This Week in Horror History | Zombie Apocalypse & Cyberpunk Body Horror

Summer horror has a cruel little trick to it. It gives you sunshine, fireworks, long afternoons, green fields, vacation roads, all the things that make the world feel open, safe, and alive. Then it reminds you that the light doesn't protect you. Sometimes it just makes the nightmare easier to see. This week, horror History crawls out of poisoned swamps, rots inside a beautiful mansion, fuses flesh with metal, seals survivors underground, and lights candles in rooms where the dead refuse to stay quiet, So check the picnic basket for insects, Avoid strange family estates, keep your hands away from sharp machinery, and if someone tells you the bunker is safe, ask who's really in charge down there.

Welcome back to This Week in Horror History, your weekly time machine through the creepiest anniversaries in film, TV, books, and games. I'm your host, Henrique Couto, and tonight we're talking about June twenty ninth through July fifth, Coming up. Radioactive ants turn a Florida resort into a drive. In Nightmare, a modern Gothic novel makes the haunted house feel damp, poisonous, and alive. A Japanese cyberpunk cult classic turns the human body into screaming scrap metal and George Romero traps the end of the world inside a military bunker. Then right after the break our Deep Cut Spotlight, an Italian Gothic shocker with Barbara Steel medical obsession and a house where love and death are way too close together.

June twenty ninth, nineteen seventy seven, Empire of the Ants opens in New York, and the summer creature feature gets wonderfully ridiculous. This is bert I Gordon, who, by the way, used to joke that that was his name because it spells big doing HG. Wells by way of radioactive waste, Florida real estate scams and giant ants who seem to understand that the best way to ruin a vacation is to become enormous. I mean, I was afraid enough of just the real estate scams. It's pulpy, strange and deeply drive in Joan Collins, swampy danger, environmental revenge, and insects that make the whole outdoors feel like it wants its land back.

I mean, I have enough trouble with camping already, because I'm too close to the dirt. This is a little extra for me, but it is a classic, and honestly, I love Bert I Gordon movies in general. I think he's got a great I don't know, he's got a great bit of rudspa when it comes to creature features. So I don't think you can go wrong with a Bert Eye Gordon film. And if you've never seen Empire of the Ants, you need to fix that. It's streaming right now with a subscription on MGM Plus, and of course you can rent or buy it on Amazon Video and Apple TV, maybe Fandango at home, but who can say.

June thirtieth, two thousand twenty, Sylvia Moreno Garcia's Mexican Gothic is published, and modern Gothic horror gets a lush and poisonous new Landmark Noami Toboada travels to High Place, a remote mansion where her cousin's desperate letters suggests something is deeply wrong, and of course something is indeed wrong. The house is wrong, the family is wrong. Hell, even the air feels wrong. What makes the novel so good is how it takes old Gothic ingredients like marriage, inheritance, sickness, locked rooms, and family secrets, then lets them bloom into something earthy, fungal, and suffocating. This is haunted house horror, where the house doesn't seem to just remember the past, it digests it.

Oh yeah, and in my opinion, the Mexican take on Gothic horror has always been underrated, and this one is definitely worth adding to your reading list. It's available wherever you get your books, whether on kindle or paperback. Check out Mexican Gothic. I promise you you won't be disappointed, although you might be a little fungusy. July one, nineteen eighty nine, Tetsua the Iron Man releases in Japan, and body Horror gets thrown into a junkyard blender. Chinyasukomoto's cult Nightmare is less a traditional movie than it is an attack on your senses. Industrial noise, black and white chaos, rust wires, drill panic, and the horrible eye idea that the body can stop being yours, one piece at a time.

If that's not a commentary on aging, I don't know what is. It's short, furious, and completely unforgettable. The fear here is not that technology will replace humanity, someday, it's that the replacement has already started underneath your very own flesh. I have always adored Tatsuo the Iron Man, and I didn't realize just how much I loved the film until Joe Bob Briggs showed it on the Last Drive in a couple of years back, and I was just so enamored. And I had seen the film many, many times in my youth. But man, maybe it just hits different when you're pushing forty.

