Carrion Comfort, a doorstopper in Simmons’ typical fashion, proves that it wasn’t just Stephen King who harbored an unusual fascination with psychics in the ‘80s.
Two additional disclaimers: horror was quite male-dominated during the ‘80s, and nearly every title below had a much cooler original cover.ĭan Simmons survived the horror bust just fine, spending much of the ‘90s on his Hyperion Cantos sci-fi tomes before finding renewed horror success in this millennium with Drood, The Abominable and The Terror (the latter of which will soon debut as a TV show from AMC). Not every novel below comes from a lost legend-several of these authors pushed through to contemporary success-and not all of them conform to the salacious paperback scene that inspired Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks From Hell, but each of them first hit shelves between 19 and are worth the attention of any confessed horror hound. That’s why King’s name is absent from the list below, along with horror perennials like Clive Barker and Dean Koontz. Unfortunately, King is one of the few authors whose output survived the ensuing horror bust, as the genre shrank back into its niche status and specialty publishers shuttered, leaving some publishing rights in limbo for years. Both on film and on the paperback spinners, horror flourished during the Reagan decade, as exemplified by Stephen King’s prolific output during the period. Sitting at the point where horror and psychological thriller meet, Cold Moon blends modern ghost story with the older gothic style to create an eerie tale that left us chilled to the bone.Here’s an understatement: the ‘80s were kind to the horror genre. In typical style, he shows up and completely steals the scene.
Speaking of the cast, there’s also a cameo by The Room’s Tommy Wiseau (more recently seen in The Disaster Artist) as a rodeo official.
Lloyd, meanwhile, brings much of the creepiness he showed off in 2016’s I Am Not a Serial Killer - for which he received stellar reviews - as his character controls his already mentally unstable son and tries to drive him to murder again and again. Knowing that, you know already that there is more than a touch of the neo-gothic about Cold Moon, and that’s before you factor in the vengeful ghost, the manipulative machinations of the killer’s father (played to horrifying perfection by Christopher Lloyd) and the creeping sense of dread that infuses the film. Michael McDowell, who wrote the novel the screenplay is based on, is the writer behind perennial favourites Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s not often that you see this kind of pedigree in a ghost story, but Cold Moon really delivers on that front.
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