JoAnn Hess, film writer and producer, joins Fright Club to be peppered with questions about how to get a film made!
Category Archives: Fright Club
A celebration of horror movies with updates on our monthly Fright Club film series at the Gateway Film Center.
Fright Club: Best Non-Chainsaw Texas Horror
Because we already know what would be #1 if we didn’t limit it, and the thing is, it’s insane how many great horror films are based in Texas. Texas is like our very own Australia! So, here are our five favorites that do not include that one we always talk about.
5. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
Who wants to see Bruce Campbell play Elvis Presley?! We do.
Director Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) brings Joe R. Lansdale’s short story to the screen to depict the horror and sadness of aging, although its done with such humor that the film is impossible not to love.
Elvis never died, he swapped places with an impersonator who died and ever since then he’s been stuck living someone else’s life. And now he’s been stuck in this low-rent old folks home where his only real friend is a guy who believes he’s JFK (Ossie Davis). Obviously, when they realize that the recent spate of patient deaths is due to a mummy sucking the life from people through their assholes, who’d believe these knuckleheads?
The script is great and Coscarelli knows exactly how to make the most of budgetary limitations. The entire cast soars, but Campbell and Davis have such incredible chemistry that the film delivers not just laughs, message, and some scares but genuine tenderness.
4. Frailty (2001)
Director Bill Paxton stars as a widowed, country dad awakened one night by an angel – or a bright light shining off the angel on top of a trophy on his ramshackle bedroom bookcase. Whichever – he understands now that he and his sons have been called by God to kill demons.
Flash forward and we’re led through the saga of the serial killer God’s Hand by a troubled young man (Matthew McConaughey), who, with eerie quiet and reflection, recounts his childhood with Paxton’s character as a father.
Dread mounts as Paxton drags out the ambiguity of whether this man is insane, and his therefore good hearted but wrong-headed behavior profoundly damaging his boys, or is he really chosen, and his sons likewise marked by God? The film upends everything – repeatedly – until it’s as if it’s challenged your expectations, biases, and your own childhood to boot.
Paxton crafts a morbidly compelling tale free from irony, sarcasm, or judgment and full of darkly sympathetic characters. It’s a surprisingly strong feature directorial debut from a guy who once played a giant talking turd.
3. The Dark and the Wicked (2020)
Bryan Bertino is not a filmmaker to let his audience off the hook—if you’ve seen The Strangers, you know that. Like that effort, TD&TW is a slow burn with nerves fraying inside an isolated farmhouse as noises, shadows, and menacing figures lurk outside.
Bertino and cinematographer Tom Schraeder work the darkness in and around a goat farm to create a lingering, roaming dread. But where Bertino, who also writes, scores extra points is in crafting believable characters.
Too often in horror you find wildly dramatic behavior in the face of the supernatural. One character adamantly denies and defies what is clearly happening while another desperately tries to communicate with “it.” No one would do either, but this is the best way to serve the needed action to come in lesser films.
2. Pearl (2022)
Mia Goth has been impressive in every film she’s graced. But nothing prepared us for Pearl.
With her first writing credit and her first no-question-about-it lead performance, Goth delivers an unerring combination of innocence and psychosis that is as captivating as it is terrifying.
The writing is sly and the direction a magically macabre take on classic American cinema, like the most wrong-headed Judy Garland movie you can imagine. But it comes together seamlessly to deliver a concoction spellbinding concoction.
Goth’s 8-minute monologue and that truly insane frozen smile over the end credits will stay with you forever.
1. X (2022)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre meets Boogie Nights?
Yes, please!
Filmmaker Ti West delivers an utterly unexpected and absolutely inspired horror show like nothing he’s made before. A group of good-natured pornographers descends upon an out-of-the-way ranch to shoot a movie, unbeknownst to the owners. Mia Goth leads a thoroughly entertaining cast, each actor making the most of the humor crackling throughout West’s script.
West explores some common themes, upending every one without ever betraying his clear love of this genre. Blending homages of plenty of Tobe Hooper films with a remarkable aesthetic instinct, West fills the screen with ghastly beauty.
