We’re coming in on a bit of a milestone here – in a couple of weeks, this blog will be 5 years old. I mean, that’s not so mature – it can’t buy cigarettes or vote or anything, but regardless, I’m proud to still be at it, five years in (and if it were a cheddar, it would be extra sharp with a bold, sharp bite). Who knows what it will grow up to be, but I feel we can at least breathe a sigh of relief that at this point, crib death is unlikely. And in that spirit of solace and joy, I thought it a good time to reflect back on some of what I consider to be my best work.
In these last five years, I think the character of the blog has stayed fairly constant, even if the publication schedule slowed considerably after the first year (to be fair, I started with a big folder of texts I’d already written, so it was easy to post twice a week – you might even call it cheating), and I have covered a wide range of films, books, and themes. I recently added a new page in the main menu – Themes, including groups of posts on the same topic or director (I just can’t stop writing about Lesbian Vampires or Fulci). If you’re new here, have a look. It could be a good starting point (besides this post, of course).
So, today, to celebrate this anniversary, I’m going to highlight a few of the texts of which I’m most proud (aiming for 10, might be 11 – Sophie only had to choose between two kids). Some of these have found a readership over the years (according to Google Analytics). Some haven’t really, but all have something that I love – an occasional turn of phrase that I take pride in, perhaps an observation I feel is significant, or in some cases, a vague feeling I managed to satisfyingly put a finger on. So, without further ado…
Edgar Allen Poe was one of my earliest entry points to the genre. Long before I ever considered myself a horror fan, I had my “Collected Works” and loved, primarily, his prose (though a couple of poems stuck – like many, my introduction in primary school was certainly “The Raven”). As long as I can remember, I’ve loved his story, “The Imp of the Perverse.” In it Poe evocatively describes a significant human psychological tendency that often goes unnoted. Here, I discuss Poe’s tale, but also get into this idea of the drive to “do wrong for wrong’s sake” and its implications for the horror genre. This is a topic that had been on my mind for years since first reading the story in high school and it felt freeing to put it down on the page.
I was totally into The Craft when it came out in 1996 and it still has a nostalgic place in my heart, but I also always felt somehow uncomfortable with it, like there was some messaging that left a bad taste in my mouth. In this post, I do praise what I think is lovable about the film, but also, I think I manage to offer a reading of its class politics that kinda turned me off. It was satisfying to think that out and put it into words. And I must say, it’s a reading I haven’t seen elsewhere of the film.
Bob Clark’s Black Christmas is just one of my absolute all-time favorites. Full of character, and characters, it is gorgeous, funny, dramatically rich, and at the end of the day, it is simply damn scary. I will always remember how the first time I saw it, when it was over, I had to go around my apartment, making sure all the lights were turned on and the doors and windows were locked. It really got under my skin. This is simply a celebratory post, trying to detail just what it is about this Christmas proto-slasher that works so well. I think occasionally, I’m successful.
Another beloved film, and in my opinion, so ahead of its time. It isn’t quite “meta” on the order of Scream, but coming at the tail end of the golden era of slashers, it really exists in dialogue with what had come before it. All while being so funny and playful and ironic, as well as occasionally actually disturbing and unsettling. It’s a perfect balance of cleverly and critically commenting on its own genre tropes, while at the same time, successfully enacting those tropes. It isn’t textual like Scream is – no one is talking about horror movies, but its perspective reads so strongly in the camera and the characters and the writing. It’s a surprisingly great movie and I rather like my description of it.
I’ve always had a deep affection both for King’s novel and Kubrick’s film, but they are so, so, so different. This isn’t about judging which is better (I know a certain Maine author has strong opinions on that point), but rather, I look at each on their own terms to see how, if anything, they complement each other. A few years back, I had the pleasure of catching Kubrick’s Shining at a midnight screening, and I came away from it with a new read on how the film works. For me, so much of their difference is rooted in the chosen main character. For King, it is clearly Jack, and it is a tragic story of an alcoholic father, who loves his family, giving in to his worst impulses, and becoming one who would do them grave harm. For Kubrick, I think the main character is really Danny, a young boy who loves his father, but is scared of him, who can’t really understand him, or what sometimes makes him and the rest of the horrifying world he inhabits so threatening. And that difference of perspective really changes everything – one is a terrifying tragedy and the other is cosmic horror. I go into it in much more detail in the post.
This one is a little different – rather than writing specifically about one film, or even five films, in this case, I dug into a sub-genre (and one that many would not term “horror”). One week, I watched perhaps 12 “youth runs wild” pictures, all about juvenile delinquents and ne’er do wells, generally from the 50s. They may not feature werewolves or vampires (though, actually, a couple do), but they still express a deep fear society was dealing with at that time of the young, of the still new concept of “the teenager.” These untamed beasts were seen as a threat to society, to the country, to themselves, and the fear of them was surfacing in popular culture in much the same way that aliens and giant insects were representing a terror of the “red threat,” This post was in preparation for writing a script for an homage/sendup of these flicks for my cabaret group, La Folie Retro Cabaret Show.
I really enjoyed putting this one together. The Bela Lugosi Dracula is of course iconic, but many have never seen the Spanish language version that was filmed on the same sets concurrently. Tod Browning shot his film during the day and George Melford got access to the sets at night. They are of course similar in many ways – essentially the same script (though there are points of divergence), many of the same shots even, but they are ultimately very different films, each with its own significant strengths (which are interestingly often weak points for the other film). I dig through both in some detail, often with comparative screenshots. (Also, I briefly touch on the Frank Langella 1977 Dracula, but the meat and potatoes of the post are the 1931 films.) I feel the comparison yields insight and feel good about the work done here.
Sleepaway Camp is one of those “guilty pleasures” for a lot of people. Campy and trashy and sleazy and fun. But I have no guilt – I think it’s actually quite a good movie, and in spite of falling into a trope which is often quite harmful (I won’t name it here because it is a big spoiler), I feel it is effectively very progressive and positive. Was it meant to be? Doubtful. I can only assume it was trying to be shocking and transgressive, but even if accidentally, I feel like this mean little slasher that features children being murdered at summer camp rather has its heart in a good place. And the fact that it isn’t “trying” to promote something “good” means that it is ironically better able to do so than something that is and which therefore, only comes across as strident and hectoring. And it is just truly a blast. I’m glad I was able to dig into these ideas.
I am quite the fan of Grady Hendrix and was really struck by his most recent novel – seriously, I remember staying up way too late, reading perhaps the last hundred pages – the whole time trying to stop the bed from shaking cause I couldn’t stop weeping, but I didn’t want to wake up my wife who was sleeping beside me. Great book – dealing with both a very real, historical harm that was done to groups of young women, and also supernatural horrors and things that cannot be fully understood. But reading it also put me in mind of a strong current in at least contemporary horror – what can be termed “good for her” flicks and I wanted to explore that theme more broadly. I think there are many interesting discussions to be had around the topic, and I really enjoyed getting into it a little bit – some writing about books and movies, some theorizing, some personal response. This is one of my favorite posts.
I came out of seeing Sinners in the cinema just all abuzz with excitement. I’d found it thrilling and moving and cool, rich with feeling and history. But the more I thought about it, I also found the movie challenging on a personal level. There were ideas being communicated that I clashed with emotionally, if not intellectually – issues of culture and cultural appropriation and cultural siloing. It really stayed with me on both levels – for the next week I found myself listening to the soundtrack and vibing with it, but I also found myself really thinking about its argument. Writing about the film was an interesting process, trying to engage honestly and emotionally with the perspective of the film, one that I didn’t share, but which I could appreciate.
The most recent inclusion on this list – one could argue that William Friedkin’s Cruising isn’t even a horror movie, but in my humble opinion, one would be wrong. Honestly, on first viewing, it simply blew me away – so rich and weird and hard to get a clean read on. I had a great time dwelling on this picture and trying to put my thoughts into some kind of order. And I think that I did. Ambiguous and sleazy and exploitative and artful – it really does hit my sweet spots.
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And there we are – five years down. Now, let’s see what the future holds. Will I keep writing about Lesbian Vampires? Probably, but I’ve covered all the classics and contemporaries don’t quite scratch the same itch. Will I keep digging into Fulci? I’ll always love him, but I may have exhausted most of his canon that I’m likely to write about. Will I carry on down the rabbit hole of Italian genre work? Indubitably. Shakespeare wrote that “past is prologue,” so I imagine in many ways my pet themes will continue to occupy me. But I think there may be some new paths ahead as well – I feel way too uneducated on a lot of international horror. Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Japan – I’ve barely scratched the surface and I know there is so much great stuff out there. There’s still a lot of exploitation fare that I find fascinating, but I haven’t seen enough of – like I’ve only seen one Herschell Gordon Lewis flick. I’ve covered a lot of Italian stuff, but that road goes on forever, and I think I’ve only written about three Bavas, and he deserves so much more. I think in the process of thinking and writing about this stuff for the last five years, one thing I’ve identified is that I really appreciate when value is found in the underappreciated. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed in thinking about horror, but finding the art, the meaning, the beauty, the passion in something discounted as merely prurient trash is deeply satisfying. And I’m sure there is no end to the amount of works out there worthy of consideration. Miles to go before I sleep and all.
