The TV Glows 📺, Paul Giamatti enters Hostel 🏨, Texas Chain Saw giveaway ☠️ & more!

It's the first day of summer ☀️ and you know what that means!

It's officially the season for road trips, camping, and sunbathing by the lake. With temps climbing into the 90s this week, what better time to pile into a hatchback and drive to a secluded cabin in the woods with your friends. If you're lucky, you won't end up like the kids in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or The Burning. You just might live to survive the night...

As a kid, summertime meant playing tag with my friends until midnight, going on beach trips with my father, and enjoying the latest horror releases. From Wrong Turn to Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, it was the golden age for teen horror. In the summer of '98, I dragged my mom to see Michael Myers and Laurie Strode face off one last time. I can remember everything about that early-evening showing. The smell of popcorn infiltrating my nostrils. The feel of plastic beneath my legs. The cool theater air. And most importantly, the roar of applause and cheers when Laurie picked up that axe and chopped off Michael's head. What a glorious piece of horror cinema. As my first horror movie (and Halloween) in the movie theater, it's the memory I hold dearest.

When my mom and I left the theater, darkness had descended upon the parking lot. Still fearful The Shape could be lurking around the next corner, we bolted to the car. I can specifically recall looking over my shoulder for one last glance, just in case the knife-wielding maniac somehow managed to escape the screen. That summer changed me. While I had been exposed to horror all my life, I transformed into a bona fide fiend during that little trip to the theater. My mom might be gone, but that memory lives forever.

Such childhood memories flooded my brain while prepping the latest newsletter. We didn't plan on it, but our third issue arrives just in time for summer. In this themed issue, we bask in some Summer Horror Favorites - from Piranha 3D to Summer of 84 (which I wrote about for my Double Trouble column on Bloody Disgusting). Our Letterboxd list boasts numerous other sunny treats, perfect to enjoy this overheated weekend. We also revisit the criminally underrated Stranger by the Lake and Monster Party on Shudder. There's a little bit for everyone!

Whether you head out to the lake this weekend or hibernate (like me) with a horror movie marathon, may Horrorverse help you beat the heat.

Yours Cruelly,
Bee Delores | Instagram | Letterboxd | X

This issue’s Letterboxd list can be found here.

25 Years of Cherry Falls

Cherry Falls has never gotten the credit it deserves. Sure, it’s difficult to stand out beneath the very long shadow of Scream – but the Geoffrey Wright-directed feature does plenty to usurp slasher tropes to warrant proper reassessments. From Bloody Disgusting to Nashville Scene, recent reviews consider it “one of the mutilated horror classics of the late ’90s/early Aughts,” writes Jason Shawhan.

Shawhan is exactly right. Cherry Falls possesses all the hallmarks of a classic. 25 years since being shopped at Cannes, the playful, expectation-shattering slasher both upholds and upends genre conventions. While your typical slasher features slutty teens meeting increasingly grisly ends, the Brittany Murphy-starring film sees a long-haired killer targeting virgins of a sleepy, idyllic Virginia town. Usually the quickest way to an early grave, sex proves to be a safeguard against being mutilated and skinned like a deer.

The story begins when two teens show up dead on Lover’s Lane. Their murders appear ritualistic in nature when the police discover a young woman nailed to a tree with the word “virgin” carved into her thigh. While there are no signs of sexual violence, her death is nonetheless savage and sadistic. It’s only when the bodies of more virginal teens pop up around town that the killer’s m.o. becomes clear. Their hunger for untouched, porcelain flesh sends a shockwave throughout the small town – leading the police to host a town hall gathering with all the parents.

