In The Flame Alphabet, Ben Marcus imagines our species becoming allergic to this ubiquitous byproduct of its civilizations. In it, language becomes so toxic in all its forms that communication itself becomes a lethal plague that only children are immune to. One might imagine the result to be a descent into feral post-apocalypse, with humans becoming more overtly animalistic, but Marcus surprises with a truly strange, original vision of a post-linguistic world. Language As Body Horror: Ben Marcus’s The Flame Alphabet

Set in 1911 Texas, the story follows a set of grisly and bizarre murders in the Big Thicket section of Southeast Texas. Victims are torn limb from limb, with organs and blood removed. Initially packs of wild dogs are blamed, but a local sheriff and a doctor with a dark past slowly come to the conclusion that what is haunting the woods is not a normal animal. Read the full review of Sour Lake

If you thought The Cabin in the Woods — Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s brilliant deconstruction of the horror genre — was both laugh-out-loud funny and terrifyingly insane in the final act, then the next horror film you should see is John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness. It boasts the same sardonic wit and the same sense of limitless chaos crawling and scuttling beneath the surface. It also plays some of the same metafictional games with its subject matter. Read the full review of this classic, In the Mouth of Madness..

Many historians have wondered how Stoker, a one-time Dublin civil servant and chum of Oscar Wilde came to imagine the gothic horrors of Dracula and now, new research into Stoker’s family tree by the genealogy website Find My Past provides the answer. What was Stoker’s genealogy?

Stephanie Meyer, author of the Twilight books, has purchased the film rights to Lois Duncan’s gothic horror novel Down a Dark Hall, which is set in a haunted boarding school. Meyer will also produce the movie adaptation of her science fiction novel The Host.

Nightmarish scenes unfolded last night at Windham Hospital. The hospital was used for an all-day shoot of the cable television movie Dead Souls. The movie has already begun production in Canterbury and features Jesse James, who has starred in The Flyboys, Amityville Horror and other movies. Read the full story…

Open Road Films has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to Silent Hill: Revelation 3d, the highly anticipated sequel to 2006’s film Silent Hill, released by TriStar Pictures. Silent Hill: Revelation 3d will be released wide on October 26, 2012 in time for Halloween. The announcement was made today by Tom Ortenberg, CEO of Open Road Films and producers Samuel Hadida and Don Carmody.

According to Digital Spy, Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, who originated the role of vampire Barnabas Collins on the daytime soap opera Dark Shadows (a role Johnny Depp plays in the new Tim Burton film) has passed away at the age of 87.

Horror icons Bill Moseley and Michael Berryman will play the leads in the new cable television series pilot Hell Hunters. The series is an action/horror/suspense/crime drama/thriller about two childhood friends from North Dakota who read a comic book and decide to become the murderous vigilante characters in real life.

Of the film adaptations of the influential, perennially popular horror writer HP Lovecraft, there are no doubt some you’ve seen and fondly remember. Stuart Gordon’s anarchic Re-Animator and From Beyond no doubt fall into this category. Then there’s Guillermo Del Toro’s At The Mountains Of Madness, which falls into the rarefied category of Lovecraft films we’d love to see but probably never will. Standing apart from all of those movies, there’s Dark Heritage: The Final Descendant – a Lovecraft adaptation you might not have seen, and probably shouldn’t.

Bram Stoker put the “vampire-as-sexual-metaphor” idea front and center in the original Dracula, it’s the engine that drives the book. And it’s been front and center in vampire fiction ever since, from Stoker’s novel and its various adaptations and sequels and so forth on up through Anne Rice, Kim Newman, and even Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Rabies, the new Hebrew-language horror film from Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales, knows how to creep up on its viewers and totally floor their expectations. If you think you know how this story will end, you will be wrong. Rabies is a purely original horror flick. Read the full review…

One of the hottest new books is Lord Loss by best-selling horror author Darren Shan. It deals with the supernatural — demons, zombies and even werewolves — and has also been described as a young-adult fantasy book. Cheyenne South High School Librarian Susan Skaar said Shan’s books offer a new genre, a new trend, which kids like.

A gruesome story from the pen of master horror writer Stephen King is being brought to life by a young Birmingham film-maker.

Stephen King’s 11/22/1963, about a time traveler who attempts to prevent John F. Kennedy’s assassination, was among the winners Friday at the 32nd annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.

The founder and driving force behind a company called RadioTheatre, Dan Bianchi has been producing aural adaptations of weird classics since 2004. On April 19, he presented the third installment in his H.P. Lovecraft festival, produced at the Kraine Theater in collaboration with the Horse Trade Theater Group; it runs through June 24.

Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ The Dark Knight Rises, the much-anticipated final chapter in writer-director Christopher Nolan’s film trilogy featuring the legendary DC Comics character Batman, will be adapted into an official tie-in novel written by award-winning author Greg Cox and published by Titan Books, under a licensing agreement with Warner Bros. Consumer Products.

It’s been more than three decades since author Anne Rice first penned her best selling book, Interview with the Vampire.
Since then, she’s gone on to sell more than 100 million copies of her books. Along the way, her stories of vampires, witches and angels helped define a genre of gothic horror. And many today credit her with inspiring the like of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series of books (and films) and Charlaine Harris’ books that became HBO’s True Blood. Listen to this podcast, in which she discusses vampires, werewolves and writing.

Fantasy-and-horror artists advised their hopeful fans at the Manchester Monster Convention last weekend. The convention was held at Sachas Hotel by Hic Dragones, a Manchester-based literature organisation that runs training events and publishes dark fiction.

Interview: zombie horror author Dana Fredsti heads to Plague Town.

Since 2000, the top twenty grossing American films that were not directly based on a book already were all made into mass market paperbacks. (13 of those arrived after Hendrix’s piece was published, in 2006.) However, while there are still regular novelizations among the biggest blockbusters, adaptations of smaller films appear to have declined in frequency, due to dropping sales figures. Do Movies Still Get Novelized?

The author who invented the vampire story thought he was being funny. The Vampyre, first published anonymously in 1819, was taken to be the work of the famous poet (and early 19th-century equivalent of a tabloid celebrity) Lord Byron, but turned out to be by Byron’s personal physician (and devoted hanger-on), Dr. John Polidori. A Brief History of Vampire Fiction

With the support of Profile Books and digital designers inkle, video-game designer Dave Morrishe has turned Frankenstein into an interactive app for iPhones and iPads.

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