My longtime readers know that I indulge myself in the run-up to Halloween with book and movie reviews that concur with my preferences for that holiday.\u00a0 A couple of years ago I wrote reviews for all the Universal Classic Monster movies of the 1930s and 1940s.\u00a0 I usually take the season as an excuse to reread Bradbury\u2019s \u201cSomething Wicked This Way Comes\u201d and watch the movie for good measure.<\/p>\n
But last year I reviewed Psycho and this year I intend to review the Thomas Harris novels that include the character Hannibal Lecter.\u00a0 Many years ago, a friend gave me his copy of Red Dragon and I found it to be one of the most unsettling things I had ever read.\u00a0 And although the violence and insanity were pretty extreme by the standards of that happier time, the thing about the book that truly frightened me was the plausibility of the killer\u2019s method for stalking his victims and the impossibility of protecting your family from someone who was determined to kill in that fashion.\u00a0 I guess it was the fact that I had a young family at that time and the idea that I might be powerless to save them that horrified me.\u00a0 And that is when I first became aware that true horror always has a human face.\u00a0 It won\u2019t be a normal human but it will look out of a face that is attached to a driver\u2019s license and a cellphone and a bank account.<\/p>\n
So, there is a difference between the good old days and the bad new days.\u00a0 We stopped trying to gently scare children and now we horrify adults by showing them what\u2019s really out there.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be the first to admit that watching Frankenstein or Dracula doesn\u2019t actually involve any fear for anyone over the age of ten.\u00a0 It was natural that movie makers and writers would escalate the violence and cart out the gore to tempt adult thrill-seekers, mostly in their teenage years, to spend their entertainment dollars on the latest fright fest.\u00a0 Back in the 1970s Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the poster child for exploitation movies aimed at frightening audiences out of their seats.\u00a0 Since then every year has upped the ante until lately the content has gotten so bad that the real name for what this represents has been designated.\u00a0 These movies are portraying torture through grisly dismemberment.<\/p>\n
I consider that a distinction can be made between these gore fests that are almost bereft of meaningful characters and plot and crime drama like \u201cSilence of the Lambs\u201d which while it does include the description of horrible violence and depravity is not focused on flinging gore across the screen to delight the demented.\u00a0 It tells the story of people.\u00a0 This includes the victims, the police and even the murderer.\u00a0 We supposedly learn a little about what drives some of these characters to become monsters.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a devotee of crime drama or fiction.\u00a0 As I said I was given the Red Dragon book long ago and because of it I went to see the Silence of the Lambs when it came out.\u00a0 Out of a sense of curiosity I read the rest of the Lecter books and saw the movies and tv series.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the later books were as good as the first two but I will review them all for general interest purposes.<\/p>\n
But I have all the Universal Monster movies on DVD and I intend to watch them all with my younger grandsons as soon as the lockdown ends.\u00a0 They\u2019re the correct age and they\u2019ll get a kick out of them.\u00a0 And truth be told, so will I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My longtime readers know that I indulge myself in the run-up to Halloween with book and movie reviews that concur with my preferences for that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,239,238,237],"tags":[1391,2660,354,1392,2662,1393,2661,417],"class_list":["post-12160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-halloween","tag-hannibal-lecter","tag-horror","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-red-dragon","tag-something-wicked-this-way-comes","tag-thomas-harris","tag-universal-classic-monster-movies"],"yoast_head":"\n