Haunted Newsreel

Disheartened by a conversation he overheard at his local video rental store, graphic designer Eric Slager felt that word needed to get out on the awesomeness that is Vincent Price. So he created an awesome poster that presents the titles of some of Price's greatest works in the shape of the actor's face, garnished with his meticulously coiffed hair and waxed moustache. You can read the whole story at Slager's blog. It's a really cool piece of art for which we are happy to boost the signal.

For my money, The Shining (1980) is the scariest movie ever made, and the book is frightening as well. There are numerous reasons for this, but one of the main ones is that damn woman in Room 237 (217 in the book). When Danny foolishly enters the room, the film cuts away, and later it is left ambiguous who put those marks on his neck. The film does this to heighten the psychological tension that results from Wendy's suspicion of Jack. The book, however, is pretty unambiguous. Danny sees a dead, decaying woman rising from the bathtub and stumbles away in terror; huddled against a wall, he closes his eyes and reminds himself that she will go away in a little while, like a dream, when he opens his eyes; and that ghosts, the residues left by the dead, can't actually hurt living people. And then fingers begin to close around his throat... (read more...)

By all appearances, Vampire Junction looks to be just another addition in a tirelessly long line of mediocre paperback fare that was spewed forth by both talented and hack writers alike during the 1980s. It's hard to go into a tale detailing the trials and tribulations of immortality with a straight face when the cover to the book shows the powdered face of a young boy (looking somewhat similar to Justin Bieber) singing his undead heart out while wearing a velvet cape and baring his fangs. But somehow author S. P. Somtow manages to downplay the ridiculous notion of a vampiric teeny-bopper singer and delve into some fertile ground that explores the deeper psychological themes surrounding the vampire myth. (read more...)

One Halloween night when I was a teenager a friend and I decided to walk to the cemetery a quarter mile from my mom's apartment and wander around. It was pretty spooky. The cemetery in question was huge, with a dead gnarled tree near the entrance, and odd little stone steps - we imagined that they were perhaps gateways to Hell - leading from the pathways to the fields where hundreds of gravestones sprawled. One almost expected to see Colin Clive and Dwight Frye skulking about with shovel and lantern. Another friend of ours had declined to come. He was quite religious, and what we were doing he found both offensive and frightening, regarding it disrespectful of the dead and vaguely "evil" as well. As the two of us got increasingly creeped out I suggested that we should have forced the third guy to come with us - if we were attacked by angry specters, I said, we could have ritualistically sacrificed him to placate them.(read more...)