196 pages, Paperback
Published August 5, 2025, by Tor Nightfire
Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin
The cursed film has become a treasured and often played in a subgenre of horror, with films like 8mm in film and Experimental Film by Gemma files in prose and most recently Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie.
Black Flame is a unique take on the already crowded field by threading the film through a one-of-a-kind projector. There is only one Gretchen Felker-Martin, a transgressive writer who is Jewish, trans, and seemingly influenced by the erotic horror of Clive Barker and Poppy Z.Brite. There is a lack of fucks given that I find inspiring even if I don’t always agree with the takes. One of the best elements of GFM is that she is one of a kind writer, and even she is playing with stuff like a cursed film or a trans take on the Screwfly Solution.
No one else would dare write an erotic, and sometimes kinky tale about a lost horror film created in Nazi Germany. As such, this novel is one of the darkest possible mirrors to look at humanity, but hell, that is horror at its best.
More than once, I have been told we should cancel this author. I interviewed GFM, and her opinions are radical, sure, but her style of horror is transgressive by nature. It was surprising to me that an author who is clearly out to ruffle feathers was expected to hold back on her opinions. One of the opinions that got the most anger was that GFM supported the idea of a Free Palestine. As the author of a very Jewish horror novel who is horrified by the 75 October 7thś done to Palestine since October 7th, it was refreshing to see never again means never again to this author.
Black Flame is important right now because the message that the Nazis are bad guys is sadly too relevant. I wasn't expecting it, as it is a novel about a cursed film, but the film in the book the Baroness, comes out of Nazi Germany, and there are excellent world-building details involved the creation of the film which is excellently woven into the narrative through our POV Ellen who is working to restore the movie.
The moral shades of grey in this novel are thick when it gets real.
“What would it do to someone, to survive the Holocaust only to realize that the other side wasn't going to save you? To understand that you were as subhuman under the stars and tripes, or the hammer and sickle, as you had been under the swastika? That everyone else was going to the biggest celebration in the history of the world while you died of hunger because people found you uncomfortable to think about?”
Black Flame is a work of art that doesn’t blink in talking about issues or in pushing the ick factor. Most importantly, for horror to break new ground these days is always welcome. Gretchen Felker Martin is a writer whose superpower is creating discomfort. This probably makes her life tougher than it needs to be, but it makes her fiction like the sharp edges of a rusty can, and that is why you should read it.
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