Tag Archives: Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies

Tele-terrors: The Real and Imagined Horrors Inside the Made for Television Movie

Miskatonic April
Bad Ronald

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Amanda Reyes, Jennifer Wallis, Kier-La Janisse

Date: 20 April 2017

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 door

Miskatonic website

Often considered the bastard step-child of the theatrical motion picture, TV movies have long been relegated to the dusty corners of our childhood memories. However, despite its scorned status, telefilms could be thoughtful and, at times, subversive. And, in this compact, mass marketed form, the TV movie reached millions of viewers, generated discussion, and aided in the development of our collective consciousness.

Some of the dismissive tone of critics may come from the fact that made for TV films look surprisingly superficial, relying heavily on B movie film techniques to produce and market themselves. Using tawdry titles such Satan’s School for Girls (1973) or salacious taglines like, ‘He’s found the perfect prey… A young defenseless human’ (Savages, 1974), telefilms sought to grab audiences by any means necessary. And, it was this desire to entertain and win Nielsen rating points that allowed the medium to cross over into a wide spectrum of sub-genres, tackling everything from the supernatural to the very real terrors of everyday life. This lecture offers an exploration into several facets of the made for television movie, surveying its cultural touchstones and analyzing the influence the telefilm had on Americans during the run of the network made for television movie produced between 1964 – 1999.

This class will be taught by visiting TV scholar Amanda Reyes, along with Jennifer Wallis and Miskatonic founder Kier-La Janisse, who both contributed to her new book Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium 1964-1999 from Headpress, who will have copies available for sale at the event.

About the instructors:

Amanda Reyes

Archivist by day, film lover by night, Amanda Reyes is also a freelance author who has been published online and in print. She recently edited Are You in the House Alone? A TV Movie Compendium: 1964-1999 (Headpress, 2017) which celebrates the made for television film, and expands upon her TV movie-centric blog, Made for TV Mayhem and its companion podcast.

Jennifer Wallis

Jennifer Wallis is Lecturer in Cultural and Intellectual History at Queen Mary University of London where she teaches modules on the history of psychiatry, Victorian values and controversies, and the history of the supernatural. She also writes on film and music and has contributed to several volumes in recent years including Are You in the House Alone? (2016) and Gathering of the Tribe: Music and Heavy Conscious Creation (2013). She is the editor of Fight Your Own War: Power Electronics and Noise Culture (Headpress, 2016).

Kier-La Janisse

Kier-La Janisse is a film writer and programmer, the founder of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies and Owner/Editor-in-Chief of Spectacular Optical. She has been a programmer for the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin, Texas, co-founded Montreal microcinema Blue Sunshine, founded the CineMuerte Horror Film Festival in Vancouver (1999-2005) and was the subject of the documentary Celluloid Horror (2005). She has written for Filmmaker, Shindig!, Incite: Journal of Experimental Media, Rue Morgue and Fangoria magazines, has contributed to The Scarecrow Movie Guide (Sasquatch Books, 2004) and Destroy All Movies!! The Complete Guide to Punks on Film (Fantagraphics, 2011), and is the author of A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (FAB Press, 2007) and House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (FAB Press, 2012). She recently co-edited and published the anthology booksKid Power! (Spectacular Optical, 2014) and Satanic Panic: Pop Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (Spectacular Optical, 2015). She is currently working on A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time, about children’s programming from 1965-1985.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Synthetic Flesh/Rotten Blood: The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936

Miskatonic March 2017

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Jon Towlson

Date: 16 March 2017

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 door

Miskatonic website

‘Too dreadfully brutal, no matter what the story calls for […] it carries gruesomeness and cruelty just a little beyond reason or necessity.’ – Review of Frankenstein, Motion Picture Herald, 1931

‘The type of picture that brought about censorship.’ – Review of Mad Love, Motion Picture Herald, 1935

‘Quite the most unpleasant picture I have ever seen […] it exploited cruelty for cruelty’s sake.’ – Review of The Raven, London Daily Telegraph, 1935

Is the thirties horror film more akin to graphic modern horror than is often thought?

Critics have traditionally characterised classic horror by its use of shadow and suggestion. Yet the graphic nature of early 1930s films only came to light in the home video/DVD era. Along with gangster movies and ‘sex pictures’, horror films drew audiences during the Great Depression with sensational screen content. Exploiting a loophole in the Hays Code, which made no provision for on-screen ‘gruesomeness’, studios produced remarkably explicit films that were recut when the Code was more rigidly enforced from 1934. This led to a modern misperception that classic horror was intended to be safe and reassuring to audiences.

