Half Price Horror

Time to spend another Halloween with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, as she brings us a quirky conspiracy thriller classic from the 1970s! People are turning into homicidal maniacs as their hair falls out, ticking time bombs ready to explode into violent rage. It's all connected to something called "Blue Sunshine"... and if Jerry Zipkin can't uncover its secret, he'll go to prison for a murder he di...

Not going to lie here--what you think of 'The Conjuring' depends greatly on what you think of the real-life Ed and Lorraine Warren, and I'm afraid I came to the party way too late to have a positive opinion of them. So let's talk about why it's important to do your research, not take the word of a pair of sketchy grifters, and why that might make 2013's 'The Conjuring' a less than ideal film.

There's never been a more appropriate time to describe an episode as a "deep dive", as HPH takes a look at Neil Marshall's masterpiece of unbearable rising tension, 2005's claustrophobic horror film 'The Descent'!

It's another Spooky Season, and you know what that means - we're playing all the hits of horror here at HPH! And when it comes to classic and influential horror movies, they don't come much bigger than the tale of Marion Crane, on the run from the law with $40,000 in stolen money and stopping in for a night at the Bates Motel. Enjoy!

It's not quite Spooky Season yet, but we're starting with the big classics early as we dive into one of the foundational texts of science fiction horror. So let's suit up with the United Federation of Planets--excuse me, just the United Planets--and follow our intrepid starship captain as he checks in on a lost colony and finds lost technology from an advanced alien race... and monsters. Monsters...

The original '28 Days Later' was shot during 9/11, but its concepts and themes had been finalized before that moment of historic upheaval. So what does it look like when the demise of Britain at the hands of rage monsters becomes a conscious, intentionally political film? What do we see when we look at zombies through the eyes of a post-Iraq filmmaker? '28 Weeks Later' has the answ...

Start spreading the news, folks, because just like Jason in 1989, the Gremlins are headed to the Big Apple and they want everyone—simply everyone, from Christopher Lee to Leonard Maltin to Hulk Hogan—to join them! So come along, and we’ll talk about the movie so gloriously anarchic it inspired its very own Key and Peele sketch!

London is deserted, a plague has stricken Great Britain, and the streets are filled with chaos and danger. Is it 1963's classic Doctor Who story 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'? Probably not, but it is time to take a look at a movie that might have been improved with a Dalek or two with 2002's '28 Days Later'!

It's been a while since we've talked about 'Shaun of the Dead', Edgar Wright's ferociously inventive debut feature, and even longer since we've discussed 1973's folk horror classic 'The Wicker Man'. But they're both relevant here, as Wright and his collaborator Simon Pegg come together for a loving mashup of folk horror and action comedy in the 2007 masterpi...

Time for deja vu all over again, as we jump ahead a year from 'The Night Stalker' to its very similar sequel, 'The Night Strangler'. Will Kolchak clash with the police? Will he argue with his editor some more? Is there a supernatural angle to the murders? Listen and find out!

French filmmaker Jean Rollin is a controversial figure in cult cinema, known for his surreal and vivid imagery as well as his strange, almost dreamlike stories. Let's dive into his body of work with one of his early forays into erotic horror and vampire movies, the 1971 'Shiver of the Vampires' (also known as 'Strange Things Happen at Night') and see what makes him so loved and...

Time to tackle an undeservedly forgotten classic, a 1972 made-for-television movie about a cynical reporter in Sin City who stumbles on the evidence of crimes no rationalist can explain away. There's a real, live vampire in Las Vegas... and maybe Carl Kolchak is the only one who can stop it.

It's time for your horror host to celebrate another birthday with another birthday-themed horror movie, and why not go straight to the sequel of the one he did last year? It's a bit repetitive, sure, but that's kind of appropriate in this case because Tree's also stuck in a bit of a rut. In fact, she's right back to repeating her birthday all over again... but this time, someth...

"Christmas in July" concludes, but not before a little stop in Halloween Town to pick up some goodies for Spooky Season. But is Jack Skellington really the good guy of this story, or is he the Elon Musk of Christmas? Let's take a deep dive and find out!

Christmas in July continues, as we jump into the most authentically holiday-themed horror movie of the genre! But given that director Michael Dougherty's last movie 'Trick 'r' Treat' made a fetish out of honoring traditions without question, is 'Krampus' going to be any different? Listen and find out!

Gremlins had a cultural footprint far beyond its box office success--indeed, it's one of the films that indelibly defines the 1980s. But what does this movie have to say about Reagan's America and the cultural conception of small-town life? How do the grEMliNs inVAde the veRy naRRAtiVe stRUCTure of the fiLM itsELf to coNVeY a sENse of anARKie &&&&& Sorry about that. The...

Time to begin 'Christmas in July', as we take a look at one of the earliest examples of holiday horror and a major influence on the slasher genre. There's a killer stalking campus over Winter Break, and nobody knows their identity... but they're getting troubling phone calls from someone referencing "Billy". And people are disappearing.

Every so often a movie comes along that traumatizes an entire generation. The 70s had 'The Exorcist' and 'Jaws', the 80s had pretty much the entire Indiana Jones trilogy, the 90s had the velociraptors from 'Jurassic Park'... and if you were the right age in 2002, you will always remember Samara Morgan and the seven days you spent in taut, tense fear after watching 'The...

Before 'The Conjuring', before 'Insidious', before 'The Ring' and 'Poltergeist' and a host of films about the supernatural, George C Scott starred in a mournful, elegant film about a grieving father confronted by a vengeful ghost. And what vengeance does it want? Come along with Half Price Horror and find out!

Mick Garris is well known as one of Stephen King's go-to directors for adaptations of his work. But some of those adaptations are more famous than others, and this is definitely one of the lesser-known King films. And why might that be? Well, let's take a look and find out!

What do you get when you combine Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Carol Kane, Adam Driver, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Chloe Sevigny, the RZA, Danny Glover, Austin Butler, Selena Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Caleb Landry Jones, Larry Fessenden, Sturgill Simpson, and a whole horde of marauding, flesh-eating zombies? You get a dry, deadpan, uniquely Jarmuschian horror-comedy, 2019's 'The Dead Don&...

Back when I was six years old, my parents went to the new-fangled "video stores" that were just becoming popular in the early 80s and rented one of their favorite silly, cheesy sci-fi horror movies to play in their new "VCR" for their kids. I'd been scared by films before, but this was the first time I watched a horror movie and it changed me forever. So join me for my 150t...

Love it or hate it, the rape/revenge movie is a subgenre with a long and venerable history, and it's safe to say that Stephen King was bound to dip into it sooner or later. Likewise, the Lifetime network has its own long history of making movies about feminist empowerment through brutal violence against the men who do women wrong. So is this a match made in heaven, or a campy misfire? Take a l...

When Robert Eggers released his debut feature, 'The VVitch', everyone wanted to know what he was going to do for his next movie. And when it turned out to be a surreal black-and-white two-hander with an opaque and deliberately confusing storyline, a double unreliable narrator, and plenty of homoerotic subtext? They couldn't stop talking about it! And now neither can I.

'#Horror' might have the world's worst SEO, but is it worth tracking down through the sea of movies, books, TV shows and radio plays also tagged as "#horror"? Well, before you go to the effort, why don't you listen for a spell to this episode and find out if you want to spend the time and energy on it. Because for better or worse, I already did.