On The Genre of Horror

[JohnTrent]

A thread about horror might yield an interesting discussion. This could either take the form of film or literature.

This is not mentioned often, but of all the popularized genres common to media, horror appears to be the one that attracts the most reactionary voices (as well as diametrically opposite ones, too; this could be a topic of later discussion). We need not restrict ourselves to Lovecraft for an example, because a multitude of themes present in horror can be considered reactionary: the necessity of strength against fellow men or otherworldly creatures, an implicit rejection of weakness, and a way of rendering corruption disagreeable to the audience. The figure that invokes a feeling of horror is irregular in some way, outside the bounds of good society, and one cannot help but desire its end. Another characteristic that sometimes appears in the slasher movie is a moral underpinning: even if unintentional, promiscuity and immoral actions are met with death, while the more chaste characters have better chances of survival. The lackluster horror of today, what I've coined as "trauma horror" [some feature films by A24 are a prime example of this], still contains these characteristics, but they merely reverse the way they are applied: instead of an outsider or a monstrous entity being the root of the issue, it is someone internal to society, such as a White man. All other details follow from this reversal, but the heart of it still exists, hence why such films are considered "subversive" — they do not innovate on the formula, they only switch the roles.

Feel free to discuss any books or films related to the matter, or perhaps discuss general observations about horror itself in our present culture.

[anthony]

A thread discussing horror might yield an interesting discussion. This could either take the form of film or literature.

This is not mentioned often, but of all the popularized genres common to media, horror appears to be the one that attracts the most reactionary voices (as well as diametrically opposite ones, too; this could be a topic of later discussion).

I think the fact it runs both ways is proof that this is more complex than "horror is reactionary". I think what's actually going on is that horror is very lively and creates a lot of freedom and opportunity for artists, so you get extremes of all kinds. Things are actually said in Horror because you don't have to get so caught on things people actually say. People die, actions have cosmic weight and consequences. There shouldn't be ideological weight to such things, and it can and does go both ways.

But if it all feels a bit rightward that also makes a kind of sense. Certain strains of libtardism are basically anti-life and anti-movement, action, and even existence to the point where anything happening feels like a spiritual revolt against the way things are supposed to be in are democracy. I have to make a point of the OP's choice of words here now. Arguably this tendency is the most reactionary voice possible in art. Is reactionary art art that hates libtards are art which hates progress and wants to live in the past? I think it makes more sense to call boring filmed plays in which people talk about environmental law "reactionary".

I'm stepping off now (to watch a movie) but want to return to this subject. This half-post here is to bump this thread and make me feel obliged to come back.

[GraphWalkWithMe]

Horror necessarily has to be "Reactionary" in feeling, and often ends up "Rightist" in tone because the genre is predicated on there emerging a present force that shouldn't be present. The protagonist/in-group has to eliminate any potential contact with an outside force because it threatens their continued existence. In something like Midsommar, the outsiders are the Germanic volk the campers need to escape custody of to guarantee survival. In Invasion of the Body Snatchers, it's the invading alien force that needs to be eliminated for the guarantee of human life as was before.

I imagine the former film is basically "Left" under most current readings, if at least because of contemp. political climate, while the latter can easily be read as "Right". One difference between the two is that Midsommar's protags enter the villains' territory willingly, while Invasion's are unwittingly and unwillingly met with the sudden appearance of an alien parasite. A shared similarity between them is that the protagonists suddenly find themselves threatened by an outside hostile force. Either way, the characters need to either escape the presence of or actively exterminate this force, to "return to what it was like before" (React).

The key difference here might be that "Left Horror" is utterly passive in its characters' motivations and actions, while "Right Horrors'" characters are opposite. Some of Alien's crew at least dissented in voice from Command's orders to land on the planet, and actively hunted to kill Xenomorph threats when emergent. I don't recall any point in Midsommar where a member of protag-team expressed anything other than a desire to leave at some point or another.

[Adamant]

The double meanings of the word reactionary may obfuscate the discussion here because what Anthony refers to as reactionary connotes looking backwards and putting up impotent resistance, which is a negative inflection of the term, whereas the positive inflection of reactionary as resisting a hostile invader is the more commonly understood meaning. As a genre, Horror does lean towards the latter but one can envision horror that leans left, though we would recognize it as dystopia, a genre much more prone to overwrought symbolism and hamfisted messages.
Then again the fear of tyranny certainly isn't left leaning either, and particularly anarcho-tyranny presents a very good opportunity to explore horror, which was recently done in Beau is Afraid, an A24 movie by Midsommar director Sri Aster with some problems but a strong opening basically about the fears of living in a crime infested big city.

In any case, this debate about whether the genre is reactionary or not is largely centered on the protagonist of horror movies, insofar as he must react to a threat rather than a regular call to adventure where he shows some initiative. However I think it would be more interesting to discuss how unique it is that Horror is a genre with a central goal of producing a particular emotional affect, obviously, Fear. No other genre really confines (or refines) itself this way, which allows for a discussion of how the best horror movies are an exercise in discipline and experimentation on what makes people scared. Fear also requires a degree of innovation especially as tastes change and people become desensitised to certain elements like gore or jump scares. Failure to deliver these innovations and ease of imitating them through cheap jump scares or buckets of blood are certainly what give horror the great variance in quality.

