Night of Dark Shadows Scares Us!

Some Night of Dark Shadows imagery to help you follow along ...

Grayson Hall as Carlotta in one of her to-die-for costumes.  Note Lyndhurst pretending to be Collinwood looming unsettlingly in the background.

One of my favorite shots of Lara Parker as Angelique, pensively gazing out of the tower window ... also, it's super autographed.

David Selby as Quentin, who captivated all of America.  He's been working steadily since Dark Shadows.

Me and Ryan at the 2016 Dark Shadows fest, which took place at Tarrytown and Lyndhurst, where House and Night of Dark Shadows were filmed.  We were being gothic heroines.

Me and the portrait of Angelique.  Possessed?

The window in the gallery ...

... and the creepy shot from NODS with Quentin silhouetted against it.

This Place Scares Us of Dark Shadows.  There.  That'll be the third movie.  Or maybe Podcast of Dark Shadows?  PODS.  Done.

Selfie.  With Lyndhurst.

Me with David Selby, post my "hey I totally went to your alma mater and we talked on the phone and I didn't even hyperventilate once well kinda" story.  HE'S SUCH A NICE GUY.

The Birds Scares Us!

Please allow the following images and videos to accentuate your enjoyment of Katya and I dissecting The Birds.

Kids running and screaming which is totally not funny.  Okay, maybe once.

Melanie's reaction.  Not funny.  Okay, maybe twice.

And now ... the hysterical hysteria of Veronica Cartwright:

Poor Kathy.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  (Click here to watch the scene.)

 Alien.

Witches of Eastwick.

Check out this fantastic post from the blog I referenced, My New Plaid Pants, all about Poor Annie from The Birds:  click here. 

Haunted Mirrors Scare Us

I took this picture in my brother's old bedroom last summer; there was no light except the flash from my camera.  Look closely into the mirror ... if you dare!

Horror in the Daylight Scares Us!

What is that thing?  Is it a bear? The werewolf from Silver Bullet?  Or something more ... sinister? 

(Photo of the Clark Fork River in our very own Missoula, Montana; courtesy of my talented husband.)

Horror in the Daylight Scares Us

 I teach a film studies unit for my Intermediate Theatre class, and this year I replaced The Dark Knight, which I had grown excruciatingly exhausted teaching, with Jaws, which I never get tired of ... anything.  And while I was teaching it, I realized how much of it follows the "horror in the daylight" trope that Katya and I have spent much time discussing, and that Davey loves so much.  (Someday Katya and I will do an episode on the entire Jaws quadrology -- which is totally a word I just now invented and plan to use forevermore -- all four of 'em ... even Jaws:  The Revenge.  Especially Jaws:  The Revenge.)  It's bad enough that something horrible lurks beneath the surface of a place we treat as a recreational toy, waiting to explode from the water and chomp us to death in a horrible fountain of our own blood, but for it to happen in broad daylight, when we can actually see, and should be able to defend ourselves ...?  Unacceptable.

I started considering this post when I found this "deleted" image from an earlier trial of the Alex Kintner death scene (you know, the poor kid who finds himself on the wrong end of the shark's serrated titular teeth).  Now, I love me the original scene (you can see it in gif format below), but there is something really, truly horrible about the maw of this leviathan beast just looming over doomed little Alex and his soon-to-be-tattered yellow raft. 

In broad daylight.

Ohmygod.  You can totally see his awful little eye and the top of his snout.

The schlub in the pond, otherwise known as "the estuary victim."  The first time we get a pretty good look at the shark, and it's unnerving as hell.

Happy Halloween from This Place Scares Us!

Happy Halloween, kitty cats!  Here are a few things that scare us, some from past episodes, some from THE FUTURE (!), and some ... eh, they're freaky. 

Yick.  The poor dead girl from the opening of It Follows, the subject of our premiere episode (click here to listen!).  This is only one of many reasons you shouldn't wear high heels to the beach.

Ol' shaggy, the subject of Stephen King's Silver Bullet, who is definitely a werewolf and not some kind of angry hell bear.

Who is this fanged fiend and why isn't the blood of the innocent keeping him forever young?  Find out in Episode 7, forthcoming ...

What horrible thing lurks at the threshold of Theodora's bedroom?  Ask Shirley Jackson, the mistress of the macabre and the author of The Haunting of Hill House as well as "The Lottery", the subject of Episode 2. 

You'll like Mr. Barlow ... and he'll like you.  (We'll cover 'Salem's Lot, I promise.)

And a little hint about our forthcoming episode, debuting November 12th ...

Clinkies!

Episode 2: The Lottery Scares Us

Our second episode (click here to listen!) focused on the horrors of Shirley Jackson's classic short story "The Lottery", a world where your friends and neighbors will happily stone you to death (with real stones!) so long as they're not the ones on the receiving end of said stones. 

Jackson is known for creating a claustrophobic sense of dread within her stories, often focusing on women whose sense of identity disintegrates, sometimes right out there in the daylight, or in otherwise perfectly ordinary circumstances.

I'm a huge fan of Jackson, as, if you've been listening, you know by now, and part of the fun of being a Jackson fan is collecting the variety of editions of her work.  Here's a sampling of the different covers in Shirley Jackson's oeuvre:  

The Popular Library editions, which are among my favorites, because the covers are so expressive, or in the case of The Bird's Nest, just so damned weird.

One of my holy grails, the original cover art for The Haunting of Hill House, my favorite of Jackson's novels, and probably my favorite novel of all time.

Amazing cover art for the first paperback edition of Jackson's final novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  I'd love a poster of this someday.

And finally, speaking of The Lottery, here is the beautiful edition I finally acquired last summer.