Elder Horror

As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims. This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.

To Enter Five Peaks Magical Academy you must have a familiar. Abigail hoped for a bird, maybe an owl like her best friend's, or a cuddly cat or loyal hound. She would have been happy with a particularly smart toad, even.Instead she got you.

A mad surrealist’s art threatens to rip open the fabric of reality, in this twisted tale of eldritch horror and conspiracy, from the wildly popular world of Arkham Horror. Aspiring painter Alden Oakes is invited to join a mysterious art commune in Arkham: the New Colony. When celebrated Spanish surrealist Juan Hugo Balthazarr visits the colony, Alden and the other artists quickly fall under his charismatic spell. Balthazarr throws a string of decadent parties for Arkham’s social elite, conjuring arcane illusions which blur the boundaries between nightmare and reality. Only slowly does Alden come to suspect that Balthazarr’s mock rituals are intended to break through those walls and free what lies beyond. Alden must act, but it might already be too late to save himself, let alone Arkham.

As baby boomers gray, cinematic depictions of aging and the aged are on the rise. In the horror genre, fears of growing old take on fantastic proportions. Elderly characters are portrayed as either eccentric harbingers of doom--the crone who stops at nothing to restore her youth, the ancient ancestor who haunts the living--or as frail victims. This collection of new essays explores how various filmic portrayals of aging, as an inescapable horror destined to overtake us all, reflect our complex attitudes toward growing old, along with its social, psychological and economic consequences.

H. P. Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) was the most important American horror fiction writer of the first half of the 20th century whose fiction, especially about the Cthulhu Mythos universe, spanned both time and space. He never achieved financial success; however, he did become good friends with several big writers, notably Robert Bloch (Psycho) and Robert E. Howard of Conan fame. The "Cthulhu Mythos" grew out of the Lovecraft Circle, a writing group where everyone shared in Lovecraft's Mythos stories. The most famous of these were "The Call of Cthulhu" and "At the Mountains of Madness". Many novels and stories have come from his Mythos tales, one of the most famous being The Necronomicon, written by the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, which first appeared in Lovecraft's story "The Hound". Lovecraft's health and financial situation began to fail seriously in the mid-1930s. He died in 1937 of cancer of the intestine, never knowing what a giant of the horror genre he was to become.

"[A] well-plotted survey." Total Film In 100 American Horror Films, Barry Keith Grant presents entries on 100 films from one of American cinema's longest-standing, most diverse and most popular genres, representing its rich history from the silent era - D.W. Griffith's The Avenging Conscience of 1915 - to contemporary productions - Jordan Peele's 2017 Get Out. In his introduction, Grant provides an overview of the genre's history, a context for the films addressed in the individual entries, and discusses the specific relations between American culture and horror. All of the entries are informed by the question of what makes the specific film being discussed a horror film, the importance of its place within the history of the genre, and, where relevant, the film is also contextualized within specifically American culture and history. Each entry also considers the film's most salient textual features, provides important insight into its production, and offers both established and original critical insight and interpretation. The 100 films selected for inclusion represent the broadest historical range, and are drawn from every decade of American film-making, movies from major and minor studios, examples of the different types or subgenres of horror, such as psychological thriller, monster terror, gothic horror, home invasion, torture porn, and parody, as well as the different types of horror monsters, including werewolves, vampires, zombies, mummies, mutants, ghosts, and serial killers.

Introduction by China Miéville Long acknowledged as a master of nightmarish visions, H. P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition’s uncanny discoveries–and their encounter with untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization–is a milestone of macabre literature. This exclusive new edition, presents Lovecraft’s masterpiece in fully restored form, and includes his acclaimed scholarly essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” This is essential reading for every devotee of classic terror.

Following on from the phenomenal success of NECRONOMICON comes ELDRITCH TALES. Howard Phillips Lovecraft died at the age of 47, but in his short life he turned out dozens of stories which changed the face of horror. His extraordinary imagination spawned both the Elder God Cthulhu and his eldritch cohorts, and the strangely compelling town of Innsmouth, all of which feature within these pages. This collection gathers together the rest of Lovecraft's rarely seen but extraordinary short fiction, including the whole of the long-out-of-print collection FUNGI FROM YOGGOTH. Many of these stories have never been available in the UK! Stephen Jones, one of the world's foremost editors of dark fiction, will complete the Lovecraft story in his extensive afterword, and award-winning artist Les Edwards will provide numerous illustrations for this must-have companion volume to NECRONOMICON.