Here’s a beautiful little shadow to darken your day…

The brand new Dark Arts horror anthology ‘When the Night Comes Down’ is now available for pre-order. There are five twilight tales from me and plenty more from legends of the genre Bev Vincent, Robert E. Weinberg and Nate Kenyon.

From start to finish it’s been a genuine pleasure to be involved in this collection. The Dark Arts team: Bill Breedlove, John Everson and Martel Sardina are innovative publishers, absolutely dedicated to publishing top quality horror – even if I say so myself.

We’ll be launching this officially at WHC 2010 in Brighton but for those who can’t wait here’s where to find out more or grab an early copy:

http://www.darkartsbooks.com/?page_id=710

I hope you enjoy every word of this unique book…

Poppy Z Brite photo by J.K. Potter; Creative Commons license

As a writer Poppy Z Brite took the lost and the depraved, the vicious, the misguided, the outsider, the deviant and the freak by the hand, she lead some home, some to the sadistic salvation they would discover in the extreme ecstasy and pain to be had from “violating the sanctity of a dead boys ass”, abandoned baby vampires into violent pansexualized father/son fuckfests and even others towards the relative safety found in the “transubstantiation of culinary delights” and I loved every fucking word.

As a 16 year old boy, growing up gay in a small backwater her novels became a beacon of hope – or despair, depending on whatever disposition you favoured – breaking through the psychotic monotony of my teenage years – each of her books were connected by one fundamental thread – her characters where for the most part lithe young boys who wanted to be girls, avenging resurrected photographers, dirt poor chartreuse soaked teenagers, gentle mystics, grunge musicians, vampires and necrophiliac cannibals in love. She effortlessly, exquisitely took the mantle of the masculine – Brite identifies as a non-operative transsexual – and offered a uniquely feminine fetishism of the gay male -  beautiful descriptions of hard-core gay sex, lurid descriptions of violence and prose as elegant as anything Shirley Jackson or Oliver Onions ever put on paper overlapped seamlessly.

Her wordplay was pictorial in its depravity, think B-movies or quasi-horror cum skin flicks with an intellectual bent and you’re not even halfway there. Her oeuvre connotates the absurd, the sexual, the glorious Grand Guignol in a bracingly intelligent, sometimes serious and sometimes even light-hearted fashion. She had an ear for macabre whipsmart dialogue, extraordinarily vivid characters; her fiction had me delight in the weirdness and inherent brutality of existence beneath the dark miasma that hung over most of her characters’ lives. What can I say, I’m a sadist. She worked me like an addiction I never wanted to break. Her frames of reference incorporated everything from The Church of The Subgenius to the cyber-punk/avant Goth subcultures which populated the seamy seedy French Quarter in New Orleans, Trent Reznor, AIDS terrorism, filicide and filleting boys.

Because this is Women in Horror Recognition month I’ve decided that the focal point of this piece is going to be on Brite’s earlier body of work – in her later novels Brite’s moved away from – though not completely out of – the horror genre: The Value of X, Liquor, and D.U.C.K are more akin to the writing of Faulkner, Flannery O’ Connor and Harry Crews; I’ve also chosen to omit her commercial projects (the unauthorized Courtney Love biography) and her “franchise fiction” (The Lazarus Heart – which is a tie-in of The Crow).

In her debut novel Lost Souls (Dell bought it in 1991 and a few months later she was signed to a six-figure three-book contract) I was introduced to a triumvirate of psychotic vampires called  Zillah, Molochai and Twig – creatures I wasn’t sure I wanted to fuck, or flee from. After subjecting a young woman to a night of alcohol-fuelled crazed lust – they disappear. An unfortunate side-effect of humans mating with vampires is that said young woman won’t survive the pregnancy, therefore forcing another of their kind to leave the orphaned vampire baby on a doorstep in grim suburbia; the baby, who grows up to become a reclusive teenager and goes by the name of Nothing, rejects the dull normies and the stifling small-town he was forced to grow up in and leaves it all behind in search of his true heritage. The Lost Souls of the title are the heartbroken musician Steve and the fey psychic Ghost, residents of Brite’s fictitious Missing Mile (apparently inspired by Athens in Georgia, where Brite resided before making New Orleans her permanent home). Eventually Nothing hooks up with his real family and embarks on an incestuous affair with Zillah – the leader of the pack and his own father. At first Nothing is easily seduced by the lure of these creatures’ hyperreality. Nothing finds his own way into the damnation – that is the easy part - however, he soon realises that after witnessing some of his new family’s more unsavoury antics he might need to find a way back to the light. The morally conflicted little vamp finds allies when he finally encounters Steve and Ghost, but the pack isn’t prepared to give up one of their own without a ferocious fight.

