Fright Club Podcast

Westerns share a lot in common with horror. Both deal in black and white, good and evil, blood. There’s not a lot of true cross over. Sure, you’ve got some brilliant horror that pulls ideas from the Western: Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes. But that’s not what we’re looking for. We want horses and cowboy hats and shit. And we found them.

“We’re on a mission from God.” That might be one of many iconic lines from The Blues Brothers, but it speaks to some of the great storylines in horror—sometimes misdirected, sometimes well-intentioned, always scary. Here we pick through the many, including the dozens of tried and true exorcism flicks, to zero in on those that are truly faithful to their calling to serve God, no matter the generall...

Wow, 2017 was one hell of a year in horror. We had blockbusters, people! Three horror movies broke blockbuster status, earning hundreds of millions of dollars. It—good God did that movie make some cash. What does that mean? It means more big budget, R-rated horror will be coming our way. It was quite a year for genre-bending films like It Comes at Night, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and mother!—po...

We finally did it. We finally took a look at short compilations and horror anthologies—all sixty million of them—and found that there are many great ones. So many, in fact, that filmmaker Jeff Frumess teamed up with us so we could cover twice as many. Here are our five favorites.

There are countless reasons the Middle East has not been a hotspot of horror film output. Chief among them may be censorship, but the truth is that many of the countries in the area have a lot more to deal with right now than making movies. Still, horror cinema has become a blossoming industry. Film as art has always been a renegade’s opportunity to make a political statement and horror can be an...

So, there’s this one set of movies you may or may not be aware of about a guy with a William Shatner fixation just trying to get home in time for Halloween. You may have heard of it. Here’s the thing, there are also other Halloween-themed movies you could watch this holiday if you’re so inclined. Loads of them. And while we feel like you probably know which Michael Meyers movies to skip (5 & 8), w...

There is a lot about eating in horror movies. Sometimes it’s a single meal (Ray Liotta’s brain, for example), other times it’s a pervasive theme to the entire movie, as in Troll 2 or The Stuff. We’re focused on the bigger theme here, which is a bit of a shame because spending some time talking about that spaghetti scene in Se7en, or the finger in the french fries in The Hitcher, or that tasty Texa...

With more than 200 films to their credit, there are almost too many directions you can take when whittling down the best in Hammer horror. Ingrid Pitt could have her own countdown, and fans of the sultrier side of Hammer may be disappointed with this countdown. Fans of Terence Fisher should be pleased, though, but there are still many other films in their repertoire worthy of note, which is why Ph...

Oh, siblings—our closest friends and the bane of our existence. Horror movies know that, which is why both sibling rivalry and sisterly bonds populate so many worthwhile flicks: Sisters, Excision, Mama, Only Lovers Left Alive, Kiss of the Vampire. Too many to count, really, but that’s exactly what we plan to do: count down the five best.

The film community lost another of its greats, and we want to celebrate the wonderful and the weirdly watchable of Tobe Hooper. Hooper’s ability to pervert social expectations, his unsurpassed gift for creating terrifying atmospheres among America’s backwoods folk, and his nonchalantly visceral presentation made every film an experience worth attempting. Not every one paid off, but those that did...

How is it even possible that we’ve recorded 109 Fright Club podcasts and we have not covered German horror yet?! It’s high time we remedy that situation, and we do so with the help of Fright Clubber #1, John Dean. Germany has an incredible history in this genre, from some of the earliest and most memorable horror films through the contemporary indie gems that will become the next generation of cla...

So many vampires – so many! And then there are all these other guys who may or may not be. Sometimes it’s hard to say. Sure they drink blood, but do they really need to? Let’s explore.

If you watch much of horror, there’s something you might notice. People lose a lot of limbs in these movies. Naturally, we decided to look into this. We spent some time with the tragic (or maybe deserving) amputees of Audition and American Mary and others, but there turned out to be so many badasses who only get cooler once the limb is missing that we decided to hang out with them.

