This Week in Horror History | Halloween Primer: The Monster Squad, Cujo & The Fly

Mid August is when summers starts to feel like a room with the windows hainted shut. The air is heavy, the road shimmers, and every locked door, stalled car, and darkened hallway seems to be keeping its very own secret. This Week in Horror History gives us a fog bound mansion where daylight is dangerous, a family dog turned into a siege engine, Jason Vorhee's crossing a very strange threshold, and an HBO journey where human monsters and cosmic ones share the same road. Then, after the break, our deep cut Spotlight gathers the neighborhood kids, raids the treehouse arsenal and asks whether a silver bullet is enough.

When Dracula brings the whole gang. Oh yeah, I can't wait to talk about that one. Welcome back to this Week in Horror History, your weekly time machine through the creepiest anniversaries in film, TV, books, comics, and games. I'm your host, Henrique Couto, and tonight we're talking about August tenth through the sixteenth Coming up. Nicole Kidman waits in a house where every curtain stays closed. Stephen King turns a gentle saint Bernard into a sun baked Nightmare, Jason Vorhees leaves Crystal Lake behind and discovers that evil can travel light, and Lovecraft Country sends a black family across Jim Crow America with ancient magic in the rearview mirror.

Then right after the break, our deep cut spotlight is on the kids club that has one night to save the world from Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and one very misunderstood creature. That film, by the way, is the entire reason this podcast exists. I'll tell you more a little later. This is a very special episode. August tenth, two thousand and one. The Others opens in US theaters and summer sunlight disappears behind a wall of curtains. Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a mother waiting in a remote Channel Island mansion with her two children near the end of World War Two.

The children are dangerously sensitive to light, so every room follows a ritual lock one door before opening the next. Draw the curtains keep the house dim. Writer director Alejandro Ahmanapa builds the film out of rules, silence, and competing versions of reality. New servants arrive, a child insists that strangers are moving through the house. Grace hears footsteps where no one should be. The mansion becomes a machine for controlling light and hiding whatever Grace cannot bear to see. The Others lets fog erase the world just beyond the gate, then makes every sound inside feel painfully close. The film has an incredible vibe and incredible mood that definitely turns itself into a kind of locked door.

This is a film that I actually only saw about ten years ago, and man, did it leave an impression on me. I really think The Others is kind of an underrated early two thousands horror film. You all should watch if you haven't already, and it's relatively easy to watch if you have a subscription to AMC Plus or Shutter But of course you can rent or buy it on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. August twelfth, nineteen eighty three, Cujo reaches United States theaters and a broken down car becomes the hottest smallest fortress ever in horror, Adapted from Stephen King's novel of the same name and directed by Lewis Tige, Cujo begins with an ordinary accident.

A friendly Saint Bernard chases a rabbit into a cave meets a rabbit bat and comes home carrying a disease that strips away everything his family could recognize. The film traps Donna Trenton played by Dee Wallace, and her young son Tad inside a failing car outside blazing sun, a total lack of help, and a dog powerful enough to make escape feel impossible. There is no accident, curse, or ritual. The horror is biology, which makes it eerily plausible. As well. That simplicity makes Kujo brutal. The threat was a once loved dog. The place is no longer safe because it's becoming an oven, and survival depends on choosing the least terrible moment to open the door.

This is claustrophobic horror at its most joyously scary, especially if you have a child to protect or you have a love of very large dogs. This is one that I can't imagine you've slept on, but if you have, you need to give it a watch or maybe a rewatch, you know, before the hot summer passes. You buy you can find it streaming with your MGM plus account or through YouTube tv and their MGM plus membership. You can also, of course rent or buy it at you guessed it, Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home.

You know how sometimes they say a bark is worse than their bite. Well, it's not the case with Kujo. August thirteenth, nineteen ninety three, Jason Goes to Hell opens in US theaters. Of course, that is a Friday the thirteenth, so it's natural, and it sends the franchise into body hopping territory and becomes one of the most hotly debated entries in a very rich and long horror series. The ninth Friday the thirteenth film begins by doing something I gotta admit is kind of delightfully reckless. I feel like this film is aged surprisingly well. It blows up the familiar shape of Jason Vorhees.

Then it asks what exactly could remain. The answer is a demonic force that can move from host to host, turning the slasher into a possession movie with a hockey mask kind of hovering but only in our imaginations. Directed by Adam Marcus, this is the strange doorway into Jason's New Line era. When New Line Cinema got the rights from Paramount, this was how they started up the fervor that would eventually vary. Eventually, after many years of development land in Freddy Versus Jason, the rules are expanded, the family bloodline suddenly matters, bodies become temporary housing, and the title's promise of finality because the subtitle is the Final Friday, arrives with quite a wink.

