In the 1980s, a handful of writers — Clive Barker, David J. Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Skipp and Craig Spector — inadvertently kicked off a seismic shift in literary horror. Less a conscious revolution than a spontaneous eruption of the arts, these restless artists bucked against the constraints of conventional horror, serving up whopping doses of wildly explicit sex, visionary violence, and really loud rock ‘n’ roll, underlying an even more subversive layer of fierce cultural critique.
At the time, it was accused of “coarsening the genre”. And when the 80s horror boom crashed and burned in the 90s, there were those who held splatterpunk responsible. In the years that followed, “extreme horror” fiction paved the way to cinematic “torture porn”. And even network cop shows started showing more graphic onscreen violence than would have gotten an “R” rating a mere fifteen years before.
Best-selling novelist, award-winning book editor and filmmaker John Skipp conducts a crazy three-hour tour through a history of horror’s most hilariously-named subgenre. The forces that shaped it. And the forces it has shaped, as we enter the fresh horrors of the 21st century.
photo: Craig Spector, Joe R. Lansdale. Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Ray Garton, Robert McCammon and John Skipp in 1986 by Beth Gwinn
About the Instructor:
John Skipp is a Saturn Award-winning filmmaker (Tales of Halloween), Stoker Award-winning anthologist (Demons, Mondo Zombie), and New York Times bestselling author (The Light at the End, The Scream) whose books have sold millions of copies in a dozen languages worldwide. His first anthology, Book of the Dead, laid the foundation in 1989 for modern zombie literature. He’s also editor-in-chief of Fungasm Press, championing genre-melting authors like Laura Lee Bahr, Autumn Christian, Danger Slater, Cody Goodfellow, and Devora Gray From splatterpunk founding father to bizarro elder statesman, Skipp has influenced a generation of horror and counterculture artists around the world. His latest book is The Art of Horrible People.
Get your tickets for In Your Face Till Your Face Comes Off: John Skipp on The History of Splatterpunk, and the Triumph of the Overt
Date: Marc 14th 2019
Time: 7:30pm-10:00pm Venue: Philosophical Research Society Address: 3910 Los Feliz Blvd, Los Angeles, CA Prices: $12 advance ($40 with book) / $15 door