It’s Halloween, a time when sales of candy and rentals of horror movies spike off the charts. Candy has been around since the time of the ancient Egyptians, but the horror film is barely 100 years old. The genre is enjoying a resurgence in popularity over the past several years: right now you’ve got Saw V in wide release, Let The Right One In in limited theaters, the vampy teen Twilight coming up in a few weeks and True Blood making waves on HBO. Studios can’t seem to go more than a few months without releasing some sort of a zombie flick, and vampires are coming back into their own.
But what was the first real horror film? Before movies existed, people had to get their scares from books and the local newspaper, but now you can just switch on cable and tune into NBC’s Chiller channel for instant scares. Check out a brief history of the horror movie after the break, and look just how far we’ve come.
Fear(s) of the Dark opens in limited release on Wednesday, October 22, presented by IFC Films. The film, produced in France, features animated shorts by six talented graphic artists. It looks really good, and really scary. As any fan of Japanese anime will tell you, the American idea that animated content is only for children is not only false, but is in fact a tragic misconception stifling an entire art form.
Fear(s) is definitely something I want to see now, and it’s definitely something that would have scared the crap out of me as a kid. Which is why I find Guillermo del Toro’s pullquote on the film’s IFC page so funny: “Rusty alleyways and vaporous ghosts painted by the masters of dread. Razor-sharp images that will slice your eye and nest there forever. Thrilling, disturbing and haunting. Bring the kids!” Thanks Guillermo, now countless parents are going to have to let their kids sleep with the lights on at least until Christmas.
Jesus Christ –– or, Xenu? (And is that a valid Scrabulous word? The mind reels…)
If you’re one of the 85,039 hippest people in the universe (as of this writing), you’ve probably already seen the Defamer-hosted, Tom Cruise-starring Scientology indoctrination video. But if you haven’t … enjoy! We’re en route to Park City and our “real” content will be in short supply until Friday.
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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