You are now listening to post-mortem with Mick Harris, where the most influential

voices in horror cinema will spill their guts, literally.

To the renowned horror director, writer, and producer.

Now here's your host, Mick Garris.

I'm Mick Garris, and this is post-mortem. It's been said that all art is political.

George Orwell put it another way. All art is propaganda.

The horror film can just be a fun romped through blood and guts or it can be

metaphorical, political, have a savage point of view. Because of its surrealistic nature,

it's

night of the night of the living dead in 1968

was seen as a political horror movie

if you felt to see it that way

about race and the creeping undead of uniform thought and fascism.

In the original invasion of the body snatchers and its three remakes, there's the same theme

of humanity being taken over by conformity and emotional death.

When we were making Masters of Horror a while back, one of the most popular and controversial

episodes was Joe Dante's The Homecoming, which was a zombie story that was all about fighting

back against President Bush and the war in Iraq.

Sometimes the best way to represent controversial ideas is in a horror story.

I'm not talking about a polemic or a broccoli movie that's good for you, but horror stories are meant to shake you up,

to take you out of complacency, to be transgressive, provocative, to take you new places with

new ideas and stretch the boundaries of reality.

...