Zombos' Closet

Chasing Ghosts Texas Style: On the Road With Everyday Paranormal

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good
(An uncorrected proof copy of Chasing Ghosts Texas Style was provided for this review.)

 

There are two corrections I'll note for Brad and Barry Klinge's book about their nocturnal exploits with the supernatural, Chasing Ghosts Texas Style: On the Road With Everyday Paranormal. The first is Brad attributing  "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," to an old Mafia saying.  That's wrong: the military strategist Sun-tzu said it first.  Brad, if you want a Mafia quote, I recommend this one: "I know nothing, I didn't see anything, I wasn't there, and if I was there, I was asleep." Even if Michael Corleone says his father told him to keep his enemies closer in The Godfather, the Mob didn't think of it first.

The second correction is more of a needed addition to the book. Brad and Barry describe their experiences with spectral phenomenon, often citing audio and photographic evidence gathered in their encounters, but there are no photographs. I can understand audio being a problem for the print edition (it would be great to hear EVPs in the ebook version, hint, hint), but to not include photographs  seems rather silly, don't you think? Am I a skeptic? Sure, to an extent. But it's more a case of me being tired of the endless hearsay descriptions given on every Ghost Hunters episode, Ghost Lab episode, and insert-your-own-favorite-here episode of any and every paranormal show.  

You know the drill I'm referring to:  investigators start investigating by invariably doing a walk-through of the purportedly haunted premises first, guided by someone who describes how he or she, or a guest or co-worker, has seen a full body apparition, or heard a disembodied voice, or was tripped down the stairs by big spectral feet. The descriptions are always so much more juicy than the investigations (although, I confess,  both do jive enough for me, sometimes). Brad and Barrys' very first investigation, the Harlequin Diner (they took photos), and Brad's apparition sighting of Civil War soldiers (he said he filmed it), piqued my interest enough to want to see photographic evidence. But none is provided in the book. Ouch.

Now here's what I really like about this book: the refreshingly skeptical stance both of them take when witches and feeling psychics are involved in investigations. Asterisks appear by certain names so I'll assume those names have been changed. Whoever "Celeste" the psychic may be in real life, her effectively simple (but naughty) spook assist in the television studio investigation, as well as those white witches who conducted a questionable ceremony--with burning sage--in another, provide a much needed Everyday Normal against all the EVP, EMF, and K-2 meter gadgetizing.  

The best chapter may be Everyday Nutsacks and Other Disasters, in which we meet tipsy "Meredith," who dresses for the brothers' investigation of her house  in a flowing white nightgown, and "Sharon," who says the spirits levitated and rotated her.  At least she wasn't tipsy. 

In Chasing Ghosts Texas Style, Brad and Barry describe their roadtrip to everyday paranormal, potholes and all. A short glossary and essential list of ghost hunting tools will get you started, but you'll just have to find--and avoid-- the potholes for yourself. This book provides a good business primer to do that.

 

Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance

I receive requests to review some interesting books now and then. Here's one: Zombie Economics: A Guide to Personal Finance.

Just when I think everything's been done and said on zombies, another variation comes along that makes me think " what a nifty idea." The book hits shelves on May 3rd.

Pay particular note to the 5 Laws (although I do fudge a bit on shopping as a hobby). No one is coming to save you. Given the ongoing congressional tit for tat mess, the authors definitely got that one right.

Sort of gives Save Your Own Ass a broader meaning, don't you think?

"Desjardins, a Capitol Hill correspondent for CNN Radio, and Emerson, a Portland radio and television broadcaster, explain that the dangers of a zombie apocalypse are equivalent to those of poor personal finance, and the skills required to survive either threat are identical:

• Finding all the weapons/ Knowing your true income
• Blocking all the windows/ Discovering where your income goes
• Storing a basement full of ammo/ Saving yourself by saving money
• Knowing when to set the house on fire/ When you should or shouldn’t declare bankruptcy

Three Stooges Career Guide Advice for Climbing the Ladder

ZC Rating 5 of 7:: Excellent

Given the staggering amount of knuckleheads in business, on Wall Street, and in politics, I'm surprised this book was so long in coming. Thank you Sam Stall for filling the void. Here are three pearls of wisdom to always follow. Just be mindful where you step.