Meanwhile, horror at its best perhaps can be found in the condensed scares of David Lynch, often with at least one scene in each of his movies demonstrating the principles of horror in a remarkably short time. Its often been said that the Mulholland Drive scene behind the Winky's restaurant is perfect because the jump scare is described in detail by the character as a kind of premonition and so the audience should be prepared for it, yet the jump scare is still effective, because it breaks the built up tension.
Or another recent highlight for me was House, the Japanese movie that may not be able to scare modern people any longer, but the combination of otherworldly imagery like a decapitated head speaking cheerfully with no background music along with playful use of special effects and color brings to life an atmosphere I described as "the feeling you have as a kid who is genuinely scared of monsters under the bed". This might be described as unnerving rather than aiming to be frightening, and this is what A24 movies often fail at, with some examples of success like the ending of Hereditary.

[JohnTrent]

In my original post, the word choice "reactionary" was incidental — it was for a lack of a better term — but it has resulted in enough fruitful discussion that I'll join in. As for Anthony's statement about an anti-life reactionary horror, the best example for this can be found in Thomas Ligotti. This is perhaps the most appropriate because Ligotti does describe himself as anti-life in an interview (I believe after the publication of The Conspiracy Against the Human Race:

"These days I don’t mind being called a nihilist, because what people usually mean by this word is someone who is anti-life, and that definition fits me just fine, at least in principle. In practical terms, I have all kinds of values that are not in accord with nihilism.For example, I politically self-identify as a socialist. I want everyone to be as comfortable as they can be while they’re waiting to die. Unfortunately, the major part of Western civilization consists of capitalists, whom I regard as unadulterated savages. As long as we have to live in this world, what could be more sensible than to want yourself and others to suffer as little as possible?

So this personal sensibility can be contrasted with the horror writer who feels deep internal revulsion, whether that be from a "hideous cult of nocturnal worshipers" or from "coppery Indians whose strange, saturnine visages and violent customs hinted strongly at traces of infernal origin" (both quotes from H.P. Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature, the former in reference to the conceit of witches and Satan-worship). I do not want to dismiss the factor of cosmic malevolence/supernaturalism, as it is one of the factors that makes horror function best, but the groups mentioned above can sufficiently produce a terrified mind. Even in movies like Rosemary's Baby, the WASPs that appear most threatening are simply branded with that Satanic character familiar to European minds, and those films like The Hills Have Eyes or Texas Chainsaw Massacre remind us of an older force in the American terrain, something savage at heart that we must combat lest we succumb to it. Even now, S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk reprises our fear of innate savagery. The world-fear that the author feels can be exhibited through such vessels, and such vessels exist in horror for the sake of unearthing our primal feeling. I do not know how the anti-life horror writer feels about such a phenomenon (of specific historical groups that excite the feelings of dread), but I would imagine it is transposed to regular social categories (as I said in the first post, White people) or extended to all existence.
The cosmic role does not involve itself with ideological circumstances, but the reader/viewer of horror feels a cosmic weight within the prosaic reality. Even the suburb environment can invoke unnerved reactions, simply upon viewing "liminal spaces". The foreign or dead language is imbued with a mystical connotation that may threaten one's life. The outsider threatens to render reality alien to us.
I have more to say about the cosmic element, but because I am tired, I will leave it off here.

[kythustra]

The double meanings of the word reactionary may obfuscate the discussion here because what Anthony refers to as reactionary connotes looking backwards and putting up impotent resistance, which is a negative inflection of the term, whereas the positive inflection of reactionary as resisting a hostile invader is the more commonly understood meaning. As a genre, Horror does lean towards the latter but one can envision horror that leans left, though we would recognize it as dystopia, a genre much more prone to overwrought symbolism and hamfisted messages.
Then again the fear of tyranny certainly isn't left leaning either, and particularly anarcho-tyranny presents a very good opportunity to explore horror, which was recently done in Beau is Afraid, an A24 movie by Midsommar director Sri Aster with some problems but a strong opening basically about the fears of living in a crime infested big city.

In any case, this debate about whether the genre is reactionary or not is largely centered on the protagonist of horror movies, insofar as he must react to a threat rather than a regular call to adventure where he shows some initiative. However I think it would be more interesting to discuss how unique it is that Horror is a genre with a central goal of producing a particular emotional affect, obviously, Fear. No other genre really confines (or refines) itself this way, which allows for a discussion of how the best horror movies are an exercise in discipline and experimentation on what makes people scared. Fear also requires a degree of innovation especially as tastes change and people become desensitised to certain elements like gore or jump scares. Failure to deliver these innovations and ease of imitating them through cheap jump scares or buckets of blood are certainly what give horror the great variance in quality.

Meanwhile, horror at its best perhaps can be found in the condensed scares of David Lynch, often with at least one scene in each of his movies demonstrating the principles of horror in a remarkably short time. Its often been said that the Mulholland Drive scene behind the Winky's restaurant is perfect because the jump scare is described in detail by the character as a kind of premonition and so the audience should be prepared for it, yet the jump scare is still effective, because it breaks the built up tension.
Or another recent highlight for me was House, the Japanese movie that may not be able to scare modern people any longer, but the combination of otherworldly imagery like a decapitated head speaking cheerfully with no background music along with playful use of special effects and color brings to life an atmosphere I described as "the feeling you have as a kid who is genuinely scared of monsters under the bed". This might be described as unnerving rather than aiming to be frightening, and this is what A24 movies often fail at, with some examples of success like the ending of Hereditary.