Thank you for being here with me. Whatever brought you to my page, I’m happy to have you and I hope you have a look around. Check out the menu above to see different categories of posts on offer. And if something catches your interest, I’d love to hear from you – please feel free to comment on anything. I love writing here, but blogging can be lonely work, and it would be so nice to know how you found me and try to take the conversation forward.
Until then, I wish you well out there in the digital darkness…
Ah, tradition, late tradition. A tradition of lateness.
Growing up, my family was always a presents at midnight on Xmas Eve family. The idea was, starting at 9-10pm, we’d gather in the living room around the cardboard fireplace and have a little party – snacks and Christmas music and eggnog and such, and wait until the proverbial clock struck twelve before any presents could be exchanged.
At least that was what we told ourselves. In actuality, we had moved about a 5-8 hour drive from my grandmother’s house (traffic dependent and on Dec. 24th, you could be sure there would be traffic), so it was as or more likely that we wouldn’t finish our journey back to the old homestead before 1 or 2 in the morning. When we got there, my grandma might be asleep, and so then we would start preparing snacks and get the decorations up from the basement. I’m sure that there were Christmas Eve’s when we didn’t end up actually opening gifts until well after sunrise on Christmas Day.
Following Vonnegut, so it goes…
And it is no less true here, or in any other aspect of life. In theory, every year, I do an end-of-year summation, and every year, I don’t even start it until January. This year, publishing closer to Valentine’s Day than Christmas, I admit I feel a degree of shame (at this rate, eventually I’ll be publishing a 2028 sum up in 2030).
As always, I’m not the best at keeping up with new releases (though I’ve got a couple), so I make no claim to list the “best of 2025” (I watched about 20 horror flicks released last year, so a “10 best” list doesn’t mean much).
So, this is a list of my ten favorite new watches (from any year) that I haven’t written about yet at length. Some of them, I’d intended to devote a full post to. Some of them I just really liked and would like to promote them to all of you lovely eyeballs out there in the dark.
These come in the order of watching. Some spoilers ahead…
Smile 2 (2024)
I liked but did not love the 2022 predecessor to this. It had elements to appreciate, but didn’t entirely stay with me. But I really got into the sequel. It built on the foundation of the first, delivering solid scares and some cool, creepy stuff, but also grounding itself in a solid story of one person’s very believable struggles. The first was a simple curse movie scare fest that jumped on the ever popular “all modern horror movies have to be about trauma” bandwagon, but the sequel really had its own tale to tell (while, yes, still dealing with a curse, a demon, creepy smiling people, and the oh so common t-word).
We follow Skye Riley, a young pop star trying to re-enter the limelight after falling down a rabbit hole of pain med addiction and self-hatred, following a terrible accident which had resulted in the death of her boyfriend. It’s a familiar vibe and Naomi Scott is great in the part. I believe her drama. But I also believe her pop stardom, which brings some real energy to the proceedings. Given the weight of what she’s already going through, and how hard she’s already pushing back against it to move forward in her life, when she gets cursed, it lands with an extra punch and what happens to her carries additional tragedy. Working so hard to recover, to live, only to succumb to the madness and self-destruction that this demonic entity brings is particularly sad.
But for all of this ‘sadness,’ what I loved here was the vibrancy, the desperate force pushing up against all that is pulling down. It is a fun movie. The music, the dance, the style all energize. The typical “horror movie stuff” (jump scares, creep outs, misdirects, etc.) land pretty well, with a couple of moments successfully getting to me, and I feel it makes some big swings with a strong, feel bad ending that is at once terrible and enjoyable in its ambition, all carried out in a pretty cool, full stadium climax.
But what stands out the most to me was one stellar sequence of Skye’s curse haunting her, pushing her towards madness. As always in these movies, she is regularly beset upon by creepy visions of people smiling menacingly at her, but there is one scene in her apartment when dancers with whom we’d previously seen her rehearsing start appearing and hunting her throughout her home. In the earlier dance scene, they had been very much manipulating her body, making an object of her. Now, their choreography has them moving as one inhuman mass, filling hallways, climbing walls, stopping with sudden, terrifying, smiling stillness, and by the end, still manipulating her body as an object, mirroring the earlier dance. You feel the connection between the movement work that is part of her career, her performance, her art, and this apparition, but it has been repurposed and recontextualized so well and so effectively. It is really scary, and so refreshing in the scare being based in simply well trained bodies performing at a high level, rather than any kind of special effects, computer generated or otherwise. It’s an exceptional scene in a solidly enjoyable horror flick.
Hellbender (2021)
I’d heard for years that this was a good one and I’m really happy to have finally checked it out. A truly independent production, written, acted, and filmed by a family of 4 on their own property during Covid lockdowns, I was genuinely impressed with how well this all came together. This Adams Family is one to watch going forward.
Fittingly for such a small film (but it feels bigger) made by blood relatives, this is really all about family. Izzy lives with her mother in a remote house in the woods, and has always been told that she has very serious medical conditions that preclude her from being anywhere near other people. Home schooled, she has lived her whole young life in a state of quarantine lockdown, alone with her mom. But until the events of the film, it doesn’t seem that she’s felt particularly restricted. The two of them have a warm, loving relationship, and they have fun together, notably in the form of their two woman metal band which regularly practices, but never gets to play a gig.
The music plays a huge role in the film. When they don their corpse paint and rock out, it sounds cool and sets an atmosphere, but more importantly, I felt connected to the depth of their relationship – the ways they can play together, create together, be expressive together. It feels rich and meaningful, and in the music, powerfully freeing. Izzy’s mom seems cool – not like some sort of religious extremist trying to protect her delicate daughter from the corruptions of the world.
Thus (significant spoiler coming), when a tragic penny drops and we come to understand that its actually the other way around and that she, a witch, is in fact trying to protect the world (and herself) from the potential danger her daughter poses, it makes sense and the film and their relationship is pushed into a new conflict, crisis, and dark potential.
It is all folksy and witchy as all get out, and I loved its magic. It felt specific and unique – all to do with blood and earth and life and power. It is messy hedge craft, but it felt grounded in internal logic. Furthermore, the film reveals by slow drips a really interesting and novel mythology, and I enjoyed watching that click into place, particularly given how tied it is to the emotional arc of the story. It is exciting to see Izzy grow into what she can be, but there is also a horror to it. Everything has a cost in this life. Nothing is free. It is impossible to claim power without doing harm, and there is no going back. Great little movie and I really look forward to seeing more from the Adams’s. I know they’ve got a couple other flicks. I should give them a try.
(edit: I just watched their new release on Shudder – Mother of Flies – I appreciated it more than I loved it, but there’s still a lot to recommend, and it gets major extra points for its truly independent nature and knockout production design – check it out!)
Dead Talents Society (2024)
This was one that I’d thought I’d write a full post about, but somehow just never found the time. What a hoot! So fresh and fun – rooted in horror movie conventions and tropes, but ultimately deeply moving, with something to say. I think I first heard about it on the Colors of the Dark podcast, with co-host Elric Kane likening it to One Cut of the Dead (2017) in its balance of being set around “horror” stuff, but really being more about a very warm hearted emotional core; I think quite an apt comparison.
From writer-director John Hsu, who had previously delivered the worthy but (in my opinion) not entirely satisfying Detention (2019) (a fascinating film in its own right, based on a popular video game and detailing a particularly dark and surprisingly long period in Taiwan’s history through the lens of a creepy ghost story), this is a terrifically entertaining story of a newly dead girl who’d never excelled in life now trying to find success as a ghost.
The conceit of the film is that once the survivors of one dead stop thinking of them and leaving out offerings, the ghost begin to fade, but if they can establish themselves as a ghost story that people know and are frightened of, they can persist. Thus there is a whole dead society, essentially ghostly influencers chasing scares, fighting for the best spots to haunt, fighting to be remembered and known.
It’s a device that allows for endless play with the tropes of Asian ghost cinema – lots of elements of J-horror and K-horror. So many ghosts take on the personas and tricks of apparitions that might be familiar from Ringu, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, or Noroi: The Curse, among many others, and there’s a great deal of fun to be had with the behind the scenes comedy of how they create their best scares, all of the top ghosts having their own support teams that serve as costumers, stagehands, and technicians. These elements aren’t really scary for the viewer cause it’s all seen from backstage, but there is great horror movie fun to be had in seeing it all created. I think a bit of watching the technicians in Cabin in the Woods manipulating the young sacrifices into splitting up or dropping a knife they clearly shouldn’t so the horror tropes play out as they must.
But the problem for our young protagonist is that she’s just not particularly good at it all. I read an interview with Hsu where he described his inspiration for the film. He’d been watching a horror movie that didn’t really work for him. He could see some ghost working so hard to scare, but he wasn’t reacting, and it just made him cry. It was so sad to see this apparition giving it all to no effect. So it is with the unnamed rookie at the center of the film. She is doing everything she can, but just can’t get there, though it is in a moment of crying out her frustration at her own failure that she comes the closest.
