The unconvincing gorilla suit was a staple of stage and screen dating back to at least the late 19th Century. Need an exotic menace for an old dark house? Someone to send a slapstick ensemble into a state of comedic terror? A zany bit of zest for a struggling sitcom? Just throw someone with the […]

During the pandemic years, I took a very holistic and intensive approach to Spooky Month. Having a surfeit of time to kill, I filled with with a robust roster of appropriately themed movies, TV shows, videogames, comics, prose, and old time radio shows. It was a glorious time to discover, re-discover, revisit, and generally wallow […]

(excerpts from Van Nielsen’s Field Notes on Prime-Time Draculas) Rollin Handula: Master of disguise, strong affinity towards the moon. Daughter also a vampire of minor reknown. Won an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of another elderly ailing Dracula. Swanula: Do not be fooled by the diminutive stature!!! Has made multiple demonic pacts with terrifying entities […]

“The Nice Price” was a late 1970s branding initiative by CBS Records, where perennial backcatalog faves got badged and repriced as midbudget offerings. Nearly all of my old Clash tapes and CDs sported the sticker when I bought them. The copy of Combat Rock that Maura scored for me somewhere still has its one on […]

First things first: I am incredibly lazy do not lack for well-considered (and self-serving) reasons not to do something. This site has always been something I worked on when I couldn’t do the things I’d rather be doing — be it playing video games, napping next to the puppy, or staring into space for hours […]

While love the entire pantheon of old school fight flick archetypes, I have a particular soft spot for the Invisible Man. Perhaps it’s because he’s more sci-fi than horror, a tragic example of science gone wrong that prefigured so many of the characters which inhabited the superhero comics I read as a kid. Or maybe […]

Poor misbegotten creature. He only crawled out of his lair to catch a Guided By Voices show and maybe hit up that new barcade down the block for some craft brews and Ms. Pac-Man. Little did he realize that he would be attacked by a mob who thought Monster was the best R.E.M. album, and […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s like my grandpa used to say: “The only thing worse than a haunted muscle car is a haunted racist muscle car.” Multiple problematic aspects aside, this episode (“The Ghost of General Lee,” 10/29/1979) creeped the heck out of me as a kid, even though it was clearly established as a hoax out of the […]