4 Documentaries About 4 Famous, Fearsome Authors

A while back, I talked about how interviews of some of my favourite authors motivateme to write better, especially during those times that I don’t feel like writing for whatever reason. Well I thought I would put together a short list of documentaries about four of the world’s most famous horror authors since we’re nearing Halloween. Below are documentaries and bio films of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. All four of these can be viewed for free on YouTube, and one is also at Biography.com.

Frankenstein: Birth of a Monster: This is a dramatisation of Mary Shelley’s life as a writer. Originally aired on the BBC network in 2003.

They Mystery ofEdgar Allen Poe: This was a Biography channel presentation. You can watch either on YouTube or at Biography.com, but I strongly suggest you watch it at the latter; the YouTube version cuts off the introduction and opening credits (probably to prevent potential infringement issues).

Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown: Out of the four, I liked this one best. It’s filmed with both archival footage as well as modern day depictions of author’s work by some really great artists, including comic book artists. The accompanying phonographic recording style of H.P.’s narration footage gives a sense of the “ancient” of his work like his work itself gives the sense of the ancient of the Elders. Let alone, it gives that haunting effect. And if this isn’t enough, there are interviews with contemporary horror writers--including Ramsey Campbell, Guillermo Del Toro, and Neil Gaiman--about the author. Produced by independent film studio Wyrd.

Steven King: Fear, Fame and Fortune: This was an A&E channel presentation originally aired on Halloween of 2002. It covers King’s life from birth through his critical accident that he fortunately recovered from to continue writing his macabre stories up to this day.

If you know of more documentaries about famous horror authors, please let me know by posting in the box below.

Until next time . . .

Available at Amazon

Comments

Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least...

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting outside our regular post-day which is late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. However, I got behind on several things last week and so had to postpone the post to today. I’ve been a reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books ever since I was 11. What I’ve always liked so much about the series is that, like a good horror story, the stories often take place in dark settings and involve bizarre cases. Conan Doyle’s novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, definitely contains these elements. It’s a detective story that crosses over into the gothic horror genre. Several movie adaptations of the novel have been made that go as far back as a 1915 German silent film. In 1959 Hammer Studios released a version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As much as I’m a fan of the Hammer horror films, I have not seen that one yet. The only one that I’ve seen so far is the 1939 adaptation starring that other big name in classic...

The Top 5 Book-To-Movie Reviews of 2022

Credit: Pixabay.com Happy New Fear everybody! (Of course, I really mean New Year. I’m a horror writer, so what do you expect?) If you read my Facebook post the other night, you can see that 2022 kind of ended badly for A Far Out Fantastic Site. As I said in the post, our monthly Book-To-Movie reviews have run late into the following month. Well, this is the first time in the series' history, that a Book-To-Movie (BTM) has actually run late into the following year. So, this blog post was originally supposed to be an end-of-year one but the internet in my area went down due to a big New Year's Eve storm. It didn’t go back up until last night. So, consider this post a New Year one even thought we’re going to look back on some BTMs of 2022. In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. However, because this year is just starting, and our BTM was supposed to occur on the last Saturday of December at the latest, and I don’t have a movie ada...

A Far Out Fantastic Site

Search This Blog