At the heart of this all is a deeply sympathetic and heartfelt tribute to the ordinary. Most people will never be exceptional – it’s mathematically impossible. And yet we are all instilled with the dream that we might be, and therefore, the burden that we must be, and that if we aren’t, we’re failures, losers – worthless disappointments. Furthermore, I don’t want to make uninformed cultural leaps, but (based on cultural stereotypes and my experiences teaching English in mainland China) I’m guessing that in Hsu’s native Taiwan, parents can be particularly demanding when it comes to expectations of their children’s success, potentially rooting this all in Hsu’s own emotional, personal experience.
There is endless heart to this deeply funny movie about ghosts making gory spectacles of themselves to frighten the living, but more than anything else, I feel it carries a moving, grounded message of self-acceptance, of loving yourself even if you never rise above the crowd. A person still has value, even if they’ll never be a star. I laughed, I cried. It was better than Cats (not difficult, but still).
The Exorcism (2024)
This is an interesting case. I understand that of the two films released in 2024 in which Russell Crowe played an exorcist, this was the one not particularly well received (I still haven’t seen The Pope’s Exorcist, but I’ve heard it’s good, goofy fun). Furthermore, I’m on the record on this here blog as not being much of a fan of exorcism films – in fact, I tend to actively dislike them, turned off by the extent to which they often come across as propaganda for Christianity, or at least religiosity.
But I really loved this. Was it a perfect movie? Not at all. Was it even a good movie? Maybe not. But I was utterly pulled in by it, and genuinely moved on both dramatic and horror levels by its story of a down on his luck actor struggling with substance abuse issues trying to repair a relationship with his estranged daughter as he takes on the role of a priest in an exorcism film, the set of which might be possessed itself – in the process of filming, he starts to unravel, and for his daughter it’s unclear if he’s simply relapsing or if there is an actual supernatural threat. I was captivated from the drop and found it consistently interesting and emotionally stirring. But I think for the film to fully connect and feel more meaningful, some meta-information is necessary.
The Exorcism is directed by Joshua John Miller and was co-written by he and his partner, M.A. Fortin, and I couldn’t help but read it as a deeply personal movie. Miller’s father was Jason Miller, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and most notably as pertains to this flick, the actor who portrayed the troubled Father Karras in The Exorcist (1973). He also, as I have heard, struggled with alcohol throughout much of his adult life. Honestly, that’s everything I know of his biography, but with that seed planted in my brain, even though I heard an interview where Miller claimed this was not about his father, it just felt so autobiographical, so real and raw.
In this story that does ultimately become supernatural, the substance abusing parent tries so hard to do right by his child and carries such shame when he so consistently fails her. On the surface, this is a fairly tropey little scare flick that has some ideas but rarely surprises. But for me, it was so infused with love and regret and a kind of wish fulfillment – by the end, the troubled parent does rise to the challenge. I do not actually know anything about Miller’s relationship with his father, and I could simply be projecting, but I was hit hard by how confessional and revealing and loving it seemed to be.
Also, I really enjoyed David Hyde Pierce in a supporting role as a consulting priest working on the movie. He’s pretty intense here and it was something I hadn’t seen from him before.
Mute Witness (1995)
Speaking of intense – who boy, was this a ride. More a thriller than straight horror, this story of a mute practical effects makeup artist working on a horror film being cheaply produced in newly open for business early 90s Russia, who accidentally witnesses a snuff film being shot on set after hours and gets caught up in a twisty tale of murder and the mob and art and commerce, is just non-stop tense excitement, the action running as endlessly as this very sentence, which is topping out at about 100 words – yeesh (laconic I am not). Probably half of the run time consists in a single near wordless chase scene as she evades capture by the killers. It is cleverly plotted, thrillingly shot, and had me holding my breath for minutes at a time.
A real calling card for first time director (he also wrote and produced), Anthony Waller, you’d expect him to really professionally thrive after this. Unfortunately, his next effort was 1997’s An American Werewolf in Paris, a follow up to the classic John Landis flick – Sadly though, I remember this sequel being – how can I put this politely – abysmal. But based on the strength of his first movie, which was just so well put together and exciting and smart, perhaps I ought to give his second film another chance. Perhaps at this point I could look past the ugly 90s CGI and see a hidden gem beneath. We’ll see.
Anyway, Mute Witness is stylish, chilling, and totally worth your time. It’s all about plot and effect in the moment and I can’t say that a lot of its ever twisting story has stayed with me in the half year since I watched it, but I remember being just on the edge of my seat the whole time and having a genuine blast. It could be time for a re-watch.
Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
I just love me a town with a secret. Some traveler comes to a new place where everything just seems off. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but things are clearly not right – this is not ok – you are not safe. And in the best cases, you’ll never truly understand why. So it is in this truly creepy Spanish sundrenched horror flick.
A British couple, Tom and Evelyn, who’s in a late stage of pregnancy, book a small boat to go visit the idyllic little Spanish island where Tom had had a great time as a young man. They go to get away from the noise and crowds on the mainland, and at this they do succeed, cause this place just seems deserted at first, and quite recently so. All they can find after a while are a few silent children. Or the children find them.
I feel like there’s a connection between this and The Birds (1963). In Hitchcock’s film, based on a story by Daphne du Maurier, we never really learn how this has come to pass – what has made all the avians so homicidal so suddenly. And yet, there is a feeling, maybe more in the story than the film, that it is some kind of revenge of the environment on the polluting, destroying, unthinking human world. So it is, here, but in this case, some switch has flipped in the children and no adult is safe.
Birds
We don’t understand how this is happening, but it seems like the bloodlust gets passed almost like a contagion, and (significant spoilers ahead) the film ends with the same apocalyptic satisfaction as many a zombie flick as a couple of tykes hop on a boat and head for the mainland, wondering if kids there will play like they do.
Children
Just as I enjoy the mysterious setting, I also always appreciate a horror film that can maintain success when you can see everything. This is daylight horror, the heat beating down upon everyone, ratcheting up tension. The land is parched and the British couple is in a state of distress before any children start hunting them. It’s a good scary movie. And it goes places – like wow, major points for not holding back. At all. Eventually Tom answers the question of the title, and learns that he will kill a child if he needs to. And it gets brutal.
And then there is one scene, one special scene, that even with spoiler warnings I don’t want to give away, but, oof. When the contagion of killing comes to one particularly young one, it is a bold move on the part of Serrador, the director. Respect.
Finally, while the mystery of this killing is never explained, there is a feeling of an emotional logic behind it. As with the birds in the previously referenced classic, the human world is not kind to children. We hear radio reports of atrocities done. There is abuse and neglect, and harm never ceases. Thus it feels as if this mania for murder is somehow the emotional result of the ways that adults have ever failed the young. This kind of poetic logic is so much more satisfying than a third act info dump about a curse or an experiment or whatever plotting element a lesser film might have introduced.
Only one negative note on this front, the film begins with perhaps a 10 minute sequence of real footage of children as victims of war and poverty and all manner of human evils. I understand what these clips are doing there, but as actual documentary footage, they are a hard watch, and in my opinion, an unnecessary watch. We get it – there are real life horrors being committed and children unfairly get so much of the brunt of it all – but I want to enjoy my horror movie and not just subject myself to raw images of the holocaust and the like. I suggest you do yourself a favor and just skip it. I can pretty much promise sparing yourself that will not detract from your experience of the rest of the film.
Final Destination Bloodlines (2025)
I’m not sure quite how this happened, but before 2025, I’d never gotten around to watching any of the Final Destination films. But last summer, all but the newest showed up on a streamer I have and I decided to start working my way through the series. And I’m so glad I did. Some of them are pretty great. And the others are movies too. But seriously, the conceit of an unseen, but still personified, willful Death serving as the killer of a slasher-esque body count flick is fun, particularly with the potential for playful creativity in the Rube-Goldberg device accident set pieces, as Death repeatedly sets in motion complicated series of events that kill off his targets in what looks like (fairly extreme, but that’s a lot of the fun too) accidents. And all of the films, this included, are such a hoot in teasing what might be the source of the next mayhem, with lots of false starts and potential danger around every corner to keep you guessing.
Weirdly, I think I particularly enjoyed watching these because at the time, I was doing a lot of carpentry, frequently up on a high ladder, in somewhat precarious positions, with the ever present threat of human error, or just inopportune gusts of wind, looming over my delicate head. Nothing happened. I was fine. Always have been so far. But it somehow made these movies more fun, rather than offputting (which I might have expected them to be, given my circumstances).
So when at the end of the summer, the 6th and latest outing (which sure feels like it should be the final one, but I understand they’ve announced there will be more – not to mention the fact that part 5 had felt even more final than this) came to streaming, I was excited to pop a bag of popcorn and take it in. And I was not disappointed in the least.
The initial inciting incident of cheated death on the Sky Needle-esque tower is a big opening (as these films often do quite well – Part 2 might be my least favorite film of the series, but the initial scene on the highway with the log truck cannot be scoffed at). I enjoyed the emotion of it, its stylishness, and the real excitement as it all goes to hell. And following that, there are so many great death scenes pulled off with real verve, real flair. You know things will go poorly for all involved, but the movie is so playful, teasing how it might or might not happen this time, and it really lands some great surprises. At least one sequence I had to immediately rewind and watch a second time, so perfectly had it been executed. It was like a perfect passage in a book that you need to re-read and truly savor before moving on.
