Horror Drive-In: Scaaaa-REEM!

Cemetery Dance OnlineFebruary 4, 2022January 30, 2022Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, ScreamLeave a comment

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I am the perfect age to be a slasher fan. Halloween was released when I was seventeen years old — roughly the same age as the victims in John Carpenter’s masterpiece. I saw it in a walk-in theater and the experience was truly transformational. I was on the verge of adulthood and this movie, which was based on an oft-told urban legend, felt like the beginning of something entirely new.

Halloween was a runaway success and along with the inevitable sequel, imitator movies were quickly made and released. The biggest of them is, of course, Friday the 13th. I was eighteen years old.Continue Reading

Stephen King: News from the Dead Zone #227

Bev VincentJanuary 31, 2022February 12, 2022Stephen King News from the Dead Zone'Salem's Lot, A Face in the Crowd, Bev Vincent, Christine, Columns, dark tower, Fariy Tale, Firestarter, Gwendy's Button Box, Gwendy's Final Task, Later, Mr. Harrigan's Phone, News from the Dead Zone, Pet Sematary, Red Screen, Richard Chizmar, Stephen King, The Green Mile, Willie the WeirdoLeave a comment

Happy New Year to all my readers. It’s been a while since my last news update, primarily because there hasn’t been a lot going on in the Stephen King Universe. However, I now have some cool things to talk about, so pull up a chair.
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Revisiting T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies, and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 30, 2021December 19, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark Sieber, Rod Serling, T.E.D. Klein, The Ceremonies, Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone Magazine1 Comment

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I like to read something special for a holiday. In 2020, deep in the pandemic, I spent a long week whiling over The Cider House Rules, a novel I read and absolutely loved when it first came out. I was considering what to read this year, when it occurred to me that I had not read T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies since it was originally published. That was quite a few moons ago, and my memories about it were vague. The Ceremonies is a book that requires attention and a little patience, so a week off is the perfect time to indulge in it.Continue Reading

Video Visions: The Twelve Assholes of Christmas

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 17, 2021December 12, 2021Video VisionsBurgermeister Meisterburger, Charlie Brown, Columns, Grinch, Hunter Shea, Video VisionsLeave a comment

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

Whether you’re a ho-ho or a humbug, it’s impossible to ignore the holiday season. I know I can’t. As I write this, the threat of having to string up lights outside is looming, which is why I just might take my sweet time getting this done.

After subjecting my wife to watching at least one horror movie a day in October (we hit 55 this year), when December first rolls around, it’s my turn to get the water torture. Yes, we have to watch at least one Christmas movie or cartoon a day until Christmas Eve, when A Christmas Story goes on repeat mode all through the next day. Mind you, I’m not complaining (not loud enough so the wife can hear). First, she never makes me watch any of those insipid Lifetime or Hallmark pieces of dreck. Second, we do throw in some horror movies like Black Christmas, Red Christmas, Better Watch Out, Anna and the Apocalypse, and this year, thanks to Shudder, Silent Night, Deadly Night parts three through five. I never saw them before, and my limbo stick is set on low. Continue Reading

Revelations: A. R. Morlan’s Ewerton Cycle

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 10, 2021November 26, 2021RevelationsA.R. Morlan, Columns, Kevin Lucia, RevelationsLeave a comment

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Around 2012, after a life-changing night with F. Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone and Stuart David Schiff, I began searching used bookstores far and wide for seminal works of horror I’d missed out on. I came to the horror genre late — both as a reader and a writer — so all I knew of horror was Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub. There’s nothing wrong with these writers, of course. But after that night, my head spun with the names of the dozens of writers I’d never heard of before. I decided that to be the kind of writer I aspired to be, I needed to widen my reading palate.Continue Reading

Dead Trees: The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell

Cemetery Dance OnlineDecember 3, 2021November 21, 2021Dead TreesColumns, Dead Trees, Mark Sieber, Ramsey Campbell, The Doll Who Ate His MotherLeave a comment

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Who is the best living horror writer?

The obvious, and most popular answer, is of course Stephen King. I almost agree, but King has done too many different types of fiction to be stigmatized as merely a horror writer. A lot of it can even be construed as science fiction. Especially when one considers how psi talents were an SF staple for years and years.

Despite my love of his work my answer is not Stephen King. I’d have to go with the inimitable Ramsey Campbell.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Inna Effress

Cemetery Dance OnlineNovember 19, 2021November 14, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Inna Effress, Night Time LogicLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

photo of author Inna Effress — Author Inna Effress

Night Time Logic is the part or parts of a story that are felt but not consciously processed. Those that operate below the conscious surface. Those that are processed somewhere, somehow, and in some way other than… overtly and consciously. The deep-down scares. The scares that find their way to our core and unsettle us in ways we rarely see coming…

“The veil of the eye” is a line from a poem that inspired one of guest Inna Effress’ recent stories. In today’s conversation we speak about what Inna calls “the fog of uncertainty” and more.Continue Reading

Dead Trees: The Fates by Thomas Tessier

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 29, 2021October 24, 2021Dead TreesColumns, Dead Trees, Mark Sieber, The Fates, Thomas TessierLeave a comment

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I read all kinds of fiction. Horror new and old, classic science fiction, modern domestic suspense, mainstream, whatever suits my fancy. There’s a special place in my heart of hearts for small town horror. The good stuff from the late seventies and early eighties. Charles L. Grant and his Oxrun Station stories come most immediately to mind. There’s Rick Hautala’s Maine. Matthew J. Costello and his early paperbacks. Peter Straub and the Chowder Society. Alan Ryan, Lisa Tuttle, Chet Williamson, A.R. Morlan, Al Sarrantonio, and T.M. Wright all set stories in cozy small towns. Let’s not forget Mr. King and his Castle Rock fiction.Continue Reading

Video Visions: The 21st Century’s Baddest Badass Final Girls

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 18, 2021October 17, 2021Video VisionsColumns, Hunter Shea, Video VisionsLeave a comment

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

I love the smell of burning candy corns in the morning. It smells like…Halloween!

