Let’s kick things off tonight with another installment of “Meet the Horror Blogosphere”: Presenting Sylvian L.’s Killing in Style, which bills itself as “Reflections about the giallo.” That’s really what it is–a series of short, thoughtful little posts on various stylish Italian slasher films, as well as movies that inspired their asthetic, like Blow-Up. This is a heckuva find if you enjoy the genre, or just good writing on horror.
Speaking of giallo, life imitates it: True-crime blogger Steve Huff reports that Mexico City is being stalked by a serial killer who is either a woman or a female impersonator and who has murdered four elderly women this year–three of whom all had prints of the same painting, Jean-Baptisted Greuze’s “Boy in Red Waistcoat,” in their homes. It sounds like something out of a Dario Argento movie, doesn’t it? But unfortunately for the victims, who had the bad luck of being women murdered in Mexico, this particularly movie is unlikely to have a satisfying conclusion.
In other news of the real-world weird, Mickey Kaus has been reporting on a series of “mystery stench” outbreaks in D.C., L.A., and…Wales? Kaus semi-suspects bioweapon experimentation; these things do happen…
Which leads us perfectly to our first Dark But Shining link of the day: Rick Geerling’s encomium for Stephen King’s military-experiment-gone-awry horror novella The Mist. Rick points out that I love this story. Everyone should.
Next, guest-blogger Aaron Weisbrod makes with the quotability: “to me, true horror is an abandonment of all hope.” My sentiments exactly!
Fellow DBS guest-blogger (and writer of the new Western horror comic Strangeways) Matt Maxwell pens a thought-provoking essay on the thin line between horror and other genres, especially sci-fi. I’m generally someone who doesn’t much care about or for genre boundaries–I have no problem viewingEyes Wide Shut, Heavenly Creatures, Deliverance, Lost Highway, and maybe even Casino as horror movies, though they’re each other kinds of movies as well. Maybe that’s why passages from Matt’s essay like this one threw me:
John Carpenter