From crumbling Gothic manors to bland suburban homes, here is a list of best haunted house horror movies ever made. The below essay, by attorney and writer Leslie S. Klinger, is taken from the introduction to In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1816–1914, a. A horror film is a movie that seeks to elicit a physiological reaction, such as an elevated heartbeat, through the use of fear and shocking one’s audiences. Writing horror isn't easy. And all of the clichés make it especially hard to write in the horror genre. Learn to take a fresh, new approach in your horror writing. Horror House on Highway 5 Blu-ray delivers stunning video and decent audio in this excellent Blu-ray release A van full of college students traveling down a highway. How to Write Horror Fiction and Avoid Typical Horror Genre Clich. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. And the last and worse one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there . Luckily, I don’t think I’m the only one. People like to be frightened. If they didn’t, Stephen King wouldn’t have a thousand novels and you wouldn’t find every horror film ever made running on AMC at this time, every year. Click over to AMC, I can almost guarantee Halloween, or one of its sequels, is on right now. And horror has adapted. Yes, you can still find the slasher movies and those “gross- out” moments that King references. But it’s mental now. The more real, the better. And the scarier. It’s the dark basement where the only thing you can hear is the beating of your own heart. That’s real horror. The kind of stuff that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, as if someone was standing inches behind you. But writing horror isn’t so easy. With any type of fiction, it’s difficult to think of something that hasn’t already been done. With horror fiction, it’s especially true. Creepy basements, loud noises from the attic, hidden rooms, Indian burial grounds, old hotels, multiple personality disorder, etc.—it’s all been done before, and it’s all out there. These clich. They’ve simply defined the space you’re working in. You know what’s there, now create your own story. Below are Ramsey Campbell’s thoughts on “Avoiding What’s Been Done to Death” in On Horror Writing, edited by Mort Castle. Be sure to read it all the way to the end. That last sentence is breathtakingly creepy.* * * * *Some people . In a sense, that may be true. More than sixty years ago, H. P. Lovecraft drew up a list of the basic themes of weird fiction, and I can think of very little that the field has added to that list since then. But that’s by no means as defeatist as it sounds, because the truth is surely that many of the themes we’re dealing with are so large and powerful as to be essentially timeless. For instance, the folk tale of the wish that comes true more fully and more terribly than the wisher could have dreamed is the basis not only of “The Monkey’s Paw,” but of Stephen King’s Pet Semetary and of my own novel, Obsesssion, yet the three stories have otherwise far more to do with their writers than with one another. That suggests . Here, as in any other of the arts, it’s a legitimate and useful way to serve your apprenticeship. If you’re writing in a genre, it’s all the more important to read widely outside it in order to be aware what fiction is capable of. It’s less a matter of importing techniques into the field than of seeing the field as part of a larger art. Buy music cds and dvds online & in store at Sanity. Sanity have an extensive range of the latest music cds and dvds at affordable prices & ship world wide. Love scary movies? Get your horror fix at Fandango with everything thrilling. Find the latest horror movie showtimes, reviews, tickets + more. Depending wholly on genre techniques can lend too easily to the secondhand and the second- rate. There’s only one Stephen King, but there are far too many writers trying to sound like him. It’s no bad thing to follow the example of writers you admire, then, but only as a means to finding your own voice. You won’t find that, of course, unless you have something of your own to say. I did, once I stopped writing about Lovecraft’s horrors and began to deal with what disturbed me personally. Offers live music. Includes schedule, hours, videos, photos and web cam. Directed by Michael Armstrong. With Frankie Avalon, Jill Haworth, Dennis Price, Mark Wynter. Teenagers gathered in an old mansion are being murdered one by one. I began to write about how things seemed to me, which was more important and, at first, more difficult than it may sound. I tried (and still do try) to take nothing on trust to describe things as they really are or would be. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the horror field is riddled with clich. The house that’s for sale too cheaply, the guy who must be working nights because he sleeps during the day . But I think there are more fundamental clich. Writing about evil is a moral act, and it won’t do to recycle definitions of evil—to take them on trust. Horror fiction frequently presents the idea of evil in such a shorthand form as to be essentially meaningless—something vague out there that causes folk to commit terrible acts, something other than ourselves, nothing to do with us. That sounds to me more like an excuse than a definition, and I hope it’s had its day. If we’re going to write about evil, then let’s define it and how it relates to ourselves. All good fiction consists of looking at things afresh, but horror fiction seems to have a built- in tendency to do the opposite. Ten years or so ago, many books had nothing more to say than “the devil made me do it.” Now, thanks to the influence of films like Friday the 1. But it’s the job of writers to imagine how it would feel to be all their characters, however painful that may sometimes be. It may be a lack of that compassion that has led some writers to create children who are evil simply because they’re children, surely the most deplorable clich. Tradition shouldn’t be used as an excuse to repeat what earlier writers have done; if you feel the need to write about the stock figures of the horror