Chiaroscuro (2000 AD)

Chiaroscuro was a horror series which appeared in the British weekly comic 2000 AD. It was written by Simon Spurrier with art by Cam Smith (also known as Smudge).

Characters

• Anthony Elvy is a film journalist and the son of a once famous film director. He is sick of the fake sincerity that surrounds the film industry.
• Samuel Erin is a seventy-year-old film director who is full of self-pity. He hands Elvy a film reel before he is killed in an accident.

Plot

London 2006. Anthony Elvy heads to Elstree film & television studio to do an on set interview with a film director by the name of Samuel Erin. During the interview, it is discovered that Erin is full of self-pity. At the end of the interview, he hands Elvy a film reel telling him it will be what he is best known for. Elvy decides to head home early to watch the reel. He discovers, to his horror, that its actually a Mondo film showing US troops executing Cubans during Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, 1983. He phones Erin for another interview but he is lying dead, impaled on a prop set and surrounded by fire.

See also

• Ancient Images a 1989 novel by Ramsey Campbell with a similar theme
• The Grin in the Dark by Ramsey Campbell that deals with the horrors of a silent film and actor.
• Flicker (1991), a novel by Theodore Roszak
• Faces of Death, one of the most famous Mondo films

External links

• 2000 AD profile