Look, the laws of physics just work differently in pre-Code horror-revenge stories, okay? (from “Symphony in Death” in Menace #11, January 1954; art by Joe Maneely, other credits as yet unknown) Recommended listening:

I grew up in an era where trashy low-budget horror flicks had a marketing presence in newspapers and television. With cable and VCR tech still a ways from becoming ubiquitous household staples, and my peers and I being a little too young (and chicken) to sneak into R-rated movies, these ad spots were the sum […]

I’ve been filling out my October smörgåsbord of spooky fare with selected episodes of Night Gallery, thus triggering my umpteenth reassessment of that three-season and oh-so-early-1970s attempt to recapture some of that ol’ Twilight Zone magic. Was it a supernatural counterpart to Love American Style‘s mix of celebrity guest stars and cornball black-out gags? Was […]

In the haunted realm of Romania, it is said that a wolfman who dies shall return as to wreak evil as a vampire. In the blighted hellscape of Hollywood, it is documented fact that an Altman cursed by a career-ending catastrophe…. …shall return a few years later as Count Downula, to plague Solid Gold viewers […]

Please, if they were real witches, they wouldn’t be casting hexes on Starsky and Hutch while intimidating a small rural community. They’d be endlessly arguing about closed practice or how much to charge for their handmade herbal satchets at next weekend’s street fair. (“Satan’s Witches,” originally broadcast on 2/8/1978, is actually pretty fascinating because it […]

Ah, the good old days of wholesome kids’ television! Recommended listening:

Scary: Linda Blair in Hell Night (1981) Scarier: Linda Blair in The Exorcist (1973) Scariest: Linda Blair in Roller Boogie (1979) The sanity-shattering apex of existential terror: Linda Blair on The Love Boat (1982) Recommended listening:

Between The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)… …and The Devil’s Rain (1975)… …the once and future Captain of the USS Enterprise didn’t fare well in his early 1970s encounters with the occult. Come to think of it, he didn’t do much better against spiders, either. Recommended listening:

I am a ghoul who will lurk by your graveside I’ll be the fiend that you’re fighting off We’ll mope forever Knowing together That we did it all for the glory of goth After all these years I’m still wondering whether it was a “Robert Palmer being a Husker Du fan thing” or that some […]

One of the happier events to come out of the pandemic lockdown period was discovering a full run of Our World on YouTube. The short-lived ABC show was a favorite of my teenage self, and its weekly wide-angle coverage of particular historical moments had a tremendous impact on my own academic development. It racked up […]