STEVE CARROLL WRITES

The following column was originally printed in Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic 47, which was published in July of 2023. You can buy a copy of it  here. There is something inherently unsettling about being in deeply rural locations where we, considering ourselves as enlightened and educated intellectuals, find ourselves confronted with beliefs and superstitions that seem backward and downright uninformed to our modern sensibilities. It can sometimes be as simple as walking into a gas station in the middle of nowhere and suddenly feeling like we’ve stepped into another era of history and speaking to a representative of the local citizenry feels like navigating a wide gulf of both colloquial language and seemingly alien culture. It leaves us feeling decidedly ‘off’ and somehow inadequate. This discomfort lies at the heart of folk horror. Though the term ‘folk horror’ didn’t enter into the modern vernacular until...

If you’ve followed this blog for any real length of time, then you know by now   that I am an espionage junkie. And nothing gets me going more than the   espionage books, movies and television shows of the Golden Age of spies, the   Cold War 50s, 60s, and 70s. Of course, this explosion in popularity at   that   time was tied directly into the superstardom of a single source—James Bond, Ian   Fleming’s indomitable British spy for Her Majesty, and his exploits   in novels   and the wildly successful film series that started in 1962 (and remains a   cash-cow today). Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham created  Men’s   Adventure Quarterly  (MAQ) as a way to preserve and celebrate the Men’s   Adventure Magazines   (MAM) of a bygone era. That MAM era was a post-war phenomenon   that ran from the late 40s through the early 70s. In their earlier heyday, there   was a   huge emphasis on so-called “true stories” of m...