Review: Scream Vol. 1: Curse of Carnage by Clay McCleod Chapman and Chris Mooneyham

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Scream Vol. 1: Curse of Carnage by Clay McCleod Chapman
Marvel (August 25, 2020)
120 pages; $15.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

For those unaware of the Marvel Universe, specifically Earth-616, the Klyntar are a race of conscious symbiotes. While Klyntar are fully sentient creatures, in their natural state they are predators who feed on the darkest emotions of their hosts, compelling their hosts to violence and corrupting them. Scream: Curse of Carnage, written by Clay McCleod Chapman and illustrated by Chris Mooneyham, focuses on one of these symbiotes, Scream, and its host, Andi Benton. For fans of the Marvel Universe, this is a really compelling tale, and for fans of horror, the allusions to classical myth and horror will be entertaining as well.Continue Reading

Review: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

cover of The Daughter of Doctor MoreauThe Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 
Del Rey (Hardcover – July 2022) (Paperback – April 11, 2023)
320 pages; $16.60 hardcover; $18 paperback 
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Horror icon Vincent Price once said, “Science is frighteningly impersonal.”

What if the scientist’s work becomes his family, his children, in a way? Some argue this is evolution, a matrimony of a creator and his work. Others argue ethics.

But in The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s reimagination of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, Carlota, the doctor’s only daughter, lives in a static and balanced world in the jungles of Yucatan alongside the human-animal hybrids. She is happy to assist her father with his research and befriends most hybrids, but despite the idyllic scope Moreno-Garcia introduces, there’s a lingering dread. Dr. Moreau punishes the hybrids for “losing control,” yet Carola believes her father would never truly harm anyone. He is reclusive and sometimes spends days mourning a lost love. This emotional side, however, is kept behind closed doors and never relayed to others.Continue Reading

Review: Shadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of Criminal Profiling by Ron Franscell

cover of ShadowManShadowman: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of Criminal Profiling by Ron Franscell
Berkley (March 2022)
304 pages; $23.19 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

“Assertive, confident women unnerved the UnSub– (…) his emotional reaction had shown, a strong woman might disarm him.” – Ron Franscell

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Review: Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower by Ronald J. Murray

cover of Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower by Ronald J. Murray
Bizarro Pulp Press (June 2020)
64 pages; $12.95 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

Ronald J. Murray is a fiction writer and poet living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His short fiction has appeared in various anthologies. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association. When he is not writing, he can be found drinking entirely too much coffee and staying awake far too late. His newest dark poetry collection is Cries to Kill the Corpse Flower, a collection of visceral mythic and grisly body horror poetry.Continue Reading

Exhumed: “Night Game” and “Orange Grove Court”

banner reading Exhumed - The Fiction of Cemetery Dance by K. Edwin Fritz

Hi there. I’m Keith… or “K. Edwin” if you prefer. I’m a middle school English teacher, a writer, and like any perfectly normal fan of horror these days, another random guy who is totally obsessed with Cemetery Dance Magazine. Ok, maybe I take it a bit further than most… I actually own every single copy (but that’s a story for another post). 

Exhumed is my humble attempt to read and review every short story and novel excerpt ever published by CD. In their 34+ years of publication, there have been 577 (and counting!) pieces spread out over 77 issues. Since each Exhumed post covers just two stories (one “old” and one “new”), I think I’m going to be doing this for a while. I sure hope you’ll join me along the way, whether that means reading each piece as I review it (assuming you can find them all) or just taking it all in while I do the hard work and wax poetic with my observations. Either way, grab your shovel and dig in. There’s no telling what we’ll unearth together. Continue Reading

Video Visions: It’s Bloody Valen-Time

Black background with spooky lettering that says Hunter Shea Video Visions and the Cemetery Dance logo

photo of the killer from My Bloody ValentineAh, February. Where love is in the air, or in many cases, a desperate need to find love by Valentine’s Day. Maybe we let up on the horror gas for a spell, and let the heart run free. 

Or, maybe love and death are meant to go hand in hand. Look at the phrase, la petite mort, aka, the little death, that blissful moment after you’ve achieved the BIG-O and everything goes numb and still. To love is to die a little, bit by bit, orgasm by orgasm, heartbreak by heartbreak. It’s a wonder we don’t have a treasure trove of V-day themed horror movies. Maybe we’re looking at this special day all wrong.

I think I need to start with a love story and how it’s bound to a very popular movie this time of year. That story would be mine. Now, if Cupid would aim that arrow somewhere else, I can get rolling.  Continue Reading

Review: Don’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones

cover of Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham JonesDon’t Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones
Gallery/Saga Press (February 2023)
464 pages; $23.99 hardcover; $14.99 e-book
Reviewed by Gabriel Hart

The slasher flick genre, and perhaps horror literature in general, isn’t likely to be the same after Stephen Graham Jones concludes his Indian Lake Trilogy; the way he’s blown it apart and reassembled it, using its well-worn tropes as trap doors to cavernous and kaleidoscopic subplots, rubbing its masked face in its own fake blood without disrespecting its vital primitive idiocy we’re unabashedly attracted to. In fact, Jones has intellectualized a genre many attempt to dismiss as trash, begging the question why so many of us intelligent, inquisitive people can’t stay away from it? The answer is simple: we cannot survive unless we go through something.Continue Reading

The Cemetery Dance Interview: Barry Hoffman revisits Ray Bradbury with Phoenix 451

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cover of Phoenix 451 by Ray Bradbury (Gauntlet Press edition)Founder of Gauntlet Press Magazine, which dealt with many controversial topics of its time, Barry Hoffman is also the Bram Stoker Award-winning publisher of Gauntlet Press, a specialty publication focused on signed, limited books both classic and modern. Through Gauntlet Press, Hoffman has published some of the most acclaimed writers in dark culture such as Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Jack Ketchum, Ray Bradbury and so many others.

