Psycho (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Well, they finally got Psycho right! Universal's new Blu-ray corrects the disappointing transfers of older DVDs. The first DVD was not enhanced for widescreen and was also mis-framed. The latest DVD looked unusually soft and indistinct. The new Hi Def version straightens out these anomalies and dazzles us with its sharp rendering of the crisply shot B&W original. Reviewers often remind us that Psycho was a low-budget production filmed by Alfred Hitchcock's TV outfit, Shamley. But on a big screen in a good print it communicated a very specific experience. The interior of the Bates house somehow captured the dry desert feel and even the smell I remembered from my grandmother's house in Nevada. The air has the slightest tinge of dust particles, and after a while the flowered wallpaper patterns seems to crawl on their own.

Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first film directors to be canonized by the Auteur Theory,...

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Book Review: 'The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners' Edited by Joe R ...

26.05.12

"There wasn't any real editing to do," he writes. "The stories were already chosen by the awards committee, and they were all good."

The awards committee in question is that of the Horror Writers Guild, the professional organization of horror writers that chooses the winners of the annual Bram Stoker awards. These awards are bestowed in a variety of categories, from novel to nonfiction to short fiction. It's that last category which is focused on in this collection, a words that has had a surprisingly difficult path to publication.

How difficult? Well, the last represented winner comes from 1996. Lansdale's introduction is copyrighted two years after that, which still makes it 13 years old. These factors might work against some collections, but not this one; the lack of recent work in no way diminishes the intent, which is to curate a handful of important genre works. While stories like Lansdale's own "Night They Missed the Horror Show" and Jack Ketchum's "The Box" have been reprinted numerous times, there are stories like Jack Cady's "The Night We Buried Road Dog" and Thomas Ligotti's "Red Tower" that may not be as familiar to horror fans, and as such are welcome finds.

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