The Best New Horror 2 (3 page)

A real labour-of-love project was Philip J. Riley’s series of facsimiles of the original shooting scripts for such Universal classics as
Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, The Mummy
and
This Island Earth
(not to mention
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
), with introductions by Forrest J Ackerman, Vincent Price, John Landis, Valerie Hobson, Zita Johann, Jeff Morrow and others.

You either love him or hate him, but
Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-In
included the usual idiosyncratic movie reviews and satire which can be found every week in his
We Are The Weird
newsletter.

Two of the best art books of the year were
Blood and Iron
, showcasing the work of Les Edwards, and
H. R. Giger’s Biomechanics
, introduced by Harlan Ellison.

The comics industry manifested the three persons of Clive Barker:
Tapping the Vein
Book Three adapted his stories “The Midnight Meat Train” and “Scape-Goats”, Book Four “Hell’s Event” and “The Madonna”. Even more popular were
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser
and
Clive Barker’s Night Breed
, both offering spin-off storylines from the author’s two movie projects.

Neil Gaiman continued to develop
The Sandman
through such memorable mini-series as “The Dolls House” and “Dream Country”, the former eight-part sequence ending up as a handsome graphic novel with an introduction by the ubiquitous Barker. Gaiman also did odd things with
Miracleman, Hellblazer
(in which he teamed up with artist Dave McKean) and a superb four-part series
The Books of Magic
. McKean was also responsible for the artwork in the hugely successful
Arkham Asylum
, and wrote and illustrated the first issue of the ten-part graphic magazine
Cages
.

Batman remained popular in graphic novel format. The inventive
Gotham by Gaslight
included an introduction by Robert Bloch, while
Batman 3-D
came complete with red and blue glasses and a headache. Gahan Wilson did a wonderful job illustrating the first of the new Classics Illustrated,
The Raven and Other Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe, and there were movie-inspired comics based on
Planet of the Apes, RoboCop, Total Recall, Darkman
and even
Aliens vs. Predator
! There was a welcome reissue of the best of the ’50s EC Comics, including
Tales from the Crypt
and
Vault of Horror
.

The most commercially successful film of the year on both sides of the Atlantic was
Ghost
, which grossed more than $200 million. Other films that took more than $100 million at the box-office included
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Total Recall
and
Dick Tracy
– although, given their huge production costs, the latter two still have a long way to go before they make a profit.

The most popular horror film of the year was
Flatliners
($60 million), closely followed by
Arachnophobia
and
Gremlins II: The New Batch
. Much further down the charts came
Darkman, Predator 2, Child’s Play 2, Jacob’s Ladder, The Exorcist III, Ghost Dad, Edward Scissorhands, Tales from the Darkside, The Guardian, Tremors, Graveyard Shift
and
The Witches. Vampire’s Kiss
was an appealingly unrestrained comedy of psychosis, but the title was by far the best thing about
I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle
.

The big losers of the year included
Nightbreed, Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
, the colour remake of
Night of the Living Dead
, Richard Stanley’s first feature
Hardware, Brain Dead
(based on an unfilmed script by the late Charles Beaumont) and
Frankenhooker
. However, each of them took more than Roger Corman’s comeback film as a director,
Frankenstein Unbound
. A surprise entry in the British
chart was a reissue of
The Exorcist
, proving that it can still draw an audience nearly twenty years after it was made, perhaps because it is now banned in the UK on videocassette. The most powerful chills of the year were to be had from Joe Pesci’s psychopath in
Goodfellas
and from George Sluizer’s film
The Vanishing
, a sunlit tale of terror not unlike a bleaker Chabrol film than Chabrol has yet made.

David Lynch’s
Twin Peaks
continued to delight and infuriate television viewers with its mysterious giants, singing dwarfs, possessed souls and the long-awaited revelation of just who did kill Laura Palmer. Malcolm Bradbury’s three-part adaptation of Kingsley Amis’
The Green Man
for the BBC began well (if you discount the splattery preamble), but ultimately lacked the novel’s severity and sense of the supernatural. Two other BBC films worth mentioning were
Frankenstein’s Baby
because it was so terrible and the supernatural thriller
The Lorelei
because it was so good.

