Time has gathered up a small list of notable horror worthies and asked them the obvious, "What scares you?"
Here's a couple of sample answers:
The single scariest moment I have ever had in entertainment came during Diabolique [the 1955 film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot]. It is the moment when the corpse in the bathtub opens its eyes and shows nothing but bulging whites. - Stephen King
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Nothing. - Elvira
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I've always loved ghost stories, writers like M.R. James, L.P. Hartley, Joan Aiken, Stephen King, Joe Hill. But the scariest story I've ever heard was a true ghost story.
There were eight or nine of us at a restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we were telling ghost stories. The friend of a friend said, 'When I was a girl living in Texas, I had a recurring dream. In this dream, I was walking down the street of my hometown, and a man would walk toward me. Sometimes he was older and sometimes he was younger. He didn't always have the same face, but I always knew it was the same man. He would get closer and closer, and I would know that something bad was going to happen, but I would wake up each time before he reached me. I would be terrified. One night, in my dream, we finally got face to face and I spoke to him. I said, "What is your name?" He said, "My name is Sammy." And then I woke up, and I was so afraid that I couldn't go back to sleep. I went to my sister's room and said, "Can I get in bed with you? I've just had a really bad dream." My sister said, "Was it Sammy?" I said, "What did you say? How do you know Sammy?" And my sister said, "I don't. But you just brought him in the room with you." I turned on the lights and I saw that my sister was asleep. - Kelly Link
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Other respondents include Eli Roth, R. L. Stine, Guillermo del Toro, Frank Darabont, and Joe Hill.
I wanted to plug a nifty post by the relentlessly productive B-Sol of Vault of Horror. Among the video blogs, weekly top ten lists, news bulletins, and paternalistic odes to the joys of raising monster-kids, this engine of Interweb copy has managed to produce the first of three posts on the history of werewolf flicks.
It's nice to see ol' fuzzy face get the B-Sol treatment. Long the red-headed stepchild of the Universal fold, the werewolf's is to the universe of classical monsters what Martian Manhunter is to the Justice League – everybody feels he's iconic, but nobody has ever been able to raise his status to the level of a Frankenstein or a Dracula (the Superman and Batman of the JLA conceit).
From B-Sol's post:
With the highly anticipated Benicio del Toro remake of Universal's The Wolf Man on the way this fall, the time is ripe to take a long, considered look at the history of one of the horror genre's most venerable and beloved sub-categories. Although not quite as popular as its cousin the vampire, and perhaps not as thoroughly explored cinematically, the lycanthrope has nevertheless provided us with some of the most terrifying films ever made.
A beast whose origins go back nearly to the beginnings of Western civilization, the mythological being who can transform from man to wolf under the influence of the full moon has gone through its fair share of Hollywood-ization, much like its blood-drinking brethren. And in general, the history of werewolf films can be divided into three major eras. Today we will take a look at the first.
Most of the comments have focused on the odd film that's been left out, notably the list's lack of reference to the werewolf cycle of Euro-horror "master" Paul Naschy. These omissions don't bother me. You can't cover everything and, while Naschy probably deserves mention for holding the record for most-performances-as-a-werewolf, it doesn't strike me that his body of work has had some massive influence on the development of the genre. Despite their cult status among Euro-horror fans, they're sort of an evolutionary dead end. I think Naschy's the William Blake of werewolf filmmakers: There was nobody quite like him and he left no notable imitators, so he stands alone as a weird one-shot mutation in the genetic history of the subgenre. That's my take anyway.
I would, however, underscore something in his discussion of 1935's Werewolf of London:
The movie is Werewolf of London, and for some connoissuers of vintage horror, it remains the high watermark of lycanthrope cinema. Henry Hull stars as Dr. Glendon, and English botanist who falls under the curse of the werewolf after being bitten on an expedition in the Himalayas. The vast bulk of cinema's take on the werewolf legend is already established in this one film: the transmission through biting, the transformation under the full moon, the beast's desire to destroy that which its human half loves most.
The makeup created by Jack Pierce is striking, and Hull's humanoid, intelligent portrayal of the creature is quite unique, giving us one of the only talking werewolves of the silver screen. The film also puts the transformation scene front and center, a tradition that would continue throughout the history of the subgenre. Werewolf of London remains one of the most influential, and yet also one of the most underrated horror films of the Universal canon.
