Do We Need Graphic Torture in Our Dystopias?

Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column all about the connections between horror and scifi. On Battlestar Galactica, there's an ongoing theme of torture: humans gang-rape an imprisoned Cylon; the Cylons beat a man so badly he loses his eye (not to mention all the humans they kill outright); and there's even a little human-on-Cylon washboarding early in the series. These are not scenes that take place entirely offscreen. We see beatings; we see the bloody, freaked-out face of Six the Cylon after she's been raped so many times she can't stand up and has lost the will to eat. The question is, do we need to see these scenes? Would this series be as powerful without them? And by extension, would any torture-laced scifi flick like The Hills Have Eyes or Cube be as enticing if it lost the mutilations or the razor net that falls from the ceiling and reduces living humans to little cubes of flesh? (Spoilers ahead.) More »

Five Reasons to Watch Movies that Hurt You, Haunt You, and Make You Want to Vomit

Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. I wasn't born a horror movie fan, I made myself one through years of careful practice and studious watching. Everybody has an origin story, and mine begins with the pulsing, gooey strands of sludge that enveloped and destroyed every single point-of-view character in the 1970s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I was so young that I missed the political allegory about Nixon, and the joke about how Spock plays one of the pod people. I crunched down into the fake velvet movie theater seat, wondering if there was a way to worm out of the narrative but still make it through. My first discovery came then: If I plugged my ears, blocked out the heart-beating soundtrack, I could survive the alien invasion. More »

The Most Shocking Science Caught on Film

Welcome back to Horrorhead, where we explore the intersection of horror and science fiction. I talk a lot here about "science horror," which I usually mean as the opposite of supernatural horror. Science horror is basically the dark side of science fiction, whereas supernatural horror can be anything from reality TV bunk like Ghosthunters to really excellent spirit flicks like The Ring or dark fantasies by Stephen King. What makes science horror scary is science itself, and the mad doctors who steer it into the crawly places full of reanimated bodies and reality-warping physics. But some kinds of science are more terrifying than others. That's why I've delineated four branches of science most likely to show up in the next science horror movie in your queue. More »

Battle of the Genitals in Science Horror Movies

Critics are always saying that horror movies are about fearing vaginas, but they're wrong. Sure there's vadge imagery aplenty in horror (just watch the run of Alien movies if you don't believe me), but the scariest science horror flicks of the last thirty years are actually about everything that can go wrong with a dude. I'm not just talking about the malfunctioning penis that blows up Tokyo in Legend of the Overfiend. I'm talking about something deeper. And yes, maybe even . . . harder. More »

How Pollution Created the Creepiest Movie Mutants

Welcome back to Horrorhead, a column where we explore the intersection of horror and scifi. Back in the 1950s, it seemed like every monster was created by radiation: giant ants, a giant tarantula, and even a giant dinosauroid thing called Gojira. But ever since the 1970s, an even scarier byproduct of human invention has been creating gloopy crawlies: pollution. These aren't your friendly Toxic Avenger "fall into a vat of waste" types though. These are the real deal, created by environmental pollutants and industrial waste dumped into the natural world. Read on if you want to take a look at movie mutants who were made by our environmentally-degraded world . . . More »