Wes Craven (1939 - 2015)

“What a horror film does is not frighten so much as release fright. It is a vent. And all these fears are in us all the time, from our lives, from our youths, from the world at large; everything from the most complex societal things of waging war and class struggle to very simple primal things like fear of the father and mother and fear of abandonment as a child. So these are all inherent in us and civilization tends to gloss them over, encapsulate them, deny them; it teaches us a thousand ways to act like everything’s fine but underneath this surface there is a sort of cauldron. So what a horror film does is tap in and release that tension and it does it in a way that’s entertaining, amusing and safe.”
- Wes Craven, RIP

Forthcoming Books - Update!

It's been quite a while since I last posted on this blog, mainly because I've been hard at work on two new books. The first is a monograph on Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind for Auteur Publishing. This book is now submitted and I'll post updates on the release date when I have them. The second is a follow-up to Subversive Horror Cinema for McFarland & Co, a study of 'gruesomeness' in 1930s American Horror Cinema. The manuscript for this is due in October so it's still nose to the grindstone for me until then! Meanwhile here are some photographs that I took during a recent research trip to Hollywood, L.A.

At Paramount

Finally found Maila Nurmi's grave in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Ready for your close up, Mr De Mille? C.B's grave at the Hollywood Forever.

Which classic 1930s monster movie is this script page from?

Glad to see Subversive Horror Cinema in the USC library!