Dec. 9, 2025

This Week in Horror History | Christine, The Wolfman & Scream 2 (December 8–14)

This Week in Horror History | Christine, The Wolfman & Scream 2 (December 8–14)
Horror movies, holiday slashers, and classic monster mayhem collide in this episode of This Week in Horror History, covering December 8–14 in spooky cinema. We dig into the releases, icons, and deep cuts that shaped horror long before Christmas morning ever arrived.
This week’s watch list includes:
  • Christine (1983) – John Carpenter’s sleek, icy adaptation of Stephen King’s killer-car novel. We look at how this haunted Plymouth went from a modest box office performer to a cult favorite thanks to its mood, music, and vicious metal-on-flesh set pieces.
  • The Wolfman (1941) – Lon Chaney Jr.’s tragic Larry Talbot helped define the sympathetic monster and rewrote the rules for werewolf lore. We talk legacy, atmosphere, and why this frosty Universal chiller still plays perfectly on a cold December night.
  • Scream 2 (1997) – Meta slashers head to college as Sidney Prescott and Ghostface return in a sequel that should’ve fizzled but absolutely works. Film theory, sequel rules, and late-’90s horror energy all collide in one of the most successful slasher follow-ups ever.
  • Maniac Cop 2 (1990) – An undead cop, wild stunts, and a grimy New York that feels like a haunted maze. We spotlight why this over-the-top sequel is a cult gem for fans of action-horror hybrids.

We also roll through a birthday crawl for some horror legends: Rick Baker, Vampira, Bill Nighy, and Dee Wallace, celebrating how their work reshaped monsters, ghosts, and genre weirdos across decades.
In our “Then and Now: Meta Slashers” segment, we use Scream 2 as a jumping-off point to talk about how self-aware horror evolved—from ’90s snark to today’s nostalgia-driven, legacy-sequel era. And for your weekly recommendation, we head back to the 1950s with Tarantula (1955), a giant-spider creature feature that channels Cold War anxieties into big, creepy fun and pairs beautifully with other atomic-age monster flicks.
All that plus our mid-show sponsor break with Cozy Earth—ultra-comfy bedding perfect for staying warm while you binge horror history marathons in December.
If you love horror podcasts, classic monster movies, ’80s Stephen King adaptations, and meta slasher sequels, this week’s trip through the dates will fill your holiday season watchlist and keep your nights eerie all December long.

🎧 LISTEN NOW and subscribe for spine-tingling horror stories every week!

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🎵 Music by Ray Mattis 👉 Check out Ray’s incredible work here !
👨‍💼 Executive Producers: Rob Fields, Bobbletopia.com
🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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WEBVTT

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December doesn't wait for Christmas. Slashers to get scary, my spookies.

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By the second week of the month, the trees are up,

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the malls are packed, and horror is already creeping into

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the calendar. Killer cars in holiday traffic, Doomed Wolfmen under

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winter moons, sequels that shouldn't work but absolutely do, and

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one undead cop who treats New York like his own

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personal haunted house. Welcome to This Week in Horror History

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for December eighth through December fourteenth, And this is the

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show where we flip through the dates, dig up the weird,

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and hand you a watch list pulled straight from the past.

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Tonight we're talking Cursed Plymouths, Classic Universal Monsters Met, a

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slasher Mayhem, an undead cop with a stunt team from

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Hell and quite the rap tribute, and one giant Spider.

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To finish the week, coming up, a possessed Plymouth Fury

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that roared into theaters right in the middle of Christmas

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shopping season. The definitive movie Werewolf that made fur sprout

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under a full moon at Universal, a slasher sequel that

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proved you can follow up a phenomenon if you go

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bigger and nastier, then will dive into maniac cop too,

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roll through a few birthdays, connect past and present in

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then and now, and close it out with a weekly recommendation.

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So let's see what crawled out between December eighth and

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December fourteenth. First up, we're warming up the engine for Christine.

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Released December ninth, nineteen eighty three, John Carpenter adapts Stephen

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King's novel about a haunted nineteen fifty eight Plymouth fury

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and the lonely kid who falls in love with it.

