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When life gets in your way (that is if you let it), things tend to go haywire and jump clear off the proverbial track. That was what happened the last couple of months after my last post, which was ironically the first entry into my Horror Tee Diaries series. Between that time and now, I wrote a piece on the short (but visibly affirmative) history of black gay characters in horror; a generalization piece that I hope to elaborate more on one day. I also wrote another piece on aging, and I tried to rest as much as possible before my job entered peak season. The latter didn’t work out, because I’m dead tired as I type this.

So now here I am! Back with only a few updates about some of the latest graphic tees I’ve acquired, my Instagram 31 Days of Horror Tees Halloween Celebration, and a few more tidbits.

Latest Tees

Gutter Garbs thankfully re-released the Roy Burns “Flare” tee from their Masks of Jason line, which I managed to snag. I also completed the series by purchasing the Sack Mask and Part 4 Jason shirts as well. I will be wearing all the shirts leading up to this Friday the 13th. Hopefully Gutter Garbs will do Jason X and Freddy vs. Jason editions to really complete the series.

Speaking of my favorite Dream Demon, a chance shopping excursion at a local Walmart blessed me with this beautiful shirt of Freddy that came with a hoodie with his signature slash marks on it. I have a shitload of Freddy tees already, (and will buy a shitload more if I find them and they are made well), but I know that I have to venture out and acquire more horror tees that don’t only contain the main horror icons. Which leads me to my last acquisition…

  While browsing Instagram, I noticed that Cursed Cult (@cursed_cult on IG) had this Demons/Demoni tee for sale that I just had to have. Having the iconic Geretta Geretta as Rosemary on my chest has been a pleasure, yet I know many people in my area have no fucking clue on who Rosemary is nor the greatness that is Lamberto Bava’s Demons.

31 Days of Horror Tees on Instagram

During October, I celebrated the most wonderful time of the year by donning a horror tee for each day of the month. I partook in the same celebration last year, and couldn’t wait to turn it into an annual tradition. If you want to take a look at what shirts made it to the 31 Days of Horror Tees, just visit my IG, which is @midnightsocialdistortion

Podcasts

This fall I had the pleasure of being featured on not one, but two great horror podcasts that I am big fans of: Eek Channel/Nite Shift Videos and Syndicated Nightmares.

Eek Channel/Nite Shift Videos – Hosted by James, Cody, and Josh, this horror podcast discusses tons of gems from the genre, both new and old, with other horror fanatics. The duo aren’t just well versed in horror. Their love for film in general elevates their take on certain entries in the genre from a unique and well-informed standpoint. It was a blast to talk with them about our mutual love, as well as recommending that they watch Bava’s Demons immediately. Surprisingly, they did and reviewed it promptly afterwards. After hitting their one year anniversary, the fellas changed their name from Eek Channel to Nite Shift Videos and are incorporating new content soon, so please give them a follow and subscribe ASAP.

  Freddy’s Nightmares Logo – New Line Cinema/Warner Bros.

Syndicated Nightmares Logo

Syndicated Nightmares – Syndicated Nightmares is a must listen for anyone who declares themselves a devout FredHead. Co-hosts Dave and Michelle have taken on the task that no other horror podcast (to my knowledge) has done: covering the short-lived run of the A Nightmare on Elm Street TV spinoff, Freddy’s Nightmares. I stepped into the guest host role for the season two episode “Dreams That Kill,” which is Freddy-centric and enjoyed discussing my theories of where Freddy’s Nightmares takes place in the ANOES canon (in my fandom, it’s canon and I will fight that till my soul leaves this damn earth). Michelle and Dave release episodes on Wednesdays, so find a bootleg copy of the series somewhere, watch and then listen to the podcast for it immediately afterwards.

Both podcasts are available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and more.

  MSD Horror Tees Diaries #2 – Catching Up on Horror Tees When life gets in your way (that is if you let it), things tend to go haywire and jump clear off the proverbial track.

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Midnight Social Distortion’s Halloween Playlist Happy Halloween, everyone! It's October's Eve, which means it's time to bust out the Halloween music to put you in the mood for the ultimate horror fan Christmas season, aka Hallo-fucking-ween!!!!

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MSD's Horror Tees Diary #1 - Origins

MSD’s Horror Tees Diary #1 – Origins

It’s taken me a minute to come up with words on why or how I’ve evolved into a horror tee junkie of sorts. I’m no bona fide expert on the “subject,” and I’m sure there’s people out there whose personal horror tee collection would put mine to utter shame. However, what I am unequivocally confident about is my pretty bizarre downward spiral into the world of horror tee collecting, which may sound…

[theanticritic]

Silent Belle - A Tribute to Fright Night Part 2's Black Queer Icon

Silent Belle – A Tribute to Fright Night Part 2’s Black Queer Icon

I can’t recall the exact night, but I can remember the exact moment my eyes first gazed upon the black gothic beauty known as Belle in Fright Night Part 2.

