This week’s hair raising read is 2021’s That Weekend by Kara Thomas. The story of three friends who embark to a lake house only to have one return with no memory of what transpired, this story delves into issues of survivor’s guilt, the destructive power of secrets, and the unreliability of memory. On this podcast, we talk blood, guts, and spoilers so listener discretion is advised.
With genuinely scary jump scares, bloody kill sequences that leave an impression, and a pitch perfect 90s soundtrack, Fear Street: 1994, the first of three book-to-film adaptations dropping on Netflix today, more than lives up to the hype. When news broke that this beloved series was being adapted, we knew that we wanted to go back and revisit a couple of books in the series. And so, this week’s hair raising reads are 1989’s The New Girl and 1991’s Lights Out. A time capsule of questionable sexual politics, these books helped to establish a template of horror storytelling that authors still follow today. On this podcast, we talk blood, guts, and spoilers so listener discretion is advised.
Recommended Reading:
Coppell, Vicki. “The ‘Goosebumps’ in Goosebumps: Impositions and R. L. Stine.” Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature 8.2 (1998): 5-15.
Jones, Patrick. “Nothing to Fear: R. L. Stine and Young Adult Paperback Thrillers.” Collection management 25.4 (2001): 3-23.
Lair, Mackenzie. “What’s so Scary about Fear Street? A Feminist Analysis of R. L. Stine’s Fear Street Series.” New Views on Gender 15 (2014): 11-15.
Nodelman, Perry. “Ordinary Monstrosity: The World of Goosebumps.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 22.3 (1997): 118-125.
Perry, Leslie Anne, and Rebecca P. Butler. “Are Goosebumps Books Real Literature?” Language Arts 74.6 (1997): 454-456.
Smith, Stacia Ann. The Exploration of Middle School Students’ Interests in and Attractions to the Writings of R. L. Stine. The Ohio State University, 1998.
Tanner, Nicole. “Thrills, Chills, and Controversy: The Success of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps.” Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management 6 (Spring 2010): 1-13.
West, Diana. “The Horror of R. L. Stine.” American Educator 19.3 (1995): 39-41.
Lights Out is very hard to find, but you can get The New Girl from Amazon (ad):
And you can find the first four Fear Street novels in this collection:
This week’s hair-raising read is 2013’s SUMMERVILLE by D.T. Neal. The story follows three friends who are planning to dive for some expensive brandy bottles they believe are sitting at the bottom of a South Carolina River. When the group encounters a hitchhiker to whom they decide to offer a ride, a series of events are put into motion that leaves no one unscathed. Part southern gothic and part ecohorror, this novella takes some big swings but do they pay off? Listen to the latest episode of The Bloodcurdling Book Club to find out!
Selected Reading on the Ecogothic: Read more
The Bloodcurdling Book Club is our horror books podcast where Dawn and I rant and rave over dark and disturbing popular fiction. This week’s hair raising read is 1983’s The Dollhouse Murders by Betty Ren Wright. This juvenile classic is the story of Amy, a young girl who escapes the fatigue of being her sister, Louanne’s, caregiver by fleeing to help her aunt prepare to sell her grandparents’ abandoned home. There she discovers a dollhouse that is the exact replica of the family home. But when the dolls begin to move of their own accord, Amy is thrown into a bloody mystery where some secrets are just not meant to stay in the past. An effective read that introduces the horror genre to young readers, The Dollhouse Murders remains relevant for its depictions of generational trauma and its deployment of uncanny dopplegangers.
Listen to the episode here:
Listen, we love horror films, and we especially love talking about them on our podcast Horror Homeroom Conversations. But we also love ranting and raving over dark and disturbing popular fiction! And so, the Bloodcurdling Book Club was born.
This bi-weekly (we hope) podcast deep dives into one spine-tingling read per episode and we’re thrilled to kick things off with Cameron Roubique’s masterful Kill River (2015). Billed as a slasher film in book form, the story follows four campers who stumble upon an abandoned waterpark in the middle of the woods. What follows is a heart pounding game of cat and mouse with twists we did not see coming. But did it successfully capture the shlock and gore of 80s horror, or did it get lost in the nostalgia? Dawn and I delve into how Roubique’s story interacts with slasher conventions in some surprising and effective ways in this episode.
And because every slasher deserves a sequel, we’re also dropping a second episode that looks at Kill River 2 (2017), which follows the Final Girl back into suburbia and asks some uncomfortable but essential questions about what it really means to survive a traumatic event at a young age. We’re also including below a reading primer for anyone wanting to learn more about the slasher sub-genre and its conventions. If you enjoy these episodes, please let us know by rating and reviewing!
You can buy Cameron Roubique’s Kill River here (advertisement):
Suggested Reading on the Slasher Film
Anderson, Aaron C. Rethinking the Slasher Film: Violated Bodies and Spectators in “Halloween’’, `’Friday the 13th”, and “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. University of California, San Diego, 2013.
Christensen, Kyle. “The Final Girl versus Wes Craven’s” A Nightmare on Elm Street”: Proposing a Stronger Model of Feminism in Slasher Horror Cinema.” Studies in Popular Culture 34.1 (2011): 23-47.
Clayton, Wickham, ed. Style and form in the Hollywood slasher film. Springer, 2015.
Clover, Carol J. “Her body, himself: Gender in the slasher film.” Representations 20 (1987): 187-228.
Creed, Barbara. The monstrous-feminine: Film, feminism, psychoanalysis. Psychology Press, 1993.
Keisner, Jody. “Do you want to watch? A study of the visual rhetoric of the postmodern horror film.” Women’s Studies 37.4 (2008): 411-427.
Kendrick, James. “Razors in the Dreamscape: Revisiting” A Nightmare on Elm Street” and the Slasher Film.” Film Criticism 33.3 (2009): 17-33.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.” Visual and other pleasures. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1989. 14-26.
Nolan, Justin M., and Gery W. Ryan. “Fear and loathing at the cineplex: Gender differences in descriptions and perceptions of slasher films.” Sex Roles 42.1 (2000): 39-56.
Nowell, Richard. Blood money: A history of the first teen slasher film cycle. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010.
Petridis, Sotiris. Anatomy of the Slasher Film: A Theoretical Analysis. McFarland, 2019.
Rieser, Klaus. “Masculinity and monstrosity: Characterization and identification in the slasher film.” Men and Masculinities 3.4 (2001): 370-392.
Rockoff, Adam. Going to pieces: the rise and fall of the slasher film, 1978-1986. McFarland, 2011.
Trencansky, Sarah. “Final girls and terrible youth: Transgression in 1980s slasher horror.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 29.2 (2001): 63-73.
Wee, V. (2005). The Scream Trilogy,” Hyperpostmodernism,” and the Late-Nineties Teen Slasher Film. Journal of Film and Video, 57(3), 44-61.
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