This Week in Horror History | American Psycho, Amityville Horror, Jakob’s Wife, Sker Ritual & The Lords of Salem

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There's something delightfully strange about this stretch of April.

On paper, it should feel like spring is finally taken hold.

The air is a little kinder.

The days are longer.

The world is supposed to be thawing out, and yet horror keeps using this week to remind

us that warm weather does not mean safe weather.

A time of designer masks and collapsing sanity.

For cursed houses and bad marriages, for multiplayer bloodbaths and witch fog visions

that feel like nightmares drifting in through an open window.

So tonight, we're walking straight into one of those weeks where horror splinters in

every direction at once.

We have a Wall Street monster who smiles better than he feels, a haunted house remake

that hit hard at the box office, a late career Barbara Crampton vampire gem that deserves

louder love, and a co-op shooter that proves there's still fresh blood in round-based horror

gaming.

So join me as we take a look at the cursed calendar.

Welcome back to this week in horror history.

I'm your host Enrique Cuto, and tonight we're talking about April 13th through 19th, a seven

day stretch that gave horror everything from prestige satire to franchise adjacent haunted

house shocks, from stylish indie vampirism to occult mood pieces and modern online era

terror, coming up a yuppie grin hiding a meat cleaver heart, a family moving into the

wrong house in the worst possible way, a marriage that gets a lot more dangerous once

appetite enters the picture, and a game that drops you into wave after wave of screaming

well-schnite mayor fuel.

Then we hit the deep-cut spotlight with a film that trades jump scares for dread, static,

and witchcraft.

April 14th, 2000, American Psycho hits theaters.

Harry Heron's adaptation arrived like a razor blade tucked inside a business card.

Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman gave horror one of its great modern monsters, a man so

obsessed with surfaces that he becomes almost abstract, until the violence makes everything

horribly real again.

Probably this one performed well relative to scale, grossing about $34.3 million worldwide

on a reported $7 million budget.

This was one that was a huge deal in the high school era I grew up in.

Everybody either wanted to sort of be him or talk about how not like him they were.

That is the staying power of the Patrick Bateman character.

You can watch it right now on Amazon Prime Video or Prime Video with ads, as well as

renting it on Apple TV or Fandango at home.

On April 15th, 2005, the Amityville Horror opens wide, not the original though.

The Ryan Reynolds remake landed right in the middle of the 2000s remake boom and actually

connected with audiences in a very big way.

Critical affection was mixed, but commercial performance was not.

It opened strong and finished with about $108 million worldwide against a $19 million

budget.

That's not just respectable, that is a clear studio win.

And I think the Amityville Horror remake is a bit underrated.

But I think there's a lot of elements to really enjoy in it and of course I'm a big

proponent of the belief that 2000s horror, especially of this era, ages surprisingly

well.

So if you haven't seen it before or you've always said it was not as good as the original

which what can be.

You can give it a watch right now on Prime Video with a subscription or Prime Video

with ads and it's also available to watch with ads for no money down at the Roku Channel

and 2BTV.

April 16th, 2021, Jacob's wife arrives in theaters on demand and digital.

This is one of those later era horror titles that feels even better on a revisit because

you can sense exactly what makes it special.

Barbara Crampton, that's right, the reanimator and from beyond alumnus who easily wins horror

fans over with her charm and girl next door demeanor.

Over the last 10 years she's had quite a big comeback in indie horror films with lots

of memorable roles and has acted as a producer on most of them.

This film takes vampire lore and fuses it with middle-aged frustration, marriage drift

and body liberation.

Her co-star is another actor-turned-producer Larry Fezendin and he puts in a phenomenal

performance as well.

It's a lot of fun and I'm not even that big of a horror comedy guy but this one, it's

messy, funny, bloody and sharper than it might first appear.

The theatrical gross is tiny but that doesn't really matter because the real audience

was found from a hybrid release, taking advantage of video on demand and later on AMC Plus

and Shutter which is how I discovered it so if you want to check it out well, I think

we just gave away the lead, you can watch it on AMC Plus or Shutter or rent it wherever

you rent your horror movies.

April 18th, 2024, Skurr Ritual launches in full, Wales Interactive took the eerie folklore

DNA of Made of Skurr and spun it into a round-based cooperative survival shooter.

That is a risky pivot to say the least but it gave players a horror game that feels old

school and structure while still carrying a distinctive identity.

If you miss the ritualized rhythm of surviving just one more wave with your friends, this

one absolutely belongs on your radar.

It can be found on Steam, Xbox and PlayStation so happy surviving.

Isn't it funny how that's the kind of thing that we find fun?

We spend our entire human history avoiding dying and having an easier life so that we can

watch movies and play games where we pretend that everything's a lot harder than it really

is.

Huh.

Sorry, got a little philosophical.

Tomorrow, Wednesday on Weekly Spooky, we present a brand new terror tale from Bruce Haney.

Jenny thinks something is wrong with her house, at first it's little things, a cabinet

door opening by itself that cold, crawling feeling that someone is standing just behind

you.

But then the kitchen comes alive, doors begin popping open one by one and then all at once.

And that is only the beginning because in her study sits a painting she doesn't remember

creating, a haunting image of a woman in white, surrounded by old books, strange rooms

and reflections that shouldn't be there.

The longer she looks at it, the more it changes, and the more it changes, the more it feels

like something inside it, is looking back.

Tomorrow on Weekly Spooky, we bring you I painted a witch, a creepy clever nightmare about

art, haunting and the horrifying moment you realize the thing in the picture may already

be in the house with you, so don't miss it.

