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Monday, May 22, 2006
I was the guest victim of an online chat recently and the question of my favorite horror director came up. The fast pace of a chatroom is dizzying to me, and I replied that David Cronenberg was my favorite. He's a good choice, no doubt, but upon further reflection I'd have to go with another filmmaker. Dario Argento.
I first became aware of Argento back in the 80's when I read about him in Fangoria. I believe that Tim Lucas's invaluable resource, Video Watchdog, had an article about the various VHS releases of Argento movies. The descriptions of the films were so intriguing to me and I was desperate to see them. The first I rented was a butchered edition of Deep Red (Profondo Rosso). Even though the many cuts rendered the movie to near incomprehension, I still loved it. I got all the versions I could find. Creepers (Phenomena), Unsane (Tenebre), etc.
At the time, it seemed like every horror lover was a Dario Argento fan and I wondered how many REALLY dug his movies. They really aren't for all viewers. Nowadays, I hear more and more people saying that they don't really dig Dario and that's cool. I admit that many of his movies defy logic or even comprehension. Argento has been accused of sacrificing plot for visuals and that's a charge with a lot of justification. Still, I think the movies of Dario Argento, especially when he's at his best as with Susperia, Profondo Rosso, Tenebre or The Stendhal Syndrome, is on a par with any other director in the world. As far as I'm concerned, Mario Bava invented giallo films, but Dario Argento perfected the art.
I know, some of Dario's more recent movies leave a lot to be desired. The only truly awful one, to me, is his version of Phantom of the Opera. This wretched production looks more like a Charles Band film than one by the Italian master of shocking thrills. Trauma isn't as good as most of Dario's films, but he made it with crews he was unfamiliar with and he did so here in America instead of Italy. His most recent is the average The Card Player. I've heard that the once great Italian horror movie industry is dead and I think he is using TV crews and rushed schedules. I think this is a fucking crime. Dario Argento has shown genius in many of his movies and he deserves to work with the best crews in the world.
Thankfully, we have a wealth of great DVDs that showcase Argento's movies in the way they were meant to be seen. Anchor Bay has done numerous beautiful transfers of his films and if you haven't seen Blue Underground's striking edition of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, you simply haven't seen the film. Not really. Sadly, Troma, the ghetto of film distribution, handled my personal favorite Argento, The Stendhal Syndrome. Not surprisingly, it is a murky, cropped, disrespectful DVD.
I've heard him called a hack, a cinematic sadist and a madman, but those of us that love the films of Dario Argento call him The Maestro and we'll watch anything that has his name in it.
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Thursday, May 11, 2006
When I was growing up, my favorite literary genre of choice was science fiction. The first real book I read, what my kids call 'chapter books', was Heinlein's Have Space Suit Will Travel. That book moved me and changed my life. I was a ceritfied science fiction fan after that and I remained one for a couple of decades. I read a ton of the stuff. Especially from what is considered the Golden Age of SF. My favorites were probably the most visible and popular of the genre. Heinlein. Asimov. Arthur C. Clarke. Bradbury. These were the writers that even non-fans knew of. I liked other, more obscure writers as well. Frederik Pohl. Theodore Sturgeon. Alfred Bester. Clifford Simak. Edgar Pangborn. And many more. These names are known by most genre readers, but few outside the rather thin walls of the world of SF fandom were aware of them.
As time passed and I aged, I began losing interest in SF. I had always gravitated toward the darker stuff that found itself lumped in with science fiction, like Matheson and Bloch and Ellison, but I really wasn't a horror reader. Other than classic stuff like Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson and Clark Ashton Smith. I began branching out and after reading an interview with a guy named Charles Grant in the pages of Fantasy and Science Fiction, I read a couple of his books. And I liked them a lot. And man, I was getting SO sick of what passed as science fiction. George Lucas put a blight on the genre, as far as I was concerned, and set things back about fifty years with his Star Wars movies. Books that copied that style began emerging as well as Star Trek and Tolkien clones falling into the mix. I definitely needed a change.
I picked up a book by this trashy bestselling writer and gave it a try. What would it hurt? About the same thing happened that happened with Have Space Suit Will Travel years before. The Shining blew me away and I knew that I had found what I had been looking for. Stephen King took his characters to an emotional depth that I really hadn't seen much of in SF. I was hooked; in a big way.
Cut to many years later. I had read hundreds of horror novels and short stories. I had this little message board on the Internet to talk about horror fiction (among other things). The first real, no-bullshit writer that came there was a guy named Steve(n)* Savile. This was in 1999, I believe. Since that time, I've known Steve(n) though hundreds of emails and message board conversations. We've shared our good times and bad ones together. Steve(n) has proven time and again to be a genuinely honorable man and a devoted friend. He has had more than his share of ups and downs as a writer and editor, but I'm very happy to say that Steve(n)'s career has been in definite upswing for a while now. Same goes for his private life. Ups and downs, like the rest of us. Steve(n) met a wonderful lady named Alethea Kontis and I sincerely hope that they make each other happy for eternity.
Steve(n) and Alethea have done a wonderful, noble thing. I don't have to remind anyone of the tsunami tragedy that occured in Southern Asia late last year. Many have grieved and many have prayed. Many have given extraordinarily generous donations to relieve the victims and survivors of the horror. Steve(n) and Alethea are giving something else to the affected people: Magic. The magic of words, of imagination. The kind of magic that can save and change lives. These two individuals gathered up some of the biggest and most important writers in the fantasy and science fiction fields and got stories from them. Tor is publishing these stories in both paperback and hardcover this month. The book is called Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology. This is a charity anthology and all publisher and writer's profits are going direct to the Save the Children Tsunami Relief Fund. Yep, I'm up here on my soapbox again. And, as always, I put my own money where my mouth is. I preordered it months ago from Amazon.
This is my chance to try to catch up on what is going on today in the SF field. I am almost 100% ignorant of most of the names in this book, I'm ashamed to say. Maybe I'll love these new writers and maybe I won't. But this is the best possible way for me to find out. By paying a fair price for a book and knowing that I am contributing to a very good cause at the same time. Please check out the Elemental website (which was created by our own Deena Warner) and please...click on the purchase link and consider buying a copy of Elemental. Whether you are (or think you are) a science fiction fan or not.
http://aletheakontis.com/elemental/index.htm
*Sorry, he goes by Steven now, but I met him as Steve and that's how I'll always think of him.
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