I don't know, but I love Tatsuo the Iron Man. And if you've never seen the film, or if you're a little nervous about subtitles, don't worry. People barely talk in this film. It's mostly loud and in your face and a little gooey while being metallic at the same time. And of course, you can watch it streaming on night Flight Plus with your subscription, or rent or buy it on Apple TV and Fandango at home. On July third, nineteen eighty five, Day of the Dead starts in New York as a limited release, and George Romero's Zombie Apocalypse moves underground.

Night of the Living Dead was panic, Dawn of the Dead was consumer satire. Day of the Dead is what happens after the argument is already lost. This film is notoriously bleak. A handful of scientists and soldiers hide in a bunker while the dead own the surface entirely. But the real horror isn't just outside the fence. It's the shouting, paranoia, the chain of command, and the slow realization that the living may be even less manageable than the dead. And then, of course you can't not mention bub Romero's strange, heartbreaking proof that maybe the monsters are learning faster than we are.

I've always had a soft spot for Day of the Dead. Dawn of the Dead is my all time favorite film. I think it's not even my all time favorite horror movie. Just I love Dawn of the Dead. But the more I watch Day of the Dead, the more I appreciate it's muted, reserved tone and it's just so nihilistic. It's not necessarily a fun watch, but I do enjoy it. And they just put out a four k UHD from Screen Factory, although there is some controversy about audio issues, and oddly enough, some of those audio issues are similar to what happened when the DVD came out back in two thousand and three, I think it was, so you may not want to grab that right now.

Hopefully there'll be a replacement or something along those lines put out. But Day of the Dead is absolutely one you want in your horror collection if you are an aficionato. And it's streaming on Peacock, Shutter and night Flight Plus with your subscription, and of course you can also catch it free with ads on the Roku channel, Pluto TV, the Shout Factory TV channel, and Midnight Pulp, so lots of options to check out because Day of the Dead is a classic and you need to give it another watch. And I've never really thought about it before, but it is kind of summertime coded.

Yeah, our summer horror event reaches its final play tomorrow on Weekly Spooky Summer of the Demon turns Camp Red Feather into a blood soaked battlefield of football, revenge, cursed power, and a monster in a double zero jersey. Eddie pee Weee Richter thought he finally had the answer. Get the jersey off the demon, expose the person underneath, and end the curse. But in the thrilling conclusion, Eddie learns the nightmare was never that simple. Because the Demon was not just one monster. The Jersey has passed from hand to hand, feeding on obsession, jealousy, rage, and the desperate need to win at any cost.

And now someone has been hiding in plain sight and they're ready to take the power for themselves. The truth behind our cast of characters is finally revealed, and when the Jersey brings Greg back for one last night of Hell, the field becomes a final battleground, one team, one impossible game, and one rule, win or be dragged to Hell forever. Now, Eddie, Jessica, Charlie and the survivors of Camp Redfeather have to face the biggest, meanest, most dangerous version of the Demon yet, a monster built from love, madness, revenge, and cure cursed power. This is Summer of the Demon, Part five, the final part of our summer horror mini series from Rob Fields.

So make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app so you can be here tomorrow to give it a listen. The Jersey wants a champion, the Demon wants revenge, and tomorrow it's the final game from Hell. All right, spookies, let's take a quick breather, but when we come back, we're opening the door On June thirtieth, nineteen sixty two. A gothic mansion, a dead wife, a new bride, and a doctor whose romantic interests are not just unhealthy, they are unspeakable. All right, spookies, we're back, so let's get into it. Our deep cut spotlight. June thirtieth, nineteen sixty two, The Horrible Doctor Hitchcock releases in Italy, and Gothic horror gets one of its most morbid house calls.

Directed by Ricardo Frida, with Barbara Steele bringing the perfect candlelight haunting presence. The film is Victorian melodrama pushed into forbidden territory, and that's really about how you could refer to nearly any Italian Gothic film after the sixties. A doctor remarries after the mysterious death of his first wife, but the past isn't resting quietly upstairs. It's breathing through the walls, wading behind curtains, sitting at the center of a secret so ugly the whole mansion feels contaminated. And this is the kind of horror that it really doesn't need to run, because it glides, it stares from the dark end of the hallway until you realize you feel guilty for looking back, which is exactly why I wanted to make this deep cut Spotlight.

