5/24/2023 0 Comments Clive barker's the forbiddenHelen finds herself fascinated by the anti-social aesthetics, and her obsession brings her into contact with an estate resident, a young mother, Ann-Marie, who tells her of further spray-painted attractions in some of the empty derelict flats. Alas, like every tragic heroine, her decision to enter the estate is the first step on a journey that will ultimately consign her to a terrible fate. She’s a photographer who’s studying the subject for a dissertation. The estate is awash with graffiti. Indeed, it’s the graffiti that attracts Helen to this urban abomination. It’s a place where ‘… lamps had been shattered and back-yard fences overthrown cars whose wheels and engines had been removed and chassis then burned…’ Barker sets the tone by describing at length an architectural dream that through neglect and lawlessness, has slowly turned into a nightmare. It’s set, not in Chicago, but in a bleak inner-city housing estate in the UK (the equivalent of ‘the Projects’ in the US). Yet there are many differences with its big-screen sibling. It’s the story that eventually morphed into celluloid slasher Candyman. The Forbidden is one of the stand-out tales from Barker’s acclaimed Books of Blood series: a genre-redefining collection that prompted the horror high-priest Stephen King to proclaim breathlessly that ‘Clive Barker is so good I am almost literally tongue-tied.’ (For any horror fan not to have read these gory, otherworldly fables is a like a church-goer eschewing the New Testament.)
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