It’s that time of year again, when many at Wales Arts Review get ghoulishly excited. So this year we have collated some of our best writing on horror and Halloween into one place for your devilish delights. Here is a creaky old chest in the corner of the attic, filled with movie reviews, essays, features and discussions about the most enduring of artistic genres.
(Banner illustration by Dean Lewis)
First up we have this mammoth 5-piece, 50 movie countdown of some of the bets horror movies you may never have heard of, compiled by Gary Raymond and Gray Taylor.
50-41 includes not the Robert Wise movie you’re thinking of.
40-31 includes zombies, werewolves and some classic Hammer.
30-21 includes a good splattering of Giallo.
20-11 throws up some modern surprises.
10-1 includes the greatest horror movies ever made.
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Next we have this amazing free-to-download special collection of Halloween short stories written by some of Wales’ top short story writers.
Click on the link to read spine-tingling weirdness from the likes of Niall Griffiths, Carly Holmes, Rebecca F. John, Angela Readman, Gary Raymond, Rebecca Parfitt and more.
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Over the last four years our writers have enjoyed taking new angles on the subject of horror, such as this Love Letter to Mario Bava, this take on The Emerging of Modern Horror Cinema, and a controversial piece responding to the recent categorising by some critics of the cinema of “post-horror”. And let’s not forget some our outstanding guest writers, who have also touched on the subject, such as this epic piece on monsters in the works of Roald Dahl from Dr Samathna Velez of the University of Wyoming.
And we have also spoken to some of the leading lights in the genre in Wales, such as with this interview with director of horror film festival, Fractures Visions, Philip Escot, and when we spoke to writer of all things wonderfully weird, Carly Holmes, about her latest short story collection, Figurehead.
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So, whatever you get up to this Halloween, we hope this tour through some of Wales Arts Review’s archive helps set the tone.