 

 

Gathering Horror: A Completist Collector's Catalogue and Index for Warren Publishing

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

It's difficult as an adult to come up with words to describe what those magazines meant at the time to an adolescent youth in the pre-Internet years, to capture the warming glee of finding a new issue on the shelves, the urgent expectation and sense of discovery that came with turning the pages of each new issue, and the feeling that they inspired of belonging to some secret fellowship.
(David Horne, Gathering Horror)

My first impulse after reading and paging through the over 600 pages of listings and appendices was to wish I lived next to David Horne so I could ingratiate myself over, in order to roll around naked in his Warren magazine collection. Sure, I'd let him keep them bagged and boarded while I did that; I'm a collector, too, you know.

Gathering Horror: A Completist Collector's Catalogue and Index for Warren Publishing is one of those labor of love's you often hear about but seldom ever really see. The over 700 Warren-instigated magazines, and related materials, indexed with concise information, is a reference book fantasy come true for horror magazine collectors. Where McFarland's disappointing The Great Monster Magazines (by Robert Michael Cotter) whetted the appetite, Horne's reference work satiates it. It's the most inclusive and meticulously written catalog of its kind available.

Drawing on his publishing background, Horne has created a book that's as much fun paging through as it is to use simply as a reference for building a complete collection of magazine runs. Thumbnail cover shots identify issues, and content title information, along with important notes, accompany each entry. Selling and buying Warren magazines on eBay, scarcity and abundance of certain issues, and a common defects section provide a suitable and engaging introduction to this body of work, and important information to the collector.

I found the section on common defects invaluable since my knowledge of Warren publications is spotty at best. Horne's discussion of the Warren Order Form being on a magazine's last page, and the significance of this in relation to how Warren paginated their issues, points out an important potential gotcha: removal of the page from a magazine could be missed under casual scrutiny.

Horne also catalogs the Warren-related fanzines (they were blogs without the Internet, when you think of it), convention program booklets, adds a profiles and fan art index, non-comic and comic title indexes, editor index, writer index, artist index, Warren One of a Kinds listing, and foreign issues. There's even a Warren merchandise section.

The name "Captain Company" first appeared in Wildest Westerns 5, May 1961, and then in Famous Monsters 12, June 1961.

If you collect Famous Monsters of Filmland, Vampirella, Creepy, Eerie, Blazing Combat, and anything else Warrenesque, or aim to, Horne's Gathering Horror is essential as blood is to a vampire. He's printed only 300 copies at a ridiculously reasonable price of $34.95.

I wouldn't wait if I were you. You can find it under "Warren Catalog" on eBay.

Interview with David Horne on Monster Magazine World

The Art of Hammer

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Carreras was a charismatic salesman, and the only British producer to strike distribution deals with every major American studio. He was often able to do this without a script or the promise of major stars, but he rarely went into negotiations without provisional poster artwork and a title. (from the Introduction, The Art of Hammer)

 

Let's be clear: the art in Hammer Studios' movie posters is promulgated on crass commercialism and designed toward a preponderance of lurid, gamy, imagery and deplorable subject matter. Thank the lord all of this sordidness is captured in Titan Books The Art of Hammer, a necessary reference for that studio's movie poster art, which was created when posters really mattered for whetting the appetites of production backers and selling theater seats.

With no Internet viral campaigns, no chit-chatty forum quorums, no message board hype, and certainly no social networking picky-pecking, blurby wordies to sell a movie, Hammer's artists combined bold imagery, screeching colors, and pow-zam-boom verbiage to titillate the vulgar interests of movie goers, stimulate the monetary interests of distributors, and annoy everyone else enough so they took offense and complained, providing even more word of mouth promotion.

