AEWCH 327: HORORR UPON HORROR PT. 1 - NATHAN BALLINGRUD + SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN on NOSTALGIA & THE BLOB (1988)

<p>Six authors. Four horror movies. Four episodes of Against Everyone with Conner Habib</p><p>This is HORROR UPON HORROR</p><p>On these episodes, we&#39;ll be thinking through the creation, reading, and viewing of the most vital and visceral art: Horror, and I&#39;ll be doing it with the frightening luminaries of the genre. People who are unafraid to endure the horrific imagination, and able to bring it to you.</p><p>On this first episode, I’ll be talking about nostalgia in horror with authors Nathan Ballingrud and Sarah Maria Griffin and then we&#39;ll move onto our discussion of the amoebic violent power of <a href="https://youtu.be/5GAApkdt2lo?si=-iW0r7C62aNgXW_V" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><strong>Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of </strong><em><strong>The Blob</strong></em></a><em><strong>.</strong></em></p><p>Unlike other monsters, the blob has no direction, no real personality. It doesn’t <em>want </em>anything. It’s not even hungry; hunger would imply some sort of desire or longing. Instead, it’s drawn to whatever is close and warm, drawn to incorporate it, to grow with the heat of flesh, bone, and blood.</p><p>As it gets bigger, it needs more heat, more blood, to keep going. </p><p>This is <em>Horror upon Horror. </em>The blob. A form older than vampires but newer in consciousness. It’s outside of time. It’s what was in the microscope made large, larger, until it envelops everything in its path with crushing pressure and dissolving acidity.</p><p><em>The blob is the pure inertia of motion.</em> </p><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/ballingrud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><strong>NATHAN BALLINGRUD</strong></a> has also been on the show before, last time talking with me and Sara Gran on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/ConnerHabib/posts/against-everyone-87724493" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><strong>AEWCH 233</strong></a> about cruelty in horror. His book of short stories, <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4714/9781618730602" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><em><strong>North American Lake Monsters</strong></em></a><em> </em>is one of my very favorite horror collections. And his trilogy of retro future horror, The Lunar Gothic trilogy, begins with the utterly hideous (in the best way possible), <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4714/9781250291738" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><em><strong>The Crypt of the Moon Spider</strong></em></a>. </p><p><a