The biggest paradigm shift Werewolf of London introduced to the subgenre is the "humanoid" part. Prior to Werewolf of London, werewolves were depicted as changing from men into standard issue wolves. After London, the norm would be a mostly bipedal human-wolf hybrid creature. Ancient wolf stories tended to assume either a purely mental transformation (a dude gets on his hands and knees and starts acting like a wolf) or a complete physical transformation (in which the transformed person becomes a wolf-wolf). The ancient idea that the transformation is complete – though often a crucial part of the pre-film folklore - would become increasingly less common.
(There are, of course, dissidents. Perhaps ironically, American Werewolf in London and its sequel mostly keep their wolves on all fours. The Ginger Snaps franchise avoids extensive two-legged walking as well. Sharp Teeth and Sacred Book of the Werewolf are novelistic exceptions to the general trend – both assume a complete transformation).
Still, that's a small quibble. It's an excellent post and worth your attention. Dig, Screamers and Screamettes.
I'm somewhat hesitant to post this as the ANTSS staff has been hoodwinked by hoaxers before. I'm thinking specifically about the perennial "London After Midnight found" brouhaha of last year. Falling for that was a pretty boneheaded move, but I managed somehow to tap a vast and previously undiscovered source of boneheadness and pass the "news" on to you, my loyal and unsuspecting Screamers and Screamettes.
So, in that long tradition of handing you poorly vetted and highly questionable information as if it were genuine, I direct your attention to Ghostspy: A blog that's supposedly run by a crew member working on Ghostbusters 3.
There's no reason yet to assume that this is anything but a prank. I picked up the link from the fine folks at Bloody Disgusting and even they claim that the site makes their "journalistic instincts scream "bullsh*t." Anything that makes the folks at BD claim they have "journalistic instincts" is immediately dubious, so lector caveo.
Artist Mark Bennett has made a name for himself producing floor plans and maps for locations that only existed inside the magical world of TV land. Above is his layout for the Addam's Family mansion. He's also done the home of the Munsters, the charted whole of Gilligan's Island, the specs for the Lost in Space ship-turned-space-age-cabin, and mapped out the travels of Richard Kimble. Your life is a song, but not this one.
Johnny Foreigner, "Eyes Wide Terrified." Pac-Man style ghosties. You watch. It's good.
Real Link proliferation.
Kelly Link's short story collection, Magic for Beginners, home of such brilliant stories as "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Award winning "The Faery Handbag," is now available to you for absolutely nothing.
That's why you should read this blog regularly. You never know what sort of free shiznos is going to be thrown around!
I don't remember Ken Burns discussing that particular incident.
In 1863, in Virginia, scientists discovered a valley containing living dinosaurs. Union military leaders believed that the destructive power these massive monsters from before recorded history could be harnessed somehow and used as weapons against the Confederates. They sent a group of Union soldiers to the valley to capture the beasts.
Before you link through, this one is not particularly pleasant.
Armin Meiwes[pictured above - CRwM]is a cannibal. In March 2001, he killed a man and ate him with a glass of fine red wine. A crime so bizarre, it horrified and mystified the world. You see, Meiwes' victim was a willing accomplice, he actually wanted to be eaten. A rare case of what they call "love cannibalism". Now you're going to meet this quiet, unassuming man who became a monster. For the first time, he'll tell his chilling story. And at times I should warn that it is quite graphic and could Armin Meiwes is 46. A quiet, polite man who grew up in a loving family in a small town in Germany. But make no mistake. He is also a modern-day monster. His crime so horrific, there were no laws to cover it, no words in medical journals to describe his mental state.
For some grim true-crime style horror you can see video and read the transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with German cannibal Armin Meiwes.
The cannibal's crime is seeing renewed interest in light of the release of reporter Gunter Stampf's new book on the case, based on more than thirty in-depth interviews he had with Meiwes.
Today I know that what I did was wrong. That this can never be the right way. The wishes, the fantasies you have, that these can never ever be fulfilled. And everything that you dream about will only ever remain a dream. What I did, even after I'd done it, I always thought it could be more than just a dream. Today I know that it can never be.
D.I.Y. Jaws
For a famously complicated effects flick, Jaws continues to inspire kit-bashed, low-fi homages. Here's the Aussie band Pivot's gory, puppet-filled Jaws tribute: "In the Blood."
I have no pets. I own several ties, but rarely have a reason to wear any of them. I sing in the shower but can never remember the words, so I make them up as I go along, and they always end up being songs about showering. I collect slang dictionaries.