When we come back, we head to Salem for a film that did not want to play by mainstream

horror rules, it wanted atmosphere, repetition, dream logic, and the feeling that evil could

just drift across the radio dial and settle inside your apartment walls.

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Welcome back, my Spookies.

Let's get weir.

Our Deep Cut spotlight tonight takes us back to April 19, 2013, when the Lords of Salem

opens in limited release.

We're focusing on this tonight because it's exactly the kind of horror history title

that keeps getting argued over, re-evaluated, and reclaimed.

Rob Zombie had already built a reputation on aggression, grime, brutality, ugliness, noise.

I mean, his Halloween film, and the sequel are very gritty, very in the vein of later

Texas Chainsaw Massacre films than Halloween.

So, when the Lords of Salem arrived, a lot of people seemed to expect another blunt

force nightmare.

Instead, what they got was a hazy, deliberate, almost narcotic piece of folk horror that

cared less about body count than mood.

Sherry Moon Zombie plays Heidi, a Salem radio DJ, who receives a record from a mysterious

group called The Lords.

From there, the movie slides into visions, repetition, inherited violence, and the idea

that a city can be spiritually haunted by the stories it tells about itself.

It's not a fast-paced film, it's also not a tidy film, but that is exactly why it

has lasted so long.

It feels like a bad dream where the soundtrack is the trigger.

Heidi, this one was not a hit, roughly $1.5 million worldwide on a reported $1.5 million

budget, released in limited fashion, making it more of a cult under performer than a theatrical

breakout.

But the value of a movie like this is not opening weekend domination, it's the afterlife,

and the Lords of Salem has one.

For time, fans who want atmosphere over handholding have kept coming back to it.

And in the context of Rob Zombie's career, it may just be the purest example of him following

a mood, instead, of a market.

If you want to give it a watch or a revisit, well, it's pretty easy, actually.

You can head to Prime Video and watch it with your subscription, or head to 2B TV, Pluto

TV, the Roku channel, or plaques, to watch it free with ads, and of course it's rentable

on Apple TV and Fandango at home.

And now let's take a look back at some horror-related birthdays.

Four faces tied to this exact week on the calendar.

Next up, born on April 13th, 1950, is Ron Pearlman.

Hellboy is fantasy superhero territory shore, but Pearlman has always carried monster

energy, and genre fans know how often he turns up where things get dark, violent, or

gloriously strange.

Of course I'll always respect his work in one of my personal favorite 90s horror films,

Sleepwalkers, so happy birthday, Ron Pearlman.

Born on April 13th, 1976, Jonathan Brandis.

For a certain generation mine included, he is forever linked to Stephen King's It, and

that alone is enough to earn a place in this week every single year.

Jonathan Brandis, we wish you a happy birthday, and you are very, very missed.

Born on April 14th, 1977, we have Sarah Michelle Geller.

Buffy alone would lock this in, but then you stack on, I know what you did last summer,

Scream 2, and The Grudge, and suddenly you're looking at one of the defining genre faces

of her era.

Happy birthday, Sarah Michelle Geller.

And finally born on April 14th, 1996, Abigail Brezlin, from Sines to Zombieland to Maggie

to Final Girl, she's quietly built a horror resume with way more bite than a lot of people

give her credit for, but we are happy to give it.

Happy birthday, Abigail Brezlin.

This week for our then and now, then in this week of horror history, you could watch the

genre turn vanity into murder, real estate fear into box office gold, and old vampire mythology

into a character study about a woman refusing to disappear inside her own life.

Now horror still does that better than almost any genre.

It keeps mutating to match whatever makes people anxious right now.

Identity, domestic life, tech dependence, social performance, group survival.

The costume may change, but the nerves stay the same.

For our weekly recommendation, we have Green Room, which began its release run on April

15th, 2016.

Jeremy Saliner's punk survival nightmare, it's lean, vicious, and incredibly good at making

every bad decision feel both avoidable and inevitable.

It's not supernatural, but it absolutely feels like horror.

Trap a group in the wrong place with the wrong people, and that's enough.

It made only about $3.8 million worldwide on roughly a $5 million budget, so financially

it was more of a cult favorite than a breakout hit, but its reputation has only grown.

In fact, I saw it in the theater three times because I couldn't believe what a mindblower

it was.

I was already a huge fan of Jeremy Saliner's other films, Murder Party, and Blue Ruin.

This one knocked my socks off, and the internet buzzed.

People were talking about it in such mass with such positive things to say that I'm still

shocked as I read this that it only made $3.8 million worldwide.

Because everyone I knew seemed to go and see that one.

Plus, you get to see Captain Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, in a role no one's ever seen

him do before or since.

If you want to give Green Room a revisit or a first time watch, I really do recommend

that you check it out.

It's available to stream right now with your Netflix subscription, and you can also

of course rent it at Amazon Prime Video, Fandango at home, and Apple TV.

That's it for this week in horror history.

If you like your horror with dates attached, come back next Tuesday and we'll do it all

again.

Don't forget tomorrow on Weekly Spooky, we'll have a brand new terror tale from Bruce

Haney for you to enjoy.

On Friday, cutting deep into horror is back, talking about creep, a film that if you've

never watched it, you're going to want to check it out.

It's on Netflix right now, and I do recommend you give it a watch and then of course on Sunday.

Unknown broadcast slips into the feed again, and I still don't know what it is or where

it comes from, but you all seem to really enjoy it.

So until next week, I've been in Rike Kuto reminding you that our days are numbered,

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