From the inn to the page to the gibbet to the crypt to the woods to the backyard to the screen. "We have the sense that Irish horror is meant for the enclave. The small  group. Between neighbors. Kin. Tales are shared, which is rather  different than tales being broadcast. Irish horror cinema tends to maintain a similar insularity, while not barring any would-be audience member. A story unfolds in a corner of the pub, but we are welcome to  listen—or, in this case, watch."

Seeing may or may not make for believing. "It’s a lovely day, and there you are motoring with your lady on the way back to your laboratory, where you keep hunks of flesh alive, when you get into a nasty wreck that slices her head clean off. A decapitation, though, is actually much more favorable than a caving-in, considering what you do and where you were headed (yes!), so you scoop up your girlfriend’s gourd—being as she is still your girlfriend, because it’s not like anyone broke up with anyone here—and you resume your car ride  to the lab, where you bring her severed head back to life so that you may love some more."

The truth about the so-called most depressing film ever made. "Leo McCarey must have been a loving man, for having shown us so much coldness and cruelty, it’s as if he opens up the heart of the world itself, and it does us good to be reminded – because we need that  reminder when we can get it – that this oft-cold and cruel world has a heart and that being recognized for who you are is itself heartening."

Carnal horror-whimsy. "There’s virtually no negative space in any of these wide shots. An open castle door reveals another castle off in the distance, which causes us to wonder what the neighbors knew, or were they just caught up in their own fiefdom? An object as simple as a key comes as off distinctly priapic. When Blue Beard hands one to his blushing wife, he might as well be forking over a dildo for her to start working herself with posthaste."

The grand romantic sweep of "In My Life." "We pursue affection, but it’s crucial that we internally position ourselves to be able to let affection into our lives as well. Love isn’t merely the one-to-one relationship. There is love of place, love of the future one envisions, love of the experiences that a person has had. Love of who they are. Love of what they believe in trying to become. Love of art like 'In My Life.'”

From Best Classic Bands. "Cars were central to that first decade of rock and roll. You wowed your buddies and your girl with them. You loved your car, tinkered with your car, made loud noises with your car, lamented your car as if dealing with the loss of life when rainwater got under her hood. But what you didn’t do until 'Don’t Worry Baby' was realize how immature you’d been, and how you were holding yourself back, on account of your insecurity as it manifested itself in an example pertaining to your car. All of life is a challenge of growing up, regardless of our age. Here we have the first song—or at least the first song that played on American radio—to codify this inescapable truth."

From Bloodvine. "There’s an extended flashback scene, which is a gem of a film within a film. As with the sepia portion of The Wizard of Oz, the sequence looks as if a different creative team had done the design and shooting; and while this encased work isn’t a found film, it does presage the found film subgenre, except it is memory that declares, 'Action' and sets the cameras rolling."

Open up your heart (or have it be opened for you) to the likes of Le Corbeau, Let the Right One In, Spanish Dracula, and King Kong. "Horror fans are sharers. They love a movie, and they wish to help  someone else experience it as well. They share the love. Their love.  And, when you get down to it, is there a better thing that any of us can  do in this world?"

Stop blaming the refs. "We are a people for whom moaning—and citing victim status, including at the level of our sports fandom—is the norm. Nothing can happen because it simply happened or was the result of a bang-bang play or a basic human error."

Regarding the value of keeping things separate. "Compartmentalization stops us from numbering among our own enemies. We are less likely to cost ourselves from experiencing that which is useful and edifying, as well as people who can help us. But we need mental discipline, and we have to work at keeping our boxes separate. Don’t dump the contents of one into another."

On a heist-centered horror-thriller reimagining of A Christmas Carol. "Cushing evinces fear, and it wasn’t often that we saw him scared in the Hammer world, even if he was prying open a coffin to stake Dracula  through the heart. Turns out a frightened Cushing makes for a frightening Cushing."

January 1 and the important kind of time. "Don’t romanticize the first of the year. She’s going to break your heart, and likely with your help. If you are depending on her to help make you whole or to get to the gym or finally write your family-friendly book on how reading Tolstoy is fun, you’re going to contribute to the downfall of a relationship that never had a shot because you weren’t in it for the right reasons."

From Bloodvine. "There are stretches where you have no idea what you’re looking at, and as much as Silent Night, Bloody Night helped usher in the body-count festive carnage of Black Christmas, it bears a more apparent stylistic stamp on the likes of Skinamarink (2022). How low can the lo-fi go? The answer is pretty low. There’s hiss and hair all over this thing. You put the movie on in the background and it’s there with you, accompanying whatever you’re doing,  and every now and again, it provides a jolt."

