This Week in Horror History | Jacob's Ladder, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Siren & Starship Troopers - Nov 2-Nov 8

0:00 The calendar is crossed into November, but horror is not packing away the decorations, not at all. This week, a Vietnam veteran enters a reality that won't hold still. Victor Frankenstein turns grief into an experiment. A forbidden village lends you the eyes of the dead, and giant bugs tear a shining future apart. After the break, an Independence Day festival on the Chesapeake Bay becomes evidence in an ecological catastrophe that officials would rather erase. So, mind the hospital floor, don't drink the tap water, and remember, the most cheerful broadcast may be the one trying hardest to enlist you.

0:59 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 Enrique Couto, and I'm also here to help you ease the pain of the end of October. Because remember, Halloween isn't only on the calendar, it's in our hearts. Tonight we're talking about November 2nd through the 8th. Coming up, Jacob's Ladder makes New York feel like a fever dream. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gives the creature a voice, a memory, and a reason to hate its maker. Siren turns seeing through a monster's eyes into a survival tool, and Starship Troopers hides a savage anti-war satire inside a very shiny recruitment film. Then, after the break, the bay assembles scattered cameras into one nasty warning from the water. November 2nd, 1990. Jacob's Ladder opens in U.S. theaters, and a trip home on the subway becomes the first wrong turn in a nightmare about grief, war, and letting go.

2:19 Tim Robbins plays Jacob Singer, a Vietnam veteran and New York postal clerk who remembers an attack on his unit, mourns a young son, and sees figures whose heads vibrate with impossible speed. Friends deny conversations. Records disappear. A hospital becomes a chute into hell. Adrian Lin and writer Bruce Joel Rubin refuse to give Jacob one stable reality. The shaking head effect was created by filming at four frames per second while moving the camera, then playing the footage at normal speed. A visible body suddenly stops obeying a familiar motion, let alone the rules of physics, and this is an effect that was used many, many more times by many horror films throughout the 90s and early 2000s in particular. It opened at number one with about $ 7. 5 million and brought in about $ 26 million domestically altogether. The reason I would say to revisit is Jacob's uncertainty. The camera makes you share in his fear and paranoia. It's a film that's very, very effective. I know this one has missed a lot of folks out there, so I highly recommend checking it out or watching it as a review.

3:42 It's available to rent or buy through Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at home. November 4th, 1994. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein opens in U.S. theaters, and Kenneth Branagh attacks the novel with sweat, lightning, surgery, and enough candlelight to set the screen on fire. Branagh directs and stars as Victor, a brilliant student who refuses to accept death. Robert De Niro plays the being he assembles and abandons. Helena Bonham Carter is Elizabeth, the wife Victor claims to value while obsession pushes her aside. The film restores the creature's language, intelligence, and the case he has against his maker. He's not innocent for long, but his violence grows from rejection rather than a defective brain. The movie's feverish excess suits a man who never understands the world quite enough. It's a very interesting take on the subject matter, while also being much more honest to the subject matter. It's a lot more like the book than most of the most famous film adaptations that are out there, but it got maligned for it too, and There's a lot to say, but I digress. Against a reported $ 45 million production budget, the film earned about $ 22 million domestically and $ 112 million worldwide.

5:15 International audiences did the most lifting when it came to the film financially, and I think this one is definitely worth a revisit if you remember seeing it and maybe not being so moved by it. I have always enjoyed this one. I always thought it was a very interesting take. I think you would too. It's available with your Netflix subscription, or of course you can buy or rent it at Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at home. November 6th, 2003, Siren releases for PlayStation 2 in Japan, and survival horror teaches players that seeing the enemy can be worse than not knowing where it is. Known as Forbidden Siren out in Europe, it traps several characters in Hanuda, a village soaked by a red flood. Residents become Shibito. living dead repeating fragments of ordinary life while hunting anyone who's still human.

