My friend Lucy published today a nice lengthy piece about the 1939 adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, featuring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
You can find the post here, and read it through the usual Google Translate thingy. It’s excellent, and it raises an interesting question, by noting that The Hound of the Baskervilles is treated as a proper Gothic story, an old dark house film.
This got me thinking about the connection between the Canon and the Horror genre, and so while clouds gathered and the storm approached, heralded by thunder and lightning, I brew myself a cup of hot tea, and I took a look at the other Hound, the one that was unleashed on the moors, in the full shocking splendor of Technicolor, by Terence Fisher, with the assistance of the fine gentlemen of Hammer Films.
The first Holmes movie in color.
Another Gothic adaptation, featuring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.
It was, if you recall, the year 1959. Continue reading
Tag Archives: horror
December, a review
Phil Rickman is an English author with a background in music and a deep knowledge of the traditions, legends and atmospheres of that region of the British Isles straddling the England-Wales border.
In this territory Rickman has set his series of novels focused on the Anglican exorcist Merrily Watkins, mixing detective fiction with a supernatural that is more hinted at than made explicit. In this Rickman is admirable author in his ability to intercept two sectors of the public – that of horror and that of the British-style mystery (not necessarily a cozy), which are usually considered to be mutually exclusive.
Rickman is also the author of a series of mystery novels set in Elizabethan England and featuring Dr John Dee and the Earl of Essex as a team of sui generis, sort-of-X-files investigators.
At the same time, Rickman produced a number of stand-alone novels, more frankly horrific and generally ascribable to that typically British genre of “folk horror” or “rural horror” that is going through a renaissance in these last years1.
December belongs to this batch of stand-alone books. I originally reviewed it last year, for an Italian magazine – a friend borrowed me her copy, and I was able to meet the publisher’s expectations. I recently bought the book (together with four other stand-alone Rickman books), and here goes my review – suitably expanded and updated. Continue reading
A Wisp of Smoke, online
The KDP morlocks did their job, and right now A Wisp of Smoke, Rising is live on Amazon.
A Wisp of Smoke, Rising is a horror story set in Japan in 1960.
It is also a spy story, a mystery of sorts.
It is also a homage to the media through which my generation discovered Japan.
And it has a historical twist, in more senses than one. Continue reading
Once again into Hell House
My friend Lucy called it “the best ghost movie you don’t know” and she’s right of course, so I spent part of the night of Friday the 13th watching once again The Legend of Hell House.
And now I’ll tell you about it.
I first saw this back when I was in high school.
I remember this distinctively because I caught it one early morning, while I was home alone, in bed with the flu. I watched it on our old Zenith black and white TV set.
It made me an instant fan of Gayle Hunnicutt, but that’s another story.
And really, who in their right minds would schedule this great little horror at 8 am?
This is a British movie, filmed in 1973 and based on a novel called Hell House by the great Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, moving the location from New England to Old England. Continue reading
The Masks of Halloween
Here’s a silly idea I’d love to do.
Heck, I love it so much that I’ll do it.
My friend Claire, over on her Scribblings blog, wrote about her acting experiences with and without a mask. You can go and check her post out. It’s quite interesting as usual. Continue reading
Ideas everywhere, and a new story
OK, new project going – because really ideas can be found everywhere.
Where will I find the time to write it, I wonder?
But anyway, good ideas should be pursued, and what I have here now is a great idea!
I am still putting together all the pieces and things, and I’m doing a nice bit of research, but I’ll work double-time to make this new thing ready for Halloween.
Because it’s horror.
Supernatural horror.
Maybe with a little touch of occult.
As usual I’m thinking in terms of mid-length, say a novella, and possibly the first in a series. But that’s long in the coming.
It is also something really different from what I usually write, and this is the exciting bit, because it’s always good to try new concepts, styles, structures and plots.
I’m also considering the option of publishing the story in both English and Italian at the same time, which makes it even more work, but it would be nice.
I’m not giving away anything else for the time being, but I promise that, if it will eventually work out, it will be quite fun. And different.
So, wish me luck
In other news: the BUSCAFUSCO ebooks are about to be re-priced at 1.99. I know this will cut my royalties drastically (70 cents instead of two bucks), but I write to be read and to sell (not necessarily in that order) and a higher royalty on a book that does not sell is meaningless.
So, keep an eye out, in a few hours the prices will drop.
A story in search of its place
I might need a little help here, so suggestions are welcome.
Last April I wrote a story, in about a weekend. It was a one-shot horror story set in New York in the 1930s, but as I usually do when I write shorts, I designed it to work as the first in a series, should the characters meet the fancy of the readers.
I wanted to do something in the vein of the old pulps, but also more modern, closer to our modern sensibilities.
Straightforward but quirky.
So, it was a one-shot “with possibilities”, and it was intended as (possibly) the first outing of my very own occult detective/monster hunter, the extremely reluctant conjurer Steve Davies, a.k.a. The Mysterious Doctor Wu Yang1… Continue reading
Karavansara 