If Jean Cocteau had made a horror film it might have resembled George Franju’s dreamy and disturbing body-horror masterwork Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960). I’ve not been able to trace the artist for this poster but it’s a good example of the diluted Surrealism which was still prevalent in poster graphics at this time.
If I were asked what’s needed today, I’d say innovation, and greater timbral variety. If you truly want the audience to experience the clammy thrill of the grotesque, the uncanny and the fearful, you have to reach for the unfamilar, the perplexing, even the ugly; there’s an infinite Lovecraftian sound-world out there waiting to be explored. We need new combinations, new textures in film scoring. Horror has a licence to be weird – it’s supposed to mess with our heads. (more)
Stephen Thrower.
Stephen Thrower is an ex-member of Coil, a current member of Cyclobe, was the editor of a great magazine, Eyeball, devoted to horror cinema and what Kim Newman (casting about for a wider, non-generic label) calls “nightmare movies”, and is the author of Nightmare USA and Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci. In other words, he’s more than qualified to write about horror film soundtracks. The reason is an event at the South Bank Centre, London, two weeks from now, Sound of Fear: The Musical Universe of Horror, one of the highlights of which will be a performance by John Carpenter’s soundtrack collaborator Alan Howarth. Related: my post about Italian horror soundtracks from 2008.
Art by Justin Lovato.
• Mind Over Matter: Alan Fletcher’s The Art of Looking Sideways. “The Art of Looking Sideways captures the sensory overload of contemporary visual culture, while also acting as a primer in visual intelligence.” Related: Alan Fletcher profiled at the Design Museum.
• More music and more psychedelia: Past Present Future Space-Time “Wysing Arts Centre explores the legacy of psychedelia in this year’s annual music event”.
• The Coilhouse International Silent Auction is GO and ends Sunday night if you want to bid for some rare and special things.
• The Garden of Kama and Other Love Lyrics from India (1901), illustrated by John Byam Shaw.
• Chris Marker’s take on the recent London riots: Overnight.
• Bristol’s graffiti artists are redecorating the city’s streets.
• Women and knives: a Dario Argento poster gallery.
• Inferno (1993) by Miranda Sex Garden, from their album Suspiria.