The Man Who Kept Spain Awake
A tribute to Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, the creator of “Stories To Keep You Awake”,
A tribute to Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, the creator of “Stories To Keep You Awake”,
I’d like to thank James Dixon and Lorna Richardson for inviting me to discuss archaeology and folk horror in HELLEBORE at the 5th Public Archaeology Twitter Conference. I’ve compiled all the tweets from my presentation in this post for easier reading. Thank you for inviting me to discuss history and archaeology in @helleborezine for #PATC5. I’m Maria, and I’m the founding editor of HELLEBORE, a small press magazine devoted to British #FolkHorror and the #Occult. Folk horror is enjoying much interest at the moment. The term remains associated with these three films from the late 60s-early 70s (the so-called “Unholy Trinity”), but its roots go back to the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Why are history and archaeology important in folk horror? The idea that drives the subgenre is the survival of ancient cults, usually in remote rural areas, a mere step away from our “civilised” surroundings. These ancient rituals will be re-enacted, almost inevitably, to some horrible ending. In folk horror, the past is unearthed, often literally, with or without archaeologists involved. Or the …
This isn’t Photoshop.
In the summer of 1816, a group of Romantic writers (Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Willian Polidori) gathered in a house on the shores of Lake Geneva and told each other ghost stories. These are some of the films inspired by the events.
Guillermo del Toro is a self-confessed fan of the Gothic Romance. I spoke to him about early influences and the pleasures and pains of reviving the genre on screen.
Guillermo del Toro described his recent film Crimson Peak as a “classic Gothic Romance”, a subgenre that has been consigned to oblivion for nearly four decades. But what is Gothic Romance, what makes it different to horror and why did it fall into obscurity?
Old-fashioned, eerie and subtle. These are my favourite ghost films.
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