Horror Homeroom

Posted on March 16, 2024

The Fawn Response – A New Way of Thinking about Folk Horror

Guest Post

JDC Burnhil

Anyone who attempts to devise a definition of “folk horror” quickly discovers how peculiarly exasperating the task is. As much as readers and critics may agree that certain works definitely belong to the corpus – as much as we may sense that the corpus is bound by a common spirit – the bewildering variety of twists folk horror can take makes it difficult to confidently identify the key elements.

What is proposed in this essay is that, in fact, a majority of folk horror draws on a common root for its power and relevance, and that this connection has gone largely unappreciated before now. Moreover, it makes sense of the bewildering variety we just mentioned: in a very real sense, folk horror’s spirit may be defined less by “these are the boundaries it fits within” than “these are the boundaries it defiantly straddles.”

Posted on March 8, 2024

Children of the Corn: Where Fritz Kiersch’s 1984 Adaptation Gets It Right – and Wrong

Dawn Keetley

Fritz Kiersch’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1977 short story, “Children of the Corn,” was released in the US on March 9, 1984. It’s one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations (somewhere in the top ten) – and its many strengths notably include an early starring role for the amazing Linda Hamilton, seven months before she appeared in the career-shaping The Terminator. It’s also a critical entry in the US folk horror tradition, defining (along with Mary Lambert’s 1989 Pet Semetary) what American folk horror looked like in the 1980s. On the film’s 40^th anniversary, here’s an assessment of some of the ways Kiersch’s Children of the Corn effectively interpreted and adapted King’s story – and a couple of the film’s missteps.

Posted on February 29, 2024

Lithic Nightmare of The Keep (1983)

Guest Post

Kevin Cooney

Tremendously flawed but much loved, The Keep (1983) was director Michael Mann’s first and only horror film thus far. For all of its cinematic beauty and meticulous production design, studio meddling and production delays turned the movie into a legendary failure. However, hidden within the mangled edit is a foreboding portrayal of evil. While The Keep falls short with its supernatural antagonist, it does turn an archaic place, the eponymous stone and slate keep, into a monstrous character unto itself, a malignant genius loci whose evil is matched by the characters in jackboots.

Two men look at a painting of an old time, bloodied sea captain.

Posted on February 21, 2024

Gothic Decay: Talking House of Usher (1960)

Podcast

In today’s episode, Vincent Price helms House of Usher, a dark tale of decay inspired by Edgar Allen Poe’s 1839 short story “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Released in 1960 as the first in the Corman-Poe cycle of films, the film follows Phillip as he visits the Usher mansion in the hopes of convincing his runaway fiance, Madeline, to return to him. But his efforts are continually thwarted by Madeline’s brother, Roderick, who warns Phillip that marriage to Madeline will result in total, personal destruction. Merging elements of the gothic sensibility that marked Poe’s illustrative career with a specific brand of 1960s film affect, House of Usher is a surprisingly overlooked film in the gothic horror canon. But should it be? We’re breaking it all down today with spoilers so stay tuned!

Recommended Reading:

Avelar, Mário. “The Colors of Melancholy in Roger Corman’s House of Usher.” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 11.1 (2010): 174-181.

Hendershot, Cyndy. “Domesticity and Horror in House of Usher and Village of the Damned.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video 17.3 (2000): 221-227.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. “Gothic Horror Film, 1960—Present.” The Gothic World. Routledge, 2013. 388-398.

St. Armand, Barton Levi. “Poe’s Landscape of the Soul: Association Theory and” The Fall of the House of Usher”.” Modern Language Studies (1977): 32-41.

Thompson, James. “Alternative Treasures: The Fall of the House of Usher and The Terror within Roger Corman’s Poe Cycle.” Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture 6.1 (2021): 168-190.

Posted on February 21, 2024

The Reproductive Imperative of Folk Horror: Robin Redbreast and Alex Garland’s Men

Dawn Keetley

In an early classic of folk horror, the 1970 BBC Play for Today episode, “Robin Redbreast” (written by John Bowen and directed by James MacTaggart), a middle-class professional woman, Norah Palmer (Anna Cropper), whose long-time boyfriend just ended their relationship, moves rather reluctantly to a remote cottage she acquired during the break-up. After discovering that she has mice, Norah sets off to look for a man named Rob (Andrew Bradford), who lives in the woods and can apparently take care of her mouse problem for her. As Norah walks through the woods, the camera isolates her and also marks her enjoyment of the scenery. She is jolted from this enjoyment by the sight of a man who is virtually naked; indeed, she will call him ‘naked’ when she recounts her experience to her housekeeper, Mrs. Vigo (Freda Bamford), later. Norah stares and, when he sees her – when he looks back – she turns and hastens away, unnerved, back to her house.