This Week in Horror History | Dracula, Maximum Overdrive & Deep Blue Sea (July 20–26)

Summer is supposed to feel alive, warm nights, long drives, open road, ocean, water that bright, heavy, feeling that anything could happen before the sun comes up. But horror knows the other side of summer. Wrong roads, hungry waters, machines that wake up angry, and experiments that get loose. This Week in Horror History gives us vampires with velvet voices, desert nightmares, reverse horror video games, alien spectacle, homicidal trucks, and genetically engineered sharks with absolutely no respect for dramatic speeches. So start your engines, check the rear view mirror, and do not look directly at the sky. Just trust me on that one.

Okay. 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 July twentieth through twenty sixth. Coming up. Frank Langella brings Dracula back with dangerous elegance. Wes Craven turns a family vacation into a sun baked survival nightmare. A video game lets you stop running from the monster and become it. And Jordan Peel reminds us that spectacle can take a look back. Then, after the break our deep cut Spotlight, Stephen King directs a killer Machine apocalypse where the trucks never stop circling.

July twentieth, nineteen seventy nine, Dracula releases in the United States, but maybe not the one you're thinking of this time, though. The count comes back smooth, romantic and dangerous. Frank Langella's Dracula is not the rat faced plague figure. He's not the Cape and Fang's Halloween image either. He's charming, he's theatrical. He understands exactly how to enter a room and make every living person in it feel slightly less alive. This version leans into Gothic romance, stormy cliffs, candlelight, old houses, and the horrible idea that evil does not always have to force its way in. Sometimes it gets invited.

Not only a monster, he's temptation incarnate. In my opinion, this is one of a few extremely underrated Dracula films. If you've never seen the nineteen seventy nine Frank Langela Dracula, directed by John Badam. It also features Laurence Olivier, Donald Pleasance, and Kate Nelligan. Those are some heavy hitting names, and the film delivers a lot of the scares. It's highly worth watching if you love the Dracula story or the book by Bram Stoker, or you just want to see a new to you, fresh take on the genre and the character. Well, you can give the nineteen seventy nine Dracula a watch for the first time or as a much needed revisit at Apple TV, Prime Video and Fandango at home, where it's available to rent or buy.

Trust me, you'll like it. July twenty second, nineteen seventy seven. The Hills Have Eyes premieres in Tucson, Arizona, and Wes Craven makes the desert feel like a sandy trap. A family takes a shortcut, the car breaks down, the landscape stretches out in every direction, but somehow there's nowhere to go. That is the sick genius of The Hills Have Eyes. It takes the family road trip, one of the most ordinary American summer rituals there is, and strips it down to panic, dust and survival. Civilization is not gone here. It's just very very far away, far enough that the rules stop helping.

Craven had already shocked audiences with Last House on the Left, but this one feels mythic in a very different way. Two families, two versions of a Marria America, staring each other down in the middle of the desert, and neither one gets to leave clean. Wes Craven is a director I'll celebrate for all of my days for having so many interesting and pivotal horror films. I mean, he reinvented the genre multiple times in his career. And if you've never given The Hills Have Eyes a watch, you really should. This was during the era when Craven was pushing the envelope.

The Last House on the Left was stomach churning, and The Hills Have Eyes was no different other than not being filmed in Connecticut, which does make a big difference. So hop in the car and have your own little summer getaway. It's available to rent or buy on Apple, TV, Prime Video and Fandango at Home. July twenty third, twenty twenty carry On Releases and Horror Gaming flips the camera around. Most games ask you to survive the monster. Carrion asks, what if you are the monster? You are an amorphous thing made of teeth, tendrils, and hunger, slithering through a research facility, escaping containment one hallway at a time.

It's called a reverse horror game, and that label is pretty accurate. The fear is still there, but it's changed sides. The scientists are afraid, the guards are afraid. The building itself feels like it's trying to hold its breath, and the more you grow, the more the game becomes a nasty little power fantasy about containment failing. Not a haunted house, a haunted experiment. I'm going to give this one a play myself. It's available on PC and major consoles like Steam, Xbox PlayStation, and Nintendo consoles. July twenty second, twoenty twenty two, Nope releases in US theaters and Jordan Peel turns the sky into a well, kind of a haunted house.

