Haunted Newsreel

On June 16, 1960, a film premiered in New York City that would change the face of the horror film -- nay, film in general -- forever. Psycho's effect on filmmaking is incalculable, even if you only track the influences of its most famous sequence, the shower murder. Over the past half-century, various movies and television shows have parodied, pastiched, paid homage, remade and ripped-off Alfred Hitchcock's "clean kill." I've spent the last two months piecing some of these clips together into a meta-homage. May I present to you, the Psycho shower sequence, rebuilt almost entirely from other films.

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I'll begin today's discussion with what I consider a statement of fact: Dracula is boring. That may be the most unpopular statement I will ever write, but I wholeheartedly believe it. How lucky are we, then, that twenty-five years before this abomination was published we were all blessed with another Irish vampire tale? Yes indeedy, I am talking about Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla. This sweetly concise and beautiful novella (or short story, as some prefer to call it) was published in 1872 and spawned an entire subgenre of horror: the lesbian vampire tale.(read more...)

While we put the finishing touches on our Phoenix Comicon 2010 coverage, we've gathered some of our favorite shots from this past weekend and put together a little image gallery for you.

View the Phoenix Comicon 2010 Gallery

As this first month of reviews comes to a close, some readers may find themselves scratching their skulls at this last selection of the horror genre's type five essentials. Certainly, I must be mistaken in including a novel that is solidly in the field of science fiction. "My God man, have you gone mad?!" I hear you screaming at your computer screen. Actually, I am indeed quite insane. However, I believe the true lunacy would be to dismiss H. G. Wells's tale of a terrifying alien invasion as a simple romp into the world of the scientifically fantastic. Wells imbues his story with a palpable fear that will have the readers shivering with genuine fright at the thought of mankind meeting its end at the cold hands of an alien invader.(read more...)