Lost Souls was listed by Fangoria as one of the best vampire novels ever written and Brite was crowned as the reigning Queen of the Macabre – dethroning even Anne Rice. The contract with Dell left Brite free to write full-time – up until this, she had been making ends meet as a stripper, artist’s model, mouse-caretaker (she cleaned up after them at a cancer research lab) and short order cook.

It took only another nine months for Brite to produce her second baby, Drawing Blood. The setting may have been the same (being almost exclusively based in Missing Mile) but although this novel had supernatural overtones, it was a very different book in tone and subject-matter than her previous one. In the opening chapters a father brutally kills every member of his family, sparing only his young son Trevor. Years later - much like his predecessor Nothing - Trevor returns to the place of his birth, now a stoic young illustrator, and the house where his family perished. In New Orleans the cyber-hacking, slutty Edward Scissorhands lookalike Zach needs to get out of dodge post-haste when a shadowy government agency begin tailing him. He is aided and abetted by the sultry exotic dancer Eddy Chung (perhaps the only female I remember as a mainstay throughout the novel, though in Brite’s earlier work, gender, pretty much like everything else was debateable). Trevor returns to his home and meeting Zach offers him sanctuary. The boys fall in love but soon the malevolent force that runs through the house starts to assert itself. The ultimate solution for Trevor is to find his way through and out of a mysterious liminal dimension known as Birdland. Brite’s conjuration of Birdland took my breath away – her allusions to the insane architecture of such a place can be traced as far back as the now-defunct 1920’s fantasy/horror publication Weird Tales which had lurid, garish covers of archetypal monsters and other assorted ghouls. One sequence in a cinema had me leaving the lamp burning for three whole nights – it was as if Todd Bronwyn had cast the characters that lived there.

Drawing Blood was perhaps the most gentle and tame of her Gothic Line. It was around the same time that Brite had her first short story collection Swamp Foetus (or Wormwood in the UK) published and saw her cover similar if no less unsettling terrain and even had cameo appearances from some of the characters of her earlier novels.

This brings me to Brite’s most controversial novel to date Exquisite Corpse. A novel which took me to the shocking, acid-skin-stripping, viscera full frontiers of psychosexual obsession and corpse-revelry and I fell in love. A tour-de-force with a taunting, teasing, thrilling and tortuous narrative trajectory that undoubtedly had maniacs salivating on the frontlines of the lunatic fringe. So extreme in content was this that her publisher Dell refused to publish it – her UK publishers also declined. Eventually it was picked up by Simon and Schuster in the US and Orion in the UK. This was so much more though than just another “extreme” novel; even with Lost Souls and Drawing Blood Brite took incredible risks and happily gave the V to any of her detractors. She wrote a novel that dragged you into the darkest realms of humanity – but her characters weren’t “monsters.” Caitlin R. Kiernan wrote in the afterword of Self-Made Man:

“At the root of all the anxiety and alarm seems to be Poppy’s decision to portray the novel’s two cannibalistic serial killers as human beings instead of reducing them to one-dimensional monsters who could then easily be dismissed by readers as Not One of Us. That Andrew  Compton and Jay Byrne are shown as men with passions and fears, strengths and weaknesses, that they are humanized rather than demonized, putting the reader at risk of gaining some insight into appetites so alien to their own, and so taboo to their society. And, I suspect, a fear that even the most disgusted reader may find a spark of empathy.”

