Synopsis: Although she is married to Carter (John Lithgow), who her friend claims is the perfect husband, Jenny (Lolita Davidovitch) is stuck in a place she does not want to be. Hubby is taking a year off from his practice to help raise their bright young child, sure, but he is turning a little different. […]
Read more "I Am What You Made Me, Doc: Raising Cain (Director’s Cut)"Robert Bloch died in 1994, leaving a wealth of stories, novels and scripts from his six decades of writing. Sadly, much of this material ended up going out of print. The one Bloch creation that is still known (though the author’s attachment to it is less well known than, say, that of Alfred Hitchcock) is […]
Read more "That’s What A Mother’s For: Chet Williamson’s Psycho: Sanitarium"The Signalman is an agent for a shady government organization. As The Agents of Dreamland opens, he is waiting in a small diner in the blasted Arizona landscape for a meet with a woman called Immacolata Sexton—and isn’t that a wonderful name? The two are tied to an investigation of a cult known as The […]
Read more "The Best Foreshadowing Never Seems Like Foreshadowing: Caitlin Kiernan’s Agents of Dreamland"Synopsis: When late night radio talk show host Fran Ambrose (CCH Pounder) decided to do a show about mother killers, she got a guest who did the deed as well as a shrink Leo Richmond (Warren Frost) who wrote some books. She never expected her prime guest to be a caller who proclaims his name […]
Read more "Backwards and Forwards: Psycho IV: The Beginning"In 1959, Robert Bloch unleashed Norman Bates upon the world. The next year, Alfred Hitchcock made the Bates Motel a household name in terror. Twenty-three years after that, Bloch let Norman out of the Asylum for a little dalliance with death both in his Fairvale stomping grounds as well as a little further west in […]
Read more "We’re All a Little Psycho: Robert Bloch’s Psycho House"When I discovered Seanan McGuire’s Mira Grant pseudonym was appearing on a novel set in the Alien universe, I was intrigued. Pairing a love of horror flicks with some solid scientific questioning led to great results in the mermaids books, the novel of which (Into the Drowning Deep) read like an Alien/Aliens inspired exercise in […]
Read more "Knives That Hunt: Mira Grant’s Alien: Echo"Synopsis: Close on the heels of Psycho II (1982) comes the second sequel to Hitchcock’s seminal horror film. Here we open with a woman responsible for a terrible tragedy in her nunnery fleeing an accidental crime with bag in hand. Maureen Coyle (Diana Scarwid) once thought her calling was to the lord, but she has […]
Read more "Nun of That, Norman!: Psycho III"Norman Bates achieved a kind of immortality due first to Robert Bloch’s thrilling novel and this was only cemented a year later through Hitchcock’s thrilling film adaptation. Twenty or more years would pass before Bloch would finally heed his agent’s advice to write a sequel novel. As he relates in his “unauthorized autobiography”: He supported […]
Read more "Not-So Final Cut: Robert Bloch’s Psycho II"Academia is as prone to attracting arrogant pricks as it is to honest knowledge seekers. You know the sorts I am referring to, the folks who know enough about a specialized area to think they are somehow vital, influential thinkers. Narcissists. Sharks, around whom swim all manner of minnows waiting to be gobbled up. Simon […]
Read more "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead: Simon Raven’s Doctors Wear Scarlet"Synopsis: 22 years after Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) was found not guilty by reason of insanity for several murders performed in the guise of his mother, Norman is found sane once more and released into the world. His homecoming is anything but welcoming. The motel is being run by an opportunistic jackass of a man […]
Read more "Vacancy: Psycho II"
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