Beau is afraid was great. Asks the question "What if everyone was an insane retard, and you were an effete jew incapable of asserting himself?" There's an alternate reality sequence (fiddler on the roof esque self insert) where Beau dreams that he *is* capable of action, but only in opposition to a *concrete* evil rather than anarchic. His victim based morality is functional only in this context, because it allows him to express justified and timid vengeance.

The whole thing oozes jewish psychology, but it's so honest that you couldn't leave without becoming more reactionary.

[JohnTrent]

Beau is afraid was great. Asks the question "What if everyone was an insane retard, and you were an effete jew incapable of asserting himself?" There's an alternate reality sequence (fiddler on the roof esque self insert) where Beau dreams that he *is* capable of action, but only in opposition to a *concrete* evil rather than anarchic. His victim based morality is functional only in this context, because it allows him to express justified and timid vengeance.

The whole thing oozes jewish psychology...

That it does. One humorous detail I found out after watching Barton Fink was that any analogue to Kafka was unintentional, something along the lines of "we read a story or two of his in college but never really thought about it afterwards, any connection to his work is coincidental". Of course, Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York was also inspired by Barton Fink, and both share that same unheimlich kind of unease about the world. Beau is Afraid sounds like yet another depiction of the same problem, from what's been said.

While we're on the subject of Ari Aster, his work has never appealed to me too much. Some of these characteristics are reflective of that "trauma-horror" phrase I used earlier, and his best film Hereditary is concerned with the family melodrama aspect of it. There is a great insistence of this in an earlier short film of his, called The Strange Things About the Johnsons (set-up is a 'groid family that is revealed to have sexual abuse issues). The family melodrama angle is unique to the Redditor, but this is a formula from a set of film studies/film school courses. The reason why I know this is because the short film has a distinct Freudian aspect to it vis-a-vis the primal father, and the standard analysis in film studies for melodrama frequently involves some connection to Freudian psychology: a hidden hysteria, some part of the family being repressed, and the eruption of conflict in the comforting territory of a private home. This is territory that can be experimented with well in the case of some David Lynch films, but it can be exhausted quite easily, which is why Lynch's own visual gifts are able to transcend it. The Millennial horror fan is not too aware of these matters however (this is OK, imo; being aware of standard film interpretations can erode you after awhile), that horror fan only appreciates the subverted family aspect because it is one formula replacing another. It is "fresh air". The occult mystique around Hereditary does save it from falling into mediocre territory, though, and for that I can't say I dislike it.
The insistence of a thriving horror film industry has its power in certain decades, but what authentic power it has today is debatable. This is a particular point among Millennials where they had originally made YouTube videos about how "Horror SUCKS Now! Here's Ten Reasons Why", but the arrival of the A24 company has transformed this belief into a diametrically opposite one: "We Are In A Golden Age Of Horror". The directors who are in mind when this newer phrase is said can be competent, and can very well be discarded in future decades too. One theory that has been lurking around in my head is that this sudden overcorrection of public opinion is due to the intensity of viral marketing. Some might truly believe these recent A24 films are the greatest of the genre, but is it as organic as one might think? I think not.

[JohnTrent]

I promise to discuss certain works in the genre that I like, but for now I will recount a recent finding.
There was a book published in 2017 titled Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction.



The author has a repertoire of pretty deficient looking books, and I don't have enough energy to go through one for the sake of this post.
If there is anything which characterizes the work, it is an interest in the So-Bad-It's-Good aesthetic often seen post-2010s, and a distant reminiscence of a booming paperback industry. The preface of the book details finding a book called The Little People, a schlock-y paperback about midget Nazi leprechauns, which begins this author's journey into paperbacks; the basic gist is that it's "friggin' crazy" and does not deserve to be forgotten. The result is that, with the aid of the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, the author reports a fast-and-loose history of horror fiction from around the 70s and 80s, along with some other mention of horror paperbacks in the 60s. 

I feel repulsed by this for a few reasons. For one thing, the works that are "forgotten" are almost unanimously considered poor quality: the intention of recovering these books is nearly the same as RedLetterMedia reviving a rare VHS SOV horror film. Rarely, one of these will have some creative spark within its contents, but it is tarnished by the personal license of the creator. It is by indulgence, by lack of means, or by the compulsion to be a creator that dooms the work. I already referenced Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature essay above, but a comparison between that and the book discussed here. Lovecraft does not mince words in his estimation of various novels, he has no trouble in detailing the ills and shortcomings of an author, but everything discussed here is in an appreciative retrospective light. It does not really matter if a certain paperback is imitative of a successful box office hit like Jaws, it is detailed in such a way that resembles a glowing advertisement regardless of defects. The title relates to a history of the fiction produced during this time, but it is more a narrative account about the mediocre books being written in response to higher-quality media.

