{"id":3123,"date":"2019-08-28T15:47:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T15:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=3123"},"modified":"2019-09-04T17:53:38","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T17:53:38","slug":"pictorial-history-horror-films","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/pictorial-history-horror-films\/","title":{"rendered":"Off the Shelf: A Pictorial History of Horror Films"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most horror fans can pinpoint the precise moment they fall in love with the genre: a channel flip in the wee hours of the morning, a particularly good Halloween party, or maybe a fortuitous garage sale find.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Print media was the gateway in pre-Internet days, and when horror became a big business in the 1950s and \u201960s, there was no shortage of reading material \u2014 see <\/span>Screen Thrills Illustrated<\/i><\/strong>, <\/span>Castle of Frankenstein<\/i><\/strong>, and perhaps the most well-known, Forrest J. Ackerman\u2019s <\/span>Famous Monsters of Filmland<\/i><\/strong> \u2014 to provide history and context for a seemingly unending parade of ghosts, ghouls, and maniacs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One particularly seminal tome was British film and comic historian Denis Gifford\u2019s <\/span>A Pictorial History of Horror Movies<\/i><\/strong>, published by Hamlyn in 1973. The large-format hardback of just over 200 pages (illustrated throughout with more than 350 stills and posters) promised the “Raven”-loving reader \u201ca hair-raising journey down the highway of horror\u201d where \u201cno stones are left unturned and the long lost rise up to snarl and smirk beneath the dusty beam of the projector.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The book seems to have made a splash on two very different horror directors who chose to feature it prominently in their films, both of which have children at the front and center: Nobuhiko Obayashi\u2019s brain-melting <\/span>House<\/i><\/strong>, and Doug McKeown\u2019s sci-fi horror splatterfest <\/span>The Deadly Spawn<\/i>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

House (1977)<\/h4>\n

In <\/span>House<\/span><\/i>, a group of young girls with descriptive names like Gorgeous, Prof, Kung Fu, Sweet, Melody, Fantasy, and Mac are on a summer getaway at a countryside mansion. Not long after they arrive, strange and terrible things begin happening: a piano eats one of them, a housecat shoots lasers out of its eyes, and a watermelon becomes a severed head. In an early scene when the girls board a train to the country, a copy of <\/span>A Pictorial History of Horror Films<\/span><\/i> is placed conspicuously on one of the seats.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tasked by Japanese production company Toho with creating a film to follow the success of <\/span>Jaws<\/i><\/strong>, Obayashi, a commercial director in Japan, turned to his 10-year-old daughter Chigumi for influence. The result is a hallucinogenic nightmare pulled directly from the brain of a child: there are no rules, and no one is safe. With the book having been released only 4 years before the film, it\u2019s a safe bet that Chigumi was pouring over the pages, letting her imagination run wild.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Deadly Spawn (1983)<\/h4>\n

Though both of these works are rightfully celebrated as genre masterpieces, their placement of children at the center of their stories makes them something special.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>The Deadly Spawn<\/span><\/i>, the titular spawn crash to Earth in a meteor and make their way to a nearby suburban home, where they take shelter in the basement and quickly make mincemeat out of everyone in their path.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the residents of this home is a young horror and sci-fi fan named Charles (played by Charles George Hildebrandt, son of legendary fantasy artist Tim Hildebrandt), who has a copy of <\/span>A Pictorial History of Horror Films<\/span><\/i> on the floor of his bedroom.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Charles typifies the pre-teen science-fiction and horror fans of that era: he uses props and gags from the ads featured in his monster magazines to play pranks on his family, terrorizing them at all hours. He quizzes his older brother Pete about the proper etiquette for dispatching certain monsters, and is given the third degree from his uncle about his obsession with all things blood and guts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles has committed the rules of genre to memory and takes them very seriously. He makes a point of reminding Pete \u2014 who is studying to be a scientist \u2014 that he <\/span>used<\/span><\/i> to know these things, but Pete\u2019s academic pursuits have pushed this information out of his brain to make room for hard facts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Real world logic and reason can\u2019t help anyone when true horror comes to town. At first, Charles\u2019s reaction is the same as anyone else gripped in a cold panic, but when he starts treating the invasion like the movies chronicled in <\/span>A Pictorial History of Horror Films<\/span><\/i>, he\u2019s able to defeat the monsters (at least until the final moments of the film reveal the true fate of mankind).<\/span><\/p>\n