It's not just an old dark house atmosphere, although there's nothing wrong with that. I adore old dark house movies, and the nineteen sixties Italian era of them is excellent. But this is about obsession dressed up in lace, medicine and mourning, a movie where love has curdled into ritual and grief has become something rotten enough to wake the dead. When it comes to gothic horror Italy, they really knock it out of the park, and Barbara Steel always brings that eerie, penetrating hauntingness. I adore this film, so if you want to check it out right now, you may not have seen this one.

It is a deep cut Spotlight for a reason. It is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and Amazon Prime Video. All right, my Spookyes, let's light a creepy candle for some horror related birthday. Starting July first, nineteen fifty two, when Dan Ackroyd was born comedy legend with a major paranormal footprint, not only thanks to Ghostbusters, but also his lifelong love of the weird, and believe you me, if you haven't listened to Dan Ackroyd just go off on tangents about aliens, ghosts, the CIA, et cetera. You're missing out. So Happy Birthday, dan Ackroyd.

This one I debated including but I'm gonna stand by it. Born on July second, nineteen forty seven, is Larry David. Yeah that Larry David from Seinfeld and Curb your Enthusiasm Now hear me out, hear me out. While not exactly horror, he is one of the best anxiety machines I've ever I've ever witnessed. The man can turn talking to somebody to get a gas pump into well, something that'll pump your blood instead, and anxiety is half the genre in horror. So I say, Happy Birthday, Larry David, prett Day, prett day, pretty good. On July third, nineteen sixty two, Tom Cruise was born.

Now he is one of the biggest stars ever in cinema, but his genre adjacent films are highly memorable, especially Interview with the Vampire War of the Worlds, which if you don't think that's a horror film, just to remember the scene with all the red plants, everything's covered in that red goop that's from human bodies. That alone makes it horror for me. And he has a career of running like something terrible is right behind him, so I think that's pretty horror accurate. So Happy Birthday. Tom Cruise born on July fourth. Born on the fourth of July nineteen ten is Gloria Stewart, a classic horror presence in the Old Dark House and The Invisible Man, bringing Old Dark House atmosphere and mad science pedigree to horror history.

So I'm very happy to say Happy Birthday, Gloria Stuart for our then and now. This week is Horror in Summer Disguise nineteen seventy seven gives us Nature striking back, Oversized and Radioactive nineteen sixty two gives us Gothic rot, where the past is preserved like a corpse in a locked room. Nineteen eighty nine gives us the Body as Broken Machinery, nineteen eighty five gives us the Apocalypse after the Hope has burned off, and twenty twenty reminds us that the Haunted House never really goes away, It just changes the wallpaper moves to another country, and of course finds a new family to poison.

Finally, for our weekly recommendation, we head back to July fourth, nineteen sixty two, when Tales of Terror is released in New York City. If you want something classic for your week few Uptales of Terror, it's Roger Corman, Edgar Allan Poe and Vincent Price. Already a beautiful combination, and it gives you three gothic stories with that perfect anthology rhythm. You've got guilt, revenge, madness, and of course people making terrible choices in rooms full of velvet and shadows. Peter Lorie and Basil Rathbone help make it even richer, especially when the film tips from elegant dread into wicked little bursts of dark humor.

It's not only spooky, but cozy, and it's mean in the best kind of old school horror way, the kind of movie that feels like a candlelit paperback cover with a skull just barely visible hiding in the corner. You really can't go wrong with any Roger Korman Poe story, but this one I always enjoyed because you get three thrills for the price of one, so to speak. And if you want to give this one a watch or a revisit. It's free with ads on tub and you can rent or buy it on any major retailer like of course, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and Amazon Prime Video.

Well, my spookies, that's your trip through June twenty ninth to July fifth in Horror History. Tomorrow Wednesday, don't miss the fifth installment of our summer horror mini series, Summer of the Demon. It's fresh and it's waiting for you right here on the weekly Spooky Feed, So make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app, and don't forget our new show, Thursday Thrills brings you something new and creepy every Thursday to help you understand what dark corners of the world are worth knowing about. There's something scary for you every day of the week, so make sure you're subscribed, and of course I'll be right here next week with another dose of horror history.

So until then, remember our days are numbered because that's how we tell them apart. See you next week.