Movie poster art became a passion of mine starting around 1968, when, in a small Hawaiian theater showing The Love Bug I saw a hand-painted poster for the movie in the lobby. Now, before you wonder why anyone would do a hand-painted poster for that movie (or why I would go and see it), I'll cut you short and tell you to focus instead on the word hand-painted. Maybe they didn't have enough printed posters to go round, or maybe they couldn't afford more than a few,  but whoever did the painting knew exactly what the movie poster needs to do. That person copied the print poster, but made it more fun, more vibrant so Herbie jumped out at you as you walked past, exclaiming "you must see me in this movie!" That's when I realized how important movie poster art really was, and still can be, once you look past the lenticular novelties and static photographic ensembles posturing for your attention in the theater lobby today.

Marcus Hearn (Hammer Glamour) returns to annotate an array of horror, comedy, potboiler, and exploitation posters that scream "you must see this Hammer movie!" beginning with 1950's screen-printed The Dark Light, and continuing up to 1979's The Lady Vanishes. Not all of Hammer's movies are represented due to lost artwork, but what's here is a grand sampling of styles and artifice. Hearn points out the prevalence of victimized and terrified women in posters which began in earnest with the Gothic Horror offerings. Up until then, men and women are shown together (usually embracing), or a dramatic depiction of action from the movie comprised the composition; afterward, it's mostly women and monsters in various postures of terrified and terrorizing, hawking the movie, with American poster versions rendered more sensationally. Indeed, much of the fun in viewing these posters comes from comparing the British, American, Spanish, German, and Belgian versions for the same movie, each doctored to the acceptable (or barely acceptable) limits allowed by that country's standards.

Movie posters are arranged by decade and Hearn adds brief comments here and there explaining important changes in style and notes on the artist or artwork involved. My favorites are, of course, the mix of horror's vampires, mummies, and Frankenstein monsters. They fostered an artistic expression leading to interesting interpretations, such as The Mummy's title monster having a gaping hole in its chest through which a pursuing bobby's flashlight shone through:

"The Mummy was still in production when Peter Cushing first saw Bill Wiggins' painting. Concerned that it misrepresented the film, Cushing asked director Terence Fisher if he could add a scene where his character drove a harpoon through the mummy's body."

The influence of pop art can be seen in the 1970s, as more psychedelic colors and groovier layouts kick in, eventually followed by more photographic compositions to trim the budget. Surprisingly, I never noticed the phallic inferences Vic Fair drew into the British Vampire Circus poster until Hearn pointed them out. How that got passed through the stringent British Board of Film Classification is a wonder.

If I were pressed to find one fault in The Art of Hammer, it would lean toward a preference I have. All posters are oriented in portrait, which does make the book easier to browse through. Given its coffee table size I agree it would be a bit of a bother to swing the book from portrait to landscape orientation to view posters, but some posters that would easily fill a full page in landscape view are short-changed by presenting them in the smaller, portrait view.

Nonetheless, I recommend this as a superb horror fan gift to give or to get. It's naughty and nice, and filled with spice.

 
A courtesy copy of The Art of Hammer was provided by Titan Books for this review.

Collecting Hammer Posters

Horror Movie Freak You Are What You See

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

What goes into making a horror movie freak? A modicum of passion for the genre, for sure, and certainly an appreciative knowledge of old and new fright flix. Don Sumner brings both together in his easy-reading and highly informative Horror Movie Freak.

I'm ocasionally asked why I've never written a horror movie book: my ready answer is "the shelves are chock full of tomes both wonderful and mediocre. What more can be said?" Sumner does something wonderful by not offering more to be said, but making sure what needs to be said is concisely and clearly done. His simple premise is that if you want to be a real horror movie fan, you can't hide behind a single genre, evade a decade or two, nor shriek away from the moldy oldies. You don't need to like everything, just make sure you know what you're talking about before you start pissing on Dracula's cape or tugging Freddy's sweater. The style is brisk, light, and appetite-wetting for newbies, while reassuring and comprehensive enough for seasoned fans to appreciate as a handy reference.

