The Disquieting Guest — The Sublime Terror of Kaiju
In 1985, I had the chance to see Godzilla on the big screen for the first time since that treasured day in the mid-70s, when my father took me to a matinee of Godzilla vs. the Thing (aka Mothra vs. Godzilla, 1964). On this occasion, the film was Godzilla 1985 (aka The Return of Godzilla, 1984). Like the 1954 original, it had been re-edited by its American distributor, with Raymond Burr shoehorned in. It was also dubbed. I didn’t care. It was Godzilla. When a couple of kids (about eight years old, I’m guessing) called out “Hi, Godzilla!” when he appeared, I barely restrained myself from doing the same. But there was another voice in that theatre. In the row ahead of me, a couple sat with their daughter. She was young enough (four? five?) that it’s possible this was her first movie. Twice during the film, I heard a small voice emerge from the seat in front of me with a quavering, “This scares me.” The first time was early in the film, when a corpse is found on a derelict ship. The second time was when Godzilla’s massive foot comes down on a fleeing crowd.
My Superpower: Kyle Burnett
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Kyle Burnett to talk about how the power of Cinematic Superimposition relates to Big Driver. ————————————————– Origin stories for most superheroes involve tragedy of one type or another. My story is no different. My super power is called Cinematic Superimposition. What this does is allow me to see and hear everything in terms of cinematic production value. Growing up, I experienced trauma of both the emotional and physical variety. When I was four years old, I watched my three year old brother fall into a river and drown in front of me. I helplessly watched my father deteriorate from Huntington’s Chorea before finally passing when I was seventeen. In a single year, I cremated my step father, my sister, and another of my little brothers. It happened to be the same year my grandfather passed, but I wasn’t involved in his cremation.
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
