I had been wanting to read Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home for quite a while, but had somehow never gotten around to it. I adored his 1972 book The Other, and the film adaptation of it is one of my favorite horror films of the decade. A while back, I was reading a post in a horror Facebook group where … More Book vs Movie: Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
While the giallo genre has a fairly rigid set of tropes that most films falling within its parameters adhere to (masked killer with gloves, a murder mystery element, ultra violent killings committed with bladed weapons, etc.), that isn’t to say that some directors didn’t try to do something a bit different within the loose confines … More Movies: All the Colors of the Dark (1972)
Dario Argento is of course no stranger to horror fans, being the mastermind behind such seminal giallo films as Deep Red and Tenebrae, as well as more lurid supernatural fantasias like Suspiria and Inferno. 1971’s The Cat O’Nine Tails (aka Il Gatto a Nove Code), only Argento’s second film, shows many trademarks of the director’s … More Movies: The Cat O’Nine Tails (1971)
In the case of Anne River Siddons’s 1978 novel The House Next Door, I was actually first turned on to it through Stephen King’s nonfiction classic Danse Macabre, in which he chose it as one of his ten best “modern” horror novels (as of 1980) and devoted an entire chapter to discussing its themes. I’ve … More Book vs Movie: The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons
In the mood for some Italian? Excellent; let’s mangia. Our movie we’re discussing is one I actually thought I hadn’t seen before, though when I got to one of the later scenes, I felt a definite tingle of recollection. See, when I was a kid, I saw a movie with this one scene that really … More Movies: The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971)
You know how sometimes when you’re bored and kinda hung over on a Sunday, and you go poking around YouTube looking for some comforting 1970s horror to watch while you inhale your hearty lunch of homemade Swedish meatballs? And you know how every now and then, you fortuitously stumble across a made-for-TV movie from 1977 … More Movies: The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977)
I chose today to focus on childhood books I loved and that helped to shape my writing identity, books that I still remember fondly decades later. These ten books, among the hundreds I read growing up, have stuck with me for various reasons over the years, and I would recommend any of them unreservedly to … More Favorite Creepy Books from My 70s Childhood
Roman Polanski, despite his rather grave personal failings, has made some absolutely champion horror films, his particular genius lying in his portrayal of claustrophobic paranoia and spiraling descents into madness. The Tenant (1976) was the third film in Polanski’s so-called ‘apartment trilogy,’ which also included Repulsion (1965) and Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The reader can check Wikipedia for a complete plot … More Movies: The Tenant (1976)
The Haunting of Julia was released in 1981 in the US, but came out in the UK in 1977 under the confusingly generic title Full Circle. It was based on the novel Julia by the phenomenal Peter Straub, who needs more film adaptations of his work, goddammit. It’s a low-key, atmospheric ghost story of the … More Movies: The Haunting of Julia (aka Full Circle) (1977)
Today I wanted to tackle one of the weirder American horror flicks from the 1970s, one that I’d seen pop up on a lot of people’s “best underrated 70s horror” lists but had only recently got around to seeing. Larry Cohen is probably best known to horrorphiles as the director of the It’s Alive killer baby series, … More Movies: God Told Me To (1976)
The Scare Salon 