Horror movies have provided some of the screen’s most iconic moments: Gary Oldman’s Count Dracula welcoming an unsuspecting Jonathan Harker to his castle while weird shadows undulate on the wall behind him; a naughty night-time skinny dip ending in terror as an unseen force drags a young blonde co-ed beneath the waves in Jaws; Freddie Krueger’s clawed hand dragging slowly across a basement boiler.
How many movie-goers can easily forget Michael Myers, Scream’s Ghostface, an almost-unrecognisable Linda Blair screaming obscenities at the priest sent to save her?
The horror genre is diverse: spooky haunted houses, mere mortals gone crazy, wildly dangerous and generally enormous creatures stalking unsuspecting victims, mythical monsters such as Dracula, Frankenstein and assorted werewolves.
It takes someone with an amazing love for horror to produce a volume that manages to tell all of the genre’s stories. Kim Newman is that man.
He is an accomplished author (most well known for the Anno Dracula novels) and a wonderful critic. His sharp observations, coupled with an excellent sense of humour, make this massive tome an extremely entertaining read.
Nightmare Movies was first released in 1988. This updated edition contains a new section titled “New Nightmares”, and consists of chapters such as “The Lecter Variations”, “Scream and scream again” and “Why are you doing this to me?” (although, to my mind, the best chapter title is to be found in the original section: “Psycho movies or: ‘I didn’t raise my girl to be a severed head’.”)
The new section gives Newman the chance to explore the genre of horror that has been labelled “torture porn” – movies such as the Hostel and Saw series, in which victims are brutally, graphically murdered as some sort of warped, bloody performance art or statement on the dissolution of modern life.
He also takes a stab – so to speak – at the prequels, sequels and more sequels that have become so commonplace in modern horror movies.
At this point, it’s probably only fair that I make a confession: I’m far too terrified to watch most of the movies Newman writes about in this fantastic volume. I remain perhaps unreasonably frightened of (in no particular order) clowns, drains, cupboards left slightly ajar, and the monster that definitely lives under my bed. This is almost entirely thanks to the film adaptation of Stephen King’s It, which sadly gets only a brief mention here – perhaps reading Newman’s almost certainly dry and intelligent assessment of the film would clear my head a little.
The thrill of this book is that Newman has such a wonderful writer’s voice – an elegant, engaging drawl that carries the reader through nearly 600 pages and several decades of horror films. He’s hilariously dismissive of the films he doesn’t like, which makes for fabulous reading.
For real movie buffs, I imagine it’s a lovely volume in whose pages new, deliciously dark treats can be identified. For those who have seen the iconic films – Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nosferatu, if they love the classics, Silence of the Lambs – it is a good launchpad towards more demanding, less mainstream fright flicks.
And what of its use to those of us who only half-watch horror movies (for instance, hiding behind a pillow for long stretches of Jaws, squealing “What’s happening? What’s happening now?”)? How does Nightmare Movies help the knee-tremblingly chicken?
A friend once assured me that the best way for my delicate constitution to adapt to horror movies was to watch them with the sound turned down, and to pause frequently to discuss what had happened and what, applying the genre’s cliches, was likely to happen next.
I disliked the idea, and still do. But I’ll retain a part of it: in future, I’ll pick my movies based on Newman’s reviews and will keep Nightmare Movies close by so I can pause the action and consult his crisp, clever explanations about the film’s place in horror history. – The Argus