I just wanted to play Virtual On. That’s all. The mecha-based arena fighter was one of the first games I picked up for my Sega Saturn in the day, and it been decades since I’d last booted it up. The wrinkle was that I didn’t want to play the Saturn version. Don’t get me wrong: […]

Though the role was silent and didn’t offer much in the way of facial expression, Christopher Lee’s turn as the bandage-clad revenant in Hammer’s The Mummy is an all-time favorite of mine. Lee’s lean but towering frame combined with skilled physical acting to perfectly portray the shambling menace of an undead powerhouse. And those eyes! […]

GIANT SPIDERS! They like to interfere with road crews for kicks! GIANT SPIDERS! They like to picnic in the grass! GIANT SPIDERS! Always looking for a good deal on a firm but comfortable queen-size mattress! GIANT SPIDERS! They greatly overestimate their abilities as pick-up artists! GIANT SPIDERS! Sometimes they are powered by a rear-mounted 1600 […]

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 […]

For Robert Scott Carey, this was the most terrifying day of his life. But for me, it was just another Tuesday.

The Legend of Hell House was a lurid, trashy rehash of The Haunting aimed at the jaded audiences of the early Seventies, but its sense of dread-heavy atmosphere is a thing of hair-raising wonder. That’s the reason why it has become a spooky season staple for me, despite the foreknowledge that I will be rolling […]

I’ve heard of “dying onstage,” but this is a bit much. (Hey, I’m a dad now. I’m allowed to make these kinds of jokes.) Recommended listening:

Man, this Special Old Ones Cut of Summer School is really weird. Recommended listening:

AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! *hic* AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! ARF! Recommended listening: You were expecting that Warren Zevon track, right? Sorry.

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: