Horror general thread [+]

[Autumnal]

I’m rereading early Laird Barron stories via audiobook.

1. Ray Porter was and is a wonderful narrstor. He didn’t sound anything like Laird Barron, but he sure sounds like Laird’s protagonists and narrators.

2. Barron was writing great horror from the very beginning. “Proboscis”, “Shiva Open Your Eye”, “Procession of the Black Sloth”, “Hallucinagenia”, and “The Imago Sequence” are all top-notch stories that would look good in anyone’s bibliography. Watching a mythos build up is fascinating, too.

 

[overgeeked]

Back filling a few issues of Weird War Tales.

Weird War Tales 1.

There’s an intro piece before the first proper story. A framing device. A US soldier in WW2 is lost and alone. He’s wandering through a darkened wood when a tank appears and shoots its cannon at him. He wakes hours later and wanders up to an isolated house and meets the old man living there. The old man nurses him back to health and tells him a few tales…

Fort Which Did Not Return. WW2. The crew of Mother Hen, a B-17 Flying Fortress, are picked off one by one while on a mission. Each man is killed by enemy fighters until only the bombardier remains. Yet the Fort keeps on flying. Turning and maneuvering to line up the bombing target and, after the bombs are dropped, fly out of harms way. The bombardier is amazed the Fort is still flying despite the rest of the crew dying. He takes a parachute and jumps clear. The Fort keeps on flying.

The Story Behind the Cover. WW2. A German corporal leads a patrol that happens across a US patrol. There’s a firefight and lots of dead soldiers. The corporal runs back to base to report. He’s met with silence. Thinking his countrymen hate him he vows to show them he’s no coward and charges out to meet the enemy. Turns out he died in the fight and is now a ghostly skeleton attacking the US lines.

End of the Sea Wolf. Post WW2. A former U-boat captain is now a salvage captain. He’s recovering one of the ships he sunk as a U-boat captain. He tells the tale of a relentless fight with a Q-boat, a specially designed U-boat destroyer. Shot after shot, she still attacked. Damage enough to sink her, she still attacked. No guns left, she moved to ram the U-boat. The end of the tale is revealed when the wreck is pulled from the sea. The two boats entwined. The Q-boat rammed the U-boat…sinking them both.

Baker’s Dozen. WW2. A 13th man is added to the very superstitious 12-man patrol of Baker company. The poor guy can’t catch a break. He downs a plane strafing them and they’re mad he attracted it in the first place. He smokes out a tank that ambushes them, they’re mad he caught it’s attention. They finally accept him after he drives a car loaded with explosives into a tank and destroys it.

Outro. Still WW2. The wounded soldier thanks the old man for his stories but insists on leaving to report back. He wanders through the forest and fog to find an old woman gathering firewood. She asks where he came from. He points to the house…only it’s a wreck. Weathered and destroyed decades ago on the last day of the Great War (aka WW1 to us).

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Finally got around to watching Sinners. Congrats on the Oscars and all the other awards. Well deserved. I really loved this one. Something new with vampires. Wonderful metaphor for...welll, forum rules and all. Great stuff. We watched it on HBO and the aspect ratio kept changing on us. It was really weird. Didn't see anyone else mention that, so maybe it was a glitch on our end. Not sure because it was for certain scenes not in the middle of something like you'd expect with a glitch.

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Read Ring Shout, a horror novella set in the deep south after WW1. Three women are hunting monsters disguised as KKK. Absolutely loved this one. It's another modern piece that I'd recommend for folks wanting to get into horror RPGs and Call of Cthulhu in particular. Some really great monsters and fight scenes. Oddly thematic with Sinners. Made for a neat double feature.

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Also came across the Encyclopedia of Weird War Stories. Published in 2017, so it's filled to bursting with tons of great films, cartoons, comics, short stories, novellas, and novels that feature various kinds of Weird War. An absolute gold mine for me right now. So good. I can't wait to dig into whatever I can find from there.

 

[Autumnal]

Jess Nevins’ book Horror Needs No Passport has a significant of stuff about things that count as weird war stories from many lands. And he’s on Bluesky, and great with questions - he likes to enthuse.

