New Horror 2023 – Day 19

“Always someone loving some thing more than that thing
loves them.”

“The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury (1951)

Okay, now I get it when someone says their only love is the sea.

💀💀💀

“It reaches in, plucking the shadow of the axe hanging in the window…”

“Shadow of Death” by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein, Graham Ingels (1953)

That’s the stuff. Some asshole comes along and gets murdered for his transgression. It’s maybe worrisome how much I enjoy that aspect of the EC Comics stories… but that’s fiction for ya.

💀💀💀

“When in doubt, skewer it out.”

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls dir. Andrew Bowser (2023)

I really enjoyed this! It takes the skit character comedy of something like Ernest Scared Stupid, throws in some real good VFX and puppets, and adds the gravitas of greats like Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs to give the cast some oomf, but everyone they got was perfect in their roles.

New Horror 2022 – Day 9

“The Black Phone” by Joe Hill (2004)

“Finney was one of the black balloons now.”

Back on that modern lit buzz with a really good ending here. Doesn’t linger, doesn’t seek to resolve anything beyond the barest minimum.

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“Mars Is Heaven!” by Ray Bradbury, Wally Wood, et al. (1953)

“And Lustig began to cry."

Looks like this story hit pretty hard in the fifties, but then the Godliness and paranoia of the nation was more potent then. Now it comes across as quaint.

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Terrifier 2 dir. Damien Leone (2022)

"You’re really weird, you know that?”

I was ready to dismiss Terrifier 2 as a movie for gore fetishists and anyone who thinks it’s hilarious to watch visceral torture, but watching Scream 2 right after (which I’ve watched many times) made me pause to reconsider. Terrifier 2 is a slasher movie that tries to get weird and show off admittedly great practical VFX and that’s fine, but it’s not for me. Between this and yesterday’s movie selection I’m reminded that I’m just not a certain kind of horror fan.

I just imagine R.L. Stine’s tired editor in 1997 reading the draft for The Haunted School after dealing with the madcap bores that Stine had been sending in for months, certain that Goosebumps was on its last legs, then sighing and whispering, “R.L., you son of a bitch…”

And a special shoutout to the kid who left the bookmark in their copy of Deep Trouble II so that I, too, may admire it from within its yellowed paper prison.