Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4647 )

• Low Stakes

  

  Elsewhere on this website I refer to myself as an “unfluencer.” This quasi-serious attempt at humor does bear a kernel of truth. It’s difficult to get your voic... Read more

  Posted on 09 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Black History

  

  The first of the “blaxploitation” movies, Blacula is a period piece. In 1972 vampires were still all the rage, following from Dark Shadows and the continuing... Read more

  Posted on 08 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bibliographer for Hire

  

  Why is bibliographer not a job?  Why can’t a person make a living categorizing knowledge?  I ask this because I see YouTube videos of people saying your job... Read more

  Posted on 07 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Red Dress

  

  Horror sometimes takes a creative turn. In Fabric is an art film as well as a horror offering. The basic premise is that a certain red dress, sold at a bizarre... Read more

  Posted on 06 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Major Drum

  

  We don’t get out much.  Live shows can be expensive and these cold nights don’t exactly encourage going out after dark.  Living near a university, even if you... Read more

  Posted on 05 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Grown-up Jane

  

  Watching Stephen King’s list of scary movies in the 30 years prior to 1980, I’ve found one or two that hardly strike me as horror. Some of the others remain... Read more

  Posted on 04 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Poking Around

  

  I’ll always prefer indies but ever since James Daunt took over Barnes & Noble it’s become a much better place.  I unfortunately didn’t get to any of Daunt’s... Read more

  Posted on 03 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Like Father

  

  There’s just something about old movies. After Universal discovered that Depression-Era people would still pay to see scary movies, they made a kind of... Read more

  Posted on 02 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Not Afraid

  

  It’s something many of us do. Trying to explain why, while religious, spiritual, and moral, we find horror fascinating. I read Brandon Grafius’ Lurking under th... Read more

  Posted on 01 February 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Not Friendly

  

  A ghost-revenge story, online. Unfriended is one of those low-budget horror films that manages to be remarkably effective through the acting and its overall... Read more

  Posted on 31 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Trouble on Campus

  

  I know what it’s like to have a story living within you. Academics writing novels don’t always qualify as Dark Academia, but Kathleen Kelley Reardon’s Shadow... Read more

  Posted on 30 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Finding the Source

  

  I need to know the origins of things.  Call it a sickness if you will, but I’m compelled to trace things to their source.  This is why I went on to earn a... Read more

  Posted on 29 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Slimy Monsters

  

  Stuart Gordon apparently had in mind to do an H. P. Lovecraft cycle, as Roger Corman did with Poe. I first saw Dagon—clearly his best—and some time later... Read more

  Posted on 28 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• CSI: Backyard Edition

  

  Dateline: January 24. Location: Backyard. It was clearly a crime scene. There were prints in the snow. Blood. Signs of a struggle. The marks hadn’t been there... Read more

  Posted on 27 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Non-Believer

  

  Heretic may be the ultimate horror and religion movie. It’s also a film you may need to see multiple times to follow the all-important dialogue. It’s a movie... Read more

  Posted on 26 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Book Stages

  

  Books appear in stages.  All publishers are different.  These platitudes encapsulate my experience in finding a venue for my ideas.  Sleepy Hollow as American... Read more

  Posted on 25 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Dusk’s Early Dark

  

  It may be the strangest vampire movie ever, and that’s saying something. To understand this, you have to realize that I read as little as possible about a... Read more

  Posted on 24 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Worse Seed

  

  Not too long ago I watched The Bad Seed. In the 1950s it probably wasn’t considered horror, but it is quite a scary movie. I’d classify it as horror—not all... Read more

  Posted on 23 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Old Movies

  

  Something strange is happening.  (“How’s that new?” you might well ask.)  There seems to be a bifurcation taking place in my brain, what techies might call... Read more

  Posted on 22 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Light Shadows

  

  I often do things backwards. It’s not really intensional. You see, I’m busy with my day job and something most people may not realize is that researching and... Read more

  Posted on 21 January 2025 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY