Halfoween, Lady Frankenstein, and Subversive Sci-fi
Every Day is Halloween #76: The Official Newsletter of Lisa Morton
Hey Crew!
Okay, I don’t know about anyone else, but…I’m LOVING Substack! I really like the way it combines the best of WordPress, MailChimp, YouTube, Twitter, and Patreon, but without the bad parts. If you haven’t checked out my profile page lately, I’m regularly posting older “Ghost Reports” from the several hundred I’ve done for Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt, and a few other odds and ends. It’s a fun way to make old stuff seem shiny and new again.
And hurrah, we’re now halfway to Halloween! If you’re reading this on May 1, Happy May Day/Beltane. I hope you’re staying healthy and happy, and thanks as always for reading my stuff.
Lisa
NEW STUFF I LIKE
I’ve recently spent too much money on some of the many incredible DVD/Blu Ray box sets now released by companies like Arrow, Severin Films, and Vinegar Syndrome, all of whom are putting out cleaned-up remasters of little-seen horror flicks from around the world. Some of these are just interesting curiosities (like Castle of the Living Dead, included in the Severin Films’ set The Eurocrypt of Christopher Lee), some are just plain duds, but a few fall into the “OMG, how have I missed this for so long?” category.
One of those is Lady Frankenstein, which for me is the stand-out in Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume One: The Italian Gothic Collection. I mean, how could you not love a movie in which Dr. Frankenstein turns out to have a gorgeous daughter who is also smarter than he is? Oh, and she’s going to put the brain of the old guy who’s in love with her into the body of the hunky young servant guy. Okay, so the movie does spend too much time on a meandering side plot about a police inspector, but it also a pretty good monster, amazing sets and locations, and Joseph Cotten as the good Doctor. It’s worth a re-watch for me!
THE HALLOWEEN SPIRIT
Within Halloween collecting circles, reproductions are a constant source of delight/dismay.
If you’re anything like me, you’d love to fill your abode with gorgeous vintage material, but hey - you haven’t yet achieved millionaire-dom, so a lot of Halloween stuff is just out of your budget. But the good news is that retro Halloween design has become very popular over the last few decades, and there are now a lot of companies putting out reproductions of original material.
This is great…provided it is clearly sold as reproduction. Oh yes, there are collectors who get stung all the time paying high prices for pieces that turn out to be facsimiles. I belong to a Facebook group of Halloween collectors, and there are frequently discussions held there in which these experts try to discern real vs. fake.
Yesterday I attended the Spooky Swap Meet, a yearly event held in L.A.’s historic Heritage Square to celebrate being halfway to Halloween. This delightful gathering is like a mini-convention with dozens of dealers selling art, clothing, jewelry, and just general Halloween stuff. I acquired the lovely set of vintage-style salt and pepper shakers you see above for not much more than the price of drink from Starbucks.
Reproduction/authentic may be an ongoing debate, but I for one am very happy to see all this beautiful new Halloween material out there!
By the way, if you’d like to shop for Halloween material like this in the near future, I highly recommend attending Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, July 28-30.
STRANGE DOINGS
For the May 1 edition of Ghost Magnet with Bridget Marquardt, I talked about Caufield’s Novelty Store in Louisville, Kentucky.
I’m not going to repost the Ghost Report because you can check that out here (or wherever you get your podcasts)…I’m just going to add here that I LOVE the way Caufield’s looks! When I was a kid, I haunted (no pun intended) a couple of old magic/novelty stores on Hollywood Boulevard, and it’s so fun to poke around into the dusty back corners of stores like these. Whether they contain actual ghosts or not, they certainly embody the ghosts of part of our shared past. That time your goofiest uncle handed you the electrified pen and then guffawed when you got shocked? That pen is a bestseller at Caufield’s. The Halloween cutouts you loved taping up every October? Caufield’s has got some vintage ones still stuck on their walls.
I’ve never been to Caufield’s, but they’re now a bucket list destination for me.
BEHIND THE SCREAMS
“Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: When Nature Wins” from Subversive Sci-fi
When editor Christopher McGlothlin approached me about contributing to his next book Subversive Sci-fi (after I appeared in his Transgressive Horror volume), my first thought was: what movie would no one else be likely to cover? Surely A Boy and His Dog, one of the most subversive science fiction films ever made, would be done to death (and yet…it WASN’T!).
