“So Charlaine Harris’ last Southern Vampires book, Dead Ever After, is out May 7. Except it’s kind of out now, which is why the interwebs are exploding. Some random asshat got their claws on an early copy, which is sneaky enough, but then posted the ending online, which is borderline sociopathic.” Mary Janice Davidson has [...]
At The Village Voice, Simon Abrams writes about The Walking Dead and its female characters.
The first thing you have to understand is this: I hate zombies. Truly, completely HATE them. Mine is a complex hatred, operating on more than one level. At the core I am, as previously stated, a huge chicken. Zombies, for their part, are one of horror’s basic building blocks. They’re practically terror ground zero. [...]
Emma Vossen examines Twilight hate and anti-fans, writing: “People have become eager anti-fans of the series, creating an active subculture that manifests in hateful dialogue and value judgements on a seemingly arbitrary slice of a very large pop culture pie.”
Scientists make a feature film about radiation zombies and film it at CERN. It’s educational and you can watch it here.
Read and listen to harrowing accounts of teens besieged by zombies in Tullamore, New South Wales. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation covered the event. and interviewed Tullamore Central School’s principal. Teens recorded their experiences as did Parkes High School’s librarian, ABC correspondent Kia Handley and zombie outbreak mastermind Matt Finch.
The discovery of a skeleton found with metal spikes through its shoulders, heart and ankles, dating from 550-700AD and buried in the ancient minster town of Southwell, Notts, is detailed in a new report.”More at The Telegraph. (via Disinformation)
B-Sol from Vault of Horror and Miguel from Monster Island Resort team up to discuss the Universal Studios monsters. First up, Frankenstein. (If you feel the urge to write us to explain that “actually, the creator is Frankenstein, please see this article. Thanks).
I’ve missed the spooky month of October by one day, and probably rotted my brain on too much Rifftrax. In lieu of coherent thoughts, here is a compilation of recent observations.
BBC Radio 4 presents dramatizations of Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as extras including discussions of the difficulty of performing Frankenstein’s Creature, Vitalism, and who Stoker might’ve based his Count on. Click through to The Gothic Imagination. (via @booksadventures)
The Smithsonian Magazine investigates the vampires and vampire panics of 18th and 19th Century New England. “In Manchester, hundreds of people flocked to a 1793 heart-burning ceremony at a blacksmith’s forge: ‘Timothy Mead officiated at the altar in the sacrifice to the Demon Vampire who it was believed was still sucking the blood of the [...]
The specter of Victor Frankenstein’s creature has been haunting me, confronting me with the horror if his creation and inherent in his being. He stalks me, in his way, as surely as he stalked Victor. Perhaps he’s just been curiously peering at me, as the creature watched humans in Mary Shelley’s novel, emulating our virtues [...]
Soldier of Cinema Rob Mitchell talks to Mike Lane about editing zombie death for the Nuit Blanche installation, “101 Zombie Kills / Cent Une Tueries De Zombies.”
Actor Herbert Lom has died. The Guardian, The New York Times and the BBC all have obituaries. Lom is probably most famous as Inspector Dreyfus in The Pink Panther films, but he also starred in many other films including, Night And The City, The Seventh Veil, Spartacus, The Phantom of the Opera and Count Dracula. [...]
Possibly the world’s first old dark house movie, The Haunted House (1908) by Segundo de Chomón and the first vampire/Satanic castle movie, Le Manoir du Diable (1896) by Georges Méliès. (Thanks, Keith and Teleport City!)
“The ‘Ramsay Brothers,’ as they are called, have in these films, and in India’s first horror show on television, featured ghosts, ghouls, monsters, zombies, witches, vampires and every conceivable version of things that go bump in the night. Mostly, they’ve been the first to do so.” More on the Ramsay Brothers and Hindi film horror [...]
Summer’s come early this year, with the hum of air conditioners and fans in the air and the grass peacefully brown beneath my feet, the fireflies rising into the trees and all around the internet, Summer Top Ten lists are in bloom, from the Top Ten YA Summer Reads to the Top Ten Summer Eggplant Recipes [...]
Sometimes life is uncooperative. The consequences extend from our highest functions to the lowest corners of the cultural gutter. Here, friends, is the result of my non-compliant life situation: a list of things that make me think of other things, loosely organized around the theme of absurd horror-comedies! I’ll start with Tucker and Dale vs. [...]
Spectactularoptical interviews the gentlemen of the Canadian genre film making collective, Astron-6, and includes a retrospective–with video!
Actor Jonathan Frid has died. He was best known as Barnabas Collins in the Gothic daytime soap opera, Dark Shadows. The New York Times has an obituary. And here is an interview with Frid on The Merv Griffin Show. Frid discusses playing Barnabas.
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