Madness Heart Press

It’s extraordinary how H.P. Lovecraft’s literary reputation has grown within my lifetime. Now that Lovecraft and his cuddliest creation, the mighty Cthulhu, are household names, it’s a little sad to think that the fragile and agoraphobic Lovecraft labored largely in obscurity and died in 1937 with no reason to think that his literary legacy would outlive him, let alone that it would inspire an entire cosmos of imitators, expanders, and appreciators of his mythos. Even when I was a young horror reader, Lovecraft was – while not exactly obscure – hardly mainstream, and certainly not the brand name he would become over the last decade or two. Lovecraft’s growing popularity has led to a much-needed examination of the man himself and his defects, in particular his virulent racism, which is utterly inexcusable, and to an appreciation of his contributions to fiction, including his more-or-less single-handed invention of the genre of cosmic horror.

I’ve made no secret of my love of Wes Craven – in particular, his Nightmare on Elm Street films. It’s worth remembering two important life lessons when considering the canonization of Craven, however: first, that where an artist begins is not necessarily an indicator of where they’ll end up, artistically, and second, that even our creative heroes have their bad days, off moments, and plain, good old-fashioned failures. Both of these lessons came to mind recently when I re-watched (for the first time in a long time) Wes Craven’s 1972 debut as writer-director: a financially lucrative but artistically utterly bankrupt little pile of excrement called The Last House on the Left.

Horror genres and subgenres rise and fall like bubbles in a cauldron. Since horror reflects the fears and insecurities of societies and since societies change over time, this isn’t surprising – but it’s worth noting when a set of story ideas or tropes is on its way in or out, if nothing else because we might glean something interesting about what’s going on in larger society from horror’s reaction thereto. I’ve been following, for example, the emergence in recent years of a subgenre I call “Airbnb Horror.”