This novel wiped the floor with the Brett Easton Ellis pussy-hating, chainsaw cub-scout Patrick Bateman. Delving deep into the psyche of the most damaged “monsters” and indeed, as Kiernan pointed out, giving us an insight into another world. Brite was a braver writer than another so-called-subversive enfant terrible, A.M Holmes, who took an intellectual and infuriatingly moral stance in her exploration of paedophilia in The End of Alice. The tabloid detachment of Holmes’ style sickened me while the intimacy of Brite’s full-blown love affair with the “monsters” or the “freaks” offered me a better understanding of the depth of things – however depraved and vile those acts may be I never felt the urge to scald my skin after reading. She led me to other subversive writers like Dennis Cooper (Frisk) Matthew Stokoe (High Life) Laura Albert (the writer formerly known as JT Leroy) and the divine former pro dominatrix Christa Faust (who collaborated with Brite on Triads and is the author of Money Shot) and many other writers who weren’t afraid to grab life by the dick and suck it (or in Andrew Compton’s case, bite it off).

With Exquisite Corpse she really raised the stakes - this was before Eli Roth could shave the hairs on his balls or Takashi Miike and The French New Wave got behind a camera. Before the gang-rape and violent retribution of Virgenie Despentes’ Baise Moi or the small-press deciding Charles Manson is worth publishing. Not that I’m diminishing any of these people and their endeavours, I’m just pointing out that Poppy Z. Brite was writing material at a time – the early nineties – that you probably wouldn’t get away with doing today. This is why I felt honoured when Joseph D’Lacey (who runs this site) asked me to write a piece on one of my favourite writers; his own novel Meat is one seriously fucked up, intelligent, though like Exquisite Corpse, a significant piece of work with staying power and violence and grace. And something which actually tells us, rather than dictates something very real about humanity – even if we might not yet know what that is.

I’m also going to mention a few more female writers you might want to look up which are: Caitlan R Kiernan, Laura Hird, Joyce Carol Oates, Helen Zahavi, Darcey Steinke, Val McDiermud, Joolz Denby, Sarah Langan, Sarah Pinborough, Cathi Unsworth, Rhodi Hawk, Gabrielle Faust, Christa Faust, Megan Abbott, Vicki Hendricks, Lydia Lunch, and Alexandra Sokoloff.

And if you fancy finding out more about Women in Horror Recognition Month, you can always visit these places:

• http://womeninhorrormonth.com/
• http://www.pretty-scary.net/
• http://www.thechainsawmafia.com/home/index.php
• http://www.fatally-yours.com/

Here’s a little inside information about each book, its publisher and editor, as well as what my contribution amounts to in each case.

First off is When the Night Comes Down released by Dark Arts. This is an approach to horror collections I hadn’t come across before. The four contributors to the anthology provide four or five stories totalling 20-25,000 words each. The other writers in this volume are Nate Kenyon, Bev Vincent and Robert Weinberg. Editing the collection is Bill Breedlove, closely assisted by John Everson and Martel Sardina. I’ve come to like Bill very much just through our email communications. He is a wise and free-thinking editor and I’ve welcomed his comments on my work. Happily, I’ll be meeting Bill, some of the contributors and the rest of the DA staff at WHC 2010 in Brighton – When the Night Comes Down will launch on Friday 27^th March in Bar Rogue between 10pm and midnight. I’ve contributed five stories to this collection.

Longer in the making but probably to be released well before WTNCD is Darc Karnivale published by The Evil Nerd Empire. The editors, David Byron and Corey R. Scales have put a great deal of time and effort into collecting and organising the stories for the anthology. The artwork has been provided by the talented Nick Rose. The image he’s created for my story ‘The Food of Love’ is superb. Other contributors include Paul Kane, Ralan Conley and Jeremy C. Shipp. With luck the anthology will be available at WHC 2010 in the dealer room, but failing that, it will be stocked by all the usual online suspects.

Next up is Holy Horrors. To give you an idea of how long this anthology has been in the pipeline, I submitted my tale ‘The Germ of His Ideas’ to Matt Cardin and T. M. Wright on 8^th September ’06. It was accepted about ten months later. Since then, watching the ups and downs has been quite disturbing. At times, I was convinced – and so were the editors, I think – that the book would never be published. However, we’re finally on course for Holy Horrors to be released in two volumes by Ash Tree Press. Volume 1 in spring and Volume 2 before the end of the year.

I include both TOCs because they excite me so much

VOLUME 1

1) “Sanctuary.” Jim Rockhill.

2) “The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini.” Reggie Oliver. Reprint.

3) “Bavel II.” Jens Rushing.

4) “Saviour.” Gary Braunbeck.

5) “Vom-Beist.” Mike Norris.

6) “Magog and I.” Craig Holt.

7) “Darshan.” William R. Eakin.