This sort of industry imitation mentioned in the last paragraph is stifling, a total inertia of the creative act, but is prized as a continued innovation in the craft of writing horror. I find it improbable that most authors are supposed to transcend the same writing prompt, especially whenever they are all doing this instantaneously the moment when a film achieves enough financial success. In fact, most of the examples listed within the chapters are all responses to larger movements within film: The Exorcist and The Omen were both novels, but once they're adapted to the film format, it accelerates a list of copycats, repetitions of the same theme. The brusque Epilogue says that the "boom" of the paperback industry ended in the 90s, but nothing described here really evokes the idea of a "boom". It is the lack thereof, a parasitism that feeds off of mass audience whims.

A passage in Ezra Pound's How to Write comes to mind:

...There was also a crisis in the American book trade. This crisis as I see it was and is at the moment I write this (July 22, 1930) due to a fear that the American public is too stupid to buy books without buying bindings. The continental European buys books in paper covers at 50 or 60 cents per volume in order to see what is in them very much as the American buys magazines. The cry that cheaper books means standardization and "Fordizing" is sheer hypocrisy or incomprehension of what Ford has done with the automobile. The crass American publisher did not try to Fordize...The book trade overproduced books that would not run, i.e. they were inferior junk, they were novels, etc., that were forgotten in five years or less, or the works of "great authors" that lasted ten years and couldn't last longer. There was no attempt to achieve literary efficiency.

There are two problems at hand during Ezra Pound's time, the first is the proper efficiency of the book trade, and the problem of literary quality. Certainly, as the decades passed, the paperback succeeded over the hardcover, and the concern over a right binding is exclusive to those who purchase Library of America editions (which might be true too for other smaller publishing companies; I am not currently in a position to know this, though). The major publishing companies of our time have consolidated repeatedly, and cannot consolidate more because of legal concerns about monopoly. Likewise, there is a remarkable strength of paperback production compared to the hardcover, a comparative luxury. Yet, when one turns their gaze over to the quality of these produced paperbacks, it is clear that it still is not Fordized. The market has continued and will continue to be populated with the inferior products of cultural moments, works that cannot last in immediate memory. In an restricted focus on horror books, it is clear that what overproduction has occurred is in relation to what can be imitated: does the public currently remember the cult escapades of Manson? Then hundreds of different books can enter production on the subject, all using the infamy for its own ends, then its fate is left up to the audience. This is true for the movie industry too, but for what's been mentioned above, it's doubly so for publications — the horror paperback is an imitation of an imitation.

Branching off from this, another noticeable part is its frequent inclusion of the paperback covers. Not too many are remarkable, only commissions for low-quality horror paperbacks, but the author makes sure to include them often throughout the chapters. Giving credit to the author, it is not an incidental part of horror paperback history, because some companies would narrow their attention to commissioning cover art for lesser-known novelists. It could also help generate an audience that grew up on pulp magazines, or be a short-term ploy to attract customers in the event of an inferior book. I do not think this would have been important to us today had it not been for the reduced attention to cover art. A discussion of this kind goes well beyond the constraints of this post, but the overarching tendencies of the book cover today adopts a minimalist design, but not in the sense of a Gallimard cover (red typeface on a yellowed-white cover). Whatever the intent behind cover art today, Something is missing. I did not set out to use this example, but it was found in the course of two minutes.

Here is an old cover art of Jay Anson's Amityville Horror, published by Bantam Books:

The flies and the devil horn formed by the H makes the cover imperfect, but it is still far superior to the republished cover in 2019, published by Vesper:


It is clear that, in light of recent cover art, the past is superior. This is true for science-fiction paperbacks, and I imagine others that fall under the standards of "genre fiction". Whenever these publishing companies wished to excite the consumer, they had first assumed that creating the best possible art for the text was the most rational course of action. Now, this does not appear to be necessary. Discussion as to why this is might fit into another thread topic.

I think part of the admiration about this art is that they invoke the spirit of some livelier past. This is perhaps what drew the attention of the author in the first place, because the sheer amount of times covers are discussed/shown. It is the essential factor for why someone would hold interest in mediocre horror novels forgotten to time. They remind people, even if only in a hint, of what a regular functioning publishing industry would look like. For this reason, it is more desirable to praise these distant forgotten paperbacks than to do so with anything today. 
To end this post, I will share some covers I liked that were included within Paperbacks From Hell:

[oyakodon_khan]

There's like 20 actually good horror movies overall, and none of them are scary. 
The entire genre is held up by cool monster designs (hasn't existed since the late 90s) and women simulating the feeling they get when they're about to get raped and murdered (main income incentive for the genre's existence)
Anyway, I'll recommend The Keep (1983)

 (NOT a good movie by any means. You probably shouldn't even waste your time watching it. But it's an interesting one. Directed by Michael Mann, it might have been a good movie once. But the studio re-cut the entire movie before release to shorten it's runtime by half and all the original footage was lost. The special effects are pretty cool.)
(I only watched it because a Japanese porn artist drew the cast of Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica in a parody of the movie.)

[anthony]

There's like 20 actually good horror movies overall, and none of them are scary. 

I agree with this and consider this point very important. But I think there's more going on with what actually is appealing. I'll post later about what. Consider this post an incentive for me to make that one.

[anthony]

Okay I'm back.