 

[MGibster]

I finally saw Sinners today. It was a pretty good movie, but I thought the last third was a bit weak, though overall the movie is saved by the strong performance of the entire cast. Kind of reminds of of From Dusk Till Dawn which felt like it switched genres right in the middle.

 

[Artamo]

Finally got around to watching Sinners. Congrats on the Oscars and all the other awards. Well deserved. I really loved this one. Something new with vampires. Wonderful metaphor for...welll, forum rules and all. Great stuff. We watched it on HBO and the aspect ratio kept changing on us. It was really weird. Didn't see anyone else mention that, so maybe it was a glitch on our end. Not sure because it was for certain scenes not in the middle of something like you'd expect with a glitch.

Sinners was shot in multiple aspect ratios for different scenes including IMAX ratio for the dance scene, so that’s probably what you were seeing.

 

[Retros_x]

Speaking about Sinners - we had two horror movies not just being nominated but actually winning academy awards (Sinners and Weapons) and not just in special effects or something like that, but in the "high tier" categories. Did we ever had something like this? Is horror as a genre finally getting some mainstream recognition as a serious form of the medium?

 

[Artamo]

Speaking about Sinners - we had two horror movies not just being nominated but actually winning academy awards (Sinners and Weapons) and not just in special effects or something like that, but in the "high tier" categories. Did we ever had something like this? Is horror as a genre finally getting some mainstream recognition as a serious form of the medium?

I think it’s getting better because horror films themselves are tackling tougher subject matter and are elevating themselves above strictly being schlock, slasher or gross out horror. Part of this is due to the popularity and quality of A24, as well as a possible halo effect around those movies. Also, when horror takes itself seriously, it tends to also get lumped in with just plain ol drama. I would personally categorize movies like Jaws and Silence of the Lambs as horror, even though the horror is not supernatural in nature.

 

[overgeeked]

Speaking about Sinners - we had two horror movies not just being nominated but actually winning academy awards (Sinners and Weapons) and not just in special effects or something like that, but in the "high tier" categories. Did we ever had something like this? Is horror as a genre finally getting some mainstream recognition as a serious form of the medium?

Three films. Don’t forget Frankenstein. Something like eight awards to horror films on Sunday. Del Toro has been winning awards for horror for decades now.

 

[overgeeked]

I think it’s getting better because horror films themselves are tackling tougher subject matter and are elevating themselves above strictly being schlock, slasher or gross out horror.

That stuff will always be part of the genre, but horror has always had more to offer than just that. Every genre has schlock.

Part of this is due to the popularity and quality of A24, as well as a possible halo effect around those movies.

Yeah, there’s a lot of that. I’m not a fan of so-called elevated horror. I don’t know that I’ve seen any A24 films. At a guess it’s less gorey, less reliant on jump scares, and more drama based.

ETA: Looking through A24’s catalogue of horror, they’ve done their share of schlock. And I’ve seen one of their films, The Lighthouse. It was okay, not great.

Also, when horror takes itself seriously, it tends to also get lumped in with just plain ol drama. I would personally categorize movies like Jaws and Silence of the Lambs as horror, even though the horror is not supernatural in nature.

I’d agree with that. As above, I think that factors into the widening popularity of horror.

 

[Artamo]

That stuff will always be part of the genre, but horror has always had more to offer than just that. Every genre has schlock.

Yeah, there’s a lot of that. I’m not a fan of so-called elevated horror. I don’t know that I’ve seen any A24 films. At a guess it’s less gorey, less reliant on jump scares, and more drama based.

ETA: Looking through A24’s catalogue of horror, they’ve done their share of schlock. And I’ve seen one of their films, The Lighthouse. It was okay, not great.

I’d agree with that. As above, I think that factors into the widening popularity of horror.

I think horror recently has delved into more serious themes because it’s en vogue but yeah, there’s always been good horror movies that led the pack. But I think they were fewer and farther between in the past. Same can be said for a number of genres though, including science fiction, and action/adventure films, even comedy.

A24’s primarily, or at least its most high profile movies, have been elevated horror but that’s not exclusive. I do think there’s a halo effect around all of their films right now. In general, I find their movies to be pretty high quality - Hereditary, Midsommar, The Witch, The X trilogy…all solid movies IMO.