8 ) “Ezekiel Remembers.” Kurt Dinan.

9) “And You Shall Be Adored.” Regina Mitchell.

10) “Sicarii.” Andrew Tisbert.

11) “Porta Nigra.” Darren Speegle.

12) “The Dead Must Die.” Ramsey Campbell. Reprint.

13) “At the Feet of the Forest Primeval.” Randy Chandler.

14) “The Editor.” Pamela K. Taylor.

15) “Behind the Bathroom Door.” Sara Joan Berniker.

16) “The Hands of God.” Michael McBride.

17) “Cold to the Touch.” Simon Strantzas.

18) “Anubis Has Left the Building.” Tim Waggoner. Reprint.

19) “On This Day of Reckoning.” Joseph Nassise.

20) “Rapture.” Robert Morrish and Harry Shannon.

VOLUME 2

1) “Abandon.” Adam Browne.

2) “In the Name of God.” Stuart Young.

3) “The Sect of the Idiot.” Thomas Ligotti. Reprint.

4) “The Shaft.” Brian Hodges.

5) “Waters Dark as a Raven’s Wing, Flames Bright as a Dove’s Breast.” Dru Pagliassotti.

6) “Uncaged.” Paul Finch.

7) “Intentions.” William Freedman.

8 ) “The Tattoo Artista.” Eric S. Smith.

9) “Redemption.” David Niall Wilson.

10) “The Bishop Receives a Visitor.” Marion Pitman.

11) “A Prayer for Captain La Hire.” Patrice E. Sarath. Reprint.

12) “Purifying Vows.” Kim Paffenroth.

13) “The Temple.” Quentin S. Crisp. Reprint.

14) “The Monsters We Defy.” Karen Williams.

15) “The Wound of Her Making.” Gerard Houarner. Reprint.

16) “Bad Religion.” Douglas M. Chapman.

17) “The Germ of His Ideas.” Joseph D’Lacey.

18) “Darkness.” Jude Wright.

Finally – but only for the moment, of course – Mark Deniz of Morrigan Books asked me for a story to complete a pet project of his. Scenes From the Second Storey was The God Machine’s debut album. Released in 1993, it has been hailed as one of the best albums of that decade. It’s one of Mark’s favourites of all time, so the collection bears the same name. Each of the stories in the anthology takes the title of, and is inspired by, one of the songs. Mine was track eleven: Seven. It was a pleasure to write and I’m happy to note that Mark will be giving himself the book for his 40^th birthday present! Other authors include Carole Johnstone and Gary McMahon.

For those of you who’d like to see a free JD’L horror tale right now, the gruesome ‘Read my Lips’ is in Ecelcticism #9.

When MEAT first came out, Bloody Books made an unabridged recording of the text. The reader was Sorcha Cusack who has the most amazing voice – it really fits the tale. I heard she was white with shock at some of things she had to say whilst reading! Apologies to you, Sorcha!

The downloadable audio version of MEAT was released last year but was never well publicised. It has now been re-released on iTunes and at audible.com and is currently on offer for a lot less than the book.

It might make a unique Christmas gift or just scare the hell out of you during the season of goodwill…

(SORCHA CUSACK is probably best known for her long running role as nurse, Kate Wilson in Casualty. She has also appeared in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Playing the Field and Eureka Street. She has appeared in many radio plays including The First Witch, The Real Charlotte and The Day Daniel O’Donnell Got Married as well as stage productions such as The Vagina Monologues, A View From the Bridge and Feast of Snails.)

Joseph D’Lacey: Hi, Allison. And welcome to the cramped, dripping corridors of Horror Reanimated. After waiting all this time to interview you, it’s a real treat to finally have you here.

There are reasons why you’ve been otherwise occupied, though. Tell us what you’ve been doing since I first contacted you regarding ‘Face’…

Allison Theus: Hey Joseph, quite a bit has been going on. At the time you contacted me I was just finishing up grad school in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon University, in their Entertainment Technology program. Immediately afterward I went to work at a start-up videogame company called Divide by Zero Games located in Seattle, WA. I spent a little over a year there doing concept art, illustration, texturing, UI design and some 2D and 3D animation on several projects. About 3 months ago I decided to strike out on my own to try a little freelancing, where I picked up work doing monster miniature concepts for Rackham Games and monster miniature schematics for Fantasy Flight Games as part of their Arkham Horror project. I’m currently working on illustrations for a children’s book and involved in a gig with Warner Bros. which, though not as fantastic as some of the monster stuff, is still really cool. Add to that the usual queue of private fantasy and sci-fi commissions, and it’s been pretty hectic!

