The Spooky Picture Show

This month, we’re ripping open the Halloween grab bag and digging through everything that keeps us hopelessly devoted to the one holiday where decorating your house with corpses is considered festive. We’re talking the candy worth fighting neighborhood children over, the horror movies that become mandatory viewing every October, the costumes we’ve built, worn, and probably spent way too much money on, and whether Halloween has finally been commercialized within an inch of its undead life. Along the way we get into the traditions we love, the seasonal obsessions we refuse to give up, the stuff that’s disappeared over the years, and why grown adults will happily spend an entire month surrounded by plastic skeletons, fake blood, and enough sugar to stop a human heart. It’s a Halloween grab bag stuffed with horror, nostalgia, costumes, candy, questionable opinions, and everything else we could dig out of the coffin. So grab a fistful of candy, lower your standards, and join us as we celebrate Halloween the only way we know how: with horror movies, bad judgment, and absolutely no nutritional value.

They’re small, they’re ugly, and for some reason they’re always hungry. This month, we’re opening the cage and taking a trip through horror’s tiny terror hall of fame! GREMLINS may have kicked the little-creature craze into high gear, but it wasn’t long before CRITTERS, GHOULIES, MUNCHIES, THE GATE and a whole army of pint-sized maniacs came crawling out of the woodwork. We’re talking killer furballs, toilet-dwelling demons, miniature monsters and all the wonderfully ridiculous ways horror discovered that sometimes the smaller the threat, the bigger the body count. So check under the bed, keep an eye on the vents, and join us as we celebrate the little monsters who proved you don’t have to be big to cause a whole lot of trouble.

The EVIL DEAD franchise has spent more than forty years proving that nothing good ever comes from a quiet weekend in the woods, reading Latin out loud, or owning a basement with questionable acoustics. This month, we’re opening the Necronomicon and digging through the entire blood-soaked history of the series, from Sam Raimi’s original nightmare and Ash’s increasingly terrible employment history to the 2013 bloodbath, EVIL DEAD RISE, and the latest entry, EVIL DEAD BURN. Along the way, we’re talking Deadites, boomsticks, possessed relatives, medieval detours, chainsaw maintenance, and the remarkable durability of a franchise built almost entirely on bad decisions and industrial quantities of fake blood. Join us as we rank the carnage, praise the practical effects, and once again ignore the very reasonable advice to leave the creepy book alone.

Blending horror and comedy is a dangerous game. Lean too hard into the horror and the jokes feel like a drunk uncle at a funeral. Lean too hard into the comedy and suddenly the monster is just a prop with dental problems. This week, we’re getting into the beautiful nonsense of the subgenre as a whole: the perfect tonal sweet spot, the glorious failures, and the movies that understand stupidity is only funny when someone smart is steering the hearse.

Get ready, fright fans, because 1986 was loud, slimy, radioactive, and absolutely out of its damn mind! In this blood-soaked battle royale, we’re throwing the horror heavyweights of 1986 into the ring to see which film claws its way to the top. Can THE FLY mutate its way into the winner’s circle with pure tragic body horror perfection, or does THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 chainsaw through the competition with neon-soaked insanity? Will FRIDAY THE 13TH PART 6: JASON LIVES prove Jason had finally become the ultimate horror icon, or do the alien terrors of CRITTERS and the undead chaos of NIGHT OF THE CREEPS steal the crown? Meanwhile, FROM BEYOND melts minds and bodies alike, TRICK OR TREAT cranks the volume straight to hell, POLTERGEIST II brings supernatural nightmare fuel, and APRIL FOOL'S DAY reminds us that sometimes the joke is on us. Join us as we slice through the gore, the goo, the creatures, and the carnage to determine which film stands tall as the ultimate horror champion of 1986! Let's get Spooky!