I dunno how to explain what horror is, but I know it when I see it :P

Corwin, you bastard, I was trying to figure out how to work that line into the blog post and I failed. You have shown me up on my own blog. I hate you.

I'm not going to even try to say what real horror is. I do know what makes real horror for me. It's that feeling you get from a movie or book. That feeling when your watching or reading that makes you check around the room. Or makes you notice something move out of the corner of your eye when the lights are out and it's just you and the television.

J. Glenn, I had that experience with Stephen King's "It." The scene where Pennywise the Clown jumps at the inside of the TV? Made my jumblies shrivel up and try to hide inside my chest. I was looking around the room, waiting for that psycho clown to materialize and come after me.

you crazy SOB
this was right on the money
especially about the "vampires in love" genre (my daughter is into those kinds of books as well as Jane Austin and your stories about fluffy bunny rabbits, where's amy?)
ANYWAYS, got a big kick out of the cats in a box thing, made me snort my drink out my nose
see you in the funnies

Thanks for an enjoyable and thought-provoking article.

Horror is like Fame. What a feeling. One person's 'Living Dead' is another person's 'Jaws 3d'. We're wired differently so horror is subjective. To me, all clowns, whether penned by Mr King or not, will always invoke horror. I have recently also developed a mild phobia to certain shapes.

The real mark of good horror is when you stay up until the wee small hours to watch or read it, and then don't go to bed because you need to keep all the lights on. And you want barricade the doors but don't want to put your feet down from off the sofa.

Of course the real horror starts when you realise that when you joined a website you gave them your email address and you forgot to used the dummy one. Then things get really scary.

General Sir! you forgot about Sherrilyn Kenyon with Hamilton. As for real horrer i would think having your body getting infected http://www.scottsigler.com/infected and taken over would count. but these fantasy romance novels are NOT.

I love my Dark Overlord BUT I love Laurell Hamilton too. I read from a wide variety of books and I have to say that both of you are among my fav's that I check back to see about new books for. I like books for very different reasons, duh! And I usually read something "light" as well as something "horror" and something "scifi" or "fantasy" along with some non-fiction about whatever I am into reading about at the time. So I think that the two are in very different genre's, Sigler is horror and Hamilton is dark fantasy, so no comparision is necessary or possible in this case. I read both, they satisfy very different "wants" that I have and I hope both keep going for a long, long time!

Here's the formula that's currently being used in "Horror" movies.

1. Some people are trapped and things are a little scary.
2. Ok, real scary. Someone dies. The rest freak out.
3. Repeat #2 as needed to fill two hours.
4. One or two good guys get out. Whew. It's over.
5. Or is it?

Don't get me wrong. It's a good formula and has worked really well for a lot great of stories that have built on that foundation. Predator is one.

The formula is just sizzle. Give me some steak. Give me a great twist, or aliens, or maybe even strippers who happen to be undead. If you just depend on the formula to lock some people in a house and spash blood around, you are a monkey turning a crank on the horror grinder.

Disclaimer:
None of the above is meant, in any way, to reflect on the superb works of my future Overlord, whose name I am unworthy to say. Long may He reign.

Predator was SCI-FI...PERIOD! Jedi had a big ugly rancor monster. The Matrix trilogy had the endless body count. Red Planet had the hopeless isolation factor. All science fiction...right? Didn't they even do the whole spine and head transfer from one body to another in Star Trek: First Contact? Not exactly pulling the spine out off of someone's back, but still pretty gruesome. And then there's the Alien franchise that has endless sequels...wait a minute...I just looped back to Predator didn't I? Did I just proved that Sigler was right? Crap!

Horror has a certain recipe:
1 cup wierd noises that make you jump
1 tsp. of cat jumping in the window from outside
1 tbsp. crazy killer with icepick,meat cleaver, etc.
3 cups original scarey music
Blend together in a spooky old house with 6 of your friends, let simmer until all but you remain, then put in oven for 40 minutes while you find all of the bodies and realize you're the only one left. Let cool for 20 minutes while you run from crazy mask wearing killer. Then serve while you kill the killer and police show up after killer is dead. Omit extreme gore and 20 hours of torture scenes. Now that's some dang good horror. Don't turn out your lights until dawn.

@niccid28: I like the recipe, but damn it all when the cops show up early and ruin the whole thing!

@Brian: Yes, you proved that I was right. Was there ever any doubt?

@Cunning Runt: Flattery will get you spared from the massive death I will wreak when I take over the world. At least the first wave of death, when I release the mutant ants it's all a crap-shoot from there on out.

@ClieQueen: My Hamilton comments are more tongue-in-cheek than anything. The woman sells a ton of books because she has what the paying customer wants, and that's all that really matters. Unless the paying customer wants me as the victim in a snuff-flick like Frontiers, then I'm out.

@Fenris: There are a lot of authors shamelessly riffing on the Buffy formula, but there is a segment of readers that buys everything put out as long as has a) monsters, b) romance, and c) borderline porn. Not sure what this says about society. Society needs, however, some fine literature that embraces the higher calling of humanity, a book like ... say ... INFECTED?

@worldofhiglet: You used your real email addy? Oh man, yo ARE the stupid horney kids that go into the abandoned/haunted house to screw!

Horror: an intense, painful feeling of revulsion and extreme and profound fear. Some scifi can be Horror, just because the scary stuff happens in space or there is an alien or time travel involved doesn't eliminate it from being Horror. But not all scifi is Horror. I think the horror part comes in with what happens and how it happens. Just because the story has a vampire doesn't make it Horror, it's what the vampire does that can make it a true horror story. I think you can have little islands of horror happening in a story that otherwise may not be thought of as horror. Hmmmm, Islands of Horror? ... Burmuda Triangle....TRIANGLES????
Now that reminds me of some true Horror...what happens to Perry in INFECTED is a perfect example.