I’m a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, and although I thought other science fiction anime films might be discussed by other authors in the book, I guessed no one would look at Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), which is a film that I do believe subverts a lot of science fiction tropes. I don’t want to give my whole essay away, but one of the things I most love about that film is how it takes the usual sci-fi trope of the triumph of technology and instead turns it into a rotting failure that has been completely overcome by nature.
While Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is not my favorite Miyazaki (that would be My Neighbor Totoro), it’s still a stunningly beautiful work that I was pleased to write about.
By the way, I will also be in Professor McGlothlin’s next book with an essay on George A. Romero’s sixth (and last) zombie film Survival of the Dead, trying to decipher exactly why it does not work.
THE WRITE STUFF
If you’re reading this, chances are you like horror. If you’re also a writer, you probably write mainly within the horror genre.
Genre is something that didn’t really exist until the 20th century, when marketing became a thing. Prior to that, authors wrote whatever they felt like; very few confined themselves solely to one genre. Take, for example, Louisa May Alcott, who is most cherished now for her works like Little Women, but who also loved writing horror and suspense stories.
So, if you’ve been writing mainly in one genre but want to dip your toe into another…how hard is it? First, let’s assume that you are already well read in the new genre, so you know the basics. And the most essential elements of writing are going to apply to any genre, so you’ve got that going on, too.
But let me speak a little from some of my own experience. Writing for a different genre can involve way more than just telling your stories in a new way. Markets are one thing that can vary wildly. I was recently a panelist at a mystery writers’ meeting, for example, and I was shocked when a question to the other panelists was, “Have you ever submitted to a paying market?” I was already beginning to suspect that paying markets for short mystery fiction seemed somewhat scarcer for horror, but this question confirmed it.
Another thing to consider is community. If you’ve been writing in one genre for any length of time, you’ve probably interacted with other writers in that genre’s community. When you step into the community of writers in another genre, it can be like setting foot in a foreign country. Mystery writers, for example, tend to skew older and more affluent than horror writers. When you’re used to a lot of young and middle-aged writers dressed mostly in black, stepping into a group of people in blazers and perfect haircuts can be a bit of culture shock!
Certainly all writers should explore their boundaries and test the waters of new ponds, but be sure you’re prepared - you might be surprised at just how different genres can be beyond the writing tropes.
NEWS & WORKS IN PROGRESS
I’m very honored to have been asked to be the keynote speaker for StokerCon 2023.
I will also be presenting my first live workshop at StokerCon! The topic will be announced soon and tickets will be available for those attending the convention.
Playlist of the Damned is a new anthology that’s running a Kickstarter from now until 5/14. It will be edited by Willow Becker and Jess Landry, feature cover art by Frank Walls (one of my favorites!), and include a music-themed story by me. It’s currently less than a thousand bucks from its goal, so check it out and, if you like it, back it.
Speculative Los Angeles, which includes my story “Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Los Feliz,” was named by the LA Times as one of the “110 Essential Los Angeles Books.”
What I’m working on right now…two short stories; one essay for a film book; one introduction for a classic reprint; one article for a British magazine; two books to read for blurbage; and the barest beginnings of what I'm hoping will soon officially be my next coffee table art book.
UPCOMING APPEARANCES
I’ll be attending StokerCon2023 in Pittsburgh, June 15-18. Right now my schedule includes moderating one panel, conducting an interview with a Lifetime Achievement Award winner, offering a live workshop, judging the Final Frame Short Horror Film Competition, being the keynote speaker, and co-presenting one Bram Stoker Award. Oh, and I also recorded a virtual reading for the convention.
I’ll be signing The Art of the Zombie Movie at Dark Delicacies on October 8.
And don’t forget to listen to Ghost Magnet With Bridget Marquardt every week to hear a new Ghost Report!
WHERE YOU CAN BUY MY BOOKS
ebay - I’m selling a few of my author copies - CHEAP! - and will be happy to personalize them for you. I’ll be adding to this every day, too.
CONTEST
This month’s giveaway is a paperback copy of “The Haunted Library of Horror Classics” edition of M. R. James classic collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. Click here (put “Newsletter Contest” in the subject line of your email) to enter and good luck!
I need to make a note about Stokercon for next year. This year, I have a family thing going on that date so that takes priority.