Jody Marken (Murphy) and her best friend Timmy (Keram Malicki-Sánchez), the gay-coded sidekick who works for the school paper, eavesdrop on the meeting, and they can’t believe their ears. “Oh, daddy…” whispers Jody, recalling a conversation with her father Brent (Michael Biehn) in which he subtly pleads for her to “go further” in her relationship with Kenny (Gabriel Mann). As the primary lead on the investigation, alongside Deputy Mina (Amanda Anka), Sheriff Brent Marken holds a deep, dark secret that is about to blow up his entire life – and expose the killer’s identity in the process. Jody, whose sexless relationship with Kenny positions her as the next victim, mounts her own investigation into the whereabouts of Lora Lee Sherman (Tammy Ballance), a social outcast who was raped 27 years prior.

When the student body learns the truth, the virgins panic and decide to host a sex party so they can all lose their virginity. They’re marked for death, and they’re not about to die without having popped their cherries. The film climaxes with an epic, sex-crazed orgy at an abandoned hunting lodge where (despite police presence) the killer manages to dismember several partygoers and unleash unholy terror on Jody and her friends.

With cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond in tow, Cherry Falls feels very much like a long-lost episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with a pinch of Scream’s meta-awareness sprinkled in for good measure. The late, great Brittany Murphy dials in an emotionally distraught performance, particularly in the school room and party scenes, that elevates the lo-fi slasher to icon status. But it’s far more than a simple slasher.

Time has fortunately allowed us to peer through the hourglass and see it clearly as an ensemble piece deconstructing sexuality and rape culture. When it’s revealed that a group of “upstanding” students raped Lora Lee, causing her to leave town, the killer’s motives align with a desire to steal the part of youth that the Cherry Falls kids cherish most: their virginity. With a script written by Ken Selden, Wright’s film approaches the topic with surprising care – displaying how it all affects and transforms Jody by the finale.

Untangling sexuality lies at the film’s core, as well, especially in how the killer presents as a woman rather than a typical masculine boogeyman. In donning a black wig, a skirt, stockings, and high-heeled boots, the killer rearranges the preconceived notion that slashers are all male – or at least, it restructures femininity within the subgenre. What was stale – Scream leans into strict maleness, even in later sequels by masking women killers behind a male voice – has become fresh and exciting.

Cherry Falls adheres to familiar fixtures (mysterious killer, big third-act reveal, etc.), but its unraveling of such socially significant themes, in addition to certain casting choices (hello, Candy Clark!), have made it the cult classic it is.

When I posted about the film’s recent appearance on AMC+, I was unsurprised to learn how many had either never heard of it or had yet to see it. To say its release was a mess is an understatement. Not only did critics pan the film during its initial release, but the MPAA rejected it several times after various cuts hit the studio floor. After making festival rounds, USA Films eventually bought the over-priced slasher – it was produced on a $14 million budget, the most for any TV movie ever – and premiered it on the USA Network in late 2000. It eventually saw a VHS and DVD release but quickly went out of print until 2016 when Shout! Factory issued it on Blu-ray. It later appeared on Shudder for a time before vanishing from the internet… until now.

From its unfettered campiness and social relevancy to the most underrated chase scene in slasher history, Cherry Falls enters the modern horror conversation as one of the great relics of the teen horror wave. It's more than earned its place alongside Scream, Urban Legend, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. It's about time it gets its proper due!

Now, go stream it on AMC+, you freaks!

It’s the first day of summer, so why not beat the heat by staying inside with some of Bee & Brett’s summer horror favorites. Check out our Letterboxd lists here. ☀️

Silver Scream Con, the horror convention that brought 5,000 blood-thirsty movie fans to Boston's North Shore in each of its first two iterations, brings the Three-quel everyone's been dying for to Worcester’s DCU Center on September 13-15, 2024. Tickets and information are available now at silverscreamcon.com.

The Fantasia International Film Festival will celebrate its upcoming 28th edition with an electrifying program of screenings, workshops, and launch events running from July 18 through August 4, 2024, returning yet again at the Concordia Hall and J.A. de Sève cinemas, with additional screens and events at Montréal’s Cinémathèque québécoise and Cinéma du Musée.