Witney Seibold
Playing With Radiation: The 1951 “Atomic Energy Lab” — For Kids!
The years following World War II were a glorious time for many Americans — financially speaking, anyway. There was a great wave of prosperity for middle-class working people, and the notion of a consumption-based society was just taking root. The market flooded with new, high-tech products that could now be produced thanks to the end of […]
Witney Seibold
Remembering “The Snacktime Kid” — The Terrifying Doll That Eats Children’s Hair
The first “hot” Christmas toy I recall from my own distant childhood is probably the Cabbage Patch Kid. Cabbage Patch Kids were launched into the world in 1982, and have been a mainstay at toy shops ever since, having produced hundreds of variants over the decades. The gimmick behind the hard-headed, soft-bodied baby dolls was […]
Witney Seibold
The Weirdest Reasons Films Have Been Banned Around the World
Sorry to break it to you, dear reader, but all art is political. Historically, even the most innocuous forms of popular artistic design have, at one point or another, been the subject of suspicious government scrutiny. And while books and printed materials have been, on terms of volume, the central focus of most politically-backed censorship […]
Witney Seibold
The Unsettling Awesomeness of Katherine Dunn’s GEEK LOVE
Freak shows first began to come into the public eye as early as the 16th century, when people with unusual, deformed, or extreme body types would be displayed for royalty as objects of curiosity and medical intrigue. The tradition of the freak show continued to centuries, and they became a staple of traveling circuses, offering […]
Witney Seibold
Donors Wanted! Remembering That Cannibal Restaurant in Germany [NSFW]
Cannibalism is, to make light of it, perhaps the silliest of all taboos. There is something absurd about the thought of eating another person. At one moment, they are an intelligent and well-spoken peer, full of thoughts and emotions, and the next, they are mixed into your morning waffles. Does anyone else giggle at that […]
Witney Seibold
Why the Politics of AMERICAN PSYCHO Are Shockingly Relevant Today
Since I choose to actively eschew the word “controversial,” I elect to describe famed 52-year-old novelist Bret Easton Ellis as “confrontational.” Ellis is a direct author who aims to shake readers from their societal complacency by peeling back all the wet, fleshy layers of good decorum to reveal the blackened, hedonistic, selfish heart of a […]
Witney Seibold
How Dante’s INFERNO Shaped the Modern Image of Hell
A recent article encountered in the Washington Post, studying adult reading habits from 1982 to 2015, found that there has been a steady decline of literative reading in the United States. That’s not to say that people aren’t reading, but it does say that American adults, when looking for a book to read, are less […]
Witney Seibold
The Devil’s Member: The Naughty Novelization of WARLOCK
It’s no longer cutting edge to remind you, dear readers, that Steve Miner’s 1989 horror film WARLOCK is an underrated classic. WARLOCK is mentioned so often by horror fans that it should just be considered a well-known horror tentpole by now; just like THE LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM, or the notion of “DIE HARD-as-a-Christmas-movie,” […]
Witney Seibold
Wes Craven and the Sins of the Parents
Any horror fan worth their weight in red-dyed Karo syrup knows the name of Wes Craven. The late horror master managed to change the face of horror three decades in a row. In 1972, he took the genre to a new, raw plane with a low-budget, exploitation-flavored remake of Ingmar Bergman’s THE VIRGIN SPRING called LAST HOUSE […]
Witney Seibold
When Jason Met Arsenio: The Weirdest Talk-Show Interview Ever
From 1989 until 1994, accomplished actor & comedian Arsenio Hall hosted his own late-night talk show, which gave the ailing late-night TV scene a much-needed shot in the arm. A younger, sprier, more energetic host whose show was hipper, more devoted to music, and — most importantly — reached a younger audience, Hall was able to […]
Witney Seibold
The Time a U.S. President Planned an Expedition to Meet the Mole People
Given the – I’ll say “controversial” – behavior of the recent president-elect, and the rage it has been inciting all across the internet, now might be the perfect time to reflect on the history of the nation’s highest office, with a special focus its bizarro tendency toward strange personal projects of those who inhabit it. […]
Witney Seibold
The Horrific Crimes of Bruce Pardo, “The Santa Claus Killer”
It’s like something straight out of the SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT franchise… only it’s real. In Covina, CA, in 2008, at 11:30 pm on Christmas Eve, a man named Bruce Pardo arrived at the home of his ex-in-laws dressed as Santa Claus. Under one arm, he held a large, giftwrapped package; in the other hand, […]
Witney Seibold
Five Weird But Real Religions You Can Join Right Now
I once heard it posited by an expert in comparative religion that there are just as many religions on this planet as there are individuals. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but it does illustrate the wide swath of paths to the Divine that humanity has taken over the centuries. Even if you look at […]
Witney Seibold
To Hell with Pre-Fab Halloween Costumes — Make Your Own, Dammit!
The venerable B.J. Colangelo, a regular contributor here at Blumhouse.com, recently authored a salient essay about the sorry state of Halloween costumes that are currently made available for women. In short, her argument was that men are allowed a great variety of Halloween costumes — from creepy to silly to strong to sexy — and […]
Witney Seibold
The Horrifying Crimes of Colombia’s Three Deadliest Serial Killers
The phrase “serial killer” is, historically, a relatively recent term. Although there have been serial killers throughout the ages (Jack the Ripper, active in 1888, is usually seen as the grandfather of all serial killers, although others handily predate him, some going back to ancient China), the actual codification of the phenomenon didn’t begin until […]
