Category Archives: horror

Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium

The Flaying of the Corrupt Judge Sisamnes (1498-99) – Gérard David

Went to Bruges yesterday and visited the Groeningemuseum which houses Bruges’s collection of Flemish Primitives. The primary attraction was Bosch’s triptych of The Last Judgement. The most vivid memory of my (short) visit was Gérard David’s gruesome painting of The Flaying of the Corrupt Judge Sisamnes (1498-99).

According to Herodotos, Sisamnes was a corrupt judge under Cambyses II of Persia. He accepted a bribe and delivered an unjust verdict. As a result, the king had him arrested and flayed alive. His skin was then used to cover the seat in which his son would sit in judgement. Sisamnes was the subject of two paintings by Gerard David, “The Arrestation of Sisamnes” and “Flaying of Sisamnes” both done in 1498. Together they make up the Cambyses diptych. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisamnes [Sept 2006]

A similarly themed painting is Apollo Flaying Marsyas (1637) – Jusepe de Ribera

See also: art horror – Flemish Primitives – 1400s

Premature burial

Premature Burial (1854) – Antoine Wiertz

“Can you possibly conceive it. The unendurable oppression of the lungs, the stifling fumes of the earth, the rigid embrace of the coffin, the blackness of absolute night and the silence, like an overwhelming sea.” –Guy Carrell in The Premature Burial (1962)

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Premature_Burial

See also: grave – asphyxia – E. A. Poe – Antoine Wiertz

The Little Shop of Horrors

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) – Fred Katz

There was a time in the early nineties – after I’d gotten hold of the film encyclopedia Cult Movie Stars by Danny Peary – when I visited nearly every video rental store in Antwerp in search of Roger Corman VHS copies. I managed to see about 20 Corman related films in that period of which The Intruder with William Shatner I still find the most rewarding.

A couple of months ago I viewed Bucket of Blood for the first time and now I am in the middle of re-viewing Little Shop of Horrors (1960).

What immediately struck me about Little Shop was the score for this cult black comedy, written by Fred Katz, an American composer working in the space age pop idiom, although this particular score is rather more jazzy than space age. It complements the film marvelously, giving it a very ‘arty’ feel which contrasts nicely with its subject matter. Fred Katz also scored Corman films Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), The Wasp Woman (1960), Battle of Blood Island (1960), Ski Troop Attack (1960), Beast from Haunted Cave (1959) and A Bucket of Blood (1959).

The story of The Little Shop of Horrors is about a clumsy young man who nurtures a plant and discovers that it’s a bloodthirsty plant, forcing him to kill to feed it. It was written by Charles B. Griffith who collaborated with Corman on more than 20 films from 1956 to 1967.

It is one of the funniest combinations of comedy and horror since Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) but also manages to be quite eerie at times. The idea of a plant which hypnotizes its owner to go out in the streets in order to kill is quite uncanny. The final scene is particularly unsettling: when finally the last buds of the plant open they reveal the faces of the people it has eaten.

The story has been remade several times but I suggest to stick with the 1960 Corman version.

Wikipedia (which features an extensive write up on the film) says:

The Little Shop of Horrors is a 1960 black comedy film directed by Roger Corman. The film is famous for having been shot in two days. The film tells the story of a nerdy young florist’s assistant who cultivates a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. The film is also noteworthy for featuring a young Jack Nicholson in a small role as Wilbur Force, the dentist’s masochistic patient. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Shop_of_Horrors [Sept 2006]

See also: http://www.spaceagepop.com/katz.htm [Sept 2006]

See also: The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Karel Thole (1914 – 2000)

Illustration of German pulp fiction novel by Karel Thole

Carolus Adrianus Maria Thole (1914, Netherland – 2000, Italy) is a Dutch painter. He is one of the best-known european illustrators of science fiction and the fantastique. Influenced by painters like Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí or René Magritte his style is instantly recognizable.

Via The Groovy Age of Horror.

See also: le fantastique

Le Monstre (1903) – Georges Méliès

Via gmtplus9:

Georges Méliès… Le Monstre (The Monster, 1903, .mpg video 02:55). “…Set against an exotic backdrop of pyramids, the Nile, and a great the Sphinx, Georges Méliès’ The Monster (Le Monstre) seems, at first glance, to be a typical Méliès magic film in which a bearded magician demonstrates a series of tricks with an animated skeleton in front of a single well-dressed spectator. The effects are similar to those used in Méliès films ranging from The Vanishing Lady (1896) to The Infernal Cauldron (1903), and in many ways this is a rare instance of a Méliès film in which the magic tricks are actually upstaged by the elaborate scenic backdrop.” From Georges Méliès Digital Video Files.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Richard Brooks

 


Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Richard Brooks

Looking for Mr. Goodbar is a 1975 novel by Judith Rossner, and a 1977 film by Richard Brooks starring Diane Keaton and Richard Gere, based on the true story of a woman who has an affair with her sadistic and misogynistic professor as the beginning of a long downward spiral that culminates in her brutal murder.

In recent years the film has been compared to Jane Campion’s 2003 In the Cut. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post called the latter an “erotic thriller that amounts to an implausible update on Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”

Notes:

  • Looking for Mr. Goodbar foreshadows the end of the sexual revolution.
  • Looking for Mr. Goodbar wasn’t the first foray of Richard Brooks into true crime, there had been a film adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood in 1967.

When the paratext is more interesting than the text

Exploitation Poster Art (2005) – Dave Kehr, Tony Nourmand, Graham Marsh [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Horror Poster Art (2004) – Tony Nourmand, Graham Marsh [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Science Fiction Poster Art (2004) – Christopher Frayling, Tony Nourmand, Graham Marsh [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

In Europe, publisher Taschen have teamed up with Nourmand/Marsh, to publish a series of film poster books. Available in Belgium at a price of 13 Euros, they are a bargain. Some of the accompanying text of these lovingly produced coffee table books was written by American film critic Dave Kehr (Exploitation poster art) and British art historian Christopher Frayling (Science-fiction poster art). The posters are masterpieces of visual innuendo, offering, in most cases, far more that the films actually delivered. And that is what I meant in my title about the paratext being more interesting than the text.

The poetics of Fritz Freleng

Girish asks:

“Why is it that acts that would horrify us in real life instead evoke in us shameless, uncontainable joy when encountered in a cartoon?”

Girish’s post is part of the Friz Freleng Blog-A-Thon by Brian Darr at Hell On Frisco Bay.

The first person to have tried to answer Girish’s question was Aristotle in Poetics when he said (I am providing two alternative translations):

  • Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. –sourced here. [Aug 2005]
  • for we enjoy looking at accurate likenesses of things which are themselves painful to see, obscene beasts, for instance, and corpses. –sourced here. [Aug 2005]

Poetics () – Aristotle

More on Freleng:

Isadore “Friz” Freleng (1906–1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. He introduced and/or developed several of the studio’s biggest stars, including Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the cat, Yosemite Sam (to whom he was said to bear more than a passing resemblance) and Speedy Gonzales. He was a contemporary of the better known Tex Avery.

The theme of this post reminds me of an article at Wikipedia, called cartoon physics and maybe by analogy there is also such a thing as cartoon psychology, in other words the psychological realism (and here and here) of Hollywood?