The Introverted Obelisk

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we descend into William Castle’s gothic funhouse of greed, ghosts, and marital loathing: House on Haunted Hill (1959). Vincent Price stars as the ever-smiling Frederick Loren, a millionaire who invites five strangers to spend the night in a supposedly haunted mansion with the promise of $10,000 each—provided they survive until morning....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we shuffle through the empty streets of The Last Man on Earth (1964), the Vincent Price classic that adapted Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend on a budget that looked like it was borrowed from the props department’s coffee fund. Price stars as Dr. Robert Morgan, the sole survivor of a plague that’s turned humanity into a shambling horde of...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we dive spine-first into William Castle’s most infamous gimmick spectacular, The Tingler (1959). Vincent Price dons his lab coat once again, this time as Dr. Warren Chapin, a scientist who discovers that fear itself takes the form of a parasitic centipede living in your spinal column. The only cure? Screaming. Yes, ladies and gentlemen,...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we buzz straight into The Fly (1958), the cautionary tale about what happens when science moves faster than common sense. David Hedison plays André Delambre, a brilliant scientist who builds a teleportation device but forgets to check the passenger list before stepping inside. One fly later, and we’re dealing with a man sporting the wor...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we prowl the drafty halls of The Bat (1959), a murder mystery that promises a terrifying faceless killer but mostly delivers a parade of suspects tripping over blueprints. Agnes Moorehead stars as Cornelia Van Gorder, a sharp-witted mystery novelist renting a sprawling mansion called The Oaks — which comes furnished with hidden rooms, s...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we peel back the fur suit on The Ape (1940), a Poverty Row shocker where Boris Karloff proves that even brilliant actors aren’t immune to scripts about monkey costumes and spinal fluid theft. Karloff plays Dr. Bernard Adrian, a kindly small-town physician with a big dream: curing a young woman of paralysis. Admirable, except his method...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we dive into The Gorilla (1939), a film that can’t decide if it wants to be a horror, mystery, or a comedy routine — so it stumbles into being neither. Starring the Ritz Brothers, who spend most of the runtime mugging for the camera, and poor Bela Lugosi, who looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, the movie offers a killer gorilla tha...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we wander into the creaky corridors of The Monster Walks (1932), a Poverty Row relic that proves sometimes the scariest thing about a horror movie is its production budget. Promising a terrifying beast on the loose, the film delivers…a chimpanzee in a cage, a thunderstorm soundtrack on repeat, and a script that stumbles more than it wal...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we stumble through the foggy backstreets of Paris with Bela Lugosi’s eyebrows leading the way in Murder in the Rue Morgue (1932). Supposedly adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s pioneering detective tale, the movie tosses out logic and deduction in favor of mad science, ape costumes, and enough bad biology to make Darwin claw his way out of t...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we sink our teeth — or at least pretend to — into I Eat Your Skin (1964, finally released in 1970), the zombie misfire with a title so good it should’ve been arrested for false advertising. Promising cannibalistic horror and flesh-ripping mayhem, the film instead delivers papier-mâché zombies, voodoo rituals filmed on the cheap in Flori...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we pack our thermal underwear, our Geiger counters, and our healthy skepticism as we head north—way north—to a remote Arctic outpost where the coffee’s strong, the tempers are short, and the science is suspiciously well-funded. We’re talking about The Thing From Another World (1951), a Cold War-era creature feature where the invader isn...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we’re digging deep—literally—into the 1957 cult classic From Hell It Came , a film that dares to ask: “What if your dead enemy came back to life as an angry tree stump?” Set on a fictional South Pacific island where science, superstition, and slow-moving bark monsters collide, this movie features radiation, voodoo, and one of the most u...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Introverted Obelisk , we wade chest-deep into the murky waters of the 1959 swamp shocker Attack of the Giant Leeches —a film where the real danger isn’t the monsters so much as the humidity, infidelity, and questionable law enforcement. When townsfolk in the Florida Everglades start disappearing, the local authorities blame gators, bad luck, or perhaps a diet rich...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Introverted Obelisk , we untangle the web of 1958’s Earth vs. The Spider —a film that asks the bold question: what if the real danger wasn’t the giant arachnid terrorizing small-town America, but the jazz band rehearsing inside the high school auditorium? Join us as we scuttle into a story featuring teenage sleuths, a high school science teacher who moonlights as...

