Movie and Book Monsters, Oh My!
By Christine Verstraete
What is so alluring about being scared?
I don't mean real life scared, but monster movie or scary book scared?
You sit and read Stephen King or Dean Koontz, holding your breath, or you peek around your hands, afraid to look at the screen, but you do. You can't help it. You have to.
What makes those movies so great, I think, is that they present terror in its simplest form, preying on your senses without the Technicolor bloodbaths of today's movies. Sometimes simpler can better.
Of course, to be truly scared today, the author and filmmaker must take fear to another level. It's the absolute horror of what will come next in the Saw movies;
It means waiting for that chainsaw revving up and the absolute horror of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
While I love watching zombie movies and reading about them, when it comes to super-scary, I'll pick Freddy Krueger as the "monster" who scares me the most. Maybe because he's a person and he has this horrifying ability to show up anywhere, anytime, knowing you cannot escape.
That is scary. Thank goodness, it's only a movie.
Right?
Wait.... did-did you hear... something?
ARGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!
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THIS JUST IN!!! NEW ZOMBIE BOOK NEWS!
The perfect tie-in. Speaking of horror films, co-blogger Pembroke Sinclair (writing as Jessica Robinson) has just released her new nonfiction book, Undead Obsessed: Finding Meaning in Zombies
About the book: Horror films are a great lens to examine concerns society has about modern science. Let’s face it, when it comes to horror movies, science has a bad reputation. Blind ambition, experimental serums, and genetic experiments are often blamed for the giant monster terrorizing the city or the reason aliens are taking human prisoners or the cause of the dead rising from the grave to consume living flesh.
Using film, literature, and interviews with experts, Robinson examines how zombies portray real-world fears such as epidemics, mind control, what may or may not exist in space, the repercussions of playing God, and the science behind the fears. Robinson's goal is to explore how zombies become a metaphor for our fears of science and what could happen if science gets out of hand.
(Paperback and coming to kindle).
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I hope you enjoyed visiting our blog and Coffin Hopping with us as much as we enjoyed planning it. Do come back as we schedule more posts later talking about zombies, other creatures of the night and whatever weird stuff strikes our fancy. Please subscribe and follow us. Thanks for stopping by!
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Happy Halloween!
ReplyDeleteI do find a special charm on old scary movies. Most are cheesy but usually they have good stories that at the time were really pushing the limits. My favourites are Vincent Price's Tales of Terror or Twice-Told Tales. And right now I'm about to watch Romero's Night of the Living Dead. What can be better?!
ReplyDeleteHappy Halloween!
Happy Halloween!
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