Werewolves

Fireside Chats: Creepy Crawly Show-and-Tell

This quarantine has got us all wrestling with boredom. (For most of us, we’re really lucky that that’s the worst we have to worry about.) Museum curators are no exception. Maybe they’re more bored than most, as they’re used to having people visit them at work every single day. Like drug dealers and prostitutes in…

THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF Part 19

As I have told you, I had seen Centurions several times in my life. Always they had born that same haughty scowl of the first of their kind I had seen while a little boy. All of them, always, the same expression of disdain and superiority. Before that night on the river, their faces revealed…

Movie Review: GERALD’S GAME

I can say now with enthusiasm that I am a Mike Flanagan mark. He did DOCTOR SLEEP, and damn was that a rockin’ flick. He did THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. He did OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL and OCULUS. And he did GERALD’S GAME. He tends to cast the same actors over and over, just…

Fireside Chats: People on Twitter Need to Shut It

I read that “people on Twitter” have been pressuring Disney to release THE NEW MUTANTS to Disney+. Those people need to put a sock in it. If it goes to Disney+ it’ll be even longer before I get to see it, if I ever do. I can’t livestream and who knows how long it would…

Fireside Chats: The Greatest Werewolf Movies

The best werewolf movies ever made? We’ll be the judge of that! First let’s list the listing provided us by Collider. (Wait, are these supposed to be in order of greatness? Descending or ascending? The article doesn’t say. We’ll assume, then, that they’re in no particular order. And Collider already gets one black mark, as…

Revisiting the Classics: IT’S ALIVE

Can you believe I’d never seen this one? Somehow or other, despite me being aware of its existence for years, it somehow managed to slip through the cracks—until now, that is. Thanks to the coronavirus quarantine, I have nothing but free time to catch up on all those movies I’d always meant to watch but…

Fireside Chats: Better Times with Harryhausen

I just wrote an article wherein I mentioned my visit to Tom Devlin’s Monster Museum in Boulder City, Nevada. (You can take a guided virtual tour of the Museum by clicking here. And help them out during this time of pandemic by contributing to their gofundme account here.) It was during the same road trip…

THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF Part 18

I remember the first time I ever saw a Roman soldier. I was still very young, five or six years old. I remember that we, Father, my brothers and I, had traveled to the nearest actual town to try to sell a pair of donkeys. I do not recall why I had been allowed to…

THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH: Doing Alabama Proud

Alabama gets a lot of bad publicity, and deservedly so, I confess. We rank dead last in education and first in support of Donald Trump—and the two are most certainly connected. We have pockets of racism and a couple of years ago a man and his daughter were arrested for living in incest. (True story….

In the Skies Above SKINWALKER RANCH

THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH on the History Channel is my favorite show on television right now. I can’t get enough of this one. Since the series debuted, and in a timeframe that has covered a few weeks from the summer of 2019 (oh, those glorious days seem so long ago now!), the investigators have…

Help the Monster Museum

This coronavirus shutdown sucks for everybody. But it sucks more for some than for others. Those who depend on public gatherings to make money—like movie theaters, restaurants, Theatre companies (like mine), and museums—are going to feel the sting the most strongly. Tom Devlin’s Monster Museum in Boulder City, Nevada, is not immune. Tom has asked…

Happy Birthday, TWIN PEAKS!

Thirty years. That’s absolutely mind-blowing to me. How in the hell did thirty years slip past me so quickly? Like sands through the hourglass and all that. (But damn, sand, slow it up a bit, will ya?!) TWIN PEAKS debuted on ABC on Sunday, April 8th, 1990. I remember it so well. I’d never seen…

Fireside Chats: AMC will be A-OK

As this linked article explains, the possible declaring of bankruptcy by the AMC theater chain does not mean, as some have feared—and even as I feared, a little, if I’m honest about it—that the AMC theaters in your area won’t open back up when this pandemic is finally over. Bankruptcy may be more likely now…

THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF Part 17

The Holy Scriptures never made much sense to me, in that they taught, or so it seemed to me, a belief in two different gods while stressing the existence of only one. I do not speak of two parts of the Trinity—one outside the Faith might, with sincerity, argue that Trinitarian doctrine espouses that there…

Fireside Chats: Shuffling Showtimes

Thanks to our lovely little pandemic, movie theaters are closed. Some, like those owned by AMC, may never reopen. AMC had almost bankrupted itself before the quarantine, overextending itself by buying up other theater chains. I hope they make it through. If not, I hope some other chain takes over their locations. Anyway, theaters are…

Movie Review: THE UGLY

This was an unexpected little surprise. I’d never even heard of it before, when I chanced upon it in the bargain bin at my local Dollar General. The premise sounded intriguing enough that I was willing to gamble 99 cents, and I’m sure glad I did. The movie gets its name from the alter ego…

Human Lab Rats at Skinwalker Ranch

As I sit typing these words, it is early Monday. I have to wait a couple more days for the second episode of the new History channel series THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH. Not being the patient type, I busy myself with study, research into the infamous Utah location. Thus it is that I chanced…

Freddy’s Cryptids

The most recent episode of the new series TRUE TERROR WITH ROBERT ENGLUND was devoted exclusively to the monsters. The story of the infamous “Red Ghost” of Arizona was repeated. I was previously familiar with this story, as it is in its own macabre way quite comical. I was not, however, aware of allegations that…

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch – Light ‘Em Up!

Is Skinwalker Ranch itself sentient? Is it *alive*? If so, or if it is occupied by some form of self-aware life that is responsible for all the strangeness that happens there, one might suspect that it, or they, would, once the eyes of scientific scrutiny were turned upon it/them, “cool it” for a while. Thus…

THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT CHRISTOPHER: WEREWOLF Part 16

Elsora won my devotion that day. She had nursed me throughout the night as I grew sicker. “I fear I have been poisoned!” I told her. The sun had scarce risen when Valsalvas and several of his soldiers came to get me. I did not see them coming; I lay inside on my crude cot,…

Eating Alice

Journalistic integrity, or the dearth thereof, is not a recent occurrence. Though I don’t think their intentions were malicious, I recall watching news programs in my youth wherein they got everything wrong. The local news reported once on the dangers of LSD contained in temporary tattoos; despite the fact that it’s just an urban legend…

Space Wolves

As much as I enjoyed the recent STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER—recent it may have been, but it seems like a lifetime ago, too, doesn’t it, what with everything that’s happened since?—the more I read about the things that didn’t make it into the film the more I’m left wanting to see them. What…

Fireside Chats: Days of the Animals

There is one, and only one, as far as I can see, good thing to come out of this forced coronavirus quarantine. Pollution has decreased. It would be wonderful if people could learn from this whole experience and, once it finally ends, start to treat the natural world a little better, to keep the pollution…

THE SECRET OF SKINWALKER RANCH Episode One

For the past few years we’ve known only that the new owner of Skinwalker Ranch in Utah was secretive and mysterious. Now we know who that owner is, a rich real estate dude with an interest in the paranormal named Brandon Fugal. Considering that he named the shell company through which he bought the Ranch…

Fireside Chats: You Gotta Laugh

This one is just for fun. It’s okay to make fun of stupid people during times of duress, isn’t it? Or if not *okay* okay then at least a little more okay than otherwise? Heck, even if it isn’t, I say we do it anyway. We can blame it on stress and cabin fever. Holding…