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Posted on February 9, 2024

Give Us a Sign: On the Possibility of Non-Diegetic Ghosts

Guest Post

Andrés Emil González

If any single monster or supernatural entity has a claim to shaping horror film and literature as we know it today, it is almost certainly the ghost –and with good reason. The figure of the ghost or spirit embodies (so to speak) some of horror’s fundamental traits, including liminality between states of being, glimpses of a world or truth beyond our own, and a sense of powers that act on human lives without our awareness or comprehension.

Perhaps because of its ability to evoke such a variety of ideas, fears and even hopes, however, spirits in modern horror cinema have tended to take wildly different forms, often within the same film or television series. Most are familiar to any fan of horror. Many times, ghosts are only represented by their effects on the visible world: a chair slides across a room, the planchette of a ouija board moves on its own, or a person is dragged off by their hair. Other times, ghosts are made visible to some combination of audience and characters, as memorably occurs several times across James Wan’s The Conjuring series, to name just one example. In this case, ghosts may be visible only to one character, or to all, or they appear only for the briefest of moments. And while of course, there are myriad distinctions to be drawn between demons, ghosts, poltergeists and other assorted spirits, for our purposes all of these beings tend to be represented within this shared set of parameters.

Posted on February 1, 2024

A Response to “Finding a Lost Production by Nigel Kneale?”

Guest Post

Jon Dear

I read with interest your recent guest post, “Finding a Lost Production by Nigel Kneale?” by Professor Philip Jenkins and felt compelled to respond. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity.

A little about myself: I’m a writer on archive British television and film and I’ve written and presented extensively on Nigel Kneale and his work. I’m also privileged to know Andy Murray (Nigel Kneale’s biographer), Toby Hadoke (the authority on Quatermass) and Andrew Screen (the authority on Beasts). We have all been consulted by Kneale’s family on various aspects of his career. We are not academics but neither are we amateurs; we are professional writers and researchers. I mention this not in any sense of boasting but simply to support my wish (and ability) to compose this response. I emphasise however that the following is written in my name only.

Posted on January 14, 2024

Finding a Lost Production by Nigel Kneale?

Guest Post

by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

In a recent column at this site, I reported what I believe to be a significant find in the history of the folk horror genre, namely a 1961 television episode titled “Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook,” in Boris Karloff’s series Thriller. This was, I believe, the first ever folk horror ever to appear on screen, and it closely foreshadowed the classic film The Wicker Man. Based on some further work, I now think that the episode is still more interesting than it first appeared, given its probable authorship. It is, I will argue, an unacknowledged work by the brilliant writer Nigel Kneale.

Posted on December 26, 2023

The Place Called Dagon – Herbert S. Gorman’s Folk Horror Novel

Guest Post

by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

The current fascination with folk horror as a genre began with British contributions in cinema and literature, and that focus is still obvious, despite all the efforts to broaden and globalize the narrative. Even today, the American part of the story is still seriously under-valued, particularly early writings that long precede the British wave of the 1960s. If I was looking for the first ever piece of writing in folk horror, I would make the case for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), while Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) is an obvious early classic. Here, I want to highlight a work that still stands among the very first full-length novels in this tradition written in any country, and one that already at its early date fulfils all the criteria for the folk horror label. This is The Place Called Dagon, by Herbert S. Gorman, published in 1927. Although it is poorly known today, it still makes for very rewarding reading.

Posted on November 23, 2023

Why You Should Watch The City of the Dead (and its Striking Resemblance to Psycho)

Dawn Keetley

It’s a moment of uncanny serendipity in horror film history.

The City of the Dead (re-named Horror Hotel in the US) – the first directorial project of Argentinian-born British director, John Llewellyn Moxey – was released in the UK in September 1960. Produced by Americans Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, the film is generally considered to be the unofficial first of their Amicus Productions (a British company they would officially found shortly after the release of City of the Dead, and which had an impact on the horror genre in the 1960s that was second perhaps only to Hammer Studios)[i]. Filming commenced “at Shepperton Studios [in Surrey, England] in the Summer of 1959,” [ii] running at least through October.

The vastly more famous Psycho, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, made at Universal Studios in the US and distributed by Paramount Pictures, was released in New York City in June 1960 and saw general distribution, like City of the Dead, in September 1960. Also like City of the Dead, filming began on Psycho in the later half of 1959 (running, specifically, between November 1959 and February 1960).

In other words, there’s virtually no way that either City of the Dead or Psycho could have influenced the other. And yet, they share some striking similarities. They are also, I should add, profoundly different in their approach to horror. Both these similarities and this difference are worth exploring.