FROM THE ORIGINAL LORE ARCHIVES
Robert M. Price’s third Moldy Manuscripts column turns the crypt door toward the screen. Horror cinema, Robert E. Howard’s Conan and the strange afterlife of Godzilla meet in a compact archive introduction to three essays recovered from LORE’s old Features section.
Author: Robert M. Price • Original date: 02 March 2012
I don’t go to theatre except for horror, Star Trek, and superhero movies. Sometimes I write reviews or review essays on them. You might think I am reading way too much into these flicks. See what you think. This time out I am exhuming a couple of reviews. Eli Roth’s Hostel has much more to it than meets the eye, as you will see, at least in my tortured psyche. My review appeared a few years ago in my newsletter/monthly essay on line, Zarathustra Speaks. My review of The Whole Wide World appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu #93 (Lammas 1996), then in The Cimmerian 14 (October, 2004). I thought it might be worth another look now that a new film version of Conan is current.
And who doesn’t love Godzilla movies (whether or not they will admit it)? I prevailed upon Stephen Mark Rainey to allow me to reprint an article on them he ran in his pre-Deathrealm zine Japanese Giants. Mark, in case you didn’t know, is a polymath: a graphic artist, a musician, and a truly gifted writer of horror fiction. He and that other Marc (Cerasini) happen to be the world’s greatest authorities on Gojira and Toho Studios films.
Three paths through the strange
Horror, sword & sorcery, and the giant monster
The original column served as a doorway to three longer pieces: “Honeymoon in the Charnel House – Checking into Hostel”, “The Last Temptation of Conan”, and “Godzilla in Retro”. Their old Joomla links are not retained here because those historical targets still require individual recovery.
Why this belongs in the LORE archive
Vol. 03 shows how broad LORE’s definition of the strange could be. Price moves from modern screen horror to Robert E. Howard and then to Japanese kaiju cinema, treating popular culture as material worthy of the same close, enthusiastic reading that the magazine brought to weird fiction and dark fantasy. It is also a useful map for future recovery work: each of the three named essays can become a restored article and then link back to this hub.
LORE CONTEXT
Explore more restored criticism in Moldy Manuscripts Vol. 02, or continue through LORE’s Robert M. Price archive.
LORE ARCHIVE RECORD
Historical URL:
/index.php/features/71-robert-m-prices-moldy-manuscripts-vol-03
Recovery status: Surviving original column preserved and editorially contextualized. The three linked feature essays remain separate recovery targets.