I think they key point to "horror" was hit on above. That many or most of the good horror movies that people lastingly care about aren't really scary. Like with my posts on video games I think the key point to get out here is that our terminology is bad. It does keep going back to that. When we talk about horror movies we're talking about more than one kind of experience. Because of this it's extremely hard to search out for more of what we like or ask for more of it.

Are famous horror films horrifying? Are they films built around the visceral experience of watching them in a kinema and feeling excited and scared by them? Some maybe. But they don't tend to be remembered as much for that, and that's a feeling that's largely lost on later observing audiences (especially today when you watch movies digitally). This kind of drive in trash is a kind of experience with its own tradition and canon, but it's not one people talk about or care about too much. And even these are about more than being scared, I would say more generally about the emotional and social experience of exciting and strange cinema viewing. Joe Bob Briggs and James Rolfe type stuff. I'm probably not old enough to give much insight into this, but I'm basically saying horror that isn't for artfags and isn't this second thing I'm going to get into (which is kind of artfag).

I think that the horror movies which really endure as more than funhouse thrillrides or cheap disposable junk are films which don't lean on horror to be interesting. And instead are films which use the label of horror as an opportunity to be free from stricter boundaries and expectations of logic, consistency, and the mundane. Horror is at its best functioning as a kind of open fantasy. But "fantasy" is its own problem. That we have tropes and expectations of "fantasy" is completely wrong. The definition ought to be negative. Fantasy is when things mentally, creatively, and spiritually go running. Dungeons & Dragons is not fantasy. Twin Peaks is. I have also seen Twin Peaks referred to as "horror". And that's what I'm talking about. Good fantasy (small f, not referring to genre) is the storytelling tradition of being able to do more because you're obliged to do less. Horror is the mainstream fantasy film tradition. The horror films which last are remembered for their lively and unique images and impressions of our world. Maybe they're thrilling, or even horrifying to watch, but I don't believe that that makes a film last.

This is a thought I've been having trouble crystalising for the longest time so I should just post some clips.




Are you afraid? I think The Beyond does have genuinely scary moments, but what really sticks with me is the dream-logic and surrealism. Things which Fulci can do here because it's horror. Permission to not make sense.




Are you afraid? This sequence is very damn violent, but is it scary? Maybe existentially because society is falling apart. But the framing in this particular sequence is more like tense action and chaos. Romero has this tendency to just do whatever he feels like scene by scene. And it's a horror movie with zombies on the poster, so people come in permissive. Understanding that we aren't bound by reality. But smuggled into that acceptance of zombies is an acceptance leaving behind all of reality. So we also get muzak, strange tone shifts, odd moody moments. Not so much surreal as just very unconventional throughout. Willing to try so much more.




This one is hard to find clips of on youtube due to a stupid video game, and I don't want a scene of violence. I just want to show off how this scene looks, not what's happening. To me Texas Chainsaw Massacre isn't about the scenes of violence. It's about this unique colour and texture. The bizarre events set against the warm sepia-like colours. It's a powerful aesthetic experience which is completely unrivalled by many sequels and remakes which all attempt to reduce the appeal to crass "horror" elements. Chainsaws and violence. Who cares? Some people maybe but not me.




No comment on this one. If I've done my job above you can generate your own Anthony sentences about this.

I strongly endorse all of the films linked above and recommend watching them if you want to explore horror. And this post is intended to open this line of discussion, not finish it. So please share your own thoughts, responses, and films you'd like to share.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

I agree with what was said above about "horror" not being a very descriptive label as it's used today. The horror films I've enjoyed intrigued me with either a prominent mystery or a surreal atmosphere. I was more curious than scared while watching them. My guess is that jumpscares and graphic violence weren't enough to make an enduring genre, but the variety of supernatural themes introduced in early horror films offered a lot of potential to invoke feelings other than fear.

I haven't seen any of the films others have mentioned, but I'd recommend: The Shining (1980), Mandy (2018), Resolution (2012), Triangle (2009). All of these except Mandy hardly invoke horror at all.

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Spoiler

The horror work that impacted me most was the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni visual novel. This story's merits are widely misunderstood because most fans have only seen the anime, but the nature of the horror is totally different in the visual novel. The visual novel is very long, and slowly builds an atmosphere of mystery that makes the moments where surprising things happen much more impactful, and genuinely scary. Even the mundane moments start to feel eerie after enough time spent in this world, and I would argue that these mundane moments are entirely necessary to give the player downtime to process what has happened and form their own theories. It's hard to recommend this VN because it's so long and takes a while to get interesting (especially if you're allergic to moeshit), but it pays off if you're able to commit to it. When it was adapted to an anime the story naturally had to be condensed, which destroyed its atmosphere. Viewers of the anime consider it to be "horror" because of the sudden violence and plot twists, missing a lot of the point of the VN.

