Review by Scott Lefebvre
Greetings horror fans!
I know I am among my people.
Because who but a hard-core horror fan
would read a review of a collection of reviews of horror films?
That’s right.
People like you and people like me.
We have our favorite horror genre films
and although we recognize the merits of most of the genre there are those few
that will always hold a special place in our black hearts.
“Horror 101” is a collection of essays
where devoted horror movie enthusiasts, people like you and people like me, are
given the chance to have their three pages worth of time on the soapbox to sing
the praises of their favorite horror films, but not in the manner in which
we’ve come to expect.
A little back story…
I met the editor in Montrose, Illinois, at
the Chicago Fangoria Weekend of Horrors in February of 2008.
As invariable happens when you put a bunch
of shrewd and charismatic salesmen in a room we pitched each other with our
wares in passing conversation. In all
honestly, I think that he hailed me on the second morning and asked me how the
show was going and after I told him I asked him what brought him out to the
convention and of course he mentioned his book but he didn’t hawk me. He wasn’t overbearing. He didn’t scream “BUY MY BOOK!”. Instead he told me what it was about and I
told him that it was a happy accident that he was there to sell his book and I
review books for Icons of Fright. We
agreed that I would stop by and check out his table when I got around to
getting around the vendor room.
On the Sunday, things had slowed down
enough that I finally got a chance to walk around and check things out and
found Aaron Christensen’s table. He had
a variety of books and other horror miscellanea for sale and I recognized a few
that I had read and complemented him on having several of the John McCarty
genre readers for sale.
Although I thought I had talked my way
into a free copy in exchange for a review, the editor ran his line about how
the books cost him however much they cost and although he couldn’t give one
away he’d be pleased to sell me one at a discount with the understanding that I
would follow through and review it.
Being a published author myself, I
understand all too well the bottom line and until I pull in some royalties I’m
still in hock with my publisher for the first batch of books I ordered up to
send out as thanks and for review. So I
forked over whatever I forked over and put the book in the small pile of stuff
that I picked up that day.
This is unusual for me because being who I
am and what I do, I usually get free books.
Not that I go out and ask for them but whenever I end up talking with an
author, the conversation somehow takes a detour into the part where I mention
that I review books for Icons of Fright and sometimes they give me a copy of
their book for review and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I ask and sometimes they’re sent
unsolicited and although I’m not building a bomb shelter out of books I’ve
almost got a stack of books as tall as I am that I’m not quite sure not to do
with.
Having paid for the privilege of parting
these pages I was going to be pissed if the book sucked.
Not that you’d ever know if I thought so.
If I can’t think of anything nice to say
about a book I don’t say anything at all, and thankfully that’s only happened,
like, once or twice over the past year, where books were so completely
irredeemable that I declined to provide a review. [Sorry, The Coming Evil. There’s a reason I haven’t gotten around to
writing up that review. New Age Christian
Horror. Who knew that was going to suck
on ice for christ’s sake?] So if you
see a review you know there must be some worthwhile qualities to any book that
I follow through and review.
Thankfully there are many recommendable
qualities about the book which this review addresses.
Although the cover isn’t one of them.
I’m sure that the guy or girl that created
the cover art is a nice enough person, but it’s just a bad execution of a good
idea.
This would have put it at risk of being
relegated to the bottom of the review pile
If not for a lay-over in Long Island at
the Sayonara Motel that may have been its temporary fate.
Instead I’m stuck in a motel room for the
night and I don’t watch TV and I don’t sleep and I’m hungry for something to
read and I remembered that book that I bought in Chicago and I thanked the fates
that I did.
The book took a little getting used to
because it’s different than a lot of critical books that I’ve read. And by critical I mean presenting criticism.
For the most part, books of this sort are
written by one author, presenting one critical perspective on a variety of
films sharing a common thematic quality.
Excellent examples are the aforementioned John McCarty Genre readers
such as, Psychos, Profoundly Disturbing by Joe Bob Briggs, Heroes of the
Horrors by Calvin Thomas Beck and Midnight Movies by J. Hoberman & Jonathan
Rosenbaum.
I would’ve included Chas Balun, but I
tried to read More Gore Score and just lost interest about halfway through. I recognize that his review style has
influenced almost every contemporary horror genre reviewer, but I don’t
necessarily think that’s a good thing.
Chas Balun writes well, and reading his style of reviewing is fun, but
there’s a whole lot of sizzle and not a lot of steak. This influence is exhibited where there’s a
trend towards reviews with trashy flashy language that don’t end up telling you
anything about the film or book or whatever it is that’s supposed to be getting
reviewed instead of thoughtful well-written deconstructive criticism that sings
the praises or damns the errors of its intended target. It is not the fault of the talented Mr.
Balun that he is often imitated but never duplicated but he started it, so
although the guilt lies among the hundreds of unimaginative reviewers pumping
out uninformative exclamatory reviews, I’m pointing the finger at Balun because
even though he invented the crime, at least he did it with style.
On that note…
Anthological critical works are rare.
And since there are less, I’ve read few
but the ones I had read were really hit or miss.
The horror reader, titled “The Horror
Reader” by Ken Gelder, we were instructed to purchase for the horror genre film
class I took in college was excellent and execrable in quick succession.
The essays addressing “wound culture”, the
“rise of the repressed” and horror as expressive of subversive sentiment, and
the semi-feminist essay addressing the “male gaze” in horror films were
well-written and though-provoking if a little flawed.
But the fifteen page dissertation on
homoerotic imagery in “Chinese Ghost Story” and the ten page essay on the
concept of “vagina dentata” were just unendurable. A vagina with teeth. I get it.