Fright Club Bonus: Author/Publisher Billy Graves
Thrilled to get a peek behind the indie publishing curtain with Lacandon Jungle Press founder and author of Seams of the Infinite, Billy Graves! We talk publishing, indie horror, and George lets us in on recording an audio book!
ljpbooks.com
lacandonjunglepress@gmail.com
Fright Club: Interview with The Withering Actor Gareth Tidball
Gareth Tidball wowed the two of us a few years back taking on the role of Stephanie in our film Obstacle Corpse. Since then, she’s gone on to star in about a dozen feature films, and even shared a scene with Tom Hardy in Havoc. In this bonus Fright Club, we’re delighted to check in with Gareth about her latest feature, The Withering.
Fright Club: Temptation in Horror Movies
Temptation is a big, big topic in horror. All sin begins with temptation and all horror begins with sin. But we narrowed down the list of our favorites so we didn’t focus exclusively on one kind of temptation. Which means we had to leave LOADS of movies out, including Nosferatu, The Lure, and Def by Temptation. But hopefully we made up for it with variety!
5. The Untamed (2016)
Sexual frustration leads to a lot of bad choices, but sexual satisfaction may be the real monster in Amat Escalante’s wild scifi/horror flick.
Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is one of the sexually frustrated. Veronica (Simone Bucio) is not. Angel (Jesus Meza) is making bad choices. But there was this meteor, and it landed out by this isolated farm. What if the answer to all their problems is there?
Taking direct inspiration from Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession, Escalante reframes the taboo-defying frenzy of unbridled sexuality. Where Zulawski’s surreal, antiseptic environment suggested absurdism, Escalante grounds the fantasy in profoundly ordinary and relatable human drama. The result is horrifying.
4. Jennifer’s Body (2009)
The central premise in this succubus horror: Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them. Better still, lure them to an isolated area and eat them, leaving their carcasses for the crows. This is the surprisingly catchy idea behind this coal-black horror comedy.
In for another surprise? Megan Fox’s performance is spot-on as the high school hottie turned demon. Director Karyn Kusama’s film showcases the actress’s most famous assets, but also mines for comic timing and talent other directors apparently overlooked.
Amanda Seyfried’s performance as the best friend, replete with homely girl glasses and Jan Brady hairstyle, balances Fox’s smolder, and both performers animate Diablo Cody’s screenplay with authority. They take the Snaps conceit and expand it – adolescence sucks for all girls, not just the outcasts.
3. The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Who tempted us first? It was that clever snake. And who better to turn Bram Stoker’s abysmal novel The Lair of the White Worm into a blasphemous, hedonistic blast than Ken Russell?
Hugh Grant’s unibrow! Amanda Donohoe’s serpentine strap on! Peter Capaldi’s impenetrable accent! It’s all here, with as much subtlety as you might expect from Russell. Campy fun from the opening credits (that font!), this one’s a hoot!
2. The Devil’s Advocate (1997)
Al Pacino is subtle as ever as the devil himself, here to tempt Keanu Reeves with power. Though carnal temptation does make a number of visits, it’s greed and ambition that drive this film.
Is this Taylor Hackford vehicle a campy act of excess? It is! Gloriously, absolutely ridiculously so! The acting is over-the-top, though Reeves is characteristically cardboard. But both Charlize Theron and Connie Nielsen are exceptional and the wretched excess is a kind of joy.
1. Raw (2016)
In a very obvious way, Raw is a metaphor for what can and often does happen to a sheltered girl when she leaves home for college. But as writer/director Julia Ducournau looks at those temptations and the excesses committed on the cusp of adulthood, she creates opportunities to explore and comment on so many upsetting realities, and does so with absolute fidelity to her core metaphor. She immediately joins the ranks of Jennifer Kent (Babadook) and Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) – all recent, first time horror filmmakers whose premier features predict boundless talent.