[JohnTrent]

I do agree with horror movies not being scary. What has interested me from childhood and onward isn't so much the thought of being frightened by imagery, or being taken by surprise, but more the abstract hint of the film/novel being a reality. I once considered my dispassionate stance towards "horror" as something resulting from autism, but perhaps the discussion isn't reducible to that. The 1974 release of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a good example, since it was something I saw relatively early on in life and have rewatched about seven times. The mise-en-scene and the atmosphere evoked is of total dilapidation, the mixture of a charnel house and a regular home, the scatterings of animal remains being a remark to savage prehistory. The worries about cannibalism and such may as well be in the background, compared to the abject surroundings. Whatever violent acts are achieved throughout the runtime give force to the atmosphere, and not the other way around. The frustrating thing about eventual franchises that bloom from these types of original films is that this is taken for granted: if x amount of violence is introduced in y amount of scenes, it succeeds in imitating the atmosphere of z. This is a backwards understanding of what gives it staying power.


In the 1974 version, the house looks unassuming, with the decrepitude being kept for the interior spaces. In the 2004 version, the house has a manorial appearance, but is built in such a way that gives foreboding impression. It gives off the sense of abandonment, and the architecture almost looks brutalist too. There are multiple things that are wrong in the remake, including the WWE-ified Leatherface, but the atmosphere is one significant thing missing. The interior of the 2004 home is not imbued with the familiar uncleanliness that was present in 1974, which first had a quality of uncleanliness. The effort towards building an environment that embarks on the same result does not happen, and what remarks of uncleanliness are found in the 2004 remake is in places outside the house. The production of the 1974 film was hectic, disorganized, and under the duress of an intolerable heatwave. The 2004 crew would not be able to handle these circumstances, let alone have it impact the output in a positive way. It is far too polished to resemble the original, save for the introduction of a chainsaw, cannibalism, and a rural area. That is the unavoidable formula if you are supposed to make a successor to the first film.

There is the controversy of remakes within the movie industry, with followers of the franchises believing them to be cheap imitations for profit, but I cannot help but believe this is a limited approach to the problem. I have no doubt in my mind that someone like Rob Zombie did have an appreciation for John Carpenter's Halloween, and so on with other remakes of "slasher" films (not that TCM is a slasher film, mind you). Depending on what specific remake you are looking at, it can be affirmed that the crew involved really did enjoy those films, and wanted to make something of their own kind. Clive Barker's Hellraiser has caused a list of bad sequels, and is now associated with a remake.
Clive Barker was the one who first announced the idea of remaking the first film, and a small list of directors floated around the project without progress. Pascal Laugier was one choice, then Christian Christiansen, then Patrick Lussier, then David Bruckner. Have not watched the result of this prolonged game of hot potato, but it can't be good. It can be assumed that the list of those involved with the project had a passing or constant admiration for the The Hellbound Heart and the adaptation, but are they in a position to understand what made the film? It is a basic incomprehension in the filmmaker's/scriptwriter's imagination, a misguided approach to appropriating an atmosphere without staying true to it. Is the creator himself able to capture the spirit again?

---

This ended up being more of a disorganized post than I expected. For the atmospheres that I have enjoyed greatly, some of them induce a hint of fear but never enough to become terrifying. Some examples of this that come to mind are HP Lovecraft, The Repairer of Reputations in Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, and some of Thomas Ligotti's work in Teatro Grottesco and I Have A Special Plan for this World. Horror, or shall we say weird fiction, was very much aligned with fantasy during its inception. Even when inherited by Ligotti, who does not have quite the same affinity for fantasy as Lovecraft had for Robert E. Howard / Lord Dunsany, there is a kernel of its power that survives, even in his anhedonic way of seeing the world. I don't want to talk at extended length about creepypastas, but this is also present in stories like The Hidden Webpage. It's imperfect, yet still portrays an blind alternation of realities. Caught in an imprisoning web that is continually being reshaped. You could say the reason that creepypastas were popular was because it is the distillation of that fantastic quality seen in the rare glimpses of a novel or film. It is more or less an attempt to revive that disquieting part of a movie and weave it into a shorter narrative. It rarely works, but the attempt is admirable.

[JohnTrent]

I first thought of posting this list in the Movie Recommendation thread, but it ties into the recent posts enough to be included here. This list is Adam Lanza's top twenty-five favorite movies, organized in chronological order.

October 19th, 2011:
I suppose that an attempted Top 25 would encompass most of what "favorite" entails.
1971 Let's Scare Jessica To Death
1971 Willard
1972 Crawlspace
1972 Haunts of the Very Rich
1972 Private Parts
1972 Folks at Red Wolf Inn
1972 Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
1973 The Baby
1973 Messiah of Evil
1973 Don't Look in the Basement
1973 The Killing Kind
1974 Bad Ronald
1975 Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural
1979 Driller Killer
1980 Don't Go in the House
1980 The Attic
1981 The Pit
1983 Night Warning
1985 Deadly Messages
1986 Link
1988 Killer Klowns From Outer Space
1988 Bloody Wednesday
1989 Pin
1989 Beyond Dream's Door
1993 Stalking Laura

He took a strong liking to the genre of horror, but had considered his favorites to be "macabre dramas", and did not appreciate the kind of violence integral to slasher flicks. For him, such dramas had to straddle the line between coherence and the surreal, must be depressive in some way, and have a strong atmosphere that emphasizes the aforementioned details. Other than Killer Klowns From Outer Space and Messiah of Evil, his list of favorites is not borrowed from popular consensus or recent cult followings — the kind of curated taste that signals autonomy.

[Guest]

Horror media that relies much on jumpscares and visceral violence aren't as good as horror media that makes use of psychological terror and tension.