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Arnie Cunningham starts as a bullied, awkward teen, and he

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was pretty pale too. By the time Christine is done

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with him, He's got slick back hair, dead eyes, and

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a crush who happens to be a homicidal car. But

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that's just puberty for you, right. Carpenter shoots Winter Suburbia

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like a graveyard, steam rising from sewers, headlights, cutting through

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the dark, old rock and roll tracks, turning sinister every

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time that engine readvs. On a roughly ten million dollar budget,

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Christine earned about twenty one million dollars worldwide, a modest

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but solid hit for the era and for an R

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rated film. Released around the holidays, but of course it

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later became a cult favorite. And by the way, this

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is my personal opinion. I think of all of the

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so called masters of horror, John Carpenter has without a doubt,

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the most hits, even though he has a lot of

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misses too. It's available to watch right now on Netflix

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in the United States, and you can rent it at

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the usual suspects like Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango

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at Home, et cetera, et cetera. But be careful when

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you start the film. If you scratch the paint, well

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that'll be it for you. Next we head to the

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foggy back lots of Universal Studios for The Wolfman, which

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opened December twelfth, nineteen forty one. Lon Cheney Junior's Larry

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Talbot comes home, tries to do one decent thing, and

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ends up cursed by a werewolf bite for his trouble,

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I feel like that's just kind of part of living

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in your twenties. But I don't know when it comes

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to this film. The Wolf's main rhyme, the silver cane,

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the gloomy forests, Jack Pierce's painstaking transformation makeup so much

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of this movie feels like it was stamped directly into

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horror's DNA. I feel like not only horror filmmakers owe

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a debt to the original Wolfman, but even novelists and

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video game makers as well. I always appreciated that you

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feel bad for the Wolfman. He's a guy who doesn't

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want to be a monster. He didn't choose to get bitten,

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and he didn't choose to carry the curse. It's a

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great way to kind of mix things up because Dracula

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is just is just so distant from being human and

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the Invisible Man is just an absolute psychotic maniac. Rewatch

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that movie. He's way way far out. Really. The Creature

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from the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein they get some amount

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of sympathy, but the Wolfman, he's just a victim of

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hairy circumstance. Made on a budget of around one hundred

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and eighty thousand dollars, which may not sound like a lot,

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but that's about four point six million in today's money,

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still a relatively low budget for a studio film. The

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Wolfman doesn't have the neat box office records, but its

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legacy is enormous. Sequels, crossovers, rem and, like I said,

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Larry Talbot, as the blueprint for the sympathetic monster who

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hates what he's becoming. It's totally worth the rewatch. There's

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something about universal monster movies that just hits right, especially

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on a lazy Sunday. It's available to rent wherever you

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digitally rent your movies. Jumping ahead to the nineteen nineties,

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my kind of stomping grounds for growing up. December twelfth,

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nineteen ninety seven gave us Scream two proof that lightning

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can strike twice if you go full meta. After surviving

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the Woodsboro murders, Sydney Prescott is in college trying to

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move on while a movie called Stab exploits her trauma.

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I always love that they went even more meta by

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having a movie be made about a killer who is

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inspired in part by movies. It's a lot of fun.

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A new ghost Face turns film theory and sequel rules

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into well into a blood sport. On a twenty four

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million dollar budget, Scream two hauled in roughly one hundred

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and seventy two million dollars worldwide, transforming a quick turnaround

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sequel into a bonafide hit and cementing Ghostface as a

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long term franchise. Slasher and Wes Craven deserves a lot

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more credit than sometimes he gets. He made a hit

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series with Scream, not just a hit first movie. But

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some people, I don't know, they don't love Scream two

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that much. But I'll tell you right now, if you

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haven't seen it in a while and you kind of

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have a negative opinion of Scream two, well you should

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really give it a rewatch, especially since hell Scream seven

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is coming out in what I think they're saying February

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twenty seventh, twenty twenty six, So time to bone up

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on your ghost face. That was a great excuse to

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say bone up. But Scream two, if you want to

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revisit it, and I do recommend you do, is free

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to watch on Pluto TV, or you can rent it

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at the usual Suspects. This episode is brought to you

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in part by Cozyerth dot com. A lot of you

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Use code spooky at check out, get forty one percent

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off and help the show. Thank you all for checking

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out Cozy Earth, and thank you to Cozy Earth for

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your support. After the break, we're leaving the classroom and

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chasing one very angry cop, one who refuses to stay dead.