story, that’s all the more reason to imagine them anew. It’s only fair to warn you that many readers and publishers would rather see imitations of whatever they liked last year than give new ideas a chance. But I’ve always tried to write what rings true to me, whether or not it makes the till ring. If you don’t feel involved with what you’re writing, it’s unlikely that anyone else will. There’s another side to the field that is overdue for attack by a new generation—its reactionary quality. A horror writer I otherwise admire argued recently that “it has been a time- honored tradition in literature and film that you have a weak or helpless heroine”—implying, I assume, that we should go on doing so. Well, tradition is a pretty poor excuse for perpetrating stereotypes (not that the author in question necessarily does); time- honored it may be, but that certainly doesn’t make it honorable. In fact, these days, so many horror stories (and especially films) gloat over the suffering of women that it seems clear the authors are getting their own back, consciously or not, on aspects of real life that they can’t cope with. Of course, that isn’t new in horror fiction, nor is using horror fiction to define as evil or diabolical whatever threatens the writer or the writer’s lifestyle. But, at the very least, one should be aware as soon as possible, that this is what one is doing, so as to be able to move on. I have my suspicions, too, about the argument that horror fiction defines what is normal by showing us what isn’t. I think it’s time for more of the field to acknowledge that, when we come face- to- face with the monsters, we may find ourselves looking not at a mask but at a mirror.* * * * *You can read more from accomplished horror authors, such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Harlan Ellison, David Morrell, Jack Ketchum, and more, in On Writing Horror, edited by Mort Castle. Also be sure to check out Mort Castle’s Dracula: The Annotated Classic, from Writer’s Digest Books, in Spring 2. You might also like. The Horror Genre Is Older Than You Think: A New History, From Homer to Lovecraft. The below essay, by attorney and writer Leslie S. Klinger, is taken from the introduction to In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Classic Tales of Horror, 1. Edgar Allan Poe. In his introduction, Klinger locates the origin of the “tale of terror” not in Poe — as is often claimed — but in Homer. Next, Klinger threads his history of horror through its “flowering” in the late 1. In Klinger’s narrative, Poe’s work, as well of that of his disciples, is made all the more fascinating because it is placed in a new context — a new history of horror. XFrom In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe: Edgar Allan Poe did not invent the tale of terror. Homer’s Odyssey records Odysseus’s confrontations with several witches, including Circe. The Bible (Samuel 2. Saul’s consultation with the Witch of Endor, a medium who calls up a spirit whom Saul identifies as the prophet Samuel. The writings of the Greeks contain several accounts of ancient vampires, called lami. Phlegon of Tralles, writing in the 2nd century, recounts a story about Philinium, a woman who returns from the grave to sleep with a young man, Machates. B. C. E.). Flavius Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius of Tyana, ca. C. E., tells of a near- fatal relationship between Menippus and a “Phoenician woman” who confesses to being a vampire. The Roman raconteur Lucius Apuleius, in The Golden Ass (translated into English in 1. Chaucer and Shakespeare both knew the traditions well, and their writings include numerous tales of ghosts and witches. The Renaissance polymath Niccol. In the late 1. 7th century and early 1. English writer Daniel Defoe penned a number of stories that are today classed as horror tales. However, the true “flowering” of stories of horror (picture the emergence of creeping, pustulant vines rather than flowers) began in the late 1. Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1. Gothic horror or Gothic romance. Walpole sought to combine medieval ideas about the supernatural with the realism of the modern novel. Above all, he sought to create an atmosphere of terror, a world in which anything could happen and often did: A giant helmet falls from the heavens, crushing Conrad on his wedding day; immense limbs appear within the castle itself; mysterious blood flows; and a hodgepodge of other bogeymen wander in and out of the tale. The immense success of Walpole’s novel (which he wrote under a pseudonym and passed off as drawn from historical records) lead to others exploring the genre. In 1. 77. 7, Clara Reeve published an anonymous work originally titled The Champion of Virtue. The author shamelessly termed it the “literary offspring” of Otranto, and the public embraced it with the same fervour as Walpole’s melodrama. Although it was similar in style to Otranto, Reeve attempted to inject more realism, avoiding some of the absurdities of Walpole. Anne Radcliffe was perhaps the most successful exponent of combining the supernatural and the modern. Radcliffe’s six novels, most notably The Mysteries of Udolpho (1. Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey (1. Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk (1. Ambrosio, the titular monk, as the basis for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. Sir Walter Scott’s immense output included many horrific folk tales, including the portion of Redgauntlet known as “Wandering Willie’s Tale” or “The Feast of Redgauntlet” (1. Scott was also highly appreciative of the work of Radcliffe. In America, Washington Irving wrote many tales of regional supernatural phenomena, among which “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” (1. Although his psychological tales of New England made his fame, Nathaniel Hawthorne was also fascinated by strange stories, and among his numerous tales of the occult, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”(1. Septimius Felton, or The Elixir of Life (1. Hawthorne’s continuing interest in the search for immortality. The Gothic romantic phenomenon was not limited to English- speaking countries. The French roman noir (“black novels”) and the German Schauerroman (literally, “shudder- novels”) were equally popular. The bizarre tales of German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann and Polish nobleman Jan Potocki were also a part of the tradition. These continental cousins were generally more violent than their English counterparts. The early stages of the Romantic movement, born in the early 1. Curiously, both emerged from a single night devoted to the telling of stories of horror. In 1. 