Tag: video

Late-Night Horror Hosts

Stefanie Snider

Elvira. Vampira. Zacherley.

Horror hosts introduced cheesy horror movies on tv. They’d have their own schtick, their own characters. They’d pop up at commercial breaks, to lighten the mood and provide a little comic relief.

Growing up in Canada, we didn’t have late-night movie hosts. Not in my area, anyway. But even then, somehow these characters worked their way into my life. I knew them even if I’d never seen them “live”. One night, a few years ago, I finally managed to catch one of these campy, low-budget cable access horror shows. I stayed up until something like five a.m., just to see every last bit.

Then tonight, I found American Scary, and now I get to participate in a horror institution, even if it’s only vicariously.

Watch along with me:

Attack of the Robot Bird…Thing

Stefanie Snider

As I’ve posted before, robots kinda give me the heebies. I thought it only applied to those too-close-for-comfort humanoids, but then I found this:

It’s like it’s…waiting. Someone’s going to turn their back on this thing and it’s going to come for them. I can feel it.

Real-Life Horror: Lobotomy

Stefanie Snider

This video is disturbing. Watch with caution.

I have a notoriously strong stomach, and this made me feel ill. There’s something…sacred about the brain, about what makes “us”, “us”. The idea of someone manipulating your very self with something so everyday as an icepick is terrifying to me.

It happened to Rosemary Kennedy, JFK’s younger sister.
“We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch.” The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. “We put an instrument inside,” he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer or sing “God Bless America” or count backwards. … “We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded.” … When she began to become incoherent, they stopped. (Kessler, The Sins of the Father, p. 226, via Wikipedia.)

Lobotomies are still performed as a treatment in certain debilitating mental illnesses.

There are greater horrors in life than I could ever hope to write.

Now THAT’S How You Set a Scene!

Stefanie Snider

This scene freaks me out, even when taken completely out of context. If I can give even one reader the same goosebumps this scene gives me, I’ll consider myself a huge success.