If you’re like me, you’ve entered into the all-horror, all-the time-zone. I know I watch and read a ton of all things creepy throughout the year, but October (or as I call it, Horrortober) is when folks like us take it up to thirteen. Fuck eleven. That’s for poseur rock bands. Continue Reading

Review: Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta

Cemetery Dance OnlineOctober 5, 2021October 4, 2021Reviews, The Comic VaultColumns, Iron Circus Comics, Jose Pimienta, Joshua Gage, Kel McDonald, Reviews, Stars Hide Your Fire, The Comic VaultLeave a comment

Stars, Hide Your Fire by Kel McDonald and Jose Pimienta
Iron Circus Comics (October 5, 2021)
162 pages; paperback $15; $9.99 e-book
Reviewed by Joshua Gage

Andrea and Darra live in a dead-end Massachusetts town, making their way through high school with hopeful (but slim) dreams of escape. Everything’s going according to plan until a chance encounter with an otherworldly spirit named Carmen changes everything! Carmen promises Andrea eternal life, but a mysterious young boy named Liam shows up claiming he had also made a deal with Carmen, and it didn’t go well . . . 100 years ago. Liam must convince his new friends of Carmen’s evil nature before Andrea is tricked into a supernatural bargain that will upend her new life before it even starts in Stars, Hide Your Fire written by Kel McDonald and illustrated by Joe Pimienta.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Sarah Langan

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 24, 2021September 19, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Night Time Logic, Sarah LanganLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

In this column, which shares a name with my New York-based reading series, I explore this phenomenon, other notions of what makes horror tick, and my favorite authors and stories, new and old with you. Today in my conversation with Sarah Langan we go “beyond the door” and into the “void”… an abyss that could be the darkest of them all and might not be the one you were initially expecting. Continue Reading

We Thought We’d Always Have the Drive-In

Cemetery Dance OnlineSeptember 3, 2021August 29, 2021Horror Drive-InColumns, Horror Drive-In, Mark SieberLeave a comment

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If you had asked me if I knew that life was constant change, and that none of the things I loved would last forever, I’d have surely shrugged and said, Sure, everyone knows that. But when you get right down here, where it counts, I believed it all was permanent.Continue Reading

Night Time Logic with Jeffrey Ford

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 27, 2021August 15, 2021Night Time LogicColumns, Daniel Braum, Jeffery Ford, Night Time LogicLeave a comment

Night Time Logic with Daniel Braum

Welcome to Night Time Logic, my new column for Cemetery Dance Online. Thanks to Norman Prentiss, Richard Chizmar, Blu Gilliand, Kevin Lucia, and the entire Cemetery Dance team. Cemetery Dance played a pivotal role in my education and exploration of horror so it is a thrill to be able to participate and share in the fun, the wonder, and the horror of it all in this forum.

While anything and everything goes, the main focus here will be interviews and conversations with the creative minds that bring us the dark fiction we love. I expect reviews and essays to come along with those conversations. I also expect a good deal of the authors and books we’ll explore will be those that we call the strange, the weird, the uncanny, and the interstitial.Continue Reading

A Preview of Chapelwaite on Epix by Bev Vincent

Bev VincentAugust 16, 2021August 14, 2021Stephen King News from the Dead Zone'Salem's Lot, Bev Vincent, Chapelwaite, Columns, Glenn Chadbourne, Jerusalem's Lot, News from the Dead Zone, Night Shift, Secretary of Dreams, Stephen King, The StandLeave a comment

Preview: Chapelwaite on Epix

“Blood Calls Blood”

I must confess that when I first heard that Epix was turning Stephen King’s early short story “Jerusalem’s Lot” into a ten-episode TV series, I wasn’t terribly excited. I don’t subscribe to that service, so I planned to give the show a miss. I thought it would turn out to be like the TV series The Mist, which bears little resemblance to the source material beyond the general concept. I’m here to tell you I was wrong, and this show is worth checking out. There is horror a-plenty here if you have plenty of patience for the show’s somewhat measured pace.

Revelations: The Short Fiction of Charles Beaumont

Cemetery Dance OnlineAugust 13, 2021August 10, 2021RevelationsCharles Beaumont, Columns, Kevin Lucia, Revelations1 Comment

Banner for Revelations, the column written by Kevin Lucia for Cemetery Dance

photo of author Charles Beaumont — Charles Beaumont

Just as I’ve discovered writers who only wrote a handful of stories and then, for a variety of reasons, didn’t write anymore, I’ve also discovered writers whose careers — and lives — were sadly cut short before they could reach their fullest potential. On one hand, I’m eminently grateful for the work they produced; on the other hand, I can only imagine what they could’ve accomplished if they’d lived longer. One of those writers is the inimitable Charles Beaumont.Continue Reading

Preview: Chapelwaite on Epix

“Blood Calls Blood”

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