Tag: horror

  • On a Night in November…
    Shelley’s “Hideous Progeny” Comes Alive

    “It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils.” So begins the creation scene in the book that The Guardian calls one of the top 10 novels of all time. And this November, that scene and more will come alive as Prime Stage Theatre premieres the first production…

  • A Child and a Monster go to the Lake, or …
    “What shall we throw in now?”

    Set in central Spain shortly after the Spanish revolution, Victor Erice’s film The Spirit of the Beehive opens with the children of a rural village watching James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931). Two of the children, sisters Ana and Isabelle, watch wide-eyed as the monster encounters a young girl by a mountain lake. It’s the same scene you’ll…

  • Today at Confluence:
    Where To Next? Trends in Science Fiction

    Writing horror in the days of covid is a bit like living in a science fiction novel. Not the Michael Crichton variety, where things pretty much go back to normal after humankind deals with the inciting incident, but the Richard Matheson kind (think I am Legend) where things change and those of us who get…

  • Mystery Theatre Exclusive:
    Signed copies of Nightmares and Visions

    Gauntlet Press is now shipping the numbered edition of the first English-language release of Nightmares, an anthology in which I rejoin three of my collaborators from the feature film Nightmare Cinema (2019). The stories featured in the book are: “As You Sleep” by Mexico’s bestselling author Sandra Becerill, whose most recent books include La Soledad…

  • A Trap Full of Monsters:
    The Return of Prime Stage Mystery Theatre

    “It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.” The above advice comes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes and the father of modern detective fiction. And it will be good…

  • New From Borderlands Press:
    Past Masters of Horror and Dark Fantasy

    Scholars, critics, and even psychologists have long touted the therapeutic benefits of vicarious horror. See, for example Why Do We Like Watching Scary Films? (from Psychology Today) or my previous post Horror Films are Good for You. And of course, there were the ancient Greeks, who some 7,000 years ago recognized the importance of purging…