VISIONS FROM WITHIN THE MECHANISM: THE INDUSTRIAL SURREALISM OF JEFFREY SCOTT
Another weird art book, and another mind-tugging triumph
THE ISLE
A stunning horror film from Korea. Stylish, erotic, and often hellaciously grotesque, it plays like a deranged collaboration between Andrei Tarkovsky and Dario Argento
THE NIGHT PORTER
Upscale Nazi-sploitation that’s been denounced as sleazy and sensationalistic. Both criticisms are valid, yet the film works
NIGHT DREAMS
Although little known today, this was one of the most revolutionary porn films of the 1980s, and remains a high point in a format that contains very few
THE TEARS OF EROS
This heavily illustrated philosophical primer on the influence of death in the sacred and sexual was the final work of Georges Bataille, and a fitting testament to a man obsessed throughout his life with the link between ecstasy and horror
FANTAZIUS MALLARE and THE KINGDOM OF EVIL
The subject matter of 1922’s FANTAZIUS MALLARE remains quite eye-opening, and the same holds true for its 1924 sequel THE KINGDOM OF EVIL
THE 4th MAN
Lurid, nightmarish and ultimately irresistible Dutch art-house chills from, ironically enough, Paul Verhoeven, one of Hollywood’s most successful filmmakers
2009: Bedlam in Print
To those who claim the horror story/novel is dead—or the horror novel is worn out, or fiction in general is dead, or whatever—I’ve got this to say: you haven’t been paying attention
THIRST (2009)
South Korea’s Chan-wook Park does a vampire film, and the results are every bit as crazed, shocking and unexpected as you’d expect from the writer-director of OLDBOY and SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE
2004: The Year in Bedlam
2004: it’s been quite a year