It has its detractors, but it is messy and gooey, and it relish in being odd as hell pardon the pun, a sequel willing to dismantle its icon just to see what might crawl out. And while people have complained about those changes, I'd be damned if I said that. They don't keep talking about all the bizarre choices and Jason goes to hell. It makes it a very memorable film. So if you want to take a little tango to The Final Friday, whether it's for the first time, which I would find bizarre, or you want to revisit your favorite day of the month, well or the year, I guess it's available to rent or buy on Yes, Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home.

August sixteenth, twenty twenty, Lovecraft Country premieres on HBO and puts cosmic horror on the same road as America's very human history of racial violence. Developed by Misha Green from Matt Ruff's novel, The series follows Atticus Freeman, his friend Letitia, and his uncle George as they leave Chicago in search of Atticus's missing father. Their route runs through nineteen fifties Jim Crow America, where a sundown town can be as deadly as anything waiting in the woods. The show keeps changing genre, but in a really fun way. Family mystery, haunted house story, body horror, a lot of that adventure serial kind of old time searches and hunting for lost loved ones.

Its thread, though, is inheritance, the trauma family passed down, the history people sometimes bury, and the power others claim when they learn who wrote the rules exactly. Lovecraft Country makes the collision deliberate. Ancient creatures are frightening, but so are ordinary people backed by a system that expect no consequences for their actions. I did enjoy this show quite a bit. I felt like it was especially strong in the first four or five episodes. But it's definitely worth a binge if you've not checked it out, And of course it's streaming right now with your subscription on HBO Max tomorrow on Weekly Spooky.

Always be suspicious of strangers offering free food, especially when the stranger's head is shaped like an egg. In Odd Egg, author Alex Grass makes his Weekly Spooky debut with a grotesque tale of neighborly generosity, unwanted rebirth, and the most horrifying breakfast imaginable. When Mary Ellen arrives home from work, she finds a strange man waiting on her porch. His name is Roger, his fingers are cool, his smile is far too wide, and he represents the Keystone Cooperative Growers Association, a charitable organization that wants everyone in the community to enjoy a curtain of fresh, cruelty free eggs.

There's only one unusual detail. Roger claims that a god lives inside him. Mary Ellen should throw the curtain away, but instead she wakes up hungry. Eleven of the eggs are empty. The twelfth is not. Something tiny drops into the frying pan, something with a human face, six spindly legs, and a scream like a newborn child. Listen tomorrow to prepare yourself for the world of the time of the Egg. Odd Egg by Alex Glass premieres to tomorrow Wednesday on Weekly Spooky, So make sure you're subscribed and count every shell in your carton. All right, Spookies, let's take a quick breather.

But when we come back, we're headed to August fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven for one of the most formidable horror movies of my entire life. One Treehouse Club, five classic monsters, and one hundred year deadline that really should have come with adult supervision. And we're back, so let's get into it, and I cannot wait for our deep cut spotlight. We go to August fourteenth, nineteen eighty seven, when The Monster Squad Oh opens in Los Angeles and New York and the kids who argue about monsters finally have to fight them. Directed by Fred Decker and written by Decker and Shane Black of Lethal Weapon fame, the film follows a group of young horror obsessives who meet in a treehouse, trade monster lore and take the classics very seriously.

That turns out to be pretty useful when Dracula arrives with the Mummy, the gill Man, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein's creature. The monsters look familiar without copying Universal's exact designs and that is, and that is very on purpose. Because Universal didn't sign on. They tried to do the film as a kind of Universal Monster reboot, but they weren't biting, so they had to redesign the monsters just a little bit. But they still scratch that itch, don't you worry. Their mission is to seize an amulet where good holds evil in balance. Once every hundred years, that balance becomes vulnerable, and naturally, the deadline is tonight.

What makes this film incredibly cozy for me is the kids are me, they are you there horror movie fans, comic book fans who end up going from being fans alone to field training. Monster rules are now survival instructions. A German diary needs translating, and fast silver bullets are hopefully effective, and one creature may be more human than the frightened adults all around him. The monster Squad understands the loneliness inside of classic horror. Frankenstein's creature finds friendship with the one child willing to look past the scars. It's cable in home video Afterlife, which is how I discovered it came from one monster kid passing a favorite to the next.

