The fine folks from Super-Horror-Rama have some up with another great two features to celebrate the new year. The theme is New Year, New You! Because of all the silly New Year’s resolutions we all make, most of which we don’t stick to, this is a good example of when those new changes might not be the best change! But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun for us to watch!
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Naked Theater & Uncensored Horror
Published by FAB Press, 2023. 360 pages
By Stuart Gordon
I’ve been wanting to get to this title ever since it arrived in the mail from FAB Press when it first came out. But like all things in life, something else always came up. Until a few days ago when I decided now was the time. It was a Sunday, and I didn’t have any real plans for the day, so I knew I could at least start it. 3 days later, I finished it.
I’ve known Gordon’s work since his debut film, Re-Animator (1985), hit the theater I worked at when it first opened. All horror fans immediately knew him as “the guy who did Re-Animator” and would watch for his next venture into the film world. The more films Gordon did, the more interviews and articles about him came out, the more we got a hint of his history. I knew very well that he came from theater background, even being here in Chicago for quite some time, but I really had no clue to the extent he had, or the impact that he made.
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Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), and Dagon (2001)
Bringing the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft to the screen is not an easy task. Much of the horrors Lovecraft talked about wasn’t described or explained too much, leaving it up to the reader. But when director Stuart Gordon, producer Brian Yuzna, and writer Dennis Paoli got together to adapt Lovecraft’s 1922 story “Herbert West – Re-Animator” for a movie, they changed cinema forever. Not only did they show us more than Lovecraft would ever dream of, they created a perfect blend of outrageous horror, gore, and bizarre imagery that would immediately put them in the horror history books.
The following year, they took another short story, “From Beyond”, first published in 1934, and showed even more strange, bizarre, and gooey things we’d seen before, going beyond then what the short story told us.
Then 15 years later, these three deranged creators returned to Lovecraft to take us to a fishing village filled with very unusual citizens, in 2001’s Dagon.
While Gordon’s filmography might not be filled with classic after classic, when he hit a home run, usually when he’s working with Yuzna and Paoli, they knock the cover off the ball.
Films mentioned in this episode:
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Directed by Stuart Gordon
Starring Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ken Foree, Ted Sorel, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, Bunny Summers
For horror fans, the ‘80s were a time of sheer wonderment when it came to special effects. With the constant advancement of special makeup effects, it was a time of foam rubber, latex, and slime, with the only boundaries being imagination. One film that represents that more than most is Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond.
When I worked at the theater back in the ‘80s, Re-Animator (1985) played there and it just blew me away, between the gore and just the outrageousness of the whole story. I had already been reading Fangoria by that time, so when From Beyond was coming out, I was already excited about seeing it. And luckily for me, it played at my theater as well, so I spent a lot of time in there watching it over and over. I had recently started reading horror fiction, and thanks to Stephen King, had already started to dive into the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and had read the very short story that From Beyond was based on. In fact, the pre-credit sequence in the film is pretty much the whole story. But I think writer Dennis Paoli, along with producer Brian Yuzna and director Gordon, fleshed out the rest of the plot that, while way gorier and gooier than Lovecraft would have spelled out, I think it still felt it could be in the same universe.
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From Beyond
Released 2003 by La-La Land Records
13 Tracks, with a total running time of 46:06 min.
Music composed by Richard Band
At my very first horror convention, back in 1988 which took place in California, I had picked up the soundtrack for this on LP and I immediately fell in love with it. Composer Richard Band created a score that has a perfect combination of a science feel but still being able to create some very creepy elements to it. I was very bummed when I got rid of my albums and had to wait more than a few years for this to get an official release on CD, which I picked up right when it came out. Continue reading
Chicago’s own Music Box Theatre has announced the date for this year’s Music Box of Horrors, which will take place on Saturday, October 24th, starting at noon! We can all hope that things will be back to some sort of normality so us devious horror fans can enjoy another 24 hours of madness! I missed last year’s marathon because we were at an out-of-town show so this year we are hoping to make our return!
So far, they only have two titles announced, but I gotta say, they’ve picked to stellar movies! The first one is one of the last great pictures from the King of Ballyhoo, William Castle! Joining forces with Joan Crawford, we get Strait-Jacket (1964), with this twisted tale of axe-murderer on the loose. Screening from a 35mm print! Continue reading
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