Just In Time for Halloween....

[harmony_bites]

I've been reading off this list from The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List. I just finished the The Horror list. Thirteen of the 44 below are vampire novels. Go figure... I'd tried at least half of these before--but then many of the below fit other genres from thrillers with no element of the supernatural (Jaws, Silence of the

Comments

[shiv5468]

So much of this isn't horror though, but urban fantasy which is really pron / romance.

Poor vampires, all defanged.

I think Barker is overrated, and haven't read much of his after the first thing I picked up which started with gratuitous rape and continued in the same vein for four more rapes and I decided not to bother.

The Monk is incredibly overblown but a huge hoot.

Kim Newman's anno dracula is very good if you've an interest in the genre and pick up his references, but I think the series goes off the boil later. I think in the end I find it hard to believe any horror story set in the modern era. You can't get the gothic vibe after the victorian era, of sexual repression and guilt, and after that all the vampires start drinking fake blood and wearing sunglasses.

Interview with a Vampire is very good, but everything after it becomes increasingly silly. However, the best lines in the sequel basically consist of Lestate saying what you did - Louis does whine so.

True Blood is a better series than the books are books, apart from Sookie who is more of a drip in the telly series than she is in the books.

[harmony_bites]

So much of this isn't horror though, but urban fantasy which is really pron / romance.

Or thrillers or even science fiction w/o a hint of the supernatural--and what's horror w/o the supernatural? Even Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll are really science fiction rather than horror.

I think Barker is overrated, and haven't read much of his after the first thing I picked up which started with gratuitous rape and continued in the same vein for four more rapes and I decided not to bother.

I shall have no regrets I didn't give him more of a chance then.

The Monk is incredibly overblown but a huge hoot.

Indeed. The plot is ridiculous--but then so much of Shakespeare is too--not that I'm saying The Monk is of that quality--or of any quality--but despite myself I thought it great fun--because it's overblown.

Kim Newman's anno dracula is very good if you've an interest in the genre and pick up his references, but I think the series goes off the boil later. I think in the end I find it hard to believe any horror story set in the modern era. You can't get the gothic vibe after the victorian era, of sexual repression and guilt, and after that all the vampires start drinking fake blood and wearing sunglasses.

And sparkle....

Interview with a Vampire is very good, but everything after it becomes increasingly silly.

I'm stopping in the right place then...

[shiv5468]

Nods. Horror should tap into something deep and primal and OMG meeeps, and this lot tend not to.

Other Barker may be all right.

Sparklng vampires is just wrong. I think that if vampires were about fear of the other or disease or immigrants or something, you could make a case that friendly vampires are because we're just a whole lot less scared as a people. It may be a good thing overall but Dracula isn't happy.

[harmony_bites]

Well, it's part of why I think I still love the original Dracula and one of my favorite Stephen King books is Salem's Lot. Vampires should be scary, not rich, gorgeous and heroic. But it's not just vampires. Endore's The Werewolf of Paris is rather like The Monk--overblown though shot with humor and a hoot--but no question there the werewolf is a scary, ravening monster--mad, bad and dangerous to know. Well, try to find a werewolf like that now. Kelley Armstrong's are suave and sexy, and JK Rowling's Remus Lupin passive and the soul of politeness. I was struck how it was hard to be scared by Rosemary's Baby or The Exorcist because whether in real life or fiction, its hard to associate witches with the devil rather than friendly peaceable sorts going around saying "blessed be." It's hard to find Hermione Granger scary, let alone evil (unless you're Ron.)

We've defanged our monsters. Maybe it's all part of our tolerant, politically correct age where we're not supposed to demonize our fellow thinking and feeling creature. (I wonder how much of my sympathy for the Frankenstein monster Shelley intended, and how much I read in because of my modern sensibility.)

Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell manage to be scary using a contemporary setting though. We moderns do have our own scary things--they just don't reside I think in the same things as the Victorians.

[shiv5468]

Werewolves now are all about conformity, about pack, and submitting to the alpha like a good little bitch. Rolls eyes.

Some of the new Hammer horror films have brought in modern themes - feral children, for one.