Lurking on the Bookshelves: Opening the Cage, It Came From the Closet, Claimed! & Feeding the Monster
Opening the Cage: A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin by Keri O'Shea, is a meticulous and fascinating examination of Lucio Fulci’s dazzling, and oft overlooked, 1971 giallo, which tells of a woman plunged into a waking nightmare when she is accused of murdering her neighbour. O’Shea is the editor of Warped Perspective, a site dedicated to horror, sci-fi, genre film/TV and literature. I’ve really enjoyed and admired her work for years now and was excited to learn she had published a book on A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. Her thoughtful analysis of the film begins by contextualising it within the Italian giallo tradition, before diving deeply into its key themes, including art, counterculture and the role of medicine, and a consideration of its striking aesthetics. She carefully dissects the film’s approach to traditional gender roles and power struggles and offers an intriguing look at the use of liminal spaces within its London setting to heighten the unnerving mood. Elsewhere, she explores how the sharp decline of the counterculture and the ‘summer of love’, triggered by the heinous crimes of the Manson family, influenced Fulci and the film's sinister depiction of youth culture and the hippy movement. O’Shea described her book as a labour of love and a love letter to Fulci's film, and her passion for A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin is apparent throughout every chapter – carefully balanced with an accessible, academic approach – it’s a captivating study. After I finished reading it, I immediately watched the film, which I hadn’t seen for years, and surely there can be no higher testament to the book’s potency and persuasiveness than that. If you're a fan of the film, the director's work generally, or the perverse charms of Italian gialli, do yourself a favour and pick up a copy of O'Shea's book here.
It Came From The Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror features a collection of essays by Queer and trans writers which explore how they each found comfort and community in the horror genre, and how specific film titles within horror impacted and even shaped their lives and personal experiences. There have been several recent academic titles exploring the relationship of queer audiences with horror cinema – including Queer for Fear by Heather O. Petrocelli, and Queer Slashers by Peter Marra – but this collection takes a different approach, with contributors sharing thoughtful, deeply personal stories about growing up, not fitting in, and having to overcome all odds just to exist. They explore how, along the way, horror films became important to them, how spooky slashers and the like offered ‘solace through subversiveness.’ Among the contributors are Carmen Maria Machado (author of Her Body and Other Parties), Jude Ellison S. Doyle (author of Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power), Tucker Lieberman, Kirsty Logan, Sumiko Saulson, and Tosha R. Taylor. Among the films each writer examines and relates to are The Exorcist, Jennifer’s Body, The Wolf Man, Candyman, Halloween, Get Out, Eyes Without A Face, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Sleepaway Camp. By turns darkly humorous, vulnerable, moving, thoughtful and deeply, deeply relatable, this collection sheds further illumination upon horror as outsider cinema and the unique relationship Queer audiences have with it. I was especially moved by Tosha R. Taylor’s essay 'The Wolf Man’s Daughter', which explores her relationship with old Universal horror films, especially The Wolf Man, and how it went some way to help her reconcile her feelings about her homophobic father.
Claimed! by Gertrude Barrows Bennett is a hidden treasure of a novella, recently rescued from obscurity by Penguin and published as part of its new Weird Fiction series. It tells of a physician who is called to treat a patient who has in his possession a strange and seemingly ancient emerald green box, etched with a single line of text in an unknown language. Doctor and patient are beset by disturbing visions and oceanic dreams of a vast, encroaching being – the ‘archangel of the abyss’ - while various attempts are made by shady individuals to steal the box. They embark upon a voyage to unlock the box’s ancient, terrifying origins. While reading Claimed!, I couldn’t help but think of HP Lovecraft, and how arguably indebted he was to Barrows Bennett, who was by all accounts a pioneering author of cosmic horror and speculative fiction. There are so many elements of this novella that are ‘Lovecraftian’ even before Lovecraft became a brand, from the ancient slumbering deity beneath the waves, to the characters’ existential realisation that they are but specks of dust on an island adrift in infinite and absolute darkness. I first learned of Barrows Bennett and her work in Monster, She Wrote, a comprehensive guide to women writers of horror, by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson. She was the first major female writer of fantasy and science fiction in the United States and has been recognized in recent years as a pioneering author of cosmic horror. A blurb on this new edition states Barrows Bennett is ‘The most important female writer of speculative fiction that you’ve probably never heard of.’ Hopefully her work will reach a wider readership with this new edition of Claimed!
Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold on Us is Anna Bogutskaya’s fascinating exploration of what attracts us to horror films and why. Drawing on personal experience, and academic study, Bogutskaya delves into the appeal of horror films and how their ever-soaring popularity, and indeed recent critical plaudits, responds to and fuels audiences’ feelings of fear, anxiety, pain, hunger and power. She explodes the myth that there is something ‘not quite right’ about people who make and enjoy horror films, offering that horror can actually teach us a great deal about empathy and the human condition. She also considers how horror is increasingly utilised by marginalised groups and communities to share their stories and experiences, and how it provides escapism and enables us to face our fears and anxieties in a safe, manageable form. Among the titles she uses to explore our relationship with horror cinema and our fascination with being scared, are The Babadook, Hereditary, Get Out and Titane, as well as small-screen shockers like The Haunting of Hill House and Yellowjackets. This is a must-read for horror fans and, indeed, anyone interested in what compels us to excitedly gaze into the dark mirror of horror cinema, breathlessly anticipating what might peer back at us.
