Barry Lee Dejasu Wrote:And don't forget the most recent: Necroscope: The Touch.
As for me, a few horror novels and stories that I can immediately and highly recommend include:- Peter Straub's Ghost Story. It gets all sorts of praise as being extraordinarily creepy, and it is! For certain people it might not be very fast in getting to the darker parts, but it really does get damn creepy. Highly recommended.
- H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House." I feel about Stewart Gordon how FPW felt about Michael Mann, circa 1983, for the atrocious adaptation he made of it for Masters of Horror, so if you liked that (weirdo), odds are you won't like this. Very subliminally creepy, and definitely not something you should read if you wake up in the middle of the night (dreams...nightmares...get it??). Come to think of it, most of his works are this good.
- Joseph Citro. I've only read these novels written by him, but they all proved to be quite unsettling: Shadow Child, Lake Monsters (AKA Dark Twilight), and The Gore (AKA The Unseen). Goes for the jugular while peppering all sorts of disjointed clues throughout, and then everything comes together in the end...even as a person falls apart (sometimes literally).
- Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Forget how popular he is for a minute and actually give him--and in particular this book--a chance. You won't regret it...it has one of the all-time coldest, grimmest, most clutching-your-heart-in-an-icy-grip endings I've ever read.
Barry, did you ever see the earlier 1968 adaptation of "Dreams in the Witch House", "CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR"? Great cast (Boris Karloff, in one of his last roles, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele, and Michael Gough), but done kind of jokey and without much of the Lovecraft "feel". It was adapted (uncredited) from HPL's story by Jerry Sohl, who did a lot of genre television scripts (Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek, The Invaders, Alfred Hitchcock Presents), as well as another HPL film adaptation in 1965, "DIE, MONSTER, DIE!" - which also starred Karloff, and was based on "The Colour Out of Space". I don't think I've seen either since they were first released, I may try to watch them again.
I just watched the AIP adaptation of THE DUNWICH HORROR yesterday. Man, what a waste. Dean Stockwell was about as poorly miscast as Wilbur Whatley as you could get.