Children are often frightened by inexplicable things. When I was but a wee gothlet, for example, I was sent into paroxysms of terror by the bubbling cauldron sound effect at the beginning of the song “The Monster Mash,” and to this day I still have no idea why. Without fail, whenever the song came on … More Let’s Talk About the Weird 1974 Jack and the Beanstalk Anime
Initially slated to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival (which was cancelled due to COVID), Jonathan Cuartas’s feature-length debut My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To was instead picked up by Dark Sky Films, and in the autumn of that year appeared on several streaming services simultaneously, including Shudder, Amazon Prime, and … More Movies: My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020)
The 1967 classic Wait Until Dark was yet another film that I sought out as a kid in the 1980s because of its tense third act being mentioned favorably in Stephen King’s nonfiction magnum opus Danse Macabre. I remembered really loving the movie back then, so I was very excited to revisit it, since I … More Movies: Wait Until Dark (1967)
The year of 1976 has provided my biggest challenge yet, as far as winnowing my favorites down to just five; seriously, just a cursory glance of the horror films released that year produced an easy eight, and several more that might also make the cut if I was in a particular mood that day. But … More My Favorite Horror Movies from Every Year Since I Was Born: 1976
I saw Bug back when it was released in theaters in 2007 (it had actually made its debut in spring of 2006 at Cannes), and it really knocked my socks off, so for a long time I had been wanting to revisit it for my movie review series, and lo and behold, I finally got … More Movies: Bug (2006)
Two decades ago, back in the distant mists of 2002 (damn, I’m getting old), director Mick Garris organized what has to be one of the most epic horror dinner parties of all time at a restaurant in Sherman Oaks, California. In attendance were such genre stalwarts as John Carpenter, Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, Stuart … More Revisiting Masters of Horror (2006/2007)
The early to mid-1980s, for those (like me) who lived through it, was a very strange time. On the one hand, we had the ridiculously overblown, gold-plated glamor of Dallas and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous; and on the other hand, we had movies, TV shows, and even pop music bombarding us with low-key … More Movies: When the Wind Blows (1986)
This 1971 film appears on several lists around the internet as one of the classic giallo movies, though I feel like it doesn’t get as much attention as some of the other, more beloved works of the subgenre. That’s really a shame, because this is a brilliant giallo, and even though I loved it the … More Movies: Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)
So here we are with the second installment of this ongoing series; if you missed the first post, where I gave a bit of background on the short-lived Thriller TV program and discussed the first six episodes of season one, you can get caught up here. Otherwise, let’s dive right in with the next half-dozen! … More Revisiting Thriller with Boris Karloff: Season 1, Episodes 7-12
As should be apparent from some of my other posts and videos, I’m a big fan of slow-burn, psychological horror, so when I started hearing that this particular film—which premiered at Sundance in January of this year and drew a bit of buzz—had arrived on Shudder, I brewed myself a cup of peppermint tea and … More Movies: Watcher (2022)
The Scare Salon 