FIRST BLOOD

Writers and filmmakers on the first movie or experience that made them know they had caught the ”horror bug,” and that the genre would go on to be an integral part of their life and career
ARTICLE | FIRST BLOOD
A young horror-seeker found his dark pleasures in classic monsters, Salem’s Lot, and the art house—and the search goes on.

Horror stories know something that other stories don’t. William S. Burroughs named his book Naked Lunch after that “frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” That’s how I remember my first horror movies...

BY TOM PHELAN  |  March 17, 2022

ARTICLE | FIRST BLOOD
Like a full moon, An American Werewolf in London transformed a young horror director-to-be.

Despite all the Universal, Toho, and Hammer monster movies I’d been introduced to on Channel 48’s Creature Double Feature, nothing had prepared me for the moment when a friend’s older brother popped in a VHS copy of An American Werewolf in London...

BY HENRY MILLER  |  February 1, 2022

ARTICLE | FIRST BLOOD
BBC2’s Horror Double Bills paved the way for cherished father-son bonding and a lifelong love of the creepy unknown.

One of the earliest memories I have is of my father pointing to an abandoned rowboat in Dublin’s River Tolka and quite matter-of-factly stating that “a monster lives in there.”

BY GLENN McQUAID  |  October 31, 2021

REVIEW

Arrebato (Rapture)

(Iván Zulueta, Spain, 1979)

Birthed during the cultural thaw that immediately followed the end of the Franco dictatorship, Basque writer-director and designer Iván Zulueta's 1979 feature Arrebato erupts like a massive discharge of so much repressed anxiety and despair.

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BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS

Beast

(Michael Pearce, UK, 2017)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

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BY  STEVEN MEARS  |  Month 00, 2021

REVIEW

Humongous

(Paul Lynch, USA, 1982)

In what could be the fastest-resulting rape revenge movie, a drunken lout brutally forces himself on Ida, the young woman who doesn't return his affections, during a party over Labor Day.

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BY  LAURA KERN  |  Month 00, 2021

GUIDE | MODERN SLAYERS

Beast

(Michael Pearce, UK, 2017)

Beast is a lot of movies in one package - fractured fairy tale, belated-coming-of-age story, psychological drama, regional horror film - but above all it's a calling card for its leading lady, Jessie Buckley.

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BY  STEVEN MEARS  |  Month 00, 2021

ARTICLE | FIRST BLOOD
(David Prior, USA/South Africa/UK, 2020)

There is a lot of misdirection in David Prior’s ambitious, scary, and exhilaratingly convoluted The Empty Man. For its first 20 minutes it plays like lost-in-the-wilderness adventure horror, following a group of American friends...

BY HENRY MILLER  |  October 31, 2021

REVIEW
(Damon Packard, USA, 2018)

The TV is always on in Fatal Pulse. Set in 1991, the underground horror legend Damon Packard’s latest film is drenched in pinkish-bluish gel lighting, a movie-world glow enveloping all in its path...

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BY CHLOE LIZOTTE  |  October 31, 2021

REVIEW
(Sean King O'Grady, USA, 2021)

In late 2001, my girlfriend and I moved from New York to Austin, Texas. We had some friends who’d recently gone down there and we’d never been away from New York. We knew a lot—especially in those months following September of that year—but we didn’t know tornadoes.

BY WILLIAM BOYLE  |  October 31, 2021