At the time, I had no inkling of the word “queer.” It was furthest from my mind, yet sonic wisps of it circled my naive and innocent face daily. But I knew something was “off” about this black vampire. Were they a man or a woman? If a man, why…

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  It’s 2019 and it’s about time that the seminal R.L. Stine’s teen horror series, Fear Street, received the proper respect that it rightly deserves in the horror community. Especially when it comes to the teen horror sub-genre.

Beginning in June 1989 with The New Girl, Fear Street became a hot commodity among spook starved teens like myself. The books were like currency in the school hallways, joining the ranks of teen serials like Sweet Valley High, Christopher Pike novels, The Baby-Sitters Club, to name a few. So it bewilders me when a die-hard, horror fan says they have never heard of them. Or when a reputable horror site labels the series as “lesser known” while covering the upcoming Fear Street trilogy of films, because it seems like 90s horror fans who grew up on The Craft and Scream would’ve inhaled R.L. Stine’s anthology of killer boyfriends, wicked stepsisters, and sexy teen vampires just as much they would a Stephen King novel or Stine’s other gift to horrordom, Goosebumps. In fact, it’s almost impossible to not know of, or be familiar with, Fear Street if one knew of/read L.J. Smith’s The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle series (yes they were published in the 90s, a decade before each respective TV series premiered), or even owned copies of Scholastic’s Point Horror novels, some that Stine himself wrote (most notably The Baby-Sitter and Halloween Night series of books). Fear Street is just as, if not more than, influential as the teen series I listed, along with Stine’s championed Goosebumps franchise.

For those (again, surprisingly) not in the know, Fear Street takes place in Shadyside, Ohio, and around the eponymous street named after the cursed Fier Family, who later changed the spelling of their last name to “Fear” in order to escape said bad juju. It didn’t work obviously, because the teen denizens are still paying for the sins of the Fears through various means, while residing on a street that seems to go on forever with frequent vacancies along the way. Fear Street contains a cemetery, a lake, an island in the middle of said lake, and woods surrounding the lake. Also there’s the Fear Family house that serves as the eyesore of the street, having been burned decades ago, but barely remodeled. While most of the stories took place in or around Fear Street, the supernatural and chilling events also affected many denizens from every corner of Shadyside’s city limits. In other words, Fear Street was basically the town’s Elm Street to the point even Freddy Krueger himself would be amazed.

From the devious antics of possessed cheerleaders and sports cars to even cliched haunted houses and carnivals, the horrors of Fear Street were akin to the slashers/horror films that laced the multiplexes in the 80s. The various Fear Street protagonists would’ve easily have fit in with the victims of Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street as they fit the many stereotypes that permeate each entry of those beloved 80s horror classics. The series even have their own cache of final girls with the likes of Corky Corcoran (The Fear Street Cheerleaders saga), Reva Dalby (Silent Night trilogy), and Kody Fraiser (99 Fear Street: The House of Evil) being memorable heroines along the likes of Nancy Thompson, Laurie Strode, or Sidney Prescott. Each girl came back to fight their respective supernatural nemesis in more than one entry, Corky being the most battle-ridden with four titles under her belt.

So with a cache of final girls, an even higher body count that rises with each novel, and supernatural adversaries who would easily get Freddy or Jason’s stamp of approval, why isn’t Fear Street championed within the horror community alongside Stine’s other popular brainchild Goosebumps? Maybe Shadyside’s high (and highly bloody) body count has a lot to do with it. The many deaths in Fear Street were numerous, and gruesome. Broken necks. Melting faces. Torn limbs. Impaled abdomens. The teens of Shadyside met their maker in ways that would be “unbecoming�� of a Goosebumps tale, which would take a more tongue-in-cheek, yet perfectly ‘safe,” approach at the expense of the juvenile protagonists. Fear Street showed no mercy to its victims. Dead was dead, and there was nothing funny about it.

Goosebumps was basically “kid-friendly” in not only the stories, but merchandise as well. While Fear Street also had calendars, bookmarks, posters, and such to promote the series outside of the books, what it didn’t have was a television series to catapult it into the global atmosphere. I personally feel that if Fear Street had its own TV series or movie adaptation during the mid 90s, it would have matched Goosebumps‘ success, if not come close to it. What the Goosebumps TV series did was become a gateway for plenty of horror fans to the joys of reading, especially kids who found the pastime hella boring. Some would say Goosebumps also probably led them into Scholastic’s other top character, Harry Potter, making them lifelong readers in the process.

