‘In Search of Darkness’ Book Review: A Must-Have for ’80s Horror Fans

In 2019, the documentary of 80s horror In Search of Darkness became an instant hit with horror fans. Now, a beautiful coffee table style companion book is available and is a must-own for all fans of one of horror’s greatest eras. The book is a walk down the horror aisle of the best mom and […]

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A Game of Rivals: The Conflicts That Shaped Horror Classic ‘The Black Cat’

In the 1930s, Universal laid claim to the two biggest horror stars of the era, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and it was only a matter of time before the pair would meet on screen. In 1932, only months after each rocketed to stardom in Dracula and Frankenstein respectively, the two were dressed in tuxedoes […]

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God, I Love This Street: The Brilliance of Joe Dante’s ‘The Burbs’ at 35

Every town seems to have that one house. The one that children walk by with hushed tones and dare each other to sneak onto the porch or ring the doorbell of. In the movies it’s the Myers House, 1428 Elm (at least in the later movies), or the House on Neibolt Street—usually run down and […]

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Love and Death: Why Lovecraftian ‘Spring’ Is One of the Most Romantic Horror Movies Ever Made

“Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.” -B.R. Haydon Love and death are the two most powerful forces in human experience. They are the engines of our stories because they are the engines of our existence. Our hopes, desires, heartbreaks, and fears so often hang on these two […]

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‘A Cut Below’ Book Review – A Joyful Celebration of the Weirdest B-Movies from the 1950s-1980s

I was a kid just as the drive-in craze was coming to a close. I can recall packing into our giant boat of a Chrysler station wagon and trekking out to see some first-run movies with my family back in the early 80s. I vividly remember seeing The Muppets Take Manhattan, Superman III (which terrified […]

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Still King of All Monsters: Revisiting the Original ‘Gojira’ at 70

It all began with the sound of thundering footsteps and a now-iconic roar before giving way to Akira Ifukube’s equally iconic music. Japanese cinema and monster movies worldwide would never be the same again. In the beginning, Godzilla represented the ultimate in fear and destruction. A creature so colossal, he could lay waste to entire […]

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Power Corrupts: Universal Monsters Classic ‘The Invisible Man’ at 90

Like most movies, The Invisible Man travelled a long and winding road to the silver screen, and perhaps longer and more winding than most. As biographer James Curtis put it in his book James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters, “The gestation of The Invisible Man was the lengthiest and most convoluted of […]

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We Who Walk Here Walk Alone: Revisiting ‘The Haunting’ at 60

“Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within…and whatever walked there, walked alone.” – Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House (1959). Of all the subgenres of horror, the haunted house story has provided the most opportunities for slow and subtle terror that creeps and crawls its way under the […]

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A Plague of Evil: Revisiting 1960’s Edgar Allan Poe Movie ‘House of Usher’ Starring Vincent Price

One of the great unsung traditions of horror is a character’s external environment reflecting their internal state. It has found its way into films as diverse as Repulsion (1965), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), and Relic (2020) to name just a few. Edgar Allan Poe was hardly the first […]

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Between Heaven and Hell: The Crisis of Faith at the Heart of ‘The Exorcist’

The Exorcist rocked the world 50 years ago and horror has never been the same since. It shocked audiences with its unflinching portrayals of disturbing medical examinations, levels of profanity that shot right past those considered “acceptable” for Hollywood studio films, and a scene in which a twelve-year-old girl masturbates with a crucifix. It was […]

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Forces of Nature: The Power of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ 60 Years Later

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds has become such an acknowledged classic and even cultural touchstone that it is easy to forget how revolutionary it was upon its 1963 release. For the Master of Suspense himself, it was a departure in many ways from his previous work while still a testament to his craft and devotion to […]

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Artificial Invasion: Why the World Is Ready for a New ‘Body Snatchers’ Movie

Every generation gets the Invasion of the Body Snatchers movie it deserves. To date, there have been four official adaptations of Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers and each one adapts its premise to the concerns of the time in which it was made. The deep core of the novel asks, “what exactly is […]

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A Matter of Life and Death: Externalizing Internal Struggles in ‘The Seventh Victim’

One of the unique aspects of the horror films produced by Val Lewton at RKO in the 1940s is the seriousness with which they discuss matters of mental illness. Even today, mental health issues are often tiptoed around, but in the forties, they were practically taboo. As discussed in previous entries in this column, Cat […]

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The King of 1983: ‘Cujo,’ ‘The Dead Zone’ and ‘Christine’ at 40

By 1983, Stephen King had rocketed to the top of the publishing world within a fairly short period of time. His first novel, Carrie, had been published only nine years before but he was already considered the modern master of the horror novel. The adaptations of his work, Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976), Tobe Hooper’s TV […]

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Strange Ideas: The Perpetual Relevance of ‘Witchfinder General’

In modern world history, few single years have been as tumultuous as 1968. The Vietnam War continued to drag on and had reached an unprecedented level of unpopularity. The assasinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy shocked the world. Protests against the war, for civil rights, and at the Democratic National Convention raged […]

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