Just what we didn’t need was yet another version of
The Phantom of the Opera
, but we got one anyway, filmed by Tony Richardson in France and Hungary. It starred Burt Lancaster and Charles Dance, who gave a ludicrously camp performance as the Phantom. To add insult to injury, we didn’t even get to see his disfigured face during this tedious three-hour adaptation.

Among the worst of the new TV shows was the Canadian-made
Dracula: The Series
. Geordie Johnson played Alexander Lucard (get it?) as a contemporary Donald Trump of the vampire world (an idea which had already been used in Hammer’s
The Satanic Rites of Dracula
). He is pursued by three typical teens and their know-it-all uncle through each shoddy half-hour episode.

Guest Speaker Robert Bloch received the Horror Writers of America’s Life Achievement Award, presented in Providence in June. Dan Simmons’
Carrion Comfort
won the Superior Achievement in Novel; Nancy Collins picked up the First Novel award for
Sunglasses After Dark
; the Novelette award went to Joe R. Lansdale’s “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” from
Book of the Dead
, and Robert R. McCammon’s “Eat Me”, from the same anthology, was the chosen short story. Richard Matheson’s mammoth
Collected Stories
received the Collection award, while in the Non-Fiction category
Harlan Ellison’s Watching
tied with
Horror: 100 Best Books
edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.

Fantasycon XV, organised by the British Fantasy Society, returned to Birmingham in September, where
Carrion Comfort
also picked up the August Derleth Award for Best Novel. Co-Guest of Honour Joe Lansdale won the Best Short Fiction award for his
Book of the Dead
novelette, Carl Ford’s
Dagon
was voted Best Small Press for the second
year in succession, and
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
was Best Film, the last time an award in this category will be presented. Dave Carson again received one of his own statuettes as Best Artist, and Peter Coleborn was presented with the Special Award for his services to the Society.

The World Fantasy Awards were presented in Chicago in November, and R. A. Lafferty was justly honoured with the Life Achievement Award. Best Novel was found to be Jack Vance’s
Lyonesse: Madouc
; “Great Work of Time” earned John Crowley the Best Novella award, while Best Short Story went to Steven Millhauser’s “The Illusionist”.
Richard Matheson’s Collected Stories
was again honoured as Best Collection, and for the second year running the Best Anthology was considered to be
The Year’s Best Fantasy Second Annual Collection
edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Thomas Canty was voted Best Artist, the Special Award Professional went to publisher Mark Ziesing and the Non-Professional to
Grue
magazine.

The Collectors Award for 1990, presented by bookseller Barry R. Levin, went – not unsurprisingly – to Stephen King as “Most Collectable Author of the Year” and to Doubleday for the limited edition of the uncut
The Stand
as “Most Collectable Book of the Year”.

1990 was another boom year for horror, but it could be the last for some time. The danger is that the much-vaunted recession in the publishing industry, coupled with continued pronouncements of a bottoming-out of the horror genre, could soon become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

1991 is the year when many publishers will begin cutting back on horror. Although the “name” authors will presumably survive, we could see a virtual disappearance of the mid-list (where most horror is published), resulting in fewer first novels appearing, contracts being cancelled, and the anthology experiencing yet another slump.

The genre is likely to fare no better in movies. All the major studios now realise they must cut back on the immense budgets of the past few years, and as few horror films are top earners, such effects-laden projects will be the first to go, once again becoming the province of the low-budget independent.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Horror fiction continues to thrive in the short form, with a wealth of new talent (particularly women writers) attracted to the field. There are still numerous outlets for new work, from newsstand magazines to the burgeoning small press.
Best New Horror
will be here with a representative sampling of many of the best practitioners working today.

THE EDITORS
APRIL, 1991

K. W. J
ETER
has been described by Ramsey Campbell as “one of the most versatile and uncompromising writers of imaginative fiction.”

