Horror Movies Inspired by Real Life

There's an interesting online article about movies, complete with trailers, inspired by real-life events. Some of them I had already heard of. For example, Child's Play was inspired by Robert the Doll, and The Conjuring was based on Annabelle the doll. I've featured both Robert and Annabelle in previous posts. I knew that Psycho was based loosely on convicted killer Ed Gein, but I was not aware of Wes Craven's inspiration for A Nightmare on Elm Street.

If you'd like to check out the article, you'll find the background stories very intriguing.

A Break from the Winter Doldrums

HorrorHound Magazine is hosting a horror convention from March 18-20, 2016, in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Sharonville Convention Center. 

Events will include film reunion panels, demos, concerts, stage events, and film screenings. Among the scheduled guests are Scott Wilson, previously of The Walking Dead, and John Noble of Fringe and Sleepy Hollow fame, as well as Danny Lloyd of The Shining (boy, does that ever take me back!). Cassandra Peterson will also be there as Elvira.

As part of the festivities, there will be a tattoo pavilion with renowned artists from around the world.

 

For further information on obtaining tickets and submitting films, please see theHorrorHound Weekend website.

The Walking Dead Returns on February 14

Photo courtesyThe Walking Dead wiki

If you're not really into chocolates, teddy bears, or expensive diamonds as gifts for Valentine's Day, take heart (no pun intended): Part 2 of Season 6 of The Walking Dead will return on this date.

A quick look back at the first part of the season--After being jerked around, Glenn (Steven Yeun) fans can breathe a sigh of relief that, yes, he did manage to crawl under the dumpster and is still alive!

And where the heck is Darryl (Norman Reedus)? He's been almost invisible in Part 1 of the season.

 Never fear. As one of the most popular characters in The Walking Dead, we can expect him back in a more fulsome role in Part 2. 

Robert Kirkman, comic book creator and executive producer of The Walking Dead, offers a semi-literate explanation of why he likes to kill off characters in the show:

I like to say, ‘people gotsta die,’ because you want people to—you never want to lose that…if you go too long a period with characters surviving and being safe, you lose that element of, ‘Oh my god any of these characters can go at any moment'...

 To see what's ahead for Part 2, visit http://www.inquisitr.com/2770709/the-walking-dead-season-6b-releases-new-2-minute-video-watch/.

The Salem Witch Trials Revisited

Like many others, I've always been fascinated by the history of witch trials. I'd read two previous books on the Salem trials,  In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton and A Delusion of Satan by Frances Hill, and I found them to be informative and well-written. I was therefore pleased to see that a new book had been published in October 2015, The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff, a Pulitzer Prize winning author.

 Unfortunately the book has garnered a number of negative reviews, primarily because of its dense narrative style. Ms. Schiff uses extremely long sentences that are often interrupted by parentheses or dashes, forcing you sometimes to re-read them to understand the point the author is making. Moreover, there is no real sense of cohesion in the book, with the author frequently reprising earlier events.

Having said  this, I plan to finish the book, which I'm now halfway through, because I'm enjoying learning more about the trials. It's interesting to know, for example, that prior to the events in Salem, only twenty-five per cent of New England witch trials ended in conviction. That's probably the reason why those who were first accused thought that common sense would prevail and they would be acquitted of the charges.

I've also learned that details of witch trials in Sweden, recorded in contemporary sources available to New Englanders, were often reproduced in the colorful accounts given by the Salem "victims". The accusers in the Swedish trials were children, who later said they had been lying.

What Ms. Schiff does very well in the book is to recreate the chaos of the court proceedings as the young women writh in agony on the floor and accuse the defendants of pinching and biting them even though, as the author points out, some of the accused did not have teeth. The reader can feel the hopelessness and despair of the accused and the horror of their imprisonment in squalid conditions, wearing chains weighing eight pounds. Those of the accused who tried to point out that the victims writhing on the floor might be  "dissembling" were among the first to be hanged. It was a sin, after all, to deny the existence of witches because this was an essential component of everyday life. As Schiff indicates, the element of causality was very strong: if the crops failed or an animal died, there was witchcraft behind it. Otherwise, how else did you make sense of the world? Ironically, the majority of those defendants who admitted to witchcraft were spared from death, and it seems that the more fantastical their confessions were, the more likely they were to be believed.

So if you are interested in learning more about the Salem trials and have a great deal of patience, I think you will enjoy Schiff's book. But remember that this is a carefully researched, textual account of the Salem witch trials. You will need to go to popular fiction if you want to be entertained.

First StokerCon™ Scheduled for May 2016

There's been a lot happening on the horror front since our hiatus, so we'll jump right in and welcome back our blog readers.

The Horror Writers Association will be presenting its first annual StokerCon™ from May 12 - May 15, 2016, in Las Vegas. Many high-profile guests of honor will be in attendance, including R.L. Stine of Goosebumps fame.

The convention will include the first-ever HORROR UNIVERSITY, a series of writing workshops led by top horror writers and including presentations on police procedures, paranormal investigation, and the history of ghosts.

And of course the coveted Bram Stoker Awards® will be presented during the convention.

To learn more, please check out http://stokercon2016.horror.org/.

Hiatus

We'll be taking a break from our four weekly blogs, The Overnight Bestseller, Behind the Walls of Nightmare, Open Investigations (Goodreads), and Writing in Retirement (Goodreads). We expect to be back in the fall with lots of news for our readers.

We'll continue to post reviews as part of our commitment to introduce new works to our readers.

Thanks to all of you who support us by following our blogs.

A Buffoon for All Seasons

I expect I'm not alone in finding real-life horror in the fact that the ultimate 21st century buffoon, Donald Trump, is actually leading all other candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. It is summertime, after all, not April Fool's Day.

The Daily Beast points out that Trump loves to compare himself to the ultimate showman, P.T. Barnum. But  Trump's politics bear no comparison to those of Barnum, who served two terms in the Connecticut legislature and one as the mayor of Bridgeport.

Contrary to Trump, Barnum was not a reactionary, but an individual who supported Abraham Lincoln's nomination as a presidential candidate and welcomed an end to slavery. He in fact joined the Connecticut legislature so that he could ratify the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery. Later Barnum was also a supporter of the largely unpopular cause of female suffrage.

As the writer of the article states:

Clearly–Donald Trump take note–biography is not destiny; previous jobs don’t determine political positions; and egotism need not trump humanism. P.T. Barnum was as self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing as Donald Trump, with an ego as monumental as any of Trump’s towers. But Barnum the pol trumped Trump as a statesman, championing equality and mutual respect. 

For the full text of the article, please click here.