Interview at Cinema Slaughter
Copyright ©2009 SICK-END FILMS/CINEMA SLAUGHTER
THE CANNIBAL WITHIN is a novel written with surgical precision by author
MARK MIRABELLO. A gut wrenching nightmare of a story that is an intelligent piece of horror fiction. I had the very cool opportunity to ask him questions on the very graphic and terrifying "splatter punk" novel.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
I have read your book and it is a very well written novel and I loved it, How did you get started on this story?
MARK MIRABELLO
A horribly mutilated woman, wearing clothing stained with semen and whiskey, actually did visit my office, as described in the preface. She claimed that “unknown superiors” exist—that her friend had been eaten alive—that she herself had been raped by arm-length penises covered with veins—and that she had escaped from a cage in a subterranean world. I listened to her story and never again saw her.
Years later, when I discovered that Oscar Kiss Maerth, a German writer, argued that devouring the soft, wet contents of any cranium caused evolution, and that devouring dead meat cooked by fire retarded our development, I was struck by the coincidence (the woman had made the same claim).
I was also struck by her claim that all paranormal activities in our world are caused by these creatures, which have finite telepathic abilities. To quote my novella:
During their stealthy forays into our world, these masters of illusion can appear in any number of forms. Always seen at night, they may appear as puritanic gods, bringing commandments or revelations, beautiful succubi, flaunting their high and youthful breasts, androgynous angels, pulsating with light and fire, ghoulish old vampires, lusting for blood and shapely flesh, kindly space travelers, conveying messages of hope and peace, and malignant grey aliens, stalking victims for their vivisections.
So, I decided to write the story.
I originally intended it to be non-fiction, but I “fleshed” out the tale so much (she had only given me a brief description) that Mandrake of Oxford, the publisher, released it as a “cult fiction” horror novella.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
The descriptions of hell and demons are all very well done...There were times I was reading it and got the chills from the horrible trauma the main character was going through..was this inspired by anything?
M.M.
Yes. I am a historian by profession, and everything in the work is on some real atrocity.
Terrified humans held in fattening cages, for example, were found in Cannibal Polynesia.
The description of Dis (“insects and rodents and fungi are the predominant wildlife--pollution, toxic waste, and the other sludge of their civilization bubble up and form cesspools throughout the settlement. A black river--oily with petroleum--bisects the settlement”) is based on the industrialized urban sores in Soviet Russia.
The description of the woman crawling over the corpse was based on the experience of a soldier from World War I in the trenches and tunnels in “No Man’s Land”:
I seemed to be inside a small shaft of some sort--a crudely chiseled passage or sub-tunnel--and I kept advancing. I encountered something softer than the soil--it was a decomposing body--a corpse swarming with centipedes--and the horror almost made me scream. Fortunately, however, I was able to muffle my shriek with my hands.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
Was this your only horror novel?
M.M.
So far, yes. Mandrake of Oxford has asked for a sequel, but I never write for money only. I will write another horror novella (I agree with Poe that effective horror is delivered in small portions) if an idea is planted in my soul and gnaws its way out, the way the larva of a certain wasp eat their way out of a living caterpillar.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
You are a professor...what do you teach?
M.M.
As I mention in my web site, markmirabello.com, my area of expertise is the "outlaw" history on the "frontiers and margins" of human civilization, and I lecture on Alternative Religions and Cults, Secret Societies, Terrorism and Crime, "Banned Books," Fascist Europe and Nazi Germany, Myths and Legends, Intellectual History, and other subjects. As a full professor, with tenure, at Shawnee State University, I have the freedom to indulge in abnormal interests, like a real-life Lovecraft character.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
What is your take on "horror" and the torture porn sub genre of horror?
M.M.
I am an eccentric by nature, and I do not read living authors. In my opinion, if a book outlives its author, it is then worthy of my attention.
My influences clearly are such writers as Lovecraft, Poe, De Sade, and Mirbeau—all dead and all great.
The Cannibal Within, my work, is obscene in a blasphemous way. Since I am a non-drinker who likes to take virginal women to quiet restaurants, it seems totally out of character. But, as Tolstoy pointed out, books have souls, and, once the work is conceived, it often grows as if it is an independent being in some intellectual matrix.
In short, the violent and pornographic nature of the book, as it oozed from my brain, almost seemed “channeled” by some demon.
But, to address your question, should an erotic horror genre exist? In my opinion, if the erect organs and nipples puckered with lust are mixed with the blood and the gore and the semen and the vomit in an obscenely beautiful way, with well-crafted language, in the manner of the Marquis de Sade, then the book is valuable
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
Are you writing anything currently?
M.M.
My current book project is non-fiction. It will be a skeleton key to the other world—a guide to surviving death, as detailed in various cultures and religious cults.
