Horror Roundtable - Week Seventy-Six
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 really proud of “Destructor Comes to Croc Town,” my contribution to the Elfworld indie-comics fantasy anthology. It’s a year or two old, but seeing it in print this year in that lovely collection was just wonderful.
In terms of blogging, I did a lot of writing I’m happy with this year. I’m pretty proud of defending of the “torture porn” label and drawing attention to the current critical fixation on political subtext in horror to the exclusion of other factors. But just in general I feel like I found a real groove in terms of talking about the art that interests me, probably aided by blogging daily with only maybe one week total of off-days.
Jeff O’Brien
http://www.bonedryfilm.com and click trailers. The “cactus scene” warms my heart.
Although not horror-related, I think my best work so far this year has been the story I made chronicling my adventure to the hippy town of Nimbin, Australia for Cannabis Culture Magazine. I’m most happy about it because I’ve done plenty of art in the past for people, but this was my first shot at writing anything. I had full creative freedom to boot, so that really rocked out too.
I haven’t been working on much art lately and due to camera troubles I haven’t taken a lot of photos this year so that limits my choices to my writing. I’m not sure what was my best piece is, but the “What’s in the Box?” piece I wrote about Bunuel’s film Belle de Jour generated a lot of interest and the research I did seemed to offer fresh insight into that film. I’m personally really fond of my piece about Lee Marvin in Point Blank, as well as my piece on Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses so I’d have a hard time choosing between those three.
Perhaps this is a cheat answer since it’s an entire series of posts that I’ve done for my blog, but I really, really enjoy doing my Thursday’s Ways Not To Die series. I’d been wanting some way to up the gore-quotient and this series has been effective in that regard, most assuredly.
Well, I have not completed anything this year. However, I have started on several projects or more including a music vid and screenwriting. If anything, I am just glad to finally have the gumption to get off my ass and make a go at making something.
David Z. - Tomb It May Concern
I’m really proud to have put all of the Thriller-A Cruel Picture / They Call Her One Eye material on the web. Enhanced by as much Christina Lindberg as I could find (with more to come)…this is something I just really needed to do. While I don’t think the writing is the strongest suit-though I think my coverage on Breaking Point is pretty good-just passing along all that stuff is something I hope lots of fans of the movie and exploitation cinema archaeologists find helpful for years to come.
And though there is some repetition in the tagging, there are lots of Christina Lindberg photos (ed. note - NSFW, and how!) that I’ve found via Usenets around the world as well as sent to me by collectors that I’ve tried to clean up and restore as best as I can.
I haven’t been as prolific with my own horror output this year as I would have liked. I can’t complain, though– my time has been occupied with work and piracy, as well as publishing the work of some very fine writers. I did sell an unpublished story to Apex Digest, though, as well as contributing to the upcoming Twisted Twins horror calendar, so I can’t say that I was unproductive. Apart from that, though, I wrote one thing that was very satisfying: an E-mail.
As some of you may know, I had some regrettable trouble with a plagiarist earlier this year, and of course I banned him from my site the moment I found him out. Some people just never learn, though, so he continued to try to send more stories from new E-mail addresses and under assumed names. I replied, reminding him in no uncertain terms of his banned status and forbidding him from contacting me again. He wrote back a few days later with a message reading, in its entirety:
“fuck you faggot”
When I read that, I knew that victory was truly mine, and I slept the sleep of the just.
Now that’s fast fiction! Thanks to all this week’s contributors for giving themselves a pat on the back. Won’t you check out their glorious achievements at the links above? And while we’re on the topic, feel free to crow about your own projects in the comments below.
December 13th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
That’s some great stuff Sean put up over there. I had read the torture-porn defense already but but the other links were new to me; I love his take on political subtext.
Sorry, but “Dawn of the Dead” is not about consumerism. It’s about a zombie plague, it succeeds or fails on that basis, and everything else is just something to make repeat viewings more rewarding once the visceral thrill’s been diluted (at least Romero’s social commentary was intentional–so many critics thought “The Thing” was about AIDS that now Carpenter does too).
I don’t resent this stuff being sussed out–I saw “Deathdream” recently and the relevance floored me–but to see these movies in those terms sucks the life out of ‘em. Yeah, the first two Body Snatcher flicks were rich with academic grist but c’mon, take all the high-mindedness out of the equation and they still kick ass. Doesn’t the chattering class ever wonder why kids love this shit so much? It ain’t for the mirror it holds up to society.
Okay, fine, I loved “Homecoming,” and that would seem to contradict everything I just said. In my defense, Bush really, really, really, sucks.