Werewolves | werewolf, werewolves and lycans

HALLOWEEN: Why Didn’t The Shape Kill The Baby?

Continuing my coverage of the new HALLOWEEN, regarding which last week I reported on the fact that some whiny-whiners—okay, actually just one—were upset that Michael Myers didn’t kill the baby. They—he—felt this was out of character for The Shape and it ruined the movie for him. (Yes, seriously. Hey, there were those eggheads who wanted…

Lights Out

See, I been telling y’all it’s still Halloween. Being too busy during the month of October to go out and enjoy any of the area haunted attractions, I was thrilled to find at least one still open for business this past weekend. The Lester Haunted Hospital was hosting a special “lights out” event for just…

THERIOPHOBIA: FEAR THE BEAST Part 24

Leland rocked in his easy chair, wearing a pair of underwear and his undershirt. He’d gone out to the mailbox to get the day’s paper and now sat relaxing, one leg brought up, his ankle resting on his knee, to read it. The short trek to the end of the driveway had left him coated…

New Harryhausen Movie In The Works

This couldn’t be more exciting news. All Monsterkidz recognize the debt that is owed to Ray Harryhausen. Horror as it exists today, in point of fact MOVIES as they exist today, period, would NOT exist if not for Ray Harryhausen. To call him a pioneer is to do him a disservice. The words “trendsetter” and…

The Beast of Cypress Canyon

Everything old is new again. I went into my local bookstore the other day and there were vinyl records out for sale. Brand new ones, and they weren’t cheap. I visited my personal mecca, Nightmare Toys, and they have a growing collection of VHS tapes for sale. New ones. And they aren’t cheap, either. Retro…

More on HALLOWEEN

Last week I justified talking about HALLOWEEN on this site because of the way it put me in mind of “parallel time” as a plot device used on DARK SHADOWS. Continuing in that vein this week, I must take to task one of the dudes over at Bloody Disgusting. Normally they and I are kindred…

Give Jane Goodall a Nobel Prize!

Indulge me for a moment, friends, as I get civically-minded. There is a petition up and running seeking to convince the people who decide such things that Dr. Jane Goodall is deserving of a Nobel Prize, and I wholeheartedly concur. I wonder if you’d be so kind as to lend your voice to the cause?…

THERIOPHOBIA: FEAR THE BEAST Part 23

“Thank you for coming in, Dr. Frye.” The big black man held the office door open. Hank shuffled inside. He forced his legs to work, trying to look normal, yet he felt so tired he could scarce stand. He hoped the policeman didn’t notice him trembling. “Why did you want to see me?” Hank asked,…

Tarzan meets King Kong—and Godzilla!

News has come out that Alexander Skarsgard has signed on to appear in the upcoming (but not soon enough!) GODZILLA VS. KONG. Skarsgard may be forever linked to TRUE BLOOD in the minds of many fans, but to me he will always be Tarzan. Even though he hardly looks like the same guy who starred…

Is it “Wolfman” or “Wolf Man”?

Let us just settle this one here and now. The answer depends on the particularities of the question being asked. What was the actual title of the 1941 Universal Studios classic starring Lon Chaney Jr.? It is THE WOLF MAN. “Wolf” and “Man” are two separate words. This would be fine, if they were hyphenated….

On Storytelling

At the risk of sounding a tad self-important, it does please me to think that what I do is important. Vital, even. I see myself, first and foremost, as a storyteller. Second only, perhaps, to living the kind of life and having the sort of adventures that other storytellers would write about, I can imagine…

Were the Trolls of Folklore Really Neanderthals?