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Welcome back to this week in horror history. You've stretched,

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you've grabbed a snack, so now let's flash the siren

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and head into our deep cut. Spotlight Our deep cut

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this week is Maniac Cop two, which hit United States

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screens on December thirteenth, nineteen ninety and somehow manages to

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be nastier, faster, and and more unhinged than the first,

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although Maniac Cop three was most certainly more unhinged than

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just about any film I can think of, But that

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one doesn't have a rap theme song at the end

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that explains who the maniac cop is. You better watch

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out when you hit it sound.

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It means that the maniac cops around plus upon a tom.

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He wasn't Supper Cop, but the bad guys like to

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make him stop. Stays put to me in prison when

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he tried to kill him, but he book on. Now

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he's the villain. Pulls won't hurt him. I know it

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sounds like Giant who wins is dead or a lot.

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Oh that is some peak nineteen nineties energy. Go ahead,

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turn your baseball cap sideways. I won't tell if you won't.

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Directed by William Lustig, a man known for Maniac So

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it's really just one extra word on the title from

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a script by the Apps legend Larry Cohen, a man

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who's written so many great screenplays. I don't really feel

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comfortable trying to tell you just a handful. The sequel

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picks right up where Maniac Cop left off. Undead officer

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Matt Cordell survives his apparent death or a parent additional death,

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and goes on an all out revenge spree, this time

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teaming up with a gleefully psychotic serial killer. The result

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is part slasher, part cop movie, and part stunt real

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fever dream Yeah maybe more than just one part. Working

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with an estimated budget of four million dollars, Lustig pours

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money into set pieces that look legitimately dangerous, a stuntman

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fully engulfed in flame, handcuffed to a speeding car, a

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subway chase that feels like it wandered in from a

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gritty nineteen seventies thriller, and a prison riot that turns

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into a one man supernatural massacre. You know, there are

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just some sentences you don't really think you'll ever say.

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The increasingly unhinged performance by Robert Dave also helps the

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film quite a bit. Because the movie was largely aimed

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at the home video and cable market, there isn't a

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box office gross to talk about, but it massively overperformed

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its station on VHS shelves and late night TV, becoming

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one of those if you know, you know sequels. It's

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currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video with subscription or free

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with ads, as well as on two B, Pluto TV,

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Fandango at Home for free, Filo Plex lots of places,

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or you can rent it if commercials aren't your thing,

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And if you're looking for a double feature this week,

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make sure to pop on the original Maniac Cop then

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rolls straight into this one, handcuffed and on fire. You'll

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see just how much the sequel cranks every dial it

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can reach. Speaking of, it's kind of like crank and

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crank two in that way. All right. A quick birthday

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roll for some horror heavy hitters born in this window.

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Horror heavy hitters. You know, in this job you really

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learn that tongue twisters come in so many shapes and sizes,

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all right. First up. Born on December eighth, nineteen fifty.

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Rick Baker the legendary makeup effects artist behind an American

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Werewolf in London The Howling, although that one is kind

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of a misnomber. He was on The Howling briefly, but

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he ditched out to go for the much more lucrative,

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higher budget American Werewolf in London, and rob Bo teen

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would take over on The Howling and then become a massive,

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massive name and horror for doing the unforgettable special effects

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in John Carpenter's The Thing. Rick Baker's pedigree is hard

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to narrow down. He has such a massive ouvra of

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work in and outside of horror movies, films like Harry

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and the Henderson's Coming to America, Ed Wood, The Nutty Professor,

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Men in Black, all of those films except Coming to America.

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He won an Oscar for if I'm remembering correctly, our

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hats go off to you and a happy birthday, mister

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Rick Baker born on December eleventh, nineteen twenty two. Mela Nurmi,

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known by many as Vampira, often cited as the original

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TV horror hostess whose silhouette eyebrows and deadpan humor helped

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invent horror host culture and as a this feels so

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weird to say as an inducted member of the horror

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host Hall of Fame, I just want to say, happy birthday, Vampire,

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and thanks for everything. On December twelfth, nineteen forty nine,

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Bill Naii was born, famous for portraying vampire Elder Victor

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in the Underworld series and a reliably spooky presence in

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everything from Sean of the Dead to I Frankenstein and

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a lot in between, and keeping with the werewolfy theme,

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we kind of have going tonight. Born on December fourteenth,

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nineteen forty nine is d Wallace, horror mom Royalty from

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the Hills Have Eyes, The Howling Kujo, and so many

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films beyond de Wallace. We hope you're having an awesome

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birthday and maybe even a cruel Yule too. Let's raise

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a glass or a lit cigar or a cheap VHS

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clamshell in their honor Forarur. Then and now we're giving

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Scream two a quick nod and looking at how meta

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slashers grew up. Back in nineteen ninety seven, Scream two

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dropped the original's rules obsessed snark onto a college campus.