He considers himself “a Los Angeles kid” and lives and works in California. His controversial debut novel,
Dr Adder
, is generally considered to be the prototype for the “cyberpunk” movement in science fiction, and his mentor Philip K. Dick called it “. . . a stunning novel that destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of science fiction.”

His other genre-spanning books include
Farewell Horizontal, Infernal Devices, In the Land of the Dead, Dark Seeker, Mantis, Soul Eater, The Night Man
and
Madlands
. He has also scripted
Mister E
, a four-part graphic novel for DC Comics.

“The First Time” is only Jeter’s second short story; it is a deeply disturbing view of coming of age, based on an article he read in
The Wall Street Journal
about US kids getting into trouble in Mexican border towns and some teenage memories of visits to Tijuana. It’s not for the squeamish.

H
IS FATHER AND HIS UNCLE DECIDED
it was about time. Time for him to come along. They went down there on a regular basis, with their buddies, all of them laughing and drinking beer right in the car, having a good time even before they got there. When they left the house, laying a patch of rubber out by the curb, he’d lie on his bed upstairs and think about them—at least for a little while, till he fell asleep—think about the car heading out on the long straight road, where there was nothing on either side except the bare rock and dirt and the dried brown scrubby brush. With a cloud of dust rolling up behind them, his uncle Tommy could just floor it, one-handing the steering wheel, with nothing to do but keep it on the dotted line all the way down there. He lay with the side of his face pressed into the pillow, and thought of them driving, making good time, hour after hour, tossing the empties out the window, laughing and talking about mysterious things, things you only had to say the name of and everybody knew what you were talking about, without another word being said. Even with all the windows rolled down, the car would smell like beer and sweat, six guys together, one of them right off his shift at the place where they made the cinder blocks, the fine gray dust on his hands and matted in the dark black hair of his forearms. Driving and laughing all the way, until the bright lights came into view—he didn’t know what happened after that. He closed his eyes and didn’t see anything.

And when they got back—they always got back late at night, so even though they’d been gone nearly the whole weekend, and he’d gotten up and watched television and listened to his mom talking to her friends on the phone, and had something to eat and stuff like that, when his father and his uncle and their buddies got back, the noise of the car pulling up, with them still talking and laughing, but different now, slower and lower-pitched and satisfied—it was like it woke him up from the same sleep he’d fallen into when they’d left. All the other stuff was just what he’d been dreaming.

“You wanna come along?” his father had asked him, turning away from the TV. Just like that, no big deal, like asking him to fetch another beer from the fridge. “Me and Tommy and the guys—we’re gonna go down there and see what’s happening. Have a little fun.”

He hadn’t said anything back for a little while, but had just stared at the TV, the colors fluttering against the walls of the darkened room. His father hadn’t had to say anything more than
down there
—he knew where that meant. A little knot, one he always had in his stomach, tightened and drew down something in his throat.

“Sure,” he’d finally mumbled. The string with the knot in it looped down lower in his gut. His father just grunted and went on watching the TV.

He figured they’d decided it was time because he’d finally started high school. More than that, he’d just about finished his first year and had managed to stay out of whatever trouble his older brother had gotten into back then, finally causing him to drop out and go into the army and then god knew what—nobody had heard from his brother in a long time. So maybe it was as some kind of reward, for doing good, that they were going to take him along with them.

He didn’t see what was so hard about it, about school. What made it worth a reward. All you had to do was keep your head down and not draw attention to yourself. And there was stuff to do that got you through the day: he was in the band, and that was okay. He played the baritone sax—it was pretty easy because they never got any real melodies to play, you just had to fart around in the background with everybody else. Where he sat was right in front of the trombone section, which was all older guys; he could hear them talking, making bets about which of the freshman girls would be the next to start shaving her legs. Plus they had a lot of jokes about the funny way flute players made their mouths go when they were playing. Would they still look that funny way when they had something else in their mouths? It embarrassed him because the flute players were right across from the sax section, and he could see the one he’d already been dating a couple of times.