Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

I'm going to discuss the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark film in detail in this post. As such, there will be material that could be considered spoilers, so if you're trying to avoid those, you should probably see the movie first before reading this. And if you're just looking for a brief, spoiler-free review: I liked it. When I first learned that a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie was in development, I admit I had mixed emotions. On the one hand, Alvin Schwartz's books are a beloved and significant part of my life, which I have written about quite extensively over the last decade , so of course the planned adaptation offered exciting and unexpected possibilities. And the involvement of Guillermo Del Toro was extremely promising, as he had the star power to get the project off the ground while also representing what seemed, in theory, a perfect fit for the material itself, having shown a flair for ornately unsettling aesthetics and a warm but macabre

        I have to say, it's a pretty great time to be a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark fan. After an ill-advised decision by the publisher years ago to replace the books' iconically eerie Stephen Gammell illustrations with tamer, less disturbing artwork by Brett Helquist, the original versions have been reissued to bookstores everywhere. Hollywood wants a piece of that sweet Scary Stories pie (don't ask what's in it), and there's a major motion picture produced by Guillermo Del Toro on the way which, judging by the teasers, looks amazing . There's even a documentary coming out chronicling the creation of the series and examining its lasting cultural impact. 38 years after Alvin Schwartz's first volume began shocking the senses of countless readers, the series' legacy is still going strong.      Perhaps most unexpectedly, there was a recent announcement that a new volume of the series is coming soon! Well, sort of. New Scary Stories to Tell in t

In 1981, Alvin Schwartz unleashed his horror classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark upon the world, and it and its two sequels would scar psyches for generations to come. 1984 saw the release of In a Dark, Dark Room , a similar book that Schwartz had tailored to somewhat younger readers. Unlike the Scary Stories books, though, this one never got a sequel...or did it? Ghosts! , published in 1991, is an oft-overlooked installment in Alvin Schwartz's oeuvre that serves in many ways as a spiritual successor to In a Dark, Dark Room . In belongs to the somewhat redundantly named "I Can Read" book series, like Dark Room , so it is targeted at a similarly young audience, and of course it shares the supernatural theme of the aforementioned works. But how does this one stack up against the veritable murderer's row of Schwartz's earlier classics? Let's find out. The first thing that jumps out at you is the artwork. Victoria Chess has a strikingly different st

         Well, despite the elevated temperature outside, the sudden abundance of jokes about pumpkin spice-flavored food and beverages tells me that it is fall once again. Yaaaay! Of course, this means that I barely wrote anything all summer, but I think that the one-two punch of a V.C. Andrews smörgåsbord and the sprawling final installment of my Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Power Rankings would knock anyone out of commission for a while.      Speaking of Scary Stories , since Halloween is right around the corner (it's a very lengthy corner that takes a couple weeks to get around), the time is right to discuss something related to this august series of horror folklore. Popular opinion holds that the most memorable aspect of these books is the collection of ghoulish illustrations by Stephen Gammell, which manage to walk the nightmarish line of simultaneously surreal and hideously visceral. Now, Gammell is an accomplished illustrator apart from the Scary Stories series,