So all of that – all of the stuff you go to a Final Destination movie for – is pretty great, but there was one more element that really got me, and stayed with me more than anything else (important spoiler coming). From the beginning, Tony Todd, star of one of my favorite movies of any genre, Candyman (1992), among many many others, had been with the franchise, primarily as a mysterious undertaker who provides ominous expository explanations into Death’s intentions in his rich, gravelly baritone. I think he was in every installment, though in some, they weirdly recast him, as a voice on the phone, or a cinema usher. But here, he reclaims his initial role, with a bit of backstory connecting his character to our opening scene, and, knowing that Death will be coming for him soon, he gives one final gravitas laden speech before he tips his hat and makes his exit: “I intend to enjoy the time I have left. And I suggest you do the same. Life is precious. Enjoy every single second. You never know when… Good Luck.”
The thing is, before the film was released, Todd had already died of stomach cancer. That context alone made these lines poignant. I’d come to this movie for a bloody good time, not to find myself weeping, and yet there I was. Later I read that, knowing that he was very sick and wouldn’t get better, he had improvised the line as a final goodbye to his work and his fans and co-workers, and it was all the more moving for it.
The movie is a great Final Destination flick. But it also features a surprisingly powerful little moment of life. As a fan of Todd’s, I am so grateful to have witnessed it.
Hocus Pocus (1993)
So I know this one is beloved of many, a core Halloween movie of their childhoods that helped inculcate in them a love of the macabre and all things witchy. But I just never gave it a chance. I think I was 14 when it came out and I just felt too old for a silly looking Disney kids movie, the trailers of which had done it few favors. Well, shows what I knew, cause now that I’m in my late 40s, I have no qualms about watching a frivolous film for children and I rather loved it.
I can’t say this is a perfect movie. Some of it does really feel a bit more like a made-for-TV Disney channel release than I would have liked (particularly whenever it was exclusively focused on the school bullying/flirtation drama of the young cast). But if you go in ready to sit through some saccharine, you will be rewarded with a terrifically fun kids witch movie, full of energy and humor that lands, and just Halloween vibes out the wazoo. Seriously, I could imagine making this an annual Halloween watch, as I know it is for many folks.
Also, it has horror touches that I was honestly a bit shocked by. For something so sweet, it has no shortage of actual danger: witches that do actually suck the life out of children and kill them, those witches are hanged until they are dead (though of course they come back a couple hundred years later), a whole town is cursed to dance until they die (they are saved, but the curse is seriously meant), a cute talking cat is killed twice (and the second time it sticks), the witches are also killed a second time (in this case, being burned to ash in a pottery kiln), a zombie is raised, children are lured to their intended doom by a sweet song, and by the end the villainous witches, who are solidly, unrepentantly EVIL, but are no less the most fun and lovable part of the movie, meet their third and final deaths in a churchyard. This is a light, fun children’s movie, but it fully commits to its story and is willing to put the kids in serious danger. And it really works.
And I’ve just got to sing the praises of Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy as the witchy Sanderson sisters at the center of it all. Their stylized performances are just pitch perfect, walking a delicious line between goofy and dangerous, portraying funny, sinister, child eating monsters, who are just so perfectly wacky and so precisely drawn with real craft and vocal and physical precision. Also, I had no idea Sarah Jessica Parker could be that hilarious. I never got into Sex and the City, but I feel somehow that when she landed that show, and it really made her a star, she missed her calling in drawing room farce.
So yeah, if you’ve never checked out this gloriously Halloweeny flick, do yourself a favor and watch it post haste!
The Thing from another World (1951)
Howard Hawks is one of those old Hollywood names with which I’ve long been familiar without actually seeing any of his work. A prolific director, producer, and screenwriter, as I understand, his films often featured the thrill of no nonsense men working together at a high level to achieve difficult things. He also pioneered the archetype of the “Hawksian Woman,” a tough talking masculine female character who never fails in undercutting those men’s pomposity. That is all on strong display here in this genuinely exciting adaptation of the novella Who Goes There?
I love when I finally get around to a bit of “horror homework” and find that it is totally justified in its acclaim. This 1951 alien invasion flick (the 50s not being famously good for horror, but following this, being full of aliens) was off like a shot from the get go, as a group of journalists, military men, and scientists set off to the arctic circle to investigate what seems to be a spacecraft that’s landed there. The set up is exciting, but so is everything else about this movie. Everyone talks a mile a minute, often over each other in a delirious balance between being absolutely naturalistic and highly stylized – cause it isn’t a mess – but rather a taut violin string being pulled tighter and tighter.
And it isn’t only the way of speaking – the ensemble acting is at such a high level – dynamics between characters in constant flow – everything is received and responded to and just so alive. Small actions, props changing hands, jokes told, friends needled for their foibles, and lovers flirted with through trading of barbs: it is non-stop and breathless, never letting the film’s tension drop, and grounding its sense of adventure and fear in believable relationships. This is effective for the action and the horror, but at the end of the day, it is also just fun, bringing to mind much later scenes of characters shooting the shit such as Vincent and Jules talking about hamburgers in Pulp Fiction, or Laurie and the girls talking about school at the beginning of Halloween. And speaking of “girls,” I just loved Margaret Sheridan’s “Hawksian” brassy broad, Nikki. I didn’t need the romance between her and the Captain, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of her sharp, acerbic screen time, and appreciated that she gets to make a real contribution to the action (I can think of other 50s sci fi where the lone woman in the picture is relegated to bringing the men coffee and sandwiches).
But this is a horror blog and this movie gets scary. I was honestly impressed with how intense it can be. The setting is so isolated and the characters are utterly vulnerable in it. The alien itself isn’t a whole lot to look at, but it is big and powerful, and can appear and attack in a burst. There are jump scares and rising dread, and hushed, excited, fearful sequences of hunting and hiding and trying to lay a trap for this danger from another world. And it must be said that this movie contains at least one top shelf scene of terror and action that I just can’t imagine could have been safely executed, however many precautions were taken. Having determined that the alien is susceptible to heat, the men lure it into a closed room where they douse it with kerosene and light it on fire. And then they keep throwing more oil onto the already burning creature. I think there’s one cut in the scene, but mostly, this is done in one take, on a cramped set, with a bunch of actors among the burning crates. It is terrifying and impressive – really something special, and groundbreaking – I’ve read it was the first full body burn effect of its kind.
Finally, I was struck by something in the ethos of this movie. When I think of 50s alien invasion movies, the conventional wisdom that comes to mind is that it’s all a thinly veiled metaphor for creeping communism, during a McCarthy-esque red scare. But in this case, while the cast is predominantly military, you have a sense that they are stuck in a bind between a monster from beyond the stars and their superiors in Washington who want a potential new weapon preserved. One side wants to destroy them and the other will cold-bloodedly use them, sacrificing their lives for “the greater good.” Meanwhile, our protagonists are fighting for their own survival, orders be damned. It gave a very different feeling than I’d expected, both heightening the threat as they have no support, no one in their corner, and freeing the film of what I’d expected to be at least a bit of propagandistic messaging.
This was a great movie that really stands the test of time. I can’t wait to watch it again.
Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)
This was a great surprise. The work of Hammer Studios has long been a blind spot for me. I know that for many Brits of a certain age, Hammer was synonymous with horror, but I’ve still only seen a handful (maybe this will be the year to remedy that), maybe fewer than 10, and while I have loved some of those, they haven’t given me the motivation to run the series, as it were. I’d heard the title of this movie for a while and had expected something quite campy. I knew that by the early 70s, Hammer (and film in England in general) had far greater license for titillation, and I thought this sex swapping iteration of Stevenson’s novel would play more as a bit of a joke, but as directed by Hammer mainstay, Roy Ward Baker (of The Vampire Lovers, among many, many others), it is played absolutely straight, pun intended. And in this, it delivers classic, classy, good old horror style, bubbling over with atmosphere and suspense, as well as a shockingly modern exploration of gender in its narrative, treated with a truly disarming sensitivity and humanity. Shocked, I tells ya, shocked!
Story wise, this is an amalgamation of Jekyll & Hyde, the murders of Jack the Ripper, and the historical case of the grave robbers/killers, Burke and Hare, all with a gender bending twist. Seeking to create an elixir of life, Dr. Jekyll starts sourcing female bodies to harvest their hormones, convinced that the secrets of life lie in their mysterious endocrinology; at first from the morgue, later from the shady resurrection men, and finally taking matters into his own bloodied hands, from the streets. But what he hadn’t expected was that while the elixir could, in fact, extend life, it would also change the sex of any male subject to female in the process.
