In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will have to somehow survive obscene phone calls, a psycho killer, pitchfork murders and Tom Savini FX! It’s Black Christmas and The Prowler!
Before I sat down to watch Black Christmas for the first time, director Bob Clark had been two for two with me. I had loved his previous two flicks – the zombie gut-muncher Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and his living-dead Vietnam vet horror comedy Deathdream,
THE ASGARDIANS 1: Thor by George O’Connor
So I’ve lost track of how many of George O’Connor’s graphic novel retelling of myths I’ve reviewed, from his original series OLYMPIANS to the first book of his current ASGARDIANS series, Odin. He’s back with book two, everyone’s favorite Norse god — Thor, and all I can say is what I’ve been saying since the beginning: the story is great, the artwork is great, they’re not just for kids,
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will be startled by a very hungry crocodile, Robert Englund, a ferocious leopard, and yummy Nancy Kwan! It’s Eaten Alive and Night Creature!
Tobe Hooper’s debut film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), although not nearly as graphically violent as popularly believed, is nevertheless quite a nightmarish experience to sit through. His sophomore effort, 1977’s comparatively unknown Eaten Alive, is almost as nightmarish and ups the gore quotient considerably.
Yesterday, the second Tuesday of October, was officially Ada Lovelace Day, in honor of the mathematician who wrote formulae with Babbage, intended for use with his Analytical Engine.
World Fantasy Con starts next week, in Niagara Falls, NY. I’ll be there.
Freya Marske has Book One of a new series coming out, and Reactor has an excerpt.
Nerds of a Feather provides a review of The Principle of Moments. Clara Cohen’s review is harsh, but probably accurate.
File 770 offers a link to this radio interview with Susannah Clarke,
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature we have two curious stories, courtesy of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s Die, Monster, Die! and I, Monster!
“The Colour Out of Space” has long been one of my favorite H.P. Lovecraft stories, so I was curious to see how this 1965 film adaptation, directed by Daniel Haller, had turned out. Very well indeed, I’m happy to report. In this solid little AIP chiller, Nick Adams, an American, comes to Arkham, England to visit his college girlfriend.
Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim
Blood of the Old Kings (2024), by Sung-il Kim and translated by Anton Hur, is the first in a Korean fantasy trilogy well known in South Korea. While it has its strong points, I have to confess to being overall disappointed with Blood of the Old Kings, though I’ll probably give book two a shot when it comes out in English in hopes that the series improves (the last book won an award so there’s a fair chance that’s the case).
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will deal with strippers, boiling oil, acid, a driller killer and tasty Doritos! It’s The Gore Gore Girls and The Slumber Party Massacre!
Say what you will about cinema’s “Wizard of Gore,” Herschell Gordon Lewis, it must be conceded that from his first films (1963’s trashy Blood Feast and 1964’s crackerbarrel massacre Two Thousand Maniacs) to his last (1972’s The Gore Gore Girls), the man remained faithful to his muse,
The first book in a series by Sophie Burnham entitled EX ROMANA, Sargassa is, not unsurprisingly given that series name, set in a world where the Roman Empire seemingly never fell, at last not permanently, though there was a mysterious “Great Quiet” in which most of the prior knowledge and technology was lost before the Empire was reestablished. More specifically, the novel is set in Sargassa, long ago colonized by the Roman Imperium and now home to the Imperial Archives, the repository of all the Empire’s knowledge and lore.
In today’s installment of the Shocktober Double Feature, we will encounter a serial knife killer, near nudity, a Parisian blood drainer and Christopher Lee. It’s Violent Midnight and Theatre of Death!
A film probably better known by its alternate, later title of Psychomania, Violent Midnight proved a very pleasant surprise for me indeed. The film centers around Elliott Freeman, a young, reclusive painter who won’t be a free man much longer if the local police have their way.
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will encounter Amazonian natives, a carnivorous tree, a man-eating houseplant and full-frontal nudity. It’s Womaneater and Please Don’t Eat My Mother!