JD’L: I have a theory that artists and musicians tend to know what they were destined to do from a very early age, whereas writers often don’t find out until later. Was that true of you?

AT: It was. Art had been a big part of my life from a very early age, and as the years went by it evolved and took over everything. It’s difficult to imagine what I would do without it.

JD’L: And were the themes you find attractive always in the realms of the fantastic?

AT: I suppose so. I found there to be a great deal of freedom in the fantastic, and that freedom allowed me to explore themes that were both of the fantastic and non-fantastic variety.

JD’L: Are you self-taught in the main or have you done a lot of formal study?

AT: I’m a pretty even mix of both. I’ve taken art classes throughout school (hell, I majored in Fine Art in undergrad), and for several years very early on I studied with a local painter, but the most important things that I have learned have been outside the classroom. I would spend hours playing with concepts and materials, figuring out new techniques, and learning what worked and what didn’t. While the classes were good, I believe I owe most of my progress to my own experimentation.

JD’L: If I were a creator of visual art, it would be my instinct to reinvent the world rather than show it as it is. After all, the real world is one no one can see, isn’t it – reality a drab cover for something astonishingly beautiful? Like everyone who creates art for a living, I know you’re tied to certain contractual commitments but if it was up to you how and what you created, what would you say the driving force is behind your gift? What do you want to see and what do you want us to see?

AT: It really depends. I’ve always possessed a strong feeling that my art was for something; that it would serve some sort of higher purpose (which is not to say I believe my art is the grandest thing since sliced bread, or that this purpose will ever reveal itself during my lifetime). It simply exists and provides a continuous urge to create. Simultaneously, my art has always been intertwined with my life. Think of it as one giant ongoing dialogue with yourself, where everything you’ve ever done or felt or learned has been recorded, IS being recorded and considered and at times disputed. A constant self-assessment, if you will.

I think what I really want to see in my art is some sort of resolution – perhaps the complete evolution of the self into something greater then what I am. For my audience, it’s less about what is seen and more about what is felt. At least for personal pieces, if someone can look at a piece and glean what I felt while making it (which is often the ‘why’ I made it), then that’s good stuff. It’s an odd way to share experiences, but I find it particularly rewarding.

JD’L: The first time I talked to you about this interview, you felt there wasn’t a great deal of horror in your work. When I look at it, I see both horror and fantasy. I didn’t mean that you set out to frighten in your work, merely that what you depict is unsettling and a spark to the dark imagination. Horror is, perhaps, more a sensation than a genre and if it was up to me, I wouldn’t hesitate to commission you for some cover art for one of my novels. I guess what I want to know is: What’s more important; how you see your work or how others see it?

AT: How I see my work, definitely. You’ve got to like it, or at least semi-like what you do to really want to do it all the time. The more involved you are, the better you will be able to convey your message(s). Besides, everybody’s different; I know and expect that people will interpret my work differently. That’s part of the fun!

JD’L: Who are your artist heroes, past and present?

AT: My very first artist hero was Robert Bakker, a well-known Paleontologist (I distinctly remember watching him explain the way sound travels through a Parasaurolophus’s nasal passageways as he was sketching the head of the creature on a TV program many, many years ago); his ability to be both scientist and artist was extremely inspiring. When I hit my wildlife stage I was very fond of Carl Brenders and Robert Bateman, one for his extreme realism and the other for his dramatic portrayals of nature. From there I forayed into the realm of sci-fi clutching Wayne Barlowe’s ‘Expedition,’ and picked up some inspiration later on down the line from Terryl Whitlatch and Iain McCaig. Currently, my present, and perhaps most influential hero to date is Zdzisław Beksiński, whose work manages not only to depict most of my long-standing nightmares but to do it in such a way that is both immensely beautiful and utterly terrifying.

JD’L: If you could pick your next employer, what would be your ideal paid project?

AT: I would absolutely love to get a chance to work inside Stan Winston Studios and make monsters come to life. That would be a dream come true for me, no joke. I would also be happy working for a variety of game companies, especially Blizzard.

