Horror

The first splatter movies were live on stage a hundred years ago [NSFW]

Six nights a week and every Sunday afternoon, theater-goers in Paris were treated to an hour’s-worth of gore, beheadings, torture and disembowelment. The effects were so explicit and so realistic that a house physician was always on stand-by duty, ready to administer a dose of brandy to the faint-hearted. Warning: NSFW images! There were even…

An incredibly simple horror short to make you afraid of the dark

There is no gore in William Prince’s short film Click, just a group of kids, an abandoned building, an understated soundtrack, and a light switch. But it succeeds in making its only evil force—the darkness—menacing. The short is a finalist in Popcorn Horror’s Blood Games short film competition. It’s amazing to see what it accomplishes…

Summon Old Ones with these painstakingly crafted HP Lovecraft props

Jason McKittrick crafts elaborate prop sets based on H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories. Grab yourself a cultist’s kit and you’ll be summoning Cthulhu in no time! McKittrick sells many of his Lovecraft-inspired pieces at Cryptocurium, but his larger sets of faux-relics tend to land in private collections. The one up top is a collection of items…

It’s hard to believe, but this movie will make you love vampires again

A lot of us are suffering from vampire fatigue, with good reason. But Xan Cassavetes’ cult film Kiss of the Damned will re-awaken your love for these enigmatic creatures who struggle to understand humans — and to stop eating them. There’s a kind of effortless blend of campy humor and sophistication at work in this…

Xan Cassavetes’ sexy gothic vampire movie Kiss of the Damned got positive buzz from SXSW… and now you can see it for yourself. We’re giving away tickets to the San Francisco screening — just click here and enter the code “io9_kotd.” See you on May 2nd!

The 9 Sexiest Doomsday Scenarios

We already know there are some pretty smokin’ disasters that await us in real life, like mega-volcanoes (what could be hotter?) and flooded coastal cities (everybody in bathing suits!). But it’s only in fiction that doomsday gets truly sexy. Here are nine of the most alluring. https://gizmodo.com/ten-of-the-kinkiest-science-fiction-books-youll-ever-re-5096491 1. Lair of the White Worm Demon-worship in…

A demon plays a deadly game of freeze in this gory horror short

In short horror film Don’t Move, six friends find their usual game night interrupted by a demon summoned through the Ouija board. The demon will leave one of them alive—the one who stays still longer than the rest. For the squeamish: this one contains blood and guts. Anthony Melton directed Don’t Move as part of…

Now THIS is how you reinvent a classic Doctor Who monster!

Doctor Who has a mixed track record when it comes to bringing back monsters from the 1960s and 1970s — sometimes the show misses the point of what made a monster great back in the day. But with tonight’s return of the Ice Warriors, the show more or less got it right. This is how…

In the creepy future of Antiviral, people pay to be infected with celebrity diseases

The conceit at the core of Brandon Cronenberg’s surreal, indie film Antiviral is perfect for our celebrity-obsessed era. Instead of buying astronomically expensive DVD box sets or action figures, fans of the future pay to be injected with virus strains that have infected their favorite celebrities. This is a movie that’s packed with sexy metaphors.…

The Creepiest Headless Portraits from the Victorian Era

We all know that people messed around with photos long before there was Photoshop. But you might not have realized how crazy the Victorians were about headless portraits. They literally lost their heads over this trend. Check out the absolute creepiest examples below. https://gizmodo.com/the-amazing-world-of-photo-editing-before-photoshop-461170976 https://gizmodo.com/how-did-we-fake-photos-before-photoshop-5942658 Photographs of William Henry Wheeler, Oxford, 1875 (via Photo History…

Forget Oblivion, you really want to know what the critics are saying about Scary Movie 5

There’s only one movie coming out this weekend that continues a long-running franchise and features Lindsay Lohan — that’s right, Scary Movie 5 is out today. It wasn’t screened for critics, and there weren’t any midnight showings, but some folks still managed to review it. Not us, though. We’re just not that masochistic. Here’s what…

Is a remake of Stephen King’s Cujo really coming this year?

It’s the 30th anniversary of Stephen King’s mad-dog horror novel Cujo. And to celebrate, Sunn Classic Pictures (which produced the original Cujo movie) wants to do a remake. They’ve even made this spooky pitch video. The video above was found by Dread Central, which says Sunn aims to have the movie out this year —…

So they updated Evil Dead by making it torture porn with a little exorcism all up in it

If you’re a fan of the Evil Dead movies, which vibrate with Sam Raimi’s visual psychosis and Bruce Campbell’s bug-eyed mania, you may find yourself disappointed by the Evil Dead reboot that the two just produced. The original movie trilogy was a slapsticky sendup of 1970s horror movies. Unfortunately the reboot is just straight torture…

First trailer for the Carrie remake shows the climax Stephen King always wanted you to see

We are beyond excited for Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie remake, which promises to be much truer to the original book by Stephen King. This trailer contains the first actual footage we’ve been able to see, and we can already tell this is going to be a much larger scale production. You can see shots of Chloë…

Who’s the character you most want to see die in the new Evil Dead?

The new Evil Dead movie is brutal to watch — but it was also brutal to film. The film is full of horrible ordeals, many of which actually happened to the actors on set. What were the most horrific things the stars of Evil Dead had to cope with? And which character is both the…

What’s better after the apocalypse: dick jokes or poop jokes? We asked Seth Rogen!

Emma Watson, aka Hermione from the Harry Potter movies, shows up and steals supplies from James Franco and his friends, in the latest trailer for This is the End. But how did Rogen and his co-director/co-writer Evan Goldberg coax a crazy comedy performance out of Watson? And what sort of humor was going too far…

Bruce Campbell explains the secret of great film-making: “give a sh-t, and don’t treat audiences like they’re stupid.”

We caught up with Bruce Campbell, the living legend, at Wondercon, and he told us the secret of making an awesome movie, in any genre. He also explained why he thinks horror comedy is making a comeback. Campbell tells us: I think horror movies are better if people give a shit, and make a decent…

New trailer for The Conjuring reveals how ineffective the 1970s versions of Ghostbusters were

James Wan of Insidious jump scare fame is back with another horror movie, The Conjuring. The first trailer was scary as hell, the second fleshes out the story a bit more. Looks like we’re dealing with a vintage Ghostbusters gang. Take a look. We’ve been sufficiently scared enough by Wan to know that this movie…

How do you make an Evil Dead movie after Cabin in the Woods?

In the new Evil Dead movie, five teenagers go to a cabin in the woods, and wind up raising something… sinister. Does that sound familiar? It’s basically the premise of Cabin in the Woods, the horror spoof that Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon put out last year. Was Evil Dead director Fede Alvarez nervous about…

The Avengers assemble themselves into Earth’s mightiest Blu-ray collector’s set

Do you ever you wish you were omnipotent? If you answered yes and you have $150, congratulations — you can buy the Cosmic Cube, which gives you the power to alter the very fabric of reality, starting tomorrow! And as a bonus, it comes with six free Marvel movies on Blu-ray! But that’s hardly the…