Fright Club: Parenting Disasters in Horror
There are loads of bad parents in horror. Jack Torrence is no doll. Margaret White’s a bit much. In bad parent horror, we empathize with the offspring. But there’s something perhaps more unsettling when you empathize with the parents who are genuinely trying but something—sometimes just one bad decision—ends in unspeakable disaster. It’s those dumbasses that we salute today!
And thanks again to FeedSpot for including us on their latest list of Best Horror Podcasts! FeedSpot is an RSS Reader that lets you follow your favorite podcasts alongside blogs and news in one place. https://podcast.feedspot.com/midwest_horror_podcasts/
5. Splice (2009)
This creature feature Frankenstein mad science mash up goes places you may not expect. Director Vincenzo Natali (Cube) investigates science as commerce, the maternal instinct or lack thereof, sexual politics, nature and nurture and more in this body horror.
The wtf! of it all works because of the undeniable talent of its leads, Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody. What they’re doing in this is hard to know, but they elevate a B-horror script to something weirdly compelling. Polley’s big eyed, emotionless performance offers a fascinating conundrum that makes every wild turn make sense. Sort of.
4. Antichrist (2009)
Lars von Trier’s foray into horror follows a couple down a deep and dark rabbit hole of grief. Von Trier’s films have often fixated on punishing viewers and female protagonists alike, but in this film the nameless woman (played fearlessly by Charlotte Gainsbourg) wields most of the punishment – whether upon her mate (Willem Dafoe) or herself.
Consumed by grief, a mother allows her husband—also grieving—to become her psychotherapist as they retreat to their isolated cabin deep in the woods where they will try to overcome the horror of losing their only child.
They won’t succeed.
3. Speak No Evil (2022)
Christian Tafdrup’s Speak No Evil, a terribly polite tale of Danes and Dutchmen that veers slowly but relentlessly toward something sinister. Speak No Evil quickly becomes a sociological experiment that questions our tendency to act against our own instincts, side with the cool kids, and lose who we are.
Tafdrup’s script, co-written with Mads Tafdrup, is sneaky in the way it treads on social anxiety, etiquette, politeness. You see how easily gaslighting alters the trajectory of a conversation, the course of action. Speak No Evil is a grim trip, but there is no question that it’s well made.
2. Mother! (2017)
Between writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s disorienting camera and his cast’s impeccable performances, he ratchets up tension in a way that is beyond uncomfortable. This is all clearly leading somewhere very wrong and the film develops the atmosphere of a nightmare quickly, descending further and further with each scene.
Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer are indescribably brilliant. Like most of the filmmaker’s work, mother! will not be for everyone. But if you’re up for an allegorical descent into hell, meticulously crafted and deftly told, and if you like your metaphors heavy and your climaxes absurd, this mother! is for you.
1. Coffee Table (2022)
On Shudder, Prime, Tubi, AMC+
A remarkably well written script fleshed out by a stunning ensemble becomes utter torture as you want so badly for some other outcome. Co-writer/director Caye Casas ties threads, builds anxiety, plunges the depths of “what’s the worst that could happen?” and leaves you shaken.
David Pareja and Estefania de los Santos craft indelible, believable, beautifully flawed characters so convincing that their experience becomes painful for you. Casas salts the wounds with dark comedy, but the tenderness and tragedy collaborate toward something far more crushingly human.
Fright Club: Curiosity Shop Horror
Doesn’t matter if it’s an antique store, new age beads and crystals shop, magic store or plain out curiosity shop, if it ain’t S-Mart, don’t trust its wares. We dive into our favorite shopping mishaps and wishes gone wrong!
5. Needful Things (1993)
Satan is from Ohio. That’s one of the drollest, funniest lines in Fraser C. Heston’s Stephen King adaptation. Max von Sydow is Leland Gaunt, and like many a ghoul before him, Gaunt has moved into a fictional King town (Castle Rock, the most famous this time) to open a little shop. Antiques. Curiosities. Cheap, but each purchase requires a little favor and exacts a specific cost.
