‘Zine Review: Horror Hound #10 & 11
Mike Phalin
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I’m not sure why, but issues 10 & 11 of Horror Hound arrived within two days of each other … Hence why we’re reviewing both at the same time.
#10, which features Chucky on the cover, kicks things off with a retrospective of the hand-held horror sub-genre. The usual suspects are there, along with a few you may not remember such as Remy Belvaux’s Man Bites Dog and the surprisingly good entry, that came just before Blair Witch, The Last Broadcast. This walk down memory lane may make some wonder why hand-held fright flicks don’t pack the same punch today as they used to. That may change with The Poughkeepsi Tapes, but who knows when we’re finally going to see that film finally hit theatres.
The real meet of issue #10 comes from its focus on doll/toy related horror movies. Of course there’s the look back at twenty years of Child’s Play, but before that Horror Hound has a whole century of plaything terror to go through. Dolls, Magic, Puppet Master and even Rotten Cotton’s Black Devil Doll get a four page spread that sure to bring back some fond memories of a sub-genre that’s rarely touched today in the mainstream (Dead Silence would count if the feature hadn’t been so damn generic).
Now it’s on to the star of issue #10: remembering two decades worth of Chucky and Child’s Play. I had a tough time believing that I was the tender age of 8 while watching a maniac possessed doll running around trying to transfer his soul to a young Alex Vincent and killing anyone that got in the little Good Guy’s way.
From Child’s Play’s humble beginnings as Don Mancini’s short story “Blood Buddy” all the way to the birth of Chucky’s son Glen, nothing is missed in this article. Even the amount of merchandise from the films that Horror Hound uncovered is amazing. Who knew you could market a little red haired killer is so many different ways. Too bad I lost my Chucky trading cards … along with my Howard the Duck ones.
That about wraps up the tenth issue of Horror Hound, but trust me, there’s a lot more in this issue to check out other than murderous play things. Fulci Lives, the short biography of the filmmaker, is perfect for those newer horror fans that are looking to know more about Italian horror. Plus, there’s also a list of Fulci’s top 10 greatest moments of cinematic gore!
3-D is one of the greatest gimmicks to be added to the horror film world. Amityville brought us flying locusts and Friday the 13th threw an eyeball at us. Good times, indeed. Too bad that didn’t transfer well in this eleventh issue of Horror Hound (MySpace). The 20+ pages before the article about three dimensional horror aren’t as attention grabbing as the previous mag, but I can attribute that to redundancy. Articles about The Happening, Midnight Meat Train, The Wolfman, and “Supernatural” are not bad at all, but when you write about them weekly (sometimes daily) you’re really looking for something more interesting.
Everything picks up with the 3-D Horror retrospective. Plenty of love is given to Vincent Price’s classic House of Wax and it should be since it was the film that kicked off three dimensional horror in glorious color. Christ there were a lot of 3-D films over the past 50+ years with the cinematic tool suffering a brief death during the later ‘80s and ‘90s. With the spread of Imax theatres, it appears 3-D is here to stay now. The article is actually quite impressive by being highly thorough with the applications history, ups, downs and future. That is what makes Horror Hound always an excellent read: the mag is more concerned with giving you something worth reading rather than slapping together lots of trivial content.
This issue winds everything down with some Blob celebrating and Sean Clark’s trip to Elm Street with Horror’s Hallowed Grounds. Is there more? Hell yes, but I am not going to tell you everything. Why not pick up a copy?
Have you been missing out on all this? Get your ass over to Horror Hound’s official site and order an issue or eleven. If you can’t wait to see some 3-D action, then get to your local book store or Hot Topic and ask for it by name.
– Syxx
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