King, Stephen (1947 -) - Stephen King (Essay Date 1982)
STEPHEN KING (ESSAY DATE 1982)
SOURCE: King, Stephen. "October 4, 1957, and an Invitation to Dance." In Stephen King's Danse Macabre, pp. 1-15. New York: Everest House, 1982.
In the following excerpt, King comments on the dual nature of horror in popular literature and film.
2
If there is any truth or worth to the danse macabre, it is simply that novels, movies, TV and radio programs—even the comic books—dealing with horror always do their work on two levels.
On top is the "gross-out" level—when Regan vomits in the priest's face or masturbates with a crucifix in The Exorcist, or when the raw-looking, terribly inside-out monster in John Frankenheimer's Prophecy crunches off the helicopter pilot's head like a Tootsie-Pop. The gross-out can be done with varying degrees of artistic finesse, but it's always there.
But on another, more potent level, the...
[The entire page is 1389 words long]
Navigate
Related Topics