What King does with W. W. Jacobs’s infamous Monkey’s Paw concept is proliferate. There’s no wish, but there is a trick, and soon everybody has an item, pulls a trick, and the town descends into chaos. It’s the Salem’s Lot effect, except with malicious mischief instead of vampirism. The film is cheeky fun elevated immeasurably by an amazing cast. Ed Harris, Amanda Plummer, Bonnie Bedelia, and J.T. Walsh join von Sydow in a slight but fun effort.
4. Gremlins (1984)
Joe Dante’s picture book madness toes the line between gorgeous, family-friendly Christmas film and bloodthirsty creature feature mayhem. Gremlins follows a sweet hearted fuckup of a dad (Hoyt Axton), who buys a cuddly little pet for his grown son who still lives at home (Zach Galligan). Tiny Kingston Falls, PA will never be the same.
Gremlins is iconic. The soundstage beauty of the town, the snow, the little downtown and the sitcom staging of the family home carnage are so specific and so perfect. Dante mixes and matches every type of family comfort media with a shockingly high body count, and the mom (Frances Lee McCain) is a total badass. Plus, the story about the dead dad in the chimney? Brutal! Nobody blends horror and cinematic nostalgia better than Joe Dante.
3. Oddity (2024)
Carolyn Bracken is Darcy, twin sister of the recently slain Dani (also Bracken). Darcy is a little touched—she still runs the curiosity/antique shop her mother left her and still holds on to the giant wooden man a witch gave her parents for their wedding. Darcy is also blind, so when she arrives at her brother-in-law’s home—the very spot where Dani came to her bloody end—Ted (Gwilym Lee) and his new live-in girlfriend (Caroline Menton) don’t know how to politely ask her to leave. And to take her giant wooden friend with her.
Writer/director Damian McCarthy hands this tapestry of folklore and soap opera to a nimble cast and a gifted cinematographer. Together this team casts a spell too fun to break.
2. Obsession (2026)
Obsession is a film about consent.
Filmmaker Curry Barker writes the “deadly wish” fable as well. Sad by Bear (Michael Johnston) can’t bring himself to confess his feelings for coworker Nikki (Inde Navarrette). He’s so desperate after one cringy missed chance that he breaks open a One Wish Willow he’d purchased as a joke and—without reading any of the warnings printed all over the box—wishes that she would love him more than anyone else on earth.
And she does.
The themes Barker mines are incredibly of-the-moment. Bear wants what he wants, but he wants it to be true. It isn’t, but that’s not good enough. Make it be true. But you can’t make something be true if it isn’t true, no matter how sad the boy is who wants it. Male entitlement masquerading as loneliness leads to violently self-centered behavior. Barker’s story, however jump-scary or genre friendly it becomes, never forgets this central, relevant concept.
1. The Monkey (2025)
Why is it that so many kids’ toys are creepy? Not that you should call The Monkey a toy. You should not, ever. Because this windup organ grinder monkey, with its red eyes and horrifyingly realistic teeth, is more of a furry, murder happy nightmare.
The film itself is a match made in horror heaven. Osgood Perkins (Longlegs, Gretel & Hansel, The Blackcoat’s Daughter) adapts and directs the short story by Stephen King about sibling rivalry and the unpredictability of death.
Perkins surrounds deliberately low energy leads with bizarre, colorful characters—even more colorful when they catch fire, explode, are disemboweled, etcetera. The film is laced with wonderful bursts of Final Destination-like bloodletting, as the Monkey’s executions are carried out via Rube Goldberg chain reactions that quickly become fun to anticipate.
Yes, fun. And funny.
Fright Club: Budding Physicians
I don’t think these people are board certified! Really, a lot of harm can be done by medical hobbyists. Whether you’re still studying, gave up studying, or just really like sewing stuff together, that doesn’t make you a doctor.
Here are our five favorite horror movies where the one doing the surgery is almost certainly not licensed.
5. Tusk (2014)
The basic idea for this film came from one of writer/director Kevin Smith’s actual podcasts. He found online a letter from a man seeking a lodger, and read it aloud and mocked the man. But somewhere in all that, Smith found the story of a man losing his humanity.
Tusk is a comic riff on The Human Centipede. It’s also an insightful kind of stress dream, so close to home for Smith that, even with all its utter ludicrousness, it feels almost confessional.