On the finest episode of The Twilight Zone and how nostalgia will kill you. "I am only interested in anything insofar as it helps me move forward. With nostalgia comes a defeatist attitude. And vice versa. If nostalgia had a slogan, it would be 'The best has come and gone.' That’s not going to be good for you."

Let there be mirth. "Silent Night, Deadly Night features what has to be the most depressing holiday party in movie history: a five-person employee affair after the toy store closes that commences with the owner saying, “Time to get shit-faced!”—we’re not talking Fezziwig here—and gets worse (much worse) from there. But whether you’re the Grinch or Father Christmas himself, you are bound to adopt Billy’s one-word  catchphrase—'Naughty!'—as your own for the remainder of the holiday season anytime someone annoys you."

On a wondrous bauble. "For with the bauble, there is wonder. The bauble is different from that which we put atop the Christmas list, be it literal or figurative, all in caps, because that’s what we think we want the most. But the things we like best are often the things that find us, or that we discover because we are open, which is itself a great gift."

Festive slicing and dicing in Bloodvine. "Any time the phone rings in Black Christmas—and with each  subsequent ringing (and we’re not talking the bells on Christmas day)—we  feel dread. This is a coarse film of paradoxical solemnity. The Christmas spirit is in consistent evidence (everything is suitably decked out, lights twinkle, trees are trimmed), but it’s as if we’re witnessing it from some remove rather than drinking directly from its  wassail bowl."

In Bloodvine. "The film represents Browning at his most sensitive. Horror films of this  vintage can have a certain arthritic creak to them, but The Devil-Doll is a spry offering. You want everyone to come out okay in the end. That  they will is the longest of long shots in a horror movie, but the  batting average is pretty high here, considering."

Exploring what the beloved Christmas special was also about. "If you’re going to create a Christmas-centric work that lasts, it has to be about more than Christmas, which is really what makes Christmas Christmas. Linus Van Pelt understood as much. So too did Ebenezer Scrooge, after he’d been visited by enough ghosts. And the same may be said about Rudolph and Hermey, the would-be outsiders who instead fostered community while still being true to their highly individualistic selves."

In Best Classic Bands. "Wild Honey is the band’s record—a kind of life’s soundtrack—for late autumn, when there’s still sunshine to be encountered amidst the fading color of the glade and the season’s final bees take a last turn or two outside the hive. It’s an album of dappled hues and the taking of various forms of stock—personal, professional, familial, fraternal. Musical, too."

Confessions of a former Nick Drake fraud and a consideration of an oft-misunderstood album. "And what I heard was the most uplifting music of my life. Music that was filled with life. A deathless spirit. Deathless beauty. Deathless vision. An unwavering life-force, despite—or perhaps because of—what its creator knew about life. I thought, 'This is a celebration, not a dirge. Like a miracle of humanness.'”

On 1960's The House in Marsh Road in Bloodvine. "This is a get-down-to-business ghost, but this is a get-down-to-business film, a rare example of kitchen-sink realism crossing with the supernatural. The ghost is very real, as is the depiction of alcoholism, infidelity, and what it means to be trapped in a marriage in different manners for different people."

From Bloodvine. “We’re not here for the plot, though, so much as we are for a horror hangout. You like to spend time with Revenge of the Creature as though it were some friend who was passionate about the same things you were. There are no delusions of artistic eminence, but nor is there that style of franchise-milking we’re so accustomed to with sequels.”

On 1964's The Gorgon. "This is one of those movies that makes you think you should put on a jacket or vest—though not your winter coat—while watching. The sun hangs low in the sky, like it barely clears the treetops. Time is compacting, slowing down—the same as the life within the gorgon’s victims. It’s a cinematic nocturne for autumn and one of the few films in which you can actually hear the scrape from the edges of wind-scuttled leaves on the ground."

On the 1948 Warner Bros. adaptation of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. "Collins and his pal Charles Dickens were adroit at conveying 'real life' via a ghost story and ghost stories via real life. The ghosts didn’t even need to be spectrally legitimate, and a ghost might be a lot of things—the haunting specter of one’s past, for instance. The novel also offered opportunities to filmmakers as a sort of choose-your-own-adventure property: if you wanted to dial in on the mystery, you could make a killer adaptation. If you preferred to push the ghost story to the fore, a terror classic was potentially in the offing."