In the beginning, he is tortured by the cost of his experiments, but bolsters his will, knowing that the scientific benefits are worth the cost, but once he becomes his own subject, unleashing his feminine side, the seductive Edwige Hyde, it becomes more a matter of Hyde killing to prolong her own existence. She’s a killer to be sure, but like a vampire, we understand this bloodshed is necessary for her to go on. Also, like a vampire, she is just sexy and cool, unhampered by “morality” – like a Disney villainesse who takes her top off and stabs prostitutes. But I think a really interesting detail in all this is that once Hyde first comes into existence, the line between her and Jekyll is blurred. Are they totally separate consciousnesses? We have reason to doubt that. When first transformed, are we watching a brand new person discover herself, or are we watching the same person as before rediscover themselves after a profound transition? It’s not entirely clear. Is he fighting to remain himself and not let this discreet personality overwhelm him, or has he discovered that he prefers life as Edwige and is in crisis about what that means for him, the importance of his own sex and gender cast into a destabilizing doubt? What I feel we do know is that she is not his “evil” side, the killer within. He’d already been a killer, and before that, complicit in killings. She is simply his feminine side, and in that femininity, she comes across as more confident, more bold, more free. And he can’t handle it or her.
Past all that, it is really solid, classic horror on a budget. Foggy old London town, a scream in the night, blood splattered across an alley wall. Baker does so much with quite little and I was utterly taken in by the vibes and the style. And there are a couple of just tremendous sequences of clever, effective filmmaking. Late in the film, Hyde has decided to take the blood of the young ingénue that gives Jekyll some reason to continue as a man, and she follows the young girl through the darkened, murky alleys, gleaming blade brandished in her fist. Throughout the hunt, the soundtrack drops out and we are left with only footsteps and the swish of Hyde’s crinoline petticoat. It is a quiet, gendered sound and it grows more and more threatening as Hyde nears on her target, its feminine delicacy much scarier than something more bombastic. It’s a simple choice, but so effective.
But I think the centerpiece of the film has to be the first transformation from Jekyll to Hyde, featuring the kind of in-camera movie magic that I just adore. He drinks the formula and starts to react, and then in one long shot we watch him approach the mirror, looking into it and seeing himself. The camera moves between him and the mirror to watch him fall back into a chair, head in hands, lingering there for a while before finally coming behind him, looking over his shoulder into the mirror once more. But now, as thinner, less hairy knuckled fingers drop from the face, we see Hyde’s feminine features looking back from the glass. The change has been worked. Edwige, in all her glory, is here, and she is bad! It’s a great trick of the camera, I assume carried out, by virtue of a team of grips moving the real mirror out of the way and replacing it with essentially a window onto an identical room where the actress playing Hyde (Martine Beswick, who’s great) is now seen. But it all happens in one take and the first time I watched it, I just bought the magic of what I was seeing without question. It was only later that I went back and was astounded at how seamlessly it had been pulled off. Now it would so easily be done with computers, but Baker’s simply designed (though probably quite difficult to actually do) mechanical illusion just amazes. I recommend watching the whole movie – it’s great. But if not, at least do yourself the favor of checking out this one bit of exemplary cinematic trickery.
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So that was 2025. I watched 121 horror flicks, 86 of which were new for me. These were the ten best of those, not counting the 18 new watches I already wrote about last year. I managed 11 posts through the year. I would have liked to do more, but life is hard, you know, and as an exercise that largely feels like throwing carefully chosen words into an uncaring void, let’s say this is good enough. But every year, I hope to do better, so it’s 2026 now. Let’s see what’s coming.
Wherever and whoever you are out there in the darkness, thanks for being here with me and giving your time and attention. I wish you all the best in the year to come. Unless you’re a jerk. Try not to be a jerk.
I’m about two and a half years into this blogsperiment? Blogventure? Bloject? (Ugh – I think these are just getting worse and were never necessary to begin with) And in that time, I’ve had good runs (last January – April, I managed a new post every week) and I’ve had drier spells (lately, I’ve averaged a post every two weeks). The blog has given me opportunity and impetus to finally check out loads of work I’ve been meaning to get around to, but just never had, and it’s also given me the excuse to devote some regular time to thought – what am I going to discuss this week? What did I think about this work? What, quality notwithstanding, did I find interesting in it? Why did (or didn’t) I enjoy a given moment of awfulness? What bigger topics do I have thoughts about or do I want to think about? There’s a lot of thinking about thinking about thinking. Sometimes there’s more of that than writing…
And so, at the turn of the year, as everyone is making best of lists, looking back at the year that’s passed or looking forward to the future to come, it has become my tradition (of only two and a half years – stop fiddling on my roof) to do a list as well – but it’s tricky. I can’t in good conscience do a “best of” list for 2023 releases because I’m terrible at keeping up with new stuff (out of the 123 horror movies I watched in 2023, only 11 were new releases). Past that, choosing the ten best to write about is rough because most of the best horror content I’ve watched this year, I’ve already done posts on (83 movies in 2023) – so in a way, these are all leftovers: The Ten Best Things I’ve Watched This Year That I Hadn’t Seen Before And Haven’t Written About Yet. It’s a mouthful. Also not a catchy title. Ah well…
In case you’re wondering, Silent Night, Deadly Night IV isn’t on the list (I wrote about it last time). But I figure she’s holding up TEN fingers in a form that is NEW for her, so there you go…
Some of these I’d watched planning to do a full post about them but for whatever reason I just didn’t make it happen. In that case, I hereby reserve the right to return to any and all of these in the future for longer analysis (I don’t know who I’m submitting this claim to, but it is thus declared). Some of these I really enjoyed, but just didn’t feel the urge to commit three thousand words to them, and so here I can briefly sing their praises without the burden of deeper consideration. So yeah – these will be short (in some cases, I watched them once almost a year ago and we’ll see what’s stayed with me). Also, this isn’t a countdown – these are in no particular order – just that in which I think of them.
But that’s probably enough set up. Let’s get to it, shall we? For a change, as these will all be short texts, I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I’m not exactly making any promises.
Curtains (1983)
What an absolute blast! This Canadian slasher with a troubled production history (directors coming and going and taking their names off the project – resulting in wildly divergent tones and, shall we say, odd plotting) has a bit of everything: creepy dolls; that scene on the ice with the hag masked killer, the sickle, and the slow motion skating; a head in a toilet; the total defiance of physics (how can you get knocked out of an upstairs window only to crash into the downstairs window?); some legitimately suspenseful sequences, better acting than it probably deserved (Samantha Eggar is great, John Vernon, most recently mentioned in my write up of Killer Klowns from Outer Space, has to be one of the all-time greatest portrayers of cinematic bastards, and I was so happy to see Lynne Griffin, Clare from Black Christmas), and a twist ending that for my money, really lands. And for all that it is more than a little stylistically messy, it even has strong contemporary resonance – a #MeToo movie thirty years ahead of its time.
We follow Samantha, a famous actress researching her next big role which will require her to play “crazy” so her director, Jonathan Stryker, a real prince of a guy, has her committed to an institution to “research” the role. He then abandons her there and invites a group of young ingénues to his remote house to “audition” them instead, and by audition, of course I mean psychologically torment them and try to get into their pants. What he’s looking for in the part is a bit of a mystery as the women are professionally, respectively, an actress, an ice skater, a stand-up comedian, a ballet dancer, and a musician. But maybe he’s not even casting, and he just wants a group of attractive women to sleep with and belittle while doing acting exercises. Like I said, a real prince.
Of course, everyone starts dying (I’m pretty sure only one person makes it to the end), and there is a reasonably enjoyable whodunit in puzzling out who’s actually behind all this slashing, as well as a turn at the end that took me by surprise, but I think this is a movie most enjoyed for its idiosyncratic little details rather than the big picture. Really – it’s a hoot.
Sante Sangre (1989)
I was so impressed with this one and really intended to write a full post on it and somehow failed to (I think it just felt so big and worthy that I needed to invest more thought and take the time for another couple of viewings, and that week, I just wasn’t up to the task). One day, I hope I circle back and do so because it is tremendous. In short, it’s about a young man, Fenix, who grew up in a circus where he witnessed his knife throwing father cut off his religious-cult-leading mother’s arms as revenge for her acid-poured-on-crotch revenge on his infidelity with the tattooed lady. After escaping from an asylum, Fenix becomes his mother’s new arms and is compelled by her to carry out a series of murders. In terms of plot, it’s relatively straightforward (relatively), but Alejandro Jodorowski’s carnivalesque, manic, utterly gorgeous and disturbed arthouse horror is anything but.
There is such an overwhelming sense of ritual, of devotion (religious, familial, romantic, sexual, psychotic), of the cruel compulsion to serve what and whom must be served and the nearly completely crushed spirit of an individual trying to assert itself, trying to live its own life, free from the oppression of the holy, of beauty, of family. Heady stuff – but it’s also just so full of life – weird and wild and bloody and baffling. No matter how lofty the ideas at play, this film is never ponderous or weighed down, but is rather a rollercoaster of passion and murder and absurdity and art and lived-in details. I absolutely loved it – easily one of the best films I saw last year, horror or otherwise.
The Ring (1998)
It is embarrassing that it took me so long to finally get around to watching the Japanese original, but I’m so very glad I did. I’d seen the American remake on release (on video, at home, and the moment my roommate and I finished watching, the phone rang…it was only his mom, but still creepy as all get out) and had always heard how good this was, but somehow never before pulled the trigger on it.
