Monster Fans Unite!
Oct 21st, 2008 by linthatcher
It’s our 2008 Halloween special, comparing classic and modern horrors and hearkening back to the glory days of monster fandom: the years when Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine could still be found on the magazine shelf at your local drugstore. God bless Uncle Forry, editor of FM, and Basil Gogos, frequent cover artist, both of whom are still with us so far as I know. (The image to the right here borrows from James Bama, I think, who did the art for the Aurora monster model kits.) I sort of trounce modern horror in this episode. Perhaps I should do a little more thinking about the subject, particularly the modern zombie film with reference to Kim Paffenroth’s book Gospel of the Living Dead and the essay collection The Undead and Philosophy edited by Green and Mohammad. Certainly the zombie has become the iconic monster of the late twentieth, early twenty-first century. Strange, though, that there is no particular actor celebrated for his or her performance as a zombie (isn’t that kind of strange?) as Karloff or Lugosi are still celebrated for their portrayals of the Frankenstein Monster and Dracula. It’s practically impossible to be a horror fan without a fave actor to hang your hat on — like Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Peter Lorre, Lon Chaney, or even Angus Scrimm! Lord willing, a real horror revival will occur in years to come based on talented performers and directors.
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Wow Lint, I really enjoyed this episode. I enjoyed it as much if not more than the original print version. I would have to agree with you that Romero could be called “Father of the modern horror film”. I wouldn’t throw the claim out there that Herschel Gordon Lewis deserved that title, however I would most assuredly grant him the title of “Father of Splatter Film”.
Many years ago I was very much into the “splatter” genre. However, I was attracted to the technical aspects and “how did they do that?” aspect. That viewpoint and interest is short lived. I now feel that filmmakers of all genres at times substitute special effects, gore and cgi for actual dialogue and characterization. The Hostel movies were very simple storywise and could have been pitched in 10 seconds. I actually enjoyed the early Saw films because the traps were quite clever and there was a mystery to the story. The Saw films do have some character development, but take 3 or 4 movies to actually get to it. The Saw film could be pitched in 10 seconds as well. Could you imagine trying to capture the nuances and struggle in the original Universal films in 10 seconds?
I just purchased the boxed set of Frankenstein. I hadn’t seen the original movie in many, many years and had completely forgotten what a wonderful job Karloff did without speaking in that role! Any true horror fan has a special place in their hearts for the original monster movies because they personified the struggle between good and evil. Almost everything was in “black and white”, on the surface. Modern horror movies are normally populated by just different levels of evil. If we’re lucky there’s a theme of redemption running through the movie as the hero who has a checkered past saves the day and makes up for all his trangressions.
Anyway, great job Lint!!!