Squaring the Circle: An American Becomes One of the ‘Children of the Stones’

By Michael Grasso

I’m not likely to add much to the thousands upon thousands of words penned over the past decade or so on how formative an experience watching Children of the Stones (1977) as a kid was. Now considered one of the signal works forming the foundation of the British folk horror and hauntological aesthetics, the series is a brilliant melding of folk memory and technological aspiration, of magic and science, of tradition and progress, done in that ineffable way that only the British seem able to express satisfactorily…

Tubular Terrors: ‘Bad Ronald’

By K.E. Roberts

During the 1970s, original, feature-length scares could be found on TV almost every night of the week. They were cheap to make and, after Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist, we were trembling and defenseless. The best known of these quickie horrors, many of which dealt enduring trauma to a generation of children often home alone…

Bob Peak Promotional Art for ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’, 1983

Although the extraordinary theatrical poster for Disney’s Something Wicked This Way Comes was illustrated by David Grove, Bob Peak painted these equally impressive pieces that, as far as I know, were never used. Peak, of course, was one of the finest commercial illustrators of the 20th century, and he virtually defined the visual concept of the modern film poster, starting with his colorful montage for 1961’s West Side Story…

“You Owe Me Awe”: Culture, Class, and the New South in Thomas Harris’s ‘Red Dragon’

By Michael Grasso

Thomas Harris’s sophomore novel Red Dragon (1981) introduced the world to iconic serial killer and cultured cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter, and arguably set the gold standard for all serial killer fiction to follow. But Harris’s novel is more than just a taut true crime thriller that first popularized the archetype of the serial killer profiler. It is also a methodical, deliberate exploration of the class anxieties…