Taking a fresh look at the genre from 1931 through 1936, this class examines ‘happy ending’ horror in relation to industry practices and censorship. Early works like Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and The Raven (1935) may be more akin to the modern Grand Guignol of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Hostel (2005) than many critics believe.

Tracing the development of classic horror to the deployment — and subsequent censorship — of on-screen ‘gruesomeness’, Jon Towlson will illustrate the discussion with memos, letters and censorship reports from the studio archives and other research conducted for his new book, The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016). Aspects of the topic to be covered in the class will include:

The emergence of the 1930s cycle in an industrial context, showing how various stresses during the Great Depression, such as censorship controversy over sex and crime films, declining audiences and growing opposition to unfair business practices, formed a backdrop of ideological rupture and contradiction in the lead up to horror’s first golden age;

The ways in which cash-strapped studios pushed for increasingly gruesome and sensational screen content to attract audiences, whilst simultaneously placating the Hays Office with moral endings; critics of the genre at the time called such studio tactics ‘Five Reels of Transgression Followed by One Reel of Retribution’;

The pervasive influence of Grand Guignol on the thirties cycle: how filmmakers deployed gruesomeness and brutality through the use of offscreen space, monster make-up, sound, and shadow play;

The changing ways in which the Hays Office responded to gruesomeness in the 1930s, from relatively light interference in the early days to heavily influencing the allowable level of gruesomeness from July 1934 following the Reaffirmation of the Production Code;

How pre-Code horror films were censored for reissue after 1935, and the implications of these becoming the only known versions by a whole generation of fans in the 1950s/1960s;

Why many modern critics have misread the 1930s cycle, and how a re-evaluation of thirties horror based on its transgression has only recently begun to take place.

The class will be illustrated with clips and/ or studio archive material from canonical films like Frankenstein (1931), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Most Dangerous Game (1932), Dr. X (1932), Island of Lost Souls (1933), Murders in the Zoo (1933), Mad Love (1935), Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and The Walking Dead (1936); as well as from such lesser known titles as Night of Terror (1933), The Monkey’s Paw (1933), Maniac (1934), Black Moon (1934), The Ghost Walks (1934), The Clairvoyant (1935), Condemned to Live (1935), Le Golem (1936) and The Human Monster (1940).

Jon will be signing copies of his book, The Turn to Gruesomeness in American Horror Films, 1931-1936 after the class.

“Ridiculously informative […] This is not only one of the best horror history books I’ve read this year, but stands as one of the best on the golden age ever written” – Gavin Schmitt, THE FRAMING BUSINESS

About the instructor:

Jon Towlson is a film critic and the author of THE TURN TO GRUESOMENESS IN AMERICAN HORROR FILMS, 1931-1936 (McFarland, 2016), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (CONSTELLATIONS) (Auteur/Columbia University Press, 2016) and SUBVERSIVE HORROR CINEMA: COUNTERCULTURAL MESSAGES OF FILMS FROM FRANKENSTEIN TO THE PRESENT (McFarland, 2014). He is a regular contributor to Starburst Magazine, and has also written for the BFI, Paracinema, Exquisite Terror, Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, Shadowland Magazine, Bright Lights Film Journal, Offscreen and Digital Film-Maker Magazine. Jon contributed to the recent edited collection LOST SOULS OF HORROR AND THE GOTHIC (eds. Bernice M. Murphy & Elizabeth McCarthy, McFarland, 2016). He is currently writing a monograph on the film CANDYMAN for Auteur/Columbia University Press. www.subversive-horror-films.com. @systemshocks

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Vulgar Structures; or Andrzej Żuławski’s Love Triangles

miskatonic-possession
Possession

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Daniel Bird

Date: 13 October 2016

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

Writer and filmmaker Andrzej Żuławski, who passed away earlier this year, worked in many different genres: war films (The Third Part of the Night), gothic horror (The Devil, Possession), melodrama (The Most Important Thing: Love, My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days, La Fidelite), thrillers (La Femme publique, Cosmos), science fiction (On the Silver Globe), costume dramas (La Note bleue),crime films (L’Amour braque), erotic dramas (Szamanka) – even musicals (Boris Godunov). However, all of Żuławski’s films share the same fundamentally vulgar structure: the love triangle. This class looks at the love triangle fundamental to all of Żuławski’s films and squares it with this remarkable director’s life and loves.