The perfunctory "why we love horror movies" section is one I usually speed through (really, why do you love horror movies? is a more important discussion), but one paragraph stands out and could easily be the basis for yet another book:

There are many ingredients to an effective and enjoyable horror stew: storyline, special effects, script, and scenery, but one of the most important is the star. Not the actors and actresses in the film, but the real stars--the heroes, villains, ghosts, and monsters.

I'll go a step further and say this is the most important ingredient. Sumner's assessment points out the major problem with today's remakes and reimagines and reboots: the real stars are missing. We get cardboard standees of monsters instead of the memorable performances that were so monstrously frightening and endearing in the first place. I love horror movies not so much because of the scares but because of who is scaring me.

The who and what of horror is covered all the way from the silents, the Universal Horror Golden Age, Hammer's bloody good reign of terror, and up to the chapter titled Remake Nation. Other chapters break down the major areas of terror onscreen: aberrations of nature, aliens, foreign horror, homicidal slashers, psychotics, supernatural, vampires, zombies, and ghost stories. Each movie receives a page or two of highlight coverage, with enough posters and photos to appropriately balance the visual dance between text and eye-candy, and it's a thorough selection of cinematic creeps to fill up a fan's must-see movie list.

Anyone still looking for a good movie to watch on Halloween will find ample choices in Sumner's Ten Days to Halloween. Each one is a worthy recommendation, but I'll second Darkness Falls. How can you pass up a murdering tooth fairy swooping in when the lights go out, especially on Halloween night?

Horror Movie Freak is that rare book that will spend as much time in your hands as it does on your shelf. After you read it, you will be a walking arsenal of lethal horror movie knowledge, ready to fend off anyone dumb enough to try and knock the Fedora off of Freddy's head.

Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Saddle Up With This One Pardner

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Westerns aren't dead: though pocked with bullet holes, they'll probably live on as long as we can keep them new and interesting with near-infinite variations on their central themes. I think that's better than good. (Mike Hoffman, foreword)

I became hooked on the outre Western tale after watching Gene Autry's The Phantom Empire (1935) serial. To see cowboys, ray weapons of mass destruction, a mysterious subterranean empire's technology being sought after by unscrupulous businessmen, and Gene Autry getting a snappy song or two sung in-between the cliff-hangers--left quite an impression on my young mind back then. I didn't consider myself a greenhorn when it came to the weird western genre until Green's book proved me wrong. There's a lot more in them thar hills then I realized.

Paul Green's Encyclopedia of Weird Westerns: Supernatural and Science Fiction Elements in Novels, Pulps, Comics, Films, Television and Games is a rich vein for prospectors mining those dusty hills of the Wild Weird West. It's the kind of book I like to dog-ear and write in, and carry along with me, in my urban saddle bag, to refer to often.

Arranged in A-Z listing format, Green identifies these sub-genres: Weird Western (horror, supernatural, fantasy); Weird Menace Western (horror and supernatural themes, but concluding with a rational explanation); Science Fiction Western (future technology, aliens, alternate histories); Space Western (space opera with Western elements); Steampunk Western (set in the Old West and incorporating Victorian sci-tech); and Weird Western Romance (traditional romance involving time travel or the supernatural).

Gifts For Horror Movie Bloggers (And Movie Loving Fans, Too!)

Right off the bat I can tell you the one thing you don't want to get that horror movie blogger on your holiday shopping list: movies. Yes, that's what I said. Movies.

Sure, they seem like they would go together like bread and butter, Starsky and Hutch, and vampires and romance, but let's face it, if a horror blogger is worth his or her salt, movies are already piled high all around within easy viewing reach. The last thing any horror movie blogger needs is another movie to add to the pile!

So how about giving that special someone--otherwise known as always difficult to get gifts for--something really useful: something they will really appreciate and actually use to hone their skills; something that will even benefit their readers: books on movies.