6:19 Sightjacking lets players tune into another person's vision. The borrowed viewpoint may reveal a patrol route, a key, or the instant a Shibito notices your hiding place. Creator Kichoro Toyama builds 78 missions across three non-linear days, making survival an act of assembling time. It asks for patience. Every borrowed glimpse gives you information, but taking time to study it leaves your own body exposed. You can understand the danger, but still be standing in exactly the wrong place when it makes its appearance. This is a deep cut for you gamers out there. The emulated PlayStation 2 Classic is sold for PS4 and PS5 through the PlayStation Store and included with your PlayStation Plus Premium. So why not take it for a spin? November 7th, 1997 Starship Troopers opens in U.S. theaters and director Paul Verhoeven turns a space war into the happiest fascist nightmare ever broadcast. Casper Van Dien's Johnny Rico joins the mobile infantry, where citizenship is a prize, pain is instruction, and death becomes a recruiting opportunity.

7:48 When the Federation declares war on the arachnids, square-jawed adventure keeps breaking for propaganda broadcasts. Children stomp insects while adults applaud. Executions become entertainment. The bugs and battlefield carnage are spectacular, and that excitement is part of the trap. Verhoeven offers military certainty, then... fills it with disposable bodies and manipulated information. It's a film that really makes you think every time you watch it. Definitely worth a revisit. Starship Troopers opens with about $ 22. 1 million, but then earned roughly $ 54. 8 million domestically, with $ 121 million worldwide against a reported $ 105 million budget.

8:41 Its first run was a disappointment for the studios, but its satire became the film's lasting identity. And if you don't think that Starship Troopers is a horror film, the gore will convince you otherwise. It's available to stream with ads on Plex or on Philo with your subscription, and of course you can rent or buy it on Amazon Video, Apple TV, and Fandango at home. Do you want to know more? Tomorrow on Weekly Spooky, federal investigator Ben Ackers has spent six years explaining dead livestock. Usually the answer has teeth. A Colorado ranch should be another routine stop, except this cow has no blood, no organs, and something bright green is streaked inside. Rancher Seth Anderson reports strange lights and a low humming sound that returns with the thunderstorms.

9:48 Now another storm is gathering and Ben's usual explanations are running out. Until the Cows Come Home by George Larson premieres tonight. Wednesday right here on weekly spooky so make sure you're subscribed and watch the clouds listen for the humming and don't count on daylight to finish this investigation Alright, spookies, let's take a quick breather, but when we come back, we're headed to November 2nd, 2012, for a film I love that's underrated called The Bay, about a Maryland town celebrating the 4th of July. And as the day falls apart, every camera in town is recording the same question. What's moving under the skin? All right, we're back. Let's get into it. On November 2nd, 2012, the Bay reaches theaters and on-demand platforms, and a cheerful waterfront festival collapses into one of found footage's most convincing public health nightmares. Barry Levinson builds the film as a leaked documentary assembled three

11:18 years after the destruction of fictional Claridge, Maryland. Kether Donahue plays Donna Thompson, a young reporter whose Fourth of July stand-up becomes the spine of phone videos, police cameras, hospital surveillance, scientific recordings, and emergency calls. People develop lesions. Fish wash ashore. Researchers discover mutated tongue-eating isopods, real parasites enlarged by the movie into creatures capable of consuming a host. from the inside. A doctor keeps sending evidence upward while officials treat every symptom as an isolated problem. Levinson first considered a documentary about Chesapeake Bay pollution. The horror film kept that environmental starting point intact. Excess nutrients really do feel algal blooms and low oxygen water there. Claridge and its killer outbreak are fictional, but the damaged ecosystem gives this invented disaster an unnerving foothold in reality. The format is one of the best parts of the film. Meaning appears only when somebody places the mayor's assurances beside the hospital audio and the scientist's final dive. Horror lives in the delay between evidence and action. It was reportedly shot on an 18-day schedule using more than 20 kinds of cameras and phones.

