Nate Yapp

The following is for the League of Tana Tea Drinkers' roundtable discussion of "What Do Cute Versions of Monsters Tell Us About Horror?" I realize that I didn't address the question directly, but I think my piece fits into the larger discussion.

I've never been a spiritual person. The most pressing conflict of faith I had growing up was whether I would become an agnostic like my father or an atheist like my mother (I still bounce back and forth to this day). I suppose we all need something to believe in, however, especially as children. I believed in horror. It was, in many ways, my faith - adored without question, every movie I could get my hands on committed to memory and recited ad nauseam. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and an exquisitely tortured Vincent Price were all major deities. It was a simple pleasure in a complex time - my parents were getting divorced and I was being moved (as opposed to moving, which suggests I had some choice in the matter) to another state. In hindsight, horror was something I very much needed to survive - the heightened acting, the fantastic settings both foreboding and unreal, the monsters who brought thrills and chills to supplant the uncertainty that was actually much, much scarier. (read more...)

Those crazy fellas over at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies have been throwing the Paul Naschy Blogathon all week long, finishing, well... today. Actually, in about a half-hour by my clock. However, that's just enough time to get my entry in, which I've been working on all week. It's a tribute to Paul Naschy's most enduring creation, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. In nine films released between 1968 and 1983, Daninsky dealt with the tragedy of lycanthropy, often while searching for someone who would love him enough to kill him. The video follows the general line of his story, backed by Arcade Fire's "Black Mirror."

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