For those of you wondering whether Pittsburgh-born beauty Marpessa Dawn ever made another film besides 1959’s classic Black Orpheus, here is your answer. She appeared one year earlier, as an Amazonian native at the opening of Charles Saunders’ Womaneater, being sacrificed to a carnivorous tree. That tree is stolen by English scientist George Coulouris,
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will encounter giant insects, prehistoric beasties and a very befuddled caveman! It’s The Black Scorpion and Dinosaurus!
By the late 1950s, filmmakers must have been running out of insects that they could mutate and transform into giant monsters. Audiences had already been treated to such fare as Them (giant ants), Tarantula (spiders), The Monster From Green Hell (wasps), The Beginning of the End (grasshoppers), The Deadly Mantis (praying mantises),
In Reactor, Molly Templeton stops to praise things that aren’t brilliant, awesome, amazing, or setting the genre on fire—they’re just good.
I loved The Fall when I first saw it, and then it disappeared. Nerds of a Feather rediscovered it and reviews it here.
Baen’s short story contest is open for submission until February 1, 2025. As I read the summarized guidelines, it looks like they want science fiction.
Here is a list of local agencies providing relief in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene,
In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we encounter mesmerism, murder, insanity, a spooky house and an escaped madman, in two wonderful old silent films! It’s The Bells and The Cat and the Canary!
The Bells is a very fine silent movie from 1926 that is not at all creaky and should manage to impress modern-day viewers. As revealed in my beloved Psychotronic Video Guide, this story was, remarkably, filmed no less than four times prior to this 1926 version,
Although I was born a little too late to experience the Golden Age of the cinematic double feature – that is to say, the 1940s and ‘50s – I have been able to enjoy the next-best thing, thanks to where I happen to live. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, NYC boasted well over a dozen so-called “revival theaters” that showed the classic old movies, usually in double-feature format. Most of those theaters are no more, and the ones that remain today, sadly enough, no longer show two films paired together for a single ticket price. But those wonderful theaters still remain fondly in my memory.
In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today, I am proud to present a review by Lixin (Lareina) Yan:
Lixin (Lareina) Yan is a first-year student at Oxford College and is considering majoring in Visual Arts and Psychology.
Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley
It was Anthony Burgess, writing in his 1984 overview volume 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, who first made me aware of L.P. Hartley’s truly remarkable creation Facial Justice. In his essay in that volume, Burgess tells us that Hartley’s novel is “a brilliant projection of tendencies already apparent in the post-war British welfare state.” It is one of the very few sci-fi novels that the Clockwork Orange author chose to spotlight in his book,
Per Locus, it’s official that F&SF has gone quarterly. I don’t know what this means for the magazine, but I don’t think it’s good.
Locus also reviewed Abigail Nussbaum’s new collection of reviews.
One of the smartest and most thoughtful writers in the SF field is Ted Chiang, and in the New Yorker he writes with intelligence and thought about AI as a maker of art.
Continuing with the intelligent and thoughtful writer theme, here’s Richard Powers being interviewed by the U.K.
The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison & J. Michael Straczynski
Short story collections by their nature are hit and miss. The classic, almost unavoidable go-to review is calling a collection a “mixed bag” or noting only “some of the stories hit.” Honestly, I wish I could go that far with The Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (kind of) and J. Michael Straczynski (kind of), but the disappointing reality is that most of these stories rather than some “didn’t hit” for me,
The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham
Tenebrae (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books.
FanLit welcomes a new guest reviewer: Serena Labrecque! Find out more about Serena at the bottom of this post.
The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy & Cary Pietsch
The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins (2018) is the first in an ongoing graphic novel series based on the McElroy family’s D&D campaign. It’s a convenient way to enjoy the story without listening to 69 podcast episodes: over 82 hours of content.
Magnus Burnsides (human fighter),
I take it then, Marion, that you are NOT a Nancy Kwan completist? 😂
I love the original myths, and this artwork is amazing.
Think I'll pass on Night Creature!
Oh, I love Karloff as well, Becky! He can justly be called "The King of Horror"!
Die, Monster, Die! is a personal favourite. Though parts did make me giggle - which may be part of the…