“Unseen—Unfeared” by Francis Stevens (1919)
“Again I struggled within me, bit at my lip till I tasted blood, and presently the blind paroxysm passed.”
Yesterday’s reimagining of Lovecraft’s background (”Turn Out the Light”) just reminded me that the paranoia that H.P. Lovecraft brought to his stories came from his racist anxieties and fear of strange foreigners. This story also hearkens back to those sentiments, showing how the racism of the day is always bubbling just beneath the surface and ready to boil over with any provocation.
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“The Speed of Pain” by Jeff Lemire, Andrea Sorrentino, Dave Stewart, Steve Wands, Will Dennis (2018)
“I spent the week cursing God.”
Whoa nelly, this first issue is a great setup. It’s got that urban decay vibe of grungy industrial hellscape movies of the 90s like The Crow, Seven, and Dark City. I’ll definitely be coming back to finish this series.
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Eve’s Bayou dir. Kasi Lemmons (1997)
“That’s how it always is. Blind to my own life.”
This movie has rich Gothic tension with underlying hints of supernatural strangeness while the real world drama leaves its traumatic scars. I’m filing this in the same drawer as Pan’s Labyrinth, Celia, and other dark coming-of-age stories where kids have to deal with shit far above their pay grade because innocence is finite.
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Bride of Frankenstein dev. Paul Smith, Steve Howard, Timedata Ltd. (1987)
“Frankenstein lives!”
I haven’t watched the movie yet, but if it’s anything like this game, it’ll be about the titular Bride murdering prisoners and robbing graves to recover the body parts she needs to revive her beloved. The navigation gameplay is so obtuse that I would’ve had to take copious notes and map out the space on paper in order to complete it without the aid of a walkthrough. The constant thumping of a heart to represent stamina/health is a great touch.
