WEBVTT
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There's a special kind of dread that only shows up
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in late January. The holidays are gone, the sky is
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still gray, the nights feel longer than they should. So
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tonight we're going to haunt that in between space when
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the ground is frozen, the roads are empty, and horror
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history keeps dropping fresh footprints in the snow, from desert
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worms that shouldn't exist, to a polite little doll that
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absolutely does, to a space station that turns into a
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meat grinder, and one midnight premiere that convinced the world
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a witch might be real. This is your week in
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horror history for January nineteenth through January twenty fifth. I'm Enriquecuto,
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your host and guide through the creepy calendar. Coming up,
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a creature feature that opened and later burrowed its way
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into cult legend. A release that turned a low budget
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into a box office monster, a reminder if someone says
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it's just a doll, do not go into that house.
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And a video game release that made space feel very,
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very small. And for our deep cut spotlight, a found
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footage midnight screening at Sundance that rewired horror marketing forever.
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On January nineteenth, nineteen ninety one of my all time
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favorite films, tremors hits US theaters, a dusty, funny, and
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genuinely tense monster movie where the ground itself becomes the threat.
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You can trace a whole modern wave of small town
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creature horror with charming characters back to this one. In fact,
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by the early two thousands, it was pretty much the
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cliche when you were watching a monster movie, especially on
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Sci Fi Channel, it would be a small town in
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the middle of nowhere, and usually the sheriff was from
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the big city, so he was the outsider as strange
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things began to happen. But here's the part that I
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think is worth bringing up the most. Aside from the
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fact that Tremor's and Tremor's two or two of my
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personal favorite films of all time, Tremor's was not a
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big theatrical smash hit. It made about sixteen million dollars
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at the box office on roughly six million dollars in budget,
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so not a flop by any stretch, but not the
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kind of numbers that scream at the top of their
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lungs franchise. Yet, the movie's afterlife has been truly massive,
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with endless sequels and the rare status of being a
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comfort film for many many people while also being a giant,
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subterranean killer monster movie at the same time. I find
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myself quoting Tremors constantly, so for what it's worth, I mean,
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I'm not the average person, but who is. Tremors really
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is a quotable and super fun ride. And if you
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haven't watched it in a while, or heaven forbid, you've
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never seen it at all, well you need to check
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it out or revisit it. It's absolutely worth your time.
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Currently it's only available to rent or buy digitally, or
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of course get yourself a four K or Blu ray,
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available at the usual suspects, Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango
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at Home, etc. Etc. Speaking of that little catchphrase, January twentieth,
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twenty seventeen brought Split to theaters. M Night Shamalan's tight,
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nasty little bottle movie thriller that plays like a kidnapping
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nightmare with a supernatural shadow creeping in from the edges,
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and in my opinion, it was the full return to
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form for M Night Shamalan, although I think a lot
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of people agreed because from there on he was having
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some pretty big box office hits. Especially with its follow
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up Glass Split was an incredible experience in the theater
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and something I was not expecting at all. I wasn't
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expecting to run out of the theater desperate to bring
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friends in to watch it again. Although his previous film,
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The Visit, I also thought was really good. I felt
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like that was his initial return to form after a
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few flops in his past. Financially, it's one of the
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cleanest how to win Hollywood case stories. You can point
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to a nine million dollar budget that turned into about
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two hundred and seventy eight million worldwide. That is the
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horror playbook. Keep it lean, keep it intense, and let
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a central performance do the heavy lifting. And there's one
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thing that this film has in spades, it is phenomenal performances. So,
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whether you've seen the film before or you've never seen
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Split at all, it's time for a rewatch. And it's
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streaming right now on HBO Max and of course is
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available to rent or buy on Amazon Video, Apple TV,
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and you guessed it, Fandango at Home. Give it a watch,
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or you'll meet the Beast. On January twenty second, twoenty
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and sixteen, the Boy arrived with a premise horror fans
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can't resist a remote estate, an anxious caretaker, and a
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porcelain child named Brahms who may or may not be listening.
