THERIOPHOBIA: FEAR THE BEAST Part Seventeen

Chaney had just reached the exit, turning off the Interstate into Birmingham, when the feeling came over her. Disquiet, foreboding, and familiar, a nagging sense that something, somewhere, wasn’t right. Am I feeling guilty now, or what? Chaney dismissed the thought, pulling a cigarette free from the pack and lighting it. She turned up her…

The Necessity of Folklore

Necessary to our shared human history, that is. Necessary to our understanding of ourselves. Necessary to a people’s establishment and maintenance, its common spiritual and psychological identity. It is, along with our recorded histories, the soil in which our cultural roots are sunk, and we will either stand, nourished, or wither and fall dependent on…

Ruminations on the Emmys

Darren Criss won for his performance in AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE, and deservedly so. Judith Light and Penelope Cruz were also nominated for that series, and also deservedly so. And I was thrilled to see my boy Finn Wittrock getting some respect. He competed against Ricky Martin and Edgar Ramirez—all for…

Dead Animals

Three horses—albeit horses of the miniature variety—and a dog in Monroe County, Kentucky were killed by some kind of animal. Two of the horses were found floating in a pond, the third in a barn with its throat torn out. It would seem the ones in the pond also suffered similar injuries, as their deaths…

Tarzan vs. the Wolfman

No, that movie never happened. But wouldn’t it have been awesome if it had! There ARE connections between the two characters, though, and not just in the conceptual sense. Both are metaphors for the blurring of the line between human being and animal. Tarzan is a man who was raised by beasts, the latest iteration…

GLEN OR GLENDA? vs. MANIAC

“Comparing and contrasting the Devil imagery in Ed Wood’s GLEN OR GLENDA? and Dwain Esper’s MANIAC” would have made for a more accurate title for this article, but it was a tad too long, I thought. Last week I watched the latter film, impressed by the depths of inadequacy it managed to plumb. Something I…