Wow. It’s always nice when something lives up to the hype – this really worked for me, even though the remake had been faithful enough that there weren’t too many surprises to be had – but yeah, it still creeped me out. And what’s more, it really lingered with me for a couple of days afterwards – not in the sense of being scared of video tapes (not many of those around these days), but in the mood, the feeling.
I won’t go into the plot much because a) I feel like everyone already knows the basic idea whether they’ve seen it or not (watch a cursed video and die in seven days) and also b) if you haven’t seen it, there are some twists and turns in the final act that really surprised me when I first saw the remake and still land dramatically on finally watching the original. But I will say that the film does something so interesting in combining elements that feel so richly folk horror – urban folklore, old curse, angry ghost, kids creeping each other out with scary stories – combining all that with modernity, with technology, with elements that feel utterly of the “modern world.” Although all of the tech at play here – video tapes, film cameras, and landline telephones have gone the way of the dodo, the idea of viral concepts self-perpetuating through the technology that dominates our lives, the space in which we really live, and haunting us, changing us, dooming us – that idea is as current as could be. It really holds up.
Hellraiser (2022)
This is another one that I mean to write about at greater length. I’d waited for it for quite a while as it took more than a year to finally be rentable on a streaming service where I live (Poland) and I wanted to be a good boy and pay for it. I can’t say that it’s a perfect movie and when I finally go into more detail, I’ll discuss why, but at least the first half felt so much like a Clive Barker story and it really scratched an itch for me, sending me down a rabbit hole of rewatching the first two Hellraiser movies (the only ones that really had Clive’s involvement) and re-reading “The Hellbound Heart” (the novella on which the first film was based).
The intersection of addiction and the compulsion to work the puzzle box, to keep going even if it hurts and is clearly self-destructive, really felt like something out of an early Barker short story, specifically putting me in mind of “The Inhuman Condition,” (the one with the knots) and I liked Riley as a flawed, but compelling protagonist. Furthermore, Roland Voight, the villain of the piece, is such an absolutely Barkerian figure – the hedonistic, amoral playboy art collector seeking out experience beyond limit, and I really liked the visualization of the cenobites, no longer just S&M leather demons (though that is an iconic look and really worked in its own way, bringing a fetishistic sexuality to the first and all subsequent films), but remade into monstrous puzzle boxes themselves, their bodies and souls perpetually held in extremis.
While it’s true that the story somewhat lost me in the second half once they’re all trapped in the house getting picked off one by one, on the whole, it had the right flavor. It gave me a taste of the author who first brought me to the genre, and that was more than worth the watch and the wait.
Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)
Sometimes you just have to be in the right mood to appreciate a given film. I’d heard of this years back as a “famously bad,” “so-bad-it’s-good” B-movie, striking for being so terrible even though it’s the first sequel to a bit of a modern classic (I mean once you get to Part III: The Marsupials, you already have lowered expectations – though, to be fair, I haven’t seen that one yet). So, long ago, I gave it a try with a terrible copy available on Youtube and quickly gave up, deeming it not worth my efforts. But then sometime this year it showed up on Shudder and I’m so glad I gave it a second chance cause I absolutely ate it up!
What’s it about? Unsurprisingly, this guy discovers that his dead sister (Karen, the protagonist of the first film) was a werewolf (wouldn’t have guessed that from the title) and therefore has to travel to Transylvania to fight Stirba, the immortal werewolf queen before she can take over the world. Along the way, eyes get popped out, there’s a werewolf orgy, there’s a telepathic mind battle, and surprisingly little stuff that feels like a traditional werewolf story – but who cares? It is brash and fun and so lovably shameless in its sleazy immaturity (infamously, a moment when Stirba tears her shirt off is repeated seventeen times over the closing credits as the theme song plays one last time).
Is it actually a good movie? Maybe not, but who’s to say? Is it frequently laugh out loud absurd in surprising, delightful, cheeky ways? Absolutely! Does the soundtrack basically just feature one song that it plays on repeat constantly? Yeah – but (as I wrote about recently) it’s a banger! Has it got Christopher Lee wearing the most 80s sunglasses imaginable and uttering ridiculous expository dialogue with great, silky voiced gravitas? Oh yeah! And somehow, in spite (and because) of all of its weirdness, is it actually kind of a cool, folksy, rockin’ werewolf (though they kind of seem more like vampires sometimes) flick that, if you’re open to it, is just a party and a half? I really think it is.
Talk to Me (2023)
Hey! A new movie – look at that! I know that this Australian feature already got a lot of buzz this year, but I’ll add to it. A group of teenagers start playing a party game with this weird mummy hand that’s being passed around – you hold the hand and suddenly find yourself face to face with a dead person. It’s creepy and weird as party games go, but it’s also thrilling and wild. The plot kicks in as a girl still in mourning for her mother who’d OD’d two years earlier comes into contact with this addictively sinister item and goes down an unsurprisingly dark path.
Now, I will say that where the story ultimately went didn’t exactly blow me away, but I loved the energy of the early scenes with all of the kids basically getting high on this new party drug (of summoning the dead). As an addiction narrative, it put me in mind of the bit in Trainspotting when Renton narrates, justifying his heroin habit, “What (people) forget is the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn’t do it. After all, we’re not fucking stupid.”
The play with this mysterious object feels like such a dangerous game – and no one understands it. We get no real lore. No exposition (so refreshing). Different kids tell different stories about its origins, but it’s obvious that no one knows anything, and there is an essential mystery which is enticing and cool and scary, and I love that the filmmakers commit to it and don’t ruin things by explaining everything (or really, explaining anything at all). As a viewer, you feel how wrong it is and at the same time how awesome it is too. In the second half, the story took some predictable turns, but the early vibes were eerie and cool enough to earn it a place on this list.
The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976)
This is another “wow” movie that I think I watched a second time the very next day. Jodie Foster (maybe 13 at the time of filming) is captivating in her portrayal of Rynn, a precocious teenage girl, living alone in a big house, who seems beset on all sides by adult threats to her life, her freedom, and her autonomy, and who also just might be a sociopath. But even if she is, that’s no matter – I think it’s impossible not to root for her independence and self-assurance.
One could certainly quibble about the genre classification here (maybe it’s a thriller, maybe it’s a mystery, maybe it’s a drama), but there is enough of the unsettling, and the threatening, enough looming doom, for me to happily count this a horror film. Plus, it features a young Martin Sheen as the local child molester, which the town takes as a kind of open secret and does nothing about, who comes to prey on Rynn, and he feels so dangerous and scary – it gets pretty uncomfortable and he’s great in the role.
The whole film is intriguing and unnerving, as Rynn both takes on and is subjected to adult situations and dangers (the treatment of age and sexuality is more than a little disquieting and it’s hard to imagine this being made in quite this way today – but it’s also, I would argue, absolutely central to the character, to the story, to the admittedly controversial idea at the center of the film – that Rynn alone has the right to her own decisions, financial independence, and sexual agency, and that any attempt on the part of “grown-ups” to protect her amounts to a unacceptable violation of her liberty). And the whole time, while I always felt on her side, there was also a mystery at the heart of her character – there is a depth under the surface we can never see. Her clear eyed understanding of the world around her is a kind of power, as is her unbothered willingness to do what she needs to do to assert her right to self-determination. But this power is also dangerous in its way, and she is able to carry out consequential acts without moral compunctions. Still, these same qualities are magnetic; separating her from others in the ‘killer kid’ canon who might be seen as monstrous. On the contrary, she always feels like the most reasonable, mature, qualified figure in the narrative, and any threats she feels the need to dispatch, I wouldn’t begrudge her right to do so. It is a really interesting little movie.
Alligator (1980)
What “right” does any film have to be good? That’s an odd judgment to make. Nevertheless, on watching this giant-alligator-in-the-sewers movie, I immediately felt that it was so much better than it had any right to be, or perhaps simply any need to be. I mean, to be successful, so many elements could have been lacking – if there’s a big alligator eating people, that’s really enough. But this Jaws-esque romp gave me so much more.
Penned by John Sayles, and starring Robert Forster, there is a surprising depth of character and feeling in this otherwise silly but entertaining story of an alligator, brought as a baby from a vacation in Florida home to Chicago where it’s flushed down the toilet and lives in the sewer, feeding on test animals from a lab, which causes it to grow extra large and extra hungry, eventually going on a rampage wherein it eventually consumes the evil scientists inadvertently responsible for its creation as well as the corrupt politicians whose turning a blind eye to corporate malfeasance has made this all possible.
But along the way, we are treated to Forester’s genuinely grounded performance as a world weary cop whose partners keep dying in the line of duty – and who thus carries a great weight of guilt, grief, and exhaustion (we see at least one get got by the gator and it actually lands with real, effective horror notes), a hesitant, tentative romance, alternatingly tender and combative, that develops between him and Marissa, the local herpetologist, and any number of little moments of life and specificity – Marissa’s mother who just won’t stop talking and is somehow both irritating and charming, a delightful short scene in which the cocky big game hunter brought in to take down the gator is being interviewed by an attractive female reporter and flirts with her by performing alligator mating and/or distress calls (sexy, huh?), and Forster’s quiet, gently sad disdain for the scientists he talks to early in the film who are experimenting on cute dogs before furtively discarding their remains in the sewer for giant reptiles to eat.
