Horror Roundtable - Week Twenty-Five
Which piece of writing, artwork or other creative output do you feel is your best of the past year?
Sean T. Collins - Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat
I’m proudest that I dragged myself to Kinko’s to print out a handful of copies of Darling Comics #0, a one-man anthology of the comic strips I’ve written over the past few years. Sure, all five strips are viewable online, and all this “issue” was was a xerox packet held together by binder clips, but seeing all five strips together in a package I can hold in my hands and flip through reminds me how proud I am of how they all turned out, which ultimately is all that matters to me.
A close second, though, is “Evil for Thee, Not Me,” my big post on the recent brutal-horror film cycle–none of which I’ve even seen yet, unless you count The Descent, which I wouldn’t. But even without viewing them I’ve found them so intriguing and thought-provoking, insofar as they (along with a year of amazingly productive psychotherapy) appear to have coaxed out of me my baseline views about horror, and therefore about art, and therefore about life.
That’s a tough question because we put out many releases throughout the year and, personally, I think all are great. But, the one title that we worked the longest on and, I fell, turned out better than we expected, was the STREET TRASH: 2-DVD MELTDOWN EDITION. It took years to put it all together and the amount of money and work we put into it was astounding. That particular release we at Synapse Films are extremely proud of. From the cover to the content, everything went together extremely well.
I happen to think that my and my partner’s work creating the key art for DEAD MARY is a good indicator of something of which I’m proud. It came together in a flash of inspiration and it was great working with everyone - they all had great feedback.
It better be my novel, which I’m in the process of posting as we speak: Night Falls on a Fairy Tale.
For this past year, I would have to say, that I feel that screenplays that I am currently writing have been improved. Hopefully, by next year I can say that one of my films is the most creative output for 2007.
David Z. - Tomb It May Concern
I would have to go with a post and a follow up. Reviewing Insurrection! was a lot of fun, especially since I stumbled upon it by accident. As if the book wasn’t bizarre enough, I was contacted by a family friend of the author and was really delighted to put some information online that I couldn’t find that talked about pulp author and journalist Dan Brennan and his wild life.
A fun read and review with a rewarding result.
There’s probably two things, my two longish original essays/ruminations on horror, Technology and Horror: Unfulfilled Potential , and with the followup part 2, about the role technology has played and perhaps should play in horror narratives, which got a good reception, and then a bit later, Horror Monomyth: Female Ghosts, Harbingers of Death, about parallels between Mexican folk tales and J-Horror staples, with some European folklore thrown in for good measure. It was less read and commented on, but I think I’m more happy with it.
Casey Criswell - Cinema Fromage
Since my site has only been around since October of 2005, it grew quite a bit this past year. I started by only posting generic links to IMdb entries for everything I was watching, but in 2006 I actually started writing about the films. My earlier reviews were a little rough, but in my mind the site’s turning point has to be my review of Hammer Studios’ The Vampire Lovers.
This particular review was the start of my long-winded rambling phase, which has continued to grow to this day! Was it this post that helped me realize I was capable of more than just short, opinionated nerd rants? Perhaps. Before I was inspired by Ingrid Pitt in her Vampire Lovers role (or something like that, you want to say which role you are referring to), I could easily knock out a review in five minutes. Now it takes me upwards of two to three hours to come up with something like this.
Maybe I should think of Ms. Pitt as a muse? I can live with that.
Thanks once again to all the contributors. Make sure you check out the best these madmen have to offer.
On a side note, my brother Gary just landed in Australia for an extended vacation, and he wrote me to let me know that he regrets not being able to contribute to the Roundtable this week. He told me that if he had, it would have been for the illustration that makes up the banner for this post. You can see the full thing at his portfolio site. Fuck, I love that drawing.