Macabre Movies of the Week! (#1)
Welcome to the first edition of Macabre Movies of the Week! Every Friday between now and October 31st, I’ll share three spooky videos that are sure to put you in a Halloween mood — whether you’re a fan of long, gory things or shorter, happier things!
Trick or Treats!
Released a few days before Halloween in 1982, this slasher is arguably most famous for its badass VHS cover, which featured a bloodied candy sack.
I’ll swipe the description from Google: “An escaped madman comes home at a time when his son is playing sick jokes on the babysitter.”
Needless to say, it’s rated R. My read on Trick or Treats is that it’s one of those movies every horror fan has heard of, but far fewer have actually seen. Well, here’s your chance. You have all week! Consider it homework.
Tales from the Cryptkeeper, Episode 15!
One of the stories in this episode is Cold Blood Warm Hearts, which we covered on the podcast several months back. It’s about a sea monster with a passing resemblance to Gill-man, and I hope that’s enough to pique your interest!
Unsolved Mysteries, Season 1 Episode 5!
I admittedly only picked this episode because it had a handsome thumbnail of Robert Stack instead of some rando from the reenactments, but that turned out to be a lucky break. This ep includes one of the all-time creepiest segments, Friends to the End, about a pair of teens who got killed by a speeding train late at night. As bad as that sounds, the full story is way more unsettling. This is one of the segments that truly haunted me.
Enjoy the vids! You can binge them all this weekend, or spread ‘em across the week. I’ll be back on Friday with another trio.
Chilling Challenge! (#1)
For your first CHILLING CHALLENGE of the season, I’ll start you off nice and easy. Go find a horror movie that you’ve never seen before. If you don’t like horror movies, just pick a film that has some tie to the Halloween season, even if it’s a happy comedy.
Your goal is simple. Watch something you’ve never seen before! This season is great for that. I think a lot of us fall into the trap of sticking with “comfort movies” we’ve already seen a billion times. Consider this encouragement for you to mix it up.
In the comments section, report back after you’ve watched whatever movie you decide on. Tell us what you thought about it!
This challenge is open until next Friday night!
The upcoming Halloween season…
Hello, After Darkers! Dino Drac’s Halloween Countdown begins in a little less than a month, so I wanted to throw you some thoughts on how After Dark will be run from that point on.
My gut instinct is that trying to do daily After Dark updates during the Countdown won’t work out. Between the severe increase in streaming options and all other considerations, tossing up YouTube videos every single day seems like it’ll taper off into pointlessness.
Instead, I’m mulling over a few different ideas — namely these two:
1. Work on a thrice-a-week schedule, with different themes on the particular day. For argument’s sake, say Mondays are for movies, Wednesdays are for surveys and Saturdays are for “talk about whatever” threads.
2. In a variation of the above idea, I’d instead post *three* posts at once, probably on Friday nights. This would include a movie post, a survey post, and a “talk about whatever” thread. You’d then have an entire week to dance between them — meaning you’d have a “chat post” to be used at all times, a survey post to interact with as you see fit, and a movie post (probably with more than one video) to enjoy at your leisure.
I’m strongly leaning towards option 2, for several reasons:
– My feeling is that the “chat threads” will be more fun for you if they each have an entire week to sit on top of After Dark, as opposed to getting buried the very next day. It’s not much different from what you’ve been working with during these “cold months,” except that there will be increased attention on After Dark, so, hopefully, a little more action!
– The daily movie posts of years past were fun, but the truth is that very few people have time to *immediately* watch a movie the day it’s posted. Also, trying to fill 60 slots with valuable videos is challenging. Wouldn’t it be better to make sure the videos are especially cool, and give you more time to absorb and talk about them?
– Survey posts would theoretically see action all week long. We’ve always had a good response to those. I’m really digging the idea of separating the survey and chat posts while still having both be “current.”
All told, if we went with Option 2, I feel like you’d actually have MORE to do here than if we stayed with the original nightly updates. LMK your thoughts!
My Best Friend is a Vampire!
Well hey, it’s a holiday weekend. Probably time for an After Dark update, huh?
I was pleasantly surprised to see My Best Friend is a Vampire available on YouTube, totally free. I’ve long had a soft spot for this 1987 horror-comedy, which I guess lands somewhere between Deadly Friend and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Enjoy!
Kind of a wash of a summer, huh? As I’ve been telling friends, I think it’ll still be a long time before anything resembles “normal” again. Between what’s already going on and all of the combustible elements yet to come, the rest of 2020 will probably live up to all of those memes about 2020.
In brighter news, we just upgraded some backend stuff on the site which greatly improved Dino Drac’s speed, especially on mobile. So if you’re a regular commenter, there should now be less of a lag!
Oh, and to help stir up some discussion after such a long break between After Dark updates, let’s add a survey!
In the comments, name three random memories about your childhood summer vacations.
I’ll start:
1) On one of the many Wildwood vacations of my youth, we stopped for zeppoles, as we always did. (I don’t think you’re supposed to pluralize ’em like that, but old habits die hard.) My aunt, who was and is a smart woman, told me that zeppoles were made from chicken. She wasn’t pulling a fast one. She actually believed that, and for a year, so did I.
2) The summer of 1989 was the summer of Batman. One neat side effect was the renewed interest in the 1960s series. I watched it endlessly that summer, because IIRC, it was the only “Batman thing” available on television at that point. WPIX ran at least two episodes a day, and I’m sure it wasn’t much different anywhere else in the country. It’s a big reason why people my age — old, but not quite that old — have such nostalgia for the show.
3) On separate occasions, I ate Jumpin’ Jack Doritos and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios while swimming in our old pool. I left them on the little deck that led into the pool, and would swim up for handfuls whenever the mood struck. I was alone both times, and have no idea what led me to bring food out to the pool. In any event, to this day, I cannot hear about either food without immediately remembering the times I ate them while swimming.
