Exquisite Terror 5 Pre-Order

Born from a love of horror, ponderous thoughts and meandering topics, Exquisite Terror is a periodical that takes a more academic approach to the genre, featuring exclusive art, script analysis and in-depth essays. Like all good things that come to those who wait, issue 5 – after the shedding of much blood, sweat and tears - is now available to pre-order. And it’s really been worth the wait…

Now featuring even more content than before, inside this issue you'll find in-depth essays and analyses on the likes of The Shining, The Omen, Silence of the Lambs and the werewolf (as a representation of 'coming out') in horror cinema, plus interviews with Uncle Bob Martin and Ramsey Campbell. Elsewhere, author and critic Jon Towlson delves into the world of film director Michael Reeves, while I explore the relationship between eroticism and death in the films of Dario Argento*. Every essay and article is accompanied by original and beautiful artwork (including some gorgeous illustrations by CJ Ryder).

I'm so happy to see the return of this publication, and to once again have my writing included within its pages. Print isn't dead – please support independent publishing and pre-order your copy here.

*This essay began as a piece for a book I was invited to contribute to back in 2008 (!). Sadly, that particular project (the aim of which was to bring together a selection of varied critical approaches to Dario Argento's body of work) eventually fell through. Rather than let all the research (and time spent conducting research) go to waste, I kept working on the essay whenever I could, revising and redrafting it on and off over the years, until I felt it was finally finished. I'm happy it has at last found a fitting home - especially as that home is within the pages of Exquisite Terror, where I feel it really belongs.

Popular posts from this blog

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Image
Dir. Andy de Emmony After placing his senile wife in a care home, retired astronomer James Parkin (John Hurt) heads for the coast to revisit their ‘old haunts’, including the now out-of-season hotel they honeymooned in. By day he is stalked along the windswept beaches by a spectral figure dressed in white, and by night he is terrorised by strange sounds and someone, or something, attempting to enter his room… In the 2000s BBC4 attempted to reignite the old Ghost Story at Christmas tradition by adapting MR James’s A View from a Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006). This series was seemingly short lived though, as their next outing wasn’t until 2010, and an unusual reinterpretation of James’s classic chiller Oh Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad . While de Emmony’s direction captures the atmosphere and tone of James very well, this film differs significantly from other adaptations, including Jonathan Miller’s supremely unsettling 1968 take . Neil Cross’s screenplay only incorpo...
Read more

Halloween: Resurrection

Image
2002 Dir. Rick Rosenthal Four years after mistakenly killing a man she thought to be her brother (really, Dimension Films? Really ?), long-suffering Laurie Strode is eventually hunted down by her not really dead actual brother, crazier-than-bat-shit Michael Myers, and murderlised. Making his way back home to Haddonfield, Myers discovers the crew of an online reality show has taken over his house (!) to broadcast a Halloween special featuring a group of dumb-fuck teenagers dared to spend the night in the house of ill-repute. Naturally he goes on yet another killing spree. And it's all caught on camera and broadcast online for other dumb-fuck teenagers to watch. Yes, all of this actually really happens. It really fucking happens. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later did not warrant a sequel. It was intended not only as a twentieth anniversary celebration of John Carpenter's classic chiller , but as a way to draw the series to a close, with its original heroine finally co...
Read more

Caveat (2020)

Image
Isaac, a brooding drifter suffering from memory loss, agrees to look after Olga, the niece of his acquaintance Moe. A troubled woman prone to bouts of catatonia, Olga lives in an old, ramshackle house on an isolated island in the middle of a dark lake. Isaac agrees to wear a chained harness that prevents him from going into certain rooms. He gradually comes to learn of the unsettling history of the house and the unquiet dead it harbours within its walls... Written and directed by Damian McCarthy,  Caveat  is steeped in the Gothic tradition. With distinct echoes of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, it is ripe with a lingering atmosphere of morbidity and decay. McCarthy's screenplay toys with themes such as psychological rot, dark family secrets, and the aftermath of unspeakable violence and cruelty. The story unfolds within the creepy confines of the lonely, mouldy house, with myriad forbidden rooms, hidden passageways and concealed bloody secrets. The house itself is cut off from c...
Read more