Wake Up Heavy

No mere Santa Slasher here, Christmas Evil is a psychological study of one lonely man's mental breakdown. Harry Stadling is obsessed with Christmas and Santa Claus and the lack of belief in his fellow man is weighing heavy on his mind. As hypocrisy, consumerism, and apathy meet him on every side Harry slides further into his delusions until he snaps. For more info please visit: https://www.wakeuph...

One of a BAJILLION campground Slashers from the early ‘80s The Burning is probably most famous for ONE scene that features some stellar Savini wet works. What stands out for me is the great cast: Jason Alexander (with HAIR), Fisher Stevens, Brian Backer, and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her Holly Hunter. It’s also one of the few Summer Camp films that shows the counselors and kids actually doing Summer...

When is a WDIRT entry not really a WDIRT entry? When you realize half-way through the movie that you HAVE seen it before. That was the case when I finally tracked down Visiting Hours a few years back. Thinking I would remember having seen a horror movie with William Shatner in it I watched it in hopes of discovering a new old favorite. But then I started getting the strangest feeling of déjà vu, a...

My little family is test-driving Disney+ before taking the streaming plunge with the new service, and one of the films I was most excited to visit was RETURN TO OZ. Having passed this one by as a teen, and knowing it's not-so-stellar reputation, I was curious to see if it was actually as "bad" as I'd heard. Since my daughter has read many of the Oz books I wanted us to watch it together. Then I th...

A lot of Slasher fans don’t like this one, but I dig it. Directed by J. Lee Thompson (best known, by me at least, for his sleazy flicks with Charles Bronson) and starring Glen Ford, Susan Acker, and Melissa Sue Anderson this one is kind of a mess. The ending was changed at the last minute and makes no sense, but for me that’s part of the charm. The set-piece kills are fun, there are red herrings g...

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is MY Friday the 13th . As well as being my favorite of that franchise, it is one of my favorite slashers (I placed it at No. 3 on my Slasher Top Ten list) AND one of my favorite horror films in general. The film's similarities to Halloween , something I hadn't really thought much about prior to doing this episode, may play a big part in that. What could have bee...

And finally here's the wrap up episode for the Stephen King series. It's a quickie (relatively speaking) where I rank some books, rank some movies, and throw in some recs for films I didn't hit on in the previous shows. Don't be a lunkhead, give 'er a listen!

My Bloody Valentine is a Canadian entry into the slasher genre (you can really hear the accents in this one) and a prime example of Holiday Horror (still waiting for a Flag Day Slasher). We’ve got all the staples of an ‘80s slasher—a masked killer, decent amounts of gore (in the uncut version), misdirection, and humor—but instead of teenage babysitters or camp counselors we’ve got 20-something coa...

I was recently asked by Sam Panico to submit a Top Ten Slashers list for his site B & S About Movies, and it got me to thinking about a series I had considered awhile back called Why Do I Hate Slashers (I Don't Actually)? Some of the films from my top ten list have been discussed on the show ( Black Christmas , Alice, Sweet Alice , etc.) so we'll skip those for this series. Everything else is...

The Blood on Satan's Claw was released in 1971 by Tigon Pictures, a short-lived competitor of Hammer and Amicus in the late 1960s and early '70s. It stars Peter Wymark ( Repulsion ) and Linda Hayden ( Taste the Blood of Dracula ) and was directed by Piers Haggard. In a field in 17th century England a local farmhand plows up the rotting corpse of a strange creature. Although the older towns people...

Between 1977 and 1984 Stephen King published five novels under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Though many fans and critics surmised that Bachman was King, which he would deny, the truth wasn’t uncovered until Washington, DC bookstore clerk Steve Brown noticed similarities to King’s writing and did some investigating. He found copyright info for one of the Bachman books in King’s name at the Librar...

As in Extra Special! Along with my own ramblings on a handful of films that didn't get the full treatment on previous episodes ( Creepshow , Children of the Corn , Maximum Overdrive , Stand By Me , etc.) there is an interview with horror film journalist and filmmaker Jerry Smith regarding his Dollar Baby Deal. For more visit the show notes: https://www.wakeupheavy.com/2019/09/wuh-stephen-king-extr...