12:51 That variety makes a huge difference because every picture seems to belong to somebody trying to do something to document a problem or reach help. Together, those ordinary reasons to press record become a record of extraordinary failure that makes the horror all that much more real. This is a film I've been raving about for years. I think you should really check it out, especially if you enjoy a good found footage movie, but it will make you sincerely very scared. It's available to stream free with ads on Tubi, or you can rent or buy it through Amazon Video, Fandango at Home, and Apple TV. Now let's light a black candle for some horror-related birthdays, starting on November 4th, 1969, when Matthew McConaughey was born. From the unhinged Vilmer in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Next Generation to the cosmic dread of True Detective's first season, McConaughey's long and lustrous career has always had a major pit stop in horror, even if it might be the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Next Generation. A very happy birthday, Matthew McConaughey. Born on November 5th, 1960, is Tilda Swinton, Suspiria, Only Lovers Left Alive, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, an extraordinary range of unsettling films in an incredible oeuvre, one of the

14:25 most incredible in all of actordom. I think that's a phrase. Well, it is now. So a very happy birthday, Tilda Swinton. Born on November 6th, 1970, Ethan Hawke. He made home movies Unbearable, In Sinister, and played The Grabber in The Black Phone and its sequel. Ethan Hawke, another great actor who's had an incredible sojourn through horror. So a very happy birthday, Ethan Hawke. And finally, born on November 6th, 1988, is Emma Stone. From Zombieland's blood-splattered comedy to the gothic reinvention of poor things, she makes strange worlds feel inhabited, and she really does make you believe whatever is happening around her, no matter how funny or scary it might be.

15:18 And I really recommend watching her in Bulgogna. That movie really messed me up. A very happy birthday, Emma Stone, and to all of our horror birthdays here tonight. Let's get out a slice of creepy cake and celebrate. This week for our Then and Now, horror asks, who controls the official version? In 1990, institutions make Jacob Singer's files and his certainty disappear. In 1994, Victor Frankenstein calls creation a triumph until his creation demands an account. In 1997, the Federation edits Slaughter into Recruitment. In 2003, Siren breaks Catastrophe into viewpoints only the player can assemble. And in 2012, The Bay turns discarded recordings into a case against everyone who called the water safe. Different screens, same warning. When authority gives you a clean story, make sure you look for what it left out. And for this week's recommendation, dim the room and enter a gallery where every painting is a door somebody should have left closed. On November 8th, 1969, NBC airs Night Gallery as a made-for-television movie. Rod Serling writes and hosts three stories, introducing each one beside a

16:52 macabre work of art that seems to remember more than the people standing in front of it. The Cemetery gives Roddy McDowell a painting that may be changing. Eyes casts Joan Crawford as a wealthy blind woman who buys an operation promising 12 hours of sight. The segment was directed by a young Steven Spielberg, The escape route follows a Nazi war criminal trying to vanish into a painting in a museum. The pilot already has the series' identity locked down, Serling's moral judgment in a darker room, stories leaning into the supernatural, and an artwork left behind to haunt the viewer.

17:35 Watch the pilot as one complete viewing. Its paintings connect three different kinds of dread together and Serling's introductions give every story the feeling of an exhibit you really should have walked past. If you're a lifelong lover of the Twilight Zone like I am, Night Gallery really deserves your attention, and this would be... the natural starting point. Now, unfortunately, there is no U.S. streaming option available legally for the pilot movie, but Kino Lorber's Season 1 Blu-ray does include it. And of course, you can hunt down the series. You can buy or rent on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, anywhere really that you rent or buy your digital media and kind of cobble it together for yourself.

18:22 But this one, I would not recommend you sleep on, especially if you are As I mentioned, a lifelong lover of the do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do like I am. Well, my spookies, that was your trip through November 2nd to November 8th in horror history. And also, we have now begun our second year of this week in horror history. So thank you so much for joining me. I hope you're enjoying these as much as I am. They're educational, fun, and nostalgic. All rolled into one. Tomorrow, Wednesday, don't forget we have a brand new horror story right here on Weekly Spooky. So make sure you're subscribed on your favorite podcast app.

19:04 We also have a terrifying compilation of true crime and folklore on Friday for you to sink your teeth into and a little something special on Saturday. So really make sure you're subscribed. And of course, I'll be right back here next week with another dive into. So until then, I've been your host, Enrique Couto. And remember, our days are numbered because that's how we tell them apart. See you next week.