The film’s greatest strength is a hypnotic performance by Michael Parks as the old seafarer with nefarious motives. He’s magnificent, and co-star Justin Long’s work is strongest when the two share the screen.
There is no film quite like Tusk, certainly not in Smith’s arsenal, which, I suppose, means this is not a traditional Kevin Smith Movie. And yet, there’s more Smith in this film than in anything else he’s made.
4. Re-animator (1985)
Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator reinvigorated the Frankenstein storyline in a decade glutted with vampire films. Based, as so many fantasy/horror films are, on the work of H. P. Lovecraft, Re-Animator boasts a good mix of comedy and horror, some highly subversive ideas, and one really outstanding villain.
Jeffrey Combs, with his intense gaze and pout, his ability to mix comic timing with epic self righteousness without turning to caricature, carries the film beginning to end. His Dr. Herbert West has developed a day-glo serum that reanimates dead tissue, but a minor foul up with his experimentations – some might call it murder – sees him taking his studies to the New England medical school Miskatonic University. There he rents a room and basement laboratory from handsome med student Dan Caine (Bruce Abbott).
They’re not just evil scientists. They’re also really bad doctors.
Re-Animator is fresh. It’s funny and shocking, and though most performances are flat at best, those that are strong more than make up for it. First-time director Gordon’s effort is superb. He glories in the macabre fun of his scenes, pushing envelopes and dumping gallons of blood and gore. He balances anxiety with comedy, mines scenes for all they have to give, and takes you places you haven’t been.
3. American Mary (2012)
Jen and Sylvia Soska have written and directed a smart, twisted tale of cosmetic surgery – both elective and involuntary.
Katharine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) stars as med student Mary Mason, a bright and eerily dedicated future surgeon who’s having some trouble paying the bills. She falls in with an unusual crowd, develops some skills, and becomes a person you don’t want to piss off.
The Soskas’ screenplay is as savvy as they come, clean and unpretentious but informed by gender politics and changing paradigms. They also prove skilled at drawing strong performances across the board. Isabelle is masterful, performing without judgment and creating a multi-dimensional central figure. Antonio Cupo also impresses as the unexpectedly layered yet certainly creepy strip club owner.
Were it not for all those amputations and mutilations, this wouldn’t be a horror film at all. It’s a bit like a noir turned inside out, where we share the point of view of the raven-haired dame who’s nothin’ but trouble. It’s a unique and refreshing approach that pays off.
2. Excision (2012)
Outcast Pauline (a very committed AnnaLynne McCord) is a budding surgeon. She’s not much of a student, actually, but she does have an affinity for anatomy. Especially blood. Pauline really, really likes blood.
Her sister – the favorite, for good reasons, truth be told – is slowly dying. And somewhere in Pauline’s odyssey to lose her virginity, inspire her mother’s love and do the right thing, she always seems to do the wrongest possible thing.
Writer/director Richard Bates, Jr. takes an unusual course with this coming-of-age horror. I’m not sure we’ve seen it handled quite like this before, although to be fair, it’s definitely in keeping with the peculiar and beautifully realized character he and McCord have created.
1. Eyes of My Mother (2016)
Francisca’s mother had been an eye surgeon back in Portugal.
“We used to do dissections together. She always hoped I’d be a surgeon one day.”
Though Mom appears only in Act 1 of writer/director Nicolas Pesce’s modern horror masterpiece Eyes of My Mother, her presence echoes throughout the lonely farmhouse Francesca rarely leaves.
Yes, the skills her mother imparted coupled with the trauma Francesca faced bleeds together to create a character whose splintered psyche keeps her from seeing that she’s taking some extreme measures to cure her lonliness.
This is one of the most beautifully filmed horror movies ever made, and as impeccable as the cinematography, the sound is even more important and magnificent. Together with restrained performances and jarring images, Eyes of My Mother is a film that sticks around even after it’s gone. Like a mom.
