Posts by Nate Yapp

The following is for the League of Tana Tea Drinkers' roundtable discussion of "What Do Cute Versions of Monsters Tell Us About Horror?" I realize that I didn't address the question directly, but I think my piece fits into the larger discussion.

I've never been a spiritual person. The most pressing conflict of faith I had growing up was whether I would become an agnostic like my father or an atheist like my mother (I still bounce back and forth to this day). I suppose we all need something to believe in, however, especially as children. I believed in horror. It was, in many ways, my faith - adored without question, every movie I could get my hands on committed to memory and recited ad nauseam. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and an exquisitely tortured Vincent Price were all major deities. It was a simple pleasure in a complex time - my parents were getting divorced and I was being moved (as opposed to moving, which suggests I had some choice in the matter) to another state. In hindsight, horror was something I very much needed to survive - the heightened acting, the fantastic settings both foreboding and unreal, the monsters who brought thrills and chills to supplant the uncertainty that was actually much, much scarier. (read more...)

Those crazy fellas over at Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies have been throwing the Paul Naschy Blogathon all week long, finishing, well... today. Actually, in about a half-hour by my clock. However, that's just enough time to get my entry in, which I've been working on all week. It's a tribute to Paul Naschy's most enduring creation, the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. In nine films released between 1968 and 1983, Daninsky dealt with the tragedy of lycanthropy, often while searching for someone who would love him enough to kill him. The video follows the general line of his story, backed by Arcade Fire's "Black Mirror."

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. Last year at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival in Phoenix, I had the great opportunity to chat with Marilyn Burns, who played final girl Sally Hardesty in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Our talk focused exclusively on her career in the 1970s and resulted in some great stories about the Texas film industry, the dangers of making a Charles Manson biopic, and why Eaten Alive may not be the film to take home to mother and father.(read more...)

In early 2009, one of our British correspondents, Simon Powell, reviewed a fascinating-sounding miniseries called Dead Set. Written by satirist Charlie Brooker, Dead Set mixed a zombie apocalypse with the reality television series Big Brother. Simon gave it a positive review, and I despaired that the show, which made its debut on the UK-based channel E4, would never see make it across the pond to the USA. Well, those worries are now dispelled -- Dead Set is making its American debut on IFC. Starting on October 25th, each of the five parts will air at 12:00AM midnight (Eastern time), with the entire series being shown in a marathon on Halloween night at 8PM Eastern. (read more...)