Book_Review_GOH

12/04/11 – Review Written By George Andrade

Horror News.Net Review of "Gallery Of Horror" By George Andrade

Towards the end of October in 2010, Thomas M.
Malafarina was attending a combination art show and
book signing near the city of Harrisburg, PA where he
was scheduled to sign copies of his first short story
collection 13 Nasty Endings and his first two novels
Burn Phone and 99 Souls. There he had the pleasure
of meeting the artist who had designed the covers to
these books - Alecia Nye - and the good fortune of
being introduced to Nunzio Barbera (link). Barbera is
a dark surrealist whose influences are “Dali, punk
rock, skateboarding and comic books” and who works
presently in mixed media and collage; he is bold,
macabre and seems to regard no boundaries in
representing his vision of the world and the bizarre
denizens of his canvases reminds one at times of
Clive Barker in his early “splatterpunk” days. During
the course of that afternoon’s conversations on art
and method, Malafarina began to recognize a kinship
with this controversial artist and on the drive home
soon hatched a plan to design a book in the mold of
Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery” wherein he would
choose a selection of prints – a “gallery” - from
among Barbera’s portfolio and write stories inspired
from them.

Writes Malafarina in his introduction: “Both Nunzio and Sunbury Press loved the idea. So after completing
the proof of my novel Eye Contact (link) in early 2011, I immediately went to work on Gallery of Horror and
from the very first story I wrote, “The Age of Man”, I was hooked. But I quickly learned I had challenged
myself with what turned out to be quite a monumental task. Nunzio’s work is often complex and very much
“out there”, with all sorts of what initially seem like unrelated images coming together in one place. But I
understood that Nunzio had a plan behind creating each work, and for a while I even considered asking him
to explain what each work meant to him. I know he would have been willing to comply, but then I changed
my mind. I realized that taking such a step would ruin the real point of the book.”

“Good evening and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time.
Each is a collector’s item in its own way – not because of any special artistic quality, but because each
captures on canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.”

And so Rod Serling introduced us all to his new television anthology series on NBC called Night
Gallery, a show which would run for three seasons before the suits starting messing with Serling (there
are always suits, aren’t there?) and ultimately cancelled it. In Serling’s mind, his newest foray into
network television was conceived as a companion piece to the ground breaking “The Twilight Zone”
(which ran for 5 seasons on CBS) in that while The Zone dealt mostly with science fiction and
psychological thrillers The Gallery would present fare more grounded in fantasy and horror.

The pilot included the short film “Eyes” which was written by Serling and notable in that it not only
marked the directorial debut of a young Steven Speilberg but it also contained what was to be Joan
Crawford’s final starring performance.

But what was seen as a critical failure in the overall presentation of Night Gallery works, of course, in a
short story collection - disparateness of voice, tone and delivery can be tolerated and even expected,
all of which Tom Malafarina delivers upon with varying degrees of success in the ten highly imaginative
stories he has written and chosen to present. And unlike the paintings of Tom Wright on Night Gallery,
which were mostly too precise and apropos, Barbera’s creations are simply too dense with mixed media
images and visual richness to be interpreted outright and dramatized verbatim, of which Malafarina
respects and does no such disservice in trying to attempt. That is part of the fun of this collection
though – we get to view the paintings before embarking on the stories and seeing how well our read
coincides with what our visual experience and expectations were with them. As can be expected,
Malafarina can’t help but for the most part to continue writing of horrific inter-dimensional and
otherworldly beings invading our world and using the human race as fodder for their inconceivable
machinations and whims - we are all meat in the end to them – but that too seems to play perfectly in
line with Barbera’s worldview and work. Two of my favorite stories are:

Talk2Me - by Nunzio Barbera

In “Talk2Me” an ancient being from an
“old country” with “old ways” enters our
world on vacation and begins to hunt
humans after first procuring and
donning some camouflage so as to
blend into our environment … the
being is eventually arrested on murder
charges and soon ends up making one
hell of a mess of the precinct … but
not before making a friend.

In “Beyond The Mind’s Eye” a young artist from a
small school is hired on to assist the research of a
professor from a neighboring major technological
university who believes that he can realize in three
dimensions what can be imagined in the mind’s eye …
he works to harness and harvest the young artist’s
imagination and they are successful in creating an
apple and then a rat and then a fifty dollar bill … and
then one day the professor neglects to remember the
video gaming enthusiasms of his young assistant and,
well, it can get rather boring laying in that chair for
hours … the mind can wander … and the professor
did leave the door to the imaging chamber open.

Beyond The Mind's Eye - by Nunzio Barbera

Thomas M. Malafarina continues to mature as a writer – his sentences are more fluid and thought out and
possess a more sophisticated design better suited to hold his grand, growing complex of ideas than in
previous works. The stories here flow as well, though not all are successful in pulling off their premise
completely, which by no means makes them “bad” but rather stands as testament to the fount of imagination
that is Tom’s and the “time restriction” of the short story form which I suspect he felt (just my gut feeling) in
combination with his desire to do justice to Nunzio Barbera’s massive universe. Kudos and extra credit for
even bringing this ambitious project to life is certainly due. This impressive improvement in Tom Malafarina’
s craft in such a short amount of time bodes well for the genre and is exciting to witness. If you haven’t
given Malafarina a read this may be the book to acquaint yourself with – Gallery of Horror is a very good
short story collection that is wonderfully designed not only as a homage to the groundbreaking imagination
of Rod Serling but as an interactive litmus for your tastes and concepts of horror in art. It is an interactive
exercise that will involve you and have you going back for more.

somewhat off-center in all of us - think Gary Larsen meets Edward
Gorey meets Scott Adams (yes, Dilbert) ... this collection of
Malafarina’s single panel cartoons are twisted, bizarre, weird,
strangely down-to-earth and, well, pretty funny. This is a pretty cool
book to have laying about the rest of your horror collection.