JD’L: What is your favourite work of art?

AT: There are too many great artists and great works of art to choose from! I don’t know that I could ever settle on just one.

JD’L: Allison, it’s been a delight to finally have this time looking into your mind. Thank you for sharing your visions with us. All of us here at Horror Reanimated wish you great success for the future.

AT: Thank you!

]]> http://www.horrorreanimated.com/2009/12/08/interview-with-artist-of-the-fantastic-allison-theus-by-jdl/feed/ http://www.horrorreanimated.com/2009/12/01/challenging-times-for-uk-genre-magazines-by-mathew-f-riley/ http://www.horrorreanimated.com/2009/12/01/challenging-times-for-uk-genre-magazines-by-mathew-f-riley/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:17:51 +0000 Mathew F. Riley http://www.horrorreanimated.com/?p=1309 There’s something afoot this side of Christmas: dark skies over real-world book retailing, and a black vein of change for UK genre magazines.

Maybe this change can be referred to as evolution, or as some might say, a devolution. But would anyone go so far as to think of the developing situation as an opportunity?

The future of the Borders book chain is looking less than rosy. This affects me on both a professional and a personal level. I for one will miss that particular quirky retail experience. There was always the possibility of finding something new and interesting on the genre shelves, and the magazine section, well, I’d regularly hotfoot it down to pick up the latest issues of HorrorHound, Fangoria, The Darkside, Rue Morgue and Death Ray, have a flick through Interzone (as I’m a horror boy and subscribe to Black Static), and generally nose about the imported titles until I sniffed out something new. That small high street pleasure is denied to me now, (and I’m sure there are others out there like me).

Will Waterstones start stocking imported magazines? I think not. Although, in some stores that I’ve visited, (Exeter and Kingston), there are encouraging stocks of imported genre books.

How will we obtain copies of Canada’s excellent Rue Morgue now? There’s the subscription option, which is actually great value, but the delivery has always been plagued by delays in my experience, with some titles arriving three months late. Maybe that has changed now. I hope so as I need my RM fix on a monthly basis.

HorrorHound is another favourite, a fanboygeek collector’s magazine of all things horror merchandise, plus some great articles on the 80s video invasion, classic films, and the like - a thoroughly modern magazine with a nostalgic editorial bent. No delivery issues here at all as far as I remember.

I stopped subscribing to these magazines a year or so ago - not because I had lost faith in them, far from it - but because I wanted to pop into a shop to buy them, (despite the high import prices). I enjoy that experience and Borders could pretty much guarantee they’d be there, all in one place.

There are other options for us paper-collecting genre geeks, at least in London. Forbidden Planet stocks all these titles, but not consistently as far as I can tell, and you can’t purchase magazines on their website. The Cinema Store stocks these titles and loads of others too. Outside London? Fab Press’ website stocks issues of Rue Morgue, but again it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pick up the latest RM there, as they have to wait to receive them, just like the rest of us. Although looking at their website today, they’re up to date with the November 2009 issue.

I think it might be time to return to the subscription option. But, will there be any (UK) magazines left for us to subscribe to?

Shivers died a year or so ago, and the inevitable demise of Borders has coincided with what are most likely to be the final death-throes of several magazines: The Darkside has not been seen since September. A wiki entry states it might return. Let’s hope so. A thread on the Frightfest Forum has a little more information. Although maligned by some, the magazine appealed to the pulp in me. In its lastest editorial Gorezone rather tastelessly claims some credit for the end of The Darkside, but as the discussion on Monster Kids Classic Horror Forum shows, other non-genre titles are dropping like flies too.

Black Fish, the publisher of Death Ray and newly-launched sister title, Filmstar, appears to be in trouble as both titles are on hold by the looks of things:

As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish’s two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently ‘on hold’. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.

Quite what the future holds for Filmstar, Death Ray – and, indeed, Blackfish – remains unclear, but we hope to have more definite news over the next week or so. Keep watching this space, because as of now quite literally anything (or nothing) could happen.

Who’s to say what the future holds for genre magazines in the UK, but I think there’s always been an element of uncertainty hovering around such titles, as finding the niche audience on the high street can be challenging regardless of which shop you can get yourself in.

