FEAR(S) OF THE DARK is an unusual French horror film we’ve talked about here a few times before. It’s an animated film of terrors with segments directed by such cartoon icons as Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti and Richard McGuire. Althought it had a limited film festival release here before, it is now touring the US, with a showing at the IFC Center here in NYC. The trailers can be viewed here.

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Shock Till You Drop catches up with Burns in a fine, extensive interview. Burns talks about FEAR(S), the Black Hole movie, and even what he’s doing next:

Shock: Have you started on your next comic project? You spent a lot of time doing “Black Hole” so are you going to do another project that takes that much time or go back to doing shorter stories?
Burns: The piece I’m working on right now is almost done. It’s a much shorter piece. I’m going to be doing a color piece, and it’s kind of in not in the style, but in the format of the French “Tintin” books, the Belgian “Tintin” books, so it’s kind of a hardbound book.

Shock: Have you started writing it?
Burns: Yes I have, and as far as I know right now, there’s going to be two books, two parts of the story that will come out in two volumes, and I’m just about done with the first.

1 COMMENT

  1. I went to see this last night, and it was really, really great. Charles Burns’ story has that sense of building “oh, this isn’t going to end well” squeemishness, but Richard McGuire’s portion of the film was the best of the bunch, in my opinion. It was both amazing and terrifying.

    The film is absolutely worth checking out — but be aware, it’s all in French w/ subtitles that can be difficult to read at times against the b&w scenes.

  2. Based on the plot of the movie (“a man who collects insects but has trouble relating to women until he meets a beautiful woman who seems to like him. Their relationship takes a dark turn after they sleep together”), it seems to be based on Charles Burns’ short story “Ill Bred” which was published in Kitchen Sink Comics’ excellent horror anthology DEATH RATTLE. But Burns sounds like he’s ashamed of the original comics story:

    “It was published, but I’m not going to tell you where. (laughs) Someone will do the detective work, but it’s not something I’m proud of. It’s not a big deal for me, but it’s not something that I want to dust off and show everybody.”

    Does this mean that we’ll never get to see the fourth hardcover collection of pre-Black Hole Charles Burns comics from Fantagraphics?

  3. Don’t hesitate… buy Black Hole immediately! So far, it’s certainly Burns best work. Although, I am a big fan of his “Skin Deep” collection.