Two interesting essays on horror to talk about today.
First, courtesy of Jim Dougan, comes this piece by the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter. Man OH man is Hunter in love with the sound of his own written voice, but that aside it’s an interesting enough read, tracing the horror film’s evolution through various temporal and generic stages in a fairly comprehensive fashion. (Of course, I’ve yet to see a piece of this type that doesn’t miss at least one major phase; in this case he glosses over the sci-fi anxiety of the ’50s.) If you can get through his belabored attempt to argue that the true purpose of horror films is to get teenage boys to second base in the theater–not particularly convincing at least as far as the current crop of horror flicks is concerned; today’s kids (and my days kids, come to think of it) are apparently doling out oral with more frequency than handshakes, so who needs to go see The Amityville Horror in order to score?–he makes at least one truly valuable point in tying The Blair Witch Project to the current crop of J-horror