Posted inArnzen News Online Gizmo of the Month

Playful Dead – New Tumblr Blog

Just a quickie note to say that to celebrate this month's release of Play Dead in paperback from Raw Dog Screaming Press, I have launched PLAYFUL DEAD -- a new blog on the tumblr.com website dedicated to sharing images and links related to the "playful" side of the horror genre: interactive games, dark tarot, twisted playing cards, and more. I consider Playful Dead to be the equivalent of the "Online Gizmo of the Month" department of this weblog, so if you've found yourself looking for those, head over to the new tumblr page. Visit http://playfuldead.tumblr.com/ If tumblr isn't your thing,…
June 29, 2013Posted inArnzen News, Online Gizmo of the Month
Posted inSnippets of the Strange

My Monstrous Lecture on the Horror Genre: “Horror is the Removal of Masks”

I'm presently wrapping up a full semester of teaching Horror Writing to undergrads at Seton Hill University, and we've been having a blast doing all sorts of multimedia work -- especially work using SoundCloud for audio critiques. Along the way, I've been been playing with the site, too, uploading lecture excerpts and strange sound prompts and other weird things. I even recently gave a little presentation about the class experiments for a conference we held on campus called the iTeach gallery. During the term, I discovered the above excerpt (from my article in the wonderful book for dark authors, WRITER'S…
April 27, 2013Posted inSnippets of the Strange
Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons

Visdum Tooten: En Film Boot Don Hertzfeldt

This morning's cereal is "Wisdom Teeth," a handcrafted work of disturbing brilliance on the absurdity of the body and the insanity of pain, brought to you by the wonderfully deranged animator Don Hertzfeldt. You must visit him at bitterfilms.com -- where you can pick up DVDs of his selected works over the past decade. His most recent work is the "Bill" trilogy, aka It's Such a Beautiful Day -- a haunting work of existentialism can't recommend enough. And for a limited time, he is currently screening his brilliant, must-see 2005 film, The Meaning of Life in HD on Youtube. Don't…
March 2, 2013Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons
Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons

The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)

This 1953 animation of Edgar Allan Poe's classic story, "The Tell-Tale Heart", in my opinion remains the best adaptation of the story. Narrated by actor James Mason, produced by UPA...and purportedly the first cartoon to be X-rated in Great Britain. Of course, you should also read the original story, too. *** See the full playlist of my Saturday Morning Cartoons on youtube.
February 9, 2013Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons
Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons

Infant Intolerable

Here's a Saturday morning cartoon that's both endearing and surprisingly brutal: Infant Intolerable by animator Peter J. Casey. I do not endorse child abuse, and neither should you, but...these are blobby organ monsters, right? On the demo real of his work (posted on his blog), Casey shares that this animation was an experiment to see how much emotion he could get out of very simple characters...and the simple story was inspired by a plane ride. Any parent or air traveller can probably empathize...
February 2, 2013Posted inSaturday Morning Cartoons