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It's October and Halloween is coming up. I talk with author and editor Lucas Gonzalez about Horror in film. This gets us into 80's horror films, Cronenberg, body horror, grief, and terror in literature.
It’s Halloween Time with Lucas Gonzalez
We are in mid-October so it’s a perfect time to talk scary movies. My guest this week is Lucas Gonzalez who loves horror films but also writes his own stories that tend to explore some of the darker aspects of life.
I love horror movies because they open up a part of experience that I don’t tend to express in my own life. My focus has always been on being “nice” and genuinely attempting to love the neighbor. This is wonderful of course but it is also a potential for repression of the real feelings of fear, pain, dread, and anger. A good horror film or story can help a person, like me, be a bit more honest about difficult realities. Plus a narrative gives the reader/viewer a safe distance from which to experience that fear.
Lucas and I talk about the films of Canadian director David Cronenberg with his focus on the body and how we can lose control of it. Our focus is mostly on 80’s horror but we also discuss The Exorcist and The Babadook plus the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft.
In the end I ask Lucas where he thinks that hope and love are present in good horror. This is a good question to think about. If we tell each other scary stories throughout human history there must be some need that we have for these tales. Lucas and I attempt to find the positive aspect of spooky story-telling which has resonated with each of us through our lives. So without further delay; here are Lucas Gonzalez and I discussing Halloween and horror.
And just for fun…how about are 2 lists of my top 10 horror films in case you are looking to watch some scary stuff before Halloween.
Straight Up Horror
1. The Shining
2. Alien
3. Videodrome
4. Possession (1981)
5. The Thing
6. Suspiria (1977)
7. Halloween
8. Rosemary’s Baby
9. Psycho
10. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Kind of Horror but Not Really (But Absolutely Unnerving)
1. Taxi Driver
2. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
3. Apocalypse Now
4. Mulholland Drive
5. Blue Velvet
6. Shame (1968)
7. Twin Peaks: The Return
8. Jacob’s Ladder
9. Oldboy
10. Audition