Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/30.

"It was 70 years ago today - October 30, 1938 - that Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre traumatised American radio listeners with their brilliant adaptation of The War of the Worlds," John Coulthart reminds us. He wrote about the program last year; this year, he revisits the closing passage of Howard Koch's 1970 book about the play, The Panic Broadcast. More from Scott Marks.

"Haunting is a form of un/knowing. The 7th issue of Forum engages with haunting and related concepts such as the uncanny, spectrality and the trace by looking at a variety of different texts and contexts." Via Catherine Grant.

"For those of you planning a Halloween viewing party, the staff of Filmmaker has compiled thoughts on seven films guaranteed to generate chills."

"The 25 Greatest Horror Films of All Time," Screengrab's latest list.

"Bill Gunn's Ganja & Hess is an oddity, often maddening, frustrating, fascinating, riddled with both flaws and beauty, and bursting with revelations," writes Flickhead.

"Just a few years into the 21st century, Olivier Assayas wrote in the Village Voice: 'Cronenberg's visionary Videodrome is the most important film of this generation. Time has only reinforced its audacity.'" Sean Axmaker: "It's been 25 years since David Cronenberg's first masterpiece drilled its mutant images into the minds of unsuspecting audiences, and Videodrome is as contemporary and relevant as ever."

Lynda Pratt in the Times Literary Supplement:

As Marilyn Butler so acutely observed, Frankenstein is "famously reinterpretable. It can be a late version of the Faust myth, or an early version of the modern myth of the mad scientist; the id on the rampage, the proletariat running amok, or what happens when a man tries to have a baby without a woman."

Yet the very familiarity of Frankenstein means that its complex pre- and post-publication textual history is often overlooked, and the actual process of composition of a fiction so centrally concerned with creation ignored. The novel's textual instability is explored in the impressive introduction to Charles Robinson's new edition. His honorable aim is not to give us another text of the novel we know - or think we know - but to strip away nearly two centuries of revision and appropriation in order to return to what he describes as the "original" Frankenstein.

At Movie Morlocks, an appreciation from Moira Finnie: Dwight Frye's "extraordinarily indelible performances, blending the grotesque, the poignant and the funny in his characterizations in classic horror movies of the 30s have always fascinated and repelled me. He was particularly memorable as the benighted Renfield in Dracula (1931), and as Fritz, the pitiable hunchbacked dwarf in Frankenstein (1931) who retrieves a defective brain for the monster, and as Karl who assists Colin Clive and Ernest Thesiger in the highly amusing burlesque in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), all of which helped to make these now nearly 80 year old “entertainments” memorable and fresh to this day and each of which confirmed his typecasting. Perhaps Frye played such parts too well, for he never quite escaped them."

"As every horror fan knows, any successful idea merits a sequel," writes Shaun Brady in the Philadelphia City Paper. "So it should come as no surprise that last year's Exhumed Films 24-Hour Horror-Thon has, one year later, spawned the inevitable Part 2. Exhumed added a bigger-and-better gimmick: Straddling the switchover to daylight-saving time, the noon-to-noon event will this year be a 25-hour marathon." Saturday to Sunday.

For IFC, Stephen Saito has "asked some of the best in the [make-up] business to pick their favorite horror creations."

"You may have noticed that Halloween falls on a Friday this year, and you may also have noticed that this would be a way bigger deal if you were still in college." Assuming you're not going Trick or Treating - or to a party - but to a movie, Jesse Hassenger offers "a quick rundown of your spooking options" in the L Magazine.

"The best kinds of horror films aren't at a theater near you, leaving the horror buff with two options: Go the arthouse route or indulge in nostalgia, a manipulative but essential part of the horror fan's experience." Simon Abrams in the New York Press: "On the one hand, adventurous filmgoers determined to tough it out with (shudder) new films have some pretty good options, like Let the Right One In, an uncommonly good Swedish vampire teen romance and Splinter, a supernatural slasher pastiche. On the other hand, NYC filmgoers have a number of terrific older standards (depending on one's acquired tastes) at their disposal, from a week-long run of Rosemary's Baby at the Film Forum (Oct 31 - Nov 6) to two midnight showings of A Nightmare on Elm Street at the Landmark Sunshine (Oct 31 & Nov 1)."

"As a fishing and horror film fanatic (two separate endeavors, I assure you), I can't help but think during this Halloween season about films featuring sadistic anglers, horrific sharks, and torturous fishing trips," writes Chris Justice at PopMatters.

"[P]erhaps this is the year of the Television Great Pumpkin," suggests Reverse Shot's cnw, who then turns to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Online scrolling tip. Not really film-related, but fun nonetheless: The Idolator's guide to horrorcore.

Online listening tip. "Tim Burton's cult stop-motion film [The Nightmare Before Christmas] turns 15 this year, and as previously reported a motley crew of indie and goth-pop acts have recorded covers for an updated soundtrack called Nightmare Revisited," notes Stereogum. Via the Playlist.

Online viewing tips. Trailers at Twitch: Die Schneider Krankheit and Pontypool.

Posted by dwhudson at October 30, 2008 3:39 PM