David J. Skal is the author of numerous books, including Hollywood Gothic, The Monster Show, Screams of Reason and Something in the Blood. Skal lives in Glendale, CA. His latest book is Fright Favorites: 31 Movies to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond and he recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.
What was your inspiration for Fright Favorites?
I was approached by Turner Classic Movies and Running Press about a potential book commission that would add a Halloween-themed title to their successful series of film books, which had already included a popular volume on Christmas-themed movies. I was impressed by the quality of the books they had already published, especially the quality of design and production. I said yes almost immediately.
What was your process for determining the films that you included in Fright Favorites? How long did it take you to do the necessary research and then create the list of films?
First, we departed from the format of their Christmas films book and decided not to focus on films that depicted Halloween, but rather were appropriate for the season. The subtitle “31 Films to Haunt Your Halloween and Beyond” was a marketing decision to guarantee sales beyond the limited Halloween window. I came up with a preliminary list, but as you can imagine, the people at TCM had their favorites, too. It only took a few weeks to agree on a final selection, and the whole project on my end took about six months. That’s a very tight schedule, but fortunately, I had plenty of unused anecdotes, insights, and illustrations leftover from previous book research.
In Fright Favorites you provide a list of 31 films, but you also reference numerous other films that are related or similar to the titular 31. Is there a film that you really wanted to include, but had to cut? What was it?
Cinematic horror was once a fairly manageable niche, but over the decades the category has exploded into innumerable subgenres, so the idea of selecting a “definitive” list went out the window early on, and so I started thinking about films that would make interesting double features, like a pairing of Cat People and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, or Night of the Living Dead with Carnival of Souls. So in addition to the 31 countdown films, there are another 31 “If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy this” selections, which makes things a little more comprehensive. I hope there will be a second volume, because some of the filmmakers included, like Val Lewton and Tim Burton, have large bodies of work worthy of additional discussion. For instance, had the format permitted, I would have included Lewton’s The Body Snatcher—Karloff’s all-time best screen performance, in my opinion--as well as Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.
You’ve been writing about the horror genre and horror media for decades. Do you have a favorite horror film (one that stands out and above all others)?
Not really, but I have plenty of favorite moments and performances, favorite visuals, favorite directorial touches. I’m constantly asked to name my favorite version of Dracula, but in truth, it doesn’t yet exist. It would be an edited, composite version of the high-points of all the major adaptations pieced together as a single narrative. I hope somebody takes this on some time! It would make the point that our favorite horror stories are a lot like oral folklore, thriving on the changes introduced by each teller of the tale.
Do you have an idea or theory regarding why so many people, when asked about horror as a genre, say that they don’t like it or are not interested and yet when asked about a specific book or movie, they will say that they love it. Horror is one of the most popular genres of books and movies. Why do many people not want to say they are fans of horror (clearly, this isn’t true for everyone, but there is definitely a group that feels this way)?
I haven’t heard many people dissing the genre outside of conservative academics who resent popular culture being taken seriously. It’s been claimed that the typical American household probably has at least two books—one of them the Bible, and the other something by Stephen King. Invariably, when I’m introduced to people as an expert on Dracula and other monsters, they will just light up and relate some anecdotes about their first discovery of horror movies. Even if it scared the crap out of them at the time, they’re smiling nostalgically about it now. Frightening masks have always played a part in initiation rituals, and I’ve come to think people often experience horror as having a coming of age significance.
What’s currently on your nightstand?
The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottesa Mossfegh.
What was your favorite book when you were a child?
I had several—always the one engrossing me at the moment. To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn all managed to swallow me whole. I didn’t limit myself to fantasy and horror.
Was there a book you felt you needed to hide from your parents?
I had so many books piled up that my parents never policed my reading, but I’m sure they would not have been happy with the Grove Press edition of The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade that a girl in my high school art class had lent me. Her brother was in Viet Nam and she found it in his room. Earlier, my father had angrily vetoed my going on a theatre field trip organized by our drama teacher to see the Royal Shakespeare Company in the original production of Marat/Sade, one of the great disappointments of my life!
Can you name your top five favorite or most influential authors?
In elementary school, Ray Bradbury and Edgar Allan Poe. As a teenager, I idolized Harlan Ellison and was later fortunate enough to have him as a writing teacher and personal mentor. I still owe him a book dedication, if only posthumously. In college, I was completely mesmerized by the novels and stories of Joyce Carol Oates, and much later stunned and amazed when she personally gave me some high praise for Hollywood Gothic when I met her at a New York writers conference. And along with Bradbury and Poe, Tennessee Williams has always struck me as one of our major prose poets.
What is a book you've faked reading?
Anna Karenina. The local movie theatre in my college town coincidentally revived the Greta Garbo film when it was assigned reading, and I shamelessly took advantage.
Can you name a book you've bought for the cover?
I was a graphic designer in New York for many years, and there are so many books I bought for the cover I can’t name them all. One that pops to mind is the original hardcover of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. I still collect midcentury paperbacks for the cover art, especially Bantam Classics, as well as luridly sensational gay and lesbian pulps from the 50s and 60s.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Probably not surprising to my readers, Stoker’s Dracula, which has steered my life in many unexpected directions since I first read it in elementary school.
Can you name a book for which you are an evangelist (and you think everyone should read)?
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts. I try to always have a few copies around to hand out.
Is there a book you would most want to read again for the first time?
Hermann Hesse’s Demian. I found it a uniquely transforming experience.
What is your idea of THE perfect day (where you could go anywhere/meet with anyone)?
People watching in Paris. Especially in Left Bank cafes and in the Luxembourg Gardens. Then a visit to the Rodin Museum. I’d take along three or four of my oldest friends.
What is the question that you’re always hoping you’ll be asked, but never have been? What is your answer?
Was a life so thoroughly dedicated to monsters really worth it? The answer is yes.
What are you working on now?
Several fictional projects, including revised, rebooted versions of some of my early science fiction novels, which seem to have urgently more to do with the world we’re living in now than the 1970s in which they were originally written. I’m trying to make sense of our current cultural catastrophe with a new book called I Hear America Screaming: The Politics of Horror.
