194. Adam Christopher (a.k.a. the Cosmic Terror): Hang Wire (2013)(An Interview)
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode194InterviewWAdamChristopher/SandF%20–%20Episode%20194%20–%20Interview%20w%20Adam%20Christopher.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSSerial killers, cosmic horrors, and immortals, oh my! Adam Christopher joins Paul and Shaun to discuss his new novel, Hang Wire. We discuss the nature of horror in his work, gods and immortals, how real life is stranger than fiction, and so much more. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 194 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Adam’s Website Adam’s Twitter Adam’s Books You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible. Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks! Thanks for listening. See you next week.
The Disquieting Guest — Manuscript Found in VHS Player
So I watched V/H/S 2 tonight. I had passed on the original, but heard that the follow-up was a distinct improvement. It was something of a mixed bag, though “Save Haven,” the segment directed by Gareth (The Raid- Redemption) Evans, was pretty effective. The film is yet another found-footage exercise, and while it finds some pretty ingenious ways of using the format (I particularly liked the dog-mounted camera), I did find myself wondering if this was really the most effective way of telling these stories. And so I present a few ramblings on found-footage horror, hoping for at least semi-coherence.
A (World) SFF Film Odyssey: Mutant Girls Squad (2010) and Anime’s Excesses
Warning: there are some graphic images in this post. NSFW. Not too long ago, I set myself the goal of viewing every SF/F film released in 2010. It figures that the first non-American film I decided to view would be one of the most ridiculous, violent, and bizarre films I have seen in a while. After being bullied by her classmates, high school student Rin (Yumi Sugimoto) returns home to discover that her father is actually a humanoid mutant known as a HILKO (or hiruko — the subtitles use HILKO, but descriptions of the film use “hiruko,” so I’m not sure which one is correct). But before she can take in this surprising news and its implications for herself, she and her parents are attacked by an anti-HILKO military unit. What follows is an all out bloodbath as Rin tries to escape not only the military, but the blood-thirst of her home town. Later, she is picked up by other HILKO members and trained and indoctrinated into a violent counter-revolutionary force run by Kisaragi (Tak Sakaguchi), who believes his pack of teen girl HILKOs are the perfect fighting force for making Japan a human-free zone.
The Disquieting Guest — Some Notes on Gore
A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a brief Twitter conversation with Teresa Frohock and Fred Kiesche that touched on the virtues of the suggested versus the explicit in the creation of terror. If memory serves (and my apologies if it does not), Robert Wise’s The Haunting (the 1963 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House) was invoked. That film is, without a doubt, a powerful argument for the virtues of subtlety. So is the CGI-laden 1999 version, which proves just how good Wise’s approach (faithful to Jackson) was by doing the precise opposite and failing in spectacular (if entertaining) fashion. That being said, I would like to mount a bit of a defence of explicitness here. More particularly, I would like to say a few words about the value of gore. Back around the end of the 80s, and the start of the 90s, there was a sometimes-heated debate on this subject. We had “quiet” versus “loud” horror, and this was when the term “splatterpunk” had its greatest currency. While the debates were interesting, the
The Masks the Monsters Left Behind by Romeo Kennedy (Guest Post)
So a few months ago, I was chatting with Mr. Annandale on twitter about iconic horror characters in movies — something that myself and my wife have discussed many a time. Characters such as Frankenstein’s monster, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, and Justin Bieber … OK, maybe not Bieber, but many others.* These iconic characters have been prevalent in the horror genre for many years, and with remakes/reboots over the years, these icons will always have their place within the genre, and quite frankly, deservedly so. But where are the iconic characters of horror today? There have been some fantastic horror films released over the last few years (and some not so good). Mostly, the films involve the classic Haunted House story, be it from a source of the supernatural or from a deranged serial killer, etc. Of course there is nothing wrong with that, as far as I’m
The Disquieting Guest — RIP Mike Vraney
On January 2, Mike Vraney, the founder of Something Weird Video, passed away. You can read his obituary here. I would like to offer my condolences to his family and his friends and to comment briefly on the importance of his archival work. Because though Something Weird is, of course, a business, it is one with a mission, and Vraney has been responsible for both the preservation and the dissemination of films and voices that would otherwise be no more than entries in film histories, or forgotten entirely. Something Weird is essentially the Criterion of Grindhouse, relentlessly seeking out and preserving the B and exploitation film. Its mandate goes far beyond horror — the nudie cutie, the roughie, and the rest of the carnival sideshow of cinematic sleaze are at play here. And, sticking to the focus of this column, this is as it should be. Horror is the disquieting guest of the fantastic not just because of the darkness of the tales or the unpleasant emotions it seeks to create, but also because it is disreputable, and always has been. From the Gothic onward, horror has been regarded with suspicion,