We also get loads of big puppet work (which is pretty much ok), a small real alligator on miniature sets (which is fun), and wild shifts of tone, like when we cut between the central romance and a kids birthday party where some little boys dressed as pirates make another kid walk the plank before pushing him into a pool where he is brutally and bloodily devoured by the titular creature, or the wedding party filled with rich jerks, where the alligator invades and causes glorious, ridiculous havoc. What fun!
Scream VI (2023)
And we have one more new movie on the list. I’d enjoyed the previous year’s jumpstarting of the dormant franchise, but this entry felt more like its own thing. Sure Gale Weathers is still on the scene, but the story otherwise belongs to the new young cast, and particularly Melissa Barrera’s Sam, and her struggle with her own useful, but nonetheless concerning capability for violence, which she fears may be an inherited trait. This internal conflict has developed over the course of these last two movies and it’s a compelling story (which, sadly, may never be resolved as the next film seems to have been scuppered after Barrera was fired for social media posts about Gaza – Ortega left immediately after, as did Christopher Landon, the director of the upcoming entry).
I think the Scream movies are pretty consistent in their quality (sure, there are ups and downs, but on the whole, they’re pretty solid) and in maintaining the mystery of the identity of the killer (or, more often, killers) each time, and this is no exception (I didn’t exactly love the why this time, but the reveal of who was satisfying). Also, they allow certain characters to make it from one film to the next, such that we can become invested in their survival (of course, characters frequently die, but the others we do get to know and come to like spending time with). I think it was always a strength of the series that the final girl was the star, returning time after time, targeted by new killers, rather than “ghostface,” the voice modulated psycho of the week wearing a store bought Halloween costume. Though the mantel of final girl has changed in this new cycle, this film continues that trend, giving us more time with the new “core four,” all of whom are likeable kids that I’m not hoping to see offed.
But the highlights are clearly a few action/suspense/horror set pieces of great tension and excitement. The series of kills in the cold open kick the mystery off in a refreshing way, the final conflict in the movie theatre/shrine has its thrills and viscerally satisfying brutality, Gale’s fight is high paced and really feels like it could go either way and this could be the last we see of her, and of course, the ladder scene shines as, under attack from the masked killer, all of the kids seek egress from their apartment terrifyingly high in the air. It is tense and scary and just fun. I think the co-directing team of Radio Silence really shined in the last film and in this one with some stand out suspense scenes. It’s a shame they’re not continuing with the series (but after recent developments, one wonders if the series will even continue with itself, or maybe lie dormant for another ten years, before doing another soft-reboot in which they may actually be willing to pay Neve Campbell’s asking price for some 40th anniversary return to the endless trials and tribulations of Sydney Prescott). But whatever (if anything) comes in the future, this was a good night at the cinema and I’m glad I got to see it on the big screen.
Chucky Seasons 1 (2021) & 2 (2022)
And, finally, this one isn’t even a movie. For a while I’d been hearing how good the Chucky show is, but it just wasn’t playing anywhere I had access to, and then finally, over the course of this year, the first two seasons showed up on Shudder (who knows how long I’ll have to wait for the third, currently airing), and it kinda blew me away.
I’ve long respected Don Mancini’s Child’s Play/Chucky movie franchise. The first is a modern classic – really well made, fresh and scary. Then there is such a strong sense of continuity that runs through the rest of the movies, even as they’ve adopted wildly different tones, from straight horror to high camp and back to horror again, with many characters returning over the years, and furthermore, showing evidence of growth and change. And also, it feels special to have such a strong authorial voice that runs through it all. Mancini has only directed the last three films, but he wrote all seven of them and creatively leads the show (though both writing and directing responsibilities are shared with a team as is common on television).
And what a show – I think it manages moments that are properly scary, and it regularly surprised me or even shocked me with brutal turns. You know nobody is safe, but all the same, my jaw fell open more than once at just how willing the show was to let horrible things happen to characters you would expect, following the patterns of pop-culture entertainment, to be inviolable. And then the story really hooked me – in many ways, it follows the sort of tropes one expects of a teen coming-of-age drama: bullying, feeling isolated and weird, romance, in this case between two boys, one of whom has to deal with a homophobic home life, growing up and asserting independence from family – normal teen drama stuff…but…add a killer doll to the mix, add a real sense of constant danger, add wild turns of character carried by top notch actors (the work Jennifer Tilly gets to do in this series is really special – the same goes for Lachlan Watson, who plays Glen and Glenda, Fiona Dourif, and of course, Brad Dourif, whose been voicing Chucky since the beginning), and you get something totally new and exciting. It’s also nice how open and warm hearted the show is towards its young characters’ gender and sexuality at the same time as it can be so harsh and brutal when it feels like it – there’s a tension of tone that strengthens the whole. I also love that all of Chucky’s movement is actual puppetry – apparently digital effects are only used to remove strings or other remnants of the puppeteers from shots, but everything is done by hand – how rare and special – and it’s really well done.
Finally, I just got fully invested in the directions the story would take – it all happens against a backdrop of heartfelt teen romance and angst, but as the antagonist driving the story forward (which can be genuinely affecting), Chucky gets up to surprising plots and ploys and the show consistently kept me guessing. Really, these two seasons are the most fun I’ve had watching a TV show for a long time (it even got me listening to music from the soundtrack which hadn’t happened since I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer). I laughed, I cried, I got startled, I got shocked, I had a great time. I can’t wait to see the third season someday.
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And there we have it, my ten favorite things of the year that I hadn’t yet written about. I imagine a bunch of these I might return to at greater length – lots of them deserve extra consideration. But either way, these last couple of days, I’ve had fun remembering them all – these might not have made the cut for a full post back during the year, but that is not due to any lack of affection for them on my part. There’s nothing on this list I wasn’t utterly enthusiastic about, both on first viewing and this reconsideration.
And so, that’s enough looking back. Let’s go forward and see what’s to be found in 2024.
Sometimes I’m not looking for some “great classic work” to analyze and I don’t feel like pulling the trigger on something new that I may or may not enjoy or otherwise find value in. Sometimes, I just want some of the (perhaps ironic) comfort that comes with horror vibes in musical form. There’s just a specific pleasure to be found in music that somehow connects with the genre. Maybe it’s a rocking song based on some bit of horror film or literature. Maybe it’s a theme from a favorite movie. Sometimes, it’s even just a tune that features in a key sequence of a film that you don’t even exactly love, but the fact that it’s from a horror movie elevates it to a kind of beloved status. These songs can just be a lovely, familiar place to hang out, a warm blanket on a rainy November day, or a kick of energy to get in a party mood or get stuff done. Maybe it’s just because I’m a fan of the genre and they bring to mind remembered satisfaction, but I think there’s also some rich juxtaposition of dark and light at work. Here’s a fun song that plays while terrible things happen. Here’s a catchy dance song about death and destruction. It’s just easier to get into some upbeat number when it has a dash of murder to cut what could otherwise be saccharine – to entirely mix my metaphors, it’s the spoon full of sugar that makes the pop tune go down.
I’ve done a few such lists before, often with more stringent rules. Here you can find a list of some of my favorite horror scores. This is a list of treasured songs found in horror movies. And here is a list of groovy tunes that aren’t from films per se, but all have horror themes. That said, this week, I’m casting a slightly wider net. Some of these will be the title theme to a movie. Some will just feature in a particular scene. Some will be about a horror topic or will reference a horror work. But they all rock.
Killer Klowns – The Dickies (1988)
Killer Klowns From Outer Space - Music Video
I just mentioned this back in September when discussing the classic for the ages, Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). It is a deeply silly movie with a theme to match. Building on Fucik’s “Entry of the Gladiators,” (the first song that comes to mind when you think of clowns or the circus, which I just learned was composed as a military march – wild), The Dickies get the party started during the opening credits with this bopping song. I read that they wrote it knowing very little about the movie other than the title, but it somehow strikes exactly the right tone. It’s bouncy – it implies circus – and it has just a bit of an edge, a note of something threatening, even sinister. It sets up what the movie is going to feel like: silly and playful, but with a bite.
No Vampires Remain in Romania – King Luan (2019)
King Luan - No Vampires Remain in Romania
Apparently this plays during the credits of s01e02 of What We Do in the Shadows, a show I love, but I can’t claim to have discovered it there. Rather, the Spotify algorithm just knew this was a song for me, and boy is it. Not actually connected to any particular horror work, it is just a great vampire themed disco song. Or maybe it’s a lack-of-vampire themed disco song, to be precise. What is it about actually? I’m not sure – maybe it’s just a bunch of random stuff that rhymes, but it feels vampirey, and it sounds cool and it’s the sort of thing that you can jump around the kitchen to or shout along with in the car. Seriously, I don’t really understand what’s going on here, but it makes me get up and boogie. And it’s got vampires and a video that for some reason features a lot of Nikola Tesla. Sure – why not?