81. 6, Dr. John William Polidori accompanied his patient Lord Byron on a trip to Italy and Switzerland. That summer, they stayed at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva, where they were visited by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, his soon- to- be- wife, Mary, and her stepsister, Jane “Claire” Claremont. When incessant rain kept the five friends indoors, they began reading aloud a book of ghost tales. According to Mary Shelley, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story to rival those in the book. Her husband wrote nothing in response to the challenge; Byron started on a story but reportedly abandoned it. Mary Shelley’s effort became Frankenstein, published two years later. The tale of the scientist Victor Frankenstein and his misbegotten creature became extremely popular, resulting in a number of stage plays, a revised edition in 1. Called by some the first science fiction novel, the popular images of the story have grown in stature to overshadow the original work. Seemingly every schoolchild knows the meaning of a staggering walk with outstretched arms; every filmgoer knows the indelible image of a horrific monster sharing a flower with an innocent child. While Shelley’s book was more a reverie on moral responsibility than a forecast of science- gone- wrong, generations read it as the ultimate horror tale, a stern warning about the arrogance of humankind. An anonymous reviewer in 1. Frankenstein for its originality, excellence of language, its “peculiar interest,” and termed it “bold” and possibly “impious.” Later that year, Sir Walter Scott, writing for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (and ascribing the book to Percy Bysshe Shelley), commented that the work expressed its ideas clearly and forcibly. In his review, Scott contemplated the purpose of “marvellous romances,” as he classed the work: “A more philosophical and refined use of the supernatural in works of fiction, is proper to that class in which the laws of nature are represented as altered, not for the purpose of pampering the imagination with wonders, but in order to shew the probable effect which the supposed miracles would produce on those who witnessed them. In this case, the pleasure ordinarily derived from the marvellous incidents is secondary to that which we extract from observing how mortals like ourselves would be affected by scenes like these which, daring to depart from sober truth, are still to nature true. Originally heralded as a work of Byron—and then seen as a satire of Byron—the story recounts some of the activities of the vampire Lord Ruthven, a nobleman marked by his aloof manner and the “deadly hue of his face, which never gained a warmer tint.” In the early part of the 1. Ruthven befriends a gentleman named Aubrey, who finds that even Ruthven’s death does not rid him of his deadly companion. When Ruthven returns from death, he rejoins Aubrey to the latter’s horror and soon attacks and kills Ianthe, the object of Aubrey’s affections. Plunged into a breakdown, Aubrey recovers only to find that his beloved sister has also become the victim of the creature, who then vanishes. Polidori was no great writer, as is evident from the concluding lines of the book: “Lord Ruthven had disappeared, and Aubrey’s sister had glutted the thirst of a VAMPYRE!” Polidori’s work is credited as the first of the great vampire tales, however, primarily for its depiction of a gentleman vampire—a far remove from the disgusting, blood- sucking corpses detailed in the accounts of vampires written by Calmet and other historians. It was immensely successful; within Polidori’s lifetime (he died two years after publication), the work was translated into French, German, Spanish and Swedish and adapted into several stage plays, which played to horror- struck audiences until the early 1. Another memorable work of the early Romantics was Melmoth the Wanderer, published in 1. Written by Charles Robert Maturin, the great- uncle of Oscar Wilde, its protagonist, John Melmoth, has sold his soul to gain 1. Melmoth wanders the earth searching for someone to take over this contract. Although the book is convoluted, with numerous tales- within- tales, Melmoth has been compared to Moliere’s Don Juan, Goethe’s Faust, and Byron’s Manfred as a great allegorical figure, and H. Lovecraft called it “an enormous stride in the evolution of the horror- tale.”Also extremely popular was Varney the Vampyre, written by James Malcolm Rymer and serialized in 1. The first novel- length account of a vampire in English, the prose of Varney is sensational: “Her bosom heaves, and her limbs tremble, yet she cannot withdraw her eyes from that marble- looking face. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang- like teeth—a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampire is at his hideous repast!” Despite its artistic shortcomings, however, Varney delivers a vivid, monstrous portrait of the undead. The vampire is Sir Francis Varney, born in the seventeenth century, frequently reborn from the dead—a “tall gaunt figure” whose face, similar to Ruthven’s, is “perfectly white—perfectly bloodless,” with eyes like “polished tin” and “fearful- looking teeth- projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang- like.”The tales of Edgar Allan Poe were mid- century milestones on the trail of the horror story. Beginning in 1. 83. Berenice,” a dark tale of a man who becomes obsessed by his lover’s teeth, Poe’s stories covered the gamut of science fiction, mystery, and horror.
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