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Posted on September 30, 2018

Creepy CliffsNotes: September Edition

Happy Sunday, Horror fiends!

It’s hard to believe that today marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Elvira: Mistress of the Dark since we still feel like the same snot-nosed kids who snuck into the duplex movie theatre and then spent months wondering how we could get our dog to be as cool as Algonquin. So in honor of our much beloved doyenne of horror, we’re rolling out this month’s Creepy Cliff Notes.

You know that death by paperclip scene in Student Bodies? Yeah, that pretty much sums up our current workload. But have no fear because we are Victor Frankenstein levels of committed to scouring the web for horror-related goodies! Read more

Posted on September 29, 2018

Top 10 Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Guest Post

Obsessions always have a beginning. If you rewind the clock 26 years, you would find hordes of kids crowding around the television at 9:30pm to catch Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon before being corralled and taken to bed. The series became the subject of nightmares and terrors and created a new generation obsession with horror. A combination of Tales from the Crypt and The Twilight Zone, mixed with kid-friendly subject matter, Are You Afraid of the Dark? was always destined to be a hit. The success of the series helped green light Goosebumps and one episode even inspired M. Night Shymalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), but unfortunately, the show now sits in relative and completely unwarranted obscurity.

Needless to say, this Canadian-American classic has a special place in my heart and, in honor of its 26^th anniversary, what follows is a list of my top ten episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? Now, I don’t claim to be a master of 90’s television and the list is very subjective, but know that I have ordered the episodes by least-to-most frightening. Moreover, every episode is a gem in its own way and a list of only ten episodes could never do justice to this amazing television horror.

So. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this article, The Top Ten Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Posted on September 24, 2018

Call for Proposals: Critical Conversations in Horror Studies

Call for Papers/ Dawn Keetley

CRITICAL CONVERSATIONS IN HORROR STUDIES

Series editor: Dawn Keetley

Lehigh University Press is introducing a new series, Critical Conversations in Horror Studies, edited by Dawn Keetley, Professor of English at Lehigh University. We are seeking manuscripts in all areas of horror studies, broadly defined.

Posted on September 22, 2018

The Wasted Promise of The Predator

Guest Post

The Predator should have been great. The cast is good, full of actors like Keegan-Michael Key and Alfie Allen who thrive even in small roles, and the behind the scenes talent is even better. Shane Black directs a script he co-wrote with Fred Dekker, both of whom worked on the incredibly fun ‘80s tween horror-comedy Monster Squad (1987). Shane Black shines when he takes a shaggy dog premise and injects some unexpected life in it, and that’s exactly what this movie—the fourth or sixth (depending on if you count the Alien Vs. Predator duo) film in a franchise that started in the late-80s—needed. The Predator ends up being kind of a tepid mess, however, especially in the third act. To misquote Monster Squad, The Predator needed some nards.

Posted on September 19, 2018

Interview with Grimmfest Senior Programmer

Dawn Keetley

Grimmfest is Manchester’s premium international festival of genre film, including (of course) horror, and it will be enjoying its 10^th anniversary when it opens on October 4-7, 2018. The final line-up is now out, and it includes some fantastic films.

This year, Grimmfest has partnered with House of Leaves Publishing in the promotion of their forthcoming book, Scared Sacred: Idolatry, Religion and Worship in the Horror Film, to offer day passes to the 2018 festival. For more information, please visit Scared Sacred‘s crowdfunding page.

Ahead of Grimmfest’s opening, I interviewed Senior Programmer Steve Balshaw about Grimmfest—and about the broader shape of horror today.

What do you think is distinctive about Grimmfest?

First and foremost, the range and selection of films. We are interested in exploring the darker side of cinema, in all its various forms. Obviously, our focus has always been on horror, and to a lesser extent science fiction, but we have also found space over the years for Southern Gothic, Crime and Film Noir, black comedy, Fantasy and even Sword and Sorcery, as well as cinema that it simply weird, wired and utterly uncategorisable. Genre cinema has always been pretty broadly defined anyway, and we will screen everything from grindhouse to arthouse. Over the years, we have developed an international reputation for pushing at the boundaries of genre, and focusing on more left-field and independent material, rather than more mainstream horror and sci-fi films. We like to stretch and redefine the parameters, and hopefully we will continue to do that. If we like a film, and think our audience will like it, or simply that they need to see it, we will try to find a slot for it.