I love a good detective story (just think of all those Murder, She Wrote references on the show) and I love to hear behind the scenes tales about my favorite movies. When I discovered Simon Fitzjohn on Twitter I was immediately intrigued by the work he was doing to track down the rights for the film Full Circle (more commonly known in the States as The Haunting of Julia ). After watching one parti...

Were there signs of King slowing down over the next four years? Heck no! Remember what I said about 1980-83 being over saturated? Well that may have been premature. Between 1984 and 1987 King published six novels, one novella, one collection of short stories, and the Bachman book Thinner . The previous four Bachman books were also re-released as an omnibus, which we will get to in time. Eight movi...

The years 1980 through 1983 might possibly be the most over-saturated in terms of Stephen King output. During this time five novels were published and five movies were released, and if you didn't know who King was you must have been living under a (Castle) rock. Ha ha. And lest we forget we also got the collection Different Seasons , as well as two novels published as Richard Bachman: Roadwork and...

Stephen King shot out of the gate with the publication of Carrie in 1974. Though the hardcover didn't sell all that well the paperback rights were acquired for a whopping $400,000.00, of which King received half plus royalties. The paperback went on to sell one million copies in its first year. Over the next five years King followed up with 'Salem's Lot , The Shining , The Stand , and The Dead Zon...

The last WDIRT in Volume 3 is on Jack Sholder's quirky slasher-home-invasion hybrid Alone in the Dark . It's got Martin Landau as a pyromaniac ex-preacher, Jack Palance as a paranoid POW, Erlind van Lidth as a hulking child-molester, and the mysterious hockey-mask-wearing killer known as The Bleeder. Donald Pleasence rounds out the cast as the equally nutty psychiatrist Dr. Leo Bain.

Stephen King is one of America's most prolific writers whose books have sold roughly 350 million copies worldwide. The Master of Horror, as he's been known for quite some time now, knows how to scare people and sell books, and naturally Hollywood has mined his voluminous output in the hopes of putting butts in the seats and dollars in the bank. From his earliest novel, Carrie , which was put to fi...

It's been a year (give or take a day or two) since I put out the first couple of episodes of Wake Up Heavy . 40 or so episodes, a handful of guests, a lot of learning and dozens of movies later, here we are. In this episode I once again get helped out by my daughter who asks me some questions about this first full year of WUH and my plans for the next. Thank you to everyone who has listened to Wak...

And here is the bonus episode with more discussion from Sam and me. Subjects discussed: Pittsburgh filming locations, "Murder, She Wrote," Marc Lawrence, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Italian horror, EXORCIST rip-offs, AMITYVILLE sequels, Linda Blair, Tom Atkins, Eli Roth (again), CHILD'S PLAY, "Cinema Sins," Claudio Fragasso, and Amicus.

Before the OTHER bonus episode with Sam here's a super short extra-extra-bonus special episode of me reading my initial viewing notes on UTSL . This one's a little spoilery so be careful.

On this episode I am joined by Sam Panico to discuss David Robert Mitchell's ambitious (yet messy) sunscorched-Neo-Noir-comedy-thriller Under the Silver Lake . Andrew Garfield plays Sam our hapless protagonist who is pulled into a labyrinthine mystery after a brief encounter with his neighbor Sarah (Riley Keough) and her sudden disappearance. Sam is bombarded by cryptic codes, conspiracy theories,...

WUH comes back from hiatus with a new WDIRT episode on Harry Bromley Davenport's nutso early-80s Alien rip-off that's actually so much more than that. Filled with too many WTF moments to count, and some of the most inspired and gloopy SFX from the era, XTRO would have damaged my brain as a kid. Now that I'm older I can soak in this odd-ball treasure with wild abandon.

"It must have been the magpies." Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio is an eerie love letter to Italian horror films like Suspiria  (see previous entry) and psychological thrillers like The Tenant . Toby Jones plays Gilderoy, a sound mixer who travels to Italy to work on "The Equestrian Vortex," a graphically violent movie involving witches at a horse-riding school. Nearly everyone at the re...

Like many people my age, Dario Argento's Suspiria was my introduction to Italian horror films. The imagery was phantasmagoric, the music was bombastic, and the violence was horrific. Unlike anything I'd seen before, SUSPIRIA opened up a whole new world of horror cinema, though one that was ultimately elusive and frustrating. Ronald Dzerigian is back to join me in discussing this seminal film--argu...