Bitter Cinema

Heresy of Dracula

Via Rotating Corpse

Splatterporn!

Back when, more than a few years ago when I wore a younger man’s socks, I graduated from the creaky puns (Hollyweird, Karloffornia… You Axed for It!), the monster-kid hagiographies (King Karloff! Lord Lugosi! Prince Price! Saint Peter Cushing!) and the crummy cheap B&W newsprint of Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland to the slicker, harder, more colorful Fangoria. What I remember most of this transition of horror fandom was Fangoria’s decidedly more grown-up look at horror. Gone were the puns… now there were cuss words! And the pictures… Good God! Gone were the rare behind the scenes shots of Lugosi on the set of The Return of Chandu or of Peter Lorre conferring with Basil Rathbone on the set of A Comedy of Terrors. In their stead were bloody, torn latex corpses, gutters strewn with entrails, brains splattered on cinder block walls while technicians laugh and pose with a skinned skull. Fangoria even had a centerfold of sorts; a kind of pull-out picture to hang in one’s wall. One of the first I remember was a garishly oversaturated shot of a young fellow with an arrow jabbed his eye (as a matter of a fact, here’s the issue in question; dig the rest of that issue’s grue). The rest of the photos were as equally grisly, with an almost pornographic attention to detail.

That pornographic attention to detail is fully evident in this collection of Maxim’s Best Horror Movie Deaths. Maxim’s easily one of the most idiotic magazines on newstands today, a Playboy without the sophistication (even the faux sophistication Playboy used to bandy about, especially back in the 60s and 70s when they used to interview people like Nabokov and Bertram Russell), or even properly nude women. Their list of deaths is not a bad one by any means, even with all of them coming after 1979; and even with the insipid laddish commentary (“Mr. Drill, meet Mr. Head. Mr. Head, meet Mr. Drill. Now you guys make yourself comfortable and we’ll bring in some punch and snacks”). Besides, you’ll see Jason X’s only scene of note (and that’s not saying much). Certainly not for the squeamish, and, be warned, the video starts as soon as the link opens. Horror’s best money shots. Dig it.