Fear Street also led reluctant teens to read as well, mainly due to their eye-catching covers. Even though Goosebumps had a TV series to help market its books, it’s still hard to grasp that a Fear Street book cover didn’t grasp a budding horror fan’s eye when entering a bookstore or the book section of a department store. These covers, drawn by Bill Schmidt, are horror gold. My fave cover is for Fear Street Cheerleaders: The First Evil, featuring a possessed, Shadyside High Cheerleader holding a pom-pom with a skeleton peeking through it. From the bloody fonts to the glassy-white eyes on the cheerleader, The First Evil is the best damn Fear Street cover of all time, because 1) you can easily see this cover as the poster for an obscure 80s horror movie sitting on the horror shelf of an old video store, and 2) is the best indicator of what Fear Street had to offer. The cover is simply iconic, worthy of not only a t-shirt I’m willing to shell money for. It’s a shame that no one has thought to capitalize off of those, but I digress.

2020 will bring us not one, not two, but three damn highly overdue Fear Street movies, which will hopefully pump new (and renewed) interest into the franchise. To say that I’m beyond ecstatic is an understatement, because its about time that Fear Street gets its due for staying in the game while other teen series from its era have fallen off.  In 2005, it returned briefly for another three part miniseries titled Fear Street Nights that came and went without much fanfare. Then in 2014, Stine returned with a slew of new Fear Street titles that are longer and thicker than their predecessors’ mass paperback size. The latest books are released under the moniker “Return to Fear Street” that feature retro style cover art, mimicking the creased and well worn covers possibly found in garage sales and used book stores across the world. With the three Fear Street movies (all set in different time periods, with the most recent being 1994) dropping next year, here’s hoping the franchise will pool over into TV and other mediums that it couldn’t break into during the 90s.

Fear Street isn’t some dated fad that’s trying to claw its way back into the horror community’s conscious. It never truly went away, and fans, like myself, have never truly left its nightmare inducing neighborhood. It inspired similar series (Nightmare Hall, Spooksville, Phantom Valley, to name a few), made R. L. Stine a household name before the advent of Goosebumps, and shows no sign of ever being buried. So let’s not act like Fear Street and the denizens of Shadyside haven’t been in the game for a minute now.

Anyone else have any favorite Fear Street stories? Are you thrilled for the new movies dropping next year?

All pictures are courtesy of Simon & Shuster, Parachute Press, Harper Teen and HarperCollins Publishers.

It’s Time That We Put Some Respect On Fear Street’s Name… It's 2019 and it's about time that the seminal R.L. Stine's teen horror series, Fear Street…

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MSD Review of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ - A Bold New American Nightmare (SPOILERS)

MSD Review of Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ – A Bold New American Nightmare (SPOILERS)

Photo Credit: Universal/Blumhouse/Monkeypaw Productions

After the worldwide (and much, much, MUCH deserved) acclaim for Jordan Peele’s socially conscious horror thriller Get Out, the former Key & Peele star and his Monkeypaw Productions announced his follow up, the aptly titled Us, and snatched the collective wig of fans across the globe.

From gate, Peele has stated in numerous interviews that…

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Black Horror Survivors #56 - Rochelle (The Craft)

Black Horror Survivors #56 – Rochelle (The Craft)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

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Black Horror Survivors #55 - Moses (Attack the Block)

Black Horror Survivors #55 – Moses (Attack the Block)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #54 - John (Day of the Dead)

Black Horror Survivors #54 – John (Day of the Dead)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #53 Michonne (The Walking Dead)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #52 - Poindexter “Fool” Williams (The People Under the Stairs)

Black Horror Survivors #52 – Poindexter “Fool” Williams (The People Under the Stairs)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #51 - Gail Stern (Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid)

Black Horror Survivors #51 – Gail Stern (Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #50 - Dr. Alexa Woods (Alien vs. Predator)

Black Horror Survivors #50 – Dr. Alexa Woods (Alien vs. Predator)

Update: due to unforeseen circumstances, the remaining eight entries missed the BHM deadline and will spill into the next day or two. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #49 - Cole Burris (Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid)

Black Horror Survivors #49 – Cole Burris (Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid)

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #48 - Dr. Christine Heffner (Wes Craven's New Nightmare)

Black Horror Survivors #48 – Dr. Christine Heffner (Wes Craven’s New Nightmare)

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #47 - Justin Carter (Scream, Blacula, Scream)

Black Horror Survivors #47 – Justin Carter (Scream, Blacula, Scream)

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some…

[theanticritic]

Black Horror Survivors #46 - Peter Washington (Dawn of the Dead, 1978)

Black Horror Survivors #46 – Peter Washington (Dawn of the Dead, 1978)

This February, Midnight Social Distortion will be celebrating Black History Month by honoring Black horror characters, in particular Black horror survivors, throughout the twenty-eight day period. Each day will feature one black male and one black female survivor in horror and sci-fi to bring light to the positive, albeit still problematic, black champions of representation in horror. Some…