What reassures me about this situation, and the worlds of genre in general, is that the brains behind these magazines have it in their blood, they must give life to their visions, and I genuinely hope they are able to resurrect their titles in one form or another in 2010.

And as John Gilbert’s comment on The Great White Space states, there might well be life in an old dog yet…

Those of you with your fingers on the Horror Reanimated pulse – er, I mean flatline – will know I rarely review books. However, every now and again something truly unique comes along. Mendal Johnson’s Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ is one of those books.

It’s difficult to attract attention to a novel without ruining its mystique but that’s my aim with this post. This is an unmissable read.

1974 was a good year for horror. Carrie was published and so was this little frightener. One of the authors went on to greater works, greater wealth and greater fame. The other was dead within two years. Interestingly, both men had trouble with alcohol. In Johnson’s case it was the death of him; he succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver. And, whereas King is wonderfully prolific, Johnson died leaving only three unfinished manuscripts. He was 48.

The plot: Bobby and Cindy’s parents go on holiday for a week, leaving a pretty babysitter named Barbara in charge. Along with their friends John, Dianne and Paul, the kids call themselves Freedom Five. They’ve been playing games together for years. The day after the parents leave, Freedom Five ‘capture’ Barbara and a new game begins.

I don’t want to say too much about the story. If you have a genuine interest in dark fiction, you should read the book. Here, in glorious black on white, is torture porn from thirty-five years ago. I expected it to be badly handled and poorly written. Neither was the case. Mendal Johnson wrote in tight, measured prose which is, on occasion, beautiful to read. This wasn’t just a book of vicarious thrills either – though, believe me, they are there if you want them – it was an examination of the psychology of children, and therefore, of our own. Each character is fully and tragically realised; their logic and the logic of the novel itself, though twisted, is always rightly fulfilled. The pace and plotting is near to flawless, tension rising all the time. The moment you put the book down, you want to pick it up again and, if you have the time, it’s one of those you could read in a sitting – if you can handle it.

I’m not saying LGPATA is an accurate appraisal of your average child’s mind. Freedom Five are a little isolated. They are a little odd. A situation arises in which their earlier games together can be explored further. One thing leads to another and group ‘morality’ overcomes the morality of the individual. But what I’m also not saying is that these things never happen. They do and it’s well documented. Cases occurred before the book was written and many more have occurred since. And that, perhaps, is what makes the book so utterly chilling. Whether victim or perpetrator, it could be your child. It could have been you. Maybe it was. Who is really prepared to speak of the questionable things we did in our ‘innocent’ youth?

This author, for one, is.

For a truly in depth look at the life of Mendal Johnson and more background about the novel – read it first, if you don’t want it spoiled – there’s a brilliant 3-part blog covering it all right here.

Antichrist commences with an extended scene, shot in black and white, and set to a classical soundtrack. No dialogue, just detailed slow-motion shots of the flat in which the Man and the Woman (the characters are unnamed and I’ll not mention the actor and actresses names either) are making love, and (ooh how controversial) a single second scene of penetration. During this activity their young son walks down the stairs, climbs onto a desk and falls out of the window. It’s a memorable, simple and stylish way to begin a film that soon loses itself in analysis, atmosphere and ambiguity.

The Man is a therapist who feels he knows more about his wife’s bereavement and guilt issues than the staff at the hospital, so he discharges her, taking care of her at home; a move which soon comes across as selfish, as the woman increasingly feels like an experimental subject. Perhaps in response she demands increasingly physical sex and self-harms as the influence of nature gradually manifests itself and her guilt grows. The Man decides they should spend time at their utterly remote cabin in the woods, Eden, where the Woman spent time writing her dissertation on medieval misogyny and where, we find out, she fell into believing what she was writing about, rather than critiquing it.

Von Trier dedicates the film to Andrei Tarkovsky, the famed Russian Director of Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Solaris among others, and it’s with these last two films that Antichrist resonates the most as von Trier utilises several of Tarkovsky’s filmic techniques such as long, uninterrupted scenes, and the black and white dialogue free passages. Like Tarkvosky, Von Trier in Antichrist has given the earth, nature, the elements and the animal kingdom, an alien and ambiguous intelligence that seeps into the minds of the Man and the Woman so that their time sent in Eden becomes a wildly surging series of experiences and emotions: as the cabin’s tin roof is constantly bombarded with acorns from the huge trees it sits beneath; in harsh, visceral and surreal encounters with crows and a talking fox (which I found extremely powerful and perfect within that segment of the film, as opposed to many who have simply laughed).

