Wikipedia
Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol (: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet")—known as the Grand Guignol—was a theatre in the Pigalle area of Paris (at 20 bis, ). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in naturalistic horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil), to today's splatter films.
Grand Guignol refers to the former of Paris, which specialized in grisly horror shows.
Grand Guignol may also be:
- Any gruesome or gory drama or event, such as a Grande Dame Guignol
- Grand Guignol (album), album by Naked City
- Le Grand Guignol, album by The Seeker
- "Le Grand Guignol", song by Soft Cell from the album Cruelty Without Beauty
- "Grand Guignol", storyline in the comic book series Starman
- "Gesshoku Grand Guignol" (Lunar Eclipse Grand Guignol), song by the Japanese band Ali Project
- "Grand Guignol", song by Bajofondo from the album Mar Dulce
- Le Grand Guignol (band), avant-garde metal band from Luxembourg
Grand Guignol is the second full-length studio album released by John Zorn's band Naked City in 1992 on the Japanese Avant label. The album followed Torture Garden, which was a compilation of " hardcore miniatures" from Naked City and Grand Guignol. The album is notable for the inclusion of cover versions of pieces written by classical composers, the guest vocal of Bob Dorough, and also, like Torture Garden, a selection of "hardcore miniatures" (tracks 9-41) which are intense, fast-tempo, brief compositions, which feature the wailing of Zorn's alto sax, and the screams of Yamatsuka Eye.
The album was also released as part of Naked City: The Complete Studio Recordings on Tzadik Records in 2005.
Usage examples of "grand guignol".
Then, last but hardly least in terms of the grand guignol, comes the Greenes.
For the past couple of years, I had suffered grim, dark moments during which I was overcome with the impression that the world was nothing but a charnel house, created and set spinning in the void for the sole purpose of providing a stage for a cosmic Grand Guignol play-and this.
This lady of the night had managed to escape the attentions of Jack the Ripper, whom she chanced upon during his Grand Guignol farewell performance at Miller's Court.
To my mind this Kkkah character was one of the more loathsome items from Le Grand Guignol.
Perhaps his elevated position gave him a sense of superiority, as if he were watching, from a stage, that gathering of lunatics locked in a Grand Guignol feud, and at the sides, almost to the entrance, the little monsters, now uninterested in the action, nudging each other and giggling, like Annibale Cantalamessa and Pio Bo.
Through massive, shaded corridors of black basalt Ly and I walked amid slick and shiny walls with finely cut relief carvings, a Grand Guignol of conquest and atrocity, including buffalo sacrifices and crocodiles eating their victims.
Later there would be time to confront and, reluctantly, explore that Grand Guignol memory.