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It's a great example of how the creepy doll subgenre
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keeps reinventing itself. The Boy was made for about ten
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million dollars, which, by the way, blows my mind that
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a year earlier that movie cost about a million dollars
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more than Split because Split became kind of synonymous. But
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that doesn't mean The Boy was not a success. It
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just wasn't a monster success. It pulled in roughly sixty
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four million dollars worldwide, a reminder that if you can
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build dread with a strong setting and a single unnerving object,
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the audience will show up for the fear. And honestly,
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I think The Boy is pretty underrated. It wasn't the
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biggest horror hit of the decade, but it was absolutely
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creepy and fun. I saw it in the theater and
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if you haven't checked it out yet, you can rent
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it on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fendego at home.
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Ding in Space No One Can Hear You game on
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January twenty fifth, twenty eleven, Dead Space two landed in
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North America and proved something horror fans already knew games
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can do claustrophobia better than almost any dead Space two
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takes the trapped somewhere that you can't escape formula and
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makes it interactive. Every hallway becomes a choice, every vent
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becomes a quandary, Every quiet moment is a setup for
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the worst possible sound to be behind you. If you're
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a gamer out there and you want to play Dead
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Space and dead Space two, well, you can play them
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on PC via Steam, also listed as included with EA
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play as far as I could tell, and on Xbox.
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It's available digitally. Tonight's episode of This Week in Horror
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History is brought to you by our good friends at
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and thank you to save Arista for supporting the show.
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When we come back. The midnight premiere that made found
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footage feel like a police report and sold terror like
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it was a rumor your friend swore was true. All right, spookies,
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lights back down, Let's go to the woods. January twenty third,
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nineteen ninety nine. It's midnight at the Sundance Film Festival,
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the Blair Witch Project premieres, and horror marketing changes shape
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in real time. If you were there, you didn't just
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watch a movie, you watched an idea. In fact, a
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room three student filmmakers disappear in the Maryland Woods. A
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camcorder survives, some film reels are unearthed, and the footage
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is all that's left. But the real spell was outside
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the frame. The campaign that blurred the border between fiction
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and maybe this really happened. That whisper level uncertainty turned
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curiosity into compulsion. People didn't just buy tickets, They argued
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about whether they were seeing evidence. And as far as
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financials go, this is the stuff producers taped to their fridge.
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Depending on how you measure the final cost after post
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and marketing, the budget is often cited in a range,
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yet the box office headline is clear about two hundred
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and forty eight point six million dollars worldwide on a
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film that reportedly could not have cost more than a
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half a million dollars, but often is reported as substantially less.
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That's the kind of return that doesn't just make money,
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it creates a template. It's a trendsetter. And here's what
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it unlocked. Found footage stops being a niche trick and
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become a mainstream engine. Viral marketing stops being a buzzword
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and becomes a sharp and deadly weapon in the hands
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of a mysterious monster. And the audience becomes part of
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the mythology because they're the ones who carry the rumor.
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And if you ever wondered why modern horror loves arg's
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fake documentaries, analog horror tiktoks, and of course lost media storytelling,
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you can trace the footprints through the dark woods to
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that midnight in January in Park City, Utah. I've spoken
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about the Blair Witch Project a lot because I am
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a very big fan and I believe sincerely the film
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is as good as the hype, but that is a
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tall order because the hype was incredible. The hype was thick.
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I remember being a teenager watching Curse of the Blair
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Witch on television and really wondering if it was all
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real or not. That is magic, movie magic, the kind
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of horror, joy and fun fear that causes someone to
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launch a podcast and update it every week for seven
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years straight. As far as where to watch it is
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the usual suspects. You can rent or buy it on
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Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and of course Amazon Prime,
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among others. So grab your camera and head into the woods.
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We're going witching. I think that's a term, all right.