As the Woman experiences the highs and lows of self-realisation it is the Man, the therapist, who appears most-affected as the landscape becomes an immense primal force that overwhelms them both; as he works with her to overcome her fear of the grass that swirls around the cabin, he is seeing visions that warn him of impending chaos. It is here where Antichrist veers away from what I took, (wanted?), to be an intriguing, ambitious exploration into the nature of nature and its influence on our relationships, towards a graphic depiction of torture and survival rooted in the deep mental illness resulting from a child’s death. Driven on by their surroundings, unable to cope with the sheer size of the environment and their emotions, their physical relationship intensifies into matrimonial violence: genital mutilations being the worst of many outrages inflicted upon and by each other.

The furore surrounding Antichrist has been mostly about its easy to criticise elements: the sex, the violence, its so-called pretentiousness, von Trier’s reputation and even his supposed attitude towards women. I bet even von Trier isn’t sure what he’s trying to say some of the time but, for me, Antichrist is an extremely brave film; as with Tarkovsky’s works, its attempts to depict this unknowable and unquantifiable world we live in and the unpredictable and unfathomable ways we humans relate to it and to each other, are absolutely open to debate and interpretation, and that’s the point. Two-thirds wonderful.

Reviewed by Mathew F. Riley

I SELL THE DEAD (2008)

Written and directed by

Glenn McQuaid

“I Sell the Dead” is the latest film from Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix and Scareflix production companies and, like most films from Larry, “I Sell the Dead” REALLY delivers!! Starring Dominic “Lost” Monaghan, Ron “Hellboy” Perlman, Angus “Phantasm” Scrimm and Fessenden himself, the film revolves around a pair of 18^th-century graverobbers, Arthur Blake (Monaghan) and Willie Grimes (Fessenden), as they TRY to make a (dis) honest living but are constantly running a-foul of sinister doctors, murderous competitors and, of course, the law.

The film has a wonderful vintage look to it, lots of fog and leafless trees, and I was really impressed when I realized that “I Sell the Dead” was shot entirely in New York State. The production design really captured 18^th-century Ireland and the actors had their Irish/Cockney/British accents down. There were also some great humorous set pieces, mostly between Monaghan and Fessenden – with their chemistry, they could well be the 21^st-century’s answer to Abbott and Costello – and even Perlman and Scrimm had their moments. And not always necessarily on-screen.

The story unfolds as young Arthur Blake is recounting his years of graverobbing to a priest, Father Duffy (Perlman), before he goes to the guillotine as Grimes has just (hilariously) done. Starting young, Blake (Daniel Manche plays the young Blake) is introduced to the dead in all their gruesomeness and beauty. But when the sinister Dr. Vernon Quint (Scrimm) starts applying some serious pressure on our protagonists to bring him “FRESHER!!” bodies so that he might “work”on them, the two graverobbers start digging up…things…even they can’t quite explain. When they come across a female vampire, one of my favorite “corpses”, hilarity ensues as well as revenge.

Besides Dr. Quint and the law, our boys must also deal with a sinister rival grave robbing clan, the House of Murphy, run by the menacing Cornelius Murphy (John Speredakos), the masked-because-her-face-is-so-disfigured-that-she-kills-with-it Valentine Murphy (Heather Bullock), Bulger (Alisdair Stewart) who has a mouth of razor sharp teeth and the never-seen-except-in-silhouette head of the clan, Murphy Senior.

This movie is just SO much FUN!! Zombies, vampires, body parts, Blake and Grimes themselves and their peculiar adventures as well as the Hammer Film look to the movie all add up to another great movie for Halloween (add “Trick ‘r Treat” to this for a great double feature on All Hallow’s Eve).

The DVD, which comes out in the UK on November 2 from Anchor Bay on both DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray (£24.99) has extras which include two commentaries: one with producer/actor Larry Fessenden and actor Dominic Monaghan and the other with writer/director Glenn McQuaid. There is also an hour-long “Making of” featurette and a 10-minute visual effects Behind the Scenes. The DVD should also come with a full-color comic book (we think!!!).

DON’T MISS THIS MOVIE!!!

Review by Elaine Lamkin 2009