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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2012 9:02:27 GMT
And this board is where I heard about Bleiler's Guide! i'm very pleased about that! One of my few shrewd moves was asking an assistant in W. H. Smiths if it was still in print (this was in 1990) and when she confirmed it was, i asked the gents at the Fantasy Center to order a copy. It cost me £25 which wasn't expensive by the day's standards - Neil Barron's then recently published Horror Literature (Garland, 1990) sold over here for £40 - and to say i've had my moneys worth is to criminally understate the matter. You'll note Bleiler is often dismissive of what he describes as "crude horror stories" and "routine commercial fiction", whereas many a Vault contributor will be on better than friendly terms with both, but the idea of treating this forum as an annotated bibliography in progress was directly inspired by The Guide. Vault as E. F. Bleiler tribute act! The poor man! WORST FILMS: Altitude (2010), Burke & Hare (2010) ..... Happy new year to you, Dr. Strange. Still haven't seen Burke And Hare so can't comment, but a film i finally got to see for the first time in 2011 was The Doctor & The Devils which seemed to me like some a grimy, downbeat take on a Hammer period piece - Dr. Jekyl & Sister Hyde and Hands Of The Ripper in particular - and i loved every squalid moment. The ending is not pleasant!
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 9, 2012 12:05:57 GMT
Happy new year to you, Dr. Strange. Still haven't seen Burke And Hare so can't comment, but a film i finally got to see for the first time in 2011 was The Doctor & The Devils And a happy New Year to you and yours. I don't think I'd ever heard of The Doctor & The Devils so I just looked it up - that's some cast! And it's based on a stage play by poet Dylan Thomas - which was also the source for the earlier The Flesh & The Fiends with Peter Cushing as the anatomist.
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 9, 2012 14:10:44 GMT
It cost me £25 which wasn't expensive by the day's standards - Neil Barron's then recently published Horror Literature (Garland, 1990) sold over here for £40 - and to say i've had my moneys worth is to criminally understate the matter. You'll note Bleiler is often dismissive of what he describes as "crude horror stories" and "routine commercial fiction", whereas many a Vault contributor will be on better than friendly terms with both, but the idea of treating this forum as an annotated bibliography in progress was directly inspired by The Guide. Vault as E. F. Bleiler tribute act! The poor man! Funny that you mention Barron's Horror Literature--I bought a copy of that a month or two ago (for much less than £40, I'm happy to say). It's also useful, if not so comprehensive as Bleiler. For me, part of the fun of reading Bleiler was comparing his take to mine. We often disagreed, but even when he trashed a story I liked I could admire how pithy and biting his comments were. For example, if I'm remembering correctly, all he wrote about Cyril Kornbluth's "Twelve O'Clock" was "should not have been reprinted."
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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2012 18:38:02 GMT
Funny that you mention Barron's Horror Literature--I bought a copy of that a month or two ago (for much less than £40, I'm happy to say). It's also useful, if not so comprehensive as Bleiler. That would be exactly my take on their relative merits though Barron's is very good on then contemporary horror novels whereas Bleiler, out of sheer necessity, had a strict, self-imposed 1970 ceiling to keep to. He even mentions his regret at not being able to feature more of Robert Aickman's work. And yes, one of the joys is when he lets loose on a story or novel which doesn't meet with his liking. Poor Dennis Wheatley takes a terrible pasting! Nothing new in that - Wheatley-bashing is a national past-time over here - but EFB does it in such a way that even as you're laughing you're already making a note to find a copy of The Satanist as a matter of urgency.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 11, 2012 3:59:53 GMT
Neil Barron's then recently published Horror Literature (Garland, 1990) sold over here for £40 That's a good reference book to dip into - Brian Stableford did a couple of the chapters and, like Bleiler, his judgements are worth reading. From memory Barron was dismissive of Marshall Tymn's earlier Horror Literature, which didn't seem very fair. Tymn's book includes a huge annotated bibliography of early gothic fiction, though it seems to treat just about anything published at the time as "gothic."
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Post by cauldronbrewer on Jan 12, 2012 12:26:19 GMT
From memory Barron was dismissive of Marshall Tymn's earlier Horror Literature, which didn't seem very fair. Tymn's book includes a huge annotated bibliography of early gothic fiction, though it seems to treat just about anything published at the time as "gothic." Your memory is correct. Barron almost seems to have a personal grudge against Tymn. Here's part of his entry on Horror Literature: "This guide, patterned after my Anatomy of Wonder, lacked careful editorial guidance and thus critical rigor and balance . . . The guide you are reading and its companion were partly designed to avoid the deficiencies of this . . ." Rather harsh, and it put me off of buying Tymn's book (though maybe I'll rethink that decision).
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jan 16, 2012 19:35:15 GMT
Best Film - The Troll Hunter. Very in keeping with the Vault I reckon & well worth checking out.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 17, 2012 10:56:05 GMT
Best Film - The Troll Hunter. Very in keeping with the Vault I reckon & well worth checking out. Watched it the other night (too late to make my best of 2011 list, otherwise it would definitely have been on it). It is very enjoyable, though I thought maybe just a little bit slow to get going. Very funny in places too.
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Post by Shrink Proof on Jan 17, 2012 11:15:55 GMT
The version dubbed with American-English voices is lousy; I'm never convinced by dubbed soundtracks (except possibly for some animations) but the dubbing's so bad that it detracts from the film. definitely go for the original Norwegian plus subtitles.
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Post by The Lurker In The Shadows on Jan 17, 2012 23:00:49 GMT
Sticking with horror...
My film of the year was definitely "The Awakening" - very atmospheric, spooky and well played.
Anthologies - "The Eighth Black Book of Horror" and "House of Fear".
Single Author Collections - "Curfew & Other Eerie Stories" by Lucy M. Boston (Swan River Press).
Novels - Er... if I read "The Dead of Winter" by Chris Priestley in 2011, it'll be that. Otherwise "Harbour" by John Ajvide Lindqvist or Helen Grant's "The Glass Demon". (I think I've forgotten how to read novels...)
Non-Fiction - "Studies in Terror" by Jonathan Rigby.
Television - "Doctor Who", "The Fades", "American Horror Story and Psychoville 2".
Magazine - "The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter".
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