Quiet Little Horrors

Merry Christmas! Don’t answer your phone! Or trust your weirdly controlling boyfriend! But do drink and insult people à la Margo Kidder as Barb. Let’s talk about the original Black Christmas.

We extend our discussion about silent horror films with one of the most interesting cinematic takes on the topic: 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire. Come for Willem Dafoe as the somewhat comical undead, stay for the subtext about what horrific sacrifices humans should make for the sake of art.

This month we’re getting classy and discussing a topic we haven’t ventured into yet: silent horror film. We talk about the ones we love and the ones on our watchlists, and dig into the details of what silent horror film has to offer with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The October theme is suburban horror, so what could we cover next but Tom Hanks’s journey through the wilds of having very weird and somewhat suspicious neighbors: 1989’s The ‘Burbs. Let us appreciate Joe Dante, Carrie Fisher and Dick Miller.

It’s October and so we’re exploring the spookiest place of all … the suburbs. This month we cover surburban horror, starting off with the classic of the genre: Poltergeist.

For our second entry in our haunted house theme, it’s time to get weird. We discuss one of the most gloriously bizarre horror movies there is: 1977’s House (otherwise known as Hausu). Ghosts, cats, and watermelons, oh my.

We get experimental and existential with the minimalist horror of Skinamarink, the best low-budget way to relive your latchkey kid childhood trauma. Since this month’s episodes are tied to haunted houses, we also discuss the short internet art film My house walk-through, another very fun and chill exploration of how simple things can scare the hell out of us on film.

Now that we’ve discussed the original Carrie, we decided to look at both remakes and, just for good measure, the sequel. So in this episode we’re talking about Carrie from 2002, Carrie from 2013, and The Rage: Carrie 2 from 1999, and, more importantly, what it is about this story that leads us back to it again and again.

We usually play in the deeper, more obscure end of horror film, so this is probably the most well-known film we’ve covered so far—but there is plenty to talk about, psychologially speaking, in the original Carrie: the ultimate in slow-burn horror, buried female rage, and the explosive danger of being a teenage girl.

We join the march to give Jennifer’s Body its long overdue flowers. We discuss the outdated stereotypes of horror audiences, the intense and complicated friendships between teenage girls, and how the filmmakers got done dirty by the media. Turn it up.