Geologically-speaking, Neanderthals haven’t been extinct for that long. Do we—and by “we” I mean people living today, Homo sapiens—retain within our collective unconscious, our group psyche, the memory of when our ancestors interacted with these creatures, the same way we retain a trace of their genes in our DNA? Does that explain all the Bigfoot…

THERIOPHOBIA: FEAR THE BEAST Part 22

Hank hammered the nail into the board, through the board and into the door frame, up to the head, driving it in deep. He picked up another board, pre-cut pine, the set of shelves he’d intended to build but had never found the time to start. He took up another nail from the box, held…

Shunka Warakin: Unidentified

The other night I reclined on ye olde sofa to watch one of the numerous shows that is being offered this glorious time of the year—Halloween season (Yes, it is a season. You knew that, right? Halloween season begins on October 1st and ends on Thanksgiving. Always.)—and which I did not have time to watch…

The Nightmare Burger

You’ve all no doubt seen the commercials for Burger King’s new “Nightmare King” burger.” Now I love me a good gimmick, am a complete sucker for a good gimmick, so I had to try the product, and tell you all about it. It’s fun; it’s Halloween season. And, as I admitted, I’m a mark for…

The Age of Rage

You need to read this article. It is sobering, worrying and, I have not the slightest doubt, truthful. Are we as a species becoming more violent, more bestial? Let me quote from the article: “People are becoming…‘decivilized’…Something is regressing people back to a point where their worst, primal, animal impulses are being unleashed — unable to think,…

Green CRITTERS

I’ve already offered a review of the new HALLOWEEN movie over at our sister site darkness.com and commented on its parallels to DARK SHADOWS over at vampires.com, so I need not say anything else about it here. Only I want to. My enthusiasm is such that I feel the need to gush. The sequel shows…

No, Rambo WON’T Be Fighting a Werewolf

This is probably a good thing. For a time, Sylvester Stallone was considering making a Rambo movie in which Rambo would have fought an immortal, werewolf-like monster that was both a genetically-engineered bipedal biological weapon, carrying the DNA of an entire race of murderous savages within it, and simultaneously the reincarnation, or perhaps it would…

THERIOPHOBIA: FEAR THE BEAST Part 21

Hank’s hands were shaking. It made it harder to do what he needed to do. He went to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, took out the little plastic bottle of pills and unscrewed the top. He shook several of the capsules into his hand, calculating the amount needed. Too little and he’d still be…

Pickin’ on Pazuzu

Everybody knows Pazuzu as the demon in THE EXORCIST, possessing and tormenting poor little Linda Blair. But Pazuzu is a real figure from Mesopotamian mythology, an Akkadian storm god. There are those who maintain, though, that it is an awkward fit to have him be the antagonist in the movie, that possessing and tormenting children…

The Universal Monsters in the Haunted Mansion

Don’t get your hopes up. It’s just an Etsy creation. We aren’t likely to see any of the classic Universal Monsters appearing in the haunted Mansion ride at Disneyworld’s Magic Kingdom anytime soon, considering they are owned by a rival studios. As far as that goes, how come we aren’t seeing the classic Monsters at…

A STRANGER THINGS Halloween

So there are three Universal Studios theme parks? I knew there were two, one in Orlando, Florida and one in Hollywood. If I’d ever known about the one in Singapore, I forgot about it. That all three are featuring STRANGER THINGS haunted mazes this year isn’t surprising. What’s interesting is that they’re each featuring a…

And Speaking of Box Office…

This time of year always brings lots of fresh genre offerings to movie screens. Sometimes those films are dead on arrival, and sometimes they just ought to be. (Sometimes they ought never to have been made in the first place.) Horror is well represented at the box office right now, but how are the various…

Whose Box Office Is Bigger?

You’ve probably heard about how GONE WITH THE WIND would totally smoke all of today’s biggest blockbusters if adjustments were made for inflation. Measuring the cost of movie tickets then as opposed to the cost of tickets today against the average cost of living, that sort of thing. Is it true? Sort of, yes. If…

Screamin’ Black Panther

This past weekend, we finished the run of my original play HAINT’ED: TRUE ALABAMA GHOST STORIES. I’m pleased to say that it was a success. Attendance was good and audiences seemed to really dig it. It is my most personal play, as it features stories that I was told by my grandparents when I was…