In the 1980s, a handful of writers — Clive Barker, David J. Schow, Joe R. Lansdale, and John Skipp & Craig Spector — inadvertently kicked off a seismic shift in literary horror. Less a conscious revolution than a spontaneous eruption of the arts, these restless artists bucked against the constraints of conventional horror, serving up whopping doses of wildly explicit sex, visionary violence, and really loud rock ‘n’ roll, underlying an even more subversive layer of fierce cultural critique.

At the time, it was accused of “coarsening the genre”. And when the 80s horror boom crashed and burned in the 90s, there were those who held splatterpunk responsible. In the years that followed, “extreme horror” fiction paved the way to cinematic “torture porn”. And even network cop shows started showing more graphic onscreen violence than would have gotten an “R” rating a mere fifteen years before.

Best-selling novelist, award-winning book editor and filmmaker John Skipp conducts a crazy three-hour tour through a history of horror’s most hilariously-named subgenre. The forces that shaped it. And the forces it has shaped, as we enter the fresh horrors of the 21st century.

For a full reading list of the books discussed in Skipp’s class, see HERE >>

photo: Craig Spector, Joe R. Lansdale. Richard Christian Matheson, David J. Schow, Ray Garton, Robert McCammon and John Skipp in 1986 by Beth Gwinn