Luke and I were supposed to talk for 30 minutes or so about an article he recently read by a younger film critic. The critic was complaining about how modern horror films like The Terrifier were about gore and gore alone where classic horror films like Saw focused primarily on the social criticism first and gore second. Luke and I had a similar conversation in 2008 where we discussed David Edelstein’s New York Magazine discussing “torture porn” and it was interesting to see a younger critic praising the films Edelstein critiqued while using Edelsteinian criticisms of the newer films.
We did talk about that them a little bit, but we wandered away from it quickly to discuss the the meaning of horror films in general and how they connect with us, the Netflix Romantic Comedy Cinematic Universe and The Wrong Paris which is the most recent entry in that series, the need for Substack to promote “Magazines” rather than just individual columnists, and a host of other topics. It’s a great chat and I hope you’ll listen and join in with your own thoughts.
I’m including a couple of links and embedded videos below that cover some of what we talked about.
Luke recently received his Art the Clown “Ben Cooper Costume” action figure from NECA.
I talked about the 1979 film Prophecy which is one of my favorite horror films, even if the location scouting was terrible. I saw it as a kid on HBO and I think it’s available there right now for your viewing pleasure.
After seeing the hand come from behind the curtain in The Legacy, another 70s horror movie, when I was a kid in the 80s, I was unable to walk by shower curtains without getting a jolt of fear.
We discussed the excellent found footage horror film Troll Hunter and whether it was appropriate for me to have it on while my 4-5 year old daughters were playing with Legos in front of the TV.
I opened up my copy of H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror to quote from his essay “Supernatural Horror and Literature.”
