The Monk: A Romance by Matthew Lewis (1796)

Source.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Film.

"A group of teenagers that work at the mall all get together for a late night party in one of the stores. When the mall goes on lock down before they can get out, The robot security system activates after a malfunction and goes on a killing spree. One by one the three bots try to rid the mall of the "Intruders." The only weapons the kids can use are the supplies in other stores. Or . . . if they can make it till morning when the mall opens back up" (imdb).

Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete, by Francois Rabelais

Source.

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre (around 1932)

Source.

Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection - Julia Kristeva

In full.

Dawn of the Dead script by George A. Romero (1977)

In full.

Links to Related (and Interesting) Online Papers Dealing with Class, Zombies, Marxism and Post-Marxism.

• Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead
• The Zombie Manifesto: The Marxist Revolutions in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead
• “Just in Case Society Crumbles”: George A. Romero and Marxism
• We the Living Dead: The convoluted politics of zombie cinema

Preface to Cromwell by Victor Hugo (English Translation)

Where Hugo defines the modern and the grotesque, especially where the latter acts as a remedy for the beautiful and the sublime.

In full.

Snuff, Exploitation, Mondo, Gore, Gross Out: Synopsises

Here is a database dedicated to itemizing the dramatic minutiae in which the antichrist tendencies of modern film-making find their anecdotal grounding. The obliteration of the body stands in thematically for where once there were trials of the soul.

Obviously, this is genre film, meant for very specific connoisseurs. Still, the plainest way to describe a theological (-ish)--non-specialized--interest in this queasy and unpleasant material is to make the case, as in hardcore pornography, that the struggles of the soul, for us moderns, needs a physical correspondence. Gore describes suffering.

Particularly useful if one has not the heart to see all these masterpieces of splenetic auteurs, but for some perverse reason must still bear witness.

N Scariest Movie Moments N

N The Top 100 Most Violent Movies Ever Made N
N Video Nasties N
N Horror Tropes on the often droll TV tropes site contains various generic descriptions. N

Chapter 4 from Rabelais and his World: Banquet Imagery in Rabelais

Source.

On Google books, with a few pages (like two) annoyingly omitted.

Bawdy Ballads

Source.

North Carolina Songs:

The Soldier Travelling From the North

The Sailor Being Tired

Womanizer Songs:

Charlotte the Harlot
Charlotte the Harlot (Alternative Version)

Chisholm Trail

Clementine

Kafoozalem

Prostitute Songs:
I'll Go Chasin' Women
It May Be Silly (But Ain't It Fun)
Old Joe Clark
Roll Your Leg Over
Roll Me Over
Ball of Yarn

General Debauchery Songs:
How The Money Rolls In
The Bastard King of England
Blinded by Turds
Do They Hang Too Low
For the Birds

Eyes without a Face (1960)

Elizabeth Taylor Quotes, Quips and Clips

• Source of quotes.
• Wikipedia's biography.
• A suitably trashy bio.
• Socialist eulogy. Elizabeth Taylor and the melodrama of American life in the 1950s and 1960s.
• Peculiar Beauty: Elizabeth Taylor: Too Bloody Much
• Liz Taylor: Rare and Unpublished Pictures
• Richard Burton's letter to Taylor, upon Their Break up

*

Her public profile blurred between flawed serious thespian and unrepentant queen of celluloid decadence, Elizabeth Taylor can be a squeamishly bad film's singular delight. Eventually a career of being type-cast and supremely miscast bleeds into her persona, whereby she becomes sort of a meta-diva, playing the role of Hollywood actress for movies: but also tabloids.

Those sensational grotesqueries in which she plays the part of aging or nubile tyrannical bitch easily surpass melodrama to become touching monster movies with her often as star (even where she is not cast as such).

Glamorously overacting and lushly stage-villainous, she is clearly having a good time, chewing up her luxe scenery of co-stars who seem by comparison of merely pretty types, upstaging blockbuster spectacles, out-pronouncing scripts-by-numbers, adding a comic stirring of life.

Lousy stage-acting and glorious, operatic scene-stealing are indistinguishable in her performances. Below are some haply campy quotes and films in full of her dizzily erratic, dramatic, high trash appearances. 

Big girls need big diamonds.

I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too - for being married so many times.

I fell off my pink cloud with a thud.

I have a woman's body and a child's emotions.

I haven't read any of the autobiographies about me.

I really don't remember much about Cleopatra. There were a lot of other things going on.

I suppose when they reach a certain age some men are afraid to grow up. It seems the older the men get, the younger their new wives get.

I sweat real sweat and I shake real shakes.

I think I'm finally growing up - and about time.

I'm a survivor - a living example of what people can go through and survive.

I've been through it all, baby, I'm mother courage.

I've only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?

If someone's dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture, I'm certainly not dumb enough to turn it down.

It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.

It's not the having, it's the getting.

Marriage is a great institution.

My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.

People who know me well, call me Elizabeth. I dislike Liz.

So much to do, so little done, such things to be.

Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.

Success is a great deodorant.

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

When people say, 'She's got everything', I've got one answer - I haven't had tomorrow.

You find out who your real friends are when you're involved in a scandal.


*

THIS LAST LINK to the movie Identikit, or The Driver's Seat  is one of her best, most emotionally disturbing appearances as aging diva (and, in this case, thief). Featuring a cameo by Andy Warhol!

Freaks, Monsters and Prodigies

Images from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.

c/f The Most Grotesque Humanoid Monsters of the Early Modern Age