Horror Homeroom

Posted on December 23, 2018

The Pro-Sex Slasher: Talking Black Christmas (1974)

Holiday horror is a mixed bag. For every acknowledged gem (Rare Exports, Better Watch Out), there exist some seriously awful yuletide tales (Santa Claws, To All a Good Night). Occasionally though, a film will get it so right that it establishes a template for the films that followed. Such is the case with the cult classic Black Christmas (1974). Criminally overlooked, this film by Bob Clark is typically recognized for establishing some of the most well-known tropes of the slasher genre. But it is its transgressive female characters that really steal the show and leave us asking why these characterizations didn’t become the standard.

In this Horror Homeroom Conversation, we’re kicking it back to 1974 with the ultimate holiday horror film, Black Christmas, and considering how the depictions of women in horror might be different had this film had gone mainstream.

Posted on December 14, 2018

Frankenstein in a Corset: Talking The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Elizabeth Erwin

The comedy-horror hybrid can be a tricky genre to get right. This is especially true of those films that attempt to leverage well known monsters. And while names such as Dracula and Werewolf pop up fairly frequently in these types of films, it is The Creature from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that offers arguably the most interesting template from which to draw inspiration. While some films focus primarily on achieving humor (Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein), others dial back the levity to create a more transgressive viewing experience (Lady Frankenstein, Frankenhooker). But one film that manages to blend both aims seamlessly while also offering up a healthy dose of social commentary is The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Read more

Posted on December 8, 2018

Await Further Instructions: New Christmas Horror

Dawn Keetley

As a fan of Christmas horror films, I’m very happy to be able to recommend Await Further Instructions (2018), written by Gavin Williams and directed by Johnny Kevorkian, director and writer of the horror feature, The Disappeared (2008). Await Further Instructions has a lot going for it, including what is essential to Christmas horror—the agonizingly tense family get together (and that’s an understatement when it comes to this film). Await Further Instructions also delivers a pretty provocative message about both violence and technology, along with some fantastic (and beautifully-shot) body horror in its culminating scenes. I’d say this is a must for your holiday viewing.

Posted on November 30, 2018

Creepy CliffsNotes: November Edition

Elizabeth Erwin

The weeks after Halloween can feel especially dark. Stores trade in their creepy displays of severed limbs and cobwebs for sparkly tree ornaments and festive lights. For fans of the macabre, it can be downright depressing! Like American Horror Story teen angst levels of depressing!

So to stave off the November doldrums, Horror Homeroom kicked it up a notch by offering an exclusive chapter from Scared Sacred, a look at how Channel Zero is remaking horror television, a reconsideration of the rape scene in Young Frankenstein, and an anniversary look at sex and sisterhood in The Slumber Party Massacre. We followed those essential reads up with a consideration of what is the real horror in It Follows, a list of five horror films set in snowy landscapes, an interview with Boston Underground Film Festival’s Director of Programming, and a must read look at Salem’s Lot and the threat of nuclear war.

That’s a lot of reading goodness and pairs especially well with another piece of pumpkin pie from the fridge. But we’re not done yet! We’re rousing ourselves from our Thanksgiving Day food comas to bring you this month’s very best horror related reads from around the interwebs! Go grab yourself a turkey leg and let’s dig in! Read more

Posted on November 24, 2018

Salem’s Lot and the Nuclear Threat

Dawn Keetley

Salem’s Lot is about vampires, of course. But as I recently re-read King’s 1975 novel and watched the exceptional TV miniseries (directed by Tobe Hooper) from 1979, it occurred to me that the latter—the film, not the novel–might also be about the nuclear threat. In 1979, America was entrenched in Cold War paranoia, with the attendant heightened fears of nuclear war. Filmed in July and August 1979 and airing on CBS on November 17 and 24, 1979, Salem’s Lot was bookended by two events critical to deepening anxiety about the nuclear threat. In only four more years, ABC’s The Day After (1983) would galvanize 100 million people gathered around their TVs to watch the devastating consequences of a nuclear attack on US soil, setting a record for the highest rated television film ever. And just before Salem’s Lot began filming, Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in central Pennsylvania was the site, on March 28, 1979, of the worst nuclear accident in the US. Anxiety about the effects of nuclear energy and nuclear war was rampant.