About the instructor:

Daniel Bird is a writer, filmmaker, and one of the world’s leading scholars on Eastern European cult cinema. He has curated numerous retrospectives, overseen film restorations, participated in DVD commentaries and is best known as the biographer of both Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Żuławski. Daniel Bird first interviewed Żuławski for Eyeball magazine with Stephen Thrower back in 1997. He organised ‘A Weekend with Andrzej Żuławski’, the first Anglo-phone overview of Żuławski’s films, at the Cine Lumiere in 1998. The following year he visited the set of Żuławski’s La fidelite in Paris and worked with with Anchor Bay Entertainment to release Possession on DVD in the U.S., for which he also moderated a commentary track with the director. Over the years he continued to work with Żuławski, liaising with festivals, distributors and producers on retrospectives, DVD releases and film projects. Last year he made the English subtitles for Żuławski’s Cosmos and produced a restoration of On the Silver Globe.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Rituals in the Dark: Evoking Magic on Film

Miskatonic Sept 2016

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Mark Pilkington

Date: 22 September 2016

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

Step into the safety of the magic circle as Mark Pilkington explores how the myriad Western esoteric magical practices and traditions have been represented, enacted and portrayed on film.

As one might expect, depictions of magic on film have tended towards the lurid and sensational rather than the spiritual or the sublime but they also provide a useful reflection of popular attitudes and ideas about magic and, on occasion, the unorthodox beliefs and practices of the film makers themselves.

From the grit of medieval grimoires and spellcraft to the closeted exoticism and eroticism of early modern hermetic orders and the spiritual liberation of mid twentieth century witchcraft, we will look at a number of representations of magic on film, from the silent era, through Expressionism, B-movies, the avant garde and into the mainstream.

In doing so, we’ll also learn something of the history of Western magics and their symbiotic relationship of influence with popular culture, and enjoy blood and fire, sex and sacrifice, great costumes, freaky dancing and all the spirits and demons that lurk in the heart of man. And remember, whatever you do, don’t break the circle!

About the instructor:

Mark Pilkington is the author of the book and documentary film Mirage Men and Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science’s Outer Edge. He has written for The Guardian, The Wire, Sight and Sound, Electric Sheep, Fortean Times, Frieze and The Quietus amongst others. He founded and runs Strange Attractor Press and regularly speaks on esoteric and fringe culture topics.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London unveils fall 2016 line-up

Miskatonic_Autumn2016

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Fall 2016 season:
Sept – Dec 2016

Dates: 22 September, 13 October, 10 November, 8 December

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concs / £35 full season ticket

Miskatonic website

THE MISKATONIC INSTITUTE OF HORROR STUDIES – LONDON UNVEILS FALL 2016 LINEUP

The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London returns to the Horse Hospital for another semester of film and pop culture classes, with a 2016 fall line-up led by some of the genre world’s most renowned critical luminaries.

Mark Pilkington (Owner of Strange Attractor Press, writer/director of Mirage Men) launches the season in September with his lecture Rituals in the Dark: Evoking Magic on Film. From the grit of medieval grimoires and spellcraft to the spiritual liberation of mid-twentieth century witchcraft, this lecture will look at a number of representations of magic on film, from the silent era, through Expressionism, B-movies, the avant garde and into the mainstream.

He will be followed in October by visiting instructor Daniel Bird, whose studies in Poland led to his becoming the pre-eminent biographer of both Walerian Borowczyk and Andrzej Żuławski. In Vulgar Structures; or Andrzej Żuławski’s Love Triangles, he will use his intimate knowledge of the late Żuławski’s work to look at the love triangle fundamental to all of his films, and to square it with this remarkable director’s life and loves.

In November, Warwick University scholar Catherine Lester will present Little Terrors: Children’s Horror on Film and Television. This class will explore in detail the area of horror films and television programmes created specifically for children in the UK and the US, with an emphasis on programming from the 70s and 80s.

And to close the season, the Horse Hospital turns into The Black Lodge when acclaimed horror author Maura McHugh visits from Ireland to bring us Working the Blue Rose Case: Signs, Codes, and Mysteries in David Lynch’s Fire Walk with Me.

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organisation that started in Winnipeg and Montreal, Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. Miskatonic London operates under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Registration for the full season is £35. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For the full details of the courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london@gmail.com.

It’s Not Real, But It’s Reality: The Story of Custom-Made Sex and Horror

Miskatonic_sexual_horror

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: David Kerekes

Date: 12 May 2016

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

In the 1990s, Wave Productions in New Jersey established itself as perhaps the leading distributor of shot-on-video horror movies. Its catalogue was expansive because of a very simple if ingenious marketing premise: Customers scripted and paid for their own movies.

