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28.95 CDN/25.95
USD Winnipeg - September 16, 2004, 7:00 PM at McNally Robinson, Portage Place location. Plus, meet special guest David DeCoteau, horror filmmaker and author of the Preface to They Came From Within. |
They Came From Within
A History of Canadian Horror Cinema
"If Canadian horror movies were people at a house party, they'd be the graceless eccentric slouching in a corner of the kitchen and drinking Extra Old Stock, their sodden woolen socks piled at their heels. Who wouldn't want to hang out with a person like that?" (pp 12-13) "No horror film is truly mainstream," David Cronenberg has said, and it is for this reason that even the lowliest of them may be worth consideration. In They Came From Within, Caelum Vatnsdal adjusts the focus in Canadian horror films, and unwinds the history of this neglected genre to learn "why we fear what we fear and how it came to be that way." From the early Canadian infiltration of Hollywood in the thirties, to the flowering of Canuck horror films in the sixties and seventies, to the surreal products of the "tax-shelter" eighties and beyond, Vatnsdal shows how the Canadian horror film industry has, unwittingly or not, created a complex social, economic, and political portrait of a nation. Engagingly written, extensively researched, and lavishly illustrated with rare stills and poster art, They Came From Within is an invaluable addition of Canadian film criticism. - Tanya Huff, in her review of They Came From Within in the August 14, 2004 edition of The Globe and Mail, states that: "In They Came From Within, Caelum Vatnsdal answers such questions as '[...] if there's really anything Canadian about a Canadian horror film [...]' not in some pseudo-scholarly dissection of nationalist motivations pertaining to severed heads and botched reincarnation, but in an exhaustively researched 'field guide' that takes up the bulk of the book and is anything but a dry presentation of fact. Stretching from1913's The Werewolf--the first and only Canadian werewolf movie until Ginger Snaps 87 years later--to 2002's Samhain and a prerelease mention of 2003's back-to-back Ginger Snaps sequel and prequel, Vatnsdal hits the highs and lows of Canadian horror cinema (D2). " - In the forthcoming Fall 2004 issue of Take One Magazine, reviewer Steve Gravestock notes that They Came From Within is "eminently readable and highly entertaining." "Caelum Vatnsdal approaches the cheapjack
shudders and sordid pleasures ladled out by Canada's 'balladeers
of blood' with a lover's ardor. His account of our B-movie
past-so rich in dreams and embarrassment-combines first-rate
storytelling with a steady downpour of inspired comedy." "They Came From Within" is a revelatory
and informative study of a previously underexplored area of horror
history."
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