And not just horror movies, mind you, but books on all-around movies. Books to broaden knowledge of the cinema, its history, its craft, and its always present commercial side, which impinges on the history and craft sides, sometimes to wondrous result, many times not.

Here's an essential bookshelf's worth of reading and reference any smart horror movie blogger would appreciate having in his or her critique la arsenal before letting the slinging arrows of outrageous commentary fly:

Scared Silly: Classic Horror Comedies

This very exciting news comes from Paul Castiglia about his upcoming book on Hollywood's horror-comedies. With Abbott and Costello and Olsen and Johnson included, I am sure this will be quite an entertaining read. Noted character actor, monster movie memorabilia collector and spook show reenactor Daniel Roebuck to write book's foreword. Here's the press release information:

"This Halloween at midnight,veteran writer-editor Paul Castiglia launches a blog to preview his forthcoming book, SCARED SILLY: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD HORROR-COMEDIES. The blog can be accessed at http://scaredsillybypaulcastiglia.blogspot.com.

"Horror-comedies were so popular that famous 1930s comedy teams like Laurel & Hardy and The Three Stooges were able to bring the form into the sound era, paving the way for brash 1940s comedy stars like Bob Hope and the ultimate horror-comedy players, Abbott & Costello to perfect the genre.

"Castiglia’s blog and book will offer readers a fun overview of horror-comedy films spanning the 1920s through 1966, the year Don Knotts’ “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” was released.  “In my mind, ‘The Ghost and Mr. Chicken’ was the last traditional horror-comedy, devoid of PG elements that would pepper later efforts,” said Castiglia.

"Also covered will be horror-comedy entries in famous film series including The Little Rascals and The Bowery Boys, and efforts by comedians wildly popular in their day but less well-known now like Wheeler & Woolsey, Hugh Herbert and Olsen & Johnson.  Of note to fans of oddball cinema is the inclusion of Brown & Carney, a team pre-fabricated by RKO to compete with Abbott & Costello and Mitchell & Petrillo, the latter aping Jerry Lewis so well that many viewers thought they were watching the real thing!  Like Abbott & Costello, both teams share beloved boogeyman Bela Lugosi as a co-star."

Hammer Glamour Classic Images From Hammer Films

"It's very difficult to be precise about what qualities of a girl catch my interest," said Hammer's chairman James Carreras. "A good face and figure, of course. But it's more than that; she has to have a special kind of magnetism. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it" (from the introduction to Hammer Glamour).

Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

 

I am reminded of the line Frederick Frankenstein utters in Young Frankenstein after seeing the huge door knockers on the even bigger doors of the ancestral castle: "What knockers!" The comely Inga, poised in his arms as he helps her out of the hay wagon, thinks he is referring to her ample bosom and responds, "Oh, thank you doctor!" The female stars profiled in Hammer Glamour: Classic Images From the Archive of Hammer Films also have ample bosoms; but more than that, they defined Hammer's sensual, supernatural horror mystique, an artistic and commercial blend of Gothic and gore done on a budget, which embellished male stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing's good versus evil action.  I do not believe Lee or Cushing ever had to do bikini-clad pin-up sessions, though, or look alluringly into the camera while posing on a bed of furs.

The book highlights fifty Hammer female stars, including the sultry, self-assured, Martine Beswicke (my favorite), statuesque Ursula Andress, and the sultry and statuesque Racquel Welch. Clad in her doeskin bikini, Welch, helped make One Million Years B.C. the "most commercially successful film in Hammer history, and sealed the company's new reputation for 'discovering' glamorous stars."

Butcher Knives and Body Counts Goes Green

This news just in from Vince Liaguno over at Dark Scribe Press...editor for the upcoming Butcher Knives and Body Counts non-fiction anthology filled with slasher love.