From the outset, customers wanted sexy girls in horrible situations. Yet, Wave had reservations about nudity and violence, underplaying or rejecting entirely anything it considered extreme. Not all the companies that followed were as conscientious. Fetish custom studios now operate internationally, patronised by individuals with a hankering to see a favourite model hiccup in white socks, or else, more likely, be executed and play dead.

This lecture traces the history of the custom shoot, from its clumsy beginnings in video horror to the present facsimile death scenes, often enhanced by digital effects and sometimes featuring explicit sex. These short films closely mimic the motifs of the mythological ‘snuff’ film, in as much as the customer suggests a scenario, the preferred mode of death (gunshot, strangulation, hanging, etc.) and the victim (plucked from a studio’s own roster of performers). Thus the custom shoot occupies a unique space in the collective mind-set, one created and never occupied by the ‘reality’ of snuff films.

Adults only.

About the instructor:

David Kerekes is a co-founder of the publishing house Headpress. He is co-author of the books Killing for Culture (1994), revised and updated as Killing for Culture: From Edison to Isis — A New History of Death on Film (2016), and See No Evil: Banned Films and Video Controversy (2001). He is the author of Sex Murder Art: The Films of Jörg Buttgereit (1994) and has written extensively on popular culture. His meditation on southern Italian Diaspora and folklore, Mezzogiorno, was published in 2012.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Live at Miskatonic: Nigel Kneale’s The Road

kNEALETHUMB-640x420
Cover for We Are the Martians: The Legacy of Nigel Kneale

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructors: Jonathan Rigby, Kim Newman, Stephen Volk

Date: 10 December 2015

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

For the final lecture of the autumn semester The Mikskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London is proud to present a very special event and a unique celebration of the work of pioneering British screenwriter Nigel Kneale. This event marks the launch of WE ARE THE MARTIANS, a new book of essays about Kneale published by Spectral Press.

A rehearsed reading of Kneale’s lost drama THE ROAD (featuring Jonathan Rigby and others), will be followed by an in-depth discussion of Kneale’s work and influence by some of the book’s authors, including screenwriter Stephen Volk (GHOST WATCH, AFTERLIFE, THE AWAKENING), author and critic Kim Newman (ANNO DRACULA, NIGHTMARE MOVIES), editor Neil Snowdon and others to be confirmed.

In 1950 Thomas Nigel Kneale won the Somerset Maugham Award for his prose collection TOMATO CAIN & OTHER STORIES. In 1953 he changed the face of British Television with THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. Public houses across the country emptied as each installment of this thrilling new story went out live to the nation. Never before had a television drama become a national event, and few enough have had such an impact since.

His adaptation of NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR would raise questions in Parliament, such was its power, while original dramas like THE YEAR OF THE SEX OLYMPICS accurately predicted, and indicted, the sensationalism of ‘Reality TV’ and the passivity of the society that produced it.

In the years that followed, QUATERMASS & THE PIT, THE STONE TAPE, MURRAIN, BEASTS, THE WOMAN IN BLACK and more would influence successive generations of authors, filmmakers and screenwriters, from Russell T. Davies to The League of Gentlemen, John Carpenter to Stephen King, Chris Carter, Peter Strickland, Ramsey Campbell, China Mieville and more…

Jacques Derrida may have coined the term, but it is Kneale – in his style, themes, and the unique tone of his work – who provides a touchstone for the Hauntological movement which has pervaded our culture in recent years.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

The next course dates of the autumn semester are 12 November and 10 December. For the full details of the course please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

Shadows and Fog: The Forgotten History of the German Edgar Wallace Krimi

krimi2-640x420
Dead Eyes of London

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: Jim Harper

Date: 12 November 2015

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

Between 1959 and the early 1970s, German film companies released more than fifty low-budget crime thrillers inspired by the works of British writer Edgar Wallace. Featuring some of Europe’s most well-known cult and horror actors (including Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski and Gert Fröbe) the Edgar Wallace krimi combined fast-paced action, surprising violence and zany humour. Sold en masse to US television and shown in an edited and badly dubbed form, these films have rarely received the attention they deserve. Jim Harper explores the background and history of the Wallace krimi, from their beginnings to their long-term influence in Germany and beyond, discussing the charm and appeal of these quintessential European cult favourites.