Fright Club: Interview with Dream Story Director Florian Frerichs
Bonus episode! We sit down with filmmaker Florian Frerichs, joining us from one of Germany’s most legendary film studios! We discuss his latest feature, Dream Story, as well as his other films and his novel, They Will Claim that I Was Dead.
Fright Club: Teenage Vampires in Horror Movies
Those teenage years can be beastly! A lot of vampire movies channel the alienation, hormones, angst and general misbehavior into a cautionary tale about teeth. Here are some of our favorites.
5. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
Back in ’92, Rutger Hauer and Paul Reubens played vampires (thank you!) bent on draining a California town. But one superficial mean girl at the local high school happens to be the Chosen One, the Slayer, or so says Donald Sutherland, and it generally seems like a fine idea to listen to him. Kristy Swanson then flirts with Luke Perry while training to stake some bloodsuckers.
Swanson is joined by Ben Affleck and Hilary Swank as vacuous teens in a highly dated but no less fun horror comedy. Reubens was a huge inspiration for our own short film Drunkula. Plus, anytime you crown Rutger Hauer prom king, you can count us in.
4. The Lost Boys (1987)
Out and proud Hollywood director Joel Schumacher spins a yarn of Santa Carla, a town with a perpetual coastal carnival and the nation’s highest murder rate. A roving band of cycle-riding vampires haunts the carnival and accounts for the carnage, until Diane Weist moves her family to town. While hottie Michael (Jason Patric) is being seduced into the demon brethren, younger brother Sam (Corey Haim) teams up with local goofballs the Frog brothers (Corey Feldman and Jamison Newlander) to stake all bloodsuckers.
Michael’s a recent high school grad, and the coven of vampires seems to also be allegedly the same roundabout age. Certainly Sam and the Frog Brothers would be high school age, although none of them turn. (Spoiler!)
What’s most fun about this movie is how gloriously gay it is, from the “will he or won’t he” chemistry between Michael and David to Sam’s Rob Lowe poster to the grinding sax man, Schumacher’s film finds sexuality in the vampire tale that swings.
3. Fright Night (1985)
Fright Night takes that Eighties, Goonies-style adventure (kids on an adult-free quest of life and death) and uses the conceit to create something tense and scary, and a bit giddy as well. The feature debut as both writer and director for Tom Holland, the film has some sly fun with the vampire legend.
Roddy McDowall got much deserved love at the time for his turn as a washed-up actor from horror’s nostalgic past, and Chris Sarandon put his rich baritone to campy, sinister use.
Still, everyone’s favorite character was Evil Ed, the manic, pitiful loser turned bloodsucking minion. Credit Stephen Geoffreys for an electric and, at least in one scene, heartbreaking performance.
2. My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020)
Making an unnervingly assured feature film debut, writer/director Jonathan Cuartas commingles The Transfiguration’s image of lonely, awkward adolescence with Relic’s horror of familial obligation to create a heartbreaking new vampire tale.
Many things are left unsaid (including the word “vampire’), and My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To confines itself to the daily drudgery of three siblings. Dwight (Patrick Fugit) longs to break these family chains, but sister Jessie (Ingrid Sophie Schram) holds him tight with shame, love, and obligation to little brother, the afflicted Thomas (Owen Campbell).
What could easily have become its own figurative image of the masculine longing for freedom mines far deeper concerns. Cuartas weaves loneliness into that freedom, tainting the concept of independence with a terrifying, even dangerous isolation that leaves you with no one to talk to and no way to get away from yourself.
1. The Transfiguration (2016)
Milo likes vampire movies.
So, it would seem, does writer/director Michael O’Shea, whose confident feature debut shows us the relationship between the folklore and the life of a forlorn high school outcast.
Eric Ruffin plays Milo, a friendless teen who believes he is a vampire. What he is really is a lonely child who finds solace in the romantic idea of this cursed, lone predator. But he’s committed to his misguided belief.
O’Shea’s film borrows ideas from George Romero’s Martin, Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In, and openly gushes over Murnau’s Nosferatu. Inside and out, the film draws on the best in vampire cinema to help Milo deal with a world in which he is a freak no matter what he decides to do.
