Filmland - History of Horror & the Apocalypse

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As the fall season comes upon us once more it’s time for that spookiest of traditions: the new season of American Horror Story.  This year’s season will be about something that’s on everyone’s mind lately: the apocalypse.  The end of days is one of those primal fears that’s been with society pretty much ever since there was a society for us to fear the end of.  However, despite being a fairly ubiquitous terror and one that you’d think everyone held a stake in the Apocalypse’s place in the horror pantheon is actually pretty limited.  

Even setting up this timeline I’ve had to fudge want counts as “horror” a bit to include some stuff that’s more schlocky or was featured a lot in the old horrorathons that channels used to show around Halloween when I was a kid.  With that said, I did find enough apocalyptic horror material to create something of a timeline for the genre and how it reflects the anxieties and apocalyptic scenarios of the time.

Panel Vision - Top 10 Tales of the Zombie Covers

It’s October, Halloween is happening, I’m talking about zombie movies for literally the whole month, and the Walking Dead is on every Sunday.  Given that, of course I had to dedicate a listicle to the best zombie book covers.  The only thing is that there are as many zombie comics as there are stars in the sky and it’d be nearly impossible for me to cull through all of them so I’m narrowing my list to just one zombie comic.  It was originally meant to be Walking Dead before I remembered Walking Dead’s covers are incredibly bland so instead I fell back on my standard answer to most comic book questions: the ‘70s.  I’ve mentioned before that in the ‘70s an agining audience forced DC and Marvel comics to experiment more with what content they were putting out.  DC started releasing its classic horror anthology comics again and Marvel released a whole ton of horror comics including Tomb of Dracula, Frankenstein, and today’s topic Tales of the Zombie, and the covers by the brilliant artist Boris Vallejo. 

Movie Monthly - Last Man on Earth

Edited by Robert Beach

In 1954, titan of science fiction Richard Matheson redefined the zombie/apocalypse genre with his horror novel I Am Legend. Even to this day, I Am Legend stands as one of the best examples of both zombie storytelling and post-apocalyptic imagination. Given the impact the novel’s had, it makes sense that it’d see a film adaptation. Most people are probably familiar with the 2007 Will Smith adaptation of the same name. 

Despite the gloss and glamour surrounding that film, it’s actually not very representative of Matheson’s novel; it’s also not the only adaptation of the story. Previously, there was Omega Man, a 1971 film starring Charlton Heston as part of his post-apocalypse trilogy (alongside Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes.) However, the first adaptation of Matheson’s novel was the 1964 Italian horror film The Last Man on Earth starring Vincent Price, and it is incredible.