I want to thank Mr. Mirabello for taking the time and please visit his site check out his book THE CANNIBAL WITHIN it is a very important book. For all other info go to:
cannibalwithin.com
markmirabello.com
Copyright ©2009 SICK-END FILMS/CINEMA SLAUGHTER
THE CANNIBAL WITHIN is a novel written with surgical precision by author
MARK MIRABELLO. A gut wrenching nightmare of a story that is an intelligent piece of horror fiction. I had the very cool opportunity to ask him questions on the very graphic and terrifying "splatter punk" novel.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
I have read your book and it is a very well written novel and I loved it, How did you get started on this story?
MARK MIRABELLO
A horribly mutilated woman, wearing clothing stained with semen and whiskey, actually did visit my office, as described in the preface. She claimed that “unknown superiors” exist—that her friend had been eaten alive—that she herself had been raped by arm-length penises covered with veins—and that she had escaped from a cage in a subterranean world. I listened to her story and never again saw her.
Years later, when I discovered that Oscar Kiss Maerth, a German writer, argued that devouring the soft, wet contents of any cranium caused evolution, and that devouring dead meat cooked by fire retarded our development, I was struck by the coincidence (the woman had made the same claim).
I was also struck by her claim that all paranormal activities in our world are caused by these creatures, which have finite telepathic abilities. To quote my novella:
During their stealthy forays into our world, these masters of illusion can appear in any number of forms. Always seen at night, they may appear as puritanic gods, bringing commandments or revelations, beautiful succubi, flaunting their high and youthful breasts, androgynous angels, pulsating with light and fire, ghoulish old vampires, lusting for blood and shapely flesh, kindly space travelers, conveying messages of hope and peace, and malignant grey aliens, stalking victims for their vivisections.
So, I decided to write the story.
I originally intended it to be non-fiction, but I “fleshed” out the tale so much (she had only given me a brief description) that Mandrake of Oxford, the publisher, released it as a “cult fiction” horror novella.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
The descriptions of hell and demons are all very well done...There were times I was reading it and got the chills from the horrible trauma the main character was going through..was this inspired by anything?
M.M.
Yes. I am a historian by profession, and everything in the work is on some real atrocity.
Terrified humans held in fattening cages, for example, were found in Cannibal Polynesia.
The description of Dis (“insects and rodents and fungi are the predominant wildlife--pollution, toxic waste, and the other sludge of their civilization bubble up and form cesspools throughout the settlement. A black river--oily with petroleum--bisects the settlement”) is based on the industrialized urban sores in Soviet Russia.
The description of the woman crawling over the corpse was based on the experience of a soldier from World War I in the trenches and tunnels in “No Man’s Land”:
I seemed to be inside a small shaft of some sort--a crudely chiseled passage or sub-tunnel--and I kept advancing. I encountered something softer than the soil--it was a decomposing body--a corpse swarming with centipedes--and the horror almost made me scream. Fortunately, however, I was able to muffle my shriek with my hands.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
Was this your only horror novel?
M.M.
So far, yes. Mandrake of Oxford has asked for a sequel, but I never write for money only. I will write another horror novella (I agree with Poe that effective horror is delivered in small portions) if an idea is planted in my soul and gnaws its way out, the way the larva of a certain wasp eat their way out of a living caterpillar.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
You are a professor...what do you teach?
M.M.
As I mention in my web site, markmirabello.com, my area of expertise is the "outlaw" history on the "frontiers and margins" of human civilization, and I lecture on Alternative Religions and Cults, Secret Societies, Terrorism and Crime, "Banned Books," Fascist Europe and Nazi Germany, Myths and Legends, Intellectual History, and other subjects. As a full professor, with tenure, at Shawnee State University, I have the freedom to indulge in abnormal interests, like a real-life Lovecraft character.
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
What is your take on "horror" and the torture porn sub genre of horror?
M.M.
I am an eccentric by nature, and I do not read living authors. In my opinion, if a book outlives its author, it is then worthy of my attention.
My influences clearly are such writers as Lovecraft, Poe, De Sade, and Mirbeau—all dead and all great.
The Cannibal Within, my work, is obscene in a blasphemous way. Since I am a non-drinker who likes to take virginal women to quiet restaurants, it seems totally out of character. But, as Tolstoy pointed out, books have souls, and, once the work is conceived, it often grows as if it is an independent being in some intellectual matrix.
In short, the violent and pornographic nature of the book, as it oozed from my brain, almost seemed “channeled” by some demon.
But, to address your question, should an erotic horror genre exist? In my opinion, if the erect organs and nipples puckered with lust are mixed with the blood and the gore and the semen and the vomit in an obscenely beautiful way, with well-crafted language, in the manner of the Marquis de Sade, then the book is valuable
CINEMA SLAUGHTER
Are you writing anything currently?
M.M.
My current book project is non-fiction. It will be a skeleton key to the other world—a guide to surviving death, as detailed in various cultures and religious cults.
I want to thank Mr. Mirabello for taking the time and please visit his site check out his book THE CANNIBAL WITHIN it is a very important book. For all other info go to:
cannibalwithin.com
markmirabello.com