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Film students argue about sequels, A movie within the movie

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exploits real tragedy, and Ghostface uses all of it as

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a backdrop for fresh murders. I mean, it's a slasher movie,

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after all, it was horror that talked about horror while

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still delivering the goods. Jump forward and you can see

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its fingerprints all over the I hate this time, but

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I kind of like this term the requel era. It's

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a remake and it's a sequel. It's a remake, but

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it's a sequel. I prefer the term legacy sequel. I

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think that one kind of works too, kind of like

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what they've done with Halloween, where they made a sequel,

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but it also kind of restarts the entire franchise. These

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sequels juggle old and new casts and poke fun at

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the fandom, but they still try to carve up something

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surprising as long as we're arguing online about what horror

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should be. And believe me, there's no shortage of argument there.

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Ghostface and slashers like him have plenty of material. And

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I do want to mention. Earlier in the nineties, Wes

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Craven planted the seeds for meta horror in a big

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way when he put out a new Nightmare, the Meta

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Freddie Krueger Movie. But me, personally, I credit Sleepway Camp

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two unhappy campers, because well, I'm just that classy. If

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you're adding one more title from this week to your

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watch list, and you should be, you should be, I'm

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going to steer you towards something big and hairy but

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eight legged Tarantula released December fourteenth, nineteen fifty five. This

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Jack Arnold creature feature follows a desert scientist experimenting with

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a growth serum that gets out of hand when his

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test tarantula escapes. It doesn't just get loose, it gets huge,

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stomping across miniatures and rear projection plates in a classic

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nineteen fifty style. Ough movies like Tarantula, there's something so

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damn cozy about them. I love to watch a silly

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nineteen fifties monster movie. I think the first time I

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saw Tarantula, it was hosted by Svengooli, and I just

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had a great time with it. Love giant spiders, Love

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giant monsters, Love nineteen fifties esthetics. Oh. On a modest

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nineteen fifties budget, Tarantula pulled in around one point one

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million dollars in the United States. In Canada, it's a

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lot of money back then, making it a solid performer

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in the Atomic Age Monster Boom. It's a perfect snapshot

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of Cold War anxieties channeled through well a giant tarantula,

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and it could pair perfectly with so many sci fi

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monster movies about giant spiders or just killer spiders in general.

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If you want to go if you want to go

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high class, you team it up with a rachnephobia. If

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you want to go even lower class, which I would,

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you team it up with the Giant Spider Invasion. Or

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if you want to go for just out and out fun, well,

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I suppose ice spiders would be a good combo. Sorry,

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I love a good giant spider movie. You can check

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out Tarantula just about anywhere you rent movies online. Man,

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that should be on two be. Damn it, that is

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such a two be kind of movie. All right, I'm

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gonna get Richard Tubey on the phone after the show. Well,

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my spookys, that's gonna do it for this week in

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horror history for December eighth through fourteenth, From cursed cars

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and classic wolfmen to undead cops and giant spiders. I

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hope you've enjoyed this, and I'd love to hear from

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you if you did. Send me an email at Weeklyspooky

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at gmail dot com. I've really enjoyed this additional pro

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here on the Weekly Spooky Feed, and I'm hoping you

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guys are too. And speaking of don't forget. Tomorrow, Weekly

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Spooky drops a brand new story, one that involves milk,

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cookies and crampus and on Fridays cutting deep into horror.

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Rachel and I'll be digging really deep into one of

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my favorite Christmas wintry horror films, wind Chill. So make

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sure you're subscribed and listen to all the great bizarre

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and spooky content we've got ready to rock and roll

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just for you. Until next time. Remember our days are numbered,

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because that's how we tell them apart. I'll see you

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all in the past.