Macabre Amusements

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Halloween Movie or Christmas Movie?

  Pick a side! Arguing about the minutiae of pop culture is a proud tradition among nerds the world over, but there are a few subjects that seemingly shouldn’t be up for debate. Yet one of these subjects manages to rear its head every year, tearing the Internet...

Book Review: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes… And Other Lessons from the Crematory

  “A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves.” – author Caitlin Doughty   What if I told you that you don’t think enough about your own death? Or the deaths of the people you care about? You’d probably be shocked, or maybe even offended. The...

7 Vintage Horror Anthology Series You Totally Need to Binge-Watch

  Netflix scored a major win in recent years with its sci-fi/horror anthology series, Black Mirror. One of the reasons Black Mirror has been so embraced by viewers (beyond the fantastic writing and heartbreaking performances) is the very structure of the series:...

Horror Lite – 11 Not-as-Scary Movies for the Faint of Heart

  Halloween is the perfect time for chills and frights, with many, many suggestions for horror movies to watch. But what if you’re kind of a wuss who absolutely cannot stand scary movies but still wants to get into the Halloween spirit? Sometimes, as they say,...

The Horror Oscars: The Best Scary Movies of the Last 40 Years

  Here is the number of Oscars that were awarded to Alfred Hitchcock for Best Director: zero. Here is the number for John Carpenter: zero. Wes Craven: zero. James Whale: zero. David Cronenberg: zero. You get the point. In the Academy Awards’ 90-year history,...

Night of the Living Dead: The 50th Anniversary!

  It’s a shame that George Romero didn’t make it to see the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Night of the Living Dead.  Though he made many more films in his long career, NOTLD will always be his magnum opus. Because of its iconic status, I chose NOTLD as the...

Gateway to Horror – 10 Movies You Can Watch with Your (Older) Kids This Halloween

  Halloween is fast approaching, which means now is the perfect time to start building your Halloween watch lists. It’s also the time of year in which everyone binges on horror, even those who don’t pay much attention to the genre the rest of the year. This...