Teaching

I am teaching courses in the spring on "The Occult in Cinema" and "Supernatural Television." I'd love to hear from any of you about scholarly (or erudite and useful non-scholarly) articles or essays you might know of that I could add to my reading packets for students...

Some of the films and texts we're covering include:

The Exorcist
Rosemary's Baby
The films of Kenneth Anger
The Wicker Man
Paradise Lost (documentary)
The Devil Rides Out
The Ninth Gate
The Blair Witch Project
Curse of the Demon
Masque of the Red Death
The Ninth Configuration
The Omen

and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The X-Files
Millennium
The Twilight Zone
Carnivale
Northern Exposure
Earth2
Hex

So any suggestions on additional texts or reading materials would be most welcome!

Tis the Season

Some of my favorite spooky movies of all time:

The Wicker Man (strange and wonderful)
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (a made for TV film from the 1970s starring Kim Darby--so creepy!)
Carnival of Souls
The Exorcist (I love how it builds slowly to terrific horror from a calm, grey beginning)
Rosemary's Baby (A masterpiece, pure and simple)
Stranger in Our House (made for TV in the 1970s, with Linda Blair)
The Blair Witch Project (A brilliant work of contemporary cinema, yes I said cinema, and very scary)
Masque of the Red Death (One of the only works by Roger Corman that is genuinely atmospheric and frightening)
Theatre of Blood (made for TV, I think, starring Vincent Price and Diana Rigg, which is reason enough to see it)
Mad Monster Party (maybe it looks like kid stuff now but it sure inspired Tim Burton with its brilliant animation)
Lost Highway (David Lynch crafts some of the most terrifying moments in film)
Night of the Living Dead (I still find this scary)
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (A parody (or is it rip-off?) of the above, campy, hilarious and spooky)

Blessings of Samhain/Happy Hallowe'en

Blessings of the New Year to all you witches, pagans, druids, heathens, and tree-worshippers out there.

Our book The New Generation Witches has finally arrived "in the flesh" and it looks wonderful! The Blackwell's website has a nice write-up (although they fail to list me as a co-editor).

Yay, us! And what a fitting prezzie for Samhain.

Now we are turning our energies to working hard on our next book projects, the Carnivale anthology and The Celuloid Bough.

May all your endeavors fill you with excitement in this dramatic and colorful season.