Nosferatu – Blue Öyster Cult (1977)
Blue Oyster Cult - Nosferatu (lyrics)
Wow – I just discovered this one a couple of months ago, but it is tremendous. A quiet creeper with a bridge that just stomps, it is entirely about Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece, focused on Lucy and her death as an act of self-sacrifice. In this, it only touches on one aspect of the story, but I feel it does so richly and effectively. It hangs out in a seventies rock groove – maybe not the place you expect to really feel a German silent film from the 20s about a particularly ugly version of Dracula, but I think Blue Öyster Cult rather nails it. I feel the mood, the atmosphere, the drive of the story, and when it opens up into a full out rock song, the sustained tension of the beginning pays off with a real release. I’ve always loved their Godzilla – do they have other songs based on horror greats? Something to check… Also, one note of interest – to avoid issues with copyright (unsuccessfully), Murnau changed all the names from Stoker’s novel, changing the name of Mina Harker, for example, to Ellen Hutter. Yet, in the song, it does reference the character as “Lucy” (Lucy, of course, being Mina’s friend in the novel). Interestingly, two years later, in his remake of Murnau’s film, Werner Herzog names the character “Lucy” as well. With some rudimentary googling, I’ve not been able to find the story of how the name was changed thus, but I am so curious – was there some source that both the band and Herzog took the name from? Was Herzog just a fan of Blue Öyster Cult? (I wouldn’t expect it, but who knows.) If anyone out there has info on this, please leave a comment!
Howling – Steve Parsons and Babel (1985)
Howling II Soundtrack / Steve Parsons & Babel - Howling Club Mix (1985)
So, The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) is famously a “very bad movie,” a judgment that may be earned, but I’ve got to say, I think it’s a pretty good time, and in its defense, I feel it knows what it is, and that its failings as “cinema” are balanced by the degree to which its tongue remains firmly planted in cheek. But beyond camp value, one standout element is its main theme, simply titled “Howling,” by Steve Parsons and the New Wave band, Babel. The band is featured in a club scene playing the song, but otherwise, the song seems to play constantly throughout the film and somehow, for me, it never gets old. It’s got a cool, eighties erotic-pop sound, lyrics that all give solid werewolf vibes, and it unabashedly keeps repeating the title of the film (at least the “howling” part of it – the actual line “Your sister is a werewolf” is left to the great, unfortunate Christopher Lee to have to utter – this was reportedly not his favorite film appearance).
The Cask of Amontillado – The Alan Parson’s Project (1976)
The Cask of Amontillado by The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parson’s Project’s debut album was an ode to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, titled “Tales of Mystery and Imagination.” I don’t know how much it really feels like Poe to me, but it was obviously made with great love of his oeuvre, and it was a real nail biter for me to choose only one song to recommend. It all, as I understand the “kids” were saying a few years ago, “slaps.” Let’s just link the whole album – give yourself 40 minutes some time to check it out – it’s worth it. Alternatingly orchestral and proggy, every track is interesting and fun and at least Poe literate. The fourth song, “The Cask of Amontillado,” walks the line between the two poles of the album – about half of which takes the form of seventies prog-rock jams and half of which is a symphonic suite circling around “The Fall of the House of Usher.” This track certainly rocks, but also has an older kind of atmosphere as it tells the tale of a man slowly dying, having been walled up in the cellar.
The Blob – The Five Blobs (1958)
Somehow I’d never seen The Blob (1958) before last spring. I don’t know how this iconic 50s teens vs aliens monster movie had so long eluded my attention (I mean, I knew about it, but just never watched it), but I’m glad I finally checked it out. Here we have another super fun theme that plays during the opening credits and alerts us to the good times we have in store. The song is lively and playful, and so is the movie, though it does also have some real threat and weight and loss along the way, not to mention, pretty cool goo-based special effects. Never having seen it before, I’d somehow expected a more self-serious affair, but as the credits rolled, hearing this, I realized I was in for something a great deal more fun.
Also, I think it’s interesting how this theme, playing in the beginning, functions in such a similar manner as the above praised “Killer Klowns,” given the degree to which that later film is so clearly modeled on the skeleton of, if not The Blob, per se (blobs don’t have skeletons after all), then films like it, to be sure.
Prom Night – Paul Zaza, Gordean Simpson (1980)
Prom Night (1980) Disco dance
Prom Night, the 1980 slasher set on, you guessed it, prom night, is a pretty good time, if not groundbreaking. There’s a terrible prank gone wrong, a series of vengeance killings of teens out to have fun, a perfunctory but ultimately satisfying mystery as to the identity of the killer and a solid, downbeat ending. It’s also got Jamie Lee Curtis lighting the dance floor on fire in a disco sequence at the eponymous school dance (to a song that bears the title of the movie) that goes on way too long for narrative value, but who cares? It’s one of the best parts of the flick. She and her dance partner (Casey Stevens when he could pull the moves off, a dance double when he couldn’t) really bring the party to life. And it’s generally a groovy song to boot. Generally here, I’m sharing Youtube clips of the songs themselves, but in his case, I’ve gotta share the clip from the movie even if the song isn’t complete. This is probably one of those cases where if this song weren’t from an early 80s slasher, it would just fade into other disco of the era, but since it comes from a movie that features a severed head, I’m there for it!
Gangster Rock – Felony (1981)
Felony "Gangster Rock" from Graduation Day
So, following the last entry, I just have to include another clip from a different early 80s slasher, in this case, Graduation Day from 1981. Once again, we have a scene from a school dance that goes on so much longer than you ever might expect it to. But in this case, it is interspersed with footage of two teenagers (one of whom is scream queen, Linnea Quigley) slipping out to the woods to have sex and get murdered by a sword wielding maniac (the killer’s a bit less creative here – one person in this movie gets killed by a football with a blade attached to it). In the beginning, the song didn’t exactly grab me, but after it had been playing for like 8 minutes, and after being so integrally tied to a pretty fun golden age slasher kill/chase scene, this energetic, keyboard slamming rocker wormed its way into my heart. And honestly, I think the whole sequence is really buoyed by the music. In this era, you can see so many similar scenes that play out in such similar fashion, but setting it all to this party sound and cutting back and forth with such energetic editing gives the whole bit a real kick. It’s great. The bladed football is great. The movie has a great final girl. Honestly, this movie which might be deemed ‘objectively bad’ by some, which Linda Gross of the Los Angeles times called, “an insinuating and lecherous movie with many hokey effects and poor-quality acting,” has a surprising amount to love in it.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t link to Stacie Ponder over at the Final Girl blog and her observation about this party scene. I’d seen the movie a couple times before and had never noticed this detail, but once she pointed it out, it’s the only thing I can see, and it’s pretty special.
The Hell of It – Paul Williams (1974)
Phantom of the Paradise - The Hell of it
Playing over the closing credits of Brian De Palma’s epic, weird, wonderful flop of a horror rock opera, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) (starring, among others, Jessica Harper – most known to horror fans as Suzy Bannion from Argento’s Suspiria), this searingly cynical song is just so tight and mean and glorious. Apparently, it was written to play at Beef’s funeral, but the scene was cut, but as I think it might be the best track on the soundtrack, it’s a great way to close out the picture. The movie itself is odd, but really distinctive, and I do recommend it if you ever have the chance. De Palma throws “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Faust,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and a particularly sour view of the 70s music industry into a blender and pours out an utterly unique film. It’s not for everybody, but I kind of love it, Harper has an amazing, deep singing voice that you might not expect from her slight frame (she’s also great in Shock Treatment (1981), Richard O’Brien’s follow up to Rocky Horror), and the music, all by Paul Williams, who also stars as the Faustian record producer, is uniformly fantastic, with this song being, in my opinion, the standout hit.
Rock Until You Drop – Michael Sembello (1987)
Rock Until You Drop (Remastered Version)
From Michael Sembello (who also gave the world the Flashdance song, inspired by William Lustig’s gritty, scalp collecting killer film, Maniac (1980)), this up-tempo 80s inspirational jam plays during the montage in The Monster Squad (1987) when all the kids are spending the day gearing up to do battle with the, you know, monsters: carving stakes in shop class, riding bikes somewhere in a hurry, playing dress up with Frankenstein’s creature, writing a letter in crayon to the “army guys” to “come quik” cause “there are monsters,” making silver bullets and also business cards, consulting maps, and stealing archery equipment – the kids all get ready in their own way. This was a movie that I loved well before I was actually into horror (I saw it in the cinema when I was nine and I remember coming out at the end just so stoked – ready, myself to fight the forces of darkness). Generally I think it holds up as one of the essential ‘kids vs monsters’ flicks, though it hasn’t been one that I revisit often as an adult, and this has got to be one of the all-time-great 80s ‘preparation montages’. Even if I don’t often watch it, the movie will always hold a special place in my heart – it’s just a shame that it features some homophobic slurs, and that really hasn’t aged well (sure, it’s how kids really talked – and probably still do – on the playground, but it’s still a turn off).
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And there we have it – ten more great horror songs. It’s interesting to me how many of them are dancey disco tunes or seventies rock grooves – not something I expected when I first sat down to brainstorm what I wanted to include in this list. It is a specific sound, and one not always associated with horror, but all of these immediately give me a taste of the genre, if not instant associations with some specific horror work. May they keep you bopping through the night as well.
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