Words Seem Out Of Place

As everyone knows, jump scares and subversive fun make Christmas infinitely better. Watching movies like Black Christmas , Krampus , and Christmas Evil this time of year is a favorite custom of misanthropic scrooges everywhere. Hey, I like Christmas just fine, but I like it even more when you ratchet up the body count. Calm down, I mean  fictional body count, yeesh! "I saw Mommy being naughty with Santa Claus " : In  Christmas Evil , Santa skips the cookies and milk but still eats out, if you know what I mean. And yes, I just channeled my inner R-rated Joe Bob Briggs commentary with this caption. #sorrynotsorry So, in the spirit of Our Lady and Savior Cassandra Peterson, AKA Elvira Mistress of the Dark , I'm wishing you a very scary Christmas season. Here's where I could make the obvious joke about unwrapping Elvira for Christmas, but nope, I'm keeping it classy. There probably won't be any new content here over the next week o...

It's that time of year again, my little ghouls and goblins. The time when I feel most alive, when the leaves start to change colors, the air turns crisp and comfortably cool, and my free time is consumed with thoughts of deliciously horrific imagery. My desire to start celebrating the Halloween season begins in earnest early in August. I don't care about the summer fanatics who complain that it's "too early" to talk about Halloween. Bite your tongue, heathen! It's never too early to begin celebrating the most wonderful time of year (sorry, Christmas). Now's the time of year when my already powerful obsession with horror kicks into even higher gear. I'm reading Carrie at the moment—one of the Stephen King blind spots in my reading through his ouevre over the years—after having just finished Grady Hendrix's wonderful new book of heavy metal horror, We Sold Our Souls . I'm trying to schedule as many horror films as possible into my fr...

On April 19, Michelle Pfeiffer joined Al Pacino, director Brian De Palma, and a few others at the Tribeca Film Festival for the thirty-fifth anniversary screening of Scarface , followed by an incredibly awkward question and answer session. The Q&A's moderator, Jesse Kornbluth, asked Pfeiffer a stunningly stupid and disturbingly sexist question. There, on stage, sat the world's most fabulous actress, a true artist who's crafted an extraordinary career, ostensibly ready to discuss her breakout role as Elvira Hancock in the seminal 1983 film. I mean, this is Elvira Hancock we're talking about! White Gold! Did he ask her about her method, her preparation, or her ideas then and know about the role? No. Instead, he asked how much she weighed during filming. Alright, I've already rambled more than I wanted to about that and I can feel my blood boiling. Thankfully, this is Michelle Pfeiffer we're talking about. In true, White Gold Queen style, she graceful...

Not surprisingly, I find myself more excited about Halloween than any other holiday. The first posts of the month here were Elvira-related, definitely in the spirit of the season. Interestingly enough, because of that post I may (I emphasize may) have the opportunity to review her new "coffin table" book. It goes without saying that would be a blast, so let's hope it winds up happening. The plan would be to review it for a website but I'll definitely link to it here. If it happens. Please, Pagan gods of Halloween, make it happen. Outside of reveling in Halloween-related activities and watching as many horror films as I can this month (which admittedly with two toddlers around is not nearly as many as I'd like), I've also been working on another post for quite a while now. I started it in the summer and it just keeps growing and morphing into something bigger, something more sprawling yet more intimately personal than anything else I've written here. I...

Rhonda Shear and Cassandra Peterson, together in one room: hearts and minds everywhere melt. This photograph warms our horror-hosts-loving hearts: Rhonda Shear and Elvira herself, Cassandra Peterson, together. For kids in the ‘80s and into the ‘90s, Elvira was our foremost educator in the school of cinematic snark as host of Elvira’s Movie Macabre , while Rhonda continued our education during the '90s with USA Up All Night!  Rhonda and Elvira are, without question, two of the most formative ladies in the childhoods of pre-adolescent and teenage geeks during those years. Those of us with encyclopedic knowledge of bad movies, sarcastic senses of humor, and a serious appreciation for low culture, wouldn't be who we are today without these two women.  Joe Bob Briggs, host of Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater and later  MonsterVision , and Gilbert Gottfried, Rhonda's Saturday evening counterpart on Up All Night! , were also important to our developing bad movie afic...

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark The After Movie Diner is now running my appreciation for the one, the only, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark . I'm excited to be included as part of their "Horrortober" series this October, and doubly excited that I got to write about the Queen of Halloween herself. It's been thirty-five years since actress Cassandra Peterson first donned the bouffant wig and low-cut, high-slit black dress and became Elvira, our most cherished of horror movie hosts and icons. Through Peterson's good humor and easy charms, Elvira has become a national treasure. I was originally intending to simply share the link to that article, but Elvira is so iconic that a little more fawning from this fan is not only warranted, but practically necessary. How can you ever say enough about Elvira in just one article? I can't, so here's a little bit more for the truly devoted. But you love guys without hairy chests too, right?!? Asking for a friend. El...