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Let's light four candles on the cake and keep them
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far away from anything flammable. On January nineteenth, eighteen oh nine,
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Edgar Allan Poe is born, the godfather of American macabre, guilt,
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obsession and buried secrets. He really created the rhythm of doom.
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I'm a huge fan of Poe. I think that's obvious,
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and during October I released a compilation of all the
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Poe readings I've done for Weekly Spooky Expecting It to
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be maybe three hours long. It was seven and a
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half hours of Poe readings, and I'm excited to dive
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into Poe readings on weekly. Spooky even more as the
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year progresses. So Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe quote The
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Raven Never More on January twentieth, nineteen forty six. David
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Lynch was born. Not a horror director in a tidy
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label sense, but few artists have made the familiar feel
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so so wrong. And I think after David Lynch's pass
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last year, we've truly realized he was very important to
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very many people, and so many appreciated his brave individual genius.
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Happy Birthday, David Lynch, you are sorely missed. Born on
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January twenty second, nineteen oh six. Robert E. Howard. While
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he was known for popularizing sword and sorcery stories, he
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also had a foundational voice for weird menace and pulp dread,
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often featuring ancient evils and cosmic horror. Some of his
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classics would be Pigeons from Hell, The Black Stone, and
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Worms of the Earth. He was all about primal physical horror,
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focused on survival and facing the inhuman. Happy Birthday, Robert E.
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Howard and born on January twenty fifth, nineteen forty three.
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Toby Hooper, the filmmaker who helped drag horror into the
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daylight and make it feel like it could happen on
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the next road over as long as you lived in Texas.
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Toby Hooper obviously brought us the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but
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some of his other films really did influence American culture deeply,
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one of which would be Salem's Lot. So many people
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have told me stories about seeing that made for TV
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two night mini series and the nightmares it brought them.
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I think Toby Hooper is extremely underrated and very very missed.
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Happy Birthday, Toby Hooper, for are then and Now Then.
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The Blair Witch Project sells fear like folklore, half movie,
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half rumor and all vibes. But when we look to now,
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we're right back there, just faster. A scary story drops online.
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It's clipped into a found fragment, posted without context, and
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the comments they do the rest. People don't ask is
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it good? First? They ask is it real? That is
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the modern horror loop. The audience becomes the campfire, the
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algorithm becomes the woods. So gather around the uncomfortably blue
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light and here something scary because maybe it'll happen to you.
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And for our weekly recommendation, a found footage kind of
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then and now that I think works really well. On
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January twenty fourth, twenty twenty, Spree premiered at the Sundance
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Film Festival, a found footage horror film that I think
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is absolutely worth your time and a lot of people
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seem to have slept on. I caught it on Hulu
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during the pandemic and it was a hell of a
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lot of fun. It's found footage, but for the modern age,
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with dash cams, live streams, screens within screens turning the
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classic Is this real? Am I actually witnessing a crime
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unfold unease into something uglier and more immediate. If you
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liked how this Week's History shows horror evolving with the
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tech of its moment, well this is a great then
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and now kind of watch. And it stars John Keary.
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Most of you probably know him as Steve from Stranger Things. Well,
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this is Steve like you've never seen him before. His
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performance is absolutely kinetic. He is pure energy in the
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chaotic evil direction. And I really do recommend you check
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out Spree from twenty twenty. It's available to stream totally
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free with ads on tub It's also available on Shutter
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and AMC Plus with a subscription, and of course you
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can rent it at the usual suspects like Amazon Prime,
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Fandango at Home and Apple TV. All right, that's your
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run through of January nineteenth through twenty fifth, a week
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where the ground moves, the walls well, they listen, space
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closes in, and the woods keep their secrets. Tomorrow Wednesday,
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mean it's a new episode of Weekly Spooky drops in
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the feed as we head into part three of our
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January mini series band It's a horror Who Done It?
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That takes place at a horror convention in a snowy
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lodge during a blizzard. You don't want to miss it,