JASON VOORHEES Trashed, ASH Hangs up his BOOMSTICK, and More!
In this Issue:
- Horror History: Vengeance is Theirs
- Image of the Week: Life-Sized Lovecraft
- Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
- The A to Z Subgenres: Y is for Yotsuya Kaidan
- Things We Love: King of Christmas
HORROR HISTORY: VENGEANCE IS THEIRS
By Joshua Lyon
Historically, the rape revenge subgenre has been deeply problematic, to say the least. Too often the attack is shown in graphic detail, ostensibly to make the perpetrator’s comeuppance more satisfying, but the scenes tend to be voyeuristic and witnessed through a leering male gaze; much more horrifying than any gore that follows. A female director, Coralie Fargeat, helms Revenge, the latest entry in the controversial category. The catalyst scene is devastating to witness, yet doesn’t linger overly long, proving you don’t need to exploit violation to make the vengeance feel deserved.
Historically, the rape revenge category follows two specific tracks — a victim survives and goes after the attackers, or she dies and her family takes on vigilante justice. In the latter camp, Wes Craven’s infamous The Last House of the Left from 1972 (a loose remake of Ingmar Bergman’s 1960 classic The Virgin Spring) set the standard, and established penis removal as an appropriate trope.
In the former category, I Spit on Your Grave was released in 1978 to scathing reviews, but grew into a begrudgingly respected horror must-see. Critics and fans are still divided: the lead exacts her revenge, but viewers must sit through almost half an hour of vicious gang rape before reaching that narrative catharsis. Was watching justice get served really worth the pain of getting there though? Many ’80s VHS standards that also trafficked in rape revenge, like Mother’s Day, Demented, Necromancer, and Nail Gun Massacre (tagline: “It’s cheaper than a chainsaw!”), beg the same question.
The 21st century has seen more nuanced versions, like 2005’s Hard Candy, featuring Ellen Page as a teen who lures a pedophile into a deathtrap—a sort of suburban Lisbeth Salander. And last year’s M.F.A.explored college cover-ups, with Francesca Eastwood offing campus offenders. Like Revenge, it’s the rare entry with a female director, Natalia Leite, and hopefully we’ll see more women exploring the theme in the future. Scratch that—hopefully someday there won’t even be a need to. In the meantime, bring on the castrations.
Revenge is streaming now on Shudder.
IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Life-sized Lovecraft
Cthulhu will be pleased: A life-sized statue of H. P. Lovecraft by sculptor Gage Prentiss’s has been funded, completed, and is set to be installed in Lovecraft’s hometown of Providence, Rhode Island in the Spring of 2019.
TINY BITES
RAY HARRYHAUSEN’S MONSTERS, STEPHEN KING’S CATS & MORE
Here’s what two actual nuns thought of The Nun.
A baby lemur born at the Denver Zoo is being hailed as an omen of evil.
While Rick Grimes will leave The Walking Dead soon, there’s a plan in place for another decade of TWD.
Bruce Campbell says it’s time for him to put down the boomstick and let a younger actor take over the role of Ash in the Evil Dead.
Read the first page of Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s own handwriting.
Here’s how the the modern murderabilia business got started. (Yes, it’s a thing.)
And here’s how real-life serial killers compare to the ones in horror movies. (Eerily similar.)
The Jason Voorhees statue at the bottom of Arizona’s Lake Pleasant has been declared trash and will be removed. ☹
Here’s a gallery of 11 awesome posters from Ray Harryhausen monster movies like The Valley of Gwangi.
Two authors wrote a send-up of slasher films over on Twitter that went viral, and now their tweet-riff has been turned into a film called You Might Be the Killerwith Alyson Hannigan. You can watch the trailer.
On a painful day of filming for Jamie Lee Curtis, theHalloween crew comforted her by wearing name tags that said “We are Laurie Strode.”
Members of a Satanic Temple have been picking up trash along an Indiana highway. Residents aren’t happy about it.
Here’s a picture of Stephen King with his cats.
THE A TO Z OF SUBGENRES: Y IS FOR YOTSUYA KAIDAN
Can one tale be a genre unto itself? When it’s a nation’s most famous and influential ghost story, adapted over 30 times for the screen in various formats, I say “sure!” Yotsuya Kaidan, originally Tōkaidō Yotsuya Kaidan (Ghost Story of Yotsuya in Tokaido) is just that. Birthed as an 1825 play, Yotsuya Kaidan fictionally converged two real-life killings into one gruesome and haunting saga of murder, ghosts, betrayal, and vengeance. The show quickly caught fire thanks to the frightening, iconic Oiwa — a disfigured and vengeful spirit who returns to punish the husband responsible for her death — presented with dazzling effects, catharsis and relish onstage. Come the advent of film, it wasn’t long before Oiwa took the screen. Yotsuya Kaidan was first adapted in 1912 by director Shôzô Makino with milestone versions hitting in 1949’s The Yotsuda Phantom and 1959 with Nobuo Nakagawa’s Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan (aka The Ghost of Yotsuya). The latter is arguably the greatest and most beloved. Since, the story has endured in cinema, television and anime, adding and peeling layers and subplots. That’s not to mention the immense influence Oiwa and the vengeful female ghost has had on both Japanese and international horror. As recently as 2014, Yotsuya was filmed again in Over Your Dead Body, by the rebellious Takashi Miike (Audition). That take adds a meta-narrative, as it focuses on actors rehearsing to put on the classic Yotsuya Kaidan play, only to find their lives mirroring the story. When it comes to themes of dark marriage, betrayal and class, who couldn’t?
See: The Yotsuda Phantom (1949), The Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959), Illusion of Blood (1965), Crest of Betrayal (1994), Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales, Over Your Dead Body
THINGS WE LOVE: KING OF CHRISTMAS
For the 25th anniversary of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hallmark has released a set of 9 Jack Skellington ornaments, and they’re as awesome as they sound. Each displays a different one of the Pumpkin King’s ghoulishly delightful expressions, transforming that tree into your own personal Halloween Town.