Send us Fan Mail This week on The Introverted Obelisk , we dive headfirst into the salty depths of atomic-age anxiety with It Came From Beneath the Sea —a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear testing, hubris, and underestimating how mad a giant radioactive octopus can get when you only give it six tentacles. Join us as we follow a square-jawed submarine commander, a trailblazing female sci...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we beam ourselves back to 1953 and dive into the uncanny, paranoid dreamscape that is Invaders from Mars . Told entirely through the eyes of a young boy named David, this early sci-fi thriller offers a Cold War allegory with a sandpit twist—and we’re here for every bizarre moment. We break down the film’s eerie aesthetic, unsettling ali...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we slide headfirst into the low-budget lizard mayhem that is The Giant Gila Monster (1959), a film where the title tells you everything—and yet somehow, not nearly enough. Join me as we unravel the story of a sleepy Texas town besieged by a shockingly chill giant lizard with a taste for hot rods, necking teens, and casual property destr...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we crank up the Theremin and hunker down in our Cold War bunkers for 1956’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers —a film where alien invasion meets government denial with all the subtlety of a brick through a window. We’ll walk through the plot, such as it is, as alien ships descend upon Earth like angry pie plates, zapping landmarks and demand...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we dip our toes—and eventually our entire sanity—into the tepid cinematic waters of Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), a film that dares to ask: what if a rubbery sea creature and a questionable romance plot tried to co-exist on a shoestring budget? Spoiler alert: they mostly get in each other’s way. Join me as I navigate this soggy B...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we plunge headfirst into the baffling, burbling waters of Creature from the Haunted Sea —Roger Corman’s 1961 fever dream that somehow mashed together Cold War espionage, mobster slapstick, and a sea monster made of mop heads. We walk through the film’s paper-thin plot, where an American conman fakes a sea monster attack to rob Cuban exi...

Send us Fan Mail  In this episode, we're cracking open the not-so-well-preserved corpse of Bloodlust (1961), a film that dares to ask the question: “What if rich guys hunted people and everyone was just kind of chill about it?” Before The Most Dangerous Game had a Hulu reboot and before “eat the rich” became a social media aesthetic, there was Bloodlust , a charming little moral play wrapped...

Send us Fan Mail  In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we descend into the fever-dream logic of Robot Monster (1953), a film where humanity is annihilated by a gorilla in a diving helmet with Wi-Fi issues. Join us as we unravel a plot held together by bubble machines, philosophical monologues about murder, and an ape-creature named Ro-Man who falls in love, develops free will, and still ma...

Send us Fan Mail In this crustacean calamity of atomic proportions, The Introverted Obelisk scuttles into the radioactive tidal pool of 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monsters —a movie where the science is shaky, the dialogue is moist, and the crabs are psychic. Join us as we unpack the radioactive fever dream of an island expedition that goes from scientific to suicidal in record time, courtesy of som...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we pack our bags for an ill-advised tropical expedition into the technicolor fever dream that is Gappa: The Triphibian Monster (1967). When a group of journalists and scientists arrive on a remote island owned by a deeply unethical corporation, they discover a baby kaiju nestled in a cavern filled with glowing eggs and ancient warnings....

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of The Introverted Obelisk , we slip on our ghost viewer glasses and stumble through the cobweb-covered corridors of William Castle’s 1960 spookfest 13 Ghosts —not to be confused with the blood-slicked, glass-walled 2001 remake that somehow starred both Tony Shalhoub and a jug of ectoplasmic rage. We follow the ill-fated Zorba family, who inherit a haunted mansion...