This is UFO horror but also creature feature, but also show business horrors and a western all at once, and it works. Nope understands something creepy about spectacle. We want to look, even when the act of looking might be exactly what puts us in danger. There are images in this movie that feel huge and strange and impossible to explain without draining them of power. A cloud that never moves, a house rained on by things that should never fall from the sky. A creature that becomes more terrifying the less it behaves the way you're expecting. It's a summer blockbuster horror, but with an edge.

And it's also about exploitation, trauma, animals, cameras, and the terrible cost of trying to capture the impossible, which in my opinion, makes the film stand out a lot. It's also basically all bent around a twist that I don't want to reveal to you if you've never seen Nope, because it is an excellent, excellent film in my opinion, So give it a watch or a revisit and you can thank me later. It's available on Netflix with your subscription, or to rent or buy on Apple, TV, Prime Video and Fandango at home. Summer is here. The cabins are open, the campfires are burning bright, and something hungry is circling just beyond the trees.

Tomorrow, on Weekly Spooky, Veteran Camp counselor Jonathan Edwards travels to Puerto Rico to help launch Camp Clemente, a beautiful new summer camp, surrounded by mountains, deep forest, and miles of tropical wilderness. For Jonathan, it should be the opportunity of a lifetime. A brand new campground, ten eager young counselors, and a few quiet weeks to prepare before the children arrive. Then, during their first night around the fire, an unholy howl rolls out of the darkness. Locals know that sound. They call the creature El vampiro de moca, but you may know it better by another name, chupa Brah.

When a violent storm crashes over the camp, something comes charging through the forest. Then more shapes join it. Claws hammer against the cabin, windows, shatter, doors, buckle, and everyone trapped inside realizes this is not one legendary beast. It's an entire pack. Now the only question is how long can they survive. Tomorrow's story is Camping with Chupacabra by Douglas Waltz right here on Weekly Spooky. So make sure you're subscribed and stay close to the fire. Make sure to check that story out tomorrow. I promise you it'll be a good time. But now let's take a quick breather.

When we come back, we hit July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, and Stephen King gets behind the camera for his one directorial film, It's Got Trucks, machines, ACDC, and a diner full of people, realizing that the entire world may have just developed a murder setting. All right, my spookees, we're back, let's get into it. On July twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, Maximum Overdrive releases and Stephen King directs the loudest, greasiest, most unhinged killer machine film of the decade. Is maybe almost under selling it. The setup is pure midnight movie madness. Earth passes through the tail of a comet and suddenly machines just turn against humanity.

But not just big machines, not just computers, all of them, vending machines, lawn equipment, arcade games, drawbridges, trucks, especially trucks. The heart of the movie is the Dixie Boy truck stop, where a group of survivors get pinned down by eighteen wheelers that seem to have developed personalities and grudges, and those grudges are definitely aimed at human beings. And yeah, the tone is completely bananees. This is not some elegant horror, some elevated psychological thing. It's Stephen King bringing you a goblin faced truck and explosions and panic in a diner, all while ACDC is blasting like the soundtrack was wired directly into your adrenal gland.

That's also why it's got such a great lasting power to it. The world is already full of machines we depend on, ignore and barely understand. Maximum Overdrive just asks what happens if all those machines wake up on the wrong side of the bed. It turns the every day into an ambush. You can't trust the road, or the kitchen, or even the arcade cabinet, and once the trucks start circling, the whole world feels like a parking lot with no exit. This is a truly crazy film, but there's a lot to love about it, if only Emilio Estevez just completely putting us all in.

I've always enjoyed Maximum Overdrive, and if you've never seen it, it's a piece of eighties cheese and nostalgia that you really need in your life. It's available to watch free with ads on two BTV and Plex, which honestly might be the best way to watch it because I always saw it on cable as a kid. It's also available on Amazon Prime Video with your subscription, and of course to rent or buy on Apple TV, Prime Video and Fandango at Home. Also we Made You, We Made You best quote from the film. Now, it's time to celebrate some horror birthdays, starting on July twentieth, nineteen thirty eight, when Diana Rigg was born.

