Spiderbite

I hadn't heard or seen this mentioned here but just saw that longtime Universal Monsters historian David Skal was killed in a car accident on 1-1-24.

He did some great books, interviews and commentaries about monster movie history. He had a great voice for it in my opinion and have always enjoyed his enthusiasm for this stuff.

Monsters and Meaning: Remembering Horror Historian David J. Skal - Rue Morgue (rue-morgue.com)

Kurt D

Oh no! I enjoyed reading The Monster Show and his work in general. Sucky way to die, too. RIP

Crocker Jarmen

I learned a lot from his work.

Brian T

Ditto. Also have the Monster Show book, and had Hollywood Gothic for ages before finally letting it go. Honestly, a sizeable portion of the current contingent of movie commentators often reeeeaaally makes me long for the work done by folks from his generation instead – Skal, Gregory Mank, Tom Weaver (minus his stupid politics), Alain Silver, Tony Rayns, Eddie Muller, Alan Rode, Donald Richie, Stephen Prince, Toby Roan, David Del Valle, and probably a bunch of others I'm forgetting right now. Most of these guys pre-dated the internet era, and wrote books, taught classes, and hosted fests and programs that involved actually talking to and befriending the then-surviving people who made a lot of classic cinema.

Now we're in an era where most contemporary filmmakers do their own commentaries — for better and for worse — and a lot of the supposedly unpaid 'experts' simply coral extant info and (increasingly deceptively, filmographies) from the internet, social media, and/or old books and articles by the likes of these predecessors into something the boutique labels can call a 'value-add' when they don't have much else available or aren't willing to pay to source legacy supplements.

cultshock

Oh that sucks. I'm also a fan of his Monster Show book and still have an old copy of it in my library.