Continue reading »]]> Who are the authors that you look forward to reading when they release something new?

Too many to list. I’ll restrict myself to three from within the horror genre and two outsiders.

Within genre, Conrad Williams and Peter Straub, both of whom are consummate prose stylists, such that even the telephone directory would read better if they penned it, and I believe that I do have two titles by Williams in the ‘to be read’ pile at this very moment, one of them a This Is Horror chapbook. My third selection is Sarah Langan, who if she doesn’t quite have the prose chops of the other two, is a superb storyteller and one of the most exciting new talents to emerge in the genre in recent times.

Keep on reading…

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It’s so important not to grow up. I’ve come to appreciate how the lucky people stay young at heart.

Peter Jackson in his Foreword to The Art of Ray Harryhausen

Steven Spielberg, John Landis, James Cameron and the aforementioned Peter Jackson are just some of the Hollywood A-Listers to feature in Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, the 2012 documentary by Gilles Penso, and express the debt they owe to Ray Harryhausen for their own love of movies. It is a wonderful documentary that showcases the love, craft and painstaking commitment Harryhausen put into his creations whilst also serving as a filmography of his extensive career.

I watched this superb documentary a couple of months ago when it appeared on iTunes and it reminded me of just how much I loved Ray’s films when I was a kid. Clash of the Titans, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger were all watched numerous times on the TV or VHS tape but it was Jason and the Argonauts that I loved the best. The enjoyment of these films led to attempts to film my own stop-motion mini-movies, initially with rubber dinosaurs and plastic soldiers, and then attempts to make my own creatures out of modelling clay. Sadly I lacked both the creative skill and the patience for it and a love of cartooning and writing began to take over. I’ve often returned to the movies on DVD or come across them on late-night TV and I’m always struck by how well they have held up against the test of time.

The skeleton sword fight in Jason and the Argonauts is often picked out as a great piece of Ray’s work, and it is a wonderfully realised scene, but for me the best example of his skill in the movie is the awakening of Talos. The hulking bronze statue of the Titan is disturbed when Hercules takes a golden pin from the treasure of the Gods that is housed within the pedestal the giant statue resides upon. The jerkiness inherent in Harryhausen’s stop-motion technique is perfectly suited to the lumbering movements of the metal behemoth and combined with a sublime soundtrack of squeaks and twisting metal serves to give the monster a real sense of size and weight. You can’t help but feel a modern CGI rendering would just be too smooth and perfect to give any real sense that the creature and the actors are sharing the same space.

I’ll finish by saying Rest in Peace Ray Harryhausen and Thank you for the movies, leaving the final words of this tribute to the great man himself:

I’m very happy that so many young fans have told me that my films have changed their lives. That’s a great compliment. It means I did more than just make entertaining films. I actually touched people’s lives – and, I hope, changed them for the better.

Ray Harryhausen

ROSS WARREN

Continue reading »]]> Welcome to this week’s edition of Must Read Horror, your one-stop shop for the best horror articles the internet has to offer. This week:

• High Impact, Low Body-Count: Movie Killers Who Put Quality Over Quantity

• RIP Ray Harryhausen: Ten Of His Best Movie Monsters

• And Now The Screaming Laughter Starts! (When Your Horror Goes Horribly Wrong)

• 12 Best Asian Horror Films You’ve Never Heard Of

• Back Against The Wall: The Decline Of Survival Horror and Why It Needs Saving

For more articles like this, please follow @thisishorror on Twitter.

High Impact, Low Body-Count: Movie Killers Who Put Quality Over Quantity

Michael Myers has slaughtered over a hundred people, while Jason Voorhees has clocked up a massive three hundred kills, but once you’ve seen one machete death, you’ve seen them all. What about those less prolific movie killers, whose on-screen kills prove that seldom does not mean sissy? This article at FearNet looks at the more frugal murderers from cinematic history.

RIP Ray Harryhausen: Ten Of His Best Movie Monsters

He was a special-effects wizard, the Godfather of stop-motion animation, and this week saw the passing of a true legend. Ray Harryhausen created some of the most memorable movie monsters, gifting youngsters and adults alike with nightmares of gargantuan beasts, colossal serpents, and skeletal armies. Here, Entertainment Weekly picks ten of the best Harryhausen creations, from Sinbad to Clash Of The Titans.

And Now The Screaming Laughter Starts! (When Your Horror Goes Horribly Wrong)

Over at Fangoria, legendary splatterpunk author, filmmaker, and screenwriter, John Skipp, takes an irreverent look at what happens when you realise that the horror you’re watching/reading is actually a stinking pile of Golem-shit.

12 Best Asian Horror Films You’ve Never Heard Of

Asian countries have a knack of putting out some truly disturbing horror. We’ve all seen Ringu and Ju-On, and as a result we’re more than familiar with the wet-girl climbing through any appliance you’ve stupidly left on standby. Here, Horror-Movies.ca look at some of the more obscure – yet no less terrifying – Asian horror films that you’ve never (probably) heard of.

Back Against The Wall: The Decline Of Survival Horror and Why It Needs Saving

Survival horror in videogames has been in decline of late, with action-orientated games becoming more favourable. This article at Ausgamers investigates why games such as Resident Evil and Dead Space are going the way of the dinosaurs, and what should be done to bring the genre back.

ADAM MILLARD