"Dark Scribe Press is pleased to announce that award-winning film director Adam Green will be contributing a special introduction to the BUTCHER KNIVES & BODY COUNTS anthology. In “Are We Sick?,” Green ponders the appeal of the genre and the undying loyalty of the slasher fan and recounts his own genre initiation that involved an older brother, some STAR WARS collateral, and the sequel to an iconic 80’s slasher."

Read more.

Deadline for submitting to Butcher Knives and Body Counts: Essays on the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film is May 31. Find out more.

Sundays With Vlad Or One Man's Quest to Find Dracula and Stop Wearing Black

ZC Rating 5 of 7: Excellent

I became the odd little kid who's in love with monsters. There's one in every neighborhood. My favorite book was The Three Little Pigs because of that wolf peeking from just outside the window of the brick house. I loaded up on books about vampires and werewolves at the school library. The grisly woodcuts of creatures loping through the medieval fields and lunching on peasants would keep me awake all night. In the morning, I'd take the books back, promise myself I would never read them again, and check them back out the very next week.
(Paul Bibeau, Sundays with Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man's Quest to Live in the World of the Undead)

 

"Please take your seats everyone, this meeting of Goths Anonymous is about to start," said a frail-looking individual in front of the room. He fidgeted with the lace on his shirt cuffs when no one paid attention to him. "We can't get started until everyone takes a seat," he implored.

"Will you please sit down," I told Zombos. He looked at me with a questioning glance as he pulled out an iPod earbud from one ear. "I said you really need to sit down. The meeting is about to start."

Zombos shut off his iPod. "I really do not know why you dragged me to this so-called meeting. I see nothing wrong with listening to Midnight Syndicate."

"You've been listening to them non-stop." I said. "And even when you aren't listening to them, you're humming Cemetery Gates or Mansion in the Mist ad nauseam. In sum, you're driving me, Zimba, your son, and Chef Machiavelli bonkers. Oh, lord, is that Paul Bibeau?"

Zombos turned around to look. "Why yes, I think it is. He is wearing that same black ensemble he used to prowl the Renfield Country club circuit for his book. My word, how does he manage to walk in those tight pants. I bet his voice has gone up a pitch or two since he put those things on. Paul! Paul! Over here!," waved Zombos.

"No! Don't call him over! I haven't reviewed his book, Sundays With Vlad: From Pennsylvania to Transylvania, One Man's Quest to Live in the World of the Undead yet. He'll be asking me about it and I won't know what to say," I pleaded, but it was too late. Paul saw Zombos and headed over to us.

"You have not reviewed his book yet? What in Hades are you waiting for, man, it has been over a year," said Zombos, folding his arms. I hate when he folds his arms like that.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered

Horror suggests physical repulsion, disgust, and that seems to me a worthless, pointless reaction for any work of entertainment to aim at; it's so easy it isn't worth doing. An eye, say, plopping all bloody into a glass dish may provoke a gasp of revulsion when it is first seen on the screen, but this is an entirely physical thing, and something one can get used to--no doubt with a certain coarsening of one's responses in the process. The second or third time something like this happens in a film, the surprise and excitement is gone, and then you come back to the old, inevitable question. What is there to support it in the way of plot and characterization, to give it some point other than providing an immediate physical shock? In other words, what is there to appeal to the spectator's imagination? --Boris Karloff interview, The Times.

I met Gordon B. Shriver at the Monster Bash in 2007, and again in 2008. He read from his one-man play on the life of Boris Karloff at Max, the Drunken Severed Head's annual party for the notables and quotables attending the annual classic horror convention. Max lets me in anyway.

Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered grew out of Shriver's fascination and admiration for the man whom many horror fans hold in high regard. Karloff's tireless and masterful acting brought life not only to the Frankenstein Monster, but to the Mummy and countless other major and minor roles, whether by using his unique mannerisms and posture, or by using his unmistakable voice,  lisping ever so eloquently, immortalized as the narration for 1966's animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Karloff became the personification of embraceable horror for a generation--and beyond, bringing his terror with a twinkling eye into everyone's living room.

