On the scary Stephen King list, I'd like to put in a word for The Tommyknockers. Mainly because it all starts so innocently, with a woman tripping over something while taking her dog for a walk. She decides to see what it is, and....

And it isn't like she did anything wrong. It all seems completely random.

I walked into the used bookstore downtown, and found a vintage but perfect condition copy of Danse Macabre! And mine is falling apart, so.

Also was reminded of Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home. He gets justifiable praise for The Other but Harvest Home is the one that really stayed with me. Gorgeous writing, slow, creeping pace that builds beautifully, and real *horror* when you get to the end.

"Freaks" is like, well, you can't claim you're a crip activist worth a damn if you haven't seen it. Of course, Stephen King wouldn't know that.

I've never seen "Freaks", although I've heard about it. I do have a DVD of the Val Lewton (?) "Cat People" and its sequel.

I've read a lot of the horror (go on, act surprised).

I do have a DVD of the Val Lewton (?) "Cat People" and its sequel.

I have the Val Lewton box set, and back when it was highly unavailable trekked out to a showing of Ghost Ship at the Roxie on a weeknight.

Lewton's work at RKO can be broken into the early ones he did before Boris Karloff came (Cat People, Leopard Man, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie). These are dreamier, noirish and someties have an almost fairy tale quality. And then the Karloff movies (Bedlam, Isle of the Dead, The Bodysnatcher) which are darker and grittier. They're all amazing. I was late coming to the Karloff ones but they're fantastic.

The Bodysnatcher digs (get it!) into the moral ambiguities during that era when doctors needed cadavers but it was illegal to obtain them. There are some haunting scenes too, and the acting is first rate.

There's also a very specific lineage of movies derived from Lewton's work, or which reference it specifically: The Haunting, The Night of the Demon (aka, Curse of the Demon), The Bad and the Beautiful (whose main character is a producer who does a Cat People movie, where he rejects the creepy costumes. Those creepy costumes were the basis for the creepy bunny in Donnie Darko.)

See, I think It is still the scariest King book for me, even though even when I got to the afterkill part as a teen I was like "Really? THAT'S how Beverly got the group mojo flowing again? At 11, 12 in the 50's? Huh."

But The Tommyknockers...I didn't like at all, or Dreamcatcher, and I LIKE King. But I found out that those were two books he wrote when he was basically coked out of his head so it makes more sense.

Yellow Wallpaper...horror. Love. Taught.

Ghost Story is the only one of Straub's stories I found really compelling, but I haven't been able to find Julia to see, so...

Caitlin Kiernan -- I loved Silk, but some of the follow-ups left me meh. I think she's got a fascinating brain, but some of her work is a total turn-on and some, NSM.

Poppy Z. Brite -- pretty much out of the writing game, and out of horror for sure. Lost Souls, Drawing Blood and her SS collection Wormwood (Swamp Foetus in the UK) were good, and she edited two collections of vampire erotica that had some damned good stuff in them -- Love in Vein and LiV 2.

even when I got to the afterkill part as a teen I was like "Really? THAT'S how Beverly got the group mojo flowing again? At 11, 12 in the 50's? Huh."

Argh, I know. But the first half or so of It is flat-out terrifying.

I think she's got a fascinating brain

That is one way to describe Caitlin, that's for sure.

I am sitting in the kitten room in the basement, which is brightly lit. It's daylight. I am reading bits of 'Salem's Lot for the Nocturnal House post I'm writing, and I am freaking myself out. This is ridiculous.

I saw Lost Souls in the bookstore today and almost picked it up, but then I decided on King's Duma Key instead.

I haven't read The Yellow Wallpaper in years, but I did love it.

Totally agree on Harvest Home. I just had a mental image of...stitches yesterday, in re a current discussion. The book made a huge impression and is always at hand for reference. (Non-closure of bone growth plates. Matriarchal society. Lilacs. Stitches. Shudder)

Yellow wallpaper is def horror. I was assigned it to read as a high school drama test, along with a couple characters from Spoon River. Brrr.

House of Leaves just came up somewhere else, so now I must.

and yes, Yellow Wallpaper is horror.