and was forced to auction off his own possessions to pay the legal fees. Undeterred by such catastrophes, Lugosi remained on the fringes of the acting world, and in 1927, he was finally offered a role in which his heavily accented, beguilingly faltering English would play to his advantage, the title role in the Broadway adaptation of the smash hit London stage show Dracula. Appearing alongside Herbert Bunston (Dr. Seward), Bernard Jukes (Renfield), Dorothy Peterson (Lucy), and Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing), Lugosi was an immediate sensation. He remained in the role for three years, then returned to Hollywood in triumph to repeat the feat on film.

Dracula was a new sensation for Americans. We have already seen how, a decade previously, Hungarian director Károly Lajthay had adapted Dracula for a moving picture. Tragically, his Drakula is long lost, but its success can be gauged from the fact that just a few months elapsed before Friedrich Murnau recast the story as Nosferatu, while the London play (the first, incidentally, ever to win the approval of the Stoker estate) had been running since 1924. Now, finally, Broadway was thrilling to the vampire’s embrace, and when Dracula became one of the most successful stage plays of the era, Hollywood too was ready to succumb to the same savage seduction.

Universal Studios, the movie’s backers; and Tod Browning, the director, originally had no intention whatsoever of casting Bela Lugosi in the movie role, much preferring Lon Chaney Jr. He, however, was battling cancer at the time and was too ill to work. Other possibilities fell through. Finally, Lugosi was the only name left in the frame. He became Dracula—in every sense of the phrase.

It is impossible today to recapture the sheer power of Dracula. Again, vampire movies were new to American eyes and ears—had Nosferatu even been shown in this country before it was so rudely crucified? No, it hadn’t. Dracula, however, rode the renown of the stage show to the top of the box office, then rode its own moody atmosphere and unparalleled scenes of horror and ugliness even further. Overnight, Lugosi was reinvented from a litigious mumbler who once had an affair with Clara Bow to the hottest property in Hollywood, an international star who suddenly found he could take—or turn down—any role he chose.

It was a freedom in which he revelled to the full, although not necessarily to his own advantage. Among the subsequent movie offerings that he was offered, but rejected, was the title role in director James Whale’s forthcoming Frankenstein, turning it down in favor of a role in another European masterpiece, a remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, titled for its main character, Quasimodo.

Unfortunately, while Frankenstein rocketed to peaks approaching Dracula’s own, Quasimodo was never made, and Lugosi—who had seen that role as essential to proving he was more than a simple stereotype monster—would never really recover. Although he remained constantly in demand, he was indeed stereotyped—if not as Dracula, then at least as a mysteriously sinister Eastern European—and few of the movies he made throughout the remainder of his career ever allowed him to break out of that cliché. By 1948, Lugosi was reduced to caricaturing his finest moment in the comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a depth that apparently horrified him so much that he would not return to the screen for another four years.

Lugosi’s genius, albeit one that led directly to his downfall, was that he was so eminently believable. No matter that the count, as played by the Hungarian, was subsequently to become punishingly parodied, not only by Lugosi himself, but by countless other would-be bloodsuckers too. Throughout the 1930s, when a nervously isolationist America was spotting fresh foes under every bed, Lugosi’s Dracula was flesh-eater made flesh. From the moment he first materializes in Dracula to that in which he is vanquished at the end, Lugosi not only overcomes any incredulity that his own audience might have felt toward the entire concept of Transylvanian bloodsuckers, but he also vanquishes that of any modern viewer. He was, quite simply, too damned brilliant for his own good.

Tiring of his exile, and with his bank account again in cobwebbed tatters, Lugosi resurfaced in 1952, finally forced to accept his fate by an appetite for drugs that demanded he take all the employment he was offered. And if the only work he could get was as a parody of himself, then he would be the greatest parody of them all. His every subsequent public appearance would find him clad in full costume, while the films he now made were purposefully calculated to play on his reputation: Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, My Son the Vampire, Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, and a pair of films with the eccentric Ed Wood, Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster.

All kept the wolf from the door, but they weren’t enough. In 1955, Lugosi voluntarily committed himself in the hope of shaking off his dope habit. He succeeded, but at a dreadful cost. Having shot just a handful of scenes for another Wood spectacular, Plan 9 from Outer Space, Lugosi was felled by a massive heart attack. On August 15, 1956, the world learned that Bela Lugosi, as the song later reminded us, was dead.

If You Like True Blood…

If You Like True Blood… is a popular history of vampires in classical and popular culture, by an author who has been reading and watching such things since high school, and who seriously believes The Hunger is one of the best things David Bowie has ever done.

With chapters embracing silent movies and modern erotica, mist-shrouded myth, and gothic rock, If You Like True Blood… transports the reader from the moss-drenched wilds of Louisiana to the mountain haunts of Transylvania, via introductions to some of history and literature’s most accomplished bloodsuckers. More than 200 new-to-you stories, movies, adventures, and eccentricities are staked out in the sunlight. Exclusive interview material stirs fresh plasma into the pot, and selections from the author’s own collection of vampirabilia are among the many illustrations.

Anne Rice, Peter Cushing, Sookie Stackhouse, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Marvel Comics, Bram Stoker’s Dracula-all flit not-so-silently through these pages; Vlad the Impaler, the Countess Bathory, Mina Harker, and Roman Polanski. too. In addition, authoritative appendices offer up a guide to best movie, TV, and literary vampires out there. If You Like True Blood… may not grant you eternal life, but it knows plenty of people who can.

Stephen King’s Horror Films

The talented and prolific Stephen King is 65 years old today! Now we can celebrate with an excerpt from Horror Films FAQ, written by John Kenneth Muir.

