Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life
Published by Liveright Publishing, 2016. 624 pages.
By Ruth Franklin
I have been an admirer of Shirley Jackson since my very first viewing of The Haunting (1963). When I started to really delve into reading, her novel that film was based on, The Haunting of Hill House, was one that I immediately sought out. The more I discovered about Jackson’s work, the more I discovered that I had already knew of some of it, such as The Lottery and the tale of the boy who has a troublemaker classmate that always seemed to get into trouble. But I had never really known that much about Jackson herself, until now.
I’ve read a few biographies on different actors and directors that I’ve admired but I think this is the first one where I was really given a open book, so to speak, to that person’s life. While at times it was depressing what Jackson had to deal with in her life, it showed me just how human she was, thankful we were fortunate enough that she had the talent to take her life and transform it into incredible personal and beautifully written literary works for others to enjoy and be inspired by. Granted, there were a few that would resonate with the readers, haunting them to their core! Continue reading
Being horror movie fans, unless you’re on the inside of the business, I don’t think we really know of the real horror that lies inside working in the Hollywood system. We see what is finally released, but what about all the ones that never made it to the greenlight and are now lost in oblivion? Well now we’ll have a chance to learn about a few of those, from the filmmakers that were there involved.
Joel M. Reed is the man responsible for the notorious grindhouse flick Bloodsucking Freaks (1976), originally titled as The Incredible Torture Show, before Troma re-titled it and released it once again. He also directed a few other titles, such as Night of the Zombies (1981), probably the second most popular of his titles. Now, while I’m not personally a fan of Bloodsucking Freaks, anybody that is able to make a movie like that, and become an icon because of it, in this huge world of cinema, that is pretty impressive. So like it or not, as horror movie fans, we have to get credit where it is due.
As many conventions and movie events that I’d go to every year, it was pretty rare when I would see someone wearing a Paul Naschy T-Shirt. For two reasons really. While he had a strong following, it wasn’t as strong as it should be. Plus, even more important, there just hardly any Naschy shirts available. So I decided to try and change that and had my friend and uber talented artist Putrid (aka Matt Carr) do an original Naschy piece for me that I could put on some T-shifts, which is the artwork on the right.
