Though a musician and songwriter first and foremost, and one with a rather monumental influence in said fields (the cultural ubiquity of the Misfits’ skull iconography alone is testament to that influence), Glenn Danzig has also long been multitasking into other mediums. “… even before getting involved in all the bands I’ve been in, I went to [the] New York Institute of Photography,” stated Danzig in 2005 (1), having studied film, photography and art (2). An avid comic book reader and collector, Danzig’s infamous 1994 foray into adult-themed comic writing and publishing, the Verotik imprint, w ..read more

Beth Hetland is not necessarily a name most horror fans have yet heard of, but her upcoming solo debut graphic novel Tender might just change that. With a bachelor’s degree in fine arts (with emphasis on comics) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters degree in the same field from The Center for Cartoon Studies, Hetland is well-versed in the world of comics and graphic novels (not that she makes a distinction between the two). Besides being a professor and teaching various comic-related courses at her old alma mater of SAIC, Hetland is a prolific artist with a vast body o ..read more

Hammer Films and director Terence Fisher (1904 – 1980) made their first foray into Gothic horror with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), their loose adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. It gave them their biggest financial success, as it earned a worldwide box office gross of $8 million on an estimated budget of $270,000. While it was a smash hit, it was met with outrage in its native UK from overreacting mainstream film critics, as the gore in Eastmancolor repulsed them, but it was received more warmly stateside. The Gothic revival had begun, but thi ..read more

In sharp contrast to the May 2016 announcement of Glenn Danzig, Jerry Only and Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein reuniting to perform again – a reunion of the original Misfits band long thought an impossibility by many Misfits and Danzig fans – the announcement of Danzig’s feature filmmaking debut Verotika (2019) was an inevitability. While Danzig’s love of horror, occult and Satanic themes have manifested lyrically throughout the original Misfits, Samhain and Danzig bands, as well as through Danzig’s adult-themed comic book imprint Verotik founded in 1994, Danzig admitted “I want to put my mark ..read more

While Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) may be the recipient of the most famous television edit by virtue of the sheer amount of creative dialogue alternations and dubs made in order to fit network standards, several of Paul Verhoeven’s films have also been awkwardly cleaned-up for TV with equally memorable results. The TV edit of RoboCop (1987), for instance, features multiple utterances of “scumbag” by Robert DoQui as Sgt. Reed (“Listen pal, your client’s a scumbag, you’re a scumbag, and scumbags see the judge on Monday morning!”) puzzlingly dubbed over as “crumbag” while “Once I even called ..read more

Ghost stories are as quintessential part of British Christmas traditions as turkey and stuffing. It is a wintertime activity that has existed as long as people have been gathering around fires on cold, dark nights to get warm and to pass the time. What better way to do that than to listen to a tale of terror that will make the darkness outside just that little bit more frightening and the cosy warmth of the fire a little more comforting? Perhaps the best-known example of these stories is Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three spirits on Christmas night ..read more

First, it was whale oil, then fossil fuels. The former was plundered to near extinction, while the latter profoundly changed America’s impression of itself and its purpose. To seek and use fossil fuels with abandon turned the United States into a country of vampires who, like the British before them, saw the world as a giant resource to be plundered for the cause of national exceptionalism. Great Britain’s pillage of guano and the bones of the Waterloo dead was described by chemist Justus von Liebig as being “Like a vampire, it hangs on the breast of Europe, and even the world, sucking its lif ..read more

The Polish director Andrzej Zulawski (1940 – 2016) is probably best known in the UK for his 1981 thriller Possession, starring Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill. The film sparked both acclaim and controversy, winning Adjani a Best Actress award at Cannes but also ending up on the infamous ‘video nasties’ list in 1983. Sadly, most of Zulawski’s other films have been far less widely distributed, making Eureka’s recent Blu-ray box set of his work a very welcome release.  The set comprises the three films Zulawski made in Poland during the 1970s (although, thanks to circumstances which will be di ..read more

Most fans of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein are undoubtedly familiar with the Haunted summer: the summer when two classics of Western horror literature were born. The year was 1816, a time in history often referred to as “the year without a summer”. Mount Tambora in Indonesia had erupted the year before, causing the global temperatures to drop to unusual lows and leading to large scale crop failures and food shortages all around the globe. A truly miserable time for all. In England, a group of young artists were battling misery of thein own. The poet Byron had fled the country early in the year t ..read more

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances – Herodotus  If you’ve read Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998), the gossipy history of New Hollywood’s rise and fall, you will know William Friedkin is portrayed as a director who believed his own hype, and that his 1977 adaptation of French novel The Wages of Fear was a career-killer. Both things are true. If Sorcerer’s lack of commercial success proved the terrible cost of attempting something different from the norm, recognition of its artistic brilliance – by way of recent critical reappraisal – is today assured. 46 ..read more