This film was everything to me as a kid, I had a VHS tape that I begged and pleaded to have my mother finally acquiesced and I watched it till it broke. Then for a very long time, what felt like forever. It was probably about a decade. Really, it wasn't available anyway other than from an old VHS tape. It didn't come out on DVD until like twenty two thousand and six or two thousand and seven, pretty late in the DVD boom because of rights issues. But now, I mean, I have a boss looking four kuhd of the Monster Squad that I honestly watch every birthday with friends because just nothing beats feeling like for just a little while.

You're part of the Monster Squad too, So I implore you for me, if you've never seen Monster Squad, which is a tragedy, or if you've not seen it in a long time, give it a watch. I promise you will not be disappointed. It's available to watch free with your Amazon Prime subscription on Prime Video, and you can also watch it free with ads on YouTube and Prime Video with ads, or of course rent or buy it on Apple TV and Fandango at home and afterward, try not to look at your friends and say, with a strong, childlike hope in your voice, where the monster squad.

Now let's dive into some horror birthdays. We have a heavy hitter to start. Born on August thirteenth, eighteen ninety nine is Alfred Hitchcock, the director who made showers, staircases, birds, and simple acts feel unsafe. I've always loved Hitchcock's work, and I know that that's kind of normal, but it's normal for a reason, and I want to mention His TV show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents was one of my earliest horror favorites. It always stuck with me. So happy birthday, mister Hitchcock. Born on August fourteenth, nineteen sixty six is halle Berry, the Oscar winning actress who entered supernatural asylum horror in the highly Unforgettable Gothica and also got on the Crimson Waters a little bit in the creature feature Dark Tide.

A very happy birthday, halle Berry. Born August fifteenth, nineteen seventy four. Natasha Henstridge, the lethal extraterrestrial sill in species Beautiful and Disgusting. She was a possibly the best looking biological threat in all of horror, and we wish her a very happy birthday and born on August sixteenth, nineteen fifty four. James Cameron. Now I know what you're thinking. James Cameron hasn't necessarily directed a straight horror movie, aside from maybe Piranha to The Spawning, which he has rightfully disowned as a film he didn't have that much of an influence on. But he's a filmmaker who turned Aliens into a massive war movie.

But it still had a sense of being a haunted house under siege, and it was definitely a survival story worthy of your of your general fear and anxiety. So I say we can claim him. Happy birthday, James Cameron. Oh and by the way, people try to argue that Terminator wasn't a horror movie and it absolutely was a sci fi horror slasher movie. Fight me. I dare you seriously though, Happy birthday, James Cameron. You're all a highlight to our creepy calendar for aur then and now this week. Horror history keeps changing what the body can contain.

Nineteen eighty three gives us disease, erasing the gentle animal that everyone knows and Loves nineteen eighty seven gives us classic monsters in fresh skins and some eighties themed attire. Some are cruel, one more human than most. Nineteen ninety three turns Jason into an evil that treats bodies like a motel six. Two thousand and one locks a family inside a house where identity depends on who believes that they belong there. And twenty twenty makes bloodline, ancestry and inherited power the map through both cosmic terror and American history. For our weekly recommendation, well, if you want one movie this week that is romantic, disgusting, funny, quietly, devastating, and everything in between, head to August fifteenth, nineteen eighty six, when David Cronenberg's The Fly opens in Los Angeles and New York, with Jeff Goldbloom as scientists Seth Brundle and Gina Davis as journalist Veronica Quaif Seth has built a teleportation system, the machine it works almost One unnoticed passenger enters the pod with him, and the computer combines what it reads at the genetic level.

From there, Cronenberg turns scientific triumph into a transformation. Neither love nor intelligence can stop the makeup effects won the Academy Award, but the reason to return is the relationship. Gold Bloom and Davis make the movie feel alive before it starts to slowly and stickily die. And believe me, I do mean stickily, which may not be a word, but it's the only one that fits. Every physical change lands inside their romance. The body horror is the terror of watching someone become unreachable while still standing in front of you. Forty years later, the Fly still earns every gasp because it treats transformation as both monster movie and human tragedy.

Bring a strong stomach but also a soft heart if you want to get the most out of this film, and I cannot recommend enough watching this film. If you've never seen it, it will blow you away, and if you have, you will somehow still not remember it being as gooey as it was. It's available to rent or buy on the Yes, Indeed, Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at Home. Well my Spookyes, that's your trip through August tenth to sixteenth in horror history. Don't forget to stop by Tomorrow Wednesday for a brand new weekly Spooky story all about the dangers inside a simple egg and make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app, because there's something spooky to enjoy every single day of the week here.

And of course I'll be right back here next Tuesday to bring you even more horror history for you to bone up on. I've been your host, Henrique Couto, reminding you that our days are numbered because that's how we tell them apart. See you next week.