The Horror Geek – News, Rants and Reviews From The Horror Geek!

With his feature film Header, director Archibald Flancranstin has done the impossible-he’s managed to bring one of extreme horror author Ed Lee’s most infamous and shocking works to the big screen without losing any of the things that made the novella so repulsive and beloved in the first place. Fans worried that a cinematic adaptation of Lee’s “Redneck Greek Tragedy” would be a neutered and spineless affair can rest easy-this is the same Header those of us fortunate enough to own a copy of the long out of print novella remember. It’s a rip-roaring, over-the-top, insane redneck splatterfest with subject matter so bizarre and offensive that most people would flee the room screaming if you played a scene or read a few sequences aloud. Seeing it recreated in front of a camera is both incredibly cool and very shocking.

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As a long time fan of extreme horror author Edward Lee, I’ve pretty much read everything the man has written (well, everything except the two novels he published under his Phil Straker pseudonym-I’ve just never been able to track those down). I’ve no illusions about Lee’s work and its place in the literary canon-but I don’t think he does either. You’re never going to get high art when it comes to Lee’s work (although he’s had moments where he’s been close. There’s a piece or two in his collection The Ushers that are very well written), but you’ll always be entertained. If Lee’s books were food, they’d be a couple of greasy quarter pounders (or given his penchant for seafood, maybe a more apt description would be a really greasy crab cake)-they’re empty calories and probably not very good for you, but they taste great and go down easily. Any stomach rumbling afterwards is most likely attributable to the fact that Lee’s novels are often graphically gory-and not because you’ve got food poisoning.

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