protean depravity

As I previously mentioned in my introduction to this series, very few short stories from King's debut collection Night Shift haven't been adapted into other media; notably films, short films, series or even radio adaptations, and that's one of the reasons this work is a staple to have set standards for horror fiction to come. That entails setting up new tropes, pushing existing tropes into the horror domain or reinforcement thereof, creating a "hype" around them. The next short stories I'll discuss, Graveyard Shift (originally published in 1970 in Cavalier Magazine), Night Shift (Ubris Magazine 1969) and I Am the Doorway (Cavalier Magazine 1971) are all writings that boosted tropes that were both sort of hanging in the realm between science fiction and horror as well as pushed them into the mainstream horror of its time. As always, I recommend reading the short stories along.

The Fantasy Filmfest White Nights, a mini-festival which took place this past weekend, was both a lovely launch of Film February as well as a warm-up for the upcoming Berlinale (February 13-23) followed by the Final Girls Berlin Filmfest (March 5-9). So as to not exhaust myself and my finances early on, I only did two films per day, totaling four films; Above the Knee , Presence , MadS and Street Trash - I liked them all, although I have little critiques, comments and opinions I want to dump here. It is noteworthy that three out of four (horror) films I saw rely on narrative or technical methods that are experimental in nature. Now of course, I'm referring to my personal selection and not the entirety of the festival, and I may have been unconsciously drawn towards a certain kind of film, but I can assure that it wasn't apparent in their description, at least not necessarily for all of them. The thing is, it's awesome that more and more filmmakers dare breaking through the...

Hey everyone! Here's the wrap-up of the past month or so. I have been mostly mood reading, and all over the place, which I'm afraid won't change in the near future because I probably won't be able to read as much in the upcoming month, due to Berlinale. I'll do my best, though. Hope you enjoy the short reviews! P.S. A couple of notes for your calendar: Dutch horror author Thomas Olde Heuvelt will be at the Otherland Bookshop on March 31st (!), and Nine Inch Nails are touring Europe this summer and will be in Köln as well as Berlin (!!!). Very  - very - psyched about these! Wild Seed by Octavia Butler Wild Seed is the inaugural book of the "Patternist" series by Octavia Butler, which I have owned as a collection entitled Seed to Harvest for at least a decade, unread. Since I'm very serious about finishing up all the unread books I have in my home library, this is the book/collection I'm starting in the year 2025. I'm secretly proud of wh...

In almost every horror anthology there's one recurring name that piques my attention because the stories under that name almost always land among my highlights: Joe R. Lansdale. I also keep on hearing how great he is, even more so since I started working at a crime and mystery bookshop, because Lansdale shines both in horror and crime fiction. So, you know how you have an endless back list of authors' names you want to read some day? Well, Lansdale was one of those names perpetually in the back of my head. I even have his The Best of Joe R. Lansdale sitting on my shelf, because you know me, I'll buy it and let it sit there for years before finally reading a book and then get frustrated because I had this gem in my home all these years.

Discussing Jerusalem's Lot , we just have to start at the root, and in many horror works, especially of that time, whether the writer knows it or not, whether the writer likes it or not, that root is H.P. Lovecraft. Not that King tries to hide anything: the setting and background, a mansion inherited by a cousin; the main character, a single young man, the only and last descendant of an old family line with a dark secret; the "symptom", noises from inside the walls of the mansion, mistaken (or not) for rats running around... All these are carbon copies of Rats in the Walls by good old HP. There are still twists - King decides to introduce vampires into the story, and gives it a supernatural touch, while Old Howard's dirty secret is based off human depravity and is much more terrifying, although there's arguably supernatural forces at work here too.

The German word "Vorfreude" which describes the happiness you feel before something, a "joyful anticipation" according to internet dictionaries, should be a word in every single language on this world for me to express the joy I yearly feel between New Year's Eve and the month of February when all my favorite film festivals and showings takes place. The constellation of those festivals is somewhat different in 2025, with the Fantasy Filmfest White Nights taking place as late as the first weekend of February and the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival even in March! Even with this shift, it's all fine by me, I have been blissfully busy in my joyful anticipation and putting bookmarks on films I want to see and buying tickets where I can.

In the same way as it is not unusual to return to the same music one used to listen in their teens and twenties, I lately feel the need to return to books that I've read in my early youth and that have left a mark on me. Of course, the role both books, music, and the associated communities play in the shaping of one's personality is undeniable, so presumably no matter how many decades past, you'll always be partial and subjective, and it's nearly impossible for the fan to give an objective assessment on these works. It would be still interesting to observe how you perceive them now compared to back then, and what feelings those same books awake in you today.

Hey everyone! Hope your passage to the new year was smooth and you've made it healthy and happy and maybe a little drunk into 2025! In my first post of the new year I give you mostly reads from the end of last year which I had somehow left unreviewed (mainly because I didn't enjoy them too much, but there are a couple I really loved too), so here are the short reviews, enjoy!