[anthony]

Horror media that relies much on jumpscares and visceral violence aren't as good as horror media that makes use of psychological terror and tension.

Fine, I'll post it already.

[BillyONare]

“Horror media that relies much on jumpscares and visceral violence aren't as good as horror media that makes use of psychological terror and tension.”

This sounds like something an AI wrote, trained on updoted Reddit and YouTube comments.

[Mason Hall-McCullough]

While we're on the subject of Ari Aster, his work has never appealed to me too much. Some of these characteristics are reflective of that "trauma-horror" phrase I used earlier, and his best film Hereditary is concerned with the family melodrama aspect of it. There is a great insistence of this in an earlier short film of his, called The Strange Things About the Johnsons (set-up is a 'groid family that is revealed to have sexual abuse issues). The family melodrama angle is unique to the Redditor, but this is a formula from a set of film studies/film school courses. The reason why I know this is because the short film has a distinct Freudian aspect to it vis-a-vis the primal father, and the standard analysis in film studies for melodrama frequently involves some connection to Freudian psychology: a hidden hysteria, some part of the family being repressed, and the eruption of conflict in the comforting territory of a private home. This is territory that can be experimented with well in the case of some David Lynch films, but it can be exhausted quite easily, which is why Lynch's own visual gifts are able to transcend it. The Millennial horror fan is not too aware of these matters however (this is OK, imo; being aware of standard film interpretations can erode you after awhile), that horror fan only appreciates the subverted family aspect because it is one formula replacing another. It is "fresh air". The occult mystique around Hereditary does save it from falling into mediocre territory, though, and for that I can't say I dislike it.

I saw Hereditary and enjoyed it. I think it struck a good balance between being mysterious/pretentious and having interesting events directly occur with dialogue. I do agree that it wouldn't have been as entertaining as just a family melodrama without the supernatural elements.

There were a few great moments where I felt genuine horror, but I wonder if those moments would have missed if I had been sufficiently exposed to these specific family tragedy tropes before. I think this somewhat predictable and formulaic movie might be an example of the narrowing genre of "true horror movies" that directly invoke horror rather than action or mystery.

[anthony]

While we're on the subject of Ari Aster, his work has never appealed to me too much. Some of these characteristics are reflective of that "trauma-horror" phrase I used earlier, and his best film Hereditary is concerned with the family melodrama aspect of it. There is a great insistence of this in an earlier short film of his, called The Strange Things About the Johnsons (set-up is a 'groid family that is revealed to have sexual abuse issues). The family melodrama angle is unique to the Redditor, but this is a formula from a set of film studies/film school courses. The reason why I know this is because the short film has a distinct Freudian aspect to it vis-a-vis the primal father, and the standard analysis in film studies for melodrama frequently involves some connection to Freudian psychology: a hidden hysteria, some part of the family being repressed, and the eruption of conflict in the comforting territory of a private home. This is territory that can be experimented with well in the case of some David Lynch films, but it can be exhausted quite easily, which is why Lynch's own visual gifts are able to transcend it. The Millennial horror fan is not too aware of these matters however (this is OK, imo; being aware of standard film interpretations can erode you after awhile), that horror fan only appreciates the subverted family aspect because it is one formula replacing another. It is "fresh air". The occult mystique around Hereditary does save it from falling into mediocre territory, though, and for that I can't say I dislike it.

I saw Hereditary and enjoyed it. I think it struck a good balance between being mysterious/pretentious and having interesting events directly occur with dialogue. I do agree that it wouldn't have been as entertaining as just a family melodrama without the supernatural elements.

There were a few great moments where I felt genuine horror, but I wonder if those moments would have missed if I had been sufficiently exposed to these specific family tragedy tropes before. I think this somewhat predictable and formulaic movie might be an example of the narrowing genre of "true horror movies" that directly invoke horror rather than action or mystery.

I hated Hereditary. Everything that can be said for it I think was done far better by The Babadook, which also didn't make me look at weird American faces.

[Guest]

I promise to discuss certain works in the genre that I like, but for now I will recount a recent finding.
There was a book published in 2017 titled Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction.



The author has a repertoire of pretty deficient looking books, and I don't have enough energy to go through one for the sake of this post.
If there is anything which characterizes the work, it is an interest in the So-Bad-It's-Good aesthetic often seen post-2010s, and a distant reminiscence of a booming paperback industry. The preface of the book details finding a book called The Little People, a schlock-y paperback about midget Nazi leprechauns, which begins this author's journey into paperbacks; the basic gist is that it's "friggin' crazy" and does not deserve to be forgotten. The result is that, with the aid of the Too Much Horror Fiction blog, the author reports a fast-and-loose history of horror fiction from around the 70s and 80s, along with some other mention of horror paperbacks in the 60s. 