I got it in the first half of the first page. I didn’t think the concept deserved a ten
page essay.
Thankfully Horror 101 gracefully avoids
the faults of its predecessors.
From the back cover blurb: “320 Pages with
122 photos from 110 films covered in 101 essays by 78 fans from 12 different
countries.” And as much as that is a
mouthful to say it is an eyeful to read but as inevitably uneven as an
anthology collecting from such a diverse and disparate pool of contributors
must be, the editor does an excellent job of reigning in reviewers’ latent
tendency to go on overlong, having fallen in love with the sound of their own
critical voice. Either that or the
editor was miraculously fortunate that each contributor provided approximately
three pages of content per segment.
As I said, uneven, but much less so than
most. The editor was either
discriminating or fortunate to have assembled an excellent collection of
reviews of and brief discussions of 110 excellent horror genre films.
Of course with any collection of this kind
there’s going to be some quibbling about significant omissions.
Of course I thought that Dario Argento’s Opera should be on any Hot 100 Horror Hits list and I’m a secret (well, it
was a secret) fan of Larry Drake’s performance in Dark Night of the
Scarecrow. But I think that in our
heart of hearts such nit-picking is part of the fun of participating as an
active reader in this sort of anthology.
If we all agreed one-hundred percent on everything then I think things
would get a bit stagnant, if not incestuous, after a while.
That being said, I think this is a more
solid representative selection than Bravo’s showcase “100 Scariest Moments in
Horror” which was definitely spotty at times.
That’s the other use that this book serves
and the beauty of anthologies of this type.
For the person first realizing that
they’re becoming an enthusiast of horror films this book is an excellent
resource. It’s an even more excellent
resource for their friend the horror aficionado who, perhaps feeling pestered
by the persistent pleas of “Tell me some more good horror movies to watch!” can
just hand a copy of ‘Horror 101’ to their caro-syrup-blood-thirsty friend and
say, “This is yours, to borrow, go out and find and watch these hundred and ten
films and then I’ll make some more personal recommendations that weren’t
mentioned in this book.” Because I’d
definitely recommend, Wild Zero, and Audition, and Ichi The Killer, and In My Skin, and Ginger Snaps and The Descent, and the August Underground
trilogy… but you get the point.
For the horror film fan that has worked
his way through the “Fridays and the Freddys” and the “Saw” and “Texas Chain Saw”
movies and the spotty “Halloween” and “Hellraiser” franchises, this gives them
a golden opportunity to either expand their horizons or to catch up on the
hundred years of horror that has happened before most of us were even born. I envy you the joy of discovery.
And for those of us that thought we’ve
seen it all the book is a useful review of the material and a checklist of
“Must See Movies”.
Of the hundred and ten films addressed in
this anthology there were eighteen that I hadn’t seen and if nothing else it
revealed my admittedly snobbish preference for the expressionistic black and
white Universal Monster movies over the lurid Technicolor Hammer Horror
follow-ups. But I guess it’s time to
bite the (silver) bullet and subject myself to twenty hours of Peter Cushing
and Christopher Lee taking turns chewing up the shoddy reproduction period
scenery and blasting it out at the audience, slivers and all. Not that Karloff and Lugosi didn’t lay the
melodrama on a bit thick at times.
In closing, perhaps this might make me
sound older and more bitter than I actually am, but you’re lucky to have a book
like this available to you. When I was
a kid, books of this kind were few and far between and almost impossible to
find in those days before inter-library loans.
Back when the “internet” was just a hard-wired phone line for military
installations to talk back and forth after World War III when the bombs had
been dropped and the bunkers were locked.
I still remember the day I found a copy of John McCarty’s Psychos at a
dollar store and I begged my mom to buy it for me and I read that book from cover
to cover until the glue in the spine cracked and the pages started falling
out. And then I just stapled and taped
the pages back in and read it some more.
To this day I still haven’t watched every movie mentioned in that book,
but not for lack of trying. Were it not
for that book it may have taken me a couple extra years to come across
Polanski’s ‘Repulsion’ or the bizarrely intense horse-fetish psychodrama Equus with Richard Burton and Peter Firth taking turns trying to act each
other off the screen.
Should you buy this book? Only if you fondly remember the genre
anthologies of John McCarty, or if you enjoyed Profoundly Disturbing by Joe
Bob Briggs, or if you watched Bravo’s ‘Hundred Scariest Moments’ and felt a
little cheesed off that some of your favorites had been left off the list, to
make room for some films that obviously had no business on the list, or if you
kind of think that you might be addicted to horror films and suddenly you’ve
become the resident expert of macabre movies in your circle of friends, family
and acquaintances.
So, in short, yes, you should buy this
book.
I did and I’m glad that I did, although
it’s probably going to go into the Josh Gravel genre film reference library
where all of my genre film reference books inevitable find their final home.
Although I personally think that the girl
that panned George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead ought to
have her fucking head examined. Putting
forth three paragraphs of Wikipedia facts about the movies, then going on for
two pages about how you didn’t like them when you saw them when you were a
teenager but now you recognize them as being important but flawed, damning with
faint praise. Maybe you’d better go
back to the drawing board with this one, sister. “Bad acting: I can’t find one good actor in
either movie…”. Yeah? Really?
Ever heard of a guy named Richard Liberty?
In the words of George Romero, from the
mouth of Joe Pilato, “All you’ve given us is a mouthful of Greek salad!”
About the Reviewer:
About the Reviewer:
Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to
write about.
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
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