Danse Macabre (1982) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

People edit see section history

• Robert Bloch: created Norman Bates
• Ira Levin: the guy who saw to it that Rosemary had a baby
• William Castle: king of gimmicky schlock horror cinema
• Roger Corman: king of buck-ninety-eight horror cinema
• Ray Bradbury: author of "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
• Jack Finney: author of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"
• Harlan Ellison: screenwriter for several STAR TREK episodes, and a great deal of fantasy and science fiction under a wide variety of pen names
• Richard Matheson: author of I AM LEGEND
• Ramsey Campbell: author of THE PARASITE and THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER
• Rod Serling: author of every single episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, NIGHT GALLERY and quite a lot of other material
• Robert Louis Stevenson: author of DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE
• Peter Straub: author of GHOST STORY
• Bram Stoker: author of DRACULA
• Shirley Jackson: author of THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
• James Herbert: author of THE FOG
• Carl Kolchak: monster-hunting reporter played by Darren McGavin
• Mary Shelley: author of FRANKENSTEIN
• Don Siegel: directed the classic 1950s movie version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS
• Arch Oboler: created some very horrific radio plays in his time
• Alfred Hitchcock: director of THE BIRDS

Quotes edit see section history

• “I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.”

  Stephen King

• “I am no apologist for bad filmmaking, but once you've spent twenty years or so going to horror movies, searching for diamonds (or diamond-chips) in the dreck of the B-pics, you realize that if you don't keep your sense of humor, you're done for.”

  Stephen King

• “The novelist is, after all, God's liar, and if he does his job well, keeps his head and his courage, he can sometimes find the truth that lives at the center of the lie.”

  Stephen King

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Horror, terror, fear, panic: these are the emotions which drive wedges between us, split us off from the crowd, and make us alone.

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• The late John Wyndham, perhaps the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced,

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• Horror in real life is an emotion that one grapples with—as I grappled with the realization that the Russians had beaten us into space—all alone. It is a combat waged in the secret recesses of the heart.

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• “I don’t read fantasy or go to any of those movies; none of it’s real,” I feel a kind of sympathy. They simply can’t lift the weight of fantasy. The muscles of the imagination have grown too weak.

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• If you write for an hour and a half a day for ten years, you’re gonna turn into a good writer.

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• not really interesting unless those involved in the discussion are drunk or graduate students—two states of roughly similar incompetence.

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• not the physical or mental aberration in itself which horrifies us, but rather the lack of order which these aberrations seem to imply.

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• All tales of horror can be divided into two groups: those in which the horror results from an act of free and conscious will—a conscious decision to do evil—and those in which the horror is predestinate, coming from outside like a stroke of lightning.

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• Lovecraft’s vaginal creation, Great Cthulhu. After viewing this many-tentacled, slimy, gelid creature through Lovecraft’s eyes, do we need to wonder why Lovecraft manifested “little interest” in sex?

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• Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force—a force so great that the knife is not really cutting at all but bludgeoning and breaking (and after two or three of these gargantuan swipes it may succeed in breaking itself

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• New York: The unlikely hiding place of Satanists in ROSEMARY'S BABY
• 'Salem's Lot: Just another small Maine town beset with problems in Stephen King's literary universe
• Hill House: The archetypal Bad Place in American horror fiction
• Jonestown: The events of 1979 were seemingly foretold in THE FOG, a novel James Herbert published just 3 years before
• Black Lagoon: A pocket of water in the Amazon basin where the keeler catfish are only the beginning of the problems you'll face
• Santa Mira, California: The place where the Body Snatchers first appeared

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Errata edit see section history

King states that LOVERS LIVING, LOVERS DEAD was written by Richard Lutz. In fact it was Richard Lortz. He also states that Bela Lugosi died shortly after the completion of his last movie, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, and may have been replaced by a stand-in rather than appearing; in fact he died while they were still filming, and the last scenes did use a stand-in who looked nothing like Lugosi.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Stephen King (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: P96.H65 K5 1981
• Dewey: 700.4164

Notes for Parents edit see section history

There is some strong language, and King talk about how radio, TV, the print media and film deal with sexual content in horror, but overall suitable for most teenagers.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › History & Criticism
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( K ) › King, Stephen
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Reference

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