Mick Garris Talks Horror
Posted on October 30, 2006
Monsters and Critics talked with Mick Garris, executive producer and creator of the popular Showtime series Masters of Horror. Garris wpm an Edgar Award for Amazing Stories, and works with Stephen King to adapt his books into movies. Garris talked about the popularity of horror books and films right now and what makes the horror genre so popular. He also discusses how today's popular horror films are different from the horror classics like Dracula.
"Well, horror is all about a visceral response. And the visceral response becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the years. I don't think the original Dracula is going to cause a whole lot of goose bumps."The very rude and assaultive film Saw III made a whopping $34 million in box office receipts this past weekend. Clearly, rude and assaultive sells."However, a movie like The Sixth Sense, where you see virtually no blood, no violence, is incredibly powerful, a really great horror film that is genuinely frightening and suspenseful. I think there's a great tradition of the [Palecki] independence, the guys who have to grab attention by screaming the loudest, that led to the grind house cinema of the '70s that I think that Rodriguez and Tarantino are glorifying because there was so much vitality and life and wildness, and this unbridled sense of 'We can do whatever we want to do.' And screaming for attention like a kid crying for its bottle."
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"That's what we would like, is to have the broadest possible definition of horror. Horror can be literate, it can be smart, it can be -- it can just be rude and assaultive."