While we grew to love him in movies that tickled our fright-bone, much of Karloff's acting also occurred on stage, radio and, in later years, television.Throughout his long career, even when faced with debilitating arthritis and emphysema, he continued to give every assignment his professional all. Shriver's correspondence with many of the people who worked with and knew Karloff provides a view of the man as consummate acting professional, always downplaying his stardom, and tempering his sinister onscreen persona with wit, charm, and an urbane demeanor in real life.

Leslie S. Klinger Confesses To Annotating Dracula

In regard to the curious incident of  Leslie S. Klinger's extensive background in annotating fictional works of great significance, which begin with a certain detective--

Mr. Klinger's work is an update and expansion of William S. Baring-Gould's Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a monumental feat of scholarship, published in 1967. It was Mr. Baring-Gould's edition, which Mr. Klinger received as a gift from his first wife in 1968, that initially sent him sliding down the rabbit hole of Sherlockiana. --New York Times, 12-30-04

--And culminate with his elucidation of one singular individual, of dubious notoriety, and ungodly nighttime habits--

In his first work since his best-selling The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Leslie S. Klinger returns with this spectacular, lavishly illustrated homage to Bram Stoker's Dracula. With a daring conceit, Klinger accepts Stoker's contention that the Dracula tale is based on historical fact...employing the superb literary detective skills for which he has become famous, Klinger mines this 1897 classic for nuggets that will surprise even the most die-hard Dracula fans and introduce the vampire-prince to a new generation of readers.

--This much can be said: bring it on. And he did.

Smirk, Sneer and Scream An Interview With Mark Clark

It's not that actors no longer give good performances in horror films (they still do), and it's not as if direction, editing, and special effects weren't important in the classic horror film era. But in most modern horrors, concept is more important than cast. Horror has become a director's genre more than an actor's genre. During the classic era, the genre's biggest stars were Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price and Peter Cushing. In the years since, its brightest luminaries have been Mario Bava, George Romero, Wes Craven and M. Night Shyamalan. (Mark Clark in Smirk Sneer and Scream)

 

Director Justin Channell's company acronym, IWC Films, seen on his Heretic Film's distributed Die and Let Live zombies and pizza flick, sum's up the current state of horror cinema rather well: IWC stands for Idiots With Cameras. While I admire his light touch of humor, I fear the ring of truth in those three letters is precisely why horror cinema is mostly relegated to backhanded reviews or begrudging nods of minor acceptance. Making the situation worse, it's not just the idiots holding cameras, but also the ones pretending to act in front of them. Then you have the ones writing incomplete scripts without a hint of drama, pathos or depth, and others directing with those scripts, with nil basic training, because the digital age makes it appear so gosh darn easy to do--and Aunt Edna and Uncle Joey are available Tuesday for free.

Before the digital age gave any idiot with a camera the potential to become another Hitchcock or Romero, but not the sense to learn first, shoot later, horror movies more often than not had drama, pathos, and good acting that was sometimes even great. Even though many of these films were made for a quick buck, too, actors still acted, and writers wrote complete--if not always stellar-- scripts. Directors learned their technique and approached their films seriously. Even if the script was underwhelming and the direction uninspired, you could still count on yesterday's classic horror actor to give it his (or her) stylistic all. It may not have been naturalistic acting, but it was acting that convincingly and realistically entertained. Mark Clark, in his Smirk, Sneer and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema, reminds us of this golden age.

If your looking for detailed plot synopses, look elsewhere: Clark focuses only on the memorable performances that show each actor's ability to bring the house down. And while his predilection for classic horror actors fills part one, the other two parts of his book examine mainstream actors--those thespians briefly caressing the horror genre to leave their permanent scars--and the often neglected leading ladies of fright. From Boris Karloff to Anthony Perkins, and Bette Davis to Jodie Foster, Clark lists the roles that bewitched us into becoming horror fans in the first place.

After reading his fascinating book, I invited Mark Clark to step into the closet and talk about Smirk, Sneer and Scream...