Monster Scholar

I picked this book up on a whim at my local book store and was glad I did. This anthology of female vampire tales combines old classics like Carmilla and Clarimonde with more contemporary tales by Stephen King and Richard Matheson. Here's a run down of some of my favorites. In One for The Road , Stephen Kings gives us a short vignette of what would become Salem's Lot.  Here the dreaded place is Jeru salem's Lot and it's the site of many unexplained disappearances at the hands of vampires who live on that unhallowed ground. In this story two natives of a nearby town try to help a city fellow who leaves his family and their car mired in a snowbank in the Lot.   The Cloak by Robert Bloch is a fun little number about a man who desperately needs a custume for a high end Halloween Party. He gets more than he bargained for when his authentic cloak begins working vampiric changes on him. He also chances to meet another cloak owner at the party.   ...

In case you've been living in a coffin, February is Women in Horror Recognition month as decreed by Hannah Nuerotica, editor of AxeWound magazine. This 2nd Annual celebration of Women in Horror Recognition Month means all kinds of goodies for fans of females in the genre here at Monster Land. My homage to this very important month will include reviews of horror films by women and for women, shout outs to female authors of horror fiction, a look at the changing face of the final girl, female monster smackdowns, and more bloody dames than you can shake a stick at. So stay tuned monster fans as I prepare to show you my brains for Women in Horror Recognition Month 2011.

Started by Hannah Neurotica and her gang of fearless females in every imaginable corner of the horror industry, Women in Horror Month is a salute to the feminine aspects of our favorite genre during the month of February. I celebrated the inaugural year of this event with a bevy of blog posts, but this year I want to take it to the next level. I'm thinking about making some special Monster Land tees to raise money for a film festival in February, showcasing original horror shorts and full length features by women. More details as this develops. Women in horror month is all about empowering fans of horror regardless of  gender to celebrate the women of horror that thrill us, chill us and fulfill us. The only question that remains is, what will you do? Leave your comments and feedback in the comment section below, including any ideas you might have for a T-shirt design. Stay spooky.

Today’s February 28 and you know what that means. It’s the end of Women in Horror Month. We had a great time, had a few laughs and I’m looking forward to it again next year. In honor of this last day of women in horror, the monster of the month for February is none other than my favorite woman in horror, the Countess Marya Zaleska played by the bombshell Gloria Holden. Read more about Gloria’s exploits at Day of the Woman and more about Dracula’s Daughter at the Tomb of the Headless Werewolf . Now prepare feast your eyes on Countess Marya Zaleska, the terrifying offspring of Dracula.

In honor of Women in Horror Month, I'm testing your knowledge of female horror actresses. The prize, a pristine copy of the hardback coffee table book, Hammer Glamour, featuring all your favorite Hammer girls and then some. The first to post their comment with the names of the following actresses and their e-mail address will receive this fantastic piece of nostalgia absolutely free.

When you think of the phrase “dead wet girl” (to borrow a term from David Kalat the author of J-Horror: The Definitive Guide to The Ring, The Grudge and Beyond ) the image that might come to mind is the ending of the 2002 blockbuster, The Ring. In one of the scariest moments in horror to date, the audience watches transfixed as the dripping ghost of Samara crawls out of the TV screen and to take the life of her terrified victim. But what is it with Dead Wet Girls in Japanese horror and their remakes? Why are they dead? Why are they wet? Why are they girls? And what is up with all that long black hair? To get a deeper understanding of Dead Wet Girls and their terrifying power in horror, let’s break down the moniker, Dead. Wet. Girl. Dead. Of course death is a prerequisite to becoming a ghost, but Dead Wet Girls move beyond the standard understanding of ghosts in Western culture. In the western world, spooks are recognizable as other from living people and there is a sharp demarcatio...

Every woman knows the magic of a perfect pair of shoes. Slip them on and you transform from the average housewife or soccer mom into a slinky sex goddess, powerful and confident in your six inch stilettos. A woman will do anything for a premier pair of pumps. Cinderella’s stepsisters were willing to hack off heel and toe to make those glass slippers fit and Dorothy went head to head with the Wicked Witch of the West for her sparkly ruby footwear. The unbreakable bond between a woman and her shoes is at the heart of the Korean horror film, The Red Shoes. Viewers might be confused by the title of the film because the cursed shoes that appear in the film are actually pink. This color change (as far as I can remember) was the result of a copyright dispute involving another pair of prominent red slippers in cinema. Ahem. A woman named Sun-jae finds herself on the business end of horrible curse when she picks up a pair of seemingly abandoned shoes on the subway. But these shoes aren’t y...

A friend of mine, who is convinced that I have bad taste in horror movies (which is completely untrue by the way), recently sat me down for a viewing of Poltergeist at a sleep over. Unlike some of my fellows in horror, I didn’t grow up watching Poltergeist or the Exorcist, so coming to this film was a new experience altogether. I was surprised at the interesting references to birth and motherhood that pop up throughout the film. Diane Freely is not exactly mother of the year and in between sexcapades with her husband and taking care of her kids, she somehow finds the time to smoke weed. When things get spooky at the house, she sends her son off to grandma in a cab ALONE with the dog and tells him to call her later (I realize the 80s were a simpler time, but still!). And did I mention her daughter gets sucked into the TV? Obviously she’s not doing something right and the house and the spirits trapped within are trying to punish her for it. There is also a lot of birth imagery in Pol...