I received word today from Vince Liaguno of Dark Scribe Press that my contributor copy of Butcher Knives & Body Counts: Essays in the Formula, Frights, and Fun of the Slasher Film (Dark Scribe Press, 2011) is in the mail. My contribution is a brief essay that argues for the slasher film myth to be understood as a contemporary form of the chaos monster myth in ancient civilizations, particularly those form the ancient Near East.

Vince was interviewed about this book which he edited at Fangoria.com which was posted in various installments. In Part One Vince talks about the origins of Butcher Knives and Body Counts:

FANGORIA: What was the genesis of BUTCHER KNIVES & BODY COUNTS?

VINCE LIAGUNO: The book was actually with another publisher in the UK called Hades’ Gate, and it was originally conceived to be encapsulated reviews of slasher films. But what the publisher was looking for was more like, “What I remember about this film,” “Why it was special to me,” “What was going on in my life when I saw this film”—that kind of thing. So I answered the call; one of my essays was for CURTAINS. She accepted those, which I thought was great and came back and asked me if I could do another one, specifically based on a blog I had written on Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN.

A year and a half went by, and there was no news about the book. So I said to her, “I’ve put together anthologies, is there any way I could find the right publisher? I could buy it for a finder’s fee and take it over.” We agreed on a price, she gave me the essays that were part of the project, I read through them, and saw exactly what the intention was, but in looking at them, I said, “There could be so much more to this. This could be so much more than just anecdotal.” There were some writers that were really touching on film theory and film commentary and broader, pop culture commentary.

So I revamped the new submissions guideline. We completely changed the title. On Hades’ Gate it was going to be called THE ESSENTIAL SLASHER GUIDE or THE ULTIMATE SLASHER GUIDE. It mirrored something very close that’s on Amazon right now, one of those little guides. The response was overwhelming; we could not believe how many submissions were coming in. One of the first e-mails I got was from Jack Ketchum; it was actually a reprint piece he did on a Japanese slasher, which I took. It’s Jack Ketchum. He could write about fried green tomatoes in a slasher film and I would put it in the book.

In 2009, I [spoke to] Jane Kozak, one of the actresses in HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW. We got into a conversation at the bar and I asked her “What was making the film like?” And [after] I said Harley, this would make such a great essay, would you contribute?” “Sure,” boom, got her involved. So it just kind of kept growing. When I finally cut off submissions, we were already at like 400 pages to the book, but there were so many films we still hadn’t covered. So I think even after that point, I accepted 15 or 20 stories from people like, “Oh, did you cover JUST BEFORE DAWN? I have this great story about JUST BEFORE DAWN.” “OK, why not?”

The whole title of the book is really a celebration. Slashers are the one part of genre in horror that are really open season. You can always take a pot-shot at a slasher. It’s there, just make fun of it, degrade it, whatever, yet it’s lasted longer than any of the other subgenres. It’s always there. It never seems to die, people always come back. So the whole thing came together in a way to celebrate it, but also pay homage to it in a way that says, “This is really about more than just killing teenagers.”

The rest of Part One of this interview can be read here, followed by Part Two, and Part Three.

Butcher Knives & Body Counts can be purchased through the TheoFantastique Store, or Dark Scribe Press.