About the instructor:

JIM HARPER is a writer and film critic specializing in cult cinema from around the globe. He is the author of Legacy of Blood: A Comprehensive Guide to Slasher Movies (Headpress, 2004) and Flowers from Hell: The Modern Japanese Horror Film (Noir, 2008). His work has appeared in many publications and websites, including Midnight Eye, MYM, Electric Sheep, Necronomicon, V-Cinema, Deranged, Alternative and Scream, and he has contributed to Intellect’s ground-breaking Directory of World Cinema series, writing for the Spanish and Japanese volumes. Currently Harper is working on a revised and updated edition of Flowers from Hell, and preparing the first English-language book about the German Edgar Wallace films of the 1960s.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

The last course date of the autumn semester is 10 December. For the full details of the course please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.

The Electric Sheep Film Show September 2015

VivreEnsemble
Lobby card for Anna Karina's lost film Vivre Ensemble (1973)

audio In the September Electric Sheep Film Show, Virginie Sélavy and Alex Fitch preview the London Film Festival and talk to filmmaker Prano Bailey-Bond, whose short film NASTY is screening as part of the Cult section. Sight & Sound production editor Isabel Stevens joins them to talk about the new Female Gaze issue of the magazine. Plus an interview with Guy Maddin (recorded at the Berlinale in February 2015), whose latest, The Fobidden Room, is showing at LFF; and an extract from William Fowler’s lecture on guerrilla filmmaker Antony Balch at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies.

The Electric Sheep Film Show is broadcast every third Wednesday of the month, 8-9pm at Resonance FM 104.4. Next date: Wednesday 21 October 2015.

This show was first broadcast on Wednesday 16 September 2015.

Clear Spot – 16 September 2015 (Electric Sheep) by Resonance Fm on Mixcloud

Freaks, Hippies and Witches: the obsessive, salacious cinema of Antony Balch

horror hospital 1
Horror Hospital

Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London

Instructor: William Fowler

Date: 10 Sept 2015

Time: 7-10pm

Venue: Horse Hospital

Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD

Prices: £10 advance / £8 concs / £11 on the door

Miskatonic website

‘An awful lot of people are going to miss all that gusto and kindness and fun,’ reflected distributor Derek Hill when Balch died in 1980. Critic Tony Raynes remembered a ‘lively, interesting, engaged, vigorous’ man who ‘threw a hell of a party’.

An extraordinary figure of 1960s-70s British film, Antony Balch was a true original. His love of cinema was infectious and he worked across nearly all the different areas of the business. Best known for directing the camp, grisly Horror Hospital and for collaborating with William Burroughs, he also ran two London cinemas, directed ads, made trailers, wrote reviews and distributed exploitation movies such as Don’t Deliver Us from Evil, Truck Stop Women and Massacre for an Orgy.

Horror and weird cinema fans should celebrate him for securing the first ever UK release of Tod Browning’s banned Freaks (with the help of Kenneth Anger). The 70s were a heady time for boundary pushing and he played an important part, resisting criticism whilst calling the press ‘the number one exploiter of fear, horror, hate and violence in the world’.

In this wide-ranging illustrated lecture (part of Scalarama 2015), William Fowler will explore Balch’s holistic approach to cinephilia as well as his ideas about censorship. Selected short films by Antony Balch will screen as part of the evening.

This is the first lecture of the autumn semester of The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies – London.

About the instructor:

William Fowler is a writer, film historian and musician. He is Curator of Artists’ Moving Image, BFI National Archive and the co-founder and co-programmer of The Flipside at BFI Southbank. His seasons and restoration projects at the BFI have included GAZWRX: the films of Jeff Keen, Queer Pagan Punk: Derek Jarman and This Is Now: Film and Video After Punk, the latter of which is currently touring internationally through LUX. He has written for The Guardian, Sight&Sound and Frieze, appeared on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, and he also contributed chapters to Inside Out: Le Cinéma de Stephen Dwoskin and The Edge is Where the Centre: David Rudkin and Penda’s Fen (which he co-edited). He programmes the monthly BFI strand Essential Experiments and has since 2013 been the co-programmer of Experimenta in the London Film Festival.

About the Miskatonic Institute:

Named for the fictional university in H.P. Lovecraft’s literary mythos, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies is a non-profit, community-based organization that started in Canada, founded by Kier-La Janisse in March of 2010. The school currently has branches in Montreal and London, with Miskatonic London operating under the co-direction of Kier-La Janisse and Electric Sheep Founder/Editor Virginie Sélavy.

All classes take place at the historic Horse Hospital, the heart of the city’s underground culture. Season ticket is £35 and will be available shortly. Individual class tickets are £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concessions and will be available 30 days in advance of each class.

For full details of the next courses please check the Miskatonic website. For all enquiries, please email Miskatonic.london[at]gmail.com.