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Well in the same way that a fairly important component of good cinematic horror is really shitty production values, insofar as in something like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre you don't, ideally, have the impression of a guiding, civilising mind in the director's chair ( and as a film, let's face it, TTCW is much less frightening now it's 'a classic,' as is Day Of The Dead, whereas I'd imagine I Spit On Your Grave or that unspeakable cannibal movie would still be tough viewing, ) I'd tend to go for the kind of bloodcurdling trash that was widely available in the Seventies and Eighties ( The Amityville Horror, James Herbert, or, personal fave, Graham Masterton, ) as horror fiction, purely because the level of emotional investment in something like ( The ? ) Rats isn't at all clear, and could well be total. It's the badness of the writing that gives it it's edge, the feeling that it's genuinely meant, that there isn't necessarily anything that could save the author responsible, not x million quid, not anything, there's the same sense of creeping despair that's implicit in Roger Waters' solo albums. At least I can't picture anyone, having finished say The Devils Of D-Day by Graham Masterton ( or The Manitou, or Revenge Of The Manitou, or any of the others ) particularly wanting to go for a pint with the writer, in the same way that they might want to share a pot of tea and a pipe on the village green with MR James, or a bracing couple of absinthes with Edgar Allen Poe.
Why I like The Devils Of D-Day in particular though ( having not been near the thing in over seventeen years, ) is that even now, I could tell you the whole plot, as well as walk you through certain key scenes. And to be totally honest, I still have the occasional nightmare about The Amityville Horror, from around the same time - That bit when 'Jody,' looks out of the window, his red eyes blazing, trotters folded on the ledge... And they had it on Pebble Mill On One and everything, the devil pig, and the family supposedly involved.
I've yet to make it the end of the cinema adaptation, whereas The Exorcist just seems like a larf these days.
Otherwise,
The Golemn by Gustav Meyrink
The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley ( It's a bit less camp than the film )
Diary Of A Drug Fiend - Aleister Crowley
Or, in a very different way
The Room - Hubert Selby Jr, which there's nothing darker than, imho. |
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