“Gothic cinema inherits an ongoing obsession with writers and writing from its literary ancestors, but how does it translate such text-based fixations into its own audiovisual grammar? How does it stage ‘objective’ diegeses in concert with the innately subjective representations of writers and the act of writing? This article approaches these questions, not by offering a comprehensive history of Gothic films depicting writers (that would require a long, book-length project), but by analyzing a trio of writer-focused Gothic films notable for their dealings with literary ancestry through negotiations between subjective interiority and diegetic objectivity.”
Featuring a comprehensive editors’ introduction to the Weird as a mode engaging with forms of knowledge, transcendence, and resistance, this collection offers a broad-reaching discussion of Weird fiction, film, art, and thought. Its 31 essays explore theoretical and philosophical applications of the Weird, such as Black Metal Theory, and key Weird themes and tropes such as cosmic horror, radical embodiment and sensation, dark ecological speculation, and forms of alterity. Essays are highly varied in period focus and subject matter, ranging from early Weird works by William Hope Hodgson and Conan creator Robert E. Howard, to the surrealist paintings of Leonora Carrington, to more recent works by David Lynch, Octavia Butler, and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Enter into a collection rife with orifice-driven horror and transgression! From literal to metaphorical interpretations, every story in here has a hole at its core—holes that bleed, holes that ridicule, holes that perturb to no end. All sales of this book will be donated to the indigenous Cucapa community of Mexicali, B.C., Mexico.
This charity anthology features Mike Thorn’s previously unpublished story, “Hell is a False Abyss”, and stories by Alissa Nutting, Elle Nash, Charlene Elsby, Brendan Vidito, Tom Over, Josh Simmons, Max Booth III, Alexandra Challoner, and others!
In this interview, we chat with S. P. Miskowski about Asian horror cinema, the power of grief, the relentless desire to shape the self, and so much more.
S. P. Miskowski is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, for literature and for drama. Her books have been recognized with four Shirley Jackson Award nominations and two Bram Stoker Award nominations. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies including Haunted Nights, Human Monsters, Looming Low I and II, The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Uncertainties III, October Dreams 2, The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 10, and Darker Companions: 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell, and in magazines including Identity Theory, Black Static, Vastarien, Supernatural Tales, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. Her grunge noir novel I Wish I Was Like You was named This Is Horror Novel of the Year 2017 and is available via Audible. An omnibus of her books set in the weird fictional town of Skillute, WA is forthcoming from Broken Eye Books in 2025.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales – Alfred A. Knopf, pub.
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 – S. A. Cosby, ed.
D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths – Ingrid & Edgar Parin d’Aulaire
Go, Dog. Go! – P. D. Eastman
Rock Paper Scissors – Alice Feeney
The Haunting of Hill House; “Maybe it Was the Car”; “The Summer People”; We Have Always Lived in the Castle; “The Witch” – Shirley Jackson
None of This is True – Lisa Jewell
Audition – Ryū Murakami
“Bluebeard”; “Cinderella” – Charles Perrault
“The Black Cat”; “The Cask of Amontillado” – Edgar Allan Poe
The Last Party – A. R. Torre
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023 – Lisa Unger, ed.
“Themes of adolescence, rage, toxic masculinity and addiction are portrayed in a terrifying but comprehensible way, and the book manages to succeed in pulling at empathetic heartstrings while simultaneously delivering a very dark, surreal story that will occupy minds for ages.”
Die Nibelungen, Part II: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924) Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934) Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938) Mogambo (John Ford, 1953) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955) Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957) The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958) The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959) Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)
ADDITIONAL STANDOUT VIEWINGS
City Girl (F. W. Murnau, 1930) Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936) The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May, 1940) Carnival of Sinners (Maurice Tourneur, 1943) The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946) The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949) Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950) The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951) Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952) Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953) The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955) The Quatermass XPeriment (Val Guest, 1955) Summertime (David Lean, 1955) Quatermass 2 (Val Guest, 1957) The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958) The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli, 1958) A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959) Tender is the Night (Henry King, 1962) Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) Danza Macabra (Antonio Margheriti, 1964) War-Gods of the Deep (Jacques Tourneur, 1965) Island of Terror (Terence Fisher, 1966) Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967) Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968) The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969) The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972) The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972) Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1974) The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974) Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976) The Nixon Interviews with David Frost (Jørn Winther, 1977) Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982) The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983) Angel Dust (Gakuryū Ishii, 1994) Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995) Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997) Serpent’s Path (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998) Ju-On: The Curse 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2000) Nightcap (Claude Chabrol, 2000) Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001) Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2001) Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2003) Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003) The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004) Speak (Jessica Sharzer, 2004) The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004/2018) Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005) A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol, 2007) Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) Missing (Tsui Hark, 2008) Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009) Occult (Koji Shiraishi, 2009) Watchmen [director’s cut] (Zack Snyder, 2009) Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone, 2012) A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016) The Putin Interviews (Oliver Stone, 2017) Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018) The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2018) I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter (Erin Lee Carr, 2019) Hemingway (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, 2021) The Deep End (Jon Kasbe, 2022) Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023) Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023) Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023) Tell Them You Love Me (Nick August-Perna, 2023) The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
Mike Thorn 