Although the horror film has frequently adapted literary material in its long history, from Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley to Thomas Harris and Dean Koontz, perhaps no writer has seen his work translated to the silver screen more often the oft-named “master of horror,” Stephen King (1947– ). King is a longtime resident of Maine and sets most of his stories in that region. And as a young man, the author was reportedly inspired to become a horror writer by the works of H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937).

The writer of more than 50 novels and 200 short stories, King has written books selling more than 350 million copies worldwide. He has earned multiple honors, including the Bram Stoker Award and, controversially, the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Suffering an identical fate to many authors who choose horror as the avenue for their storytelling, King’s work is often dismissed out of hand as lowbrow when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. King’s work often deals directly with the American blue-collar experience and the interfacing of that experience with the supernatural or paranormal. His protagonists are often a circle of friends reckoning with something outside the human experience but using their bond of friendship to defeat it.

Since 1976 and Brian De Palma’s cinematic adaptation of King’s novel Carrie, several dozen of King’s works have been adapted to film, television, and even the stage. “The simple fact is that King’s stories and novels have provided a wealth of materials for filmmakers,” writes King biographer Michael R. Collings. “Almost every novel published under King’s name has been produced as a film, is in production, or has been optioned.”

Furthermore, writes another King scholar, Tony Magistrale, “Between box office receipts and film rental distribution around the world, the Stephen King movie business is now worth well in excess of a billion dollars.” Tellingly, King’s most critically acclaimed film adaptations have emerged from outside the horror genre. Rob Reiner’s Stand by Me (1986), Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994), and Green Mile (1999) have all been met with kudos and award nominations, whereas the horror films have achieved far less acceptance. In the eyes of judgmental, “elitist critics,” writes Mark Browning, “the films are associated with a cinematic subgenre with historically low status [horror] and secondly, the films are adapting overtly popular, best-selling writer who is commonly associated with this particular genre in literature.”

Clearly, however, the horror-film adaptations of Stephen King’s literary works have created a dilemma of “authorship” for many who admire the books. Audiences familiar with King’s novels bring high expectations to the theater that often can’t be met since film is a different art form than literature, and settings, events, and characters are sometimes eliminated, combined, or changed to so as to vet the cleanest, most concise narrative.

Secondly, many of the directors who have crafted films based on King’s work are of an unusually high caliber. As auteurs, they inevitably bring their own creative aesthetic to any filming of a King story. Thus King’s vision is changed or sublimated to accommodate the vision of the director in question. The result is that the images onscreen abundantly represent a hybrid vision: Stephen King through the lens of Brian De Palma (Carrie), Stephen King through the lens of Kubrick (The Shining), or Stephen King through the lens of John Carpenter (Christine).

Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).

 

The Birds

The following is an excerpt posted by Bookgasm of Horror Films FAQ, written by John Kenneth Muir. Check out the rest of the excerpt here.

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds opens on a seemingly normal day in the early 1960s with attractive Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) visiting a bird shop in scenic San Francisco. As she enters, a flock of birds is seen in the distance among the skyscrapers: circling and cawing but otherwise nonthreatening. This view is a deliberate foreshadowing of what is to come, a simmering before the inevitable boil.

Once Melanie is in the store, however, things do heat up. She attempts to pull a prank on a handsome man, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), by pretending to be a bird-shop employee. But Mitch, who claims to be there to purchase two “love birds,” is actually pulling a prank of his own and soon gets the better of Melanie.

This game of cat and mouse spurs a veritable obsession in Melanie, and she soon tracks Mitch to his home, sixty miles up the coast in scenic Bodega Bay, a little hamlet described as a “a collection of shacks on a hillside.” Her not-so covert mission is to initiate a sexual relationship with Mitch. Melanie does so under the guise of delivering him his love birds.

Once in town, Melanie also meets the town’s schoolteacher, Annie (Suzanne Pleshette), another woman who once shared an intimate relationship with the apparently promiscuous Mitch. There is a quick rivalry between Annie and Melanie, and some jealousy, too. Meanwhile, as Melanie grows closer to Mitch, she is looked upon with stern disapproval by Mitch’s shrewish, controlling mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy). Lydia is a cold, emotionally closed off woman, still despondent over the death of her husband years earlier.

While all these tumultuous personal relationships shift and grow, the inexplicable suddenly occurs. Birds of all varieties launch a coordinated attack on Bodega Bay, ambushing the local school, killing Annie, dive-bombing the local diner, and laying merciless siege to Mitch’s family farmhouse, a location reachable primarily by motor boat and therefore isolated…

Today, The Birds has lost little of the searing dramatic punch that captivated audiences four decades ago. The lack of a scientific or rational explanation behind the avian attack lends the film a powerful and undeniably sexual subtext. The bird attacks, one can detect upon close viewing, occur because of turbulent human emotions. In short, this film is all about not just the birds, but the bees.

Keep reading at Bookgasm!

Horror Films FAQ explores a century of ghoulish and grand horror cinema, gazing at the different characters, situations, settings, and themes featured in the horror film, from final girls, monstrous bogeymen, giant monsters and vampires to the recent torture porn and found footage formats. The book remembers the J-Horror remake trend of the 2000s, and examines the oft-repeated slasher format popularized by John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Friday the 13th (1980).

After an introduction positioning the horror film as an important and moral voice in the national dialogue, the book explores the history of horror decade by decade, remembering the women’s liberation horrors of the 1970s, the rubber reality films of the late 1980s, the serial killers of the 1990s, and the xenophobic terrors of the 9/11 age. Horror Films FAQ also asks what it means when animals attack in such films as The Birds (1963) or Jaws (1975), and considers the moral underpinnings of rape-and-revenge movies, such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) and Irreversible (2002). The book features numerous photographs from the author’s extensive personal archive, and also catalogs the genre’s most prominent directors.