Elegant, sharp, and unforgettable in films like The Avengers, Theater of Blood, and more recently The Last Night in Soho, Diana Rigg brings just about everything you could want to a horror role and helps you feel a little safer, which, as we know, is exactly how horror movies really get you. A very happy birthday to Diana Rigg on July twenty first, nineteen seventy eight. Josh Hartnett is born from Halloween h two to The Faculty to Thirty Days of Night and now more recently films like Trap. He's a familiar face in modern genre cinema and a guy who's having a real resurgence in his career currently.

After being kind of the talk of the town when I was a teenager in the early two thousands, He's popping up again and again, not only in interesting and solid films, but also with interesting and solid roles for him to play. I love seeing it. A very happy birthday. Josh Hartnett born July twenty second, nineteen fifty five is Willem Dafoe. This is a guy who has made a mark on every single genre. He's a fearless performer, but his stops in genre films have been really memorable, like Shadow of the Vampire, or Antichrist, or The Lighthouse or the modern retelling of Nosferatu.

Willem Dafoe is a guy who has a face for horror, and I mean that with all the love I could possibly bring a very happy birthday, Willem Dafoe. And on July twenty fourth, nineteen fifty one, Linda Carter is born. Now she is forever known as wonder Woman, and rightfully so. But she had several spooky stops in the horror genre, including the excellent and underrated The Initiation of Sarah, as well as many genre adjacent cult television series as well. So we're claiming her. If you don't like it is send a complaint. A very happy birthday to Linda Carter, and all of our horror birthdays this week are then and now.

This week is horror history with safety locks removed. Nineteen seventy nine gives us Dracula as seduction evil dressed well enough to be welcomed into your home. Nineteen seventy seven gives us the desert as punishment, a vacation route that becomes a survival test. Twenty twenty gives us the Monsters point of view horror from inside the body that escaped the lab. Twenty twenty two gives us the sky as a predator spectacle transformed into threat, and nineteen eighty six gives us the machines baby, every tool, vehicle and convenience suddenly looking at us like we're prey. And finally, our weekly recommendation takes us to July twenty sixth, nineteen ninety nine, when D Blue Sea premieres in the United States.

And if you want something to queue up this week that'll help you feel all fun in the sun, but then not quite make it. Deep Blue Sea. It's a late nineties entry into shark horror that gets bigger and wonderfully ridiculous. Researchers in an isolated ocean facility genetically alter mako sharks while searching for a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The result smarter sharks, which, as plans go, turns out to have more than a few problems. Deep Blue Sea is pure summer creature feature joy. It has storms, flooding corridors, corporate hubris, underwater laboratories, giant sharks, and a cast of people slowly realizing they're not in a research facility anymore, they're in a lunch box.

And of course it has one of the great shock moments of nineties horror, the kind of scene where the movie kind of stares you dead in the eyes and says, no one is safe. Also, are we having fun? That's the charm that you cannot deny about Deep Lucy. It knows exactly what it is. It's loud, it's fast, it's wet, it's absurd, and it's completely committed to the bit. This one is always a fun time anytime a year, but in the summer it really feels proper. So give Deep Lucy a watch, or rewatch free with ads on two B or of course, you can rent or buy it on Apple TV, Prime Video.

And Fendango at home. Well, my spookies, that's your trip through July twentieth to July twenty sixth. Than horror History Tomorrow Wednesday, there's a fresh horror story all about out camping with Chupacra on the Weekly Spooky Feed, so make sure you're subscribed. And remember there's something scary every single day of the week right here on Weekly Spooky. So click that subscribe button, leave a five star rating on your favorite podcasting app, and while you're at it, tell a friend who loves Halloween all year long to give it a listen. So until next time, remember our days are numbered because that's how we tell them apart.

See you next week.