A ripe topic for the genre, serial killers. There’s not much more terrifying than that. And while most films on that theme tend to be police procedurals, plenty of horror movies contend with that loner who thirsts for his (or her) next kill. Some are done with humor – The Greasy Strangler and Sightseers among the best. Some (Peeping Tom, for instance) give us sympathetic villains. Some (Wolf Creek...

Who’s crazy, who’s not? Whose perspective can you believe? Why can’t I look in the basement? All fine questions that have been asked in film since around 1920. We sifted through all the loonies and the asylums to generate a list of the best and nuttiest available. Thanks to Senior Lunatic Correspondent Dr. Neil McRobert – affectionately known as NakMac – for returning, hangover and all, to help us...

Horror has not always treated the mentally ill very well. Many filmmakers twist notions of “crazy” into varying degrees of evil, but rarely with any real thought to the pathology behind it. Some films and filmmakers make an attempt to examine illness and mine it for both humanity and fear, since nearly all illnesses of any kind are marked by both. Here are our five (OK, maybe six) favorite films d...

We are halfway through 2017 already – whew! It’s been a sucktastic year in many respects, but not when it comes to horror movie output. The young year has already seen so many great flicks that we had to leave some real gems off this list, but we’re pleased to say that Senior Filmmaking Correspondent Jason Tostevin returns to keep us honest.

From The Omen‘s Mrs. Baylock to Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s domestic and handyman, you’ll find questionable help aplenty in horror (and not quite horror). Chan Wook Park’s The Handmaiden explored the dual sized anxiety of having a stranger living in your house – or being the stranger living in someone else’s house. Good horror directors know how to pick that scab, because having a stranger inside...

Who’s idea was this? Because this was super fun. Horror filmmaker can get positively inspired by what they find in a tool box or garden shed. But where to even start? Every Friday the 13th movie, every Sleepaway Camp – basically, every camping movie. Plus, some films really give it away with their title: Driller Killer, Toolbox Murders (both), Saw (all of them), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (all of...

Everybody has their rituals, and that’s all fine and dandy. But we aren’t looking for fine and dandy, are we? Hell no – we’re looking for the kind of rituals that generally includes goats heads and/or black candles and/or virgins and/or special meat preparation. Where will we find these? In some great horror movies. Check it.

You want to know the fears and anxieties at work in any modern population? Just look at their horror films. There are certain anxieties that plague us no matter the era. It Follows, for instance, brilliantly brought horror’s long obsession with underage promiscuity into modern focus. Unfriended, #Horror, Rings, The Den and dozens of others touched on our loss of control in a digital age. You could...

Film lost one of the great character actors earlier this year. Bill Paxton – forever reliable, always memorable, often quotable – died in February at the age of 61. Gone far, far too soon, he’s the horror icon-of-sorts we pay tribute to today. The man made a lot of films, many of them horror: The Colony, Impulse, Future Shock, Club Dread, Deadly Lessons, Mortuary. Sure, these are bad movies, but t...

Who loves horror? We do, you do, and that’s probably why homage horror is so satisfying. Filmmakers take a self-referential approach to draw attention to the tropes of the genre they – and we – love. It’s not a spoof, not a satire, it’s a loving ode to the genre. It’s like a big, bloody bear hug, and we are in!

Few figures in horror are more familiar, no matter your age, than Vincent Price. With more than 100 films to his credit, not to mention the Scooby Doo episodes and Thriller rap, the iconic voice and face of evil (and sometimes comedy) left an impression. Whether it’s his hapless scientist in The Fly (1958), the sole survivor of a zombie/vampire epidemic in 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, or his murd...

From Truffaut’s Day for Night to Burton’s Ed Wood and countless others, films frequently take the setting of filmmaking as their playground. For horror, the meta-possibilities seem endless. What if a serial killer hired a documentary crew to capture him as he lived the tropes of the slasher? I give you Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Or what if a horror veteran reinvigorated a dying ge...