Most recently, Gauntlet Press published a massive book titled Phoenix 451 by Ray Bradbury, available in three collectable editions. Weighing in at over eight-hundred pages, the publisher has claimed this could be their last signed Bradbury title. If so, what a way to go considering the enormous effort and amount of content which went into this book, including various drafts of Bradbury’s timeless classic novel, Fahrenheit 451, various scripts and plays of the novel, personal letters to and from Bradbury, plus several of Bradbury’s drawing and photos from his home presented here for the first time.  

A literary treasure, a celebratory work of art, an important achievement in culture and entertainment; all these and so much more, this is a book I was eager to sit down and discuss with Barry Hoffman, who was kind enough to open up about his time publishing the work of Bradbury and getting to know the man behind the words we’ve all come to cherish.Continue Reading

Review: Delevan House by Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair

cover of Delevan HouseDelevan House by Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair
Independently Published (February 2023)
240 pages; $21.95 hardcover; $14.95 paperback; $3.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms

Folk horror tends to be an intriguing subgenre. It runs deep in our veins and roots in our DNA, no matter what the setting. Collaborative novels are always a mixed bag as the stylistic mix between two minds walks the artistic tightrope.

Yet these two authors forge something special here, as Ruthann Jagge and Natasha Sinclair — the former a Texan/NY hybrid, and the latter hailing from Scotland — have produced a story that is both gorgeous and vicious. The mystery surrounding the story is intoxicating as the question is posed: what is Delevan House? The answer to that is labyrinthine in construction.Continue Reading

Review: Skull Cat and the Curious Castle by Norman Shurtliff

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cover of Skull Cat and the Curious CastleSkull Cat and the Curious Castle by Norman Shurtliff
IDW Publishing (February 21, 2023)
112 pages; $14.99 paperback
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

Scully the Cat’s father was injured hunting gold on a mountain, so Scully has to get a job with a local garden crew. His first job is at Le Dark Chateau, a haunted mansion rumored to have a hidden treasure, but it’s protected by unknown evil. When Scully’s new crew goes missing and he catches the lady of the manor drinking red liquid from a mug, surely she has murdered everyone and is drinking their blood! Will he have the same courage as his father? Will he find the treasure of Le Dark Chateau, or will he find a different type of treasure, instead?Continue Reading

Dark Pathways: In the Dead of Winter

Dark Pathways

cover of Bleak MidwinterFor those looking for a great collection of horror stories, please for the love of God look no further than Bleak Midwinter: The Darkest Night. Editors Damon Barret and Cassandra L. Thompson just knocked this collection out of the park. It’s fantastic. It’s scary. And the stories are of an exceptional quality. I want to talk up one in particular for this post, because I just re-read it while delayed at the airport and I’m more convinced than ever that I’m in love. There are few things scarier than missing a flight … and this particular story is one of them.Continue Reading

Review: This Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau

cover of This is Where We Talk Things OutThis Is Where We Talk Things Out by Caitlin Marceau 
Dark Lit Press (September 2022)
114 pages; paperback $13.00; $2.99 e-book
Reviewed by Haley Newlin

Imagine that every event in your life is unwound, beaten down to bones, and restructured from top to bottom. The funereal routine repeats again and again until you can’t tell your truth from the rescript. That’s how life was for Miller — growing up with a narcissistic mother who was MIA most of the time and emotionally manipulative whenever present.  Continue Reading

Review: The Drift by C.J. Tudor

cover of The Drift by C.J. TudorThe Drift by C.J. Tudor
Ballantine Books (January 31, 2023)
352 pages; $28 hardcover; $13.99 e-book
Reviewed by Dave Simms

It’s always a wonderful thing when readers discover a talented new writer whose every offering is rock solid, the quality high yet never failing to break out of comfort zone. C.J. Tudor has become something of a superstar in the thriller and darker tales in the past five years. From the most recent The Burning Girls, an almost folk horror thriller, to her debut The Chalk Man, one of the best thrillers in recent memory, Tudor has played it small, meaning the settings have centered around small, claustrophobic towns and characters who are anything but what readers expect them to be. With The Drift, the author goes big. High concept, end of the world scenario, and a situation that’s horrific, weaving in terror that would find itself familiar in tales of that guy from Maine.

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Review: The Spite House by Johnny Compton

cover of The Spite HouseThe Spite House by Johnny Compton
Tor Nightfire (February 7, 2023)

272 pages; hardcover $27.99; e-book $14.99
Reviewed by David Niall Wilson

The Spite House, the debut novel from Johnny Compton, is a very complex story. There are a lot of well-developed characters, and each of them has secrets, and stories, things they are keeping to themselves and things they want to share. And, of course, there’s that house.Continue Reading

John Mantooth takes the HOLY GHOST ROAD to Bloody Good Reads

Bloody Good ReadsFrom our friends at the Bloody Good Reads podcast:

This week on the podcast we chat to John Mantooth, author of Shoebox Train Wreck, about his latest book Holy Ghost Road and the re-release of this first book Year of the Storm. John also shares his three Bloody Good Reads!

Take a listen to the episode right here.Continue Reading