NotLD
Duane Jones, Ben, AND this gif are all supercool:
movies/tv
Best Articles from . . . Lately
Decided to do this as a list this time, instead of letting some of them auto-embed—felt messy, having both kinds of links/previews. So, here’s the best of what I’ve been reading lately: “Crackdown on sexist ads outlaws bad female driver and inept dad commercials“ “Brandon Hobson on Recovering Cherokee Myths from His Grandfather’s Notebook“ “What
Best of 2018
Which is going to be a movie/TV-heavy list, for the first time ever. Not because my tastes or habits changed—fiction on the page is still and always where it’s at for me—but because, since I’m now judging for the World Fantasy Awards for 2018, it would feel a bit . . . weird and unclassy,
Off-Kilter Slashers
I mean, pretty much there’s two kinds of slashers, yes? Not talking “Excellent” and “Trying to Cash In” here, but “Straightforward” and . . . “Playing with the Genre,” I guess you could say? Which, of course Scream didn’t start, as in, it wasn’t first-first—the Golden Age was more self-aware than we give it credit
The Strangers: Prey at Night
Just re-re-watched this one, and, wow, holy everything, Batman, this is STILL my favorite horror movie of the year. By miles. Really? It’s the best slasher I can think of since . . . Happy Death Day, yeah. Which was far and away the best since . . . You’re Next, maybe? And before that it’d
The House that Jack Built
This is as solid a piece of film writing that I’ve seen for a while. Solid stuff. And, I imagine it’s on point? That its analysis and sort-of conclusions are spot-on-ish? I haven’t seen the film, I mean. Don’t think I’ve seen any Lars Von Trier, actually. People always tell me Anthichrist can kind of
Throwback Horror
Way back. First two seem to pretty much be ‘fun with effects’/let’s see what we can do. But Frankenstein, man, there’s a lot of horror seeds getting planted there, that are still blooming all these years later. 1896 1908 1910
VHS Book Covers
Not sure why, but I’ve been stashing these as I stumble onto them. Will add more as I find them, probably. They’re kind of cool. The Darnielle is more like the actual iridescent tape from a VHS, but still, it’s kind of on the same shelf: And, guess this is kind of the same? Taking
Best of 2018 so far—the December roundup
that “Herpes of the Heart” story: http://the-toast.net/2015/05/29/herpes-heart-short-story/ that comic strip: http://overcompensating.com/oc/index.php?comic=1243
SpongeGar
Remember when Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died, and, the picture on his site was just that birdcage he’d doodled, open and empty? Broke my heart and fixed it with a single image. Same here: I just wrote a haunted house novel that used a SpongeBob episode kind of as touchstone. SpongeBob, man, he’s deep in my
Favorite Horror Movies
By category, sub-genre, branch, type—whatever’s under “Horror” and’s on the movie shelf, and not getting too granular. But, “15,” right? I know. I tried to keep it to a properly spooky “13,” but things happen. Though, if you take #11 and #15 out (which would shatter me), as they’re not really ‘categories’—”Scariest,” “Perfect”—then this does
The Haunting of Hill House
Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series, I mean, not Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel*—though? I do kind of wonder if a whole generation will find a re-issue of The Haunting of Hill House, maybe even with a cover from this television series, and consider it this weird old-timey novelization that doesn’t have Theo being a sister, that puts
Video Palace
How about instead of an actual write-up for Shudder’s Video Palace podcast series—limited series, I guess—I’ll just do a cloud-gallery of associated stuff. Wish I could make it swirl:
On Zombies
Excellent graphic for this one: https://www.cpr.org/news/story/brains-rotting-flesh-and-infection-zombie-101-with-an-expert-cu-professor
Do You Like Scary Movies?
If you like a good gory time with some ridiculous storytelling and nothing but laughs, you can’t do better than Gravy: If you like that, then Murder Party‘s a sure bet: And it goes without saying that Trick ‘r Treat is called for this time of year: And, for something less silly that comes in
The Main Staples of Horror
For real horror, you need: an empty rocking chair, rocking a crackle-faced porcelain doll the close-up of an eyeball a spread-fingered hand on the other side of a window a tree swing, creaking back and forth and a cat flying out of every closet: doesn’t hurt to have a mysterious shape walking past a doorway,
Halloween 2018
Isn’t that mask just so expressive? It’s supposed to make Michael Myers faceless, but really it kind of gives him a soul. A dark, evil, tortured soul. Anyway, I think it’s going to be a touch before I get to actually talking about this latest version, BUT: if you haven’t seen it yet AND you
Zombie News
Man, was at the gym long about 11:15 yesterday, just having a good time reading a JS Breukelaar collection and sweating on various torture devices, when I got a call that maybe I could clean up and drive into my office on campus (like, MILES away) by noon, to talk to the newspeople for a