Horror is Coming Out of the Closet

Not about Homosexuality, for all of you offended by the title: I gave you more credit than that.

Okay, moving on. While watching The Unnamable, based on a H.P. Lovecraft story, I was thinking about the horror genre and how far it has moved on just since the '80s, not to mention the '20s! Pshaw! Get outta here!

The Unnamable was pretty good for a movie made in the '80s, (I would know, I was there.) because I felt the stirrings of fright deep inside, and I can see how, at that time, it was probably horrifying. But I didn't find it horrifying now, in fact, I didn't even really find it scary.

What has happened? Have we become hardened to horror so it takes more and more to scare us? Is it part of our upbringing? Kids become accustomed at earlier ages to seeing increasingly graphic material? Or is it a collective? A process of the hardening of the social consciousness? And what is it that actually scares us anymore anyway?

I don't know. Well, to all the questions but the last one. (I'll talk about that in another column.) I do know that while society is raising it's standards for what it takes to be horror, many horror writers are lowering the standards for what it takes to write it, and I find my self forced to ask, over and over again:

Is this really the best we can do?

Fanfiction? Now, I got it, I know that it's very popular and lots of people love it, and I would probably run off with Joss Whedon myself if I got the chance, BUT...this is top of the list? This even makes me mad at myself. Where are all the original ideas at? Where are the new stories? Then I found them:

Okay, I'm done ranting now, and there are plenty of good titles out and coming out soon. I'm not hating on anybody or any books, I just happen to be more of a "serious" horror guy. Horror comedy? Not for me. I won't judge you if you like it though. (Well, I won't judge you much.)

I don't want this to be taken negatively, because I actually intend to convey encouragement. Come on Ladies and Gents, we can do better than this when it comes to inspiration! Are you telling me that the very last thing we have to resort to is a Zombie Christmas Carol? I'm currently reading Raymund Hensley's Filipino Vampire, and I can appreciate it, but his Were Dolphin? Yeah, probably not happening.

As for Lovecraft, I'll read anything of his and luckily despite some minor contentions to the contrary, his work has passed into the public domain. If you would like an online source for Lovecraft's entire body of work you could visit ------>HERE.

And as a little bonus, let me tell you about yBook. yBook is a free ebook reader for the computer that does many things, but one of them I use all the time because I find it quite amazing. IT WILL TRANSLATE A WEBPAGE INTO EBOOK FORM.

I can take any archived book, webpage, article, you name it, load the URL into yBook and it will instantly format the content into an ebook for my reading pleasure. (Complete with "turnable" pages if I so desire.) Take a look, and while you're there, pick up yWriter. It's only the best writing program ever created and it's absolutely free. You can find them both ----> HERE.

If, however, you already have an e-reader, (Kindle, Nook, Ipad, Sony, blah, blah, blah) you can find the entire work of Lovecraft compiled and available for free download. Now if you can't get a file that didn't come from Amazon synced to your Kindle, that's a different story and I'll deal with that in a different article.

Download the entire Free Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft here ----> Cthulhu Chick

I'll take my leave now, after asking one very important question of you:

If you ran into an unnamable thing, what would you call it?

Please leave your responses in the comment section below.

Oh, and follow me on Facebook ---> HERE or Twitter ---> HERE