Hi, folks! I decided to create a kind of concert journal for my sojourn to the Format Festival 2022 here in Bentonville, Arkansas. If you’re just tuning in, you can check out what I checked out on Day One HERE. Without further ado, on with the show! I wake up feeling utterly exhausted… My step…
Format Festival 2022 Day One
When the Format Festival was announced back in April, I was immediately pretty jazzed but also a little weary. Northwest Arkansas has indeed been growing by leaps and bounds over the last few years, due in no small part to the propensity of the Waltons (the heirs to the Walmart fortune) to pump tons of…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: CipherGhasts and Goodnights
Welcome, dear friends. Tonight we shall dine on a savory selection of lovely literature sure to whet your appetite and leave you feeling full and empty at the same time. We have an influential and highly well-regarded gothic fantasy cycle, a bizarre, misanthropic narrative about a hole, a famous stage play of a notorious murderer,…
The Cornshukker Blu-ray Review
Pale white, rail thin, squatting. Eating corn raw, straight from the cob in a cornfield. This is how we meet our protagonist(?). This strange individual with seemingly psychic powers of some kind meets a parade of eccentric and memorable characters. A fat man mimics his motions and has an usual fixation with a clown painting…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: Out of Whispers and Snowmen
I’m not one to cotton to self-help gurus and feel-good platitudes. My day job (what? you think I get paid for blogging? LOL) is in a corporate environment where I’ve been exposed to lots of this nonsense, usually marketed as “LIFE-CHANGING! YOU GOTTA READ IT/WATCH IT”. They inevitably wind up being basic common sense stuff…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: Murgunstrumm Enters the House of Flesh
After a cavalcade of summer travel, I’m back in the saddle, reelin’ in the years like Steely Dan’s mighty steel sex toy. This time we have another fractured tale of death and weirdness from Caitlin R. Kiernan, a fat load of pulpy goodness from Mr. Hugh B. Cave, a delightful children’s classic with some groovy…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: Of Shadowland and Gilead
It’s been a hot minute since the last one of these, but like Jason returning from the grave to machete another troop of camp counselors, I humbly return to slaughter a few books… Yes, I know the analogy doesn’t work. Whatever, chump! Don’t hassle me! Anyway, in this round up of reading material, we have…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: From the ‘Burbs to Baghdad
From a mind-melting story from a master of suburban horror to a brush with all too real Iraqi war atrocities, from a collection of pulpy goodness that includes the inspiration for The Blob to a trip into the world of a famous serial killing cannibal to a classic of the ‘evil child’ sub-genre, this installment…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: Harrowing Night Stalking and Gothic Deep Ones
Welcome back, boils and ghouls to another installment in this delightful journey through the horror fantastique where in this segment we will look at what would happen if you put together Lovecraft’s Deep Ones with the notorious Lizzie Borden, a series of spooky monster adventures with intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, a deeply sad and disturbing…
Ben Reads the Horror Classics: The Ceremonies Must Die
In this entry, we return to the twisted world of Ramsey Campbell, check out supernatural detective adventures described by some as Sherlock Holmes Meets Scooby Doo, take a look at an alternate history of what REALLY killed the Donner party, read a wonderful collection of horror in the Civil War era and finally experience an…