I feel repulsed by this for a few reasons. For one thing, the works that are "forgotten" are almost unanimously considered poor quality: the intention of recovering these books is nearly the same as RedLetterMedia reviving a rare VHS SOV horror film. Rarely, one of these will have some creative spark within its contents, but it is tarnished by the personal license of the creator. It is by indulgence, by lack of means, or by the compulsion to be a creator that dooms the work. I already referenced Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature essay above, but a comparison between that and the book discussed here. Lovecraft does not mince words in his estimation of various novels, he has no trouble in detailing the ills and shortcomings of an author, but everything discussed here is in an appreciative retrospective light. It does not really matter if a certain paperback is imitative of a successful box office hit like Jaws, it is detailed in such a way that resembles a glowing advertisement regardless of defects. The title relates to a history of the fiction produced during this time, but it is more a narrative account about the mediocre books being written in response to higher-quality media.

This sort of industry imitation mentioned in the last paragraph is stifling, a total inertia of the creative act, but is prized as a continued innovation in the craft of writing horror. I find it improbable that most authors are supposed to transcend the same writing prompt, especially whenever they are all doing this instantaneously the moment when a film achieves enough financial success. In fact, most of the examples listed within the chapters are all responses to larger movements within film: The Exorcist and The Omen were both novels, but once they're adapted to the film format, it accelerates a list of copycats, repetitions of the same theme. The brusque Epilogue says that the "boom" of the paperback industry ended in the 90s, but nothing described here really evokes the idea of a "boom". It is the lack thereof, a parasitism that feeds off of mass audience whims.

A passage in Ezra Pound's How to Write comes to mind:

...There was also a crisis in the American book trade. This crisis as I see it was and is at the moment I write this (July 22, 1930) due to a fear that the American public is too stupid to buy books without buying bindings. The continental European buys books in paper covers at 50 or 60 cents per volume in order to see what is in them very much as the American buys magazines. The cry that cheaper books means standardization and "Fordizing" is sheer hypocrisy or incomprehension of what Ford has done with the automobile. The crass American publisher did not try to Fordize...The book trade overproduced books that would not run, i.e. they were inferior junk, they were novels, etc., that were forgotten in five years or less, or the works of "great authors" that lasted ten years and couldn't last longer. There was no attempt to achieve literary efficiency.

There are two problems at hand during Ezra Pound's time, the first is the proper efficiency of the book trade, and the problem of literary quality. Certainly, as the decades passed, the paperback succeeded over the hardcover, and the concern over a right binding is exclusive to those who purchase Library of America editions (which might be true too for other smaller publishing companies; I am not currently in a position to know this, though). The major publishing companies of our time have consolidated repeatedly, and cannot consolidate more because of legal concerns about monopoly. Likewise, there is a remarkable strength of paperback production compared to the hardcover, a comparative luxury. Yet, when one turns their gaze over to the quality of these produced paperbacks, it is clear that it still is not Fordized. The market has continued and will continue to be populated with the inferior products of cultural moments, works that cannot last in immediate memory. In an restricted focus on horror books, it is clear that what overproduction has occurred is in relation to what can be imitated: does the public currently remember the cult escapades of Manson? Then hundreds of different books can enter production on the subject, all using the infamy for its own ends, then its fate is left up to the audience. This is true for the movie industry too, but for what's been mentioned above, it's doubly so for publications — the horror paperback is an imitation of an imitation.

Branching off from this, another noticeable part is its frequent inclusion of the paperback covers. Not too many are remarkable, only commissions for low-quality horror paperbacks, but the author makes sure to include them often throughout the chapters. Giving credit to the author, it is not an incidental part of horror paperback history, because some companies would narrow their attention to commissioning cover art for lesser-known novelists. It could also help generate an audience that grew up on pulp magazines, or be a short-term ploy to attract customers in the event of an inferior book. I do not think this would have been important to us today had it not been for the reduced attention to cover art. A discussion of this kind goes well beyond the constraints of this post, but the overarching tendencies of the book cover today adopts a minimalist design, but not in the sense of a Gallimard cover (red typeface on a yellowed-white cover). Whatever the intent behind cover art today, Something is missing. I did not set out to use this example, but it was found in the course of two minutes.

Here is an old cover art of Jay Anson's Amityville Horror, published by Bantam Books:

The flies and the devil horn formed by the H makes the cover imperfect, but it is still far superior to the republished cover in 2019, published by Vesper:


It is clear that, in light of recent cover art, the past is superior. This is true for science-fiction paperbacks, and I imagine others that fall under the standards of "genre fiction". Whenever these publishing companies wished to excite the consumer, they had first assumed that creating the best possible art for the text was the most rational course of action. Now, this does not appear to be necessary. Discussion as to why this is might fit into another thread topic.

I think part of the admiration about this art is that they invoke the spirit of some livelier past. This is perhaps what drew the attention of the author in the first place, because the sheer amount of times covers are discussed/shown. It is the essential factor for why someone would hold interest in mediocre horror novels forgotten to time. They remind people, even if only in a hint, of what a regular functioning publishing industry would look like. For this reason, it is more desirable to praise these distant forgotten paperbacks than to do so with anything today. 
To end this post, I will share some covers I liked that were included within Paperbacks From Hell:

I never read "Paperbacks from Hell," but I visit the author's blogger once in a blue moon.
http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/

His entries are trite but informative, and his autistic commitment to collecting paperback horror books is somewhat commendable. If anything, it shows the florid—if hackneyed—variety of covers publishers were willing to use to attract eyeballs. A confluence of artistic daring, desperate advertising, and readership expectations provided an ideal situation for unique and intricate book covers.